ABSTRACT
First published in 1847 under the male nom-de-plume Currer Bell, Jane Eyre immediately established that a new fictional talent had emerged, and the novel has remained a widely read 'classic' ever since. It was followed by Shirley, Villette and The Professor, which also have central female protagonists. The cumbersome title Marxist-Feminist Literature Collective covers on one side of the hyphen, in the adjective 'Marxist, a diversity of positions in relation to Marxism. On the other side of the hyphen, the adjective 'feminist' points, among other things, to an important aspect of our practice. A basically isolationist admiration for the literature of the female subject in Europe and Anglo-America establishes the high feminist norm. It is supported and operated by an information-retrieval approach to 'Third World' literature which often employs a deliberately 'nontheoretical' methodology with self-conscious rectitude.
