1. She-writers in English Literature
of the 19th Century. Feministic
literature.
1. Sisters Bronte and their novels .
2. Elizabeth Gaskell – her life and works.
3. George Eliot – her life and work. Her best
novels.
2. Jane Austen is the undisputed master of the novel of manners.
Jane Austen - The novel of manners
Premise
there is a vital relationship
between manners, social
behaviour and character
Main features
• Set in upper- and middle-class society.
• Influence of class distinctions on character.
• Visits, balls, teas as occasions for joining up.
• Main themes: marriage, the complications of love and friendship.
3. • Set in Longbourn,
Hertfordshire.
• Mr and Mrs Bennet
and their five daughters
(Jane, Elizabeth, Mary,
Lydia and Kitty).
• Mr Bingley, a rich
bachelor, rents the large estate of Netherfield Park nearby.
• Mr Bingley falls in love with Jane Bennet.
• His friend Mr Darcy, a proud aristocrat, feels attracted
to Elizabeth.
• Elizabeth cultivates a dislike of Mr Darcy.
Pride and Prejudice: PLOT
Performer Heritage
4. • Mr Darcy proposes to Elizabeth but she rejects him.
• She accuses him of separating Jane and Mr Bingley.
• She accuses him of ill-treating Mr Wickham, a young officer.
• Darcy writes her a letter to reveal that Wickham is an adventurer without
scruples.
• Wickham elopes with Lydia.
• Darcy finds them and organises
their marriage.
• Elizabeth accepts Darcy’s
renewed proposal.
• Bingley and Jane also get married.
5. The relationship between the individual and society.
• The conflict between the individual’s desires and the individual’s responsibility
to society.
• The use that the individual
makes of freedom and its
consequences.
• The contrast between
imagination and reason.
• Love, courtship, and
marriage.
Themes
6. Marriage is presented from several points of view:
• in terms of security and independence (Charlotte Lucas and Mr Collins);
• arising out of physical infatuation
(Lydia and Wickham, and Mr and
Mrs Bennet);
• containing elements of love
and prudence (Jane and Bingley;
Elizabeth and Darcy).
The marriages in the novel
7. Performer - Culture &
Literature
Elizabeth
• Young woman with big comunicative dark eyes;
• Her character become complex from the
psychological point of view;
• A girl of the bourgeoisie of the province become
the heroine of the “Reason”;
• Elizabeth is influenced by others in some
decisions
• She judges people based on prejudices.
8. Performer - Culture &
Literature
DARCY
• He Is a young rich man with beautiful features,
but also proud and hateful;
• At the end he shows his real essence;
• He makes a choice against the current of the
time, giving up to follow the oppressive social
convention.
9. Elizabeth Bennet
• has a lively mind;
• is capable of complex impressions
and ideas;
• has a strong spirit of
independence;
• refuses to take on the roles which
her family or society tries to
impose
on her;
• accuses Darcy of pride.
Elizabeth and Darcy
Fitzwilliam Darcy
• knows the principles
of right conduct;
• is selfish and unsociable;
• accuses Elizabeth
of prejudice;
• is prejudiced by his upbringing
and disgusted by the vulgar
behaviour of Elizabeth’s mother
and younger sisters.
10. The search for a balance
through
the gradual change of the main
traits of the characters’
personality
leads to
a reconciliation of the themes
that they represent.
The message of the novel
Performer Heritage
11. Vividness of characters
brightness of dialogue, use of
irony
Third-person narration
Elizabeth’s point of view
Epistolary technique
many letters
The style of the novel
12. The social status of the women in the XIX century
England
the Victorian period, regarded men as the
superior gender and women as inferior.
Men were believed to be stronger than women,
both physically and mentally.
It was considered to be unhealthy for women to
participate in any activities that would strain
them physically or mentally.
Women’s activities were restricted and therefore
their opportunities in society were restricted as
well.
13. The social status of the women in the XIX century
England
Critic, John Stuart Mill declared that women could
never be innovators and therefore they would
always fall into the category of imitators.
In general, women were commonly thought to lack
certain characteristics that made a good writer.
Many female writers have adopted gender-
ambiguous pseudonyms, for a number of reasons:
to publish without prejudice in male-dominated
circles; to experiment with the freedom of
anonymity; or to encourage male readership.
