Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T00:51:05.079Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Profession of the Author: Abstraction, Advertising, and Jane Eyre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Sharon Marcus
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Through the concept of abstraction I examine the relation between female subjectivity and writing in Jane Eyre. In the novel abstraction means a lack of attention or a lapse of will, conditions that permit Jane to realize her wishes. Three other meanings of the term shed light on Jane Eyre and on Charlotte Brontë's career. Through abstraction as a degree of relative disembodiment, both Jane and Brontë avoid becoming female spectacles, Jane by shifting from corporeal rebelliousness to an anonymous advertisement, Brontë by adopting an ungendered pseudonym. Abstraction also involves the alienation of the self into objects and texts, as when Jane and Brontë project themselves into their written products. Finally, abstraction entails the synthesis of the particular into the general: Jane rhetorically enters a professional body of governesses, and Brontë participates in the commercial literary marketplace.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 110 , Issue 2: Special Millennium issue , March 1995 , pp. 206 - 219
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Abbott, Andrew The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1988.Google Scholar
“Abstraction.” Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia. Vol. I. New York: Century, 1911.Google Scholar
“Abstraction.” Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989.Google Scholar
Adburgham, Alison A Punch History of Manners and Modes, 1841-1940. London: Hutchinson, 1961.Google Scholar
Advertisement. Times [London]. 6 Jan. 1840: 1.Google Scholar
Advertisement. Times [London]. 12 Apr. 1841: 1.Google Scholar
Advertisement. Times [London]. 24 July 1840: 1.Google Scholar
Allott, Miriam, ed The Brontës: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge, 1974.Google Scholar
Altick, Richard D The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800-1900. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1957.Google Scholar
Axelos, Kostas Alienation, Praxis, and Techné in the Thought of Karl Marx. Trans. Bruzina, Ronald. Austin: U of Texas P, 1976.Google Scholar
Azin, Firdous The Colonial Rise of the Novel. London: Routledge, 1993.Google Scholar
Blessington, Marguerite The Governess. Paris: Baudry's European Library, 1840.Google Scholar
Charlotte, Brontë. Jane Eyre. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986.Google Scholar
Bruno, Giuliana Streetwalking on a Ruined Map: Cultural Theory and the City Films of Elvira Notari. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993.Google Scholar
Rev. of César Birotteau and Histoire de M. Jobard. Edinburgh Review 65 (1843): 1–43.Google Scholar
Collins, A. S The Profession of Letters: A Study of the Relation of Author to Patron, Publisher, and Public, 1780-1832. New York: Dutton, 1929.Google Scholar
Cvetkovich, Ann Mixed Feelings: Feminism, Mass Culture, and Victorian Sensationalism. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1992.Google Scholar
Derwin, Susan The Ambivalence of Form: Lukács, Freud, and the Novel. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1992.Google Scholar
Elliott, Blanche B A History of English Advertising. London: Business Publications, 1962.Google Scholar
Feltes, N. N Modes of Production of Victorian Novels. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel An Introduction. Trans. Hurley, Robert. New York: Pantheon, 1978. Vol. 1 of The History of Sexuality.Google Scholar
Gallagher, Catherine “George Eliot and Daniel Deronda: The Prostitute and the Jewish Question.” Sex, Politics, and Science in the Nineteenth Century. Ed. Yeazell, Ruth Bernard. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1986. 39–62.Google Scholar
Gallagher, Catherine “Who Was That Masked Woman? The Prostitute and the Playwright in the Comedies of Aphra Behn.” Women's Studies 15 (1988): 23–42.10.1080/00497878.1988.9978715CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaskell, Elizabeth The Life of Charlotte Brontë. London: Penguin, 1985.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Sandra, and Gubar, Susan The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979.Google Scholar
Grant, James The Great Metropolis. 1st ser. Vol. 2. London: Saunders, 1836.Google Scholar
Hennelly, Mark W. Jr “Jane Eyre's Reading Lesson.” ELH 51 (1984): 693–717.Google Scholar
Heyck, T. W The Transformation of Intellectual Life in Victorian England. London: Croom. 1982.Google Scholar
