CHARLOTTE BRONTË: FURTHER READING

Bibliographies

Crump, Rebecca W. Charlotte and Emily Brontë: A Reference Guide. 3 vols. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982-1986, 194 p.

Provides an annotated compilation of secondary sources from 1846 to 1983.

Passel, Anne. Charlotte and Emily Brontë: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland Publishing, 1979, 359 p.

Organizes criticism by text.

Biographies

Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Life of Charlotte Brontë. London: E. P. Dutton, 1908, 411 p.

Offers a biography by one of Brontë's contemporaries; includes large extracts from Brontë's correspondence.

Gérin, Winifred. Charlotte Brontë: The Evolution of Genius. London: Oxford University Press, 1967, 617 p.

Biography focusing on Charlotte Brontë's development as an author.

Gordon, Lyndall. Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996, 418p.

Provides revisionist insights into Brontë's life.

Miller, Lucasta. The Brontë Myth. New York: Knopf, 2004, 351p.

Offers a biography that retraces myth surrounding the Brontë sisters, particularly Charlotte.

Criticism

Adams, Maurianne. "Jane Eyre: Woman's Estate." In The Authority of Experience: Essays in Feminist Criticism, edited by Arlyn Diamond and Lee R. Edwards, pp. 137-59. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977.

Reads Jane Eyre as a feminist novel despite Jane's initial discomfort with her feminist awareness.

Argyle, Gisela. "Gender and Generic Mixing in Charlotte Brontë's Shirley." Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 35, no. 4 (autumn 1995): 741-56.

Explores the use of the third-person narrator in Shirley as a departure from Brontë's usual style.

Baines, Barbara. "Villette: A Feminist Novel." Victorians Institute Journal (1976): 51-60.

Interprets Villette as the story of a young woman observing the identities available to her and gradually realizing her personal power.

Craik, W. A. The Brontë Novels. London: Methuen, 1968, 266 p.

Studies the novels by the Brontë sisters.

Eagleton, Terry. Myths of Power: A Marxist Study of the Brontës. London: Macmillan, 1975, 148 p.

Takes a Marxist literary approach to interpreting the Brontës' work.

Ewbank, Inga-Stina. "Charlotte Brontë: The Woman Writer As an Author Only." In Their Proper Sphere: A Study of the Brontë Sisters as Early Victorian Female Novelists, pp. 156-204. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966.

Analyzes Brontë's work in terms of the novelist's principle of artistic truth.

Federico, Annette R. "The Other Case: Gender and Narration in Charlotte Brontë's The Professor." Papers on Language and Literature 30, no. 4 (fall 1994): 323-45.

Discusses Brontë's use of a male narrator in The Professor.

Greene, Sally. "Apocalypse When? Shirley's Vision and the Politics of Reading." Studies in the Novel 26, no. 4 (winter 1994): 350-71.

Contends that earlier feminist criticism of Shirley has failed to consider its context, particularly in its religious themes; argues that anachronistic criticism is unable to recognize the challenges to the limitations placed on women that Brontë's work presents.

Levine, Caroline. "'Harmless Pleasure': Gender, Suspense, and Jane Eyre." Victorian Literature and Culture (2000): 275-86.

Connects Brontë's use of a pseudonym with narrative suspense as pleasurable methods of subversion.

Meyer, Susan. Imperialism at Home: Race and Victorian Women's Fiction. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996, 220 p.

Examines the treatment of race and colonialism in Jane Eyre.

Millett, Kate. "The Sexual Revolution, First Phase: 1830-1930." In Sexual Politics, pp. 61-156. New York: Doubleday and Company, 1970.

Includes Brontë's works in a discussion of subversive works by women; sees in Villette a revolutionary sensibility with respect to gender issues.

Moglen, Helene. Charlotte Brontë: The Self Conceived. New York: W. W. Norton, 1976, 256 p.

Explores Brontë's novels as an indication of the development of her personality.

Pell, Nancy. "Resistance, Rebellion, and Marriage: The Economics of 'Jane Eyre.'" Nineteenth-Century Fiction 31, no. 4 (March 1977): 397-420.

Interprets Jane Eyre as a critique of the social and economic strictures on Victorian women.

Plasa, Carl. "Charlotte Brontë's Foreign Bodies: Slavery and Sexuality in The Professor." Journal of Narrative Theory 30, no. 1 (winter 2000): 1-28.

Examines the representation of colonialism found in The Professor.

Poovey, Mary. "The Anathematized Race: The Governess and Jane Eyre." In Feminism and Psychoanalysis, edited by Richard Feldstein and Judith Roof, pp. 230-54. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989.

Considers the historical position of the governess and Brontë's treatment of it in her work.

Ratchford, Fannie E. The Brontës' Web of Childhood. New York: Columbia University Press, 1941, 293 p.

A pioneering study of the Brontës' childhood works.

Rich, Adrienne. "'Jane Eyre': The Temptations of a Motherless Woman." In On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966-1978, pp. 89-106. New York: W. W. Norton, 1979.

Assesses Jane Eyre as a novel that depicts alternatives for women.

Spacks, Patricia Meyer. "Power and Passivity." In The Female Imagination, pp. 45-96. New York: Avon, 1975.

Suggests that while Brontë's heroines must accept their dependency on men, they are able to retain at least some power in their relationships.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism." Critical Inquiry 12, no. 1 (autumn 1985): 243-61.

Relates Jane Eyre to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Jean Rhys's reimagining of Bertha Mason's story in Wide Sargasso Sea.

Taylor, Irene. "The Professor, Jane Eyre, Shirley." In Holy Ghosts: The Male Muses of Emily and Charlotte Brontë, pp. 159-99. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.

Links Brontë's characters' struggles with gender roles with her own desires for gender equality in society and a deeper sense of balance between the male and female qualities within herself.

Tillotson, Kathleen. "Jane Eyre." In Novels of the Eighteen-Forties, pp. 257-313. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954.

Describes Jane Eyre as a novel of the inner life; discusses Brontë's development as a writer through the Angrian chronicles and The Professor to the more coherent and insightful Jane Eyre.

Woolf, Virginia. "Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights." In The Common Reader, pp. 219-27. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1925.

Emphasizes the poetry of Brontë's writing and the intensity of Jane Eyre.

Yaeger, Patricia. "Honey-Mad Women: Charlotte Brontë's Bilingual Heroines." Browning Institute Studies 14 (1986): 11-35.

Compares the treatment of bilingualism in Jane Eyre and Villette with Romantic poetry.

Zonana, Joyce. "The Sultan and the Slave: Feminist Orientalism and the Structures of Jane Eyre." Signs 18, no. 3 (spring 1993): 592-617.

Looks at Brontë's use of Orientalist themes and their relationship to feminist issues in Jane Eyre.

OTHER SOURCES FROM GALE:

Additional coverage of Brontë's life and career is contained in the following sources published by the Gale Group: Authors and Artists for Young Adults, Vol. 17; Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults, Vol. 2; British Writers, Vol. 5; British Writers: The Classics, Vol. 2; British Writers Retrospective Supplement, Vol. 1; Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, 1832-1890; Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vols. 21, 159, 199; DISCovering Authors; DISCovering Authors: British Edition; DISCovering Authors: Canadian Edition; DISCovering Authors Modules: Most-studied Authors and Novelists; DISCovering Authors, 3.0; Exploring Novels; Literature and Its Times, Vol. 2; Literature Resource Center; Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Vols. 3, 8, 33, 58, 105; Novels for Students, Vol. 4; Twayne's English Authors; World Literature and Its Times, Vol. 4; and World Literature Criticism.