City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 1996 (En)gendering Romanticism: A Study of Charlotte Bronte's Novels Ariella Bechhofer Brown Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1658 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] 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. 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Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor MI 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. (ENGENDERING ROMANTICISM: A STUDY OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S NOVELS bv ARIELLA BECHHOFER BROWN A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 1996 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 9707069 UMI Microform 9707069 Copyright 1996, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in English in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. [signature] Date « Chair of Examining Committee [signature] [signature] Norman Kelvin Anne Humpherys N. John Hall Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. iii Table pf Contents Chapter 1: Inroduction: Bronte's Feminized Romanticism I Chapter 2: Becoming a Bronte Heroine 25 Chapter 3: Bronte’s Juvenilia: Patterns of Poetry and Prose 43 Chapter 4: The Professor. The Signified Gender 61 Chapter 5: Jane Eyre: A Woman's Voice 82 Chapter 6: Shirley. Convention and Subversion 107 Chapter 7: Villette: Irresolution and Independence 131 Chapter 8: Conclusion: Charlotte Bronte's Poetry Through Prose 157 Bibliography: 163 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Brown 1 Chapter I Introduction: Bronte's Feminized Romanticism: "If you knew my thoughts, the dreams that absorb me, and the fiery imagination that at times eats me up, and makes me feel society, as it is, wretchedly insipid, you would pity and I dare say despise me," Charlotte Bronte wrote to her friend Ellen Nussey in May,1836 (Wise and Symington 1:139). The portrait of herself that she presents is that of a Romantic artist, consumed by the fire of her imagination which alienates her from society. She is an outcast because her dreams elevate her above the prosaic people around her. That is the Byronic Bronte who bears her mark of Cain with Satanic pride. Yet, Bronte's Romanticism is also informed by the other Romantics. She greatly admired Wordsworth's poetry and was familiar with Coleridge’s. She was also sufficiently versed in Shelley to quote from Prometheus Unbound. 1 Shelley's conception of poetic imagination clearly informs Bronte's; there are parallels between her and Keats on the subject as well. Her challenge to norms of society and literary genres, and the enforced silence of female voices in both, is fueled by her Romantic spirit of protest. In this respect she offers an analogue to the radicalism of Blake. Yet Bronte's social protest included her objection to the situation of women, an objection that also applied to their placement within Romanticism as defined by the male poets. Bronte's Romantic inspiration, therefore, is also informed by the female Romantics who gave voice to women's issues, most notably in the feminist arguments of Mary Wollstonecraft. Romanticism is a term that evokes manifold associations. However, an exploration of the movement of Romanticism in all of its facets is beyond the scope of this study which is limited to the aspects that bear on Bronte's writing. In particular, Bronte was drawn to Romanticism for its elevation of subjectivity, the poet's creative Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Brown 2 imagination, and emotional intensity — qualities she recognized in herself. The representation of the individualistic questing spirit and its pursuit of self-definition and transcendence was another aspect of Romanticism that Bronte translated into her own works. Bronte ultimately succeeded in breathing the Romantic spirit into her novels, though she had to first surmount the obstacles she faced as a woman writer. The poets who shaped English Romanticism wrote from a male perspective which excluded women from the center of the Romantic experience. This situation forced Bronte to confront what Christine Battersby describes as "the problem of aligning Romantic notions of art as an instinctive, non-rational activity against [the] need to assess (rationally and consciously) the likely reactions to afemale voice" (103-104). It is that very female voice that became central to Bronte's rendering of Romanticism. In order to grant women the position of Romantic subject, rather than mere objects, Bronte had to release them from their marginalized positions. She accomplished this objective by creating a new type of heroine, one who used her voice to express her feminized Romanticism. Her triumph is first fully realized in Jane Eyre, though the antecedents of this distinctive heroine can be traced back to the juvenilia. Throughout her writing, Charlotte Bronte develops her own formulation of Romanticism, a rendering of the advancement of the male Romantic poets into a woman’s discourse. However, like the Romantic poets themselves, Bronte demonstrates an understanding of the limits of discourse. Her writing evinces an awareness of the limitations imposed on representation by language which cannot fully re-present experience, the gap between imaginative vision and its expression.2 The corollary of that understanding is the recognition that texts do not contain meaning but, rather, offer fields of interpretations. The absence of fixity is emphasized by Romantic irony; the integrity of the text is unsettled by the intrusion of the narrator who highlights the contrivance of the narrative. Susan Wolfson finds that "in English Romanticism ... the play of interpretive strategies emerges as a primary subject — a 'principle of action' in itself," and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Brown 3 the poems "dramatize the uncertainties of interpretation." Like the um in Keat's "Ode on a Grecian Um," the import of these poems is their teasing quality, the effect they have on our "thought - provoking questions and refusing to confirm any sure points and resting places for our reasonings" (Wolfson 34,46-47). Conscious of the narrator's manipulation of and the reader's expectation of a pointed message attached to the text, in her own writing Bronte opts for Romantic irony over novelistic conventions. Most patently in the last two novels, though to some extent even in The Professor and Jane Eyre, Bronte deliberately refuses to grant the closure and defined meaning anticipated by the novel reader. As many women writers of the nineteenth century did, Charlotte Bronte established her reputation as a writer through the novel. Yet, though her choice of genre brackets her with waters of her own gender, Bronte's novels do not conform to the pattern of the traditional women wnters who — even when anonymous — presented their works as the compositions of "a lady," tor Bronte consciously chose to emulate male writers.3 Her use of male pseudonyms, a practice that she had already established in choosing the names of the narrators of her juvenilia, indicates that she associated the role of author with a male persona.. Although she read and approved of works by contemporary women wnters such as Elizabeth Gaskell and Harnet Martmeau, she did not care for the compositions of popular female poets of the time such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Bronte's literary tastes are revealed by the reading list she made up for her friend Ellen Nussey in a letter dated July 4,1837. The authors Bronte endorses include mneteenth-century waters such as Scott, Southey, Wordsworth, and, with some apologetics, Byron, but not a single woman water (Gaskell 151).