Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

1976

Keywords

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Villette

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

English, General Literature, and Rhetoric

First Advisor

John H. Hagan

Second Advisor

Philip E. Rogers

Third Advisor

Michael J. Conlon

Abstract

In general, though, the critics and reviewers whom I have been describing attribute the qualities of passion and power to Charlotte Brontë’s novels without ever really posing the question of what the source of those qualities could be. Ascribing it to the ineffability of genius does nothing to account for the novels as novels, the word structures that have continued to evoke the effects of passion and power irrespective of their creator. It is my intent therefore to propose a revaluation of this view of Charlotte Brontë's work by arguing that the power and passion of her major fiction are precisely due to her artistry and craftsmanship. More specifically, the novels’ imaginative and almost poetic intensity is the result of the careful patterning of motifs and structuring of imagery. These characteristics are common to most good novels, but few contain them to the extent that Jane Eyre and Villette do, and even fewer employ them as the main vehicle of their structure and theme.

For in Jane Eyre and Villette it is the imagery, symbolism, and the other techniques of poetry—as distinguished from the methods of prose—that are basic to an understanding of those novels’ form and content. To quote Q. D. Leavis, “the parts are not mechanically linked by a plot as in most previous fictions but organically united (as in Shakespeare) by imagery and symbolism which pervade the novel and are as much part of the narrative as the action” (“Introduction” to Jane Eyre, Penguin, 1966, p. 13). What she says here about Jane Eyre is even more true of the later and more sophisticated Villette. These two novels, far from being formless emotional effusions, are consciously crafted; and instead of simply asserting their “poetic” quality—another generality that a number of critics have adopted—I will demonstrate it through a close and sustained analysis of some of Charlotte Brontë’s principal motifs and structures.

While I feel that biographical and historical criticism has certainly added significantly to a knowledge and appreciation of Charlotte Brontë's works, I do not think it can elucidate the particular way in which the novels’ language is manipulated so as to produce those universally accessible intangibles labeled “passion,” “power,” and “poetry.” Ultimately these effects are indistinguishable from their causes, and thus a knowledge of the latter can only increase the reader's appreciation of the former. Jane Eyre and Villette are simultaneously both passionate in their effect and the result of craftsmanship.

....

My analysis of Jane Eyre is divided into three chapters which provide an individual examination of each of the motifs of sight, food, and nature and the supernatural. Critics have examined several of the novels’ patterns of imagery, but these book length motifs which I analyze are all central to the novel and have yet to be treated. Implicit in my explications is my agreement with several other critics that Jane Eyre's theme is liberation, Jane's quest for a sense of identity that includes independence, love, and fidelity to God's moral law.

Chapter four deals with the poetic technique of Villette by way of a close reading of chapter 41, "Faubourg Clotilde"; and chapter five demonstrates one of the symbolic means Charlotte Brontë employs to depict Lucy Snowe’s education. These explications are presented in the context of my view of Villette as a bildungsroman, with the theme that the attainment of love is central to Lucy's acceptance of loss and resignation to her fate.

Download

Share

COinS