This thesis examines the ways in which various practices, such as novel-writing, publishing, book-reviewing, reading for pleasure, adaptation and studying English literature, have produced Jane Eyre’s complex cultural profile. The organizing principle of the study is Paul du Gay, Stuart Hall et al’s ‘circuit of culture’, which identifies five key processes or ‘moments’ as being productive of the meanings that a cultural artefact or text comes to possess. Explaining the meanings which have been attached to Jane Eyre partly involves trying to understand why it has been perceived and described dichotomously. For example, it has been thought of as trivial and serious, radical and conservative, feminine and unfeminine. The investigation begins with the writing process, exploring how and why Charlotte Brontë embedded the text with specific hybrid features. The study then traces how these textual features have acquired meaning in different discourses, focusing primarily on the novel’s reception in Britain in the mid-nineteenth century and in the 1990s. The thesis points to the role played by distinct target-audiences in configurations of Jane Eyre; Charlotte Brontë, publishers, biographers, literary critics, film-makers and teachers have all had specific audiences in mind when they have described, evaluated, regulated and/or creatively reworked the novel, its author’s life and/or the culture in which the author lived. During the course of the twentieth century, Jane Eyre became increasingly thought of as a legitimate object of study at all levels of the education system. The thesis examines how the text has been studied, and contributes to ongoing debates about National Curriculum English by offering ways of allowing more creativity into the classroom.

Ce mémoire étudie l’objectif des multiples demandes en mariage dans Pride and Prejudice par Jane Austen et Jane Eyre par Charlotte Brontë. Je montrerai que l’inclusion par Austen et Brontë de ces multiples demandes – par Darcy et par Rochester, respectivement – joue un rôle central dans la structure narrative de leurs romans. J’analyserai comment ces auteures présentent à leurs héroïnes des multiples demandes en mariage afin de démontrer le moment approprié pour accepter une telle demande. Ce mémoire contextualisera les choix d’Elizabeth Bennet et de Jane Eyre en engageant en conversation avec plusieurs savants littéraires travaillant sur Austen et Brontë. Le premier chapitre sera consacré à Pride et Prejudice et analysera l’évolution des rapports entre Darcy et Elizabeth. Le deuxième chapitre examinera Jane Eyre et le parcours individuel de Jane en ce qui concerne sa relation avec Rochester. J’examinera également comment chaque auteure démontre que les rôles et stéréotypes des sexes peuvent constituer une menace pour une relation saine ainsi que pour le développement de soi. Au travers de multiples demandes en mariage, Austen et Brontë démontrent l’importance de l’indépendance et l’égalité dans un mariage. Elles démantèlent également les notions traditionnelles de masculinité. / This thesis studies the purpose of multiple marriage proposals in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. I will show that Austen’s and Brontë’s inclusion of two proposals – by Darcy and by Rochester, respectively – are central to the narrative structures of their work. I will examine how Austen and Brontë present their heroines with multiple proposals in order to demonstrate the proper moment at which a proposal should be accepted. This thesis will contextualize the choices of Elizabeth Bennet and Jane Eyre by engaging in conversation with several literary scholars who work on Austen and Brontë. The first chapter will be dedicated to Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and the analysis of Darcy and Elizabeth’s changing relationship. The second chapter will examine Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Jane’s individual journey as it relates to her relationship with Rochester. I will also examine how each author demonstrates how gender roles and stereotypes can serve as a threat to a healthy relationship as well as to one’s own self-development. Through multiple proposals, Austen and Brontë demonstrate the importance of independence and equality in entering a marriage. They also dismantle traditional notions of masculinity.

