Performing the self in camera: Charlotte Bronte, the camera obscura and the protocols of female self-enactment.
Date
1997
Authors
Walker, Ulrike.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Dalhousie University
Abstract
Description
In this thesis I discuss how Bronte's work engages the gendered protocols of perception, cognition and representation in nineteenth-century discourse. I argue that Bronte's narratives can be positioned as knowing interventions in a masculine discourse that drew its authority from rationalist and empirical models of mind, particularly the camera obscura which was one of the most important models for the representation of vision and subjectivity. Following Jonathan Crary's Techniques of the Observer, I construct the camera obscura as a metaphor and technology intersecting a range of cultural activities that determine the construction and empowerment of the subject. Applying Crary's Foucaultian approach to issues of gender, I present the camera obscura as the paradigmatic "space" against and within which the protocols of female self-representation are inscribed in Bronte's work.
After a discussion of my methodology, I provide a history of the camera obscura as an apparatus and as a metaphor of mind, noting its influence in the nineteenth century and on Bronte (Ch.I). I then describe how the subjective and self-reflective nature of the camera obscura is appropriated by Bronte to register the subversive theatricality of the female subject (Ch.II). Focusing on the gendering of genius, I demonstrate how Bronte's early work satirized conventions of female creativity (Ch.III). I then discuss the development of the theatrical female subject in The Professor (Ch.IV), Jane Eyre (Ch.V) and Villette (Ch.VI) and describe how this subject first emerges on the margins of Crimsworth's male narrative, becomes central to Jane Eyre, and finally culminates in the evasions and ruptures of Villette where the "heresy" of female theatrics is most fully explored.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Dalhousie University (Canada), 1997.
After a discussion of my methodology, I provide a history of the camera obscura as an apparatus and as a metaphor of mind, noting its influence in the nineteenth century and on Bronte (Ch.I). I then describe how the subjective and self-reflective nature of the camera obscura is appropriated by Bronte to register the subversive theatricality of the female subject (Ch.II). Focusing on the gendering of genius, I demonstrate how Bronte's early work satirized conventions of female creativity (Ch.III). I then discuss the development of the theatrical female subject in The Professor (Ch.IV), Jane Eyre (Ch.V) and Villette (Ch.VI) and describe how this subject first emerges on the margins of Crimsworth's male narrative, becomes central to Jane Eyre, and finally culminates in the evasions and ruptures of Villette where the "heresy" of female theatrics is most fully explored.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Dalhousie University (Canada), 1997.
Keywords
Literature, English.