Description
This thesis examines the element of monstrosity in the novels of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë, and the ways in which unconventional female characters pose a threat to patriarchal society. While Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights move along a monster/angel binary based on stereotypes of femininity in the Victorian era, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall manages to overcome this need for categorization and establish a more authentic female character as heroine. The two former novels depict the repercussions of marital confinement for the monstrous characters of Bertha Mason and Catherine Earnshaw in their inability to encompass the angelic ideal and ultimately function as sacrificial characters, allowing Jane Eyre and Catherine Linton to successfully navigate patriarchal society and avoid the repercussions of monstrosity. Therefore, the madwomen of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights pay the price of monstrosity but their sufferings are redeemed by the happy marriages of the younger heroines. In this way, the two eldest Brontë sisters rebel against the angelic ideal of Victorian women and pave the way for the youngest sister, Anne Brontë, to create a real female character without the need to categorize her as either an angelic or monstrous woman. Although The Tenant of Wildfell Hall also forces suffering on a female character, she is able to escape her imprisonment and find happiness in her own lifetime rather than a delayed redemption on a younger heroine. Therefore, Charlotte and Emily Brontë destroy the imposing angel and monster figures, enabling Anne Brontë to overlook this binary and bring to life Helen Huntington — neither an angel nor a monster, but a free-willed woman. Through this rebellious destruction of the monster/angel binary, the Brontë sisters broke formal boundaries and radically revised traditional novels.
