MINISTRY OF HIGHER AND SECONDARY SPECIALIZED

EDUCATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN

NUKUS STATE PEDAGOGICAL INSTITUTE

FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT OF

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

COURSE WORK
On the theme: «Interaction of traditions and cultures in the works of
Charlotte Bronte»

Student: Karamatdinova D
Scientific advisor:
Head of the department: doc. Tajieva A.U

The Course Paper is admitted to the defence.

Protocol № _____ «____» __________ 2023

NUKUS-2023
Content
1
INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………….3
CHAPTER I CHARLOTTE BRONTE’S LIFE AND WORKS….………..……5
1.1 Biography of Charlotte Bronte………………….…………………………….5
1.2 Jane Eyre and other novels of Charlotte Bronte……………….………….10
CHAPTER II INTERACTION OF TRADITIONS IN CHARLOTEE BRONTE’S
WORKS………………………………….…..……………………..……………16
2.1 Narrative features in Shirley novel………….………………………………16
2.2 Bronte and the Gothic tradition….………………………………………….20
CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………….26
REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………27
INTERNET RESOURCE……………………………………….………………..30

Introduction
2
 As to Bronte's source material I argue that the presence of region-specific
folklore references across Jane Eyre and Shirley suggest her drawing on the
Yorkshire rural world or oral tradition that might also be demonstrated, to a degree,
across Bronte's letters. Evidence of folklore as a cultural aspect of the local
environment may have exacerbated magical thinking (I explain this term later)
referenced in her letters. Certainly, magical thinking is a key character trait in her
major heroes and heroines, distinguishing them from other fictional characters.
Bronte's second major source of folklore, I argue, is drawn from the work of
Walter Scott (1771-1832). Richard M. Dorson in The British Folklorists: A History
(1968) regards Scott as the "first major figure to cultivate the literary uses of
folklore with sympathy and comprehension served well the cause of antiquarian
folklore. While Dorson's work is more historical, Coleman O. Parsons devotes an
entire study to the literary role of folklore in Scott's historical romances." Both of
these studies, however, situate Scott firmly in a folklore literary tradition. I argue
that throughout her tales, Bronte adapted Scott's narrative uses of folklore. She
transformed Scott's fairy material for the role of fairies in Jane Eyre and adapted
Scott's ghost investigations for her theme of Enlightenment rationality in Villette.
In sum, Bronte critics do little to advance the relevance of folklore in her
fiction. Simpson is invaluable in advancing the topic of folklore studies in her
critical analysis of Jane Eyre. However, her study overlooks analysis of the role of
the fairy motif in gender studies and does not extend to the other novels. Simpson's
analysis of Wuthering Heights, however, is very useful. It draws attention to
Emily's interest in ghosts, an enquiry I develop in my analysis of the role of the
ghost motif within the study of eschatology and early psychology in Villette. There
is, to my knowledge, no other critical study on the role of folklore in Brontë's other
works. Bronte critics do not associate Scott, the literary antiquarian, with folklore.
However, they do acknowledge the presence of folklore in Bronte's local
environment.
To an extent, Jason Marc Harris's recent study of the hitherto critically
overlooked relationship of folklore and literature in the Nineteenth-century is a
3
context for my argument." His work is limited to the analysis of folklore in folk
legends, fairy tales and ghost stories or the literary fantastic and pays less attention
to prose fiction.
The aims of course paper are to explore Charlotte Bronte’s life and to learn
the interaction of traditions and cultures in their works.
The tasks of course paper:

 to explain Charlotte Bronte

 to analyze Charlotte Bronte’s works
 to analyze traditions and culture in Shirley
The subject of course paper is to explore traditions and cultures which were
used in her work Shirley and to research Gothic traditions.
The object of course paper is to be aware of some information about
Charlotte Bronte’s life and her works, to research traditions and cultures that were
used in her novels.
The course paper includes introduction part, two main body, conclusion, list
of used materials and internet resource.

