Profession And Emotion

As one of the most influential female writers in the Victorian age,Charlotte Bront? has authored four novels in her short life,namely,The Professor(1857,completed in 1846),Jane Eyre(1847),Shirley(1849)and Villette(1853).Apart from Shirley,all the other stories feature the lives of female teachers.The images of female teacher have drawn considerable attention from home and abroad since their publications.Some studies probed into the social and individual reasons for the suffering of female teachers and some analyzed the feminist consciousness reflected by these images.Although there are researches about the growth of the female characters,their professional backgrounds are not taken into consideration.This thesis aims to conduct an extensive study about the heroines' growth in the professional field and their relationships with men,so as to bring to light Bront?'s insights into the growth of Victorian women.The analysis will be carried out on the basis of close reading against the background of the cultural context.Chapter One mainly focuses on Frances' progressive way to her professional fulfillment in The Professor;it also exposes her submission to the patriarchal convention in her relationship with man.Chapter Two discusses the female protagonist's integrity of personality through her work with an exploration of her journey to the seemingly equal and happy marriage in Jane Eyre.Chapter Three probes into Lucy's passage to self-assertion while developing from a nursery-governess to a directress in Villette;her crippled course to emotional independence will also be analyzed with reference to the author's own observation in real life.Via examining the three novels in the chronological order,this thesis explores the contradictions,development and breakthrough of Bront?'s thoughts on the roles of female.From Frances' inconsistent idea about female roles in public and domestic sphere to Jane Eyre's compromise and finally Lucy's crippled choice,Bront?'s writing demonstrates the awakening and development of her feminist consciousness.The growth and fulfillment of the female teachers in terms of profession and emotion show that the author had been fighting against the dominant patriarchal ideology while she tried actively to find the best way of living for the women of her own time.