Theme 7: She-writers in English Literature of the 19th Century.

Plan:

1. Charlotte Bronte and her novel 'Jane Eyre'.

2. Elizabeth Gaskell – her life and work. 'Mary Barton'.

3. George Eliot – her life and work. Her best novels.

CHARLOTTE BRONTE

(1816-1855)

Charlotte Bronte (pseudonym Currer Bell) – a daughter of a clergyman, received her education at a charity school for daughters of impoverished clergymen. The school was a veritable prison. Charlotte gained first-hand knowledge of the king of training to which future governesses were subjected. Her education completed, Charlotte entered the employ of a wealthy family as a governess were she was treated in a most slighting manner.

Charlotte Bronte's novel 'Jane Eyre' (1847) brought her fame and placed her in the rank of the foremost English realistic writers. She was personally acquainted with Dickens and Thackeray and the latter greatly influenced her literary method. In 1849, Charlotte published 'Shirley', her second big novel which dealt with the life of workers at the time of Luddites. The author's sympathies are with the toilers. However, Bronte's realistic portrayal of the conflict between labor and capital is much weakened by her attempting to solve the problem in a conciliatory moralistic way.

Jane Eyre

One of the central themes of the book is education. Bronte's description of horrors of Lowood charity school is not inferior to Dickens's strongest passages portraying educational institutions of England of that time. Another problem raised in the novel is the position of a woman in society. The heroine of the novel maintains that women should have equal rights with men.

ELIZABETH GASKELL

(1810-1865)

Elizabeth Gaskell, a clergyman's daughter, also married a clergyman. Her husband and she made a study of living and working conditions of textile workers in Manchester and her first novel 'Mary Barton' (1848) contains a vivid picture of the industrial conflicts which prevailed at that time. It was severely criticized by reactionary critics as a book hostile to the employers while Dickens and other representatives of progressive literature supported the author. Her first novel 'Mary Barton' was undoubtedly the best owing to its realistic treatment of the main facts of the social and political life of that period.

GEORGE ELIOT

(1819-1880)

Mary Ann Evans, known under the pseudonym of George Eliot, was born in Warwickshire. She was a daughter of a land agent who gave up his business to take charge of an estate. Her childhood and youth were spent amidst rural scenes and picturesque village locality described in the 'Mill on the Floss'.

Compelled to leave school at the age of 17 because of her mother's death Mary Evans took charge of all domestic affairs. But her active mind and strong emotional nature drove her on to study. She put in much reading and became proficient in music and in German, French and Italian languages.

Eliot had been brought up under religious influences, but she early abandoned religious beliefs disavowed church tenets and became a free thinker. From 1844-1855, Eliot translated into English Feherbach's 'The Essence of Christianity' and other philosophical works.

In 1851, she settled in London as an assistant editor of a progressive magazine 'The Westminster Review'. In 1857, George Eliot wrote her first three stories for a magazine, which were later published in book form under heading 'Scenes of Clerical Life'. Then followed three remarkable novels which made her famous: 'Adam Bede' (1859), 'The Mill on the Floss' (1860) and 'Silas Marner' (1861). 'Adam Bede' contains splendid realistic pictures of the English countryside at the turn of the 18th century. Eliot lovingly depicts the patriarchal relations unaffected by bourgeois civilization. Adam Bede, a village carpenter, is the central character of the novel. He is an upright man always ready to help the weak and the suffering. His character is contrasted to a flippant and selfish aristocrat of the place.

The book shows her democratic and progressive sympathetic treatment of common people. At the same time it is affected by the positive philosophy: according to Eliot, the moral principles of men are closely connected with religion, 'the religion of the heart'.

'The Mill on the Floss' in its first chapters is largely autobiographical. Scenes of rural nature and the life of peasants form the background against which the author traces the fate and the development of a girl whose aspirations ran counter to the philistine narrow-mindedness and incomprehension of those surrounding her.

Summary

Theme 7: Role of women writers in the progress of English realism. Sisters Bronte and their novels about women in the society, domination of money and hypocrisy.

Questions

1. Charlotte Bronte, her life and work.

2. Elisabeth Gaskell, her life and work.

3. What works by George Eliot do you know?

4. Why did a woman writer, Mary Ann Evans, take a man's name for her pseudonym?