Lynda Hall | Chapman University (original) (raw)

Papers by Lynda Hall

Book review of Everybody\u27s Jane: Austen in the Popular Imagination, by Juliette Wells

A review of Mansfield Park: An Annotated Edition, edited by Deidre Shauna Lynch

Jane Austen’s minor female characters expose the economic and social realties of British women in... more Jane Austen’s minor female characters expose the economic and social realties of British women in the long eighteenth century and reflect the conflict between intrinsic and expressed value within the evolving marketplace, where fluctuations and fictions inherent in the economic and moral value structures are exposed. Just as the newly-minted paper money was struggling to express its value, so do Austen’s minor female characters struggle to assert their intrinsic value within a marketplace that expresses their worth as bearers of dowries. Austen’s minor female characters expose the plight of women who settle for transactional marriages, become speculators and predators, or become superfluous women who have left the marriage market and battle for personal significance and existence. These characters illustrate the ambiguity of value within the marriage market economy, exposing women’s limited choices. This book employs a socio-historical framework, considering the rise of a competitiv...

A review of Jane Austen on Film and Television: A Critical Study of the Adaptations by Sue Parrll

I don't know if Jane Austen had anything to do with my own retreat from the rogues in my life, bu... more I don't know if Jane Austen had anything to do with my own retreat from the rogues in my life, but I do know that I've always been fascinated by the rogues in Jane Austen's novels-especially the ones who capture the attention, if not always the hearts, of the most headstrong heroines: Marianne Dashwood, Elizabeth Bennet, and Emma Woodhouse. The more malleable ones-Catherine Morland, Elinor Dashwood, Fanny Price, and Anne Elliot-do not seem to need the rogues to show them their real match. These women, no matter their age, know their hearts from the start. Marilyn Butler notes that the headstrong heroines must rely on "objective evidence" rather than "private intuition" (101). The need to experience rather than merely believe is important even to Marianne Dashwood. Butler points out that "if feeling is an unreliable aid in choosing a husband, it is equally wayward as a general guide to conduct," as Marianne learns on the brink of death (10 I). This idea is not new; one early critic wrote a particularly vivid analogy of Jane Austen's use of the rogue in her plot development. In 1870, an anonymous reviewer of Pride and Prejudice saw the rogue as a meteor:

is meek, self-deprecating, pious, sickly, and self-righteous. For 'fhomas Hoberg, Fanny Price is ... more is meek, self-deprecating, pious, sickly, and self-righteous. For 'fhomas Hoberg, Fanny Price is "the passive Cinderella" who "is not like her canonical sis ters and that's the vvhole prohlern" (l 37), \vhile Arny J. Pa\vl speculates that Fanny's affinity to the eighteen th-century senti111ental heroine 1nakes he r a "problem," because Austen "atte1npts to take sorne forms of sen-tin1entalis1n seriously" (288). Many readers are unco1nfortable vvith Manifi.eld Park s ince Jane Austen includes aspects of the senti1nental novel and the fairy tale in a novel of 1nanners, and because Fanny, \vho suffers and prosper s, is an unusual heroine. This unease ,. vith /V[anifi.eld Park rnay corne fro1n the place-n1ent of gothic sy1nbols and character s 'vi thin the \VOrld of the English gentry. By under standing J\1anifi.eld Par/(s affinity •vith the gothic novels of the eighteenth century, \Ve 1night also understand our discornfo rt with Fanny Price. Since 1nany of the ingredients that one \voulcl expect in gothic fi ction, the "barbarous, 1 neclieval, s upernatural" (Varina 12), or the "spectres, n1onsters, de1 nons, corpses, skele tons, evi l aristocrats, rnonks and nuns, fainting heroines, and bandits" (Botti ng 2) arc no,vhere to be found in J\1anifi.eld Park, placing the novel \.Vi thin the genre is uncon1111on. Even so, central to Manifi.eld Park are several gothic ele1nents. First, v.1e can recogn ize character types: a fainting but virtuo us heroine, a terrorizing father figure, troubleso1ne aunts, and a duplici tous suitor. In addition , illicit sexuality and vice are in1portant the1 natic issues in the novel. Finally, "an aesthetics based on feeling and e1no-208 PERSUASIONS No. !!S

