During the Victorian period marriage proved to be a dominant theme in fiction. Female writers especially focused on the topic of marriage and wrote stories of women whose first marriages were imperfect. Anne Brontë and George Eliot dedicated themselves to portraying in their stories realistic heroines who deal with their own flaws as well as those of the men they marry. Their heroines distance themselves from their expected roles, moving beyond their first failed marriages to wiser second marriages. Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall follows Helen Huntingdon as she attempts to fulfill the self-appointed role of Savior to her husband. Her rash first marriage opens her eyes to her frank inability to redeem and reform her reprobate husband. Along the same lines George Eliot warns readers in her prelude to Middlemarch that Dorothea Brooke will never fulfill all her saintly capabilities because of the unaccommodating social structure of her time. She marries an elderly scholar in the hopes of being enlightened intellectually and spiritually by the alliance. Instead she finds herself stymied in a claustrophobic marriage. Both women are liberated, in a sense, by the deaths of their husbands and regain their free will at that point. This thesis explores the psychological pathway from first to second marriage. Marriage serves as the prime educator for Helen and Dorothea. Both women move from blind adoration to despair and hatred at the failure of their first marriages. Both eventually seek a second marriage and wed men who are in turn wiser for their association with these women and who love and respect them. The treatment of marriage in the two novels hinges on the realistic portrayal of life and reflects the era the authors lived in as well as serving as a vehicle for the heroines' character development and growth. Brontë and Eliot create remarkably similar stories beginning with marriage and focusing on heroines who survive the refiner's fire and in the end attain a sense of self as well as a measure of peace.

This thesis discusses the contrasting publication and reception histories of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847) and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (1847) and the complex role of Victorian gender norms in shaping those histories. In addition, the thesis examines the interplay between the Brontes’ works and their dialogues with Victorian gender norms and expectations of women on the creation of modern intertextual interpretations such as the Twilight (2005) and Fifty Shades of Grey (2011) novel series. The publication histories of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights can be best understood in relation to the social context provided by the gender norms and pressures that governed (or sought to govern) women’s behavior during the nineteenth century. Emily and Charlotte’s novels both opposed these gendered social norms to varying degrees but received widely different receptions during their lifetimes. Emily’s text was relatively negatively received and Charlotte attained literary success. An analysis and discussion of the interplay between their publication histories, the social norms and pressures that shaped those histories, and contemporary responses to the main female and male characters in their novels, Catherine Earnshaw, Heathcliff, Edgar Linton, Jane Eyre, and Mr. Rochester, can shed light on their opposing receptions. In addition, this thesis explores how a gendered analysis of the effect of Victorian social norms and pressures on these texts and their receptions illuminates how modern appropriations by popular series novels Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey interpret anew the gender tropes the Brontes explored in their narratives. The characters in these novels, this thesis argues, follow a comparably gendered pattern of behavior in comparison to their literary predecessors. This thesis reads the female and male characters created by E.L. James and Stephenie Meyer for the ways they echo both the characterizations in the Bronte novels and the social and gendered pressures to which they conform. The connected characterization highlights female self-consciousness, morality and sexual innocence, and a desire for wealthy dominant male partners with sexual and emotional dysfunction. Finally, it is important to place this discussion within the wider cultural narrative that includes contemporary cultural engagement with these ‘popular’ interpretations of the Brontes’ work as a piece that fits into the larger archive of women’s culture.

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In this studyi apply a feminist-narratological grid to the works under discussion. I show how narration is used as strategy to highlight issues of concern to women, hereby attempting to make a contribution in the relatively new field of feminist narratology. Chapter One provides an analysis of Pride and Prejudice as an example of a feminist statement by Jane Austen. The use of omniscient narration and its ironic possibilities are offset against the central characters' perceptions, presented by means of free indirect style. Chapter Two examines The Tenant of Wildfell Hall as a critique of Wuthering Heights, both in its use of narrative frames and in its at times moralistic comment. The third and fourth chapters focus on Charlotte Bronte. Her ambivalences about the situation of women, be they writers, narrators or characters, are explored. These are seen to be revealed in her narrative strategies, particularly in her attainment of closure, or its lack. Chapter Five explores the increasing sophistication of the narrative techniques of Elizabeth Gaskell, whose early work Mary Barton is shown to have narrative inconsistencies as opposed to her more complex last novel Wives and Daughters. Finally, I conclude that while the authors under discussion use divergent methods, certain commonalities prevail. Among these are the presentation of alternatives women have within their constraining circumstances and the recognition of their moral accountability for the choices they make. / English Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (English)

