Dreary Beginnings to Fairy Tale Endings: Charlotte Bronte’s Villette and Jane Eyre

1. Dreary Beginnings to Fairy Tale Endings: Charlotte Bronte’s Villette and Jane Eyre • Jennifer Hazelwood’s Scholarly Article Presentation

2. Abstract: • Charlotte Bronte’s novels are influenced by the classic fairy tale hopes and dreams of young girls in the nineteenth-century. Bronte’s allusions to fairy tales and use of a fairy tale structure reveal her deepening pessimism about a woman’s place in man’s society. Bronte’s novels Villette and Jane Eyre tell the stories of motherless children who yearn for affection, but must overcome numerous obstacles before gaining true happiness. Villette presents Paulina Home, a child depicting all the virtues of a young Victorian woman, who is awarded love because she abides by the social norms of the time period and commits herself to domestic servitude. Through Jane Eyre, Bronte subtly deconstructs the idea that women must be beautiful, passive, domestic servants devoting their lives in servitude to their husbands, and presents Jane as an unconventional example of an independent, nineteenth-century woman who is awarded love in a marriage of equality.

3. Article Topic:

4. Findings: • Charlotte Bronte challenges the conventions of a woman’s role in Victorian society. • In Villette, Pauline Home depicts the traditional Victorian woman’s dilemma of finding a man to provide for her, and is awarded the love of her Prince Charming because she abides by the social norms of the time period and commits herself to the domestic servitude that she was raised to fulfill. • Through Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte subtly deconstructs the idea that women must be beautiful, passive, domestic servants devoting their lives in servitude to their husbands. Jane Eyre led a tumultuous life, her story riddled with ups and downs, from her lonely, isolated childhood to her reunification with Rochester, with whom, she tells the reader, she has found true happiness. • Jane Eyre captures all the power of a fairy tale, not merely to entertain, but to challenge the prejudices and constraints which were perpetuated by Victorian society.

5. Publication Venue: • The major journal for publication of new research in its field, Nineteenth-Century Literature features articles that span across disciplines and explore themes in gender, history, military studies, psychology, cultural studies, and urbanism. The journal also reviews annually over 70 volumes of scholarship, criticism, comparative studies, and new editions of nineteenth-century English and American literature.

6. Lessons Learned: • This process was much more difficult and time consuming than I would have expected. • Finding the “right” journal is vitally important when beginning publication process. • Editing is key!

7. Works Cited • Armitt, Lucie. “Haunted Childhood in Charlotte Bronte’s Villette.” The Yearbook of English Studies, 32, (2002): 217-228. • Blom, Margaret Howard. Charlotte Bronte. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1977. • Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. New York: Signet, 1960. • ---. Villette. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. • Chevalier, Jean, and Alain Gheerbrant. The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols. London: Penguin, 1996. • Clarke, Micael M. “Bronte’s “Jane Eyre” and the Grimms’ Cinderella.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 40, 4, (Autumn 2000):695-710> • Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Guber. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. • Hughes, John. “The Affective World of Charlotte Bronte’s Villette.” SEL 40, 4, (Autumn 2000): 711-726. • Knapp, Bettina L. The Brontes. New York: Continuum, 1991. • Lanone, Catherine. “Artic Spectacles in Jane Eyre and Villette.” Bronte Studies 34, 2 (July 2009): 117-126. • Quarm, Joan. “Pink Silk and Purple Gray: Charlotte Bronte’s Wish-Fulfillment in Villette.” Bronte Studies 31 (March 2006): 1-6. • Zipes, Jack. Fairy Tale as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994. 18–19.