Research Catalog

Title

Austen, Eliot, Charlotte Brontë, and the mentor-lover / Patricia Menon.

Author

Menon, Patricia.

Publication

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

viii, 217 pages; 23 cm

Summary

"The figure of the mentor-lover raises difficult but inescapable questions about the nature of sexual love and its links to the attributes of the mentor - power, judgement and moral authority. As such it provides a means to evaluate the works of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot, each woman employing the figure extensively, though to very different ends. This lucid and tightly argued study appraises their maturing interests, identifying what distinguishes each from the others as they contend with issues of sexuality, family, selfhood, freedom, conduct and gender. The characteristics they associate with the mentor-lover also provides a pattern against which to test the similarities between their concepts of the figure and their own relationship to the reader, as, through authorship, they become mentor-lovers in their own right, each eliciting a different form of love and electing a different style of instruction."--Jacket.

Subject

• Brontë, Charlotte, 1816-1855 > Characters
• Eliot, George, 1819-1880 > Characters
• Austen, Jane, 1775-1817 > Characters
• Austen, Jane, 1775-1817
• Brontë, Charlotte, 1816-1855
• Eliot, George, 1819-1880
• 1800-1899
• English fiction > Women authors > History and criticism
• Mentoring in literature
• Women and literature > England > History > 19th century
• Mentoring of authors > England > History > 19th century
• English fiction > 19th century > History and criticism
• Romance fiction, English > History and criticism
• Man-woman relationships in literature
• English literature > Women authors > History and criticism
• Mentoring of authors > England
• English literature > Women authors
• Characters and characteristics
• English fiction
• English fiction > Women authors
• Man-woman relationships in literature
• Mentoring in literature
• Mentoring of authors
• Romance fiction, English
• Women and literature
• England

Genre/Form

• Criticism, interpretation, etc.
• History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 196-208) and index.

Contents

Acknowledgements -- Prologue : the mentor-lover in the eighteenth century : novel, conduct book and archetype -- 1. "Saturated with the platonic idea"? Judgment and passion in Northanger Abbey, Pride and prejudice and Emma -- 2. Sense and sensibility and Mansfield Park : "At once both tragedy and comedy" -- 3. "Slave of a fixed and dominant idea" : Charlotte Brontë's early writing : preliminaries or precursors? -- 4. "Should we try to counteract this influence?" : Jane Eyre, Shirley and Villette -- 5. George Eliot and "the clerical sex" : from Scenes of clerical life to Middlemarch -- 6. "Worth nine-tenths of the sermons"? The author as mentor-lover in Daniel Deronda -- Epilogue : the author, the reader and the "imaged solution" -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.

ISBN

• 1403902593
• 9781403902597
• 9780230512047
• 0230512046

LCCN

• 2003040474
• 9781403902597

OCLC

• ocm51518565
• 51518565
• SCSB-14512910

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library