by Marta Sánchez RomeraDepartamento de Filología Inglesa, Francesa y Alemana, Universidad de MálagaMay 2026Throughout this dissertation project, I will provide some context on how Victorian values affected the relationship between women, creating a bond that sometimes went further than a simple friendship. Since the category ‘’lesbianism’’ did not exist and homosexuality was widely seen as bad, Victorians romanticised these friendships and were blinded to the fact that something deeper could occur between them. In order to reflect all this, after giving some historical context and theory, I will analyse Villette by Charlotte Brontë, in which there is a clear subtext of sapphic desire, with the aim of revealing how lesbianism was portrayed and seen in the 19th century.
by Sara MaltonJournal of Victorian Culture, vcag014, https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcag014 (July 2026)This essay focuses on the nineteenth-century ‘fasting girl’, a phenomenon scrutinized in medical writing and the popular press, as well as the period’s literature. Fasting girls were typically purported to survive on only the Eucharist and sips of water – for weeks, months, or even years. They often became objects of intense public interest, alternately the locus of legal and medical enquiry or sites of pilgrimage. In evoking earlier fasting saints, whose behaviour was considered anorexia mirabilis, the fasting girl claims to embody the miraculous consequences of devotion to her saviour. The medical establishment would increasingly seek to discredit this earlier understanding of fasting. Cases such as that of the Welsh girl Sarah Jacob (1857–1869), who has been ‘resurrected’ by authors from Dickens to Emma Donoghue (in her recent historical novel, The Wonder [2016]), were at the nexus of this transition from the perception of self-imposed starvation as redemptive sacrifice to pathologized illness, anorexia nervosa (1873). Dickens offers varying treatments of fasting women in his journalism and his portrait of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop (1841). Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley (1849) identifies maternal healing as a tonic to destructive, idolatrous forms of self-starvation. Finally, in its depiction of dangerous religious devotion and the limits of medicalization, The Wonder offers us a prism through which we can critically examine the ongoing cultural construction of the fasting girl. Collectively, the texts considered here invite a more thorough confrontation with the religious dimensions of female self-deprivation and its vexed relationship to female agency.
by Paloma Ríos PrietoAdvisor: Ana Isabel Zamorano RuedaUNED, 2026La tesis doctoral que se presenta en este documento pretende ofrecer una panorámica completa de la producción literaria de la escritora del siglo XIX Anne Brontë para demostrar que el tipo de voz, discurso y los enunciados que la autora va empleando progresivamente a lo largo de la vida. Su trayectoria literaria comenzó como escritora de composiciones poéticas contextualizadas en un universo de ficción denominado Gondal y continuó con una poesía confesional que le sirvió como instrumento para expresar todo tipo de sentimientos, ilustrando una proyección autobiográfica de la interioridad, de su yo más íntimo y personal. Mientras que la voz y el discurso inicial de la escritora se focaliza en una atracción por el mundo de la fantasía, la aventura, la sensibilidad por el paisaje y la naturaleza que la rodeaba, su crecimiento personal se corresponde con la evolución o maduración en su discurso, presentando en la poesía que no pertenece a su universo de ficción un discurso aún más intimista, introspectivo y de autoexploración confesional en el que destaca el análisis de la fe o el sentido general de la vida. La escritura de Anne Brontë también comprende un ensayo dialogado entre dos personajes no identificados conocido como Brotherton Manuscript en el que la autora presenta el debate entre la razón y la fe en relación con el origen de la Tierra. Por otro lado, en las dos novelas, Agnes Grey y The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, publicadas con menos de un año de diferencia, predomina el discurso moral y social, pero fundamentalmente didáctico para reformar situaciones de desventaja social y legal para las mujeres y los niños del siglo XIX. Si la voz de la escritora Anne Brontë comenzó con una predilección por la fantasía, terminará sus últimas líneas con un discurso de realismo social con dimensión feminista que la convierte en una figura pionera en el pensamiento de reforma social que resuena incluso hoy en día. La problemática en torno a la figura y obra de Anne Brontë reside en la escasez de documentos de primera mano que se conservan de ella, en la abundancia de leyendas que la han situado en una posición periférica en relación con sus hermanas, además del proceso de censura e incluso silenciamiento que su obra ha tenido hasta el último tercio del siglo XX. Esta investigación aspira a recuperar la voz de Anne Brontë tanto en su producción poética como en la narrativa, revisando de igual manera, la evolución que ha habido en la crítica literaria con el objetivo final de contribuir en el proceso de reconocimiento literario que su obra merece. La difusión y visibilidad independiente de Anne Brontë como pensadora adelantada a su tiempo se hace necesaria para reconocer y valorar su contribución en la mejora de las condiciones sociales, económicas y legales para las personas pero de manera más específica para los niños y las mujeres. Este estudio espera ser una contribución relevante en el conocimiento científico en el campo de los estudios de género en España, al no existir ninguna tesis doctoral centrada de manera exclusiva en la obra y figura de la escritora Anne Brontë.
