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The Image of Chains in Emily Brontë’s Poetry: Intimations from Epictetus to Wesley

The feeling of being both physically and spiritually imprisoned recurs in Emily Brontë’s poetry and novel expressed in literal and figurative ‘chains’, ‘fetters’ and ‘prisons’. Such imagery appears to be related to a mystic view of the world, Wesleyan borrowings and Platonic overtones, with a possible admixture of the Stoic philosophy of Epictetus. This paper aims to show how such philosophical “shreds” — derived from various sources, personal as well as school readings — often help the meaning of the imagery move towards a “metaphysical” dimension: never clearly formulated in a cosmological system, yet suggestive of vague but powerful undercurrents.