Bluebeard Gothic: Jane Eyre and Its Progeny (review)

Gothic: Eyre and Its Progeny. By Heta Pyrhonen. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010. 277 pp. Heta Pyrhonen's Gothic: Eyre and Its Progeny offers an extremely intelligent understanding of functions and processes of literary adaptation. Building upon work of scholars such as Anne Williams and Michelle Masse, Pyrhonen points out that Bluebeard, with its motifs of threatening patriarch and mysterious house that conceals a terrible secret, embodies central elements of Gothic. Charlotte Bronte's Eyre, a selfconsciously narrative, expands upon story by granting fairy-tale characters complex psychological motivations and justifications. While many scholars have identified as a key intertext within Eyre, only Sandra Gilbert and Maria Tatar (2004) have treated subject at any length. Pyrhonen has expanded admirably upon Gilbert and Tatar's arguments, offering not just a nuanced reading of Eyre as a reworking of but also a stellar examination of how Eyre itself has been reworked by writers such as Jean Rhys, Jeanette Winterson, and Angela Carter. Pyrhonen identifies category of what she calls Bluebeard Gothic - narratives that center on question of a young woman's marriage and secrets of house and of her husband (6). In her estimation this category consists of texts that respond both to itself and to Eyre's specific adaptation of Bluebeard; these works include Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, Winterson's Oranges Are Not Only Fruit, and Carter's Bloody Chamber and Fall River Axe Murders, among many others. In tradition of much scholarship of Gothic, Pyrhonen uses lens of psychoanalysis to illuminate the intimate link between physical and mental space in topography of Gothic (22). The results are often fascinating, such as her application of psychoanalytic theories of hysteria - physical embodiment of mental distress - to identify key similarities between and Rochester. However, occasionally this serves to undermine her arguments. The subtitle of book is Jane Eyre and Its Progeny, to underscore Pyrhonen's reading of familial relationship between Eyre and adaptations; however, though she cites Linda Hutcheon's dictum that previous does not equal authoritative (10), her insistence on progeny metaphor, and its psychoanalytic implications, does place texts in a hierarchical relationship. But this is a relatively minor quibble, especially since she focuses upon how writers adapted both and Eyre as a means of critiquing ideological assumptions of those narratives. Chapter 1 is an extended discussion of Eyre as a rewriting of Bluebeard, with special focus upon psychic similarities between Rochester and Jane, as both are haunted by a red room. This focus on psychic distress is carried through in chapter 2, which explores literary responses to Eyre through theory. Pyrhonen argues that later writers have served as witnesses to Jane's narrative of trauma (67); this is figured not just as that of individuals but also, in postcolonial responses such as Wide Sargasso Sea, as that of entire cultures. Chapter 3 demonstrates that romantic iterations of Bluebeard Gothic highlight violence inherent in patriarchal romance, thus exposing these narratives that are so often presented as normal to be perverse. Thoughtful readings of Daphne du Maurier's supposed romance Rebecca, Diane Setterfield's densely intertextual The Thirteenth Tale, and D.M. Thomas's dark sequel to Eyre, Charlotte, enable Pyrhonen to articulate how these authors examine discourses of perverse, including sadism, masochism, and incest, as part of a critique of Gothic. Chapter 4 analyzes religious issues surrounding and Eyre, particularly discourses of obethence and sacrifice. …

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