JANE EYRE E A CONSTRUÇÃO DE UMA VOZ DE REBELDIA

RESUMO: O presente artigo tem por objetivo analisar através da trajetória da personagem título do romance Jane Eyre, escrito por Charlotte Brontë em 1847, como uma voz autoral feminina se levanta e quebra convenções sociais, questiona relações de poder e estereótipos culturalmente estabelecidos, borrando, assim, as fronteiras entre os gêneros e tendo sempre como princípio norteador seu amor próprio e sua sede por igualdade. De forma a desenvolver uma leitura crítica da obra parte-se de uma teoria feminista-marxista, a qual entende as obras literárias enquanto projetos políticos que trazem em si as lutas e contradições do momento histórico no qual nascem e do qual falam, questionando a ideologia dominante ao penetrar na realidade social, econômica, mental e política. A compreensão do feminino, assim, não se constitui como uma verdade essencial, mas como um constructo social elaborado por uma sociedade centrada na Voz do Pai. Por fim, a questão de gênero é levada para além de suas fronteiras, dissolvendo-as e propondo-se através de Jane Eyre uma identidade não presa a um sexo delimitador de atitudes e comportamentos.

"A Strange Fever of the Nerves and Blood": Nervous Illness in the Literature of the Nineteenth Century

<p>In the nineteenth century, the discussion of personal health and wellbeing became almost a national pastime. With publications such as the British Medical Journal and Lancet freely accessible to the everyday reader, common medical terms and diagnoses were readily absorbed by the public. In particular, the nineteenth century saw the rapid rise of the ‘nervous illness’ – sicknesses which had no apparent physical cause, but had the capacity to cripple their victims with (among other things) delirium, tremors and convulsions. As part of the rich social life of this popular class of disorder, writers of fiction within the nineteenth century also participated in the public dialogue on the subject. Authors such as Charlotte Brontë, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle all constructed narratives involving nervous sufferers, particularly hypochondriacs and victims of brain fever. Despite writing in a wide variety of genres ranging from Gothic to realist, the roles played by the illnesses within the texts of these authors remain a vital feature of the plot, either as a hindrance to the protagonists (by removing key players from the plot at a critical moment) or a method of revealing deeper aspects of their character. Nervous illnesses carried with them social stigmas: men could be rendered feminine; women could be branded recklessly passionate or even considered visionaries as ideas about the nerves, the supposed seat of emotion and passion, brought into sharp relief the boundaries between physical and mental suffering, and physical and spiritual experiences. The central aim of this thesis is to examine the cultural understanding of nervous illness and how nineteenth-century texts interacted with and challenged this knowledge. It focuses on how nineteenth-century authors of different genres – particularly the Gothic, sensation and realist genres – use the common convention of nervous illness – particularly hypochondria and brain fever – to develop their protagonists and influence the plot. Through comparisons between literary symptoms and those recorded by contemporary sufferers and their physicians, this thesis analyses the way that the cultural concept of nervous illness is used by four principal Victorian authors across a range of their works, looking at how hypochondria and brain fever function within their plots and interact with gender and genre conventions to uphold and subvert the common tropes of each. Whether it aids or hinders the protagonist, or merely gives the reader an insight into their personality, nervous illness in the Victorian novel was a widely used convention which speaks not only of the mindset of the author, but also of the public which so willingly received it.</p>

"A Strange Fever of the Nerves and Blood": Nervous Illness in the Literature of the Nineteenth Century

