Alien female prose: Ch. Bront"e read by Russians

The article deals with early Russian translations of Ch. Brontë’s novel “Jane Eyre”, their specificity and reception in Russian culture. The reception is influenced by the affiliation of the novel to the English literary tradition and to the female prose. Critical reception of English and Russian women’s prose is analyzed in an article in a comparative aspect. The English novel tradition is evaluated by Russian critics as undoubtedly significant and having an advantage over the French one, since does not demonstrate a penchant for romantic fiction. It is important that the critics ignore a fantastic episode in “Jane Eyre”. Ch. Brontë’s novel is compared in the article with the novel by A.Ya. Marchenko “Governess” in the aspect of the subject, the image of the protagonist and its belonging to female prose. According to the author, the contemporaries saw no reason for comparing the two novels (formal reasons for this being substantial), since in the English novel one can see the features of romanticism, and realism, and even of the “natural school”, and in the Russian one a late romantic (epigoneromantic) model can be traced. Other Russian writers are also drawn to the comparison, A.Ya. Panaeva in particular. The author comes to the conclusion that the difference in the perception of one’s own and alien female prose is connected with a benevolent attitude towards English literature (unlike French one) and with a foreign status, thanks to which English prose, unlike Russian, is not perceived as a secondary phenomenon.