The Profession of the Author: Abstraction, Advertising, andJane Eyre

Abstract

Through the concept of abstraction I examine the relation between female subjectivity and writing inJane Eyre.In the novelabstractionmeans a lack of attention or a lapse of will, conditions that permit Jane to realize her wishes. Three other meanings of the term shed light onJane Eyreand on Charlotte Brontë's career. Through abstraction as a degree of relative disembodiment, both Jane and Brontë avoid becoming female spectacles, Jane by shifting from corporeal rebelliousness to an anonymous advertisement, Brontë by adopting an ungendered pseudonym. Abstraction also involves the alienation of the self into objects and texts, as when Jane and Brontë project themselves into their written products. Finally, abstraction entails the synthesis of the particular into the general: Jane rhetorically enters a professional body of governesses, and Brontë participates in the commercial literary marketplace.

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