Power and Starvation in the Novels and Lives of Emily and Charlotte Bro

Power and Starvation in the Novels and Lives of Emily and Charlotte Bronte In the fabricated worlds of Charlotte and Emily Bront, one of the few ways that women who otherwise have very midget say in their lives ar able to express dissatisfaction is through self-starvation and illness. It is worthy that in their own lives the Bronte sisters exhibited many eccentric habits in regards to take in, and both Charlotte and (especially) Emily engaged in self-starvation similar to the strategies used by the characters in their novels. Anorexia is a universal term that describes the decline of appetite or aversion to food, though it is intimately commonly used to refer to self-starvation. Anorexia was not new during the cartridge holder of the Bronts. Although eating disorders are often thought of as being a fresh day phenomenon, it is in fact only widespread diagnosis that is a recent occurrence. Those who had no other means to wield power, other than in terms of individual self -control, have long used starvation and sobriety as a means of exerting control over an environment in which they felt powerless. In his book, Holy Anorexia, Rudolph Bell sites a case of anorexia in a 20 year old girl from as earlyish as 1686 (3). In fact, eating disorders were fairly common in the time leading up to the Bronts era, although the motivations behind them were often quite dissimilar. Today, young women are often driven to starve themselves because, they must conform to an impossible, media-driven standard of dish aerial which holds that you can never be too thin. (Orenstein 94) In the 18th and nineteenth century, however, thinness was not an ideal to strive towards, and the psychology behind abstemiousness and starvation was oftentimes more complica... ... Bemporad, Jules R. The psychoanalytic Approach to Psychosomatics and Eating Disorders The prehistoric culture of Anorexia Nervosa. newfound York The Newsletter of the Psychosomatic Discussion Group of the Am erican Psychoanalytic Association, Sept., 1997. Bell, Rudolph M., and William N. Davis. Holy Anorexia. Chicago University of Chicago Press, 1987. Frank, Katherine. A Chainless Soul A bread and butter of Emily Bront. Boston Houghton Mifflin Co., 1990. Gordan, Lyndall. Charlotte Bront A Passionate Life. New York W.W. Norton and Co., 1994. Orenstein, Peggy. Schoolgirls Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap. New York Anchor Books, 1995. Terris, Susan. Nells Quilt. New York Sunburst, 1996. Vine, Steven. Bronte, Emily Jane. Date unknown. University of Swansea. 30 March 2002. http//www.litencyc.com/