While some people enjoy reading full-length novels, most people have a difficult time concentrating on reading or even finding the time to do it. Audio books, especially abridged ones, may be a way for people to enjoy fiction without having to read the whole novel and they can listen to the text at the same time as they do other things. The purpose of this essay is to study whether the abridged audio books can be a valid replacement for the full novel in terms of genre. The essay compares Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë in its full length with three abridged audio books of the same novel. In these three audio versions the original text has been abridged in varying degrees so that the shortest version runs to fifty minutes, the second shortest to three hours and the longest to six hours. The three genres I focus on are the Romance, the Gothic novel and the female Bildungsroman. I present genre-specific features and then analyze how these characteristics are affected in the abridged versions of Jane Eyre.

The aim of this essay is to examine Janes personal progress through the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. It addresses the issue of personal development in relation to social position in England during the nineteenth – century. The essay follows Janes personal journey and quest for independence, equality, self worth and love from a Marxist perspective. In the essay close reading is also applied as a complementary theory.

Through a study of Twilight literary texts, fangirls' online discourse, and cinematic adaptations, I theorize the rhetorical dimensions of "neo-Victorian melodrama," a pervasive mode of discourse in girl culture. These rhetorical functions include the validation of girls' emotional lives, especially affective responses to coming-of-age experiences. Through the confessional revelation of interiority, neo-Victorian melodrama promotes empathy and intimacy among girls and functions to critique restrictive constructions of contemporary girlhood, which has inherited Victorian discourses related to female youth. Theorizing these rhetorical dimensions helps advance an appreciation for girls' rhetorical activities and their cultural preferences. These preferences have often been derided by ageist and sexist critiques of Twilight, a phenomenon initiated by Stephenie Meyer's young adult vampire romance. In order to determine the rhetorical dimensions of neo-Victorian melodrama in girl culture, I use generic rhetorical criticism. Specifically, Meyer's Twilight Saga appeals to contemporary girls through melodramatic moments shared with Charlotte Brontë's nineteenth-century Jane Eyre. Fangirls' online discourse certifies this appeal while also demonstrating how melodrama qualifies girls' own speech practices. Thus, generic criticism is complemented by ethnographic approaches to fandom. In addition, a focus on narrating voiceover, a sound convention with a legacy in girls' media, helps make sense of the Twilight cinematic adaptations' translation of neo-Victorian melodrama from page to screen. The rhetorical dimensions of neo-Victorian melodrama in girl culture are consistent with previous feminist theoretical insights related to the revelation of affect, intimacy, and personal experience for the purpose of community building. While feminist rhetoricians have addressed women's rhetorical practices, they have not theorized girls to the same extent, nor have they used generic criticism to account for melodrama's redemptive or progressive potential. Likewise, while scholars of literature, film, and media studies have advanced an appreciation for women's preferences for melodrama, these feminist scholars generally have not treated girls' preferences for the melodramatic mode. And while feminist critics in girls' studies have theorized girls' productive cultural contributions, as well as their complex reading and viewing strategies, such scholarship has not accounted for girls' preferences for melodrama. My study at once builds on and remedies the gaps in this theoretical foundation. / text

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

No description available.

John Bowlby’s work on attachment theory in the 1960s altered the cultural understanding of parent-child relationships. Bowlby argued that the ability for an individual to form attachments later in life, be that familial, romantic, or friendship is affected by whether or not that individual formed a strong attachment to a primary caregiver in early childhood. My thesis uses Bowlby’s theory as a critical lens to examine three novels by the Brontës: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë. I use this theory in order to demonstrate that these novels are what I have termed proto-attachment narratives, which is to say narratives about attachment before formal attachment theory existed, and, further, that they work to bridge the gap between the contemporary nineteenth-century debate on child rearing and Bowlby’s theory. In addition, I discuss how each of these novels exemplifies, complicates, and expands upon Bowlby’s theory in its own way. Wuthering Heights demonstrates the cyclical nature of damaged attachments and works to find a way to break from that cycle. Jane Eyre gives a clear understanding of an individual’s lifelong struggle with failed attachments and the importance of a balanced power dynamic to forming healthy attachments, and, finally, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall examines how even properly formed, healthy parent-child attachments can lead to development problems, if the power granted to those parental attachment figure is not used responsibly. I further theorize that we can use these novels as a starting point to discuss how we might define attachment narratives as a genre, as they hold many similarities with more clearly defined modern attachment narratives.

This essay examines the theme of conformity in Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre. It highlights in particular the protagonist’s conflict with conformity as criticism of social inequality in terms of gender. The analysis builds on the patriarchal concept of the angel of the house, as described by Lois Tyson and Alastair Henry and Catharine Walker Bergström, which is a definition of the governing codes of behavior women of the nineteenth century were expected to follow within both the domestic and professional sphere. Specifically, these spheres are organized through significant Victorian institutions such as the household, the education and employment of women and the marriage. The behavior of Jane is discussed in relation to these institutions as a means to support the argument of the protagonist distancing herself from contemporary gender norms. The conclusion of the essay shows that Jane’s circumstances within these institutions leads to her deviation from behavioral norms as a deliberate action. / Den här uppsatsen undersöker temat konformitet i Charlotte Brontës verk Jane Eyre. Den framhäver i synnerhet protagonistens konflikt med konformitet som en kritik riktad mot sociala ojämlikheter mellan könen. Analysen bygger på det patriarkala konceptet ängeln i hemmet, så som det beskrivs av Lois Tyson och Alastair Henry och Catharine Walker Bergström, vilket är en definition av de rådande uppförandekoderna som kvinnor under den viktorianska eran förväntades att leva upp till inom familje- och yrkessfären. Dessa sfärer utgör viktiga inrättningar inom det viktorianska samhället. I synnerhet hemmet, skolan, yrket och äktenskapet. Jane Eyres uppförande diskuteras i relation till dessa inrättningar som ett led i att understödja argumenten för protagonistens distanserande från samtida könsnormer. Uppsatsens sammanfattning visar att Janes omständigheter inom var och en av dessa inrättningar leder till hennes avvikande från uppförandekoderna i form av medvetna handlingar.

