Women’s Writing and Mission in the Nineteenth Century: Jane Eyre’s Missionary Sisters

The missionary plot in Charlotte Brontës Jane Eyre has been overlooked, but this book demonstrates that it was present in a range of writings from missionary newsletters and life writing to canonical Victorian literature, New Woman fiction, and womens college writing. Women writers wove the tropes of the female missionary figure and plot into their domestic fiction, and the female missionary themes of religious self-sacrifice and heroism formed the subjectivity of these writers and their characters. This book offers an alternative narrative for the development of women writers and early feminism and a new reading of Jane Eyre.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 250 pages
Publication date: 27 May 2024
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Until now, the missionary plot in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre has been seen as marginal and anomalous. Despite women missionaries being ubiquitous in the nineteenth century, they appeared to be absent from nineteenth-century literature. As this book demonstrates, though, the female missionary character and narrative was, in fact, present in a range of writings from missionary newsletters and life writing, to canonical Victorian literature, New Woman fiction, and women's college writing. Nineteenth-century women writers wove the tropes of the female missionary figure and plot into their domestic fiction, and the female missionary themes of religious self-sacrifice and heroism formed the subjectivity of these writers and their characters. Offering an alternative narrative for the development of women writers and early feminism, as well as a new reading of Jane Eyre, this book adds to the debate about whether religious women in the nineteenth century could actually be radical and feminist.

Weight: 380g
Dimension: 228 x 153 x 17 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032366234