Dr. Suvam Nath SharmaDrishti : the Sight # Vol.- XV, Issue - I (May, 2026-October, 2026), pp 122-126The Brontë novels possess canonical status because they refuse exhausted historical meaning and maintain resistance to singular interpretation across generations. Reading the Brontë canon through the lens of weird fiction and contemporary theory reveals how these works systematically dismantle Victorian moral certainties and domesticity’s illusory stability. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë wrote texts that expose moral nihilism as an affective condition wherein established ethical frameworks prove radically inadequate to comprehend human experience and desire. Rather than offering reassurance, these novels stage the eruption of the numinous within domestic interiors supposedly secured by convention. Heathcliff’s demonic force, Bertha Mason’s mônstrum-like presence, and Helen’s recognition of her husband’s fundamental vacancy all constitute manifestations of this numinous threat that dissolves selfhood’s boundaries. Reconsidering the Brontë canon through weird fiction’s diagnostic apparatus illuminates how Victorian comfort depends upon elaborate denial and repression of forces that exceed rational explanation and moral categorization. The permanence of moral chaos and numinous danger in these works constitutes their enduring philosophical wisdom for contemporary readers who inhabit moments of ideological hardening and moral certainty.
Women, Autonomy, and Resistance in Victorian Fiction: A Study of Jane Eyre
Pallavi Bhardwaj. Ritu Sharma and Simran KambojJournal of Technical Education, Vol. 49 Special Issue No. 1 April 2026, p. 116Victorian literature frequently reflects the rigid gender hierarchies embedded within nineteenth-century British0 society. This paper explores the theme of women’s autonomy and resistance in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë within the socio-cultural framework of Victorian England. The novel critiques patriarchal authority and redefineswomanhood through a protagonist who asserts moral, emotional, and economic independence. Through an examination of Jane’s psychological development and key narrative moments, the study argues that Jane Eyre anticipates feminist thought and serves as a foundational text in Victorian feminist discourse.
Esther Liu Godfrey, University of South Carolina UpstateVictorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature, Number 149, Summer 2026, pp. 141-161This essay argues that Gen Z readers, equipped with a vernacular psychological literacy derived from social media and therapy culture, are uniquely positioned to reread Wuthering Heights through a diagnostic gaze: a feminist interpretive practice that recognizes the novel’s psychodynamics as patterns of abuse rather than passion. While feminist critics from Deborah Lutz to Arielle Zibrak have examined the liberating potential of portrayals of desire, contemporary students bring to the text a democratized therapeutic vocabulary—terms such as trauma bond, coercive control, and enmeshment—that reframes the dangerous lover’s allure as pathology. Drawing on pedagogical encounters and the cultural afterlife of Wuthering Heights in Twilight, Fifty Shades of Grey, and Emerald Fennell’s recent film adaptation, this essay traces how Wuthering Heights persists as a cultural trauma loop: a dopamine-driven cycle of harm and reconciliation that masquerades as romance. Integrating insights from Kirsten Shepherd-Barr, Naomi Booth, Jack Halberstam, Christine Jarvis, and Sandra Lee Bartky, I contend that therapy-speak, often dismissed as reductive pop psychology, instead informs a feminist discourse capable of dismantling the aesthetics of romanticized abuse. The diagnostic gaze thus offers a mode of reading that neither pathologizes desire nor romanticizes domination. By recognizing Catherine and Heathcliff ’s relationship as a model of dysregulated attachment rather than transcendent love, Gen Z readers illuminate new ethical possibilities for teaching and reading Brontë today: not the cancellation of Wuthering Heights, but the recovery of intimacy itself.
Santos Zunzunegui Díez, Universidad del País Vasco - Euskal Herriko UnibertsitateaSERIARTE. Revista científica De Series Televisivas Y Arte Audiovisual, 10, 45–58 (2026)Recuperando una idea acariciada durante más de veinte años largos años y con la complicidad esencial de uno de sus mejores guionistas, Julio Alejandro, Buñuel lleva a cabo una adaptación de la gran novela de Emily Brontë, Cumbres borrascosas, transponiéndola desde los áridos páramos ingleses a las ardientes tierras mexicanas. Pero sobre todo insertando el amor imposible y transgresor que la novela describe en la tradición hispánica de la más pura necrofilia con la finalidad de proponer una ilustración cinematográfica de uno de los versos más célebres de nuestra literatura, ese «polvo enamorado» que cantó Quevedo, como destino final de cualquier amor.
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‘A hot July day’: Editorial Introduction
pp 211-213 Author: O'Callaghan, Dr. Claire
Research Articles
Rediscovering Anne Carus Wilson
pp. 214-229 Author: Burstein, Moriam Elizabeth
Abstract:
This article recovers the work of Anne Carus Wilson (1787–1859), who was the wife of William Carus Wilson (1791–1859), the model for Mr Brocklehurst in Jane Eyre (1847). Anne Carus Wilson has been ignored in accounts of the Brontës, despite her known involvement in the Clergy Daughters’ School. Now virtually forgotten, Carus Wilson was a successful children’s author in her own right, whose output during the 1820s and 1830s included short fiction, a novel, multiple devotional works, periodical articles and a children’s biblical card game. This article argues that analysing her surviving work clarifies how she and her husband may have disseminated their Evangelical Calvinism to students at their various schools, even as she sought to model forms of Christian activism for British children in general.
‘Let me try to wait His will in silence’: Silence and Faith in Jane Eyre
pp. 230-244 Author: Lewis, Ariadne
Abstract:
Silence in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) is often unfavourably contrasted with the power of speech and ‘telling the story’. However, the novel’s silences are much more complex than simple signs of oppression or roadblocks to self-expression. Silences in Jane Eyre reveal Jane’s spiritual growth and a narrative of transformation in her relationship with God and Rochester. Jane initially reads God as silent in response to her prayers, which reading shapes her understanding of divine providence and plan for her life. She sees a similar sort of silence reflected in her earthly relationships, and these experiences of silence shape how she uses silence towards those around her. However, when the ‘mysterious summons’ breaks God’s silence, Jane comes to believe that there is a providential purpose behind the silence of God, allowing her to redeem and repurpose silence in her relationships.
