Title: Charlotte Bront
1Charlotte Brontë Emily Brontë
2Anne,1820-1849
Charlotte,1816-1855
Emily,1818-1848
3A brief biography (1)
They were born in Yorkshire. In 1820 Mr. Brontë
moved his family to Haworth, a remote and gloomy
village on the Yorkshire moors. During the
following years at Haworth, they had a great deal
of freedom to explore the surrounding
countryside. After 1831 Charlotte went to Roe
Head and worked there intermittently. In 1842
their aunt provided them with money to go to
Brussels to study French. All the Brontë
scribbled poetry secretly. In 1846 they published
their first and only poetry Poems by the authors
named Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (the
pseudonyms they choose preserved their own
initials). However, their poetry proved failure
which led all three to begin work on novels.
4A brief biography (2)
Emily and Anne had been more successful than
Charlotte in getting their first novels accepted
while their works were published under the
sisters pseudonyms. In 1848 Charlotte and Anne
visited their publishers in London, and revealed
the true identities of the "Bells." In the same
year Branwell, by now an alcoholic and a drug
addict, died, and Emily died shortly thereafter.
Anne died the following year. In 1854 Charlotte
married her fathers curate and after a few
months of marriage a cold which she caught during
pregnancy brought about her death.
5Brontës country
6Haworth
7Brontë sisters novels
Charlotte Jane Eyre (1847,by Currer Bell)
Shirley (1849, by Currer Bell,??) Villette
(1853,???) The Professor A Tale (1857, her
first written but last published,???) Emily Wut
hering Heights (1847) Anne Agnes Grey (1847) The
Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848,?????????)
8Jane Eyre
9Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre, taking the form of autobiographies
written by authoritative and reliable narrators
tells a story of a childs development and
maturation. Its popularity and success owns much
to its exceptional emotional power. Deep inside
Jane we discover Charlottes soul. It is a work
of critical realism as well as the first and one
of the most popular works of the working middle-
class women. It is the first governess novel in
the history of English literature.
10Point of view in Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre is written in the first person (I)
which functions as follows 1. indicates the
characteristic of autobiography. 2. be favorable
to reveal intense, fierce and sharp feelings
directly and powerfully. 3. provides a full and
complete thoughts of the whole event and the
other characters from the angle of vision of the
narrator. 4. makes the work consistent and tends
to give authority and credibility to the
narrative.
11The use of verb, adjective and adverb reinforces
the strength of emotions. It makes the sentence
more intense and reflects the sharp anguish and
inner struggles of the characters. While reading,
we cant help temporarily identifying ourselves
with the characters. It proves especially in
Janes declaration. The following are two
examples selected from chapter 23, Jane Eyre
12???????,?????,???????????,??????????????????,???
???????????????????????????????????????,??????????
??????????????????????????????????,???????????????
??????????????????,??????,????????????,???????????
??????,????????????? ?23?,????
13I grieve to leave Thornfield I love Thornfield
I love it, because I have lived in it a full and
delightful life, momentarily at least. I have not
been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I
have not been buried with inferior minds, and
excluded from every glimpse of communion with
what is bright and energetic and high. I have
talked, face to face, with what I reverence, with
what I delight in, with an original, a vigorous,
an expanded mind. I have known you, Mr.
Rochester and it strikes me with terror and
anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from
you for ever. I see the necessity of departure
and it is like looking on the necessity of death."
14?????????,?????????????????????????????????????
?????,?????????????????????????????????,??????????
???????????????????,?????,????,??????,???????????!
???????????,?????????!?????????????????,??????????
,????????????????????????????????????????????,????
??????????,??????????,????????????????????????!
15I tell you I must go! I retorted, roused to
something like passion. Do you think I can stay
to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an
automaton?-a machine without feelings? and can
bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my
lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my
cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure,
plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless?
You think wrong!I have as much soul as you-and
full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with
some beauty and much wealth, I should have made
it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for
me to leave you. I am not talking to you now
through the medium of custom, conventionalities,
nor even of mortal flesh it is my sprit that
addresses your spirit just as if both had passed
through the grave, and we stood at Gods feet,
equal----as we are!
