The novels of Charlotte and Emily Bronte have become canonical texts for the application of twentieth century literary and cultural theory. Along with the work of their sister, Anne, their texts are regarded as a sources of diversity in themselves, full of conflictual material which different schools of criticism have analysed and interpreted. This book shows how the Brontes writings engage with the major issues which dominate twentieth century theoretical work. The essays are grouped under broad schools of theory- biographical; feminist; marxist; psychoanalytical and postcolonial.

Patricia Ingham is Senior Research Fellow and Reader at St Anne's College,Oxford.

Introduction 1. Wuthering Heights Terry Eagleton 2. A Dialogue of Self and Soul: Plain Jane's Progress Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar 3. The Sultan and the Slave: Feminist Orientalism and the Structure of Jane Eyre Joyce Zonana 4. Shirley Penny Boumelha 5. Villette 'The Surveillance of a Sleepless Eye' Sally Shuttleworth 6. Words on 'Great Vulgar Sheets': Writing and Social Resistance in Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey (1847) Susan Meyer 7. The Profession of the Author: Abstraction, Advertising and Jane Eyre Sharon Marcus 8. Gothic Desire in Charlotte Bronte's Vilette Toni Wein 9. The Other Case: Gender and Narration in Charlotte Bronte's The Professor Annette R. Feberico 10. Edwrd Rochester and the Margins of Masculinity in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea Robert Kendrick 11. Gender and Layered Narrative in Wuthering Heights and the Tenant of Wildfell Hall N. M. Jacobs 12. Siblings and Suitors in the Narrative Architecture of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Tess O'Toole 13. Diaries and Displacement in Wuthering Heights Rebecca Steinitz Further reading Index