Imitation and Protest: Two Case Studies of Depictions of Marriage in Anne Brontë and Olive Schreiner

Abstract: Literature has long been an effective vehicle for conveying women’s morals and opinions when they have otherwise been ignored and supressed. Fifty years apart, Anne Brontë and Olive Schreiner wrote fiction critical of different aspects of marriage with noticeably different results and conclusions. This project aims to investigate the basis for these differences by using Elaine Showalter’s idea of a women’s literary history as divided into three separate eras which come with their own distinct relationship to the dominant culture. In this essay, I analyse and account for Brontë’s and Schreiner’s moral arguments in light of the material, intellectual, and social changes that took place in the time period between them. I also critically evaluate whether Brontë’s and Schreiner’s work are compatible with Showalter’s theory of the three eras, which I conclude that they indeed are.