The Brontë Novels as Historical Fiction
Författare
Summary, in English
The article looks at the Brontës' reasons for setting the action of their novels in the past, from the late-18th-century setting of "Wuthering Heights" to the twenty-year backdating of "Agnes Grey". The bulk of the article, however, deals with Charlotte Brontë's condition-of-England novel "Shirley".
Like other well-known nineteenth-century novelists, including Dickens and Thackeray, the Brontë sisters wrote fiction set in the past. Indeed, the main action in all their novels is backdated by at least one generation. This article explores reasons for the three writers’ respective choices of temporal framework, looking at works by all of them in the historical contexts to which they supposedly belong. The bulk of the analysis is devoted to the only Brontë book that may be called a condition-of-England novel, Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley. The paper addresses the stereoscopic properties of the action in that novel, Luddism prefiguring Chartism. Showing how past and present coalesce in the book’s portrayal of Yorkshire and Britain, this paper supplies an outline of what, to Charlotte Brontë, made Britain great.
Like other well-known nineteenth-century novelists, including Dickens and Thackeray, the Brontë sisters wrote fiction set in the past. Indeed, the main action in all their novels is backdated by at least one generation. This article explores reasons for the three writers’ respective choices of temporal framework, looking at works by all of them in the historical contexts to which they supposedly belong. The bulk of the analysis is devoted to the only Brontë book that may be called a condition-of-England novel, Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley. The paper addresses the stereoscopic properties of the action in that novel, Luddism prefiguring Chartism. Showing how past and present coalesce in the book’s portrayal of Yorkshire and Britain, this paper supplies an outline of what, to Charlotte Brontë, made Britain great.
Avdelning/ar
Publiceringsår
2015
Språk
Engelska
Sidor
276-282
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Brontë Studies
Volym
40
Issue
4
Dokumenttyp
Artikel i tidskrift
Förlag
The Brontë Society
Ämne
- Specific Literatures
Nyckelord
- Brontë
- historical novel
- Jane Eyre
- politics in literature
- Shirley
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISSN: 1474-8932