Jane Austen and William Shakespeare, 2019

Jane Austen often uses reading as a way to develop her characters. For instance, in Persuasion, C... more Jane Austen often uses reading as a way to develop her characters. For instance, in Persuasion, Captain Benwick’s melancholic disposition is revealed through his partiality for Romantic poetry, but Anne Elliot’s value for balance is expressed when she recommends moral essays. Other times, and not unfrequently, characters’ reading choice falls on the works of William Shakespeare—such as Hamlet, which Willoughby reads to Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, and the excerpts from Elegant Extracts we learn that Northanger Abbey’s Catherine Morland has memorized.

Women and ‘Value’ in Jane Austen’s Novels

One additional way to understand the potentially superfluous woman is to consider the heroine of ... more One additional way to understand the potentially superfluous woman is to consider the heroine of Mansfield Park. Fanny Price’s story begins in a minor space, since she has no expressed value. When Fanny is thrust onto the marriage market and has the chance to gain some expressed value, she finds a voice and refuses to be commodified. Thus, as Fanny Price asserts her rights not to settle for a marriage without affection, rejects the possibility of speculating on the marriage market, and sheds her superfluous and minor role, she ultimately earns her place as a heroine with solidified intrinsic value. Reading the six published novels of Jane Austen through the lens of economic valuation exposes the importance of expressed value in the marriage market of the long eighteenth century and its continuing conflict with intrinsic value. Even as English society was struggling to reconcile the supposed intrinsic value of gold and silver coins with the less certain expressed value of paper bank-notes, women on the marriage market were struggling to retain their intrinsic value as they were assessed by their expressed value or monetary worth. Even as a woman’s intrinsic value was enduring, her expressed value was more likely to find her a “preservative from want” and a “comfortable home.” Austen’s novels recognize the importance of expressed value for women’s survival, but they also question the devaluing of the intrinsic worth of women within that marriage-market culture.

Women and ‘Value’ in Jane Austen’s Novels

Many women in England’s long eighteenth century found themselves unvalued creatures within a worl... more Many women in England’s long eighteenth century found themselves unvalued creatures within a world that saw only their (lack of) monetary worth. These vulnerable superfluous women struggle to retain their intrinsic value even as they have lost their expressed value. Both Emma’s Miss Bates and Persuasion’s Mrs. Smith have fallen from a more prominent place in society: they are poor, childless, and have been aged out of the marriage market. They play an important, albeit minor, role in the novels, each fighting her superfluity while exposing the pitiful state of the poor unmarried woman, ultimately warning the heroine of a plight she might have realized had circumstances been slightly different. Miss Bates has already disappeared from a marriage market in which she had little expressed value, and it is her struggle to assert her intrinsic value within her small corner of society that is both comic and distressing, yet ultimately revelatory. Mrs. Smith is a widow who was at one time successful on the marriage market but has found herself dependent on charity, and she must assert her tarnished but ultimately reclaimable intrinsic value to retrieve her lost fortune. Becoming a superfluous woman was a palpable danger for women in early nineteenth-century England because they had little expressed value. Miss Bates and her humility, Mrs. Smith and her resilience, expose an often overlooked dark side of women’s reality and provide a means to demonstrate the intrinsic value of apparent superfluous women while reflecting the difficult world in which they live.

Traditional marriage practices, following Anglican canon law, were codified in Lord Hardwicke’s M... more Traditional marriage practices, following Anglican canon law, were codified in Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1753, which was presumed to prevent so-called clandestine marriages and to protect the estates of the landed gentry. The social pressures and practices that prescribed, as well as those that resulted from, the marriage act and the marriage market are reflected in much of the fiction of the period, including Daniel Defoe’s Roxana, Sarah Fielding’s The Adventures of David Simple, Sarah Scott’s Millenium Hall, and Frances Burney’s Cecilia. These fictional works reveal a progression in thought about credit and a woman’s place in the market economy. Jane Austen’s novels would eventually extend and complicate this discussion about the importance of a woman’s credit in setting her value on the marriage market. Other writing of the period also addresses how women’s education and behavior helps to determine a woman’s intrinsic and expressed value. Assumptions about education and be...

