[“To Win a Place by Their Hearts’ Very Hearthstone”: Two Novels by the Sisters Brontë as Assessed by Virginia Woolf

Abstract

The article deals with the content and form of Virginia Woolf’s essay «”Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights”» (1916) which was included by the writer into her «The Common Reader» (1925). The author of the article analyses artistic peculiarities of Woolf’s essay and shows how much its originality is close to the writer who positioned herself as the writer opposed to old-fashioned novelistic art of the Victorian Age. One of the ideas of the article is to show that when Woolf sees real pieces of great art of which the novels under analysis are, she takes in no consideration their Victorian origin; thus the myth of total anti-Victorianism of Woolf is called into question. The author of the article asserts that the very choice of these two novels and high analytical level of assessment of these bright example of English prose definitely lead to better understanding of Woolf’s artistic world as a whole. Key words: Charlotte Brontё, Emily Brontё, Virginia Woolf, “Bloomsbury”, realism, modernism, English novel, the Victorian Age.