Chapter I Charlotte Bronte’s life and works

1.1 Biography of Charlotte Bronte

4
 Charlotte Bronte 21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) was an English novelist
and poet, the eldest of the three Bronte sisters who survived into adulthood and
whose novels became classics of English literature.
She enlisted in school at Roe Head in January 1831, aged 14 years. She left
the year after to teach her sisters, Emily and Anne, at home, returning in 1835 as a
governess. In 1839, she undertook the role of governess for the Sidgwick family,
but left after a few months to return to Haworth, where the sisters opened a school
but failed to attract pupils. Instead, they turned to writing and they each first
published in 1846 under the pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.
Although her first novel, The Professor, was rejected by publishers, her second
novel, Jane Eyre, was published in 1847 [2; 42]. The sisters admitted to their Bell
pseudonyms in 1848, and by the following year were celebrated in London literary
circles.
Charlotte Bronte was the last to die of all her siblings. She became pregnant
shortly after her marriage in June 1854 but died on 31 March 1855, almost
certainly from hyperemesis gravid arum, a complication of pregnancy which
causes excessive nausea and vomiting.
Charlotte Brontë was born on 21 April 1816 in Market Street, Thornton, west
of Bradford in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the third of the six children of Maria
(née Branwell) and Patrick Brontë (formerly surnamed Brunty), an Irish Anglican
clergyman. In 1820 her family moved a few miles to the village of Haworth, where
her father had been appointed perpetual curate of St Michael and All Angels
Church. Maria died of cancer on 15 September 1821, leaving five daughters,
Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, and a son, Branwell, to be taken care
of by her sister, Elizabeth Branwell [3; 57].
Her father was Patrick Bronte (1777–1861), an Anglican clergyman. Irish-
born, he had changed his name from the more commonplace Brunty. After serving
in several parishes, he moved with his wife, Maria Branwell Bronte, and their six
small children to Haworth amid the Yorkshire moors in 1820, having been
awarded a rectorship there. Soon after, Mrs. Bronte and the two eldest children
5
(Maria and Elizabeth) died, leaving the father to care for the remaining three girls
—Charlotte, Emily, and Anne—and a boy, Branwell. Their upbringing was aided
by an aunt, Elizabeth Branwell, who left her native Cornwall and took up residence
with the family at Haworth [12; 75].
In 1824 Charlotte and Emily, together with their elder sisters before their
deaths, attended Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge, near Kirkby
Lonsdale, Lancashire. The fees were low, the food unattractive, and the discipline
harsh. Charlotte condemned the school (perhaps exaggeratedly) long years
afterward in Jane Eyre, under the thin disguise of Lowood Institution, and its
principal, the Reverend William Carus Wilson, has been accepted as the
counterpart of Mister Brocklehurst in the novel.
Charlotte and Emily returned home in June 1825, and for more than five years
the Bronte children learned and played there, writing and telling romantic tales for
one another and inventing imaginative games played out at home or on the
desolate moors.
In 1831 Charlotte was sent to Miss Wooler’s school at Roe Head, near
Huddersfield, where she stayed a year and made some lasting friendships; her
correspondence with one of her friends, Ellen Nussey, continued until her death
and has provided much of the current knowledge of her life [8; 74]. In 1832 she
went home to teach her sisters but in 1835 returned to Roe Head as a teacher. She
wished to improve her family’s position, and that was the only outlet that was
offered to her unsatisfied energies. Branwell, moreover, was to start on his career
as an artist, and it became necessary to supplement the family resources. The work,
with its inevitable restrictions, was uncongenial to Charlotte. She fell into ill health
and melancholia and in the summer of 1838 terminated her engagement [4; 59].
Meanwhile, his sisters had planned to open a school together, which their aunt
agreed to finance, and in February 1842 Charlotte and Emily went to Brussels as
pupils to improve their qualifications in French and acquire some German. The
talent displayed by both brought them to the notice of Constantin Héger, a fine
teacher and a man of unusual perception. After a brief trip home upon the death of
6
her aunt, Charlotte returned to Brussels as a pupil-teacher. She stayed there during
1843 but was lonely and depressed [17; 93]. Her friends had left Brussels, and
Madame Héger appears to have become jealous of her. The nature of Charlotte’s
attachment to Héger and the degree to which she understood herself have been
much discussed. His was the most-interesting mind she had yet met, and he had
perceived and evoked her latent talents. His strong and eccentric personality
appealed both to her sense of humor and to her affections. She offered him an
innocent but ardent devotion, but he tried to repress her emotions. The letters she
wrote to him after her return may well be called love letters. When, however, he
suggested that they were open to misapprehension, she stopped writing and applied
herself, in silence, to disciplining her feelings [14; 147]. However Charlotte’s
experiences in Brussels are interpreted, they were crucial for her development. She
received a strict literary training, became aware of the resources of her own nature,
and gathered material that served her, in various shapes, for all her novels.
In 1844 Charlotte attempted to start a school that she had long envisaged in
the parsonage itself, as her father’s failing sight precluded his being left alone.
Prospectuses were issued, but no pupils were attracted to distant Haworth.
In August 1824, Patrick sent Charlotte, Emily, Maria, and Elizabeth to the
Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire. Charlotte maintained
that the school’s poor conditions permanently affected her health and physical
development, and hastened the deaths of Maria (born 1814) and Elizabeth (born
1815), who both died of tuberculosis in June 1825. After the deaths of his older
daughters, Patrick removed Charlotte and Emily from the school. Charlotte used
the school as the basis for Lowood School in Jane Eyre, which is similarly affected
by tuberculosis that is exacerbated by the poor conditions [5; 71].
At home in Haworth Parsonage, Bronte acted as “the motherly friend and
guardian of her younger sisters”. Bronte wrote her first known poem at the age of
13 in 1829, and was to go on to write more than 200 poems in the course of her
life. Many of her poems were “published” in their homemade magazine Branwell’s
Blackwood’s Magazine, and concerned the fictional world of Glass Town. She and
7
her surviving siblings – Branwell, Emily and Anne – created this shared world, and
began chronicling the lives and struggles of the inhabitants of their imaginary
kingdom in 1827. Charlotte, in private letters, called Glass Town “her ‘world
below’, a private escape where she could act out her desires and multiple
identities”. Charlotte’s “predilection for romantic settings, passionate relationships,
and high society is at odds with Branwell’s obsession with battles and politics and
her young sisters’ homely North Country realism, none the less at this stage there
is still a sense of the writings as a family enterprise” [6; 73].
However, from 1831 onwards, Emily and Anne ‘seceded’ from the Glass
Town Confederacy to create a ‘spin-off’ called Gondal, which included many of