Hindley, Diana, and Hindley, Geoffrey Advertising in Victorian England, 1837-1901. London: Wayland, 1972.Google Scholar
Jameson, Anna Memoirs and Essays Illustrative of Art, Literature, and Social Morals. New York: Wiley, 1846.Google Scholar
Rev. of Jane Eyre. Athenaeum 23 Oct. 1847: 1101.Google Scholar
Kaplan, Cora “Pandora's Box: Subjectivity, Class and Sexuality in Socialist Feminist Criticism.” Sea Changes: Essays on Culture and Feminism. London: Verso, 1986. 147–14.Google Scholar
Kaye, Barrington The Development of the Architectural Profession in Britain. London: Allen, 1960.Google Scholar
Keefe, Robert Charlotte Brontë's World of Death. Austin: U of Texas P, 1979.Google Scholar
Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits: A Selection. Trans. Sheridan, Alan. New York: Norton, 1977.Google Scholar
Larson, Magali Sarfatti The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis. Berkeley: U of California P, 1977.Google Scholar
Linton, David “Mr. Mitchell's ‘National Work.‘” Journal of Advertising History Jan. 1979: 29–31.Google Scholar
McKendrick, Neil “Josiah Wedgwood and the Commercialization of the Potteries.” The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England. Ed. McKendrick, John Brewer, and Plumb, J. H. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1982. 99–144.Google Scholar
Macpherson, C. B Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval. Oxford: Clarendon, 1973.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Trans. Martin Milligan, Buffalo: Prometheus, 1988.Google Scholar
Mermin, Dorothy Godiva's Ride: Women of Letters in England, 1830-1880. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1993.Google Scholar
Nevett, T. R Advertising in Britain: A History. London: Heinemann, 1982.Google Scholar
“Observations on the Paper Duties.” Edinburgh Review 53 (1831): 427–42.Google Scholar
Perkin, Harold The Origins of Modern English Society. London: Ark, 1969.Google Scholar
Peterson, M. Jeanne “The Victorian Governess: Status Incongruence in Family and Society.” Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age. Ed. Vicinus, Martha. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1972. 3–19.Google Scholar
Poovey, Mary Making A Social Body: British Cultural Formation, 1830-1864. Chicago: U of Chicago P, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Poovey, Mary Uneven Development: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1988.Google Scholar
“Profession.” Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989.Google Scholar
Renton, Alice Tyrant or Victim? A History of the British Governess. London: Weidenfeld, 1991.Google Scholar
Rigby, Elizabeth “Vanity Fair, Jane Eyre, and Governesses' Benevolent Institution Report for 1847.” Quarterly Review 84(1848): 153–15.Google Scholar
Sampson, Henry A History of Advertising from the Earliest Times. London: Chatto, 1875.Google Scholar
Showalter, Elaine A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1977.Google Scholar
Shuttleworth, Sally “Female Circulation: Medical Discourse and Popular Advertising in the Mid-Victorian Novel.” Body/Politics: Women and the Discourses of Science. Ed. Jacobus, Mary, Evelyn Fox Keller, and Shuttleworth. New York: Routledge, 1990. 47–68.Google Scholar
Spark, Muriel, ed The Letters of the Brontës: A Selection. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1954.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty “Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism.” Critical Inquiry 12 (1985): 243–24.Google Scholar
Sutherland, J. A Victorian Novelists and Publishers. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976.Google Scholar
Symington, John Alexander, and Wise, Thomas James The Brontës: Their Lives, Friendships and Correspondence in Four Volumes. 4 vols. Oxford: Blackwell, 1932.Google Scholar
Thompson, E. P “Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism.” Customs in Common. London: Merlin, 1991. 352–403.Google Scholar
Tuchman, Gaye, with Fortin, Nina E. Edging Women Out: Victorian Novelists, Publishers, and Social Change. New Haven: Yale UP, 1989.Google Scholar
Turner, E. S The Shocking History of Advertising! London: Joseph, 1952.Google Scholar
Wicke, Jennifer Advertising Fictions: Literature, Advertisement, and Social Reading. New York: Columbia UP, 1988.Google Scholar
Wood, Josiah P The Story of Advertising. New York: Donald, 1958.Google Scholar
Woolf, Virginia A Room of One's Own. New York: Harcourt, 1929.Google Scholar
Zonana, Joyce “The Sultan and the Slave: Feminist Orientalism and the Structure of Jane Eyre.” Signs 18 (1991): 592–617.10.1086/494821CrossRefGoogle Scholar