14. Bronte Family and Patrick Bronte
an Irish priest and author born in
Loughbrickland, County Down and had several
apprenticeships (to a blacksmith, a linen draper, and
a weaver) until becoming a teacher in 1798
received his BA degree in 1806 and met Maria
Branwell (1783–1821), at Guiseley, whom he married
in 1812.
Their first child, Maria (1813–1825), born after their
move to Hartshead, Elizabeth (1814–1825), after the
family moved to Thornton becoming perpetual
curate. There the remaining children were
born: Charlotte (1816–1855), (1817–1848), Emily(1818–
1848) and Anne (1820–1849).
15. Bronte Family and Patrick Bronte
His sister-in-law Elizabeth Branwell (1776–1842),
joined the household in 1821 to look after the children
Maria Brontë, who was suffering the final stages
of uterine cancer.
came to terms with widowhood at the age of 47, and
spent his time visiting the sick and the poor.
Charlotte's husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls (1819–
1906), who had been Brontë's curate, stayed in the
household until he returned to Ireland after Brontë's
death, at the age of 84, in 1861.
outlived not only his wife (by 40 years) but all six of
his children.
16. Charlotte Bronte
Charlotte Bronte is often regarded as the most famous
of the sisters, mainly because of her novel Jane Eyre,
published by Smith, Elder, and Co. in 1847. She
became the eldest sibling after the death of her sisters,
Maria and Elizabeth.
Charlotte Bronte is one the world's most famous
female writers. She was born in Thornton, Yorkshire.
At four years old her family moved to the Parsonage in
Haworth, a small village on the Yorkshire Moors.
Charlotte attended the Clergy Daughters’ School at
Cowan Bridge. Later both Charlotte and Emily spent
time abroad studying in Brussels. Whilst in Brussels
Charlotte fell in love with Monsieur Heger, but this love
was unrequited and so in 1844 she returned to
Haworth.
1816 - 1855
17. Charlotte Bronte
Charlotte published her novel Jane Eyre on
19th October 1847 under the pseudonym
Currer Bell, with the publishing house Smith,
Elder & Co. It was very successful and
quickly had subsequent editions published.
Charlotte’s brother Branwell died of
Tuberculosis in Sept 1848; three months
later Emily too died of Tuberculosis. Anne
Bronte died in Scarborough in 1849.
Charlotte published Shirley in 1849; her last
novel Villette was published in 1853.
Charlotte married in June 1854, and died in
the early stages of pregnancy in March 1855,
three weeks before her 39th birthday
1816 - 1855
18. Eternal love for home
My home is humble and unattractive to strangers but to
me it
contains what I shall find nowhere else in the world -
the
profound and intense affection which brothers and
sisters feel for
each other when their minds are cast in the same
mould, their
ideas drawn from file same source...
Charlotte Bronte, Letter from Drewsbury 1832
19. “Jane Eyre”
Charlotte’s most famous and best
recognized novel which gained her
an everlasting admiration among
readers and critics from all over the
world.
The novel’s title “Jane Eyre” is
eponymous protagonist has up to
this date been a symbol of female
independence and strength.
The book be divided five parts –
Gateshead (the Reeds family),
Lowood, Thornfield (Mr. Rochester),
the Moor House (the Rivers family)
and the reunion with Rochester.
20. The whole story is narrated
retrospectively as Jane looks back as
far as to her childhood. At the very
beginning of the novel, we ‘meet’ an
orphaned child named Jane living
with her aunt and cousins.
She is then sent to the school at
Lowood which bears a striking
resemblance to Charlotte’s real first
school experience at Cowan Bridge.
From the school, we follow Charlotte
to her first position as a governess at
Thornfield hall where she gets to
meet the mysterious Mr. Rochester
she falls in love with.
21. Rochester proposes to her and as their wedding is
carried out the ceremony is interrupted and we find
out Rochester is already married and his insane
wife is locked up in the attic of Rochester’s estate.
Jane, though deeply in love with her master,
manifests her self-respect by refusing to live with
Rochester as his mistress and leaves the
Thornfield Hall.