their poems. After 1831, Charlotte and Branwell concentrated on an evolution of
the Glass Town Confederacy called Angria. Christine Alexander, a Bronte
juvenilia historian, wrote “both Charlotte and Branwell ensured the consistency of
their imaginary world. When Branwell exuberantly kills off important characters in
his manuscripts, Charlotte comes to the rescue and, in effect, resurrects them for
the next stories; and when Branwell becomes bored with his inventions, such as the
Glass Town magazine he edits, Charlotte takes over his initiative and keeps the
publication going for several more years”. The sagas the siblings created were
episodic and elaborate, and they exist in incomplete manuscripts, some of which
have been published as juvenilia. They provided them with an obsessive interest
during childhood and early adolescence, which prepared them for literary
vocations in adulthood.
Between 1831 and 1832, Bronte continued her education at Roe Head in
Mirfield, where she met her lifelong friends and correspondents Ellen Nussey and
Mary Taylor. In 1833 she wrote a novella, The Green Dwarf, using the name
Wellesley. Around about 1833, her stories shifted from tales of the supernatural to
more realistic stories [9; 58]. She returned to Roe Head as a teacher from 1835 to
1838. Unhappy and lonely as a teacher at Roe Head, Bronte took out her sorrows
in poetry, writing a series of melancholic poems. In “We wove a Web in
Childhood” written in December 1835, Bronte drew a sharp contrast between her
8
miserable life as a teacher and the vivid imaginary worlds she and her siblings had
created. In another poem “Morning was its freshness still” written at the same
time, Bronte wrote “Tis bitter sometimes to recall Illusions once deemed fair”.
Many of her poems concerned the imaginary world of Angria, often concerning
Byronic heroes, and in December 1836 she wrote to the Poet Laureate Robert
Southey asking him for encouragement of her career as a poet [6; 79]. Southey
replied, famously, that “Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it
ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure will
she have for it even as an accomplishment and a recreation.” This advice she
respected but did not heed [4; 61].
In 1839, she took up the first of many positions as governess to families in
Yorkshire, a career she pursued until 1841. In particular, from May to July 1839
she was employed by the Sidgwick family at their summer residence, Stone Gappe,
in Lothersdale, where one of her charges was John Benson Sidgwick (1835–1927),
an unruly child who on one occasion threw the Bible at Charlotte, an incident that
may have been the inspiration for a part of the opening chapter of Jane Eyre in
which John Reed throws a book at the young Jane. Bronte did not enjoy her work
as a governess, noting her employers treated her almost as a slave, constantly
humiliating her. Bronte was of slight build and was less than five feet tall.
In 1842 Charlotte and Emily travelled to Brussels to enroll at the boarding
school run by Constantin Héger (1809–1896) and his wife Claire Zoé Parent Héger
(1804–1887) [5; 51]. During her time in Brussels, Bronte, who favored the
Protestant ideal of an individual in direct contact with God, objected to the stern
Catholicism of Madame Héger, which she considered a tyrannical religion that
enforced conformity and submission to the Pope. In return for board and tuition
Charlotte taught English and Emily taught music. Their time at the school was cut
short when their aunt Elizabeth Branwell, who had joined the family in Haworth to
look after the children after their mother’s death, died of internal obstruction in
October 1842. Charlotte returned alone to Brussels in January 1843 to take up a
teaching post at the school. Her second stay was not happy: she was homesick and
9
deeply attached to Constantin Héger. She returned to Haworth in January 1844 and
used the time spent in Brussels as the inspiration for some of the events in The
Professor and Villette [7; 41].
After returning to Haworth, Charlotte and her sisters made headway with
opening their own boarding school in the family home. It was advertised as “The
Misses Bronte’s Establishment for the Board and Education of a limited number of
Young Ladies” and inquiries were made to prospective pupils and sources of
funding. But none were attracted and in October 1844, the project was abandoned.
1.2 Jane Eyre and other novels of Charlotte Bronte
In May 1846 Charlotte, Emily, and Anne self-financed the publication of a
joint collection of poems under their assumed names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.
The pseudonyms veiled the sisters' sex while preserving their initials; thus
Charlotte was Currer Bell. "Bell" was the middle name of Haworth's curate, Arthur
Bell Nicholls whom Charlotte later married, and "Currer" was the surname of
Frances Mary Richardson Currer who had funded their school (and maybe their
father). Of the decision to use noms de plume, Charlotte wrote:
Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer,
Ellis and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of
conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we
did not like to declare ourselves women, because – without at that time suspecting
that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called "feminine" – we had a
vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice; we
had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of
personality, and for their reward, a flattery, which is not true praise [15; 93].
Although only two copies of the collection of poems were sold, the sisters
continued writing for publication and began their first novels, continuing to use
their noms de plume when sending manuscripts to potential publishers.
Bronte's first manuscript, 'The Professor', did not secure a publisher, although
she was heartened by an encouraging response from Smith, Elder & Co. of
Cornhill, who expressed an interest in any longer works Currer Bell might wish to
10
send. Bronte responded by finishing and sending a second manuscript in August
1847. Six weeks later, Jane Eyre was published. It tells the story of a plain
governess, Jane, who, after difficulties in her early life, falls in love with her
employer, Mr Rochester [20; 173]. They marry, but only after Rochester's insane
first wife, of whom Jane initially has no knowledge, dies in a dramatic house fire.
The book's style was innovative, combining Romanticism, naturalism with gothic
melodrama, and broke new ground in being written from an intensely evoked first-
person female perspective. Bronte believed art was most convincing when based
on personal experience; in Jane Eyre she transformed the experience into a novel
with universal appeal [24; 138].
Jane Eyre had immediate commercial success and initially received
favourable reviews. G. H. Lewes wrote that it was "an utterance from the depths of
a struggling, suffering, much-enduring spirit", and declared that it consisted of
"suspiria de profundis!" (sighs from the depths). Speculation about the identity and
gender of the mysterious Currer Bell heightened with the publication of Wuthering
Heights by Ellis Bell (Emily) and Agnes Grey by Acton Bell (Anne).
Accompanying the speculation was a change in the critical reaction to Bronte's
work, as accusations were made that the writing was "coarse", a judgement more
readily made once it was suspected that Currer Bell was a woman. However, sales
of Jane Eyre continued to be strong and may even have increased as a result of the
novel developing a reputation as an "improper" book. A talented amateur artist,
Bronte personally did the drawings for the second edition of Jane Eyre and in the
summer of 1834 two of her paintings were shown at an exhibition by the Royal