‘Amusing you with an old world story’: Relating to the Past in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
pp. 245-257 Author: Walters, Elijah
Abstract:
This essay revisits the topic of narrative structure in Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) by exploring similarities between Helen’s diary and John Bunyan’s The Life and Death of Mr Badman (1680). As Brontë’s novel shifts from the Gilbert frame narrative to Helen’s Gothic diary, she introduces her topics of reform through an interpolation of Bunyan’s seventeenth-century fiction. Brontë’s careful interaction with Bunyan’s text makes The Tenant of Wildfell Hall not simply a commentary on Victorian society but also a transformative engagement with literature from the past.Why Trees Matter in Wuthering Heights
pp. 258-275 Author: Defant, Ivonne
Abstract:
Trees are not a remarkable feature of the Brontë moors—trees are indeed rare–yet their very dearth is rife with significance in terms of both gender and ecology. This article proposes that the trans-corporeal interplay between trees and Catherine Earnshaw and her daughter, Cathy, in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) foregrounds ideas of transformation, connection and preservation. The episode of the fir tree in Lockwood’s dream introduces the reader to Catherine’s past and therein the past of the moorland: ancient forests that once blanketed the landscape participating in its formation. Drawing upon an intersection between matrilineality and the ecological history of the landscape centred on the arboreal, this article demonstrates how Brontë interweaves the identity of the moorland with the identities of mother and daughter. While Catherine’s arboreal embodiment allows Cathy to retrieve the spirit of the mother and of the place, trees enroot the self of Catherine, Cathy and the land, interconnecting and enriching them.The ‘Pets’ of Edward Fairfax Rochester
pp. 276-288 Author: Pope, Liam George
Abstract:
In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), Rochester’s dog, Pilot, introduces Jane and Rochester, essentially setting into motion the main plot of the novel. To use Ivan Kreilkamp’s term, Pilot eventually becomes something of an anthroprosthetic seeing eye dog for his owner when he is partially blinded following the fire at Thornfield Hall. Anthroprosthesis refers to an anthropomorphic being that fits the role of a living ‘prosthesis’ for an injured or otherwise disabled human character. This article argues that Jane, upon returning to find Rochester at Ferndean Manor, willingly replaces Pilot in his capcity as Rochester’s ‘guide dog’, becoming an anthroprosthetic human guide dog parallel.The Earliest American Reactions to Wuthering Heights: Some New FindingsSpecial Interst Article
pp. 289-297 Author: Evans, Robert C.
Abstract:
This Special Interest Article describes and quotes from over thirty ‘new’ responses to Wuthering Heights that were published in the United States immediately after the novel was first printed there in 1848 and in several later decades of the nineteenth century. These newly collected responses indicate that the book was at first strongly criticised, whereas other reviews offered occasional positive comments, although even these were often mixed with censure. In the decades following the novel’s initial American appearance, it was still sometimes described negatively; however, by the 1870s, opinion had clearly shifted, with Emily Brontë praised for her bold genius. Taken together, these reviews illustrate the vagaries of literary interpretation and the ways in which some books, initially condemned by their earliest reviewers, can eventually be fully accepted into the canon of great literature.
Book ReviewsAnne Brontë and Lord Byron: Lost Echoes of Influence
pp. 298-300 Reviewed by Cook, Peter
Violence and the Brontës: Language, Reception, Afterlives
pp. 301-303 Reviewed by Curzon, Rachel
“Wuthering Heights”, a Film Directed by Emerald Fennell, Warner Bros., 2026
pp. 304-306 Reviewed by Seijo-Richart, Maria
The Edinburgh Companion to the Brontës and the Arts
pp. 307-309 Reviewed by Stoneman, Patsy
The High Flight: 50 Poems Inspired by Emily Brontë’s Hawk
pp. 310-312 Reviewed by Van Der Meer, Carolyne
Mădălina Elena MandiciProUniversitariaISBN: 978-606-26-1773-82023In this study, the investigative focus is given by the typological analysis of the female reader postulated by three Victorian novelists – Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë and George Eliot – in Jane Eyre (1847), Wuthering Heights (1847), Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860) and Middlemarch (1871-1872). The act of reading performed by fictional women in the English novel of the Victorian period undoubtedly requires clarifications and delimitations. The internal chronology of the texts places the biography of the female reader in the five emblematic mother texts for the Victorian period in a broader historical, cultural, educational and social process that involves, in 19th century England, the proliferation of books of all kinds, the diversification of the reading public, the relativization of the taste for reading, but also the polyvalence of the types of pleasure and instruction offered by it. The central intention of the book is, therefore, to formulate a comprehensive description of the notion of "reading", revolutionized in the Victorian era, when the author-book-reader relationship became impossible to account for, and the female audience became increasingly refined.The book is addressed not only to English scholars, but – thanks to the exegetical methodology used – also to the general, non-specialized public. What new breath can be added to iconic figures of 19th-century English literature and to the female characters created by the pens of the novelists of the time, already turned on all sides? The answer represents an opportune occasion for this work to bring into discussion, through a reader-oriented analysis, the function of reading (active, productive, ultimately propelling the recipient's desire to write and rewrite any complex phenomenon that wins the approval of the text label) – on the scene of identity changes – in the life of the woman-reader/intellectual/educated and, by extension, in the psycho-cultural destiny of the woman who reads, a woman attested historically and culturally. In the Western world, the methodological interest in the act of reading (performed by fictional and historically attested women alike) has reached, in recent decades, countless nuances and refinements. Since the interest in the female reader as represented in the Victorian novel is quite weak in the native space, the indirect aim of the work to contribute to the enrichment of the poetics of reading cannot be ignored either. The choice of the five reading examples discussed at length in the work is not at all arbitrary. In the complex game of reading within the five novels, we can discover the expansion of the English textual consciousness (in the sense of cultural anthropologists): each text refers ad infinitum to other texts, forcing the external reader to (re)read both the mother text and the embedded texts belonging to the predecessors. The ultimate goal of the woman-reader's reading is, as each bundle of hypotheses advanced in the last three sections of the book will indicate, self-reading – the scrutiny of the self through new forms of self-knowledge and legibility.
