I hold another creed

 A new paper, published online:

“I hold another creed”: reading Helen Burns’ resistant theology in Jane Eyre

Elizabeth Apple, Duke University, Durham

Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 1–17 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1080/08905495.2025.2510200

This paper examines Helen Burns’ theological ideology in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre as a nuanced resistance to the biopolitical and disciplinary regimes of nineteenth-century charity schools, particularly as exemplified at Lowood. Through close analysis of Helen’s position as an “excess” figure within Lowood’s population—marked by her lack of social function and perceived disposability—the essay traces how Brontë’s novel rehearses Michel Foucault’s concepts of biopower and the strategic management of life and death within institutional settings.