Austen and the Brontes: From Sense to Sensibility
S06
April Bernard
Jane Austen, in her six magnificent novels (Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion) bridged the Augustan and the Romantic ages with her stern yet deeply affectionate view of young women on the perilous road to marriage. Only a few years later, sister novelists Charlotte and Emily Bronte, deeply immersed in romanticism, wrote on much the same subject—minus Austen’s wit, perhaps, but with compensatory doses of terror. We will read Jane Eyre, Shirley, and Villette by Charlotte Bronte, and end the course with Emily Bronte’s endlessly puzzling, compelling, and horrifying Wuthering Heights. Students will be expected to research and present to the class reports on contextual material, and to write three critical papers.