The Governess and Textual Reinterpretation: Charlotte Brontë’s Jane EyreReaders on a Social Spectrum in Wuthering Heights
Funkcje wątków gotyckich w Wichrowych Wzgórzach Emily Brontë oraz Pogance Narcyzy Żmichowskiej (The Functions of Gothic Themes in Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë and The Heathen by Narcyza Żmichowska)by Szklarz, WeronikaJuly 1, 2026Zarówno w Wichrowych Wzgórzach Emily Brontë, jak i w Pogance Narcyzy Żmichowskiej występują elementy charakterystyczne dla „formuły gotyckiej”. Niniejsza praca stanowi analizę porównawczą sposobu wykorzystania przez pisarki wątków gotyckich, a jej celem jest wskazanie ich funkcji w wymowie obu dzieł. Autorka wyznacza najważniejsze cechy powieści gotyckiej, przeprowadza analizę konstrukcji przestrzeni i ich wpływu na bohaterów, a także omawia kreację postaci przypominających gotyckich łotrów. Ponadto podkreślono znaczenie sił nadprzyrodzonych w obu utworach oraz wyjaśniono, w jaki sposób gotycka maska służy wprowadzeniu kwestii takich jak związki nieheteronormatywne, dyskryminacja rasowa oraz opresyjność norm płciowych. Praca dowodzi, że wątki gotyckie w utworach Brontë i Żmichowskiej nie tylko tworzą atmosferę grozy, lecz za sprawą kategorii „niewypowiadalności” umożliwiają równoczesne ukrycie i wyeksponowanie tematów niemożliwych do wyrażenia wprost. Tym samym zestawienie Wichrowych Wzgórz i Poganki ujawnia transgresyjny potencjał gotycyzmu, pozwalający na wpisanie obu powieści w szeroki kontekst społeczno-kulturowy.Both Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë and The Heathen by Narcyza Żmichowska feature elements from “the Gothic formula”. The thesis is a comparative analysis of the usage of Gothic themes, and its aim is to state their functions in the novels’ message. The author of the thesis outlines the most important features of the Gothic novel, analyses the construction of the spaces and their influence on the characters and considers the characterisation of these who resemble Gothic villains. Furthermore, meaning of the supernatural forces is highlighted, and also it is explained how the gothic disguise serves to introduce issues such as queer relationships, racial discrimination and oppressiveness of gender norms. The thesis proves that the gothic themes in Brontë’s and Żmichowska’s novels not only create horror atmosphere but also, through the category of “unspeakable”, enable the simultaneous concealment and unveiling of topics that cannot be expressed directly. Therefore, a comparison of Wuthering Heights and The Heathen reveals the transgressive potential of Gothicism, which allows both novels to be situated within a socio-cultural context.
Чартистское движение в романах Шарлотты Бронте и Элизабет Гаскелл (he Chartist Movement in the Novels of Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell)Dmitrienko K. V.Current issues of translation, linguistics, history of literature and folklore: collection of articles from the XIV International scientific conference of young scientists dedicated to the 95th anniversary of the Department of Foreign Languages (Ekaterinburg, February 19-20, 2026). - Ekaterinburg: Publishing house "Azhur", 2026. - P. 1224-1236.This article analyzes how the Chartist movement is reflected in Charlotte Brontë's social novels Shirley (1849) and Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South (1855). It examines ideas about Chartism that existed in British society and how they were depicted in women's fiction of the second half of the 19th century. Particular attention is paid to the images of the characters through which the writers convey their attitudes to the social problems of their era.
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by Elizabeth ImlayRiver Light PressISBN: 978-1068467424June 2026Did Charlotte Bronte transform the ancient tale of 'Cupid and Psyche' into one of literature's most enduring novels?In this compelling study, Elizabeth Imlay argues that 'Jane Eyre' is a bold reworking of fairy-tales dating back to the tragic myth, recast through the consciousness of a 19th-century woman seeking passionate love. By tracing Jane's symbolic journey through earth, air, fire, and water-body, spirit, passion, and reason, Imlay reveals how Bronte reshapes the story through a feminist lens, redefining love as a unity of the spiritual and the physical, making 'air' a female element.
About the author
Elizabeth Imlay, MA Oxon, was born into a Freethinking family, her father being a classical scholar and her mother a linguist. She was educated at a school for the daughters of Evangelical missionaries, where she obtained a thorough grounding in the Bible, French and Latin. She read English Language and Literature at Oxford, which at that time demanded a knowledge of French, Latin, Anglo-Saxon and Middle and Modern English. She has worked in publishing and journalism and is now a widow with two grown-up children.