Northern Society for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts in Leeds [14; 82].
Shirley, A Tale is a social novel by the English novelist Charlotte Bronte, first
published in 1849. It was Bronte's second published novel after Jane Eyre
(originally published under Bronte's pseudonym Currer Bell). The novel is set in
Yorkshire in 1811–12, during the industrial depression resulting from the
Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. The novel is set against the backdrop of the
Luddite uprisings in the Yorkshire textile industry [27; 192].
11
 The novel's popularity led to Shirley's becoming a woman's name. The title
character was given the name that her father had intended to give a son. Before the
publication of the novel Shirley was an uncommon but distinctly male name.
Today it is regarded as a distinctly female name.
While Charlotte Bronte was writing Shirley three of her siblings died. Her
brother Branwell died in September 1848 and her sister Emily fell ill and died in
December. Bronte resumed writing, but then her only remaining sibling, her sister
Anne, became ill and died in May 1849 [13; 62].
Some critics believe that the character of Caroline Helstone was loosely based
on Anne and it has been speculated that Bronte originally planned to let Caroline
die but changed her mind because of her family tragedies. However, Ellen Nussey,
Charlotte's lifelong friend, claimed that the character of Caroline was based on
herself.
Charlotte Brontë told Elizabeth Gaskell that Shirley is what she believed her
sister, Emily Brontë, would have been if she had been born into a wealthy family.
Again, Ellen Nussey, who knew Emily as well as anyone outside the family, did
not recognise Emily in Shirley.
The maiden name of Mrs Pryor is Agnes Grey, the name of the main
character in Anne's first novel. She was based on Margaret Wooler, the principal of
Roe Head School, which Bronte attended as both student and teacher [19; 138].
In 1848 Bronte began work on the manuscript of her second novel, Shirley. It
was only partially completed when the Bronte family suffered the deaths of three
of its members within eight months. In September 1848 Branwell died of chronic
bronchitis and marasmus, exacerbated by heavy drinking, although Bronte
believed that his death was due to tuberculosis. Branwell may have had a
laudanum addiction. Emily became seriously ill shortly after his funeral and died
of pulmonary tuberculosis in December 1848. Anne died of the same disease in
May 1849. Bronte was unable to write at this time [29; 103].
After Anne's death Bronte resumed writing as a way of dealing with her grief,
and Shirley, which deals with themes of industrial unrest and the role of women in
12
society, was published in October 1849. Unlike Jane Eyre, which is written in the
first person, Shirley is written in the third person and lacks the emotional
immediacy of her first novel, and reviewers found it less shocking. Bronte, as her
late sister's heir, suppressed the republication of Anne's second novel, The Tenant
of Wildfell Hall, an action which had a deleterious effect on Anne's popularity as a
novelist and has remained controversial among the sisters' biographers ever since
[10; 82].
The Young Men's Magazine is the last of a series of three magazines written
by Branwell Bronte and his sister Charlotte. The journals were handwritten mini-
books containing articles, stories, letters, and reviews, inspired by and following
the model of Blackwood's Magazine and Fraser's Magazine. A notable issue is
volume 2, a copy of which was sold in December 2011 for £690,850 at Sotheby's
in London. Writing the magazine on the basis of established literary models helped
Charlotte and Branwell in their maturation process toward becoming "literary
professionals" [6; 152].
The Bronte siblings began writing prose and poetry related to their
paracosmic fantasy world in the 1820s, and in December 1827 produced a novel,
Glass Town. In January 1829 Branwell started publishing a monthly miscellany
involving events and characters from that world, Branwell's Blackwood's
Magazine, the title taken from the well-known magazine Blackwood's Magazine,
and its content inspired by Blackwood's and Fraser's Magazine. Branwell
published it for six months. Its name changed to Blackwood's Young Men's
Magazine when Charlotte took it over in 1829; six volumes were published over
the next six months. She resurrected it in August 1830 as The Young Men's
Magazine. The Young Men were characters based on the original twelve wooden
soldiers bought by Rev. Bronte for Branwell in 1826 [22; 84]. The books were
supposed to have been produced and read by the soldiers, thus their miniature size.
What the magazine borrowed especially from Blackwood's was its alternating
between serious and satirical points of view, a dynamic Charlotte apparently found
very attractive—she wrote, for instance, a series of contributions for two opposite
13
frequent contributors to her magazine, "the sentimental Marquis of Douro and the
sardonic Lord Charles Wellesley", sons of the Duke of Wellington, both of whom
also figure in the plays she writes. Wellesley, Douro, and others wrote in
correspondence columns; the magazine also featured advertisements; in one of
those Lord Charles Wellesley challenges a man who insulted him in a tavern "to
try a match at fisty-cuffs" [27; 173].
The prose fiction and drama is set in what has been called "Glass Town
Saga", the fictional world set in West Africa, prompted by the gift of twelve little
wooden soldiers to Branwell by his father. Stories related to these characters made
their way into hundreds of little books, including, in 1829, the magazine. The
authors' names were likewise fantastical or imaginative, often related to wood:
Branwell signs as "Sergeant Bud," and under Charlotte's editorship contributions
are signed "WT" ("we two") or "UT" ("us two"). Charlotte as editor assumes the
name "Captain Tree" [3; 143].
A Book of Ryhmes is a miniature book of poems by Charlotte Bronte. It was
written in 1829 when Bronte was aged 13. The book is part of the collections of
the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, West Yorkshire.
A Book of Ryhmes (the word rhymes is misspelt) is one of six miniature
books written by the teenage Brontë, forming part of her juvenilia. Dated 17
December 1829,[4] it measures only 3.8 in × 2.5 in (9.7 cm × 6.4 cm).
The book sold for $520 in an auction at Walpole Galleries in New York City
in 1916 (equivalent to $12,949 in 2021). The last of Brontë's miniature books to be
owned by a private collector, its location was subsequently unknown until April
2022 when it was announced that it would be for sale at the New York
International Antiquarian Book Fair later that month. It sold for $1.25 million
(£983,500), making it possibly the most expensive book ever sold, in terms of
price per unit of surface area [25; 96].
The book was purchased by a British literary charity, the Friends of the
National Libraries, which donated it to the Bronte Parsonage Museum. The estate
of T. S. Eliot and the Garfield Weston Foundation donated funds to the Friends of
14
the National Libraries to assist in buying the book. The principal curator of the
Bronte Parsonage Museum, Ann Dinsdale, said that it was "... always emotional
when an item belonging to the Bronte family is returned home and this final little
book, coming back to the place it was written when it had been thought lost, is
very special for us." At the time that it acquired A Book of Ryhmes, the museum
already had nine other miniature books made by the Bronte siblings, and expected
to receive seven more from the Honresfield Library in the near future.

