Jane Eyre's Fairytale Legacy at Home and Abroad

Exploring the literary microcosm inspired by Brontë's debut novel, Jane Eyre's Fairytale Legacy at Home and Abroad focuses on the nationalistic stakes of the mythic and fairytale paradigms that were incorporated into the heroic female bildungsroman tradition. Jane Eyre, Abigail Heiniger argues, is a heroic changeling indebted to the regional, pre-Victorian fairy lore Charlotte Brontë heard and read in Haworth, an influence that Brontë repudiates in her last novel, Villette. While this heroic figure inspired a range of female writers on both sides of the Atlantic, Heiniger suggests that the regional aspects of the changeling were especially attractive to North American writers such as Susan Warner and L.M. Montgomery who responded to Jane Eyre as part of the Cinderella tradition. Heiniger contrasts the reactions of these white women writers with that of Hannah Crafts, whose Jane Eyre-influenced The Bondwoman's Narrative rejects the Cinderella model. Instead, Heiniger shows, Crafts creates a heroic female bildungsroman that critiques fairytale narratives from the viewpoint of the obscure, oppressed workers who remain forever outside the tales of wonder produced for middle-class consumption. Heiniger concludes by demonstrating how Brontë's middle-class American readers projected the self-rise ethic onto Jane Eyre, miring the novel in nineteenth-century narratives of American identity formation.

"Challenging the American reception of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre as a version of Cinderella," Abigail Heiniger provides a fascinating analysis of the persistence of an interpretive tradition that for cultural and ideological reasons remains uncontested." - Heta Pyrhönen, University of Helsinki, Finland“Jane Eyre, as Abigail Heiniger shows, is a perfect case for study and Jane Eyre's Fairytale Legacy at Home and Abroad an excellent starting point to explore it” - Brontë Blogspot, "Highly recommended"- S. A. Parker, Hiram College, CHOICE"Abigail Heiniger’s monograph is an interesting, worthwhile addition to previous scholarship on the fairy-tale elements in Jane Eyre [...] Heiniger presents us with two fascinating arguments: that Brontë incorporated pre-Victorian fairy lore to create a changeling heroine in Jane Eyre, and that a distinctively American Cinderella rise tale became central to the female bildungsroman on this continent."- Theodora Goss, Boston University, Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies

Abigail Heiniger is Assistant Professor of English at Bluefield College, Virginia, USA.