Charlotte Watson creatively explores Anne’s unique character in this moving and brilliantly- written piece. Featured image credit: Barley, Flickr Creative Commons [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/] Note from the Author I first read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall during my last year of secondary school, and from the very beginning, it struck me as a hugely engaging, critical, dare-I- say- it feminist text. It was bold and subversive, revolutionary and impactful, and yet still maintained a sense of the Victorian sensibility of feeling. In short, it seemed to me to be the very opposite of the way in which Anne Bronte is primarily characterised….
In this thoughtful and incisive essay, Millicent explores resistance in Jane Eyre. Featured Image is Jane Eyre by Liz Lux, flickr creative commons. Literature which can be described as rebellious and resistive should be willing to go beyond social norms in a revolutionary way for the time period, something I would argue that Bronte is successful in doing in her novel ‘Jane Eyre’. Even the action of writing ‘Jane Eyre’ in 1847 could easily be considered to be an action of resistance, against both a literary culture which placed less value on female narratives, and a society which reinforced these…
One of the brilliant entries for our Anne Brontë competition. Jack Probert expertly explores the animal kingdom in Anne and Emily’s works. Featured image is a sketch of Keeper, Emily Brontë’s dog, by Emily herself. In the work of both Emily and Anne Brontë, animals form part of a wider moral and political scheme in which both sisters examine the growing individualism of their own modern, industrial world. In exploring this, the distinction between wild animals and pets is crucial: for Emily, there is a separation between the animal and the human that Anne resists in her more compassionate approach…
Based on the lives of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë [Featured Image: Moorland Derelict by Not So Dusty, Flickr Creative Commons] ‘Yet, though I cannot see thee more‘Tis still a comfort to have seen,And though thy transient life is o’er‘Tis sweet to think that thou hast been’ ‘A Reminiscence’, Anne Brontë. View From A Train Through The Yorkshire DalesIFor Charlotte, Emily and AnneI see three girls; barefoot, untethered,Bound proudly o’er both heath and stream;Through joyous splats of wind-blown heatherGo three, hand in hand, eyes agleam.Three dresses, torn by rock and thorn,Stitched up – restitched – and torn again,Whip wild ‘cross…
In this article, Jessica Pabon will explore the effect the pandemic has had on US politics in a thoughtful, engaged way. [Featured image credit: ‘Jackson: Capitol Building’, by Visit Mississippi] ‘Coronavirus’: the term that will haunt the world for years to come, eliciting memories of a global pandemic in modernity, which was allowed to senselessly cause over a million death in its first year of existence. The pandemic has influenced every aspect of human life, resulting in quarantines, added stress on societal norms, and divides between individuals, both physical and ideological, where they did not exist before. There is nowhere…
This poem by Molly Knox explores the pressures of lockdown, especially during the initial lockdown, in a creative, innovative way. [Image credits: ‘COVID-19’ by Jon Taylor/Flickr]
“Despite the potential for a mass outbreak looming over our heads, Josephine Butler students, and Durham students writ large, have shown a true resilience and a fighting spirit.” Jessica Pabon, a Butlerite fresher, discusses lockdown anxieties, homesickness and enjoying university life during a pandemic.
We are past the poppy. Remembrance Day, in so far as it looks to commemorate the soldiers of the First and Second World War, is no longer important to British society. Its value as an act of Remembrance is exhausted. Yet, each year, we pay homage to its badly-framed discourse, strangulated by its centennial tentacles which reach well beyond the despair of the period’s slaughter. Our society’s ability to remember as a collective is the equivalent of a torch: we bear it to shine light on our past mistakes and direct our future course. In 2019, Remembrance of these wars…
A study by Haines and Spear in 2010 indicated that over a 5-year period in a college in Illinois, a media campaign with an aim to change students’ views regarding binge drinking was seen to be the cause of an almost 19% decrease in the number of students viewing binge drinking as a norm, resulting in a 9% decrease in binge drinking overall from students. On the other hand, surely there must be other factors that alter students’ perceptions of the causes of binge drinking just as strongly as social norms, however they may be more subtle and less talked…