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Nurslings Of Protestantism: The Questionable Privilege Of Freedom In Charlotte Brontë’sVillette

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Mazurek M.

Studia Anglica Posnaniensia

2014

vol. 49

issue 4

37-54

In Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, a number of foreigners at various points express their amazement or admiration of the behaviour of Englishwomen, who, like the novel’s narrator Lucy Snowe, travel alone, visit public places unchaperoned and seem on the whole to lead much less constrained lives than their Continental counterparts. This notion was apparently quite widespread at this time, as the readings of various Victorian texts confirm – they often refer to the independence Englishwomen enjoyed, sometimes with a note of caution but often in a self-congratulatory manner. Villette, the novel which, similarly to its predecessor, The Professor, features a Protestant protagonist living in a Catholic country, makes a connection between Lucy’s Protestantism and her freedom, considered traditionally in English political discourse to be an essentially English and Protestant virtue. However, as the novel shows, in the case of women the notion of freedom is a complicated issue. While the pupils at Mme Beck’s pensionnat have to be kept in check by a sophisticated system of surveillance, whose main purpose is to keep them away from men and sex, Lucy can be trusted to behave according to the Victorian code of conduct, but only because her Protestant upbringing inculcated in her the need to control her desires. The Catholics have the Church to play the role of the disciplinarian for them, while Lucy has to grapple with and stifle her own emotions with her own hands, even when the repression is clearly the cause of her psychosomatic illness. In the end, the expectations regarding the behaviour of women in England and Labassecour are not that much different; the difference is that while young Labassecourians are controlled by the combined systems of family, school and the Church, young Englishwomen are expected to exercise a similar control on their own.

The Topography of Confinement in "Jane Eyre" and “The Lady of Shalott”

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Łowczanin A.

Roczniki Humanistyczne

2013

vol. 61

issue 5: Neofilologia

267-280

This paper is based on the assumption that it is possible to overcome generic boundaries and discern a shared language in the literary and visual arts. Its purpose is to demonstrate how literature and art rupture the Victorian ideal of angelic woman at home and allow us to enter intimate territories of female minds where free will goes against the sanctioned expectations. I will demonstrate this on the basis of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, where a pilgrimage to maturity and emotional fulfillment is embodied as space. This text will be juxtaposed with Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott,” read as a representation of defiance of gender-ascribed confinement. One of this poem’s most potent pictorial images, Hunt’s engraving of 1857 (a basis for his later painting of 1905), capturing the Lady in the moment of fateful decision-making is compared with Jane Eyre’s other silent home-ridden character, Bertha Rochester. All three images, of Jane, Bertha and the Lady, realize in their own way a territorial relocation seen as necessary for an untrapping of femininity.

Na podstawie wybranych utworów literackich, „Jane Eyre” Charlotte Brontё i „Pani na Shalott” Alfreda Tennysona, oraz obrazu Prerafaelity Williama Hunta, artykuł ukazuje sposoby kwestionowania przez ich autorów wiktoriańskiego ideału kobiety-anioła, strażniczki domowego ogniska. Omawiane prace pokazują jednocześnie, że wspólna tematyka umożliwia przekroczenie barier gatunkowych, a przez to ukazanie podobnej intensywności uczuć, dotarcie do intymnych przestrzeni świadomości i ukrytych przed światem pragnień i przemyśleń bohaterek, które nie wahają się kwestionować usankcjonowanych konwencji społecznych. We wszystkich omawianych pracach kluczowym elementem definiującym przynależność społeczną jest przestrzeń i to w odniesieniu do niej bohaterki Charlotte Brontё, Jane Eyre i Bertha Rochester, oraz Pani na Shalott Tennysona i Hunta definiują swoją tożsamość. Artykuł ukazuje, że to właśnie w odniesieniu do na nowo zdefiniowanego własnego terytorium odnajdują one drogę do swoiście pojmowanej wolności i uwolnienia kobiecości.

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1 Roczniki Humanistyczne

1 Studia Anglica Posnaniensia

1 Mazurek M.

1 Łowczanin A.

1 2014

1 2013

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Nurslings Of Protestantism: The Questionable Privilege Of Freedom In Charlotte Brontë’sVillette

The Topography of Confinement in "Jane Eyre" and “The Lady of Shalott”