The new issue of
Brontë Studies (Volume 49 Issue 4. July 2024) is available
online. It's a special issue, edited by Deborah Wynne:
Charlotte Brontë and the Material World. We provide you with the table of contents and abstracts:
Introduction: Charlotte Brontë and Material Culture
pp 257-263 Author: Deborah Wynne
A Cabinet of Curiosities: The Apostles Cabinet in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre
pp. 264-280 Author: Sara L. Pearson
Abstract:
The Apostles cabinetis one of the most recognisable objects that Charlotte Brontë encountered in life and subsequently represented in fiction. Two years before the publication of Jane Eyre (1847), Brontë had visited Hathersage in Derbyshire and had seen the Apostles cabinet in situ; the object clearly remained embedded in her memory. Although the Brontë Parsonage Museum purchased the Apostles cabinet in 1935, no one has yet identified the individual apostles depicted on it, or deeply considered the cabinet’s imaginative recreation in Brontë’s novel. This article will present previously unknown information about the Apostles cabinet, including the fact that eleven of the cabinet’s twelve portraits are modelled on engravings by Cornelis van Caukercken produced circa 1650–1660, which in turn were based on a series of paintings by Anthony Van Dyck created circa 1615–1620. Understanding the cabinet as a material object will enable an investigation of several curious aspects of Brontë’s imaginative transformation of it. I will argue that the fictional cabinet in Jane Eyre serves multiple literary purposes: to enhance the Gothic setting; to contribute to Brontë’s subtle characterisation of Mr Rochester as Catholic; and to evoke the themes of redemption, healing, sin, and betrayal that pervade the novel.
The ‘personal museum’: Letters as Relic Collection in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette
pp 281-292 Author: Shelby Steele
Abstract
This paper contributes to the existing scholarship on letters as material culture and relic culture in the nineteenth century and in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853). In the novel, Lucy collects and preserves letters from absent loved ones to maintain a sense of connection to others in a life that she seems destined to live alone. In this article, I argue that her letters serve as relics of her past relationships and dead love as she desperately clings to tangible objects that bind her to other people. While scholars have concentrated on letters in Villette as material symbols of the corporeal body and romantic love, I argue that Lucy’s letters form a collection that acts as a substitute for personal relationships. To borrow a term from Deborah Lutz, I assert that Lucy’s collection of letters function as a ‘personal museum’ of relics of dead love, which she carefully collects to preserve past relationships.
The Defying Expectations Exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage Museum: A Reflection on Contemporary Curatorial Practices
pp. 293-312 Author: Holly Kirby
Abstract:
This article reflects on the curatorial practices in the Brontë Parsonage Museum’s 2022 Defying Expectations costume exhibition, to assess its strengths and weaknesses and to identify opportunities for similar exhibitions to be launched and improved upon in the future. The Defying Expectations exhibition included interactive art installations, recreations and illustrative reconstructions alongside traditional display methods, and this article evaluates the effectiveness of such a blended approach. Written from the perspective of a museum professional, the article considers how the exhibition developed contemporary curatorial practices and its legacy. Drawing on heritage studies and curatorship, the article juxtaposes information gleaned from literary analysis with an assessment of material culture. It assesses the exhibition’s aim of reinterpreting Brontë’s reputation as choosing plain and practical clothing by foregrounding her interest in colourful and multicultural textiles, which raises questions of individual, local and national identity as well as regarding the effects of colonisation.
Critical Decades: Textiles and Material Culture in Jane Eyre and Three Recent Adaptations
pp. 313-329 Author: Kate Faber Oestreich
Abstract:
This paper discusses the social commentary of textile production as revealed in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) and three recent adaptations. First, I focus on Rosamond Oliver’s deceptively offhand allusion to the Luddite riots of 1812 to argue that Brontë sets her novel in the 1810s during the upheavals impacting the textile industries of the East Midlands, Yorkshire and the North West regions. This setting coupled with textual allusions to early nineteenth-century fashions are used to connect the female characters’ dress in Jane Eyre to local and global labour issues, colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade. I then turn to the visual representation of textiles in the intermedial adaptations of Jane Eyre by Robert Young, Susanna White and Cary Fukunaga, which by visually highlighting the material culture of the 1830s and 1840s, move Brontë’s narrative from the late Georgian to the early Victorian era. These adaptations overwrite the novel’s allusions to early nineteenth-century debates on industrialisation, colonialism and human enslavement in order to privilege its mid-nineteenth-century feminist critique of British marriage laws.
‘The bit of bread, the draught of coffee’: Food Imagery in Jane Eyre
pp. 330-340 Author: Jian Choe
Abstract:
Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) foregrounds the subject of food, depicting the material culture of mid-Victorian society. The text is rife with alimentary imagery and metaphors. Each section of the novel explores different aspects of food, hunger and privation, drawing upon food motifs in varying degrees to map out the heroine’s development into a moral agent. In general, food discourse tends to elucidate the major themes of the novel: childhood trauma; identity formation; education and discipline; love, marriage and sexuality. The novel thus suggests that the issue of food is associated with a wide range of human experience. It engages the reader to critically reappraise food and its consumption, seemingly a banal practice of everyday life, which resonates with material, symbolic and socio-cultural significance.
Reading-While-Walking: Books and Material Culture in Jane Eyre (1847) and Milkman (2018)
pp. 341-356 Author: Marcela Santos Brigida
Abstract:
As with many Victorian novels, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) reflects and thematises society’s obsession with material culture. This article investigates the contrasting ways in which books are appraised in Jane Eyre, arguing that patriarchal authority and its imposed vigilance over female bodies appear to be connected to the ways in which its characters engage with books. To unpack this argument, I propose a close reading of the novel’s opening scene, in which John Reed confiscates Thomas Bewick’s A History of British Birds (1797–1804) from Jane Eyre and reclaims it as his own. Further, I propose an analysis of the intertextual relationship between Jane Eyre and Anna Burns’s Milkman (2018), a contemporary novel that posits the book as a contested object in the public space. In both novels, the protagonist/narrator finds in storytelling a way to circumvent the barriers placed over their access to books in early life.
Establishing Lucy’s Self: Reading Bretton Things in Villette
pp. 357-369 Author: Tian Keyuan
Abstract:
In Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853), the Bildungsroman of Lucy Snowe is woven into her experience of the material culture in Villette where she is frequently rendered impotent by things. In the chapter ‘Auld Lang Syne’, Lucy’s confusion over things reaches a climax with the presence of ‘Bretton things’. These objects from the Bretton house in England first appear at the opening and then turn up again at La Terrasse in Labassecour. Although such objects initially shatter Lucy’s consciousness, they play an important role in her journey towards self-establishment. Contrary to scholarly perspectives that suggest Lucy’s selfhood is fragmented and lost amid the reappeared Bretton things, this paper argues that these objects enable Lucy to confront her suppressed passions and desires. Through her exploration, Lucy gradually moves beyond her dependence on the Bretton things and people and succeeds in adjusting the understatedness of British materiality with the materiality of Villette. This paper aims to reveal how Lucy’s relationship with the materiality of objects empowers her to face life’s adversities. As Lucy narrates her story, she demonstrates a profound understanding of how to live among the shadows of death, with objects becoming the tangible threads that connect the past, present and future.
Book Reviews
The Invention of Charlotte Brontë: Her Last Years and the Scandal That Made Her
pp 370-372
Author: Lydia Craig
Call for Papers
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