How Lucy Snowe Became an Amnesiac

Author: May, Leila S.¹

Source: Bronte Studies, Volume 34, Number 3, November 2009 , pp. 220-233(14)

Publisher: Maney Publishing

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Abstract:

This essay is an attempt to refute the thesis of Nicholas Dames's book of 2001, Amnesiac Selves: Nostalgia, Forgetting, and British Fiction, 1810-1870, as it applies to Charlotte Brontë's Villette. Dames sees Lucy Snowe, the long-suffering narrator of the novel, as the victim — or the perpetrator — of an extreme case of amnesia that constitutes 'the death of memory'. I argue that Dames's thesis involves a misreading of the role of memory in Charlotte Brontë's novel, a novel that, perhaps more than any other Victorian novel, is about long-term memory in all its detail and painfulness. I further argue that Dames's error is partially motivated by an over-emphasis on his part of the role of phrenology in Villette.

Keywords: CHARLOTTE BRONTE; NICHOLAS DAMES; AMNESIA; MEMORY; PHRENOLOGY

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1179/147489309X12470507051904

Affiliations: 1: Department of English, NC State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-8105, USA

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