Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Thomas, Sue

Titel

Reading Polly Teale's Dog Women in After Mrs Rochester and Brontë

Ist Teil von

• English studies, 2020-11, Vol.101 (8), p.943-960

Ort / Verlag

Lisse: Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Taylor & Francis Journals Complete

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Playwright and director Polly Teale's biodramas After Mrs Rochester (2003) and Brontë (2005) boldly feature dog women to embody the psychological shadows of Jean Rhys and Charlotte Brontë respectively. In developing the figures Teale draws inspiration most explicitly from artist Dame Paula Rego's Dog Woman series (1994) and Charlotte Brontë's blurring of the species boundary human/animal in her representation of Bertha Mason Rochester in Jane Eyre (1847). The intersections between the aesthetics of Teale and Rego provide, I show, a critical frame within which to read their dog women. To weigh Teale's treatment of her biographical subjects, intimacy and the relation between sexuality and writing I also draw out the scope of her engagement with canine images in Rhys's fiction and a letter Brontë wrote to Constantin Héger.