Charlotte Brontë, Autobiography, and the Image of the Hero
Abstract Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, was one of the many real-life heroes, probably the pre-eminent one, in Charlotte Brontë's life and works. He was a masculine type that attracted her, as both woman and writer, from a very early age; but she was not alone in her admiration of what Carlyle called 'the great ones of the earth'. The paper argues that Charlotte's response to historical characters like the Duke of Wellington is not only part of a cultural dynamic of hero-worship that provided a ready context for 'veneration' but is also part of the complex self-fashioning that we all experience in the process of identity formation. Wellington and his various mutations can be traced in her writing from the juvenilia to Shirley in particular, and can be seen as an evolving critique on the hero. They also reflect an important element of Charlotte Brontë's personal narrative and indicate the way hero-worship helped to mould her ambition, her love of politics and her idea of integrity.
Tory Brontëë: Shirley and the ““MAN””
ABSTRACT Philip Rogers, ““Tory Brontee: Shirley and the ‘‘man’’”” (pp.141––175) Charlotte Brontee9s politics in Shirley (1849) conform to the Tory principles implicit in the Duke of Wellington9s responses to Chartist unrest and parliamentary reform. Brontee9s representation of Robert Moore9s defense of his mill against Luddite rioters directly reflects Wellington9s hostility to mob violence and also his strategy, as Commander-in-Chief, for suppressing the Chartist demonstration of 10 April 1848. The novel9s defensive eulogizing of Wellington derides the liberal Manchester politics of Richard Cobden and the Peace Society as unmanly and unpatriotic. The Duke also serves subtextually as the model for changes that Robert and Louis Moore must undergo to make them suitable matches for Caroline and Shirley. Wellington consequently presides over the joint resolutions of the novel9s domestic and political narratives. In this essay I challenge the view of Brontee9s politics presented by Elizabeth Gaskell, subsequent biographers, and manycritics——who, understandably wishing to view Brontee9s proto-feminism as evidence of political liberalism, have blunted the anti-democratic edge of her conservatism.
Body sculpturing.
Significant improvements in body contour can be accomplished by surgical procedures having reliable, predictable results. Similar to the modern sculptor of inanimate art forms, plastic surgeons have utilized new materials and devised new techniques to achieve aesthetic improvement of the face, trunk, and extremities. The goals of the surgical sculptor are perhaps more challenging than those of the pure artistic sculptor, not only because they must result in improved appearance but also because the surgeon is limited at all times by considerations of regional anatomy, the availability of viable tissue materials, and the safety of his patient.