This Terrific Separation: The Experience of Girlhood in Jane Eyre and Northanger Abbey - Research Paper Example

?This Terrific Separation: The Experience of Girlhood in Jane Eyre and Northanger Abbey This paper will look at the first section of Jane Eyre, written by Charlotte Bronte in 1846, and compare the childhood experiences of its first-person heroine with the third-person narrative of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (1817). In both novels, the characters are separated from their family very early in the novel, whether through death (Jane Eyre) or by choice (Northanger Abbey); it appears that Victorian women were unable to pursue story-worthy lives in the presence of their parents. With reference to primary and secondary sources on Victorian childhood (Victorian Childhood: Themes and Variations), orphans (Girlhood in America: An Encyclopedia), moral expectations (Childhood in Victorian England and Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist), education (The Schooling of Working-Class Girls in Victorian Scotland; Dress Culture in Late Victorian Women's Fiction), work (Victorian Working Women), familial relationships (Family Ties in Victorian England), and others, this paper will look at Jane's and Catherine's very different experiences of young womanhood and what these experiences say about their respective authors, in order to glean a comprehensive view of what it was like to be a working-class and a non-working class girl in Victorian Britain. It will show that in spite of the disparities in their age, time period, finances, class, and more, Jane and Catherine represent the dull restrictions of being girls of their times, and reveal an entire group of society which was, in the nineteenth century, yearning for more opportunities. Annotated Bibliography Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey. 1803. Gutenberg.org. Project Gutenberg, January 21, 2010. Web. July 13 2011. I have chosen Jane Austen's earliest completed novel, Northanger Abbey, to provide a counterpoint of experience to Bronte's Jane Eyre. Northanger Abbey's heroine is also a young girl, but of a higher class and with greater familial ties than the orphan Jane; she is not expected to find work as an adult, but is under great pressure to find a rich husband. Northanger Abbey is also comedic, intended as a gentle satire of girlhood, whereas Jane Eyre is not. Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. 1846. Gutenberg.org. Project Gutenberg, April 29, 2007. Web. July 13 2011. Jane Eyre was one of the most interesting books studied on this course, and I was particularly fascinated by the first section of the novel, which deals with Jane's lonely and miserable childhood. In light of the later events in the book, this section is often seen as the unexciting part, through which readers must plod if they are to get to the romance. But Bronte clearly felt that it was important, and so I feel it is worthy of further study. Bronte, Charlotte. The Letters of Charlotte Bronte, 1852-1855. Ed. Margaret Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Print. This compilation of Bronte's letters offers a unique opportunity to understand the author's own reaction to her seminal work; furthermore it reveals what it was like to live inside the complex tangle of expectations of nineteenth-century women. Forman-Brunell, Miriam, ed. Girlhood in America: An Encyclopedia, Volume 1. California: ABC-CLIO Inc, 2001. Print. This collection focuses on modern and historical experiences of being a girl in encyclopedic format, with relevant literary references, statistics, and other research. It will be invaluable in placing Jane's and Catherine's experiences in a continuum of young womanhood which stretches from beyond their time to ours. Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Life of Charlotte Bronte. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1857. Print. A nineteenth-century biography of Charlotte Bronte, penned by one of her contemporaries, offers a fascinating look at how nineteenth-century women viewed each other, as well as providing necessary biographical information on Bronte's own childhood. Jordan, Thomas E. Victorian Childhood: Themes and Variations. New York: New York University Press, 1987. Print. Jordan's book focuses on the facts and figures of being a child in Victorian England, which will be of use in backing up my claims with statistics. It also talks about the social dimension of childhood, often glossed over in other books, and I hope to use this in conjunction with Jane's relationship with Helen, and Catherine's relationship with Isabella. Kaplan, Carla. “Girl Talk: Jane Eyre and the Romance of Women's Narration.” NOVEL 30.1 (1996): 5-31. Print. Kaplan's essay looks at the unusual female first-person perspective of Jane Eyre, which I will take as representative of Jane's desires to break out of her socially-prescribed role. Kortsch, Christine Bayles. Dress Culture in Late Victorian Women's Fiction: literacy, textiles and activism. Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, 2009. Print. This book looks at the knowledge Victorian girls were meant to know – the secret of fashion. This certainly preoccupies Catherine in Northanger Abbey, but why, and is clothing equally as important to Jane? Lau, Beth. “Madeline at Northanger Abbey: Keats' Anti-Romances and Gothic Satire.” The Journal of English and German Philology 84.1 (1985): 30-50. Print. This article looks at a different piece of literature in connection with the underlying message of Northanger Abbey: that this Gothic parody of Gothic novels shows, perversely, that novel-reading 'spoils' young girls. One of the ways in which Catherine subverts social norms is by reading so voraciously. Levine, George. “Translating the Monstrous: Northanger Abbey.” Nineteenth Century Fiction 30.3 (1975): 335-350. Print. Levine's article on the playfulness of Northanger Abbey highlights Catherine Morland's status as a young, frivolous girl, who is unable to tell the difference between reality and novels. Austen's meta-criticism of the Gothic is a complex literary device forefronted by a simplistic little girl. In this case, what does girlhood represent? Mill, John Stuart. The Subjection of Women. Ed. Edward Alexander. New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2001. Print. In an appendix to Mill's astounding work on feminism in early Victorian Britain, editor Alexander juxtaposes excerpts from Northanger Abbey and Jane Eyre to highlight the similarities in these women's attitudes (although Austen's is dripping with sarcasm). In conjunction with Mill's forward-thinking (for the time) proposals, we glean a well-fleshed-out image of woman's contemporary position. McDermid, Jane. The Schooling of Working-Class Girls in Victorian Scotland. Oxon: Routledge, 2005. Print. Although this paper's focus is exclusively Scotland, it presents a fair idea of girl-oriented education in Victorian Britain, and is a good basis from which to research Jane's boarding school education and Catherine's complete lack of schooling. Interestingly, in Northanger Abbey, it is the older generation of women who have been educated. Muzzey, A.B. The Young Maiden. Boston: W.M. Crosby & H.P. Nichols, 1848. Print. This contemporary guide of behaviour for young women will reveal the expectations that society had of Jane and Catherine, and, indeed, even of Bronte and Austen. Myer, Valerie Grosvenor. Jane Austen, Obstinate Heart. London: Michael O'Mara Books, 1997. Print. That Myer's biography begins with an assurance that Austen was pretty is telling of the expectations that even women have of other women, even now, nearly two centuries after Austen's death. It will also provide key information about Austen's own struggle to reach adulthood in a world hostile to women. Nell, Wanda F. Victorian Working Women. London: Frank Cass & Co, 1929. Print. Nell's book discusses the world of Victorian female adulthood, where expectations were to marry, but the reality was that for many women, work was necessary. How does Jane's experience as an orphan, and Catherine's experience as a young woman with aspirations above her class, fit into this? Nelson, Claudia. Family Ties in Victorian England. Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2007. Print. This book attempts to subvert the traditional view of the Victorian family as a stable unit governed by a mother who could not work outside the home; it gives a more true-to-life description of contemporary familial relationships than commonly accepted. Pakditawan, Sirinya. Childhood in Victorian England and Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist. Germany: Druck und Binding, 2002. Print. Pakditawan's scholarly paper looks at Victorian childhood from a different perspective, namely, that of boyhood. This provides an appropriate foil for my research, which looks at what girls wanted and were forbidden – often the very things which were encouraged in boys. Shuttleworth, Sally. Charlotte Bronte and Victorian Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Print. Shuttleworth's book focuses on the language of self-articulation, and discusses Jane's struggle to self-identify in the face of gender, class, and economical oppressions. Wolff, Cynthia Griffin. “The Radcliffean Gothic Model: A Form For Feminine Sexuality.” Modern Language Studies 9.3 (1979): 98-113. Print. Although I do not want to focus on the sexualisation of Jane and Catherine, no paper on girlhood would be complete without mentioning it. Wolff's article looks at the difference in how we view male and female sexuality, and the impact of these sexualities on Northanger Abbey and Jane Eyre. Zonana, Joyce. “The Sultan and the Slave: Feminist Orientalism and the Structure of Jane Eyre.” Springs 18.3 (1993): 592-617. Print. Zonana's article focuses on Jane's feminism, which is the cornerstone of her desire to break out of the prescribed mold of contemporary heroines. Read More