She then wonders, lost and starving through the
windy moors and gets rescued by the Rivers family
– St. John, Diana and Mary, who are later
discovered to be her relatives.
After regaining her strength, she secures a job as
a teacher in a village school and moves into her
own cottage.
22. Jane also finds out she inherited a
considerable sum of money from her
diseased uncle and thus finds herself in a
position previously unknown to her –
surrounded by loving family and being
financially secured.
However, she still misses Rochester and
refuses to marry her cousin St. John and
go with him as missionaries to India as
she simply does not love him and cannot
imagine her life spent with someone she
has no passionate feelings for.
After that, Jane feels like she hears Mr.
Rochester calling her name from a great
23. She learns his mad wife Bertha set
the Thornfield Hall in fire and died
while her husband lost his arm and
sight in attempt to rescue her from the
flames.
Jane and Rochester are then married
as equals and have a son together.
The day their child is born,
Rochester’s sight is healed and he
can see again.
24. In Jane Eyre, Charlotte develops many themes,
such as education, search for independence,
marriage, gender issues, feelings of loneliness and
alienation, family and others.
Charlotte makes a better use of placing a female
character in the centre of the story which makes it
possible for her to explore the themes in a more
personal and relatable manner.
This is a very important feature of the book as the
child narrator makes it possible for Charlotte to
25. Jane Eyre is often described as a feminist novel
due to its extensive focus on gender issues.
Through the eyes of a female first person narrator,
Brontë provides an insightful testimony of how
women of her times have to fight for equality and
recognition in the oppressive patriarchal world.
Throughout the novel, Jane confronts various kinds
of repression which was familiar to many Victorian
women who could thus relate closely to the main
26. Charlotte explores also in Jane Eyre. However, she draws on a different
experience of her own as she goes back to her childhood to the Cowan
Bridge school which was the main inspiration for the Lowood school for
Charlotte.
In the novel, Charlotte criticizes the condition of the school and the methods
of some of the teachers, reliving traumatic moments from her childhood
when she saw her older sisters die from illness they caught in the school.
She thus provides a powerful testimony of schooling in her times.
The Theme of Education
27. Emily Brontë
(July 30, 1818 – December 19, 1848)
One of Britain best known authors, born in Thornton
In 1824, sent to the Clergy Daughters’ school, Cohen
Bridge, Lancashire along with her sisters Charlotte,
Elizabeth and Maria. The appalling conditions contributed
to the premature death to tuberculosis of her sisters Maria
and Elizabeth in 1826.
In 1824, appointed as a governess at Miss Patchett’s Ladies
Academy at Law Hill School near Halifax, returning home
approximately six months later due to homesickness.
28. Emily Brontë
(July 30, 1818 – December 19, 1848)
published her only novel ‘Wuthering Heights’ in
1847, under the pseudonym of ‘Ellis Bell’.
died of tuberculosis - and interred in the family vault
at St. Michael and All Angel’s Church, Haworth,
Yorkshire, England.
29. • Past, Present, Future
Tell me, tell me, smiling child,
What the past is like to thee ?
'An Autumn evening soft and mild
With a wind that sighs mournfully.'
Tell me, what is the present hour ?
'A green and flowery spray
Where a young bird sits gathering its
power
To mount and fly away.'
And what is the future, happy one ?
'A sea beneath a cloudless sun ;
A mighty, glorious, dazzling sea
Stretching into infinity.'
30. Key Facts
Full Title - Wuthering Heights
Author - Emily Brontë
Type of Work - Novel
Genre:
Gothic novel – designed to both horrify and
fascinate readers with scenes of passion and
cruelty; supernatural elements; and a dark,
foreboding atmosphere
Also, realist fiction - incorporates vivid detail
into a consistently and minutely thought-out plot,
dealing mostly with the relationships of the
characters to one another
31. Key Facts
Language - English (including bits of Yorkshire
dialect)
Time and place written - In 1846–7, Emily
Brontë wrote Wuthering Heights in the
parsonage of the isolated village of Haworth, in
Yorkshire
Date of First Publication – 1847
Narrator - 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.
