When I previously posted about Christmas cake it was in relation to Jane Eyre. In Charlotte Bronte’s 1847 novel, Jane’s making of a Christmas cake for her newly discovered family, the Rivers, demonstrates both her new wealth and the fact she has found her identity and at last feels she belongs somewhere. Continue reading “Christmas Cake 2020”
Tag: Charlotte Bronte
The State of the Nation novel: part one
As well as telling great stories about complex characters, many novels are interested in the social questions and political changes of their time. As in the title of Anthony Trollope’s highly-acclaimed 1875 novel, such writers explore The Way We Live Now. Continue reading “The State of the Nation novel: part one”
Feeding children
Back in 2015 I wrote a post – The Hungry Child – about Jane Eyre. In that novel, published in 1847, Charlotte Bronte describes in heartfelt terms the hunger that Jane and her fellow pupils experience at the harsh boarding school Lowood.
More than 170 years later and, depressingly, children are still going hungry. Continue reading “Feeding children”
Metafiction and intertextuality
Metafiction – fiction about fiction – sometimes also referred to as ‘self-conscious fiction’, is usually associated with the postmodern movement in literature (c. 1950s onwards). In metafiction the writer takes delight in alluding to the fictional nature of the work the reader is reading and to their own role as writer or compiler of that work. Continue reading “Metafiction and intertextuality”