Class and Classrooms: Teaching Jane Eyre with Adele Grace and Celine
Date
2024-04-23
Authors
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Publisher
Victorian Review
Abstract
In an influential 2019 essay, Carolyn Betensky calls on teachers of Victorian fiction to address seriously the racism in these texts—not only the examples of it that are pervasive and central to the narratives but also “racist references” that are fleeting and seemingly offhand (723). “Casual racism” of this sort, she writes, “abounds in Victorian novels,” but this is no reason to treat it casually in our pedagogy (724). Especially for students of colour, who are subjected to being “treated as a racial other” in their daily lives, seeing “casual Victorian racism” accepted in the classroom “as merely routine without further discussion amounts here to an act of aggression” (736). At the same time, such a lack of attention signals to white students that merely noting the presence of historical racism is sufficient, without considering its relevance to their own lives and its continuing power in shaping current-day attitudes.
Description
This article was originally published in Victorian Review. The version of record is available at: https://doi.org/10.1353/vcr.2023.a925216. Copyright © 2024 Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada
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Citation
Stetz, Margaret D. "Class and Classrooms: Teaching Jane Eyre with Adele Grace and Celine." Victorian Review 49, no. 1 (2023): 40-43. https://doi.org/10.1353/vcr.2023.a925216.