Power and Starvation in the Novels and Lives of Emily and Charlotte Bro

federal agency and Starvation in the Novels and Lives of Emily and Charlotte Bronte In the fictional worlds of Charlotte and Emily Bront, one of the few shipway that women who differentwise pose very little say in their lives ar able to express dissatis concomitantion is through self-starvation and illness. It is noteworthy that in their own lives the Bronte sisters exhibited many a(prenominal) eccentric habits in regards to consume, and both Charlotte and (especially) Emily engaged in self-starvation similar to the strategies apply by the characters in their novels. Anorexia is a general term that describes the decline of liking or aversion to food, though it is most commonly used to think of to self-starvation. Anorexia was not new during the time of the Bronts. Although eating disorders are often approximation of as being a modern day phenomenon, it is in fact only widespread diagnosis that is a recent occurrence. Those who had no other way of life to wield power, other than in terms of individual self-control, have long used starvation and fasting as a means of exerting control over an environment in which they felt powerless. In his book, holy place Anorexia, Rudolph Bell sites a case of anorexia in a 20 social class old girl from as early as 1686 (3). In fact, eating disorders were fairly common in the time leading up to the Bronts era, although the motivations behind(predicate) them were often quite dissimilar. Today, young women are often driven to lust themselves because, they must conform to an impossible, media-driven standard of beauty which holds that you can never be too thin. (Orenstein 94) In the 18th and 19th century, however, thinness was not an rarefied to strive towards, and the psychology behind fasting and starvation was oftentimes more(prenominal) complica... ... Bemporad, Jules R. The Psychoanalytic Approach to psychosomatics and Eating Disorders The Prehistory of Anorexia Nervosa. New York The Newsletter of the Ps ychosomatic Discussion Group of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Sept., 1997. Bell, Rudolph M., and William N. Davis. Holy Anorexia. boodle University of Chicago Press, 1987. Frank, Katherine. A Chainless Soul A Life of Emily Bront. Boston Houghton Mifflin Co., 1990. Gordan, Lyndall. Charlotte Bront A perfervid Life. New York W.W. Norton and Co., 1994. Orenstein, Peggy. Schoolgirls Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap. New York Anchor Books, 1995. Terris, Susan. Nells Quilt. New York Sunburst, 1996. Vine, Steven. Bronte, Emily Jane. visit unknown. University of Swansea. 30 March 2002. http//www.litencyc.com/