Zhiying ZhangThe Explicator, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2026.2680014 (2026)Charlotte Brontë's Villette (1853) is a novel profoundly concerned with the act of looking and being looked at. Vision in the novel is never neutral; rather, it is bound up with power, desire, moral judgment, and gendered discipline. In particular, the ekphrastic episode of the Cleopatra painting in Chapter XIX has elicited substantial critical commentary and functions as a focal point for discussions of gender, spectatorship, Orientalism, aesthetics, and narrative authority. (...)
Alia Rehman, Hira Javed and Iram AyazLiberal Journal of Language & Literature Review, Vol. 4 No. 1 (2026)The paper discusses a thematic and psychological analysis of the notions of love and revenge in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, with particular attention to the figure of Heathcliff. It aims to study how intense frustrated love becomes transformed into destructive vengeance and the way such a vicious circle furthers violence, suffering, and ruination throughout generations. Qualitative research methodology is employed in this study because close textual reading and thematic analysis, as its tools, are necessary to trace causes, development, and consequences of revenge within the narrative. Analysis reveals that the vengeful behavior of Heathcliff originates from social alienation, class prejudice, childhood abuse, and emotional betrayal, mainly Catherine Earnshaw’s denigrating her emotional commitment for social status. The research further discusses an intriguing connection between obsessive love and revenge; it indicates how passion, when strangled by social mores, acts as a catalyst for cruelty and moral degeneration. Most importantly, this study suggests that Brontë had denounced revenge as a self-deprecating impulse, and how such a cycle of revenge is retarded in the second generation through mutual comprehension, forgiveness, and nourishing love. By placing revenge as the central thematic force of the novel, this research contributes to a deeper understanding of Wuthering Heights as a psychological and moral exploration of human passion, suffering, and the possibility of redemption.
Nazem DaradkehVerlag Unser WissenISBN-13 : 978-6209995224May 2026Der freudsche Ansatz ist eine Methode zum Lesen und Verstehen literarischer Texte. Durch seine Anwendung auf literarische Texte lassen sich Figuren und ihre Psyche im Verlauf der Handlungen in den Romanen analysieren. Dieses Buch untersucht die Rolle von Natur und Gesellschaft, die die Psychologie der Figuren kontinuierlich verändern. Dieses Buch analysiert, wie das Leben die Figuren im Roman beeinflusst und wie die Figuren mit verschiedenen Situationen und Orten umgehen. Sie sind auf der Suche nach Leidenschaft und Liebe. Dies gelingt ihnen jedoch nicht aufgrund von Kämpfen, Auseinandersetzungen und Konkurrenz im Streben nach der zweiten Hälfte ihres Herzens. Liebe und Leidenschaft sind die Ursachen für seelische Leiden. Diese sind schlimmer als körperliche Leiden. Dieses Buch analysiert die leidenschaftliche Liebe und ihren Einfluss auf die Veränderung der Psyche der Figuren entsprechend der Kontrolle über deren Persönlichkeit. Es kann sich dabei um das Es, das Ich oder das Über-Ich handeln. Dieses Buch erläutert diese Liebe in "Wuthering Heights", das Emily Brontë (1818-1848) 1847 verfasste. Es untersucht die Gründe, die zwischen den Liebenden bestehen und zu Kämpfen, Hass und Konflikten zwischen den Figuren führen. Die Untersuchung der Psychologie der Figuren ist für die Analyse ihrer Einstellungen von großer Bedeutung.
Manana Aslanishvili, Georgian Technical University, Georgia, manana.58@mail.ruIRCEELT 2025: 15th International Research Conference on Education, Language and LiteratureEmily Bronte was a prominent English novelist and poet of the 19th century, best known for her only novel, “Wuthering Heights”, now regarded as a classic of English literature. The novel was published under masculine pen name, Ellis Bell, in 1847. “Wuthering Heights” is a story of revenge and doomed love. It features harsh moments of cruelty and sexual passion. Although published during the Victorian period, “Wuthering Heights” deviated from the literary norms of the time as it exceptionally represented different aspects, raised diverse questions and addressed more serious issues than those that concerned Victorian era. Instead of celebrating the spirit of the Victorian age, the novel skillfully portrays and reflects more practical and vitally important aspects of people’s lives such as love, hate, revenge, personal relationships, and friendship. The novel depicts the power and passion of intense love as well as the dark and evil side of human nature. It revolves around the love relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff, the climax of which is a tragedy since the love ends up in revenge. The reunion in death of the two lovers constitutes their achievement of complete freedom and love. Though, Emily Bronte published only one novel, “Wuthering Heights” (1847), but that single work has its place among the masterpieces of English literature.
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Editor: Robert C. EvansSalem PressISBN: 978-1-63700-073-1January 2022The Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, are well known English poets and novelists of the nineteenth century. This volume closely examines Charlotte’s masterpiece Jane Eyre, Emily’s influential Wuthering Heights, and Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, to give readers a deeper sense of the themes throughout these important works and the influences behind their creation. Common themes throughout the sisters’ works are love, gender, class, and the intersections of all three, and this volume explores these topics and more, setting the work of the Brontë sisters into various contexts, such as biographical, historical, social, cultural, and aesthetic.