32. • Setting - all the action of Wuthering
Heights takes place in or around two
neighboring houses on the Yorkshire moors
— Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross
Grange
• Protagonists - Heathcliff,
Catherine
33. Major Conflicts -
Heathcliff's great natural abilities, strength of
character, and love for Catherine Earnshaw all
enable him to raise himself from humble beginnings
to the status of a wealthy gentleman, but his need to
revenge himself for Hindley's abuse and Catherine's
betrayal leads him into a twisted life of cruelty and
hatred;
once Heathcliff hears Cathy say it would "degrade"
her to marry him, the conversation between Nelly
and Cathy, which he secretly overhears, drives him
to run away and pursue his vengeance
Catherine is torn between her love for Heathcliff and
her desire to be a gentlewoman, and her decision to
marry the genteel Edgar Linton drags almost all of
the novel's characters into conflict with Heathcliff
34. Climax -
Catherine's death is the culmination of the
conflict between herself and Heathcliff and
removes any possibility that their conflict could
be resolved positively;
after Catherine's death, Heathcliff merely
extends and deepens his drives toward revenge
and cruelty;
• Heathcliff destroys Isabella and drives her away,
takes possession of young Linton, forces
Catherine and Linton to marry, inherits
Thrushcross Grange, then loses interest in the
whole project and dies;
• Hareton and young Catherine are to be engaged
to be married, promising an end to the cycle of
revenge
35. Anne Brontë (1820-1849)
The third and youngest of the Brontë
sisters, still remains sadly overlooked.
Her novels, Agnes Grey (1847)
and The Tenant of Wildfell
Hall (1848) are not read or taught as
often as Charlotte’s Jane Eyre or
Emily’s Wuthering Heights.
However, Anne’s novels are just as
bold and adventurous as her sisters’ in
tackling real-world issues directly: the
position of the governess and the
dangerous inequalities of
contemporary marriage law.
36. Agnes Grey (1847)
• Agnes Grey was a daughter of a clergyman
who ran his family to debts. To help her
family to improve their financial situation
she decided to make her own living and to
become a governess.
• In her first job, Agnes is in charge of children
who are unmanageable. The boy hits, kicks
and bosses Agnes around.
• In her next job, Agnes is in charge of two
older girls who are not much more
cooperative about learning than her first
charges. Rosalie, one of the two girls, flirts
with men to the point she makes them
believe she is interested in marrying them,
and then turns them down, delighted that
she is able to crush them.
37. Agnes Grey (1847)
• During this time Agnes meets Mr. Weston,
the new curate at the church that she attends.
She develops an admiration for Mr. Weston's
religious and serious nature.
• Agnes is forced to return home suddenly
when her father passes away and she chooses
to help her mother start a school instead of
returning to the Murrays.
• Agnes hopes to see Mr. Weston again when
she returns to visit Rosalie in her new home.
She learns, however, that he has moved to a
different church.
38. Agnes Grey (1847)
• One day while walking on the beach,
Agnes is surprised when a dog that had
been her pet at the Murray home runs up
to meet her. She is surprised again when
she discovers this dog is accompanied by
Mr. Weston, who has been searching for
her. Mr. Weston later asks Agnes to marry
him and she accepts his proposal.
39. Elizabeth Langland
wrote:
Anne was one of the first women writers to adopt
a woman as narrator … in Agnes Grey, she
developed the governess story in ways which
were to influence Charlotte significantly in the
writing both of Jane Eyre and Villette … Anne
employed a first-person, female narrator who
intimately addresses the 'Reader'. She seems
therein to have suggested these new
possibilities to Charlotte who, previous to Jane
Eyre, had never employed a female narrator,
even in her juvenilia
40. GEORGE ELIOT (1819-1880)
Born at Arbury Farm in Warwickshire
Her father, Robert Evans, was an overseer at the Arbury Hall
estate, and Eliot kept house for him after her mother died in 1836.
Her father remarried and Mary Ann had a good relationship with
her two stepbrothers, particularly with Isaac, who played marbles
with her and took her fishing.
1824-35 At the age of five she was sent to a local boarding school
while Isaac was sent to school in Coventry. She became sternly
Christian after her strict religious schooling.
1836 Her mother died and her elder sister married the following
year so Mary Ann became her father´s housekeeper and companion.