Chapter II Interaction of traditions in Charlotte Bronte’s works

2.1 Narrative features in Shirley novel
In this chapter, I aim to deepen the association between Bronte's northern
novels, especially Shirley, their allusion to folklore and the local cultural
environment of Yorkshire. It warrants a reading of Shirley from the perspective of
15
its cultural historical framework. The Yorkshire locale, I argue, provides a source
of folklore for her creative writing. References to local folklore in Jane Eyre are
also present. But, given that Shirley is a condition-of-Yorkshire novel we might
conceive of it as a more reliable folklore source. However, the Gytrash of Jane
Eyre is a local folkloric belief as examined in the introduction. Shirley seems to
mirror the local people's interaction with the cultural framework of the beliefs,
customs and proverbs of rural county life in the early nineteenth century. Shirley is
not simply a condition-of- England novel but a condition-of-Yorkshire novel. Its
historicity is in part indebted to the folkloric framework [13; 80]. Not only does
Bronte reconstruct the economic and political structure of Yorkshire in 1811-2
(and national events of 1848) but also, to an extent, the cultural structure. Despite
the lack of folklore as ideological tool in Shirley, it adds to the narrative and helps
to shape its generic regional definition. This is a novel moreover, that intimates
local traditional culture as a key resource for Bronte's knowledge of folklore.
Notwithstanding the pitfalls of treating her northern novels as factual rather than
literary constructs, it is possible to study them from the perspective of cultural
change in rural Yorkshire [14; 63]. Shirley characterizes this aspect of nineteenth-
century social change and to a degree; this novel is alert to cultural as well as
social history. I also identify the use of local folklore references to support the rural
narrative setting, the Luddite plot and Whitsun as key dramatic incidents. Folklore
is an aspect of magical thinking in characterization and the notion of characters'
sense of place and rootedness. Above all, the presence of folklore in Shirley offers
a commentary on Bronte's awareness of cultural transformation in its sentiment of
nostalgia. I examine the local cultural backdrop of Yorkshire to argue its potential
as a major source for Shirley. Finally, comparing allusions to folklore in Bronte's
letters with her novels, furthers the idea of the local cultural environment as a
major inspiration for her. Her letters indicate not only her use of folklore as a
descriptive tool to convey emotion but provide evidence of her own magical
thinking.

