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History and Way of Life of Gypsies |
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Page 5 of 5
Jane Eyre is not the only novel that mirrors this romanticized view of Gypsies. Inspired by the works of leading Gypsy scholar George Borrow, author of several fictional and semi-fictional works about Gypsy life, many prominent authors of the time began to include Gypsy characters in their works (Harrison 375). Borrow and other Gypsy scholars enjoyed warm relations with Thomas Carlyle, George Eliot, Bulwer Lytton, Algernon Charles Swinburne, and Theodore Watts-Dunton. As a result of this friendly relationship, "the [Gypsy scholars] and their literary friends generated 'a very craze for the Gypsy' that had no European equivalent" (Behlmer 243). This Gypsy craze was manifested in the formation of the Gyspy Lore Society in 1888. Society's fascination with Gypsies had its parallels in the literary community. As David Mayall notes, "the use of romantic notions of a separate, mysterious race of Gypsies was a device frequently adopted in poetry and fictions of all descriptions, from the 'highbrow' works of Sir Walter Scott. . .Charles Dickens and D.H. Lawrence to the anonymous 'penny dreadfuls' and railway literature" ("Gypsy-Travellers" 71). Works by contemporaries of Bronte that involve Gypsy characters include George Eliot's poem "The Spanish Gypsy;" Matthew Arnold's poems "To a Gipsy Child by the Sea-Shore," "Resignation," "The Scholar-Gipsy," and "Thyrsis;" J.M. Barrie's "The Little Minister;" and, a later work, D.H. Lawrence's "The Virgin and the Gypsy." Bronte's inclusion of this Gypsy character, even though a somewhat minor one, reflects on a small scale a society's reaction to a race that was both misunderstood and loved.
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