Bronte Flashcards
What is the first Victorian theme?
Gender, sexuality, domestic ideology
What is the second Victorian theme?
Poverty, unrest, social criticism
What is the third Victorian theme?
Doubt, self-reflection, Romanticism
What is the fourth Victorian theme?
Art, aesthetics, critique of Victorian values
What is the fifth Victorian theme?
Progress, science, colonial expansion
Who was Sarah Stickney Ellis?
She wrote Female Conduct Guides: home managers for the advancement of husbands and sons
Denis de Rougement’s Theory
passion must entail obstructions (pleasure is forbidden, pain, yearning, never obtaining)
Niklas Luhmann’s Book
Love as Passion
Medieval Courtly Love
the idealization of love because of beauty
Amour
the passion of the 17th-18th century French aristocracy, sexuality, illicit love affairs
Romantic love
marrying due to desire and affection
19th Century English Marriage
to secure establishment for females, to have families as a duty to God and country
Passion
Inherently opposed to reason
Overrides thoughts, self-control
Irrational, wrong, dangerous, can’t help yourself
Not just risk, inevitable, unavoidable, unendurable pain, sorrow, death (ex. Romeo and Juliet, “parting is such sweet sorrow”)
Lord Byron
Handsome, charming, and sexually unconventional
Abandoned by dad, volatile mom, molested by nursemaid
Inherits title, loves Greece, celebrity, marries, meets up with Shelleys
Dies @ 36, one of the first focal points of modern journalism
Addiction
Alcohol safer than untreated water
Cholera epidemics common
Boil drinks (tea) or drink alcohol
Opium, opiates, and laudanum are common treatments for both kids and adults
Recreational drug use also flourished
Confession of an English Opium-Eater
(1821) autobiography of laudanum addiction
Dangerous Drugs Act of 1920
banned opium
Coverture
upon marriage, a wife’s legal status, property, and existence were subsumed by that of her husband’s
Once married, everything she had or will have is his alone, with no legal recourse in case of infidelity, abuse, neglect
“Madwoman in the Attic”
Gilbert and Gubar - highly influential
Thesis: confinement of female characters to “angel” and “monster” stemmed from male writer’s tendency to categorize women
Argument: must kill off both monster and angel because neither is accurate
Brontes’ House
Haworth Parsonage
Brontë Sisters Portrait
Books, dark colors, fold/creases on painting, discovered years after their death (1914), painted by brother Branwell (edited self out), positioned himself in center, replacement looks like a light beam
Charlotte (18) Emily (16) Anne (14)
Juvenilia
Work made during artist/author’s youth
12 toy soldiers → fantasy world “Glass Town federation”
Charlotte and Branwell - Angria, continued to write in minute script
Emily and Anne - Gondal (very important to Emily)
Combined fact and fiction, based on historical figures
Presided over their stories as genii
Wrote from childhood into their 20s
Poetry
Charlotte discovers Emily’s poetry
Anne and Charlotte have also been writing
Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846) - hid names with Christian, masculine names
Sisters spend evenings in their sitting room discussing writings (after poetry is published)
Charlotte’s poetry
200+ poems about Glasstown or Angria, some biographical, experimented
Her wish to be “forever known” as a poet
Developing ability to express feelings, how she was influenced by other writers
Anne’s poetry
59 surviving poems, often writes in common meter
Subject matter varies: Gondal, religious, William Weightman, natural world, “exile” as governess, homesickness
Emily’s poetry
found most favor, one of the great English Poets
Furious Charlotte read them, finally agrees to publish
Edited out Gondal references, 200 poems, nature poet, intense, purposeful, emptiness
Oxford Movement
Anglican academics at oxford frustrated with Church of England
High Anglicanism
movement towards Roman Catholic roots and resistance to religious modernization
Tractarian Movement
leading anglican figures to publish tracts criticizing the church
Governess
Teach children in private household
Still lady in society
Inferior, isolated in domestic and public relations
Gothic Tradition
“All the extravagances of an irregular fancy”
Literature: middle ages, catholic countries, gloomy castles, dungeons, subterraneous passages, sliding panels, innocent heroine, cruel villain, ghosts, disappearances, supernatural
Evokes gloom, chilling terror, mystery, horror
Mood → atmosphere, feeling
Dolls, doppelgangers, stuffed animals, prosthetics, robots, zombies, corpses, etc.
The Victorian Age
Queen Victoria (1837-1901)
9 children, family seen as model for society
The Women Question
19th century debate over women’s proper place and characteristics
“Angel in the House”
Coventry Patmore argues virtue of fleshless desire, beauty - saint, eliminates physical, sexual, eulogizes first wife, problematic pedestal of high standards, best seller, harmful idealization of women
Separate Spheres
women - private sphere, men - public sphere
Victorian Ideal
wife/mother devoted to children (male), submissive to husband
Female novel reading
transgression (1) women impressionable (2) disrupted reproductive health
Bildungsroman
German coming of age story
Diectic
word/phrase meaning grammatically, contextually important (first line of Jane Eyre)
In media res
in the middle of things (start)
Romance (Genre)
love story focused on heroine, ending happily
Hapax Legomenon
“something said only once”: genuinely unique all other historical occurrences are lost (ex. Wuthering: windy, blustering, indicating bad weather)
Frame Narrative
larger story contains smaller ones
Common Meter
metrical pattern, ballad
Fop
perjorative terms for 17th century men concerned with aesthetic and pleasure
Foppish
disinterested, bored, cavalier, vain, foolish
Dandyism
late Victorian new aestheticized mode of dress and lifetsyle
The Uncanny
Sigmund Freud 1919 essay defines as a psychological feeling when something familiar is made unfamiliar (creepy return of what is repressed)
The Sublime
feelings from grand landscapes, combo of fear and terror, admiration and awe, sense of wonder
Doppelganger
“double-goer”, double or evil twin, both complementing and antithetical manifestation, dark omen
1812
Patrick and Maria marry
1842
William Weightman dies
1845
Patrick dismissed in disgrace
1846
Poems published
1847
Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey published
1848
Tenant of Wildfell Hall published
1848-9
Branwell, Emily, and Anne die
1853
Villette published
Brontes in age order
Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Patrick, Emily, Anne
Poems by Charlotte
“The Teacher’s Monologue” (pp. 6-8)
“Passion” (pp. 8-10)
“Preference” (pp. 10-12)
“Parting” (pp. 12-13)
“On the Death of Emily Jane Brontë” (p. 15)
“On the Death of Anne Brontë” (pp. 15-16)
Poems by Emily
“Faith and Despondency” (pp. 17-18)
“Stars” (pp. 19-20)
“The Philosopher” (pp. 20-21)
“Remembrance” (p. 22)
“The Prisoner: A Fragment” (pp. 27-28)
“Hope” (p. 29)
“Plead for Me” (pp. 34-35)
“Death” (pp. 37-38)
“Stanzas to —–” (pp. 38-39)
“Stanzas” (p. 39)
“The Night-Wind” (pp. 42-43)
“No Coward Soul Is Mine” (pp. 43-44)
Poems by Anne
“A Reminiscence” (p. 45)
“If This Be All” (p. 48)
“Memory” (pp. 49-50)
“Past Days” (pp. 50-51)
“Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day” (p. 51)
“The Bluebell” (pp. 55-57)
