St. John le calviniste, ou l’émule de Gil-Martin

This article aims to show how far Hogg’s archetypal character, Gil-Martin, influenced Charlotte Brontë’s enigmatic character, St. John, who appears in chapters XXVI to XXXV and is mentioned again in the conclusion of Jane Eyre. Some unexpected words, like “glen”, in a greater Yorkshire area, operate...

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Main Author: Jean Berton
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Presses universitaires de Rennes 2009-08-01
Series:Revue LISA
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Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/lisa/833
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author Jean Berton
author_facet Jean Berton
author_sort Jean Berton
collection DOAJ
description This article aims to show how far Hogg’s archetypal character, Gil-Martin, influenced Charlotte Brontë’s enigmatic character, St. John, who appears in chapters XXVI to XXXV and is mentioned again in the conclusion of Jane Eyre. Some unexpected words, like “glen”, in a greater Yorkshire area, operate as keywords to a “deep context” study in a neo-contextualist approach. Even though St. John cannot be mistaken for a double of Gil-Martin, a fair number of details tend to prove that James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner deeply influenced Charlotte Brontë—both pride-driven St. John and Gil-Martin stand for demonic despotism. Yet, if Gil-Martin is a straightforward Gothic illustration of Satan, St. John is a reincarnation of a marble-cold Apollo in a dogma-trapped Calvinist. Brontë’s intention was not so much to denounce noxious excesses in religious beliefs as to set her heroine’s wise independence against nefarious male domination: whereas victimised Robert Wringhim is driven to despair and suicide, self-reliant Jane Eyre escapes from St. John’s grip. In both narratives relationships between men and women are shown as tragically warped by religious behavioural extravagance, but only the female character is granted a positive outcome to serve an optimistic view on life: Robert Wringhim is violently wrung out of the society of men and women, St. John Rivers, from “Marsh End”, blindly drifts away to his death in India, and airy Jane, of “Moor House”, wafts away to anchor to Edward Rochester, the sender of the airwave-born call.
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spelling doaj-art-8bc870ce9640472184025b136ce020d42025-01-06T09:02:08ZengPresses universitaires de RennesRevue LISA1762-61532009-08-017385110.4000/lisa.833St. John le calviniste, ou l’émule de Gil-MartinJean BertonThis article aims to show how far Hogg’s archetypal character, Gil-Martin, influenced Charlotte Brontë’s enigmatic character, St. John, who appears in chapters XXVI to XXXV and is mentioned again in the conclusion of Jane Eyre. Some unexpected words, like “glen”, in a greater Yorkshire area, operate as keywords to a “deep context” study in a neo-contextualist approach. Even though St. John cannot be mistaken for a double of Gil-Martin, a fair number of details tend to prove that James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner deeply influenced Charlotte Brontë—both pride-driven St. John and Gil-Martin stand for demonic despotism. Yet, if Gil-Martin is a straightforward Gothic illustration of Satan, St. John is a reincarnation of a marble-cold Apollo in a dogma-trapped Calvinist. Brontë’s intention was not so much to denounce noxious excesses in religious beliefs as to set her heroine’s wise independence against nefarious male domination: whereas victimised Robert Wringhim is driven to despair and suicide, self-reliant Jane Eyre escapes from St. John’s grip. In both narratives relationships between men and women are shown as tragically warped by religious behavioural extravagance, but only the female character is granted a positive outcome to serve an optimistic view on life: Robert Wringhim is violently wrung out of the society of men and women, St. John Rivers, from “Marsh End”, blindly drifts away to his death in India, and airy Jane, of “Moor House”, wafts away to anchor to Edward Rochester, the sender of the airwave-born call.https://journals.openedition.org/lisa/833St. John RiversGil-Martingothiquecalvinisme
spellingShingle Jean Berton
St. John le calviniste, ou l’émule de Gil-Martin
Revue LISA
St. John Rivers
Gil-Martin
gothique
calvinisme
title St. John le calviniste, ou l’émule de Gil-Martin
title_full St. John le calviniste, ou l’émule de Gil-Martin
title_fullStr St. John le calviniste, ou l’émule de Gil-Martin
title_full_unstemmed St. John le calviniste, ou l’émule de Gil-Martin
title_short St. John le calviniste, ou l’émule de Gil-Martin
title_sort st john le calviniste ou l emule de gil martin
topic St. John Rivers
Gil-Martin
gothique
calvinisme
url https://journals.openedition.org/lisa/833
work_keys_str_mv AT jeanberton stjohnlecalvinisteoulemuledegilmartin