<p>In the nineteenth century, the discussion of personal health and wellbeing became almost a national pastime. With publications such as the British Medical Journal and Lancet freely accessible to the everyday reader, common medical terms and diagnoses were readily absorbed by the public. In particular, the nineteenth century saw the rapid rise of the ‘nervous illness’ – sicknesses which had no apparent physical cause, but had the capacity to cripple their victims with (among other things) delirium, tremors and convulsions. As part of the rich social life of this popular class of disorder, writers of fiction within the nineteenth century also participated in the public dialogue on the subject. Authors such as Charlotte Brontë, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle all constructed narratives involving nervous sufferers, particularly hypochondriacs and victims of brain fever. Despite writing in a wide variety of genres ranging from Gothic to realist, the roles played by the illnesses within the texts of these authors remain a vital feature of the plot, either as a hindrance to the protagonists (by removing key players from the plot at a critical moment) or a method of revealing deeper aspects of their character. Nervous illnesses carried with them social stigmas: men could be rendered feminine; women could be branded recklessly passionate or even considered visionaries as ideas about the nerves, the supposed seat of emotion and passion, brought into sharp relief the boundaries between physical and mental suffering, and physical and spiritual experiences. The central aim of this thesis is to examine the cultural understanding of nervous illness and how nineteenth-century texts interacted with and challenged this knowledge. It focuses on how nineteenth-century authors of different genres – particularly the Gothic, sensation and realist genres – use the common convention of nervous illness – particularly hypochondria and brain fever – to develop their protagonists and influence the plot. Through comparisons between literary symptoms and those recorded by contemporary sufferers and their physicians, this thesis analyses the way that the cultural concept of nervous illness is used by four principal Victorian authors across a range of their works, looking at how hypochondria and brain fever function within their plots and interact with gender and genre conventions to uphold and subvert the common tropes of each. Whether it aids or hinders the protagonist, or merely gives the reader an insight into their personality, nervous illness in the Victorian novel was a widely used convention which speaks not only of the mindset of the author, but also of the public which so willingly received it.</p>

A Veiled Love in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre

The particular structure and organization of Jane Eyre surely constitute only some of the traits that favor survival of this great classic for all these centuries. They represent the hallmark of Jane Eyre, through which Charlotte Brontë has spoken to a large number of readers, using different cultural, geographical and historical interrelations in unexpected ways and forms, but always suggestive and successful. This paper aims at highlighting some of the different occultation strategies brought into play by the two emblematic, magnetic and fascinating protagonists, who sit at the loving table in Jane Eyre. The ability to conceal and unveil, to allow the feeling of love to be subtended and misunderstood is certainly one of the building blocks of the soul of a classic like Jane Eyre. It offers the possibility of maturing an interior path of redemption, of knowledge and affirmation of the self, within a delicate system, in balance between drives and reason. The continuous game of parts, between presence and absence, between what is shown and what one actually is, remains mysterious, elusive, and in perpetual becoming. Hiding love thus represents a gateway to the complexity of reality and at the same time allows us to experience other fascinations and sensations that would otherwise remain only, totally ‘ideal’.

Wide Sargasso Sea e as cartas de Jean Rhys: dessacralizando o discurso colonial

O objetivo deste trabalho é analisar quão contextual é o processo de escrita de mulheres, em especial, o do texto literário, tomando como objeto as cartas de registro da produção do romance feminista pós-colonial Wide Sargasso Sea, da escritora Jean Rhys. Por meio das cartas de Rhys, abordamos os fatores que envolveram a produção da obra, desde o conflito da autora diante da representação da personagem crioula louca no romance inglês, Jane Eyre (1847), da escritora canônica Charlotte Brontë, às estratégias para validação da sua obra na Inglaterra. Tomamos como referência perspectivas pós e decoloniais para análise dos aspectos elencados nas cartas e suscitados pelo texto literário.

Depicting Women Through Transitivity Choices: A Comparative Analysis

The study aims at depicting how male and female authors portray female characters and how their core ideologies and social influences affect these depictions. This study is based on the feminist stylistic approach, proposed by Sara Mills (1995), embedded with the literary theory of feminism. It is an overlapping field that has its roots in critical discourse analysis. This stance is significant as it allows to critically look at the substance to uncover the ideology related to women. From a feminist stylistic perspective, the notion of presenting the distorted image of the female entity is associated with male authors leading to the point that female authors portray female characters positively as compared to their male counterparts. By employing Halliday’s transitivity framework (2004) in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) as an analytic tool, the utterances of the female protagonists from both the novels: The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, have been analysed into the process, participants and circumstances. Social influence, mostly in the form of male domination, on ideologies and linguistic choices in the depiction of women in both the writers’ work has been found on almost equal grounds.