- “The air swarmed with Catherines”: Moving Words and Stereoscopic Narrative in Wuthering Heights, by Kara M. Manning
- The Myth of the Brontës, by Brandon Schneeberger
- “It is only English girls who can thus be trusted to travel alone”: Class, Travel, and Work in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, by Sarah McNeely
- Lucy Snowe in Belgium: Work and Colonialism in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, by
Sarah McNeely- Charlotte Brontë’s The Professor: Overbearing Men and the Gleam of Female Intellect, by John Rignall
- Emily Brontë: The Man Branwell Should Have Been, by Tracy Hayes
- The Experience of Marriage in Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Jeremy Tambling
- Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë: A Survey of Editorial Introductions, 1950–1989, by Robert C. Evans
- Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë: A Survey of Editorial Introductions, 1990–2020, by Joyce Ahn
- Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë: A Survey of Editorial Introductions, 1950–1989, by Robert C. Evans
- Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë: A Survey of Editorial Introductions, 1990–2020, by Joyce Ahn
- Charlotte Brontë’s “Other” Novels: A Survey of Editorial Introductions, 1974–2008, by Robert C. Evans
- Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Brontë: A Survey of Editorial Introductions, 1969–2020, by Robert C. Evans
- The 1996 Film of Jane Eyre: A Survey of Reviews, by Jordan Bailey
- The 2009 Film of Wuthering Heights: Critical Problems and Possibilities, by McKenna Odom
- The 2011 Film of Wuthering Heights: A Survey of Reviews, Mikia Holloway
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by Sarah Danielle AllisonColumbia University PressISBN: 9780231209717 (Paperback)ISBN: 9780231209700 (Hardcover)ISBN: 9780231558075 (E-book)August 2025Literary celebrity in the nineteenth century emerged from a miscellaneous array of trending print forms, including antislavery writing, which was a popular, consumable form of literature in the period. Antislavery print culture could function as a pop culture, leveraging cultural myths about gender and authorship through print forms that connected readers with writers: printed collections of author signatures, descriptions of writers’ homes, autobiography, biography, and travel writing. The Rise of Celebrity Authorship traces surprising relations among figures and across shared forms in the period: What do antislavery forms and figures tell us about literary celebrity and the networks of transatlantic print culture?Sarah Danielle Allison illuminates the collective creation of celebrity by tracing unexpected connections within this anarchic nineteenth-century literary marketplace. Bringing together book history with more recent computational approaches, The Rise of Celebrity Authorship shifts focus from the conventional literary work of major writers to the breadth of print forms circulating around them. Allison considers a variety of texts adjacent to the novel, including Edgar Allan Poe’s satire of autograph collecting, antislavery gift books, and a Southern travelogue by the Swedish writer Frederika Bremer. She draws striking parallels between two starkly different 1858 texts: Elizabeth Gaskell’s biography of Charlotte Brontë, which sought to unearth the reality behind Jane Eyre, and Josiah Henson’s autobiography, which circulated as the life of the “original Uncle Tom.” A rich account of the competing and complementary forces that shape images of authors, this book reveals the collaborative work of literary production and celebrity.
5. A True History of Jane Eyre: The Collaborative Posthumous Creation of Charlotte Brontë
‘Between her and the world’: Legacies, Interpretations, Adaptations
pp 97-99 Author: O'Callaghan, Dr. Claire
Research Articles
No Atom Rendered Void: The Aerial and Alchemical Enchantment of Wuthering Heights
pp. 100-117 Author: Duell, Meg
Abstract:
This article maps how elemental and meteorological metaphysics function in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847), arguing that the novel’s complex recursive structure is facilitated through an alchemical process by which the collision of air and materiality—the transcendent elements embodied by Catherine and Heathcliff—activates psychic, spatial, mortal and temporal ‘wandering’. These points of elemental friction, defined here as ‘portals of enchantment’, connect their subjects with past and future iterations of themselves and others. Additionally, it explores how the novel’s elemental ‘portals’ extend beyond spatial thresholds into aerial and avian touchstones, allowing Brontë to infuse the novel with folkloric subtext..
This Rustic Muse: Developing a Political Voice in the Poetry of Patrick Brontë
pp. 118-134 Author: Avery, Simon
Abstract:
This article examines a range of the Reverend Patrick Brontë’s poetry—a much neglected body of work in Brontë criticism—and argues that it was here that Brontë was able to develop a political voice and a sense of literature as a vehicle for political exploration and debate. In considering Brontë’s two collections, Cottage Poems (1811) and The Rural Minstrel (1813), in the contexts of war abroad and industrial, economic and social unrest at home, this article explores what the poetry tells us about Brontë’s political thinking, his relationship with political structures and hierarchies, and his anxieties about political cohesion and security. What emerges is a poet whose work, written under the guise of his ‘rustic muse’, offers fascinating interventions into contemporaneous political debates regarding poverty, industrialisation, the city, community, the place of religion in society, nation-state formation and the nature of liberty and equality more generally.