Anne Brontë died in 1848, having written two novels, Agnes Grey (1847) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848). Although these novels, especially The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, initially received a favourable critical response, the unsympathetic remarks of Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell initiated a dismissive attitude towards Anne Brontë’s work. For over a hundred years, she was marginalized and silenced by a critical world that admired and respected the work of her two sisters, Charlotte and Emily, but that refused to acknowledge the substantial merits of her own fiction. However, in 1959 revisionist scholars such as Derek Stanford, Ada Harrison and Winifred Gérin, offered important, more enlightened readings that helped to liberate Brontë scholarship from the old conservatisms and to direct it into new directions. Since then, her fiction has been the focus of a robust, but still incomplete, revisionist critical scholarship. My work too is revisionist in orientation, and seeks to position itself within this revisionist approach. It has a double focus that appraises both Brontë’s social commentary and her narratology. It thus integrates two principal areas of enquiry: firstly, an investigation into how Brontë interrogates the position of middle class women in their society, and secondly, an examination of how that interrogation is conveyed by her creative deployment of narrative techniques, especially by her awareness of the rich potential of the first person narrative voice. Chapter 1 looks at the critical response to Brontë’s fiction from 1847 to the present, and shows how the revisionist readings of 1959 were pivotal in re-invigorating the critical approach to her work. Chapter 2 contextualizes the key legal, social, and economic consequences of Victorian patriarchy that so angered and frustrated feminist thinkers and writers such as Brontë. The chapter also demonstrates the extent to which a number of her core concerns relating to Victorian society and the status of women are reflected in her work. In Chapter 3 I discuss three important biographical influences on Brontë: her family, her painful experiences as a governess, and her reading history. Chapter 4 contains a detailed analysis of Agnes Grey, which includes an exploration of the narrative devices that help to reinforce its core concerns. Chapter 5 focuses on The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, showing how the novel offers a richer and more sophisticated analysis of feminist concerns than those that are explored in Agnes Grey. These are broadened to include an investigation of the lives of married women, particularly those trapped in abusive marriages. The chapter also stresses Brontë’s skilful deployment of an intricate and layered narrative technique. The conclusion points to the ways in which my study participates in and extends the current revisionist trend and suggests some aspects of Brontë’s work that would reward further critical attention. / Thesis (DLitt)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / English / Unrestricted

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Диссертация посвящена проблеме передачи эмоций при переводе с английского языка на русский. Из романа Ш. Бронтё «Джейн Эйр» методом сплошной выборки извлечены контексты, показывающие восприятие пространства главной героиней. Осуществлено сопоставление двух переводов (советского, выполненного В. Станевич, и современного, предложенного И. Гуровой) в опоре на эти контексты. / The work studies the problem of conveying emotions when translating from English into Russian. Within the analysis, the contexts showing the perception of space by the main character were extracted from the novel by Ch. Brontë “Jane Eyre” using the continuous sampling method. Then, based on these contexts, there was carried out a comparison of two Russian translations (the Soviet by V. Stanevich and the modern by I. Gurova).

This thesis seeks to show the ways in which Charlotte Brontë's fiction anticipates the concerns of contemporary feminist theology. Whilst Charlotte Brontë's novels have held a place of honor in feminist literary criticism for decades, there has been a critical tendency to associate the proto-feminism of Brontë's narratives with a rejection of Christianity—namely, that Brontë's heroines achieve their personal, social and spiritual emancipation by throwing off the shackles of a patriarchal Church Establishment. And although recent scholarly interest in Victorian Christianity has led to frequent interpretations that regard Brontë's texts as upholding a Christian worldview, in many such cases, the theology asserted in those interpretations arguably undermines the liberative impulse of the narratives. In both cases, the religious and romantic plots of Brontë's novels are viewed as incompatible. This thesis suggests that by reading Brontë's fiction in light of an interdisciplinary perspective that interweaves feminist and theological concerns, the narrative journeys of Brontë's heroines might be read as affirming both Christian faith and female empowerment. Specifically, this thesis will examine the ways in which feminist theologians have identified the need for Christian doctrines of sin and grace to be articulated in a manner that better reflects women's experiences. By exploring the interrelationship between women's writing and women's faith, particularly as it relates to the literary origins of feminist theology and Brontë's position within the nineteenth-century female publishing boom, Brontë's liberative imagination for female flourishing can be re-examined. As will be argued, when considered from the vantage point of feminist theology, 'Jane Eyre', 'Shirley', and 'Villette' portray women's need to experience grace as self-construction and interdependence rather than self-denial and subjugation.

This essay analyses and compares gender construction in Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. The focus is on the construction of the female and male gender of selected female and male characters. Using the knowledge that gender is highly dependent on the social and cultural environment and that family relations often impact gender, the aim of the essay is to examine if the two authors use similar methods to construct gender. Additionally, the aim is to analyse if the novels are critical towards Victorian gender norms. As feminist criticism specializes in gender analysis, this literary critical approach is used. Furthermore, additional information about the historical context was used to analyse and compare the novels. The comparison demonstrates that Emily Brontë and Charlotte Brontë mainly use the same methods to construct the female and male gender in their novels. It also illustrates that both novels are critical towards Victorian gender norms.