These were islands known for their apple trees that Gemma spotted as she took off from the Glasgow airport.
ENGL 628 Jane Eyre Neo-Victorian Appropriations Dashboard
Description
Jane Eyre: An Autobiography (1847) is a seminal text in the Western feminist literature canon, published fifty-five years after Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and a year before the Seneca Falls convention launched the feminist movement in Western culture. Scores of authors, directors, and digital producers have attempted not just to adapt but to appropriate, revise, and modernize Charlotte Bronte’s most famous novel. Antonija Primorac contends that the current vogue of neo-Victorianism is “a powerful trend in contemporary Anglophone media” pointing to the “continuous production of adaptations and appropriations of Victorian literature and culture.” In order to be considered neo-Victorian, Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn posit that “texts (literary, filmic, audio / visual) must in some respect be self-consciously engaged with the act of (re)interpretation, (re)discovery and (re)vision concerning the Victorians” (emphasis in original). In this class, we will explore the creative and rhetorical choices twentieth- and twenty-first-century authors have made when appropriating, revising, and modernizing Jane Eyre’s narrative, paying particular attention to gender ideology in the Victorian era and in more recent times. In this course, we will also leverage the new media capabilities of the COVE (Central Online Victorian Educator) web site in order to examine more deeply the impact of multimodal writing and digital technology on literary studies in the twenty-first century.
Individual Entries
An Icelandic mountain that Jules Verne wrote about in Journey to the Center of the Earth. Gemma remembered it being mentioned by Berglind when she was waiting for the airplane that was to take her back to Scotland.
An inlet where Gemma's aunt told Charles about her being pregnant.
Gemma Hardy p.440
Gemma references Maes Howe in her conversation with Mr. Sinclair when on the airplane returning to Scotland. I couldn’t find a previous reference to it so I think she used it as a metaphor to symbolize all the hard work she had put in to take the exams at university.
Maes Howe is a Neolithic chambered cairn and passage grave situated on Mainland Orkney, Scotland. It was probably built around 2800 BC. In the archaeology of Scotland, it gives its name to the Maeshowe type of chambered cairn, which is limited to Orkney. Maeshowe is a significant example of Neolithic craftsmanship and monumental...
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Gemma Hardy p. 386
Gemma uses the term “bangers and mash” to describe the meal she, Marian, and Robin had after she returned from the village escorted by Archie. Bangers and mash, also known as sausages and mash, is a traditional dish of Great Britain comprising sausages served with mashed potatoes. It may consist of one of a variety of flavored sausages made of pork, lamb, or beef. The dish is sometimes served with onion gravy, fried onions, or peas. The term was in use at least as far back as 1919. The term "bangers" is attributed to the fact that sausages made during World War I, when there were meat shortages, were made with such a high-water content that they were more liable to pop under high heat when cooked. The contraction of "mashed potato" to "mash" was common among the upper-middle and upper classes in Britain.
Gemma Hardy p. 337
On this page, Gemma thinks of this word when she begins to understand the relationship between Hannah and Pauline. Archie explains the status quo of lesbianism to Gemma and provides an accurate account. Homosexuality among men was illegal in Scotland until 1980. Same-sex contact between women had never been targeted in law and was not illegal. Scottish society just chose to believe lassies did not do that kind of thing. Queen Victoria insisted it wasn’t possible between women. When the Sexual Offences Act was granted royal assent on 27 July 1967 it applied to England and Wales only, Scotland, along with Northern Ireland, was excluded. England and Wales can now mark 50 years since the historic reforms which partially decriminalized homosexuality between two consenting men in private over 21 years of age. But Scotland took 13 years to adopt the same legislation into Scots Law.
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Gemma Hardy p. 323
Marian uses this term when describing a disaster that buried children alive in the village of Aberfan. She instructs Jean (Gemma) to shield Robin from hearing about the disaster.
The Aberfan disaster was a catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip in the Welsh village of Aberfan, near Merthyr Tydfil, on 21 October 1966, killing 116 children and 28 adults. A colliery tip is a pile built of accumulated spoil/waste material removed during mining It was caused by a build-up of water in the accumulated rock and shale, which suddenly started to slide downhill in the form of slurry.
Over 40,000 cubic meters of debris covered the village in minutes, and the classrooms at Pantglas Junior School were immediately inundated, with young children and teachers dying from impact or suffocation. Many noted the poignancy of the situation: if the disaster had struck a few minutes earlier, the children would not...
moreGemma Hardy p. 309
Hannah speaks about this site to Jean (Gemma) when she is convalescing in their cottage. She tells Jean they will walk up there when she feels better. The Falls of Moness were a series of waterfalls on the Moness Burn in the Birks of Aberfeldy (Birches of Aberfeldy), which was also made famous in a poem/song by Scottish poet Robert Burns.‘The Birks of Aberfeldy" is the song lyric written for a pre-existing melody in 1787 by Robert Burns. He was inspired to write it by the Falls of Moness and the birch trees of...
moreGemma Hardy p. 358
In a public park overlooking Wade's Bridge and the River Tay in Aberfeldy, Perthshire stands a striking memorial to the soldiers of the Black Watch Regiment (the Royal Highlanders). The monument is in the form of a massively tall cairn topped by a statue of a soldier wearing the original Black Watch Regimental uniform. Though the statue represents all members of the regiment, it is, in fact, a depiction of Private Farquhar Shaw. Private Shaw was one of three men executed for desertion in 1743. The Black Watch was ordered to march south from Scotland to London. That was odd, for the regiment normally served in Scotland. When they reached London a rumor spread that they were to be transported to the American colonies, which was a method used by Parliament to disperse...
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