About the Forum||Journals||FPP Online||Contributor Information||Board Members||Order Forms||Contact||

|| Back to Forum on Public Policy Online||Fall 2006 || Winter 2007 || Spring 2007 || Summer 2007 ||

Summer 2009: Table of Contents

||Digital Age||Fighting Terrorism||Issues in Education||Literature||Science and Religion||Social Justice||Three Cultures||Women and Leadership||

LiteratureBack to top

• “Clearing the Sill of the World”:  Jane Eyre and the Power of Education in the Nineteenth-Century Novel
  Nancy L. Davis, Associate Professor of English, William Rainey Harper College
• The Dichotomy of Rossetti's Apologetics
  Carol Chambers Gibson, English Professor, Kilgore College
• Home-Schooling in Oldtown:  The Education of a Virtuous Citizenry
  William L. Howard, Professor of English, Chicago State University
• Mary Shelley: Teaching and Learning through Frankenstein
  Theresa M. Girard, Adjunct Professor, Central Michigan University
• Education and Access to Christian Thought in the Writing of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Anna Julia Cooper
  JoJo Magno, Senior Adjunct of Humanities, Warren County Community College
• Robert Frost: Devout Pagan
  Nancy Nahra, Professor of Humanities, Champlain College
• God and Allah in the works of Rudyard Kipling
  John J. Salesses, Professor, English Department, Salve Regina University

“Clearing the Sill of the World”:  Jane Eyre and the Power of Education in the Nineteenth-Century Novel
Nancy L. Davis, Associate Professor of English, William Rainey Harper College

Abstract
The idea of education in nineteenth-century women’s writing revolves around social class, social mores, and the subtleties of the writer’s imagination.  Nowhere can this be seen more vividly and thoroughly than in Charlotte Bronte’s novel, Jane Eyre. 
            The book’s opening scene, striking in its symbolic detail, highlights and foreshadows the aforementioned criteria for women’s education of the era.  Although doors to education were opening wider both in the United States and England due to the Suffragist Movement and other influences, specifically, America’s Civil War and the West’s Industrial Revolution, the majority of women were as constricted in their educational goals as the claustrophobic space in which the young Jane sequesters herself inside the breakfast-room of the Reed home at the opening chapter of Bronte’s novel.
            Four images made clearly apparent in this first chapter become critical motifs in the book, notably the window out of which Jane gazes; the books surrounding her in the library; birds, as highlighted in Bewick’s History of British Birds, which she is studying; and the red curtains behind which she takes sanctuary from the Reed family.
            Jane’s own imagination is far more advanced and exercised than the Brocklehursts of Lowood or even Mr. Rochester himself as he is first introduced at Thorndale.  And so, it is Jane’s subtleties of the imagination that instantaneously endear her to Rochester, subtleties learned from Helen Burns and Miss Temple, Jane’s female mentors.  It is these same subtleties that imbue her with moral fortitude when Bertha’s existence is revealed; protect her on the moor when, destitute, she is found--unbeknownst to either party—by her long lost cousins; and, finally, fill her with the courage to reject the narrow path of St. John and listen to her own “educated” and by now experienced heart. 

The Dichotomy of Rossetti's Apologetics
Carol Chambers Gibson, English Professor, Kilgore College

Abstract
This essay purports to reveal that Christina Rossetti's epic poem "The Goblin Market" is not only a depiction of the concepts of martyrdom and redemption but also is a commentary on the growing controversy regarding faith as a result of newfound scientific discoveries in The Victorian Age. The characters present the power of religion in its effect on the imagination. Critics have denounced the devotional aspects of Rossetti's writing, particularly feminist critics who want to rewrite the scriptural influence on Rossetti as signifying something else; however, this purports to abolish the contraindication centered around this debate. Attention is paid to the ideas of Christian theology through evil, symbolism, characterization, and the author. Using Reader-Response Criticism, pieces of the poem are used as models conveying to the participant that Christ-like self-sacrifice becomes the outlet for rewriting societal wrongs. In the Age of Darwin and the scientific exploration of biological evolution, Rossetti uses natural selection and survival of the fittest ideas to downplay the fallacy inherent in a philosophical attempt to uproot biblical foundations. Why does Rossetti withhold the origin of fruit in her narrative poem? Is she implying that this correlates with the Origin of the Species? Is her reading a paradox, or a conclusive dig into science versus faith? The dual nature messages evoke a response that questions these in determining one's theological position in a scientifically-based world.

