Male Bonding and Reciprocity in Words in Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
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This essay argues that the narrative structure of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is architecturally made to explore the meanings and effects of gift exchange. The gift exchange is more aligned with patriarchal ideology that endorses men’s alliance and that tends to ignore the presence of female participation. In other words, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is Brontë’s gift to the reading public about the failure of female freedom rather than female subversion. The novel’s strategic design intermittently allows a woman to experience triumph. However, through setting Gilbert as the main narrator and Halford as the intended reader in the outer form of the narrative, it only shows that efforts to achieve woman’s freedom can work, but not often, only within the given scope assigned by male authority, and also at a small scale. When it happens, it often accompanies an illusion that women can achieve freedom by their efforts or sacrifice. Assuming that gift exchange is a man’s realm, Brontë’s presentation of a gift economy aims to elucidate how men establish an intimate alliance and, moreover, how male participants in the gift exchange treat women as the gifted object. Furthermore, in examining the nature of a gift between men, this essay focuses on the exchange of desire, a desire that often lies on the liminal line between homosocial and homosexual. Yet, conclusively, the identity of sexual desire, as Brontë shows, does not make any difference when it comes to the oppression of women.
Abstract
This essay argues that the narrative structure of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is architecturally made to explore the meanings and effects of gift exchange. The gift exchange is more aligned with patriarchal ideology that endorses men’s alliance and that tends to ignore the presence of female participation. In other words, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is Brontë’s gift to the reading public about the failure of female freedom rather than female subversion. The novel’s strategic design intermittently allows a woman to experience triumph. However, through setting Gilbert as the main narrator and Halford as the intended reader in the outer form of the narrative, it only shows that efforts to achieve woman’s freedom can work, but not often, only within the given scope assigned by male authority, and also at a small scale. When it happens, it often accompanies an illusion that women can achieve freedom by their efforts or sacrifice. Assuming that gift exchange is a man’s realm, Brontë’s presentation of a gift economy aims to elucidate how men establish an intimate alliance and, moreover, how male participants in the gift exchange treat women as the gifted object. Furthermore, in examining the nature of a gift between men, this essay focuses on the exchange of desire, a desire that often lies on the liminal line between homosocial and homosexual. Yet, conclusively, the identity of sexual desire, as Brontë shows, does not make any difference when it comes to the oppression of women.
참고문헌 (26)
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