Theory and Criticism
Haworth Churchyard, the front yard of the Parsonage
Theory and Criticism |
Haworth Churchyard, the front yard of the Parsonage |
The following list represents an attempt to highlight some of the more interesting critical and theoretical monographic readings of the Brontës. The amount of research which has centered on the Brontës in the past century is almost unimaginably vast, so it should be noted that this list is in no way encyclopedic.
Azim, Firdous. The Colonial Rise of the Novel. New York: Routledge, 1993.
A post-colonialist examination of Charlotte's fiction by a respected Bangladeshi theorist and professor. Azim isolates elements of the "other" in Jane Eyre, Shirley and Villette, and examines how they are both informed by and critical of an Orientalist discourse in English nineteenth-century society's vision of colonial empire. Feminist elements of the novels are also examined.
Berry, Elizabeth H. Anne Brontë's Radical Vision: Structures of Consciousness. Victoria, BC: University of Victoria, 1994.
A rare scholarly study devoted to exclusively to Anne, questioning her role as the least known and least read of the sisters. Evidence of political structures informing Anne's literary output is examined, and there are chapters devoted to critical readings of her two novels, Agnes Grey (1847) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848).
Davies, Stevie. Emily Brontë: Heretic. London: Women's Press, 1994.
A study of Emily which sees her as a set of complex contradictions. To quote Davies: "The spirit of perversity which empowered her singular vision is seen in most young children and is systematically squashed, slapped, smoothed, wheedled and argued out of us. In her case, indoctrination didn't take." Davies uses Wuthering Heights and Emily's poetry to argue that the "artistic freshness" of her peculiar literary output is a result of her own personal affirmation against accepted opinion and her inability to adhere to convention. Radical and feminist elements of the novel and poems are also highlighted.
Duthie, Enid. The Brontës and Nature. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986.
An investigation into the influence of the landscape of West Yorkshire on the Brontës' works. Particular attention is paid to natural imagery in Wuthering Heights and in the poetry.
Eagleton, Terry. Myths of Power: A Marxist Study of the Brontës. Basingstoke, UK: MacMillan, 1988.
The definitive Marxist reexamination of the Brontës' works from the pen of Britain's most important Marxist literary theorist. Eagleton examines effects of contemporary political movements on the Brontës, especially the struggles of the working classes (the earlier Luddite Riots and the contemporary Chartist uprisings, in particular) and how their experiences as members of the serving class- specifically, as governesses- informed their literary output. Eagleton takes pains to point out often-overlooked radical elements in the fiction of both the Brontë sisters and of their father.
Emily Brontë: A Critical Anthology. ed. Jean Pierre Petit. New York: Penguin, 1973.
A collection of reviews and critical responses to Wuthering Heights, starting with its initial reception, which was very poor, to the development of its widely accepted status as one of the crowning achievements of literature in English. Included are critical pieces by such famous literary figures as Matthew Arnold, Algernon Charles Swinburn, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf.
Ewbank, Inga. Their Proper Sphere: A Study of the Brontë Sisters as Early-Victorian Female Novelists. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966.
A feminst reading of the Brontës. Using the novels, Ewbank questions how mid-nineteenth century society saw the female author, and how the female author saw society. She also questions to hat extent the novels are products of the epxectations of the society around the ones who produced them, and if the relative isolation of the sisters resulted in their creations being outside of the norm. The author sees the Brontë novels as transgressing the expectations of society at every instance.
Ghnassia, Jill. Metaphysical Rebellion in the Works of Emily Brontë. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994.
Emily's entire literary output from her earliest scraps of journal writing to Wuthering Heights is examined for clues to her stances on issues relating to religion, morality and society. Because Emily is an elusive figure, and because so little of her writing besides her fiction survives, Ghnassia attempts a reconstruction of Emily's personal politics.
Gilbert, Sandra and Gubar, Susan. The Madwoman in the Attic. New Haven. CT: Yale University Press, 1979.
Groundbreaking exploration nineteenth-century women writers and of representations of sexual repression, hysteria and madness in the nineteenth-century novel- a central work of feminist literary criticism. The book argues, among other things, that the character of Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre is an expression of Charlotte's covert working out of her own sexual desires and rage. It also draws from the rethinking of the character of Bertha in Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea (1966).
Lamonica, Drew. We Are Three Sisters: Self and Family in the Writing of the Brontës. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2003.
An examination into the Victorian family as it is conceived by society and in the world of art, drawing from a wide range fo sources, and how this conception of the family operates within the fictional world created by the Brontës. Particularly, Drew is interested in the popular conception of the presumed necessity of the family as a container within which (and only within which) the Victorian female is capable of achieving self-fulfillment. The novels and the sisters themselves, she argues, present a complex understanding of this stricture, offering examples of fulfillment sought both within the proper domestic sphere and outside of it in the world of fame.
Laar, Elizabeth. The Inner Structure of Wuthering Heights. The Hague: Mouton, 1969.
This reading of Wuthering Heights attempts to reassess the basis of its status as a masterpiece. Laar argues that Emily's fictional construction is unusual in that it is not reliant so much on plot or story, but imagery, that is, on Emily's seemingly supernatural ability to observe and transmit into language "sights and sounds, forms and colors, suggested by memory."
Maynard, John. Charlotte Brontë and Sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Examines sexual discourses, both heterosexual and homosexual, operating within and relating to Charlotte's novels and letters and arrives at the concolusion that she was a nonconformist with regards to the subject. The infamous Heger incident is also reexamined. To quote Maynard: "[Charlotte's novels] present the fullest, most sophisticated discussion of sexual issues of any Victorian writer before Hardy."
Ratchford, Fannie. The Brontës Web of Childhood. New York: Columbia University Press, 1941.
An early close reading of the surviving Brontë juvenilia, specifically, the Angrian Chronicles of Charlotte and Branwell. Large chunks of the juvenilia are reprinted.
Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. New York: Norton, 1966.
A seminal text of post-colonial and feminst theory, Rhys's novel sets itself as a prequel to Jane Eyre, focusing on the story of Rochester and Bertha Mason (the madwoman locked in his attic in Jane Eyre, whom we later discover is his wife) in Jamaica several years prior to the events described by Charlotte. The novel explores the dark side of European colonialism and examines the representations of gender and racially-based "otherness" in British nineteenth-century art and culture.
Shuttleworth, Sally. Charlotte Brontë and Victorian Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
The author provides evidence of Charlotte's knowledge of medical practice and assesses how Victorian notions of the body, sexuality, the mind, medicine and particularly, of insanity, inform The Professor, Jane Eyre, Shirley and Villette.
Stoneman, Patsy. Brontë Transformations: The Cultural Dissemination of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. London, Prentice Hall, 1996.
The author assesses the critical heritage of these two central works of English literature, specifically, how the critical views changed over time and what brought about that change.
Thormählen, Marianne. The Brontës and Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
An examination of how aspects of religious practice, organization and society inform the Brontës' fiction. In four separate sections, the book deals with issues relating to different denominations, doctrinal practice, ethical beliefs and the recurrent figure of the cleric throughout the Brontës' fictional world.
Link to Davis Library's catalog