In this studyi apply a feminist-narratological grid to the works under discussion. I show how narration is used as strategy to highlight issues of concern to women, hereby attempting to make a contribution in the relatively new field of feminist narratology. Chapter One provides an analysis of Pride and Prejudice as an example of a feminist statement by Jane Austen. The use of omniscient narration and its ironic possibilities are offset against the central characters' perceptions, presented by means of free indirect style. Chapter Two examines The Tenant of Wildfell Hall as a critique of Wuthering Heights, both in its use of narrative frames and in its at times moralistic comment. The third and fourth chapters focus on Charlotte Bronte. Her ambivalences about the situation of women, be they writers, narrators or characters, are explored. These are seen to be revealed in her narrative strategies, particularly in her attainment of closure, or its lack. Chapter Five explores the increasing sophistication of the narrative techniques of Elizabeth Gaskell, whose early work Mary Barton is shown to have narrative inconsistencies as opposed to her more complex last novel Wives and Daughters. Finally, I conclude that while the authors under discussion use divergent methods, certain commonalities prevail. Among these are the presentation of alternatives women have within their constraining circumstances and the recognition of their moral accountability for the choices they make. / English Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (English)

My dissertation examines the roles of Emily and Anne Brontë as nineteenth-century women poets, composing in a literary form dominated by androcentric language and metaphor. The work of Mikhail Bakhtin, particularly concerning spoken and implied dialogue, and feminists who have pioneered an exploration of feminist dialogics provide crucial tools for examining the importance and uses of the dialogic form in the development of a powerful and creative feminine voice. As such, I propose to view Emily's Gondal poetry not as a series of loosely connected monologues, but as utterances in an inner dialogue between the dissenting and insistent female voice and the authoritative voice of the non-Gondal world. Emily's identification with her primary heroine, Augusta, enables her to challenge the controlling voice of the of the patriarchy that attempts to dictate and limit her creative and personal expression. The voice of Augusta in particular expresses the guilt, shame, and remorse that the woman-as-author must also experience when attempting to do battle with the patriarchy that attempts to restrict and reshape her utterances. While Anne was a part of the creation of Gondal, using it to mask her emotions through sustained dialogue with those who enabled and inspired such feelings, her interest in the mythical kingdom soon waned. However, it is in the dungeons and prisons of Gondal and within these early poems that Anne's distinct voice emerges and enters into a dialogue with her readers, her sister, and herself. The interior dialogues that her heroines engage in become explorations of the choices that Anne feels she must make as a woman within both society and the boundaries of her religious convictions. Through dialogue with the church, congregation, and religious doctrine, she attempts to relieve herself of the guilt of female creativity and justify herself and her creations through religious orthodoxy. Yet her seeming obedience belies the power of her voice that insists on being heard, even within the confines of androcentric social and religious power structures.

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English

This thesis addresses issues of class as represented through the narrative agency exercised by the servant-narrator in Castle Rackrent and Wuthering Heights. Thady Quirk and Ellen Dean are servant-narrators who strategically use feigned allegiance, astute perception, and selective disclosure to wield power over the lives of their masters. These “arts of subordination” allow the servant-narrator to tell his or her own life narrative, while appearing to share the masters’ memoirs. While both servant-narrators are motivated by economic means, Ellen Dean’s involvement throughout Wuthering Heights is further complicated by her desires of emotional connection. However, each servant-narrator achieves his or her goals by manipulating the events and relationships that constitute his or her masters’ lives.

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