Mary Anne Evans
41. GEORGE ELIOT (1819-1880)
1841 Her father moved to Coventry hoping her daughter
would meet a potential husband there.
1849 After her father´s death, whom she had nursed for
months, she inherited a modest income of £1000 and five
days after the funeral she left for the Continent.
1951 Mary Ann, now a 30 year-old spinster, did not want
to intrude in her brother´s lives and decided to move to
London and lodge at John Chapman´s house. He had just
bought The Westminster Review. 1851-3 Mary Ann became
assistant editor of The Westminster Review.
Mary Anne Evans
42. • 1854, She published a translation of Feuerbach´s The
Essence of Christianity under her own name;
Victorian society was offended by her daring to
openly flout its moral laws.
• 1856, Eliot began writing fiction. Scenes of Clerical Life
was published under the pen name of George Eliot.
• Her first novel, Adam Bede, "a country story full of
the breath of cows and the scent of hay", for which
she drew on her childhood memories, was published
the following year.
• The central character was based on her father. The book
attracted tremendous interest and speculation about the real
identity of its author. She was forced then to admit her
authorship publicly. She became the famous novelist George
Eliot. The book sold 5000 copies in a fortnight and she was
able to buy a house.
43. She produced a steady flow of best-sellers:
The Mill on the Floss (1860),
Silas Marner (1861),
Romola (1863),
Felix Holt, the Radical (1866),
Middlemarch (1871),
Daniel Deronda (1876).
Marian's income rose from £800 for Adam Bede
to £8000 for Middlemarch. She bought a bigger
house, the Priory near Regent’s Park and traveled
widely in Europe.
44. Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson
born on 29 September 1810 in Chelsea, London.
Her father,William, trained as a dissenting
minister at Daventry, Northampton and
Manchester and for a short time served the
Unitarian congregation at Failsworth, near
Manchester, before trying and failing at farming.
Her mother, also Elizabeth, nee Holland, came
from a large family of more traditional,
‘respectable’ middle class rational dissenters from
Cheshire, linked by marriage to theWedgwood,
Turner and Darwin families.
45. Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson
Her only brother, John, was twelve years older than her,
but she saw little of him after her mother’s death in 1811.
William sent Elizabeth to live with her mother’s sister,
Aunt Hannah Lumb, in Knutsford.
It was here that Elizabeth grew up, attending Brook
Street Chapel, apart from a couple of years at boarding
school in the Midlands.
When she was 18 John disappeared, either lost at sea or
in India; this loss affected both Elizabeth and her father
severely, and she went to stay withWilliam (who had
remarried and had two more children) for some months,
during which time he died.
46. Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson
Elizabeth met the new co- minister: the RevWilliam
Gaskell. Elizabeth was just 21, and considered lively and
sometimes ‘giddy and thoughtless’ according to her Aunt
Lumb, whileWilliam, at 27, was quiet, scholarly and
rather austere.Within six months they were engaged,
and married very soon after at the parish church in
Knutsford.
William and Elizabeth set up their first home in
Manchester, and though they moved twice, stayed in the
same small area one mile south of the city centre and
Cross Street Chapel.As the minister’s wife, Elizabeth met
many of the middle class professional families in the fast
growing city, and became involved in their concerns, such
as the cholera outbreak of1832, and cultural life.
47. As Britain industrialized, there occurred a
rapid population shift into the cities as
workers sought jobs in the factories.This
resulted in severe overcrowding, a dangerous
lack of sanitation, and the rise in a variety of
other urban ills
The economic instability and fluctuation
throughout the 1830s and 1840s resulted in
rising poverty and starvation among the
working class.This led to protests and other
demands and appeals for reform from the
workers
Two of her novels, Mary Barton and North
and South, focus on whatThomas Carlyle
famously branded “condition-of-England
novels”
48. • This book includes 10 unique
illustrations that are relevant to its
content. North and South is an industrial
novel by Elizabeth Gaskell. It first
appeared as a 22-part weekly serial in the
magazine Household Words.
• The novel is set in the fictional town of
Milton-Northern, in the industrial-era
North of England.
• The heroine, Margaret Hale, is a new
arrival in the town. She remembers her
former home in the South as a rural
paradise, and is critical of industrialism.
