De Shirley à Villette : comment Jane Eyre peut-elle vieillir ?

While Jane Eyre obliterates the process of getting old, not so for Charlotte’s two subsequent novels which introduce singular characters whose connection with the heroine suggests that ageing is now part of the issue of self development with which her writings are concerned. In Shirley, the old maid...

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Main Author: Bernadette Bertrandias
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée 2006-12-01
Series:Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/cve/13365
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author Bernadette Bertrandias
author_facet Bernadette Bertrandias
author_sort Bernadette Bertrandias
collection DOAJ
description While Jane Eyre obliterates the process of getting old, not so for Charlotte’s two subsequent novels which introduce singular characters whose connection with the heroine suggests that ageing is now part of the issue of self development with which her writings are concerned. In Shirley, the old maids are monitory figures, but in Villette, Miss Marchmont, on the one hand (whose fate can be read as the alternative of Jane Eyre’s), and the monstrous Malevola, on the other hand, frame Lucy Snowe’s progress in life in a paradoxical structure of closeness/strangeness regarding the process of ageing. This article attempts to read the function of those figures as part of the problematic maturation of the woman subject, as uneasy with the codes of the Bildungsroman as such, as with those of patriarchy at large. For if Malevola illustrates the ultimate degradation of feminine stereotypes, she also embodies the parodic obverse of the woman writer’s manipulative power, and as such maybe the last mirror in which Brontë contemplates herself, with the issue of autonomy and self-fulfilment dramatically unresolved.
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spelling doaj-art-1631142bfa9f44f5be41e2d09a90f9052025-01-30T10:21:02ZengPresses Universitaires de la MéditerranéeCahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens0220-56102271-61492006-12-016310.4000/cve.13365De Shirley à Villette : comment Jane Eyre peut-elle vieillir ?Bernadette BertrandiasWhile Jane Eyre obliterates the process of getting old, not so for Charlotte’s two subsequent novels which introduce singular characters whose connection with the heroine suggests that ageing is now part of the issue of self development with which her writings are concerned. In Shirley, the old maids are monitory figures, but in Villette, Miss Marchmont, on the one hand (whose fate can be read as the alternative of Jane Eyre’s), and the monstrous Malevola, on the other hand, frame Lucy Snowe’s progress in life in a paradoxical structure of closeness/strangeness regarding the process of ageing. This article attempts to read the function of those figures as part of the problematic maturation of the woman subject, as uneasy with the codes of the Bildungsroman as such, as with those of patriarchy at large. For if Malevola illustrates the ultimate degradation of feminine stereotypes, she also embodies the parodic obverse of the woman writer’s manipulative power, and as such maybe the last mirror in which Brontë contemplates herself, with the issue of autonomy and self-fulfilment dramatically unresolved.https://journals.openedition.org/cve/13365
spellingShingle Bernadette Bertrandias
De Shirley à Villette : comment Jane Eyre peut-elle vieillir ?
Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens
title De Shirley à Villette : comment Jane Eyre peut-elle vieillir ?
title_full De Shirley à Villette : comment Jane Eyre peut-elle vieillir ?
title_fullStr De Shirley à Villette : comment Jane Eyre peut-elle vieillir ?
title_full_unstemmed De Shirley à Villette : comment Jane Eyre peut-elle vieillir ?
title_short De Shirley à Villette : comment Jane Eyre peut-elle vieillir ?
title_sort de shirley a villette comment jane eyre peut elle vieillir
url https://journals.openedition.org/cve/13365
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