| Where recent trends in feminist criticism have
readily ascribed to Emily Brontë a specifically feminine
'anxiety of influence', this strikingly creative study posits
an Emily Brontë whose writing remains radically and joyously
free from the debilitating effects of male cultural traditions.
Its theoretical basis lies not in the current orthodoxies
of Freudian psychology but in modern theories of perception
based on hemispheric specialisation in the brain.
A practising novelist herself, Stevie Davies is highly
attuned to the tonalities of Emily Brontë's language,
a language through which she structured a reversed perception
of consensus reality, undercutting normative social and
cultural conventions.
Brontë's radical vision is most dramatically realised
in Wuthering Heights, where male and female are seen
not in opposition but rather as deeply mirroring identifications
of the self.
In examining the ways in which Emily Brontë achieved
her radical effects, Stevie Davies here reveals that at
the heart of Brontë's endeavour there resides an intransigent
language of childhood, which enabled her not only to subvert
gender distinctions but to create unique fictional worlds
in a language of extraordinary power. |
