Walking in the Brontë Dining-room as Literary Influence

This essay analyses the Brontë sisters’ shared writing and walking practices in the Haworth parsonage dining-room in order to explore how communal indoor walking may have influenced the composition and content of the novels that were written there: Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey, The Professor, Jane...

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Main Author: Kate Lawson
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée 2023-03-01
Series:Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/cve/12714
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author Kate Lawson
author_facet Kate Lawson
author_sort Kate Lawson
collection DOAJ
description This essay analyses the Brontë sisters’ shared writing and walking practices in the Haworth parsonage dining-room in order to explore how communal indoor walking may have influenced the composition and content of the novels that were written there: Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey, The Professor, Jane Eyre, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Shirley, and Villette. Employing the materialist theories of Thomas Rickert, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, and Karen Barad, the essay explores how the complex web of the sisters’ everyday lived experiences could constitute literary influence. While indoor walking provides only one of many possible routes for such a materialist analysis of influence, the Brontës’ daily evening walks of approximately two hours in length are well documented and can act as a focal point for an investigation of how such experiences intersect with the novels’ composition. Scenes of indoor walking in the Brontë novels foreground affective connections between a subject moved to walk by an intense emotional state and an observer who witnesses and interprets the walk and who may act in response. Communal indoor walking in the novels thus provides a model through which to read materialist influence as, in Barad’s terms, ‘intra-active’ and ‘entangled’.
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spelling doaj-art-3b6aa223af174ad3aaeb4422dcf459ce2025-01-30T10:22:40ZengPresses Universitaires de la MéditerranéeCahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens0220-56102271-61492023-03-019710.4000/cve.12714Walking in the Brontë Dining-room as Literary InfluenceKate LawsonThis essay analyses the Brontë sisters’ shared writing and walking practices in the Haworth parsonage dining-room in order to explore how communal indoor walking may have influenced the composition and content of the novels that were written there: Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey, The Professor, Jane Eyre, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Shirley, and Villette. Employing the materialist theories of Thomas Rickert, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, and Karen Barad, the essay explores how the complex web of the sisters’ everyday lived experiences could constitute literary influence. While indoor walking provides only one of many possible routes for such a materialist analysis of influence, the Brontës’ daily evening walks of approximately two hours in length are well documented and can act as a focal point for an investigation of how such experiences intersect with the novels’ composition. Scenes of indoor walking in the Brontë novels foreground affective connections between a subject moved to walk by an intense emotional state and an observer who witnesses and interprets the walk and who may act in response. Communal indoor walking in the novels thus provides a model through which to read materialist influence as, in Barad’s terms, ‘intra-active’ and ‘entangled’.https://journals.openedition.org/cve/12714Brontë (Charlotte)Brontë (Emily)Brontë (Anne)literary influencematerialismwalking
spellingShingle Kate Lawson
Walking in the Brontë Dining-room as Literary Influence
Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens
Brontë (Charlotte)
Brontë (Emily)
Brontë (Anne)
literary influence
materialism
walking
title Walking in the Brontë Dining-room as Literary Influence
title_full Walking in the Brontë Dining-room as Literary Influence
title_fullStr Walking in the Brontë Dining-room as Literary Influence
title_full_unstemmed Walking in the Brontë Dining-room as Literary Influence
title_short Walking in the Brontë Dining-room as Literary Influence
title_sort walking in the bronte dining room as literary influence
topic Brontë (Charlotte)
Brontë (Emily)
Brontë (Anne)
literary influence
materialism
walking
url https://journals.openedition.org/cve/12714
work_keys_str_mv AT katelawson walkinginthebrontediningroomasliteraryinfluence