Aus literaturwissenschaftlicher Position heraus argumentiert Christine Borsch (M. A., M. Ed.) in ihrem anglistischen Beitrag, Männlichkeitskonstruktionen und ‚Female Masculinity‘ in Charlotte Brontës Roman Jane Eyre. Bescheinigt sie doch ihrem Untersuchungsgegenstand – Brontës viel beforschtem feministischem ‚Kult-Roman‘ von 1847 – die Qualität, ästhetisch ein Wissen zu gestalten, das erst von der gegenwärtigen Geschlechterforschung theoretisiert und formuliert ist. Borsch nähert sich dem genderrelevanten Bedeutungspotenzial des Romans, der mit dem rollentransgressiven Ausgangsprofil seiner Heldin wie mit seinem regressiven Ende an Astons deutschsprachigen Roman unmittelbar ‚anzugrenzen‘ scheint, indessen nicht mit Butler, sondern mit prominenten Theoremen der Masculinity Studies. Im Rekurs auf Connell, Kimmel und insbesondere Halberstam leistet Borsch nicht nur eine Neuausrichtung des analytischen Blicks auf die männlichen Figuren mit ihrem ‚Geschlechtsrollenstress‘ und ihren scheiternden Versuchen, Geschlechtsidentitäten und soziale Beziehungen innerhalb der engen Grenzen der viktorianischen Geschlechterordnung zu leben. Es gelingt auch ein neuer, begrifflich präziserer Blick auf die Protagonistin und ihre prekäre Weiblichkeit. Jane, die den ‚weiblichen‘, privaten Bereich nur als provokante Begrenzung erlebt und, so Borsch, alle Kategorien kultureller Rollenvorgaben sprengt, die sich selbst ‚männlich‘ attribuiert und von ihrer Umwelt als „animal“, „alien“ und „queer little thing“ bezeichnet wird, erscheint mit Halberstam nun als literarische Präfiguration einer ‚Femal Masculinity‘ außerhalb des Geschlechterbinarismus, wo die Koppelung von biologischem Körper, Begehren und Verhalten gelöst sind, geschlechtliche Fixierungen entgrenzt und Positionswechsel nicht sanktionsbedürftig, sondern Ausdruck universeller ‚Genderfluity‘. Mehr noch: In diesem Zugang entfaltet sich das Aktualitätspotenzial dieses Traditionstextes – es liegt, so die Verfasserin, im vorausschauenden, kreativen Umgang mit lebensweltlichen Zwängen.

<p>The aim of this study is to investigate how the female author, Charlotte Brontë, describes the development of her female protagonist in Jane Eyre and to compare this to how the male author, Fyodor Dostoevsky, describes the development of his male protagonist in Crime and Punishment, inside the patriarchal 19th century.</p><p>My basic idea is that both characters in these two books have to reach their own unknown to find satisfaction and a new existence, and I want to investigate what the characters have to go through to find that existence. To help me in my exploration of Jane Eyre I make use of Gilbert and Gubars’ book The Madwoman in the Attic and in the case of Crime and Punishment, I make use of Pelikan Straus’ article ”“Why did I say ’Women!’?” Raskolnikov Reimagined”. Both authors discuss literature from a gender perspective, but without comparing female and male characters or authors with each other, which I believe is important for a more holistic understanding of gender issue.</p><p>The conclusion of this essay is that these books are describing the main characters’ evolution towards their personal unknown with the same tools, a double self, an important symbol, and in the end a love partner that embodies that unknown. Furthermore, I conclude that this development moves in opposing directions, whereby the female character gets in touch with a more traditional male disposition and the male character gets in touch with a more traditional female disposition. This mirrors the different position men and women are assigned in the patriarchal society. In conclusion, I suggest that all social roles are ultimately confining (irrespective of sex), and are attracted to the opposite pole, in order to discover what the individual does not have access to in the social sphere.</p>

The aim of this study is to investigate how the female author, Charlotte Brontë, describes the development of her female protagonist in Jane Eyre and to compare this to how the male author, Fyodor Dostoevsky, describes the development of his male protagonist in Crime and Punishment, inside the patriarchal 19th century. My basic idea is that both characters in these two books have to reach their own unknown to find satisfaction and a new existence, and I want to investigate what the characters have to go through to find that existence. To help me in my exploration of Jane Eyre I make use of Gilbert and Gubars’ book The Madwoman in the Attic and in the case of Crime and Punishment, I make use of Pelikan Straus’ article ”“Why did I say ’Women!’?” Raskolnikov Reimagined”. Both authors discuss literature from a gender perspective, but without comparing female and male characters or authors with each other, which I believe is important for a more holistic understanding of gender issue. The conclusion of this essay is that these books are describing the main characters’ evolution towards their personal unknown with the same tools, a double self, an important symbol, and in the end a love partner that embodies that unknown. Furthermore, I conclude that this development moves in opposing directions, whereby the female character gets in touch with a more traditional male disposition and the male character gets in touch with a more traditional female disposition. This mirrors the different position men and women are assigned in the patriarchal society. In conclusion, I suggest that all social roles are ultimately confining (irrespective of sex), and are attracted to the opposite pole, in order to discover what the individual does not have access to in the social sphere.