16The writing style of Jane Eyre
1. the rich nature images which help establish
the characters lives and build their
personalities. 2. the framework of fair tale
such as Cinderella (a heroine who is ill- treated
by her stepmother but gets married to a prince
later). 3. various rhetorical devices and writing
skills such as hint, simile, metaphor, metonymy,
symbol and so on.
17- Thornfield thorn(??,??????????) field. It is a
image in Bible which alludes to Janes suffering
from the unfair life and resisting the temptation
from the outside world. - Love is a religion in Jane Eyre.
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19Jane Eyres development
- There are five distinct stages of development,
each linked to a particular place Janes
childhood at Gateshead, her education at the
Lowood School, her time as Adeles governess at
Thornfield, her time with the Rivers family at
Moor House, and her reunion with and marriage to
Rochester at Ferndean.
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21Jane Eyre (1)
Jane is an orphan who grows up lonely without
nobody caring for her. Jane is a small, plain and
poor governess of Victorian era instead of the
rich, gentle, frail, modest and virtuous beauties
of the conventional heroine. Jane only has an
intense feeling, a ready sympathy and a strong
sense of equality and independence.
22Jane Eyre (2)
Most importantly, Jane dares to love her master
and marries him openly in defiance of the social
convention and prejudices. It makes her as an
entirely new woman in the era of Victorian. Jane
is a spirited and intelligent woman to accept her
appointed place in society with unusual frankness
and with a passionate sense of the dignity and
needs of her sex.
23Conflicts and struggles in Jane Eyre
The outer conflicts between Jane and
others Appearance, status, wealth, education and
so on The inner struggles in Jane Reason and
emotion Reality and imagination Her dependent
position and her desire for independence Her
actual inferiority and spiritual superiority
24Charlottes features of her novels
1. presents a vivid realistic picture of the
English society. 2. shows as intense love for the
beauty of nature. 3. Greatly influenced by Byron
and Scott, her novels are all about lonely and
neglected young women with a fierce longing for
life and love. 4. Charlotte is exceptionally good
at landscape painting and presentation of
atmospheres of mystery, horror and prophesy. 5.
Charlotte is known as a great impressionistic
verbal painter.
25Wuthering Heights
26Wuthering Heights
It is one of the most intense novels written in
the English language. It is a story of doomed
love and revenge. The protagonists are
characterized as figures of violent emotions and
typical Yorkshire characters. The Gothic
tradition and transcending including its
sophisticated observation and artistic subtlety.
27The gothic novel
The Gothic novel is a literary genre, in which
the prominent features are mystery, doom, decay,
old buildings with ghosts in them, madness,
hereditary curses and so on.
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29Features of this novel
1. There is the combination of extremely simple
language with the most mighty and intensified
effects. 2. Its confusing narrative forms and
narrators. The first person and the third person.
3. The apparent absence of social mortality.
30Narrator or narrators?
- Lockwood, a newcomer to the locale of Wuthering
Heights, narrates the entire novel as an entry in
his diary. The story that Lockwood records is
told to him by Nelly, a servant, and Lockwood
writes most of the narrative in her voice,
describing how she told it to him. Some parts of
Nellys story are narrated by other characters.
31Some questions
1. Whats the meaning of intense? 2. What makes
love doomed? 3. What do you think the revenge in
this novel? 4. Whats the point of the
moors? 5. Why does the author mention ghosts
sometimes? 6. Whats the theme of this novel?
32moors
- The landscape in the novel is comprised primarily
of moors wide, wild expanses, high but somewhat
soggy, and thus infertile. The moors serve very
well as symbols of the wild threat posed by
nature. As the setting for the beginnings of
Catherine and Heathcliffs bond (the two play on
the moors during childhood), the moorland
transfers its symbolic associations onto the love
affair.
33ghosts
- Ghosts appear throughout Wuthering Heights, as
they do in most other works of Gothic fiction,
yet Brontë always presents them in such a way
that whether they really exist remains ambiguous.
Thus the world of the novel can always be
interpreted as a realistic one. Certain
ghostssuch as Catherines spirit when it appears
to Lockwood in Chapter IIImay be explained as
nightmares. The villagers alleged sightings of
Heathcliffs ghost in Chapter XXXIV could be
dismissed as unverified superstition. Whether or
not the ghosts are real, they symbolize the
manifestation of the past within the present, and
the way memory stays with people, permeating
day-to-day lives.