Title

"WAKING TO EMPIRE": READING THE NATIONAL POLITICS OF MARY SHELLEY AND CHARLOTTE BRONTE

 

Date of Award

1995

 

Document Type

seniorscholars

 
 

Department

Colby College. English Dept.

 

Advisor(s)

David Suchoff

 

Abstract

Mary Shelley and Charlotte Bronte serve as two strong examples of a domestic nationalism that circulated in Victorian Britain in opposition to the more mainstream imperialistic nationalism represented by pro-imperial tracts like Carlyle's "The Nigger Question" and Laetitia Hawkins and Hannah More's construction of feminine nationalism as acceptance of traditional feminine roles. Arguing for a both an anti-imperial mission based on their portraits of Frankenstein's creature and Bertha Mason as particular examples of the colonized and for a new definition of the "Proper Lady" which would include female education, passionate expression, and meaningful work for single women, Shelley and Bronte build their novels on a desire to deconstruct the angel/demon binary view of women and the colonized and to return to an England based on cultural and familial values instead of capitalistic, exploitative, dehumanizing colonialism.

By presenting the creature in Frankenstein as an intelligent "natural man" alienated and rejected by Victor Frankenstein's refusal to acknowledge the creature's human nature and his own role in Hegel's master/slave dialectic, Shelley criticizes the imperial system as dehumanizing in language that prefigures the anti-colonial theories of Frantz Fanon and Albert Memmi. At the same time she offers a positive vision of domesticity based in the creature's attempts at beginning families, first by adopting a son and then by seeking a mate of his own "race." Robert Walton's return to his sister's domestic sphere also indicates Shelley's preference for the domestic sphere of England to the imperial mission in which the explorer had been involved. Simultaneously arguing for a radical anti-imperialism and a somewhat conservative return to a Wollstonecraftian English domestic sphere. Shelley tries to redefine the concept of the "Proper Lady" to allow for a definition of female education and passion as natural and not monstrous.

Bronte continues and expands Shelley's mission in Jane Eyre. Presenting a rather typical Victorian feminine identity novel based in tropes depoliticized of their racial history and repoliticized with feminist meaning, Bronte breaks the formula by introducing the colonized figure of Bertha Mason into the text. Bronte uses Bertha to show Jane that English whiteness does not necessarily insure cultural and racial purity, forming a spiral of national doubt that includes Helen Bum's masochistically repressed national sentiment for Northumbria, Rochester's depiction as a weak Irish figure. and Bertha's insurgent anti-imperial nationalism that bums Thornfield to the ground. With only the arrogant. spiritually pompous St. John Rivers as a model of imperialist nationalism upon which to base her English character, Jane Rochester as narrator argues for patriarchal domesticity and imperialism in a somewhat sarcastic manner that clearly indicates her dissatisfaction with both her own domestic life and St. John's imperial mission to India.

Bronte proceeds to write Shirley, a historical novel which continues the feminist thrust of Jane Eyre while introducing a nationalistic instead of a colonial interruption into the text in the character of Shirley Keeldar. Through the strong feminist language and nationalist sentiment of Caroline Helstone, Rose Yorke, and Shirley Keeldar, Bronte defines domestic English nationalism as feminism, calling on the men of Yorkshire and England to educate their women in order to be proud of them. Through the nationalistic education of Robert Moore and the prevention of Louis Moore's imperialistic impulses toward the American West via his marriage to Shirley, Bronte creates a strong domestic sphere based in Shirley's feminist and nationalist identity and Caroline's deep respect for English high culture, ending the novel with the women marrying the men they love and successfully keeping their own identities.

While one may argue that Shelley and Bronte in fact keep many of their society's racial biases, these two authors call to mind Memmi's description of the colonizer who refuses. Even though encouraged on all sides to accept the colonial situation, the left-wing colonizer fights his/her alienation and tries to break the imperial system, even though eventually he/she must necessarily be removed from the colony. Instead of arguing for the racism of the authors, critics can instead analyze the ways in which these marginalized women writers fight the labels of impropriety and monstrosity for the colonized and for themselves, displaying and creating fractures in the seemingly monolithic edifice of the tautological Victorian imperial project.

 

Keywords

Mary Shelley, Charlotte Bronte, domestic nationalism, feminism

 

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