16
 Critics and biographers situate this novel in the historic-regional setting of
Yorkshire landscape, people, or dialect and industrial Luddite theme and recognise
Shirley within the regional genre. Despite earlier acknowledgement of the regional
specificity of Shirley and critical praise for Bronte's working class sympathies,
Terry Eagleton's study of the novel's politics sets the tone for critical evaluations of
the Luddite theme. Yet, still, critical consensus is to the novel's reconstruction of a
specific event in Yorkshire's history with an acceptance that Bronte drew on
reliable sources of back copies of the Leeds Mercury and first-hand accounts of the
Luddite period from her father who was curate at Hartshead Church during the
protest movement of 1811-12 [8; 105].
Notwithstanding the omission of folklore in critical studies of Shirley, I take
my lead from various analyses in order to further reinforce the argument that
Bronte drew on her immediate locale to source folklore material. The study of the
regional novel might be better placed by Keith Snell's studies. Acknowledging that
the regional novel mixes the real with the imaginary, the known with the unknown,
he defines it as one that contains local dialect. landscape, setting, history and
customs. Snell states that any regional writer might supplement other descriptions
as a way of imagining realising or knowing life, character and social relations, with
unique imaginative and evocative potential. This genre, be adds, on occasion,
incorporates "novels dependent upon regional folklore. Of particular note is Snell's
noting of Scott's historical settings incorporating vernacular surroundings imbued
with local narratives and folkloric traditions He cites other examples including the
provincial novels of Hardy's Return of the Native (1878) and Eliot's Adam Bede
(1859), of which folklore is present [18; 152].
The context of cultural history offers a useful framework to situate my
reading of Yorkshire folklore as a major source for Bronte. Although in passing,
Jason Mare Harris refers to the interdisciplinary nature of folklore, literature and
cultural history, citing studies of customs and beliefs by key historians Bob
Bashaway (but also Patrick Joyce and John Rule) to highlight their insistence of
the persistence of folklore in the nineteenth century." These studies support my
17
claim that Bronte was in a position to develop her knowledge of local folklore in
the early to mid-Nineteenth-century. Harris quotes an Anglican clergyman's
experience as late as 1826 of a 'world of comprehensive vision' as opposed to a
community polarised by true faith and indolent superstition [7; 162]. Looking back
the clergyman remembered. conjuring parsons and cunning clerks (or wise men),
blacksmiths as doctors, and old maids perceived as witches, saying "in short all
nature seemed to be united-its wells, its plants, its beasts, its reptiles and even
inanimate things in sympathising with human credulity; in predicting or in
averting, in relieving or in aggravating misfortune".
Tim Harris includes Bushaway's historical study of alternate beliefs within
Harris wider and revisionist discussion on popular culture. He too recognises the
value of Bushaway's examination of the structure and system of belief in
nineteenth-century rural England. Bushaway's work does offer a basis from which
to establish the cultural context of rural folklore. His studies all emphasise a
consistent pattern of continuity yet change of alternative belief and calendar
customs and of a picture, nuanced and ambiguous, charactensing nineteenth-
century rural England [26; 170]. His studies demonstrate the interrelationship
between cultural history and folklore studies, Bushaway also quotes from a local
clergyman, adapting the title of his essay, Tacit, Unsuspected, but still implicit
faith": Alternative Belief in Nineteenth-Century Rural England (1995) from some
of the words of Reverend J.C. Arkinson, a clergyman who walked the length and
breadth of the Yorkshire dales to visit his parishioners and described the beliefs as
'a living faith." Bushaway describes superstitions such as divination, fairies, omens
and prophecy as "alternative belief. For many people, they were integrated into the
structure of rural life of the individual alongside place and landscape. The natural
world, seasons, weather and time, domestic life and work. Belief in omens did not
abate in the presence of the Church [13; 78]. They were integrated into life crises
and celebration, knowledge and wisdom. As a system, omens provided a universal
set of principles for controlling uncertainty, chance and minimising disaster. They
provided a coping mechanism, a living framework, a value system, a perception of
18
reality and of existence. Beliefs were based on phenomenology, observation and
experience. Magic conveyed a symbolic universe (as did orthodox knowledge)
from which people gained understanding of social reality. People lived in close
proximity with nature and believed in an 'anima mundi for some, the sun, moon,
planets, fire and water were allotted religious and cultural status. Superstitions
explained local and universal situations [1; 204]. They provided a knowable
mechanism to deal with uncontrollable situations and events, a form of wisdom
communicated by identifiable individuals such as wise men and women who could
be consulted for remedies, solutions, access to futurity and information. Omens
were attached to rituals of birth, courtship marriage and death; all aspects of
domestic life. Omens concerning death were the most common. The behavior of
not only animals, birds (both often white) and insects, but also church bells, night
noises and deaths of others was also under scrutiny. Weather lore was observed for
clues to the future [24; 183].
Bronte incorporates folklore as a narrative strategy. Yet, as plot device, its
presence also signifies a society in transformation. The novel's tension between
tradition and science seems to anticipate some of the novels of Hardy. Folklore in
Shirley is interspersed sporadically throughout the novel. It hardly constitutes the
motif value of fairies and ghosts inherent in the other novels. It is easy for it to go
unnoticed. However, we do need to interpret the material as part and parcel of the
local rural culture of the novel. It might offer a mirror to Yorkshire in flux as much
as to Bronte's reconstruction of Luddism of 1811-12. Its fictional presence suggests
Bronte drawing on the oral folk tradition to enhance historical authenticity.
Folklore marks the local colour of the novel, typifying manners of speech with
Caroline warning Robert not to overstep his power over the weavers and framers
with the proverb 'It is a boast of some of them that they can keep a stone in their
pocket seven years, turn it at the end of that time, keep it seven years longer, and
hurt it, and hit their mark at last. Caroline's local folk proverb is a warning similar
to Mike Hartley's anticipation of impending doom in his vision of fairies or
moving objects, red like poppies, or white' [20; 83]. Clearly, Mike's omen acts as a
19
foreshadowing technique. In a show of class solidarity and local patriotism, Joe
Scott, overseer to Robert Moore, pours scorn over Southerners, saying 'cause it's
sport to us to watch 'em turn up the whites o' their een, and spreed out their bits o'
hands, like as they're flayed wi' bogards" . As show later in the chapter, these
folklore items resonate with folklore county collections of West Yorkshire with
Bronte referring personally to the proverb to Gaskell.
Folklore features, briefly, as characterization. It explains characters' fears,
optimism and over-active imagination or magical thinking. Robert Moore recoils
from "Miss Mann's goblin-grimness. It went further though than merely disliking
het. On one occasion he had been fixed with Miss Mann's eye [18; 172]. Robert
Moore had undergone it once, and had never forgotten the circumstance" and had
scarpered forthwith. To Caroline, Moore's magical thinking about witches was all a
figment of fancy, a matter of surface. Moore also suggests his belief in good omens
such as those birds whose appearance is to the sailor the harbinger of good luck'.
At nine o'clock on the night of the Luddite raid, Shirley Keeldar informs Caroline
that I would walk from Fieldhead to the church any fine midsummer night, three
hours later than this, for the mere pleasure of seeing the stars and the chance of
meeting a fairy' to which Caroline replies "But just wait till the crowd is cleared
away.
2.2 Bronte and the Gothic tradition
Without doubt, and this, is the crux of my premise, allusions or references to
the supernatural world, to superstition, to supernatural beings and to supernatural
phenomena, are conceived as solely Gothic. Alexander, for example, develops the
Gothic legacy in examining the juvenilia. The genre, familiar to and enjoyed by the
Brontes from an early age continued its presence in their novels. Alexander and
Smith describe Gothic novels as fiction characterised by elements of terror, the
ominous, mystery, macabre, the supernatural, set often in the Middle Age and in an
oppressive atmosphere of a haunted castle. In their commentary on 'Gothic novels
in the Companion they suggest that Bronte was familiar with late Eighteenth-
century gothic sources: Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story (1764)
20
(naming and beginning Gothic fiction) and Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of
Udolpho (1794), A Sicilian Romance (1790) and The Italian; or the Confessional
of the Black Penitent (1797). Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or the Modern
Prometheus (1818), to name several and Gothic tales and Romantic poetry
published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine [11; 39]. They argue that Bronte
exploited the genre for melodrama, exoticism and violence in the tales and adapted
the mode at a deeper more sophisticated level in her novels. Bronte's literary use of
the supernatural is Radcliffe an.
Although Alexander and Smith argue that Wuthering Heights makes more of
conjuring ghosts, dreams and hallucinations than Jane Eyre, all of the siblings
exploit the Gothic lineage, grafting its tropes, motifs, imagery, characterisation,
atmosphere and setting onto contemporary realism. Feelings of dread and terror,
apparitions, unnatural phenomena and disturbing dream states portray complex
character psychologies. Gothic features do not reveal 'paranormal forces so much
as they reveal characters' superstitions, transcendental beliefs, desires and
subconscious awareness. Excepting Shirley, all of Bronte's novels (and Emily's
novel) rely heavily on Gothic [22; 94].
Similarly the event asserts the novel's middle class paternalistic model of
Church, state and monarchical hegemony over the working classes, Whitsun is part
and parcel of the social structure of rural life. Its main function in Shirley is to
maintain social order and social cohesion. The singing of God Save the King' and
the band playing "Rule Britannia" controls any potential customary features of
rebellion or dissent. No aspect of the communal process is left out. As to Luddism,
folklore historian Norman Simms is convinced that Bronte knew the ritual power
of the event, even if she can only articulate two young girls' fear of gruff men to
give the feeling of the attack itself." The detail of Whitsun suggests Bronte's
familiarity with the event and probable participation in it either in the joining of the
three parishes of Haworth, Oxenhope and Stanbury or in the Spen Valley during
her period at Roe Head School [12; 143].

