Marginality in the Brontë sisters’ novels

Abstract

The Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne have left their mark on the literary landscape of Victorian England. Beyond the fact that they belong to the same family and are all three remarkable writers in the same period, a unique fact in literary history, these sisters fully express their genius through the sensitive and aesthetic dimension of the various themes they address in their novels. One of the major themes common to their novels is the question of marginality in a highly stratified society of 19th-century Britain. Using Marxist, new historicist, feminist, and psychoanalytical reading grids, we aim to examine this theme of marginality precisely in Jane Eyre, The Professor and Shirley by Charlotte and Wuthering Heights by Emily. This work thus reveals the multiple faces and implications of marginality in these novels in a context of economic, political and social revolution.