Reading Jane Eyre as a Hagiographic Romance
pp. 28-43 Author: Schiavone, Matteo
Abstract:
This article uses queer medievalism as a critical method to interpret Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), reading it as a hagiographic romance, a hybrid text that blurs clear-cut generic boundaries. As the fictionalised autobiography of a character who finds the strength of self-belief through mystical experiences and the Christian doctrine of endurance, the narrative is akin to medieval hagiographic and visionary literature, which the comparison with The Book of Margery Kempe (c. 1430s) demonstrates. At the same time, however, similar to Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval, it follows the pattern of a chivalric quest romance, as Jane physically moves outwards and goes through several stages of development before being ready to marry Mr Rochester. Ultimately, queered genres create a space where Jane can develop a queer gender identity beyond stifling societal expectations.‘To give the passage quite a contrary turn’: Female Religious Authority and Subversive Hermeneutics in Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley
pp. 132-152 Author: Wiegand, Holly
Abstract:
This article argues for a reading of Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley (1849) as a historiography of women’s challenges to androcentric Anglican structures of authority and measures of biblical interpretation. Shirley stages the possibility and precarity of women’s public religious authority amid socio-religious discourses, underscoring the relationship between Shirley and Caroline as a space for proto-feminist theological and interpretive revisions. Attending to Brontë’s heroine’s push against religious exclusivism foregrounds Caroline’s often-overlooked hermeneutic turns in her dispute with mill overseer Joe Scott, Brontë’s mouthpiece for inherited anti-woman Anglican interpretations. This article contends that class and gender inflect the act and reception of biblical interpretation for Brontë, playing out historical debates about women’s preaching and discussions about working-class Dissenting groups that supported women’s ministries, such as Methodism. It nuances Brontë’s views on the role of women in religion as she too is pulled between traditional dogma and radical woman-centred hermeneutics along class lines.‘Are you not a little severe?’: Lucy’s Wit in Her Narrative Voice in Villette
pp. 153-166 Author: Zhang, Zhiying
Abstract:
This article provides a new perspective on Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853), analysing the function of wit through the lens of psychoanalytic and comic theories. Primarily based on Freud’s theory of wit, the analysis examines various wit-making techniques, exploring how Lucy employs these methods as a means of self-expression and critique. The use of wit breaks the serious narrative tone, creating a comic effect that allows readers to enjoy the story and empathise with Lucy’s painful experiences. It also allows Lucy to release her suppressed emotional pain and struggles within her narrative. By demonstrating how wit is integral to Lucy’s journey of self-discovery and self-expression, this article contributes to the ongoing scholarly conversation about comic elements in Brontë’s writing.Heathcliff, Harry and Hardin: After as a New Layer to Wuthering Heights
pp. 167-183 Author: de Beus, Emma
Abstract:
This article considers Anna Todd’s After series (2013–2015) as a new adaptive layer to Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847). It explores the relationship between the two works by considering the adaptive history and context of Wuthering Heights before moving onto an analysis of After, examining its multiple points of origin. The analysis includes fanfiction, the boy band One Direction and other influences on After, both classical and contemporary. The article then undertakes close readings of Wuthering Heights and After to establish clear points of connection and overarching parallels, arguing that a reading of After exposes it as a hitherto unrecognised adaptation of Wuthering Heights. By shedding light on this relationship, it is possible to better understand how Emily Brontë’s novel has found an increasingly varied afterlife in the twenty-first century—one that both speaks to the contemporary climate and reflects new understandings of the novel itself.Book ReviewsA Brontë Reading List: 2023
pp. 184-195 Reviewed by Pearson, Sara L. & Cook, Peter
Abstract:
This reading list is an annotated bibliography of scholarly and critical work on the Brontës published in 2023. We have attempted to compile a comprehensive list of resources by consulting the MLA International Bibliography, Academic Search Complete, and the Brontë Blog (http://bronteblog.blogspot.com). Book chapters and scholarly articles on the Brontës are included except those articles published in Brontë Studies. Entire books on the Brontës are in the reviews section of this journal. The author’s initials in brackets are provided after each annotation.
The Rise of Celebrity Authorship: Nineteenth-Century Print Culture and Antislavery
pp. 195-198 Reviewed by Ayrton, Tricia
Brontë Women’s Writing Festival, 26–28 September 2025
pp. 198-200 Reviewed by Dawn Gant, Rose
A Vain Talent? The Question of Female Artistry in the Life and Work of Anne Brontë
pp. 200-202 Reviewed by Sanders, Valerie
Women and Madness in the Early Romantic Novel. Injured Minds, Ruined Lives
pp. 202-204 Reviewed by Seijo-Richart, María
The Banagher Brontë Group Festival, Ireland, 15–18 August 2025
pp. 205-207 Reviewed by Wilcock, Joanne
AnnouncementBrontë Studies Early Career Research Essay Prize 2026
pp. 208-209 by O'Callagahn, Claire
The Coquette’s Prison: Rosalie Murray And The Failure Of High-society Marriage As A Path To Autonomyby Donny Syofyan, Program Studi Sastra Inggris, Universitas AndalasJurnal Ceteris Paribus, 5(1), 12–24. https://doi.org/10.25077/jcp.v5i1.60Research on women's agency in Victorian literature typically focuses on the marginalized figure of the governess. At the same time, the upper-class coquette—who appears to wield power—remains overlooked in critical readings as a victim of systemic oppression. This research examines the coquette’s prison in Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey, specifically analyzing how Rosalie Murray’s pursuit of high-society marriage serves as a mechanism of self-erasure rather than a path to autonomy. The study employs a qualitative approach rooted in feminist literary criticism and historical realism. The data consist of textual evidence from the novel, analyzed through close reading and character-comparative analysis. The research evaluates the transition from pre-marital performative power to post-marital domestic entrapment. The results indicate that Rosalie’s flirtatious artillery provides only a temporary and illusory agency. Upon marrying Sir Thomas Ashby for rank and wealth, she experiences a catastrophic loss of freedom, becoming a prisoner and a slave within the physical and psychological enclosures of Ashby Park. The research concludes that Victorian high-society marriage, when divorced from moral compatibility, leads to psychological petrifaction. Further studies are recommended to employ a digital humanities approach to map motifs of spatial and psychological confinement across the broader canon of the Brontës and to identify systemic patterns of gender inequality.
