Patriarchal structures of control and female homosocial relationships in the novels of Charlotte Brontë

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT:In Charlotte Bronte's novels, the importance accorded to female homosocialrelationships - such as friendship and the mother-daughter relationship -challenges the conventional structure of the Victorian realist novel, in which thefocus of the female protagonist's development is almost exclusively on theeventual achievement of heterosexual marriage Structurally. heterosexualmarriage at closure re-establishes the status quo that has been threatened ordestabilised during the unfolding of the plot. Yet what Bronte's novels reveal,is that the status quo thus re-established also confirms patriarchy as a systemin which the bonds between men are consolidated to maintain social, politicaland economic power as a male prerogative By contrast, the ideology thatpromotes marriage as the sine qua non of women's existence positions womenas rivals and the representation of female homosocial relationships in thenineteenth-century novel is either relegated to the margins of the text or erasedentirely. In Bronte's novels, the structural relationship between thisconventional displacement of female homosocial relationships and the silencingand containment of female desire in heterosexual marriage at closure isconsistently explored and subverted.In an increasingly complex process of rewriting the Victorian novel froma female perspective, Bronte's novels construct alternative plots that privilegethe representation of female homosocial relationships even as they imitateconventional plot structure In so doing. the gendering of narrative voice asfemale lays claim to a female discourse of desire. which is rooted in femalehomosociality and inclusive of lesbian desire. Compulsory (female)heterosexuality which is exclusively domestic and maternal. IS thereforechallenged by an alternative representation of female desire as defiant of thengid categories Imposed by heterosexuality. because it is fiurd and multiple inIts expressionThis thesis explores the process of recuperation through which Bronteboth places the representation of female hornosocial relationships at the centreof her novels and reveals patriarchal structures of control at work

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University