ISBN: 9781898594925
Book Type: paperback
Number of Pages: 230
Book Dimensions: 216mm by 150mm
Images: 16 black & white illustrations
About (taken from the blurb of Charlotte Brontë and the Mysteries of Love: Myth and Allegory in Jane Eyre):
This critical study examines Jane Eyre in terms of the culture from which it sprang.
Charlotte Brontë was a highly educated and meticulously ingenious writer. By extensive research into Brontë’s reading material and close attention to the text, Imlay shows that the novel is a reworking of the classical fairy-tale ‘Cupid and Psyche’.
Brontë uses the story to describe a 19th-century soul in search of love. From her reading, she also knew of the relationship of the myth to the Platonic mystery tradition.
She takes her wandering heroine, and the responsive reader, though earth, air, fire and water (body, spirit, passion and reason) to arrive in the fifth section of the book as the ‘quintessence’ or human soul, united with Love both spiritual and physical. It is Brontë’s own model of personality.
Imlay further discusses how Brontë manipulates the Platonic tradition to feminist ends by choosing ‘Air’ as a female element.
For an understanding of the full depth and breadth of Charlotte Brontë’s mind, read this book.