Charlotte Bront

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Charlotte Brontës Jane Eyre
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Many Books in One

• Autobiography
• Fairy Tale Plot
• Marriage Plot
• Bildungsroman or Quest Plot
• Gothic/Mystery Plot

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Jane Eyre as Autobiography

• 1816-1854
• Parents Rev. Patrick Brontë Maria
• Maria (1814), Elizabeth (1815), Charlotte (1816),
  Branwell (1817), Emily (1818), Anne (1820)

Haworth today
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Currer, Ellis, and Acton BellCharlotte Brontë
Emily Brontë Anne Brontë
Jane Eyre as Autobiography

• 1847

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Branwell Brontë
Jane Eyre as Autobiography
Branwells painting of Emily, Charlotte, and Anne
Branwells painting of Emily
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Angria
Jane Eyre as Autobiography
Map of Angria, drawn by Branwell

• Box of soldiers given to Branwell (1826 )
• Imaginary African world with extensive stories
  Glass Town ? Angria
• Obsession . . . Farewell to Angria

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Reading at the Window SeatBewick's History of
British Birds (1804)
Jane Eyre as Autobiography
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Education
Jane Eyre as Autobiography

• Clergy Daughters School, Cowan Bridge
• Roe Head School
• ? Lowood School in Jane
  Eyre

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Jane Eyre and the Fairy-Tale Plot

• Cinderella--Poor girl with heart of gold
  oppressed by wicked stepmother and stepsisters
  gets her chance to meet a Prince and prove her
  superiority, but not without serious obstacles
  along the way.

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Beauty and the Beast?
Jane Eyre and the Fairy-Tale Plot
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Bluebeard

• I lingered in the long passage to which this
  staircase from attic led, separating the front
  and back rooms of the third story narrow, low,
  and dim, with only one little window at the far
  end, and looking, with its two rows of small
  black doors all shut, like a corridor in some
  Bluebeards castle (91 Norton)

Scene from Bela Bartoks opera Bluebeards Castle
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Jane as Otherworldly Sprite

• Mrs. Reed (22)
• Rochester (104, passim)

Titanias Awakening by Charles Sims
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Poor Orphan Child
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Jane Eyre and the Romance/Marriage Plot

• Once upon a time, the end, the rightful end, of
  women in novel was socialsuccessful courtship,
  marriageor judgmental of her sexual and social
  failuredeath. Rachel DuPlessis

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Jane Eyre and the Bildung Plot

• a.k.a. Quest Plot
• Bildungsroman growing up story a novel dealing
  with the growth and education of the protagonist
• Typically a male hero, on a journey toward
  self-realization/independence
• Often orphaned or presented with other challenges
• e.g., Dickens Great Expectations, David
  Copperfield

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Marriage Plot vs. Bildung Plot

• Contradictory contemporary views
• 19th c. womens fiction typically ends in the
  female protagonists setting aside the bildung
  plot by either getting married or dying. (Rachel
  DuPlessis)
• 19th c. womens fiction often shows that through
  marriage, women and men develop individually by
  merging of female and male spheres and gender
  roles. (Chris R. Vanden Bossche)
• Pride Prejudice, Emma, Little Women, Wuthering
  Heights, Return of the Native, Middlemarch, Mill
  on the Floss, etc. (2 heroines already married,
  die anyway Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary)

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Jane Eyre and the Gothic Plot

• Dark Romanticism
• Mystery
• Haunted castle or house
• Dreaming and nightmares
• Doppelgänger or alter ego
• Physical imprisonment
• Psychological entrapment and helplessness
• Involvement of the supernatural
• Psychology of horror and/or terror

Henry Fuselis The Nightmare, 1781
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Mystery
Jane Eyre and the Gothic Plot
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The Byronic Hero
Jane Eyre and the Gothic Plot
Lord Byron by Richard Westall, 1813
Byron in Albanian attire by Thomas Phillips

• A.K.A. Villain-Hero Aristocratic, charming,
  moody, solitary, secretive, intelligent, cynical,
  and emotionally wounded. Irresistable to
  women--relationships destructive.

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Byronic heroes of Brontë sisters
Jane Eyre and the Gothic Plot
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The Distressed Heroine
Jane Eyre and the Gothic Plot

• Female Gothic
• Female protagonist is pursued and persecuted by
  a villainous patriarchal figure in unfamiliar
  settings and terrifying landscape.
• The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe

Lady Macbeth by Henry Fuseli 1784
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Architecture of the Mind
Jane Eyre and the Gothic Plot
Gothic heroines explore their unknown inner
selves as they wander through the mysterious house
North Lees Hall, c. 1590
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The Tragedy of the Brontës

• Branwell--addiction to alcohol and opium
• 1848 Family caught cold/flu leading to 3 deaths
• Branwell and Emily in 1848 Anne in 1849.
• 1854 Charlotte married Rev. A.B. Nicholls and
  died same year (pregnant)

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Acknowledgements

• Bossche, Chris R. Vanden. Moving Out
  Adolescence. In A Companion toVictorian
  Literature and Culture. Ed. Herbert Tucker.
  Malden, Mass Blackwell, 1999. (82-96)
• DuPlessis, Rachel Blau. Writing Beyond the
  EndingNarrative Strategies of Twentieth-Century
  Women Writers. Blomington Indiana UP, 1985.
• Gaskell, Elizabeth. Life of Charlotte Bronte,
  London Smith, Elder, 1857.
• Glossary of Gothic Terms at Georgia Southern
  Universitys Department of English and
  Philosophy
• http//www.georgiasouthern.edu/dougt/goth.html
• Hall, Renee. "The DNA of Fairy Tales Their
  Origin and Meaning"
• http//www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/general
  /ge-rhall.htm
• Images
• Angria map and woodcut showing school
• http//www.beepworld.de/members8/desireebouvier/e
  milybronte.htm
• Bewicks birds http//www.sharecom.ca/bewick/vign
  ettes/vignettes.html
• Albanian Byron by Thomas Phillips, 1835
  http//englishhistory.net/byron/life.html
• Charlotte Brontë, from the portrait by George
  Richmond. BBC Hulton Picture Library. Chalk
  http//www.wwnorton.com/nael/victorian/topic_2/ill
  ustrations/imbronte.htm
• Emily Bronte by Branwell Bronte
  http//chnm.gmu.edu/ematters/issue8/lathbury/lathb
  ury_body.htm
• Henry Fuseli paintings www.artchive.com

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Acknowledgements, cont.

• Jane Eyre, 1996 film stills http//www.angelfire
  .com/nc/janeeyre/moviepics.html
• and http//www.math.utah.edu/gold/gainsbourg.htm
  l
• Lord Byron at age 25 (1813 portrait by Richard
  Westall) http//www.csulb.edu/csnider/brontes.ht
  ml
• North Lees Hall, photo http//www.lovetripper.com
  /issues/issue-35/jane-eyre.html
• Portrait by Branwell Brontë of his sisters, Anne,
  Emily, and Charlotte (c. 1834)
• http//www.csulb.edu/csnider/brontes.html
• Titanias Awakening by Charles Sims (1873-1928)
  http//www.modjourn.brown.edu/mjp/Image/Sims/Sims.
  htm

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Charlotte Brontës Jane Eyre