Victorian Literature and the Anorexic Body: Hunger and repression in Shirley and Villette

摘要: Although they wrote as contemporaries, Charlotte Bronte and Charles Dickens never met, nor did hold high opinions of each other's work. enjoyed David Copperfield, but she criticized those portions Bleak House narrated by Esther “too often weak twaddling.” Even her compliments are noticeably strained. When commenting on only commends for his “varied knowledge men things,” tepid praise when juxtaposed with summation Goethe, in the same paragraph, “Great, powerful, giant-souled” ( Correspondence III: 20). was even less enthusiastic about Bronte, reportedly announcing 1860 that “he had not read Jane Eyre … would he disapproved whole school.” Probably, like so many other Victorian readers, have found character coarse vulgar distinguished own more rarefied conventional heroines from Bronte's “school.” Despite differences between Dickens's novels, however, two authors share a proclivity slender female runs throughout both their works: Eyre, Frances Henri, Caroline Helston, Lucy Snowe slim, contourless bodies do Agnes Rose Maylie, Mary Graham, Amy Dorritt, to name few. typically employs body marker heroines' selflessness lack sensuality, going far sentimentalize hunger starvation.