📘 L’expression des émotions — I : Le ressenti comme mode d’expression de soi

Feelings and emotions are the fuel of art. Lyricism (Brontë, Dickinson, Keats), private writings (epistolary fiction: Burney’s Evelina; diaries: Bowen’s Death of the Heart), and excessive emotions (unladylike outbursts: Gaskell’s Margaret Hale; tragic despair: Shakespeare’s The Tempest) are key modes of emotional self-expression.

📐 A1 — Lyricism and introspection

Emily Brontë, “The Old Stoic” (1841): self-portrait as a free spirit — “a chainless soul” — rejecting love and wealth. “The Bluebell” (1846): ode to spring and home, tinged with nostalgia. Emily Dickinson, “I Dwell in Possibility” (1862): poetry is a house with infinite openings, liberating both imagination and creativity. Both poets inhabit two worlds — earthly reality and an inner world built through imagination.

📐 A2 — Odes to nature

Keats, “To Autumn” (1820): ambiguous portrayal — warm continuation of summer + wistful anticipation of winter. “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.” Autumn = symbolic depiction of adulthood: “fill all fruit with ripeness to the core.” “Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?” — nostalgia must be dismissed to enjoy adult life fully.

Brontë: the wild Yorkshire moors as a refuge and mirror of her inner world.

📐 B — Private writings

Epistolary fiction: Frances Burney, Evelina (1778) — letters as diary entries; heroine struggles to name her feelings for Lord Orville (“I cannot write the scene that followed, though every word is engraven on my heart”). She is both willing and unwilling to admit to her love → a turning point in her emancipation.

Diaries: Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart (1938) — the heroine’s sister-in-law reads her diary (breach of trust). Feelings build the “necessary home” of identity: “wherever we unconsciously feel, we live.”

📐 C — Feelings in excess

Unladylike outbursts: Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South (1854) — Margaret Hale lashes out at Mrs Thornton who accuses her of improper behaviour. Free indirect speech makes the reader complicit in her anger. Female characters with strong emotions are truer to life and debunk the “angel” stereotype.

Tragic despair: Shakespeare, The Tempest (1610-11) — Prospero’s soliloquy: “We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.” Life is farcical delusion; pride and resentment are a waste of what little time humans have. He gives up magic and frees Ariel and Caliban.

💡 Key takeaway

Feelings and emotions are the raw material of art. Lyricism (Brontë, Keats) transforms emotions into metaphors. Private writings (Burney, Bowen) allow intimate self-revelation. Excessive emotions (Gaskell, Shakespeare) reveal deeper truths about identity and the human condition.