Delve: Readers' Seminars with Literary Arts: Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë: Pride & Prejudice and Jane Eyre October 22, 2007

In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf discusses the women writers who preceded her, with particular attention to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Woolf admires Austen but repeatedly picks at Bronte, who Woolf believes will never realize her potential as a writer for her inability to step outside gender politics and let her characters become who they want to be. In this seminar, we will read the two novels through the lenses of craft and historical milieu, and we will evaluate Woolf’s ideas for ourselves. Pertinent excerpts from Woolf’s book will be provided.

Guide: Susan McKee Reese holds an M.A. in English from Portland State University and an M.F.A. in Writing from Pacific University. A published poet, she specializes in Irish and British literature and is a member of the English department at Portland State University.

Recommended editions:
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: A Norton Critical Edition, Third Edition, edited by Donald Gray (2001), ISBN 0-393-97604-1
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: Oxford World’s Classics, edited by Margaret Smith (2000), ISBN 0-19-283965-9

If you already own a different edition of the text, you are welcome to use it.

This event requires tickets through Literary Arts. Visit their box office for more information.