Faculty Remarks:
I feel fortunate to have been chosen to supervise Emily Fechner’s 2-semester capstone project on what turned out to be her favorite novel of all time as well as my own, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Over the summer and during the fall of 2019, back when normal was actually normal, Emily read everything I threw at her by way of demonstrating how, during the 1840’s, a new wage-labor system was disrupting many long established English ways of living—and why a woman without an even temper, good looks, family ties, or wealth was especially imperiled by these changes. By rethinking Brontë’s novel within those historical parameters, Emily understood and argued with remarkable clarity that what allowed this particular heroine to survive in her own time and still dazzle readers a century and a half later is Jane Eyre’s literacy. In a remarkably clear and well-informed senior essay, she argues that Jane’s literary education enables her to imagine alternative modes of existence, both good and bad, setting the standard for a heroine who insists on setting her own standard. Emily Fechner is exactly such a heroine in my book. She brought such joy and intellectual energy to an individual project that all I had to do was guide it toward new sources and examples. What are these if not the qualities of success in any field of endeavor, which I know will certainly be hers.
– Nancy Armstrong
