‘The Fiery Imagination’: Charlotte Brontë, theArabian Nightsand Byron’s Turkish Tales

Abstract

Although the influence of the Arabian Nights on Charlotte Brontë's imaginative and artistic development is well known, this influence is generally considered in relation to her earlier writings. This study explores how references to the Nights in Charlotte Brontë's adult fiction function complexly as symbols of both an imaginative liberation that takes on a heightened importance for women within their confined sphere and, conversely, of the sexual danger (and allure) with which Charlotte Brontë associates the Orient through Byron's Turkish Tales. As for many contemporary writers, Charlotte Brontë's life-long struggle with the danger and allure of imagination itself -the godlike act of artistic creation -is transposed on to an Orientalist fantasy beyond the borders of English identity.

‘He is rather peculiar, perhaps’: Reading Mr Rochester’s Coarseness Queerly

“…17 Existing readings of Jane Eyre have also acknowledged Byronic echoes in the text, with Tanya Llewellyn, for example, persuasively arguing that Brontë's invocation of the Orient was inspired by Byron's 'Turkish tales' that privilege sexual diversity. 18 Given Brontë's consuming familiarity with the poet's life and work, it is conceivable that she acquired wider sexual knowledge from Byron's oeuvre, a notion that challenges the stubborn image of Charlotte as saintly or prudish. 19 While acknowledging the limitations of my own supposition here, it is apt that in her review of Jane Eyre, Rigby describes Rochester as a 'a bachelor addicted to travelling', for in these words, parallels to Byron's queer lifestyle can be traced in Brontë's portrayal of Rochester's life as a 'seducer' (R, p. 116; JE, p. 160 emphasis mine).…”