Gender Conventions and Language of Evaluation in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Abstract

Since first published, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë have been object of both praise and criticism by readers and scholars from all the world. One of the most studied aspects of their novels is their approach to women’s issues which is present in all their novels, especially in the construction of their heroines. Against this background, this thesis consists of a descriptive linguistic analysis of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. This work focuses on how the evaluations and judgements made by secondary characters towards the main female heroines help the readership construct their appraisal of these fictional women in accordance with the gender expectations of their context of production. The concepts to be developed and on which the analysis is based are those of narrator and focalization as proposed by Bal (2017) and the Appraisal model developed by Martin and White (2005).