SOURCE: “The Other Case: Gender and Narration in Charlotte Brontë's The Professor.” In Papers on Language and Literature, Vol. 30, No. 4, Fall, 1994, pp. 323-45.

In the following essay, Federico discusses Brontë's use of a male narrator in The Professor.

Male novelists who use female narrators have been praised for their insights into “feminine psychology,” yet we seldom expect women writers to represent masculinity from a male point of view. In her recent work on feminism and narratology, Susan Lanser considers “the social properties and political implications of narrative voice,” claiming that “female voice”—the grammatical gender of the narrator—“is a site of ideological tension made visible in textual practice” (4-5). This tension is conspicuous in novels published in the nineteenth century: a strict literary double-standard reflects a cultural double-standard that devalues feminine discourse in the public sphere. Like everything else, narrative voice corresponds to the cultural...