Thanks, in part, to critical studies like Sandra Gilbert & Susan Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic and Patricia Beer's Reader, I Married Him, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte has come to be regarded as the standard feminist text; that is, when someone wants to demonstrate a particular principle of feminist criticism or a traditionally feminine concern, she generally points to Jane Eyre. As critics like Gilbert and Gubar have shown us, Bronte's novel is not merely a Gothic romance; it reveals a feminine consciousness struggling to assert itself within the nineteenth-century patriarchal social and religious structures. Jane Eyre, therefore, would naturally lend itself to a critical study based on the concerns of feminist spirituality, especially the notion of women's communities and reflections of a feminine divinity. I propose a critical study of Jane Eyre, like the one Carol Christ conducted on the works of Kate Chopin, Margaret Atwood, Doris Lessing, Adrienne Rich and Ntozake Shange in Diving Deep and Surfacing: Women Writers on a Spiritual Quest, in which Christ examines spiritual awakening of a female consciousness in the writings of these five authors.Though Jane Eyre, seems at first glance to work within a standard Christian, or patriarchal, religious structure, there are elements of a feminine divinity, even an attempt to re-create (as Mary Daly would say) God so that He perhaps more closely resembles the early, androgynous Hebrew Yaweh: Iahu-Anat, or Ashtoreth (Diane Stein, The Women's Spirituality Book, Llewellyn Publications, 1987, pp. 78). Jane Eyre asks guidance from the Moon, who in turn addresses her as "daughter'; then too, she clearly rejects the Christian Church, as evidenced by her highly symbolic refusal of St. John's proposal of marriage, for instance. However, despite her intuitive recognition of the feminine power and wisdom that is hers to draw upon and her rejection of the institution of patriarchal religion, she does not ultimately, I believe, reject a masculine God, nor does she replace Him with an androgynous God. Yet the aspects of the feminine divinity she discovers and the women's community (the nurturing influence of her cousins Diana and Mary, so named for the archetypal moon and the virgin) in which she finds herself lead lead her to a subconscious acceptance of the feminine divinity within herself.I propose then to trace the development of a feminine divinity in Jane Eyre, which culminates in a rejection of the Church and follows the individuation process of Jane Eyre herself. Completion of this project will requires research into four principal areas:1) Feminist literary criticism on Jane Eyre--in order to familiarize myself with the feminine and feminist significance of such a reflection, and possibly place Jane traditions it falls into and those, like Gilbert & Gubar's, that center on it and also to determine to what extent the notion of a feminine divinity has been recognized in the novel.2) Archetypal psychology and criticism--strictly concerning the process of individuation and manifestations of the Goddess and those figures associated with Her; for example, near the end of the novel Mr. Rochester is compared to Vulcan and I would like to pursue to what extent he can be seen in light of a Hephesties/Demeter syzygy.3) Jane Eyre criticism that discusses the spiritual or religious aspects of the novel--since Jane Eyre has obvious religious implications, spiritual issues have not been ignored by the critics (I am most eager to read Elisabeth Jay's The Religion of the Heart: Anglican Evangelicalism and the Nineteenth Century Novel, for instance); however, my previous research has not unearthed a feminist spirituality critical approach to Jane Eyre.4) Issues of women's spirituality--particularly those concerning communities of women, Goddess worship and ritual behavior, and images and symbols of the Goddess. Such research will allow me to determine to what extent a sense of a feminine divinity is reflected in Jane Eyre, come to a conclusion about the meaning and Eyre into a tradition of women writers on a spiritual Research in community management of the severely mentally ill has been scarce. Two primary components of community care in particular need evaluation,residential arrangements and styles of "case management." The purpose of this study was to evaluate the interaction of two types of residential arrangements (single- and double-occupancy) and two types of case management ("assertive" and "limited") in a 2 X 2 design. Participants were individuals with a severe mental illness served by CMHS, Inc. Individuals were matched on DSM-III-R diagnoses and sex: 8 had roommates and received assertive case management, 5 had roommates and limited case management, 5 lived alone and received assertive case management, and 5 lived alone with limited case management. Data were obtained from three independent sources: (1) each client was interviewed using the Denver Community Mental Health Questionnaire (DCMHQ) and the Inventory of Socially Supportive Behaviors (ISSB) on four separate occasions over three consecutive months; (2) frequency of client contact with family members over the same time interval was tracked by case managers; and (3) concurrent attendance in day treatment sessions, diagnosis, number of previous hospitalizations, and approximate number of months of previous hospitalization were obtained from community mental health center records. DCMHQ scores for acute symptoms and interpersonal conflict were combined into an index called problems, while ISSB scores