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This blog is for use by students in Anjuli Raza Kolb's "Legacies of the Gothic Novel" course at Columbia University.
Course Description
The gothic novel is a genre of 18th and 19th century fiction that concerns itself with fear, mystery, the supernatural, violence, purity, otherness, and the impact of these conceits on its largely female protagonists. Much maligned as a popular or 'low' genre at its inception, the form has nevertheless persisted in its popularity as well as crossed into 'higher' forms of modernism and postmodernism. This course will read three key texts in the gothic mode-Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights-and follow the ways they are revisited and rewritten by contemporary American and Caribbean novelists. We will look at how these texts subvert the realist leanings of 18th century narrative prose in English-and its assumptions of enlightenment rationalism-by way of two main processes: narrative hypertrophy and feminist versions of horror. Additionally, we will take up select contemporary criticism on the gothic in literature, film, and art.
There are no prerequisites.
Followers
Blog Archive
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2009
(20)
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June
(15)
- Guerillas/No Telephone to Heaven
- Guerillas II
- Guerillas
- Sylvia Plath reads Purdah
- Wuthering Heights III
- Wuthering Heights II/Sedgwick/Kristeva
- Wuthering Heights I
- Wide Sargasso Sea II/ Caribbean Gothic
- Wide Sargasso Sea
- Jane Eyre II
- The Other Side of A Mirror
- Jane Eyre I
- Beloved III/ Modern Medea/ Black Frankenstein
- Beloved II
- Whitman "A Boston Ballad"
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June
(15)
"As his wife, at his side always, and always restrained, and always checked, forced to keep the fire of my nature continually low, to compel it to burn inwardly and never utter a cry, though the imprisoned flame consumed vital after vital, this would be unendurable."
ReplyDeleteThis passage highlights a connection between Jane and Bertha. Bertha's character is associated with fire, as she often lights them as her way of defiance and self-expression. Bertha uses fire ultimately as her revenge and her permanent escape from Thornfield. Fire, for Jane, is related to passion, and her passion could not burn married to St. John, who she does not love. She would be restrained, the way that Bertha has been restrained.
Another thought that crossed my mind is the way in which male characters express their religion extremely aggressively and forcefully (St. John & Brockelhurst) while Helen, for instance, is made passive through her faith.
After thinking about the frequency of male characters named John and the tendency for female to be married happily ever after, I suggest (not too seriously) that these are characteristics of automata. Moreover, marriage as a whole can be seen as a forgoing of independence and free will that separates humans from robots. Even the process of marriage seems to be devoid of a typical courtship plot that is concerned with the selection of a spouse. Instead, characters like Miss Temple and Georgiana are passed over quickly and Jane’s decisions concerning marriage seem to be heavily influenced by factors outside of her own decisions.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad religion was mentioned again because it's such a big feature of this book and it seems to get more intense toward the end -- perhaps largely because of the oppressive and overbearing religiosity of St. John Rivers, but also as Rochester experiences a new-found religious feeling: ""Of late, Jane -- only of late -- I began to see and acknowledge the hand of God in my doom. I began to experience remorse, repentance; the wish for reconcilement to my Maker. I began to pray: very brief prayers they were but very sincere." (446) Then he calls out to Jane. Earlier Jane has a powerful reckoning, she hears that voice on the wind, calling out to her -- "Jane! Jane! Jane!" -- and she runs out in full fervor, searching for the origin of the voice (419).
ReplyDeleteWhat's interesting to me is how she describes this religious experience as different from St. John's but valid nonetheless: ""I broke from St. John; who had followed, and would have detained me. It was MY time to assume ascendancy. MY powers were in play, and in force... fell on my knees: and prayed in my way -- a different way to St. John's, but effective in its own fashion. I seemed to penetrate very near a Might Spirit; and my soul rushed out in gratitude at His feet..." (420). Later she expresses her powerful spiritual experience in terms less as an immediate intercession of God or Jesus but as a "visitation" and "inward sensation" (421). But she had used the religious language of "His feet" although "Mighty Spirit" has a more agnostic tone. As she makes her way to Thornfield Hall, she has an inner dialogue going with what she calls "the monitor" (423). It seems like supernatural or spiritual experiences filter through the religious mode and sometimes through a more natural or supernatural mode. I'm interested in the passage right after she hears the voice: "Down superstition!" I commented, as that spectre rose up black by the gate. "This is not thy deception, nor thy witchcraft: it is the work of nature. She was roused, and did -- no miracle -- but her best." (420). I'm not sure what she's saying here -- she doesn't say nature with a capital N -- although she has used that before -- and she doesn't say it's God. Is it her conscience?
I, too, was intrigued by the passage on page 420 that Beth hilighted in her post: "...itis the work of nature. She was roused, and did--no miracle, but her best."
ReplyDeleteI would like to consider this quote in relation to Jane's increasing fascination with relgion, as delineated in the second and third volumes of the novel. I think the above passage represents Jane's personal perception of the all mighty diety; that is to say, i believe that Jane herein is equating the hand of fate, or "God," with the simple lilt of the natural world. This fits in nicely with Jane's definiton of motherhood: as an orphan, Jane never knew any real mother. She feels companionship and compassion for her pupils,including Adele, but really on touches upon the subject of motherhood once lost in ther wilderness. Biblical analogy, anyone? her mother, her procteress, is the covered side of a hill. Nature herein becomes Jane's mother, Jane's keeper, Jane's source of spritual motivation, i.e. her god. Its as if Bronte is suggesting that a woman, just like the birds she so often desribes in the novel, are simply fanciful creatures of nature, following their impulses not imperfectly, like St. John, but naturally, and to "the best" of their earthbound ability.