The Bronte Sisters勃朗特姐妹说明

1、 The Bronte SistersCharlotte Bronte (1816-1855), Emily Bronte (1818-1848), and Anne Bronte (1820-1849) came from a large family of Irish origin. Their father was a clergyman at Haworth, Yorkshire.Charlotte Bronte:She aimed to make her novels a realistic picture of society, but she added to Thackeray

2、s realism the element of passionate and somewhat unbalanced romanticism.Her works are all about the struggle of an individual consciousness towards self-realization, about some lonely and neglected young women with a fierce longing for love, understanding and a full, happy life. On one hand, she pre

3、sents a vivid realistic picture of the English society by exposing the cruelty, hypocrisy and other evils of the upper classes, and by showing the misery and suffering of the poor. Her works are famous for the depiction of the life of the middle-class working women, particularly governesses. On the

4、other hand, her writings are marked throughout by an intensity of vision and of passion. By writing from an individual point of view, by creating characters who are possessed of strong feelings, fiery passions and some extraordinary personalities, by resorting to some elements of horror, mystery and

5、 prophesy, she is able to recreate life in a wondrously romantic way. She established the theme that a mans value is never determined by social and economic status; a womans value is never determined by her good looking, charm and sexy appeal but by her thought, moral character, intelligence and sen

6、timent. Women are not different from men, but need a field of action much as their brothers do.It is Jane Eyre who declares her love to Rochester before he makes his sentiments plain to her, and, by doing so, greatly shocked the first readers of the book. Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, pl

7、ain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? she cries, believing Rochester about to marry another woman and to dismiss her; You think wrong!-I have as much soul as you, -and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty, and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to lea

8、ve me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: -it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at Gods feet, -equal, -as we are!Jane Eyre strives f

9、or independence and in her the novelist expresses her humanistic and democratic protest against the suppression of personality in Victorian society.The author tries to show here that Jane Eyre, different from many other women in the mammon-worship society, considers marriage not as a bargain but as

10、a union of kindred souls. Charlotte Bronte contrasts the unselfish Jane Eyre with another woman character, Blanche Ingram, who hopes to be married to Rochester on account of his large estate and who therefore stands for the calculating motive of marriage in the hypocritical bourgeois world.“Jane Eyr

11、e” contains not alone the authors criticism of bourgeois attitude toward marriage and love, but more importantly her ruthless expose of inhuman misery in charity schools of her day which were established and run in the name of philanthropy.She held the view that education is the key to all social pr

12、oblems and that by the improvement of the schools most of the evils of capitalism can be removed.Mr. Rochester is a grim-looking, energetic, elegant, quick-tempered but an understanding middle-aged man. He is rich in property at first, then he becomes poor because of a great fire and finally he beco

13、mes rich in love. His first marriage is arranged by his parents.Jane Eyre is quick-wit, honesty, frankness loving heart and her spirit of independence and self-dignity. Freedom-independence-equality-egoShe helps Mr. Rochester remount his horse back at their first meeting when he fells down.She puts

14、out the fire in Mr. Rochesters room and saves his life.She returns to Mr. Rochester when he loses his property.St. John Rivers is young, handsome, devoted to God.In “Shirley”, Charlotte Bronte presents the social contradictions in England at the beginning of the 19th century, the scene of the story

15、being laid in Yorkshire in the later years of the Napoleonic Wars and the time of the Luddite uprising.She tries to show that only terrible hardships of the workers and the inhuman measures adopted by the capitalists could have led the Luddites first to destroy the mill and later to kill the capital

16、ist.Like Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Bronte shows her hopes to solve the social conflict between labor and capital by peaceful means.In “Villette”, Charlotte Bronte creates a woman character from a poor family who fights her way in the world with her intelligence and strong will. The he

17、roine here is shown as having no money, beauty or friends, and in order to support herself she teaches at a girls school at Brussels, Belgium. Her broad humanity displayed with her keen mind and great energy exerts benevolent influence upon all the people around her and enables her to turn the board

18、ing school into a model institution where the girl pupils are not only taught knowledge but are given a humanistic education as preparation for their future struggles in life.The chief distinctive feature of her novels is the creation of courageous, upright figures, such as the titular heroines in “

19、Jane Eyre” and “Villette” and Farren in “Shirley”, who successfully resist oppression and other social evils in the inhuman world.Her heroines are marked by a code of honor and a personal fastidiousness of taste characteristic of the author herself; while exposing them to great mental suffering, als

20、o allows them no facile road to fulfillment and happiness. Jane Eyre, Lucy Snowe, and Shirley Keeldar are endowed with a quality of mind, a strength of will, a capacity for love that differentiates them fundamentally form the general productions of contemporary lady-novelists; they are portrayed wit

21、h total honesty and courage. Charlotte Bronte and her sister Anne were among the first women novelists to claim equality between women and men in the right to declare their love.Emily Bronte:Upon the first appearance of “Wuthering Heights” for some years afterwards, it was neglected and regarded as

22、a nave fantasy by a young wirter, but it began to be valued more highly in the last years of the 19th century and recent Western criticism has exalted it as among the great novels of the Victorian age.British critic Arnold Kettle said, Heathcliff “had come to see the pointlessness of his fight to re

23、venge himself on the world of power and property through its own values.”The books curious and lasting appeal rests upon a number of qualities: the unflagging excitement of the plot; the wild moorland setting and the splendor of the description; the originality of the characters; the unearthly, not

24、to say ghostly atmosphere created by the interplay of the elements in the affairs of men; the homely background of the old house, The Hights, in which the decaying fortunes of the Earnshaw family are-literally-played out, gambled away, by the last of the line.Emily Bronte does nothing less than chal

25、lenge the whole traditional view of the nature of love previously accepted both in literature and in life. The love of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw is far stronger than any normal human bond, marital, sexual, or filial.Heathcliff:Tortured-torturing-self-destructiveHeathcliff is primitive, sever

26、e, gloomy, brutal, brave, powerful, aggressive, and destructive. His revenge for love costs his whole life. The revenge is similar to Hamlets revenge, but the difference is that Hamlets revenge is a struggle for the good against the evil while his revenge is for his true love against the conventiona

27、l hostile world. His revenge is not only powerful and violent, but unhesitating, deliberate, and successful. When he began his rabid revenge, there is no appeasement for his wolfish spirit until all his targets are realized. First of all, Heathcliff is to ensure the ruin of Hindley financially and m

28、orally, destroying him totally. He gambles with Hindley and takes away all his money. At last, Hindley mortgages his mansion but fails again. Now, Heathcliff gets possession of Wuthering Heights and controls Hindley; the once cruel master becomes nobody at the Heights.Then he intends to degrade Hare

29、ton (Hindleys son) as he himself has been degraded by Hindley. He doesnt give Hareton any chance for education and never corrects his bad habits, but teaches him to swear. He pays wrong for wrong, takes an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, for every wrench of agony, returns a wrench, reduces H

30、areton to the level he used to be when a child, letting Hindley see the nothingness of the gentility.When Heathcliff visits Catherine at Thrushcross Grange, Isabella (Edgars sister) is soon infatuated with him. On hearing the news, he decides to make use of the chance and begins to trap her. He makes her elope with him not out of love but revenge. When they come back to the Heights from their honey-moon, Heathcliff doesnt show her any warmth but torture