Structural Oppression and Self-Alienation: The Construction and Dissolution of Female Self-Identity in Jane Eyre, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Mrs. Dalloway 

Xiaoyan Dong

The Yeats Journal of Korea (한국 예이츠 저널) Vol.79 (2026.04) pp.33-50

This paper examines Jane Eyre, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Mrs. Dalloway as primary texts for a comparative study of female identity under structural oppression. Situating each heroine within her distinct historical context—Victorian England, the mid-twentieth-century American South, and early twentieth-century Britain—the analysis traces how Jane Eyre, Blanche DuBois, and Clarissa Dalloway navigate the intersecting pressures of social institutions, economic dependency, and family structures. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s theory of disciplinary power and Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity, the study identifies three distinct modes through which patriarchal power operates: visible coercion, internalized discipline, and total erasure. It then examines the forms of self-alienation these modes produce and the corresponding strategies of resistance each woman develops within her structural constraints. By bringing these three figures into sustained parallel analysis, female identity under patriarchy emerges not as a single story of victimhood but as a differentiated spectrum of entrapment and agency, yielding a more precise understanding of how women negotiate and reconstruct selfhood under systemic oppression.

   

Located in Thornton, its official opening was marked by a visit from HM Queen Camilla as part of a Royal Visit.

During her time at the house, Her Majesty met with committee members and volunteers, signed the guestbook, and unveiled a commemorative plaque.

In celebration of the anniversary, a new exhibition will open on Friday, May 15, featuring a framed piece of wallpaper dating back to 1890 discovered during the property’s restoration.

Anna Gibson, general manager, said: "We have had the most incredible first year at the Brontë Birthplace and have invited people from across the world to see this very special place.

"From a forgotten house on a village street, it has now become an internationally renowned literary centre protecting the Brontës’ legacy and inspiring generations to come."

The birthplace has attracted national and international media attention over the past year, with features in The Times, The Telegraph, and on BBC One’s The One Show.

A range of events have also taken place, including a standout performance by internationally acclaimed musician Guiem Soldevila and his group, who set 12 Brontë poems to music.

The house has hosted two artists in residence: Chicago-born Garrett Wild and digital artist Sam Sharp.

Committee member Chris Raine also delivered a talk about the Brontë Birthplace in Japan.

Other notable speakers have included Ann Dinsdale, principal curator at the Brontë Parsonage; author Sharon Wright; writer and illustrator Dr Eleanor Houghton; Helen MacEwan of the Brussels Brontë Group; Dr Michael O’Dowd from the Banagher Brontë Group; and storyteller Irene Lofthouse.

Literary fans have had the chance to own a piece of history, with original beams from the house offered for sale.

The sale is helping to boost income for the house.

Siblings Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne Brontë were all born at the house on Market Street.

The building was acquired through the combined support of more than 700 individual investors and funding from Bradford City of Culture 2025, the Community Ownership Fund, the National Lottery Heritage Fund, and the Rural England Prosperity Fund.

It is now managed by Brontë Birthplace Limited, a Community Benefit Society. (Harry Williams)

Ever since it landed on HBO Max, Margot Robbie's newest R-Rated hit has been a streaming sensation. However, as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end, and this past weekend, the film fell victim to a new post-apocalyptic arrival that quickly knocked Robbie's spicy smash down a peg. Today, it's down another rung on the ladder thanks to another movie that ties directly into HBO Max's latest success.

Taking in $242 million at the box office earlier this year, Robbie's Wuthering Heights is a loose adaptation of Emily Brontë's 1847 novel of the same name. Also starring Jacob Elordi, the film follows the intense and destructive bond between Catherine Earnshaw and the orphaned Heathcliff. Featuring way more heat than Brontë ever could have imagined, the film was a big hit with audiences, earning a 76% on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics were more unforgiving of the darker interpretation of the classic story, rating it just 57%.

Added to HBO Max on May 1, Wuthering Heights found continued success on streaming following its box office run. The Gothic romance held the #1 spot in the Top 10 in the United States for nearly two weeks, and still sits in first place on the global charts. That being said, its stranglehold on the North American list finally came to an end this past weekend thanks to none other than Gerard Butler. (James Melzer)

The track, which opens Charli XCX's Wuthering Heights album, pulses with a sense of growing dread, building from isolated, creaking strings to a blazing crescendo. (A "Wall of Sound," if you will.) To listen to it is to feel the same sense of confinement and madness present in Emily Brontë's novel. While I had my worries about Emerald Fennell's "Wuthering Heights" going into the theater, I was still excited to see how she deployed "House."

Mere minutes into the movie, I got my answer, and I was underwhelmed.

