Hunters of Girls: the Roles of Male Sexual Predators in the Novels of Austen, Charlotte and Anne Brontë, and Gaskell

Although the rakish hero is a stock prototype in the romantic novel, he is usually in the background: the plot is dominated by the heroine whom he pursues; she monopolizes the attention of readers and invites them to identify with her. However, the sexually predatory male character is more than just a handsome place-filler: he represents a reflection of what the heroine secretly aspires to ? in the terms of Karen Horney, her idealized image. By recognizing the destructiveness of this image and rejecting it for a less rebellious and more self-effacing idealized image, the heroine can complete her education, the key enterprise of the coming-of-age novel. This makes the male sexual predator vital to the plot, since he makes the education and vindication patterns of the novels possible. Ay?egül Kuglin?s study on Jane Austen?s Sense and Sensibility, Charlotte Brontë?s Jane Eyre, Anne Brontë?s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Elisabeth Gaskell?s Ruth and Mary Barton, based on the psychoanalytical theory of Karen Horney and the reader-response theory of Wolfgang Iser, sheds light on the role of an easily underestimated character type in nineteenth-century novel.