Crianças vulneráveis: infâncias e precariedades em Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights e Agnes Grey

Abstract

This dissertation proposes to investigate the different childhoods portrayed in the works Agnes Grey (1847), by Anne Brontë (1820-1849), Jane Eyre (1847), by Charlotte Brontë, and Wuthering Heights (1847), by Emily Brontë (1818-1848). These childhoods are necessarily plural since there is no single type of Victorian childhood, but rather various manifestations of the experiences of children who lived during this period in different situations of infantilization (FROST, 2008). Given that the Haworth sisters witnessed firsthand the oppressions brought about by the Industrial Revolution and, before that, the complications of capitalist agriculture (EAGLETON, 2005a; WILLIAMS, 2011), the intersections between the historical context in which they lived and the fictional creation of their child characters contribute to a more nuanced perception of the respective precariousness (BUTLER, 2019) at stake. Thus, it is proposed that the act of narrating such childhoods, marking them materially with their distinct precariousness (BUTLER, 2019), exposes a system that needs to exploit the vulnerable in order to grow