1. Characteristics of Gothic Literature
Jane Eyre and the Woman Question

2. When did Gothic become popular?
Later 18th Century
Started with a “Gothic Revival” -- mid-1700’s
Visible in gardens
Seen in architecture (gargoyles) of the Middle Ages
1740’s - Horace Walpole - Strawberry Hill estate near London
Published The Castle of Otranto: a Gothic Story

3. Application to literature
Any kind of romantic, scary novel
Came from Germany in the late 1700’s - early 1800’s
Popular among female writers
Became best sellers!

4. Famous Gothic Writers Ann Radcliffe - The Mysteries of Udolpho
Jane Austen -- Northanger Abbey (parody of Gothic novels)
Charlotte Bronte -- Jane Eyre
Emily Bronte -- Wuthering Heights
Shirley Jackson, Daphne du Maurier, Barbara Michaels, Anne Rice

5. A classic Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818)
Single most important product of this tradition
Themes relate to science, poetry, psychology, alienation, politics, education, family relationships, etc.
Tradition: 8-foot tall monster made of separate body pieces
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6. Influence felt elsewhere
Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge-- skeleton ship and the crew’s reaction
Christabel by Coleridge-- atmosphere, setting, and fragmentary plot of seduction and witchery
Manfred by Byron -- initial scene
The Even of St. Agnes by Keats -- setting

7. Famous Gothic Writers - cont’d.
Edgar Allen Poe
Steven King

8. Characteristics Set in Medieval times Dark, mysterious, evil tone
Dark castles, palaces, chambers, haunted mansions
Isolated setting
All come together to emphasize the sense of evil

9. More characteristics
Presence of ghosts, spirits, vampires, and other supernatural entities
Mysterious disappearances and reappearances
Supernatural or paranormal occurrences

10. Characteristics -- cont’d.
Religion, usually Christianity or at least spirituality, is confronted.
A gothic “double” is used in which a character who seems to be good is linked with another who is evil
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11. More characteristics Blood, pain, death Cruelty Eroticism Confinement
Characters with “aberrant psychological states”
Events are “uncanny, macabre, or melodramatically violent bordering between reality and unreality

12. Purpose
To evoke “terror” versus “horror” in the reader because of situations bordering reality/unreality
Often used to teach a message
May lack a Medieval setting but will develop an atmosphere of gloom and terror

13. Differentiating between the two
Horror
“An awful apprehension”
Described distinctly
Something grotesque
So appalling, unrealistic
Depends on physical characteristics
Terror
“A sickening realization”
Suggestive of what will happen
Depends on reader’s imagination
Sense of uncertainty
Creates an “intangible atmosphere of spiritual psychic dread”

14. Why Were Novels So Popular in the 19th Century ?
Appeal to “young, ignorant, and idle”
Appeal to newly-literate audiences (working classes, middle class, women)—leads to “highbrow” and “lowbrow” notions of writing
Economically feasible (subscription publishing, libraries, serials)

15. What does the 19th C British novel emphasize?
Questions of social identity (class, inheritance, gender roles)
Moral values (faith, ethics, courage, dignity)
Realism in subject, tone, description
Mood, sensation, feeling (e.g. “gothic”)

16. Jane Eyre Published by Charlotte Brontë in 1847 as “an autobiography”
Pseudonym “Currer Bell”
Immediate success

17. Why a pseudonym?
“Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because -- without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called 'feminine' -- we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their reward, a flattery, which is not true praise."

18. Autobiographical Elements?
Brontë was a clergyman’s daughter
She and her sisters attended a similar school
She became a governess
Sisters died of “consumption”
Siblings were all artists

19. Schooling
During the early 19th century, it became fashionable to educate females.
However, free education was not yet available for either sex.
Only the very rich could send their daughters to elegant girls’ schools

20. Governesses
1. Less costly schools were formed by well-meaning benefactors in order to educate poor females.
2. Illness was common because there was not a clear understanding of the relationship between dirt & disease
3. With the new stress on female education, governesses were in demand.
4. Pay was poor, but it was one of the only jobs available to educated, yet impoverished young women

21. Role of the governess
Employers & other servants shunned the governess because they felt she was “putting on airs.”
Her employers would ignore her, too, because she had a superior education, which intimidated many people.

22. A ground breaking novel
Why?
The heroine is small, plain, & poor
The heroine is the first female character to claim the right to feel strongly about her emotions and act on her convictions
This romantic ground had previously been reserved for males
Such a psychologically complex heroine had never been created before

23. Synthesis of Criticism
Kapurch, Katie. ""'Why Can't You Love Me the Way I Am?': Fairy Tales, Girlhood, and Agency in Neo-Victorian Visions of Jane Eyre” N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Feb
This article references Sandra Gilbert’s critique of Jane Eyre, who says the reason the story of Jane Eyre is so incredibly popular during the Victorian era is because of its inclusion of familiar fairy-tale structures and imagery. Kapurch suggests that Jane by April Linder continues the trend of fairy-tale inclusion by modernizing the character using current representations of girlhood, femininity, and what it means to be a heroine.

24. Synthesis of Criticism
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale UP, Print.
Gilbert and Gubar use the character Bertha Mason from Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre to argue that female characters of the nineteenth century were notoriously portrayed as either the monster or the angel. They use Bertha to prove that even women authors of the Victorian period struggled with characterizing female characters in a manner other than the monster or the angel.

25. A Feminist Novel?
All the most sympathetic women characters – Miss Temple, Rosamund, Diana and Mary and Jane herself – are married by the end of the novel
Its least sympathetic characters include members of both sexes
What matters most are a person's strength of character and moral values, not their gender
Jane does achieves true parity with Rochester by the end of the novel, rather than having to settle for the role either he or St John intended for her

26. Two Points are worth making:
In general social terms, the novel does not ultimately challenge the status quo – the present state of things: it points out religious hypocrisy and the abuse of wealth and privilege in relations to women, but does not argue for any fundamental change in the structure of society
Some literary critics writing about the novel have made the point that the Rochester whom Jane marries is rather reduced from the man she first meets and falls in love with. They ask whether he has had to be reduced to manageable proportions; however, this doesn't quite accord with what Jane says in the passage from Chapter 12 with which this section begins.