21
 Folklore supports the novel's major incident the Luddite attack. Although
Luddism is central to Shirley, critics overlook Bronte's familiarity with folklore's
use in nineteenth- century social protest. As stated previously, Norman Simms
recognises her knowledge of ceremonial yells saying "perhaps her own syntactic
outburst is closer to the mentality of the rebellion than all the rest she has written."
identifying the yell to Yorkshire, to a specific district and to the community of
textile workers. Bronte's localism is unequivocal with her 'a rioter's yella North-of-
England-a Yorkshirea West-Riding a West-Riding-clothing- district-of-Yorkshire
rioters yell Simms examines the northern machine breakers of 1811 from the point
of view of folklore and notes the role of the Mummers plays, yells and dance, the
mythical but ideological character of Ned Ludd and the use of various disguises
such as blackened faces or masks, as Bronte draws on in Shirley, Simms is
adamant not to trivialise these folkloristic activities but regards them as
fundamental to "archaic mentalities, those modes of thought which persist in
conditions of actual or socially enforced isolation." Simms overlooks the fact that
the attack takes place at midnight, a key feature of folklore that denotes the most
negative time of day. On the Luddite theme, Mr Malone, the Irish curate, questions
an earlier revolt of the Luddite men saying "I do not see a mask or a smutted face
present" (p. 30), Bronte knows the significance of disguise in the Luddite cause
We can value the folkloric content in Shirley for its narrative function, its integral
role in reconstructing Luddism, its embodiment of nostalgia, and potential
similarities with the transformation and continuity of Yorkshire rural culture.
Undoubtedly, folklore characterises many of the features of the novel's sense of
place, period and identity of the people [30; 172].
Similarly the event asserts the novel's middle class paternalistic model of
Church, state and monarchical hegemony over the working classes, Whitsun is part
and parcel of the social structure of rural life. Its main function in Shirley is to
maintain social order and social cohesion. The singing of God Save the King' and
the band playing "Rule Britannia" controls any potential customary features of
rebellion or dissent. No aspect of the communal process is left out. As to Luddism,
22
folklore historian Norman Simms is convinced that Bronte knew the ritual power
of the event, even if she can only articulate two young girls' fear of gruff men to
give the feeling of the attack itself." The detail of Whitsun suggests Bronte's
familiarity with the event and probable participation in it either in the joining of the
three parishes of Haworth, Oxenhope and Stanbury or in the Spen Valley during
her period at Roe Head School [9; 204].
Folklore supports the novel's major incident the Luddite attack. Although
Luddism is central to Shirley, critics overlook Bronte's familiarity with folklore's
use in nineteenth- century social protest. As stated previously, Norman Simms
recognises her knowledge of ceremonial yells saying "perhaps her own syntactic
outburst is closer to the mentality of the rebellion than all the rest she has written."
identifying the yell to Yorkshire, to a specific district and to the community of
textile workers. Bronte's localism is unequivocal with her 'a rioter's yella North-of-
England-a Yorkshirea West-Riding a West-Riding-clothing- district-of-Yorkshire
rioters yell Simms examines the northern machine breakers of 1811 from the point
of view of folklore and notes the role of the Mummers plays, yells and dance, the
mythical but ideological character of Ned Ludd and the use of various disguises
such as blackened faces or masks, as Bronte draws on in Shirley, Simms is
adamant not to trivialise these folkloristic activities but regards them as
fundamental to "archaic mentalities, those modes of thought which persist in
conditions of actual or socially enforced isolation." Simms overlooks the fact that
the attack takes place at midnight, a key feature of folklore that denotes the most
negative time of day. On the Luddite theme, Mr Malone, the Irish curate, questions
an earlier revolt of the Luddite men saying "I do not see a mask or a smutted face
present" (p. 30), Bronte knows the significance of disguise in the Luddite cause
We can value the folkloric content in Shirley for its narrative function, its integral
role in reconstructing Luddism, its embodiment of nostalgia, and potential
similarities with the transformation and continuity of Yorkshire rural culture.
Undoubtedly, folklore characterises many of the features of the novel's sense of
place, period and identity of the people.
23
 The idea that Yorkshire cultural identity is inextricably linked to people's
sense of the past or to a pre-lapsed golden age resonates with the sentiment felt in
Shirley. Symbolically, folklore is an appeal to the past. The sense of nostalgia is
realised in Shirley with Shirley and Caroline, gazing down on Nunnwood forest.
Shirley asks:
"Was it not one of Robin Hood's haunts?
Yes, and there are mementos of him still existing. To penetrate into
Nunnwood, Miss Keeldar, is to go far back into the dim days of old. Can you see a
break in the forest, about the centre" [12; 56].
More explicit is Shirley's:
When I was a very little girl, Mr Moore, my nurse used to tell me tales of
fairies being seen in that Hollow. That was before my father built the mill, when it
was a perfectly solitary ravine. You will be falling under enchantment'.
Shirley's nurse is surely echoing Tabitha Aykroyd's recollection of Haworth's
premechanisation, saying:
What is more, she had known the 'bottom' or valley, in those primitive days
when the fairies frequented the margin of the "beck' on moonlight nights, and had
known folk who had seen them. But that was when there were no mills in the
valleys, and when all the wool-spinning was done by hand in the farm-houses
round. 'It wur the factories as had driven 'em away'
It is unclear as to whether Gaskell heard this comment directly from Aykroyd,
another employee at the parsonage, second hand from Bronte or another member
of the family. But it resonates in Shirley.
The novel's ending is dedicated to the past rather than to the present with
Shirley asking her housekeeper to describe pre-industrial Yorkshire. She is the link
to historic continuity.
This sense of regret for the passing of time might echo the voice of
community. Shirley is a commentary on history and the fairies symbolize the past.
There is a shared sense of inter-generational consciousness of the passing of time
and the loss of something be it nature, cottage industry, community, imagination or
24
romance. However, the appropriation of the English past does not detract from the
novel’s sense of a radical detachment and discontinuity with what has gone on
before [7; 93]. According to Simpson and Roud, the lament for a vanishing past
was described as ‘Merrie England’. This Arcadian attitude to the past was
popularised by Walter Scott in his ballad Marmion (1808):
England was merry England, when Old Christmas brought his sports again.
They describe this sentiment not as an unscientific concept but as an historic
attitude that constituted a Victorian world-view, and had a profound impact on
traditional festivals and customs. They state that Merrie Englandism was
essentially nostalgic with the sense of loss felt mostly in terms of community.
Countless novelists adhered to the Merrie England school of thought in an attempt
to recreate the golden age. The past of May Day and Christmas was extolled. In
Villette the wassail-cup ritual epitomises this sentiment with the Home and De
Basompierre families paying homage to ‘the mask of Old Christmas’ and ‘Old
October’, mentioned three times, with Graham Bretton saying ‘let us have a
Christmas wassail-cup, and toast Old England here, on the hearth’.

