General Education Requirements
Course Description
Isolated in the moorlands of Yorkshire and raised in evangelical strictness by an eccentric father, the Brontë children imagined stories of personal power and political intrigue, based on the news they read. The eldest of the three sisters, Charlotte, grew up to become a major novelist of the Victorian age. Her younger sister, Emily, became a poet and a novelist of wild genius. The youngest sister, Anne, wrote two arresting novels before her early death. The lone brother, Branwell, squandered his talents -- and much of the family's money -- before his death at thirty-one. In 1847, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, and Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey surprised literary London, and voiced an angry, sensual, urgent response to the Victorians' nagging "Woman Question." These eccentric novels register the tedium, the aspirations, and the frustrations of these gifted women. We will consider historical, cultural, and biographical questions, as we study these early novels, the children's juvenilia, and a representative later work. Each student will have the chance to investigate one of these women more deeply, and share their discoveries with the seminar.
Meet the Instructor: Linda Paulson
“I have my PhD from UCLA in Comparative Literature, with a specialty in the urban literature of 19th-century Britain and France. I can't remember a time when Victorian literature and culture didn't light up my imagination and clarify my understanding. Among some of the finest novelists in English, the Brontës are a revelation. Virginia Woolf reminded me of the feminist rumblings in Charlotte's novels, and I followed Woolf's direction to yet another reading of the sisters' works. I then followed these remarkable women to their home in Yorkshire and to my own week spent walking across the moors. Recently, I've been offering broad courses like The Long Nineteenth Century, War and its Narratives, and The Plague, along with readings of single Victorian novels in serial form. I'm really looking forward to spending a quarter with the Brontës, and with students who are curious about them and their time.”