Cameron Zwierlein, Chapman UniversitySpring 5-2026First Advisor: Joanna LevinSecond Advisor Lynda HallThird Advisor: Rei MagosakiAbstractThis thesis examines representations of female food refusal across Wuthering Heights, Play It As It Lays, “Los Angeles,” and The Vegetarian, arguing that restrictive food behavior extends beyond individual psychology to function as a culturally embedded form of protest. Drawing on Susan Bordo’s theoretical framework, this thesis looks at the female body as a site disciplined by patriarchal norms, where the refusal of food becomes a paradoxical act that simultaneously resists and reproduces systems of control. Through the characters of Catherine, Maria, Alice, and Yeong-hye, these texts depict food refusal as a symbolic language used in contexts where conventional forms of agency are constrained or silenced.Despite differences in historical and cultural context, these works converge in portraying anorectic behaviors as both an assertion of autonomy and an internalization of oppressive ideals surrounding femininity and control. This duality reveals the inherent contradictory nature of food refusal. It operates as a form of protest against patriarchal expectations while also enacting self-erasure. Ultimately, this thesis argues that such acts of resistance are limited in their transformative potential, as they often culminate in further alienation, exploitation, or even death. By situating these narratives within a broader cultural and theoretical context, this thesis demonstrates how female food refusal demonstrates a complex, yet ultimately unsustainable, negotiation of female identity, agency, and power.
Khushbakht Irshad, Monitoring Officer, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Education and Monitoring Authority, PakistanYusra Ali, M.Phil Scholar, Department of English, Institute of Management Sciences, Peshawar, PakistanSocial Sciences Spectrum, 5(2), 144–151DOI: https://doi.org/10.71085/sss.05.02.527AbstractThis paper investigates the proportion to which silence and speech is an interdependent power negotiation strategy in female-to-female interaction in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Although comprehensive study on feminist scholarship on the verbal agency of Jane against the agents of patriarchal society has been carried out, there is still relatively little focus on the linguistic relationship that arise between females. This study focuses on the critical aspect of the relationships between Jane and female characters like Mrs. Reed, Helen Burns, Blanche Ingram, and the rivers sisters Diana and Mary with the help of textual analysis. This study uses feminist narrative and discourse-pragmatic approaches as framework. The analysis highlights that Bronte creates an economy of women speech, voices, and silence, whereby morality, affection, resistance, and the bargaining of social order are manifested with the use of speech and silence as tools. Silence serves as a communicative act of purpose for enforcing repression, emotional restraint, moral superiority or subversive defiance. Speech acts, on the other hand, are contention, sympathetic, and power areas. This discussion helps in widening the critical perception of the gendered power relations within the novel. It paved the way for larger discussions about the topic of women use of language for constructing gendered norms in the Victorian novel by emphasizing the role of a female-to-female communication narrative as opposed to the traditional male-female dynamic.
Hannah MarkleyStudies in the Novel, Volume 58, Number 2, Summer 2026, pp. 121-137This essay explores how debilitated appetites in Wuthering Heights spread among the novel’s characters as diseases. While critics comment on the ways Heathcliff’s hunger engenders Catherine’s anorectic refusals, Hindley’s alcoholism and Frances’s tubercular consumption also respond to Heathcliff’s arrival at Wuthering Heights, exposing more complex entanglements of physical illness, emotional suffering, and traumatic experience. By situating these appetites in relation to nineteenth-century medical ideas about Anorexia nervosa, inebriety, tuberculosis, and miasma theories of disease, the disabling effects of racial persecution (Heathcliff), gendered confinement (Catherine and Frances), and social dispossession (Hindley) disclose biopolitical distributions of risk along the lines of race, gender, class, and disability that underwrote British racial capitalism, structuring both appetite and embodiment in the provincial scene of the everyday.
Muckle, Lacey Nicole; Siegel, Jonah (chair); McGill, Meredith (member); Luciano, Dana (member); Grossman, Jonathan (member);Rutgers University ; School of Graduate Studies, 2026This project focuses on how the ideological and stylistic strategies that Frederick Douglass used in his first autobiography influenced Charlotte Brontë’s immensely popular novel Jane Eyre (1847). Subsequently, Jane Eyre’s widespread influence created a subsection of mid-nineteenth-century reform novels that contain “the rebellious aesthetic,” a narrative style in which authors imported the aesthetic aspects of rebellion from Douglass by-way-of Brontë without considering how different representational strategies might be necessary for different political projects. The first part of this project explains Douglass’s influence on Brontë, and how Brontë’s novel subsequently reproduces the aesthetics of (rather than actually imagines or incites) rebellion. The rest of this project tracks how Douglass’s rhetorical strategies were refracted through Jane Eyre into a set of novels written between the aftermath and enactment of the British Slavery Abolition Act (1833) and the end of the American Civil War (1865). Techniques created by authors of slave narratives came to shape the way white authors represented different political projects. Ultimately, when these authors attempted to portray other social issues using the style of Douglass’s narrative (mediated through Brontë’s novel), the rebellious aesthetic limited how they could imagine or portray different forms of social transformation.
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