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Charlotte Bronte

EXPRESSIONS LITERATURE

Jane Eyre

Expressions // ‘God’s Own Lambs’: The Evangelical Child in Jane Eyre

Charlotte Brontë wrote in a letter to W.S. Williams that Jane Eyre ‘has no learning, no research’, and ‘discusses no subject of public interest.’[1]  Although it is true that Charlotte did not set out to write Jane Eyre with the same didactic impulses which compelled her sister to write The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, in her representation of the evangelical institution of Lowood – a thinly disguised Cowan Bridge School as Charlotte’s biographer Elizabeth Gaskell later confirmed – and in the ensuing debate in the press as to the extent of its accuracy, there can be, as Heather Glen states, no doubting the ‘public interest’ of her chosen subject matter.[2]

The harsh, rigorous discipline to which children were subjected at such ‘evangelical, charitable establishments’[3] as Lowood had, at its core, a firmly-held belief in man’s inherently sinful nature, and the absolute authority of the parent and the teacher to ‘subdue the desires of the flesh’, ‘instil humility and obedience’ and, most significantly, prepare the child for salvation.[4]  To evangelical Christians like Reverend Carus Wilson, upon whom Mr Brocklehurst is purportedly based, the child, however inexperienced, is no less sinful than any adult. Continue Reading

EXPRESSIONS LITERATURE

Jane Eyre // Wide Sargasso Sea

Charlotte Bronte

Expressions // Thoughts on feminism in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea

I was originally going to write a piece about Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel entitled ‘Why Jane Eyre will always be relevant’ but upon reflection decided that such an effort would not exactly be futile, but, well, frankly unnecessary.  That Jane Eyre is still taught to students from KS4 right up to postgraduate level, that it is still pitched to film executives for ever more adaptations, that figures like the brooding Rochester, and ‘plain’ Jane have each entered our collective consciousness, enshrined among the greatest symbols of our literary heritage, that the literature tags of sites like Tumblr and Instagram are utterly saturated with photographs of stylised quotes from Jane’s great ‘I am no bird’ speech, this – all of this – renders completely redundant the task of attempting to account for, or justify the text’s endurance.  The novel can, and will, speak for itself, as it has for generations. Continue Reading