In Marina MacKay’s The Cambridge Introduction to the Novel, she discusses the types of characters used in a novel in light of the humanists and structuralists debate. She explains that humanist critics tend to give characters a human dimension...

The struggle between women and authority has been a central concern for novelists throughout the ages, yet the rise of the novel in the 18th century brought with it the increase in number of female narrators and authors, giving women a platform...

In both the 19th century fictional autobiography of Jane Eyre, and the 21st century memoir by Jeanette Winterson, protagonists are presented as being trapped within the oppressive worlds that they inhabit. Winterson and Eyre fight many battles,...

The concept and action of dreaming is a natural process, innate to almost all human beings despite gender, race, and culture. People dream both subconsciously in their sleep and consciously dream towards a goal or a better future. This natural...

“We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but more animated and an audible thinking,” Jane Eyre reports fondly in the conclusion of her eponymous novel, describing the marital bliss she has finally achieved with Mr. Rochester...

When it comes to the topic of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre in literary circles, the critical attention given to Eliza and Georgiana Reed, the title character’s cousins is practically non-existent. Most critics do not seem interested in delving...

Reflection versus Conversation

The 19th and 20th centuries introduced readers to a variety of prominent authors who are still read today. Two of these prominent and well-read authors from each period include Charlotte Brontë and Jean Rhys...

The preoccupation with the structure of class and class-relations in Austen’s Emma and Brontë’s Villette arises from the particularities of their historical context. Caught in the liminal moment between two social and political paradigms, modern...

In Villette and Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë creates protagonists who are markedly strange and isolated people. Throughout both books, their awkwardness in society and difficulty communicating is a continuous concern. These women are also our...

Supernatural events and portents are a major theme in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette. While Brontë never crosses into a truly magical realm, it is clear that Lucy Snowe believes that certain events pertain to the supernatural world. Forces of nature...

Reading the novels of Defoe alongside those of Austen or Brontë feels very different, even though they wrote less than a century apart. In Austen’s novels, the formal delineation of chapters increases distance in the reading experience that a...

Lucy Snowe, the narrator in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, delivers a narrative that is very much the story that she wants the reader to hear. She explicitly details some facets of her life and leaves others drenched in opaque clouds of metaphor....

Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853) explores repression and projection of identity through the voice of the suffering, confusing, and often unreliable Lucy Snowe. This novel emerged after Brontë’s acclaimed Jane Eyre, exemplifying a newfound...

Charlotte Brontë’s Villette revolves around the myriad cycles and seasons of life. Lucy Snowe traverses from place to place, witnessing different stages of life and yearning for her own fulfillment of elusive experiences. Lucy’s introspections...

Following a foray into third-person omniscience in her second novel, Shirley, Charlotte Brontë’s Villette returns to the first-person narration for which Jane Eyre remains famous. Unlike that novel’s immediately vivid and feisty eponymous...

Critics have long puzzled over what Emily Heady terms an “uneasy fusion” of genres in Charlotte Brontë’s final novel, Villette (341). Toeing the line between two dominant—and, in many regards, opposing—literary modes of the era, realism and Gothic...

With the 1847 publication of Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë—publishing under the androgynous pseudonym “Currer Bell”—effectively obscured her gender along with her identity. While Brontë did not unanimously pass for male, debate about the author’s...

Charlotte Brontë’s Villette references a menagerie of folklore and inhabits many stand-out qualities often seen in fairy-tales throughout the novel. This is aided by the fantastical narration provided by Lucy Snowe, the protagonist who seems to...

Charlotte Brontë’s novel, “Shirley” was written in 1849. Although this novel is secondary in both quality and popularity, it addresses many social issues and dilemmas of Bronte’s time period, such as business, religion, and most importantly the...

With the 1847 publication of Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë—publishing under the androgynous pseudonym “Currer Bell”—effectively obscured her gender along with her identity. While Brontë did not unanimously pass for male, debate about the author’s...