Two papers and a thesis. Recent Brontë research:
Brontë Violations: Liminality, Transgression, and Lesbian Erotics in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre
Deborah Denenholz Morse
Literary Compass
First published: 5 December 2017
DOI: 10.1111/lic3.12427
Abstract
Among the many 2016 works celebrating Charlotte Brontë's life and work in her bicentenary year, several essays were published that urge reinterpretation of her sexuality. Influenced by decades of work in gender studies, these essays intervene not only in Brontë scholarship but also more widely in long-running debates on lesbian historiography of the 19th century that considers whether erotic attraction between women was manifested in passionate “romantic” friendship or in sexual practice. Jane Eyre includes deep currents of lesbian desire, a reading that violently upends the marriage plot. The intense friendships that Jane finds with other women throughout her narrative pilgrimage have traditionally been viewed in Brontë scholarship from a biographical perspective or through the feminist lens of female community. This essay argues instead that Jane's Lowood relationships with Miss Temple and even more with Helen Burns are erotic, with desire and consummation frustrated. Further, memoirist and visual artist Jane painstakingly delineates other women in sketches or paintings as well as in her narrative, displaying a transgressive expression of lesbian desire under the cover of conventional feminine auspices that is most evident in the miniatures she creates of Blanche Ingram and Rosamond Oliver. If the most canonical Brontë novel – and one of the most canonical of all Victorian novels – can be newly interpreted in relation to lesbian desire, there is undoubtedly even more exciting scholarship to come not only on the Brontës' life and work but also on other Victorian novelists, particularly noncanonical writers.
Jane Eyre on the Nineteenth-Century Spanish Stage: Intertextuality and Adaptation in Francisco Morera's version of Charlotte Brontë's novelSara Medina Calzada, Universidad de Valladolid
Odisea, nº 17, ISSN 1578–3820, 2016, 69–82
Abstract
This paper examines Francisco Morera’s Juana Eyre (1869), a stage version of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre which can be regarded as the first significant evidence of works by the Brontë sisters appearing in Spain. Morera’s text is based on the French stage version by Lefèvre and Royer (1855), which was, in turn, inspired by the German adaptation by Birch–Pfeiffer. The Spanish adaptor creates a conservative rewriting of Jane Eyre and introduces relevant changes in Bertha Mason’s storyline in order to eliminate the elements that would challenge the moral conventions of the time.
The Unacknowledged Nineteenth Century Woman: The Portrayal of the Governess in Victorian Literature
Cortés Granell, Sofía, Universitat Jaume I. Departament d'Estudis Anglesos
2017
Tutor/Supervisor: Posteguillo Gómez, Santiago;
Abstract
The Victorian era was characterised for being a period of changes not only in technology, politics and economy but also in society, primarily with the growth of the middle class. This fact enabled the proliferation of a group of ladies specialised in educating middle class children; or in other words, governesses. As a consequence, literature was influenced allowing the emergence of a new literary genre, the governess novel. The aim of this paper is, consequently, to analyse how those Victorian governesses were portrayed in fiction. In order to conduct this research, three novels; Agnes Grey, Jane Eyre and The Turn of the Screw, by three well-known Victorian writers; Anne Brontë, Charlotte Brontë and Henry James, were selected. Subsequently, these narratives have been examined bearing in mind the real conditions and struggles that governesses had to confront both in the public and private domain. Moreover, the introduction of fictitious facts related to governessing, which have made the novels more appealing to readers, has also been taken into account. This further analysis has revealed the existent similarities and dissimilarities between reality and fiction as well as the different points of view that writers wanted to present with their novels in relation to governessing.
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