measured social support received. Monthly followups for. three consecutive months were used to obtain stable estimates of problems and support. Significant positive correlations were found between family involvement and problems, family involvement and residential arrangements, social support and problems, group attendance percentage and age, problems and social support, and a marginal relationship between residence and social support. Statistically significant negative correlations were found between case management and problems, social support and number of previous hospitalizations, group attendance percentage and problems, and residence and age. In multiple regression involving all predictors, the variables other than roommating and case management, (i.e., average family involvement, number of previous hospitalizations, program attendance, and age, considered together) predicted both problems reported and support received, while as second and third steps in the regression analysis case management and residence did not significantly predict problems or social support. In other words, once chronicity (i.e., number of previous hospitalizations), family contact, age, and group attendance were controlled, case management and residence both vanished as predictors. Future studies should consider these factors, and other aspects of the natural context, when evaluating community interventions for the mentally ill in a more controlled experimental design. With respect to developing new research for community adjustment, recommendations for more controlled studies were made and two new community intervention procedures were described. / Department of English

"Why did George Eliot live and Currer Bell die?" Victorian pseudonymity is seldom treated to any critical scrutiny - the only sustained interest has been in reading masculine pseudonyms as masks for "disreputable femininity," signs of the woman writer's "anxiety of authorship." This thesis proposes that pseudonymity is not a capitulation to gender ideology, but that a nom de plume is an exaggerated version of any authorial signature - the abstraction (or Othering) of a self into text which occurs in the production of "real" authors as well as fictional characters. After an introductory chapter presenting the theoretical issues of selfhood and authorship, I go on to discuss milieu - the contexts which produced Bronte and Eliot - including a brief history of pseudonymous novelists and the Victorian publishing and reviewing culture. The third and fourth chapters deal with pseudonymity as heccéité, offering "biographies" of the authorial personas "Currer Bell" and "George Eliot" rather than the women who created them, thus demonstrating the problems of biography and the relative, multiple status of identity. The three following chapters explore the concerns of pseudonymity through a reading of the novels: I treat Jane Eyre, Villette, and even Shirley as "autobiographical" in order to address the construction of self and narrative; I examine how Eliot's realist fictions (notably Scenes of Clerical Life, Romola, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda) trouble the "reality"/"fiction" binary; and finally I read Bronte specifically for her engagement with "dress," using queer theories of performativity with Victorian theories of clothing and conduct to question "readability" itself. My final chapter is concerned with agencement (adjustment) and "mythmaking": the posthumous biographical and critical practices surrounding these two writers reveal that an author's "name," secured through literary reputation, is not static or inevitable, but the result of constant process and revision.

This thesis is comprised of two articles that examine sympathy, material culture, and ownership in Victorian literature. In the first article, I explore the figure of the heiress in the Victorian literary tradition, focusing on Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and Charles Dickens's Great Expectations. George Eliot marked the heiress figure as unsympathetic, no matter her incarnation: whether the moralist of popular fiction or madwoman of gothic fiction, she is representative of excess and indulgence—ideas that society wanted to condemn in harmony with Georges Batailles's observation that a time of indulgence will be checked by a return to conservative bourgeois ideals. The heiress is made a vessel for these cultural anxieties, representing both the desire for and reaction against material possession within the larger male imperial imaginary landscape. The heiress is a way for the male protagonist to indulge in a decadent coming-of-age narrative before being scalded by his secular desires, abandoning this dream for bourgeois security. I employ the criticism of Batailles, Laura Brown, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, etc., in order to discover how the heiress is objectified and controlled, yet, in the greater narrative structure, finds ways to act outside of the male linguistic system as an agent for change—bringing about the collapse of the fake set and props of the material world. In the second article, I examine Charles Dickens's attempts to control his printed materials and his belief that he could coalesce the expanding literate public into a faithful readership. However, Dickens was troubled by illicit reproductions of his work by the popular presses. In order to look at Dickens's concerns not only over losing control of his product, but also having the emotional essence of his characters and stories compromised, I turn to Bleak House which, critics have established, is in part a treatise against unlicensed copies. I argue that the character of Lady Dedlock serves as a representation of Dickens since she, like him, relies on the popular press in order to maintain her social standing, yet she also imagines that she is above them—though, in reality, much of her "private" life is already in public hands. I focus, specifically, on an unlicensed image of Lady Dedlock (that she is unaware of) that has been reproduced in a collection that anyone can purchase. In the end, Dickens allows his fiction to speak for him, forcing the reader to process the invasive horror of unlicensed copies through the emotion they feel for the actual, authentic woman. / Graduation date: 2012 / Access restricted to the OSU Community at author's request from June 20, 2012 - June 20, 2014