"House" plays during the opening minutes of "Wuthering Heights," in which young Cathy and Nelly (Charlotte Mellington and Vy Nguyen) attend a frenzied hanging, then tear across the moors back to Wuthering Heights. The song fades as we get our first glimpse of the film's titular estate, a darkened blot against hulking rock crags.

The song remains a banger, especially as the film version incorporates extra orchestrations by Anthony Willis. But while the song establishes a fittingly bleak tone for the rest of the film, its placement is odd. Why is this extremely claustrophobic track being used over a shot of Cathy and Nelly running with wild abandon across the vast moors? Why does this introspective, harrowing song serve as the soundtrack to a rowdy crowd scene? The visuals and song are separately entrancing, but they do not mesh. There's no sense of creeping dread or isolation. It's just Fennell throwing the song's climax at us in the hopes of overloading our senses. Unfortunately, in doing so, Charli XCX and Cale's refrain of "I think I'm gonna die in this house" loses its potency.

It's not like Fennell couldn't have used "House" anywhere else. Cathy worries about wasting away in Wuthering Heights with her ruined father (Martin Clunes) before she meets Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif). Then, once at Thrushcross Grange, she realizes she's in a gilded prison. Not to be too literal, but if you have a song named "House," maybe tie it to a character's relationship to one of the film's two central houses!

(After all, if my new husband painted my room the exact color of my face, mole and all, my reaction would absolutely be, "I think I'm gonna die in this house.")

While Fennell doesn't use "House" to its highest potential, at least TikTok is on the case. The song has become a meme online, used to soundtrack moments of despair or unsettling images. (Belen Edwards)

   

An alert for tomorrow, May 13 in Keighley:

Keighley and District Local History Society presents

Behind the Scenes at the Brontë Parsonage Museum

May 13, 2026 @ 7:15 pm – 8:45 pm

Keighley Civic Centre

May’s History Society meeting is on Wednesday 13th May 2026. It will include a talk from Brontë Parsonage Museum’s Principal Curator, Ann Dinsdale. Ann lectures and writes on aspects of the Brontës’ lives and social conditions in mid-nineteenth century Haworth. But on this occasion, her talk will focus on how the museum operates – a subject she is well-versed to talk on, having been working at the museum for over twenty years.

The meeting will take place upstairs in the Civic Centre, on North Street. Doors open at 7.15pm and the meeting will start just before 7.30pm. Entry is free to History Society members, or £3.50 for anyone else who wants to just come along (booking is not required). Members can also choose to join the meeting via Zoom if they wish.

   

Wuthering Heights may be a love it/hate it type of movie considering all its polarizing opinions, but no matter what you think about it, one thing is pretty undeniable. It’s got style, and it’s got vision. After having a blast watching it in a theater packed with women earlier this year, I revisited it on streaming with an HBO Max subscription, and one thing I noticed even more this time is how Cathy’s fits stay true to one color palette the whole time, and I think it’s worth diving into.

Of course, I couldn’t take my eyes off of all of Cathy’s clothes going full bodice core during both viewings, but this time all the coordination was impossible to look away from. [...]

So, what’s up with these particular colors? While I would have theorized it would have something to do with red being the shade associated with passion and desire, when CinemaBlend spoke to writer/director Emerald Fennell, she had some interesting thoughts about why she dressed Margot Robbie in the same palette throughout. In her words:

"When it comes to the color palette of the clothes, for example, it made sense that Cathy makes an imprint on the world that she's in. Cathy kind of like burns an image onto any space. And so, we wanted to make sure that her clothes were very graphic. So they're black, white, red and occasionally like a silver, because she's always sort of an indelible shape."

Now this is interesting. Cathy needed to “burn” through every moment on screen. During the filmmaker’s chat with us, she also spoke about how the expression of a character’s personality through something like clothing is very specific to Gothic cinema. The genre often evokes intensity that we wouldn’t see in other movies, so the lavish use of red is all part of it. You can check out her full thoughts below:

As she says, it’s not just about the costumes. It was also through the textures she decided to use throughout the sets. I know I’ll never forget this movie’s skin wall, which was actually fashioned out of actual scans of Robbie’s own skin to represent what it feels like for Cathy to be a “collector’s item” to her husband once she gets married.

Fennell’s explanation of the Gothic genre also helps make sense of some of the objects in the movie being exaggerated sizes or how long we have to wait for Cathy and Heathcliff to kiss. Everything is more dramatic and hyperbolic than you’d expect from other movies.

I don’t know about you, but I really appreciate Emerald Fennell’s eye for making her films very distinct, and Wuthering Heights knocks it out of the park in that respect. (Sarah El-Mahmoud)