Unfinished Business of Feminization: Domesticity and Empire in Jane Eyre (여성화, 끝나지 않는 기획: 『제인 에어』의 가정과 제국)

CHO, SON JEONG (조선정)

doi:10.17326/jhsnu.79.4.202211.69

Unfinished Business of Feminization: Domesticity and Empire in Jane Eyre

Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University
2022, 79(4), pp.69-99
DOI : 10.17326/jhsnu.79.4.202211.69
Publisher : Institute of Humanities, Seoul National University
Research Area : Humanities > Other Humanities
Received : October 10, 2022
Accepted : November 8, 2022
Published : November 29, 2022

CHO, SON JEONG ¹

¹서울대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This essay presents a reparative and nuanced re-reading of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre with a focus on fluidity, mobility, and permeability of its protagonist to illuminate the dynamic configuration of feminine subjectivity, never given as a fixed identity, rather enacted through the repetitive imperial performativity. Observing that the distance between domestic space and remote empire is constantly recalibrated in the novel, this essay argues that subjectivity its heroine, forced to be mired in such recalibration, continues to take a risk for drastic disengagement and escape. While resonating with both Gayatri Spivak’s postcolonial critique of the novel’s imperial complicity and Nancy Armstrong’s criticism of domestic ideology, the essay endeavors to contextualize their intersectional critical interests under the rubric of ‘feminization.’ The essay analyzes the ways in which liminality and hybridity are represented relentlessly to unsettle the boundaries of binarism between home and empire, which leads to reevaluate the politics of feminization and its discontents and also helps expanding the discussion on the complex nexus of gender and nation in literary discourse and beyond.

KEYWORDS

Imperialism, Postcolonialism, Subjectivity, Feminization, Domesticity

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

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Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.89

Unfinished Business of Feminization: Domesticity and Empire in Jane Eyre

ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.89

Unfinished Business of Feminization: Domesticity and Empire in Jane Eyre

ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS

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* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.