Seattle University Law Library

A new addition to the law library entitled Law and the Brontës explores the legal issues raised in selected novels by the Brontë sisters. Here is an overview from the publisher: “It might be thought that the Brontë sisters did not write much about the law in their novels, certainly in comparison to contemporaries such as Dickens or Collins or Gaskell. But they did. Beneath the surface of the Brontë canon, the law is everywhere; from spousal abuse and child custody in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, to illegitimacy and inheritance in Wuthering Heights, to insanity and confinement in Jane Eyre, to broader questions of public governance in Shirley … Law and the Brontës represents a significant and highly original contribution to the study, not just of the Brontes and the mid-nineteenth century ‘woman’s novel’, but also the situation of women in nineteenth century English law and the debates which moved around its prospective reform.”