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2001. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In Charlotte Bronte's novels, the importance accorded to female homosocial relationships - such as friendship and the mother-daughter relationship - challenges the conventional structure of the Victorian realist novel, in which the focus of the female protagonist's development is almost exclusively on the eventual achievement of heterosexual marriage Structurally. heterosexual marriage at closure re-establishes the status quo that has been threatened or destabilised during the unfolding of the plot. Yet what Bronte's novels reveal, is that the status quo thus re-established also confirms patriarchy as a system in which the bonds between men are consolidated to maintain social, political and economic power as a male prerogative By contrast, the ideology that promotes marriage as the sine qua non of women's existence positions women as rivals and the representation of female homosocial relationships in the nineteenth-century novel is either relegated to the margins of the text or erased entirely. In Bronte's novels, the structural relationship between this conventional displacement of female homosocial relationships and the silencing and containment of female desire in heterosexual marriage at closure is consistently explored and subverted. In an increasingly complex process of rewriting the Victorian novel from a female perspective, Bronte's novels construct alternative plots that privilege the representation of female homosocial relationships even as they imitate conventional plot structure In so doing. the gendering of narrative voice as female lays claim to a female discourse of desire. which is rooted in female homosociality and inclusive of lesbian desire. Compulsory (female) heterosexuality which is exclusively domestic and maternal. IS therefore challenged by an alternative representation of female desire as defiant of the ngid categories Imposed by heterosexuality. because it is fiurd and multiple in Its expression This thesis explores the process of recuperation through which Bronte both places the representation of female hornosocial relationships at the centre of her novels and reveals patriarchal structures of control at work / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: In die romans van Charlotte Bronte konfronteer the sentraliteit van vroulike homososiale verhoudings - soos vriendskap en die moeder-dogter verhouding - die konvensionele struktuur van die Victoriaanse realistiese roman. Volgens hierdie konvensionele struktuur is die fokus van die vroulike protagonis se ontwikkeling bykans uitsluitlik gerig op haar uiteindelike toetrede tot 'n heteroseksuele huwelik. Struktureel gesproke herstel die heteroseksuele huwelik by die sluiting van die roman die status quo wat bedreig of gedestabiliseer is gedurende die ontplooing van die roman. Wat Bronte se romans egter aan die lig bring, is dat die status quo wat so herstel word, ook die patriargale sisteem bevestig - waarbinne die bande tussen mans gekonsolideer word ten einde sosiale politieke en ekonomiese mag as 'n manlike prerogatief te waarborg Die ideologie wat die huwelik voorhou as die sine qua non van die vrou se bestaan posisioneer vroue as mededingers, en hierdeur word die uitbeelding van vroulike homososiale verhoudings in die negentiende-eeuse roman verskuif na die buitewyke van die teks, of word dit algeheel uitgewis. In Bronte se romans word die strukturele verwantskap tussen hierdie konvensionele verplasing van vroulike homososiale verhoudings en die demping of beheer van vroulike begeerte in die heteroseksuele huwelik voortdurend in die roman se sluiting ondersoek en ondermyn In 'n proses wat 'n toenemend ingewikkelde herskrywing van die Victonaanse roman vanuit 'n vroulike qesiqspunt inhou. stel Bronte se romans alternatiewc verwikkelinqsplanne saam wat voorrang gee aan die uitbeelding van vroulike hornososiale verhoudings terwyl hierdie storieplanne konvensionele struktuurplanne naboots. Ole manier waarop die verteller se stem so vervroulik word gee uiting aan 'n vroulike diskoers van begeerte wat gewortel IS In vroulike hornososialiteit en wat lesbiese begeerte insluit Verpliqte (vroullke) heteroseksualiteit. wat uitsluitlik huislik en moederlik IS, word dus gekonfronteer deur 'n alternatiewe uitbeeldinq van vroulike begeerte wat die rigiede kateqoriee opqele deur heteroseksualiteit verwerp en meer vloeibare en veelsoortiqe vorme van ultdrukklng daarstel Hierdie tests ondersoek die herstellinqsprcses waardeur Bronte die uitbeeldinq van vroulike hornososiale verhoudinqs sentraal plaas In haar romans, terwyl sy terselfdertyd die werkswyses van patriargale beheerstrukture aan die lig bring.

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)