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INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand corner and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. University Microfilms International A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor. Ml 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 Order Number 0201030 Unveiled rage and unspoken fear: A study of emotional, physical and sexual abuse in the juvenilia and novels of Charlotte Bronte Carlson, Susan Anne, Ph.D. The Ohio State University, 1991 Copyright ©1991 by Carlson, Susan Anne. All rights reserved. UMI 300 N. Zeeb RA Ann Arbor, MI 48106 UNVEILED RAGE AND UNSPOKEN FEAR: A STUDY OF EMOTIONAL, PHYSICAL AND SEXUAL ABUSE IN THE JUVENILIA AND NOVELS OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Susan Anne Carlson, B.A., M.A. * ★ ★ ★ ★ The Ohio State University 1991 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Marlene B. Longenecker Arnold Shapiro Barbara H. Rigney Adviser Department of English Copyright by Susan Anne Carlson 1991 To My Mother ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my adviser, Professor Marlene Longenecker, for her excellent guidance, insightful comments, and constant encouragement throughout the research. I express sincere appreciation as well to the other members of my advisory committee, Professor Barbara Rigney and Professor Arnold Shapiro, for their suggestions and comments. Special thanks goes to the friendship and encouragement of Julena Yutzy and Linda Brown. Finally, I would like to thank Jerry Acree for his unwavering faith in my work and his gracious love and support, all of which have helped to make this dissertation possible. VITA August 27, 1962 .................... Born - Orange, New Jersey 1984...................................B.A., Drew University, Madison, New Jersey 1987.................................. M.A., English Department, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English Studies in Nineteenth-Century British Literature TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ................................................. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................. iii VITA ........................................................ iv INTRODUCTION ............................................... 1 CHAPTER PAGE I. FANTASIES OF DEATH AND VIOLENCE IN THE EARLY JUVENILIA OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE (1826 - 1832) . 17 II. INCEST AND RAGE IN CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S NOVELETTES (1836 - 1839) 42 III. THE BATTERED CHILD: JANE EYRE AS A SURVIVOR OF PHYSICAL ABUSE, EMOTIONAL ABUSE, AND NEGLECT . 68 IV. BRONTE'S "MORBID" HEROINE: READING LUCY SNOWE AS AN INCEST SURVIVOR ................................ 100 V. CONCLUSION .............................................. 151 LIST OF REFERENCES ......................................... 158 V INTRODUCTION Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, in their theory of a female aesthetic (Madwoman in the Attic. 1979), state that nineteenth-century women authors usually did not communicate meaning directly, but expressed themselves through symbol and metaphor. Their theory, along with the pioneering work on the history of women's writing by Ellen Moers and Elaine Showalter, began a search for the "subversive text" in women's literature, with Charlotte Bronte's Jane Evre usually getting the most attention. Filled with erotic images, dreams, and mysterious paintings, all woven through the plot of a gothic romance, Jane Eyre became the classic text of subversive writing, and Charlotte Bronte the writer who secretly expressed rage against a society that entrapped women. Building on Gilbert and Gubar's analysis of "subversive writing," I argue in addition that in Charlotte Bronte's novels women characters exist as survivors of sexual, emotional, and physical abuse, and that her female characters' responses to and perceptions of their worlds can be seen as a response to that abuse. Analyzing Bronte's writing in this way helps to explain the rage, sadomasochism, and fear of confinement that run throughout her fiction, all 1 issues which have become central in feminist criticism of B r o n t e . My literary analysis is founded upon two major developments in Bronte criticism: psychoanalytic criticism of Charlotte Bronte's novels (established by Helene Moglen's work The Self Conceived [1976] )* and the feminist critique developed by Gilbert and Gubar in the Madwoman in the Attic (1979). The tradition of feminist psychoanalytic criticism of Charlotte Bronte's novels which informs my own study was established in the 1970's. This criticism defines Charlotte Bronte as a "psychological" writer and works from the belief that her conventional plot lines were used to "cover" more subversive meanings in the text, meanings which are seen through the heroine's accounts of dreams, paintings, and doubles. Helene Moglen in The Self Conceived (1976) is the •'■Recent psychoanalytic studies of Charlotte Bronte' s work include an extensive Freudian analysis by Dianne Sadoff (Monsters of Affection: Dickens. Eliot & Bronte on Fatherhood. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1982) which bases its analysis on Freud's primal fantasy of castration, and on "the dialectic of master and slave" in Bronte' s novels, where the male gaze is a form of "penetration" and the female gaze "the threat of castration." Karen Chase in her study Eros and Psvche: The Representation of Personality in Charlotte Bronte. Charles Dickens, and George Eliot (New York: Methuen, 1984) further develops the theme of mastery and submission, especially in the juvenilia, and analyzes the use of physical space in Bronte's work. For a Lacanian interpretation of Bronte's novels, see Christina Crosby's article "Charlotte Bronte's Haunted Text" tStudies in English Literature. 24, Autumn, 1984), 701-715 in which Crosby uses Lacanian notions of the Imaginary to depict Lucy's imaginary sense of wholeness and "the mirrored images and doubles" who represent her actual, fragmented self. 3 first of many biographer-critics to expand the labeling of Charlotte Bronte as a great nineteenth-century "romantic writer"— "...the spontaneous artist who pours forth her feelings...without premeditation" (Elaine Showalter, & Literature of Their Own. 104)— to a "psychological realist," a woman who, through plots that run like dream-seguences, works out problems of her own life and the problem of being a "woman" writer (Moglen 106). Critics who look at Charlotte Bronte's novels as psychological texts look for the breaks in rationality in the conventional "telling" of the stories: Jane Eyre's dreams and paintings, Rochester's mad wife, Lucy Snowe's breakdowns and encounters with the nun. Most feminist critics agree that Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe are both journeying towards some kind of psychic wholeness. The same critics differ, however, on what Bronte's heroines must fight against to achieve wholeness. The differences are based both on conflicting political views of the novels and on conflicting interpretations of the same dreams, paintings, and other "selves." Katherine Blake, in her "Review of Bronte Studies, 1975-1980," divides the interpretations into three main areas: "Mother/Child Family-Romance," "The Erotic," and "Anger and Protest" (221). The following discussion will summarize the trends in Bronte feminist criticism since the 1970's and outline the relevance of different critiques to my own. Moglen writes one of the first feminist psychoanalytic critiques of Bronte's work, concentrating on the "interaction" between Charlotte's life and her art. According to Moglen, Bronte was unconsciously using her art to recreate herself and to understand the extent of her society's oppression. As Bronte matures as a woman and a thinker, her novels become more revealing and explosive: from The Professor (an unsophisticated attempt to describe the Heger "romance" which shows "the gulf between Bronte's obsession and her capacity for self-analysis" [83]), to Jane Evre (a "feminist myth" [105], a romantic allegory which ends in "equality" by crippling the man and removing the lovers from society), to Shirley (a political commentary which connects the plight of women to the working classes), to Villette (her most "uncompromising" [195] novel, which seeks to "confront not only the