ENGL 6680: Jane Austen, the Brontes, and the
19th-Century Woman Writer
For 19th century readers and critics, Jane Austen and the three Brontë sisters embodied oppositional models of “the woman author.” Charlotte Brontë mocked Jane Austen’s characters as “commonplace” creatures in “elegant but confined houses.” For some admirers of Austen, Brontë’s fiction lacked the earlier novelist’s subtlety, sophistication, and “feminine delicacy.” Along with their sister Charlotte, both Emily and Anne Brontë were also criticized for literary “coarseness,” and for taking on daring or controversial subjects supposedly unsuited to women writers.
While Austen brought her form of literary realism to a high gloss, and the Brontës often mined the twin veins of literary romanticism and the gothic imagination, all four writers pushed the limits of gender and genre in intriguing ways; all four helped to alter their contemporaries’ assumptions about the novel’s possibilities and the role of the 19th century woman author. As we engage in close readings of their novels, we will also explore the numerous works of literature and film that they have inspired.
Finally, we will investigate how Austen and the Brontës have been mythologized or romanticized over time, and how their literary reputations have been linked to changing critical and theoretical paradigms. Students are encouraged to explore connections among our readings in a seminar paper that they can work on, in stages, throughout the term.
This is a theory-intensive, historically oriented seminar.
While Austen brought her form of literary realism to a high gloss, and the Brontës often mined the twin veins of literary romanticism and the gothic imagination, all four writers pushed the limits of gender and genre in intriguing ways; all four helped to alter their contemporaries’ assumptions about the novel’s possibilities and the role of the 19th century woman author. As we engage in close readings of their novels, we will also explore the numerous works of literature and film that they have inspired.
Finally, we will investigate how Austen and the Brontës have been mythologized or romanticized over time, and how their literary reputations have been linked to changing critical and theoretical paradigms. Students are encouraged to explore connections among our readings in a seminar paper that they can work on, in stages, throughout the term.
This is a theory-intensive, historically oriented seminar.