The Industrial Brontës: Advocates for Women's Equality in a Turbulent Age

by Taten Shirley

Overview

A 2023 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title

This book addresses the ways in which Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë took advantage of the rapid change of their time unleashed by the Industrial Revolution in order to illustrate the inequalities women faced in the Victorian Age. It historically contextualizes all seven novels, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Shirley, Villette, and The Professor, in order to investigate the themes of marriage, education, class, and work. Specifically, the author examines the ways the Brontë sisters decenter marriage, call for equality in education, expose the inherent dignity of humans despite class differences, and demonstrate the ways in which increased work opportunities empowered women. Ultimately, the author argues that the Brontë sisters’ call for female empowerment was symptomatic of the age, and one that is realized in the latter half of the Victorian Age and beyond.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781666905007
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	03/20/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	152
File size:	334 KB

About the Author

Taten Shirley is director of interdisciplinary studies and associate professor of humanities at Faulkner University.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Section I: Decentering Marriage

Chapter 1: Subverting the Separate Spheres Doctrine

Chapter 2: Resisting Control and Maintaining Agency

Chapter 3: Rejecting Marriage as a Means to an End

Section I: Conclusion

Section II: Education as the Answer

Chapter 4: The Pitfalls of the Education of a Victorian Male

Chapter 5: A Call for Equal Education

Section II Conclusion

Section III: Challenging Class Assumptions

Chapter 6: The Governess’s Paradox

Chapter 7: Transcending Class in Wuthering Heights

Chapter 8: Class Compromise in Shirley

Section III Conclusion

Section IV: Work as an Equalizer

Chapter 9: Subverting Gender Roles

Chapter 10: Work as Empowering

Chapter 11: The Dignity of Work

Section IV Conclusion

Conclusion

Epilogue

Bibliography

About the Author

Editorial Reviews

The three Brontë sisters—Charlotte (1816–55), Emily (1818–48), Anne (1820–49)—between them wrote a total of seven novels. Whether the siblings discussed the effects of the industrial revolution one cannot know, but their fiction reveals a profound interest in the social changes it brought on. Their books ask how women can achieve agency. The answer is brought to the fore in complex novels that show protagonists who saw beyond love and marriage to the enriching possibilities of education and work. By 1855 the sisters were all dead, but their writings lived on and helped bring about social change. In 1904 Virginia Woolf visited the Brontë home on the moors: their knicknacks did not speak to her, but the novels still did. Over time scholarship has enriched understanding of the dark truths of Victorian change. This book is easy to read and well researched, and it includes useful chapter notes in addition to the customary scholarly apparatus. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

Choice Reviews