Becoming Jane: Embedded Epistolarity in Jane Eyre’s Writing Herself into Being
Résumé :
Charlotte Brontë’s title heroine in Jane Eyre: An Autobiography peripherally adopts the 18th century epistolary literary convention for the purpose of writing herself into being by the conclusion of her narrative. In employing an innovatively embedded epistolarity Jane devises an intimate letter-writing dialectic between herself and her reader that results in the successful purging of her horrific past, once and for all. This transformational path reflects Michel Foucault’s endorsement of “self writing” as a requisite for “care of the self” [souci de soi], as well as bell hooks’ veneration of the importance of “writing [one’s] autobiography” as a means of purgation. Jane Eyre’s self-writing facilitates her cathartic ability to emerge as a fully realized independent woman who successfully leaves the traumas of her past behind in order to assume her role as Mrs. Jane Rochester, matriarch of the manor, as a fully developed whole and autonomous self.
Date de publication : 2010-03-11
Citer ce document
Mary-Antoinette Smith, « Becoming Jane: Embedded Epistolarity in Jane Eyre’s Writing Herself into Being », Cycnos, 2010-03-11. URL : http://epi-revel.univ-cotedazur.fr/publication/item/287