Mary Shelley: Teaching and Learning through Frankenstein
Theresa M. Girard, Adjunct Professor, Central Michigan University

Abstract
In the writing of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley was able to change the course of women’s learning, forever.  Her life started from an elite standpoint as the child of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin.  As such, she was destined to grow to be a major influence in the world.  Mary Shelley’s formative years were spent with her father and his many learned friends.  Her adult years were spent with her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and their literary friends.  It was on the occasion of the Shelleys’ visit to Lord Byron at his summer home that Mary Shelley was to begin her novel which changed the course of women’s ideas about safety and the home.  No longer were women to view staying in the home as a means to staying safe and secure.  While women always knew that men could be unreliable, Mary Shelley openly acknowledged that fact and provided a forum from which it could be discussed.  Furthermore, women learned that they were vulnerable and that, in order to insure their own safety, they could not entirely depend upon men to rescue them; in fact, in some cases, women needed to save themselves from the men in their lives, often with no one to turn to except themselves and other women.  There are many instances where this is shown throughout Frankenstein, such as:  Justine’s prosecution and execution and Elizabeth’s murder.  Mary Shelley educated women in the most fundamental of ways and continues to do so through every reading of Frankenstein.

Home-Schooling in Oldtown:  The Education of a Virtuous Citizenry
William L. Howard, Professor of English, Chicago State University

Abstract
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was the beneficiary of a unique blend of educational influences.  The daughter, sister, and wife of Congregational ministers, she inherited the faith of New England Puritanism and its subsequent redirection by Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758).  Studying and then teaching at her sister Catharine’s female seminary, she shared some of her sister’s dissent from the received faith.  Her maternal grandmother ensured that Harriet was a welcome shareholder in the Episcopal Church, to which she would convert near the end of her life.  Stowe’s New England novels trace each of these influences.  In Oldtown Folks (1869), she is particularly concerned with the application of Christian principles to the upbringing of three children raised in the ordinary households of a post-Revolutionary War New England community.  Irrespective of its theological disputes, Oldtown families consider themselves heirs of Hebrew theocracy and rely on Biblical principles.  In the Preface, the novel’s narrator argues that the communities in which these households operated created a seed-bed of virtue that eventually helped characterize an entire nation.  Stowe’s novel thus embodies the source and constituent parts of the virtuous citizenry that the American Founders felt was necessary for a successful republic.

Education and Access to Christian Thought in the Writing of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Anna Julia Cooper
JoJo Magno, Senior Adjunct of Humanities, Warren County Community College, Washington, NJ

Abstract
In attempting to climb past the racist and sexist barriers which existed in nineteenth-century America, women could look to writers such as Harriet Beecher Stowe and Anna Julia Cooper.  Their works not only reflect the conditions of women and African-American women in particular, but also call for access to educational opportunities for these women to provide a gateway to Christian thought. Bible study and theological education extended the idea of women and blacks as God's creatures, possessed of a soul, and rebutted the use of Scripture by Southern white males to promote slavery and segregation.

Robert Frost: Devout Pagan
Nancy Nahra, Professor of Humanities, Champlain College

Abstract
Homespun and unpretentious, Robert Frost evinces in his poems of country life a Yankee plainness that he presents as essential to the rural persona and speaker of his poems. That same poetry shows just as plainly a religious perspective of acute devotion, thoroughly redefined by Frost. In its methodology, the article relies on the organizing concept of a poetic career as defined by the Roman poet Virgil and culturally re-interpreted by Frost. The important and formative influences of Frost’s own classical education are explored by way of discovering the place of a mystical inclination that may be identified in his poetry.

This article then considers the mystical dimension of Frost’s spirituality in the context of the Swedenborgian religion in which he was baptized and which he was encouraged to practice by his mother. The paper relies also on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay on Swedenborg to confirm the central place of mysticism within that  religious tradition. References to particular poems will illustrate the sustained presence of a mystical strain in work produced over Frost’s long career. In addition to the poetry, Frost’s dramas and the more recently published notebooks will be considered in the analysis.

God and Allah in the works of Rudyard Kipling
John J. Salesses, Professor, English Department, Salve Regina University

As a young reporter who returned to India in 1882 while still a teenager, Rudyard Kipling became more and more interested in the native people and their culture and their religious practices and beliefs. In an article entitled “Ruddy’s Search for God: the Young Kipling and Religion” Charles Allen writes:  the young Kipling “wrote with growing sensitivity about Islam and Muslims”, and in a letter to his new young editor, Kay Robinson, Kipling reveals:   “I am deeply interested in the queer ways and works of the people of the land. I hunt and rummage among ‘em; knowing Lahore City—that wonderful, dirty, mysterious ant-hill—blind fold and wandering through it like Haroun Al-Raschid in search of strange things." Allen states: “Kipling in his twenties was a man who has turned his back on Christianity, but who has no time for atheism” (23). While Kipling may not be described as a religious man, he is far from being an atheist; religious beliefs and practices of a wide variety surrounded him in his life and work as a writer and reporter and are extensively included in his work.  

©Copyright by the Forum on Public Policy
All rights Reserved. Electronic edition published 2006