Conclusion
To conclude, the main aim of this course paper is to shift critical perceptions
of Bronte's Gothic to the framework of folklore in her realist novels. In
differentiating between Gothic and folklore, I have argued that folklore is an older,
25
 orally transmitted belief system, with roots in the cultural primitive past and linked
to pre-Christianity. Gothic is a literary mode or genre. But fundamentally, folklore
is a primary source of the supernatural element across Gothic romance and realist
fiction. Folklore is adapted to the English literary canon. In revisiting the critical
canon we can conclude that Jacqueline Simpson and Robert B. Heilman both
allude to folklore material in Jane Eyre but with different objectives in mind.
Heilman's commentary on Bronte's transformation of the Gothic to new
psychological heights gained ground. Simpson's analysis of folklore to convey the
themes of love and ideas of difference or otherness and her analysis of Emily's
study of ghosts in Wuthering Heights did not springboard into mainstream
criticism in the same way. Somehow it got overlooked in the critical canon. Now
as then, Gothic criticism predominates in Bronte scholarship. It is still unclear as to
why the study of Bronte's folklore remains on the periphery. Given folklore's
previous critical reception as something antique or 'immoral, irrational, or
unrespectable" as Harris says, perhaps literary critics consider it as low rather than
high culture. If this is the case, this thesis aims to resurrect the reputation of
folklore material.
I have argued for a new critical approach to the study of Bronte's uses of the
supernatural, offered an account of Bronte's sources of local and literary folklore,
examined the narrative and ideological functions of folklore in her novels and
considered her letters in the light of her fiction.

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Internet resource
1. https://ecozona.eu/article/view/534
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3. https://www.academia.edu/37116335/
Discuss_the_question_of_cultural_exchange_as_it_is_raised_by_the_writing_of_
Bront
%C3%AB_and_Rhys_with_attention_to_the_interface_between_different_historie
s_and_cultures
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5. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25058638

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