Representations of power and transgression: The idea of Byron and the byronic character in the poetry of the Brontës

Abstract

In order to question and explore the complex power relations between man and woman in early Victorian England, the two eldest Brontë sisters seem to use several strategies of representation and dramatisation of political and sexual transgression in their respective poetry. While Charlotte chooses primarily a male perspective to portray female disempowerment in her poems, in Emily’s work a female perspective of male disempowerment predominates; nevertheless, these perspectives may often shift and cross-dress according to each author’s individual development and her corresponding poetic fiction. I will argue that these methods of representation derived for the most part from the classic poetic traditions of the image of male and female ‘abandonment’ inaugurated by Sappho, but also from the overwhelming myth of personality that the character of Byron elicited through his fictionalised creations (both male and female), and his own ambivalent and controversial reputation as a poet and a man.