Keywords
displacement
linguistic representation
psychological estrangement
spatial imagery
narrative perspective
identity
Lucy Snowe
Villette
How to Cite
Abstract
This article investigates the linguistic representation of alienation and displacement in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, with particular attention to the ways in which language reflects psychological estrangement, social detachment, and the instability of belonging. The study examines lexical choices, figurative expressions, syntactic patterns, spatial imagery, and shifts in narrative perspective as interconnected mechanisms through which Lucy Snowe’s experience of emotional and cultural dislocation is articulated. Brontë’s narrative strategies transform displacement into a complex psychological and discursive phenomenon, revealing the protagonist’s continuous negotiation between isolation, identity, memory, and the desire for belonging.References
1. Brontë, Ch. Villette. London: Smith, Elder Co., 1853.
2. Gilbert, S. M., Gubar, S. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979.
3. Showalter, E. A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977.
4. Cohn, D. Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978.
5. Genette, G. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980.
6. Leech, G. N., Short, M. H. Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose. 2nd ed. Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2007.
7. Simpson, P. Stylistics: A Resource Book for Students. London: Routledge, 2004.
8. Toolan, M. Language in Literature: An Introduction to Stylistics. London: Arnold, 1998.
9. Lodge, D. Consciousness and the Novel: Connected Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.
10. Kristeva, J. Strangers to Ourselves. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.
11. Said, E. W. Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.