Date Thesis Awarded
5-2022
Access Type
Honors Thesis -- Open Access
Degree Name
Bachelors of Arts (BA)
Department
English
Advisor
Deborah Morse
Committee Members
Kim Wheatley
Suzanne Raitt
Kathrin Levitan
Abstract
Since being published, both Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights have attracted scholarly and critical attention on account of their framed narratives. At the time of publication, some portion of this attention was negative; however, since the early 20th century, scholars have moved towards recognizing and analyzing potential purposes for the narrative structures of both texts. Within my thesis, I enter into this field of scholarship so as to analyze how the frame narrative functions as a tool for both simulation and subversion within the two texts. More specifically, I argue that Emily and Anne use frame narratives to center the relationship between a male audience and female storyteller. Ultimately, in their specific explorations of this relationship, both sisters subvert a patriarchal approach to female author and text.
Recommended Citation
Murphy, Sammy, "Framing the Female Narrative: Male Audiences and Women's Storytelling Within Two Brontë Novels" (2022). Undergraduate Honors Theses. William & Mary. Paper 1889.
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/1889
Included in
Literature in English, British Isles Commons, Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Women's Studies Commons
