'That Peculiar Voice': Jane Eyre and Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, an Early Wesleyan Female Preacher

Abstract

References to the plain appearance of Charlotte Brontë's heroine in her first published novel, Jane Eyre, link the character to Wesleyanism, a movement which extended the priesthood of all believers to women and granted them access to the pulpit during the late eighteenth century. The Brontë sisters came under the influence of this movement in their childhood, through the Wesleyan theology of their father's Haworth parsonage. As the autobiographical writings of one Wesleyan preaching figure, Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, make clear, this tradition that shaped Charlotte Brontë and her views about gender linked women's choice of plain dress to John Wesley's expectation that all Wesleyans publicly voice their spiritual experience. This essay explores the relationship between the life and theological concerns of Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, an acquaintance of Charlotte Brontë's father, in order to expose an important clue to the source of Jane's 'peculiar voice', which, as Rochester claims, 'renews hope' and 'sounds so truthful' (JE, p. 432).