Summary

A Companion to the Brontës brings the latest literary research and theory to bear on the life, work, and legacy of the Brontë family.

Includes sections on literary and critical contexts, individual texts, historical and cultural contexts, reception studies, and the family’s continuing influence
Features in-depth articles written by well-known and emerging scholars from around the world
Addresses topics such as the Gothic tradition, film and dramatic adaptation, psychoanalytic approaches, the influence of religion, and political and legal questions of the day – from divorce and female disinheritance, to worker reform
Incorporates recent work in Marxist, feminist, post-colonial, and race and gender studies

Author Biography

Diane Long Hoeveler is Emerita Professor of English at Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She is author most recently of the award-winning books The Gothic Ideology: Religious Hysteria and Anti-Catholicism in British Popular Fiction, 1770–1870 (2014), and Gothic Riffs: Secularizing the Uncanny in the European Imaginary, 1780–1820 (2010). She is author, co-author or editor of over a dozen scholarly and reference books, and some 65 articles on a variety of literary topics.

Deborah Denenholz Morse is the Vera W. Barkley Term Professor of English, inaugural Fellow of the Center for the Liberal Arts, and Plumeri Faculty Excellence Scholar at The College of William and Mary. She is author most recently of Reforming Trollope: Race, Gender, and Englishness in the Novels of Anthony Trollope (2013) as well as author and editor of a number of other books. She has published extensively on all three Brontë sisters, and on other women writers from the Victorian era to the present day.

Notes on Contributors ix

Introduction 1
Deborah Denenholz Morse and Diane Long Hoeveler

Part I Imaginative Forms and Literary/Critical Contexts 9

1 Experimentation and the Early Writings 11
Christine Alexander

2 The Brontës and the Gothic Tradition 31
Diane Long Hoeveler

3 The Critical Recuperation of and Theoretical Approaches to the Brontës 49
Lisa Jadwin

4 Journeying Home: Jane Eyre and Catherine Earnshaw’s Coming]of]Age Stories 65
Amy J. Robinson

Part II Texts 79

5 Wuthering Heights 81
Louise Lee

6 Jane Eyre 101
Margaret Markwick

7 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall 115
Kari Lokke

8 Agnes Grey 135
Judith E. Pike

9 Charlotte Brontë’s The Professor 151
Tabitha Sparks

10 Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley 167
Herbert Rosengarten

11 Villette 183
Penny Boumelha

12 Poetry, Campaigning Articles, and Letters by Patrick Brontë 197
Dudley Green

13 The Poetry and Verse Drama of Branwell Brontë 213
Julie Donovan

14 Poetry of Anne, Charlotte, and Emily 229
John Maynard

15 The Artwork of the Brontës 249
Nancy V. Workman

16 The Letters and Brussels Essays 265
Karen E. Laird

Part III Reception Studies 283

17 The Brontës and the Periodicals of the 1820s and 1830s 285
Lucasta Miller

18 The Brontës and the Victorian Reading Public, 1846–1860 303
Alexis Easley

Part IV Historical, Intellectual, and Cultural Contexts 319

19 The Temptations of a Daughterless Mother: Jane Eyre and the Feminist/Postcolonial Dilemma 321
Ken Hiltner

20 Race, Slavery, and the Slave Trade 339
Beverly Taylor

21 Marriage and Divorce in the Novels 355
Beth Lau

22 Physical and Mental Health in the Brontës’ Lives and Works 369
Carol A. Senf

23 The Brontës and the Death Question 385
Carol Margaret Davison

24 The Irish Heritage of the Brontës 403
Edward Chitham

25 The Intellectual and Philosophical Contexts 417
Elisha Cohn

26 The Religion(s) of the Brontës 433
Miriam Elizabeth Burstein

27 Reading the Arts in the Brontë Fiction 453
Judith Wilt

28 Politics, Legal Concerns, and Reforms 471
Simon Avery

29 Class and Gender in the Brontë Novels 485
Tara MacDonald

Part V Afterlives of the Brontës 501

30 Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights and Their Filmic Adaptations 503
Tom Winnifrith

31 Mixed Signals: Narrative Fidelity, Female Speech, and Masculine Spectacle in Adapting the Brontë Novels as Films 513
Brandon Chitwood

32 Brontë Hauntings: Literary Works from Modernism to the Present 529
Deborah Denenholz Morse

33 The Brontë Family in Popular Culture 547
Abigail Burnham Bloom

34 The Brontë Parsonage Museum, the Brontë Society, and the Preservation of Brontëana 565
Ann Dinsdale

35 Biographical Myths and Legends of the Brontës 579
Sarah E. Maier

Index 593

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