Persuasions; The Jane Austen Journal, 2006

READERS ARE OFTEN UNCOMFORTABLE WITH Mansfield Park because Fanny Price is meek, self-deprecating... more READERS ARE OFTEN UNCOMFORTABLE WITH Mansfield Park because Fanny Price is meek, self-deprecating, pious, sickly, and self-righteous. For Thomas Hoberg, Fanny Price is "the passive Cinderella" who "is not like her canonical sisters and that's the whole problem" (137), while Amy J. Pawl speculates that Fanny's affinity to the eighteenth-century sentimental heroine makes her a "problem," because Austen "attempts to take some forms of sentimentalism seriously" (288). Many readers are uncomfortable with Mansfield Park since Jane Austen includes aspects of the sentimental novel and the fairy tale in a novel of manners, and because Fanny, who suffers and prospers, is an unusual heroine. This unease with Mansfield Park may come from the placement of gothic symbols and characters within the world of the English gentry. By understanding Mansfield Park's affinity with the gothic novels of the eighteenth century, we might also understand our ...

I don't know if Jane Austen had anything to do with my own retreat from the rogues in my life, bu... more I don't know if Jane Austen had anything to do with my own retreat from the rogues in my life, but I do know that I've always been fascinated by the rogues in Jane Austen's novels-especially the ones who capture the attention, if not always the hearts, of the most headstrong heroines: Marianne Dashwood, Elizabeth Bennet, and Emma Woodhouse. The more malleable ones-Catherine Morland, Elinor Dashwood, Fanny Price, and Anne Elliot-do not seem to need the rogues to show them their real match. These women, no matter their age, know their hearts from the start. Marilyn Butler notes that the headstrong heroines must rely on "objective evidence" rather than "private intuition" (101). The need to experience rather than merely believe is important even to Marianne Dashwood. Butler points out that "if feeling is an unreliable aid in choosing a husband, it is equally wayward as a general guide to conduct," as Marianne learns on the brink of death (10 I). This idea is not new; one early critic wrote a particularly vivid analogy of Jane Austen's use of the rogue in her plot development. In 1870, an anonymous reviewer of Pride and Prejudice saw the rogue as a meteor:

The historical foundation for the terms expressed value and intrinsic value reflect the debate ab... more The historical foundation for the terms expressed value and intrinsic value reflect the debate about economic value. As we read Jane Austen’s fiction, it is also difficult not to consider her characterizations as reflecting realities she exposed, supplementing our reading with historical data and other fictional and nonfictional representations of the time in order to ground our understanding within the lived reality of her contemporary readers. Concerns about the balance of trade, the existence of credit, the use and regulation of paper money, the distribution and redistribution of wealth, the division of labor, and the value of commerce are reflected in various pamphlets and treatises published in this period. Overlapping with the ongoing debate about value among the economic writers was the development of the novel—most notably for this study, popular circulation narratives that not only reveal the reading public’s fascination with circulating money, but also expose the split bet...

As the result of multiple wars and a high infant mortality rate for males, some women were driven... more As the result of multiple wars and a high infant mortality rate for males, some women were driven to extremes in order to secure a place for themselves on the marriage market. The speculating minor women are often prettier and more vibrant than the heroines, but their intrinsic value is often tarnished. Northanger Abbey’s Isabella Thorpe is trained to make her way in the world by securing the proposal of the most eligible bachelor she can trap with her beauty and her charm, revealing that gambling and fiction-making represent some of the most troubling aspects of the marriage market culture. Sense and Sensibility’s Lucy Steele, is well-schooled in marriage-market behavior, using flattery and manipulation and creating secret alliances to move up in the ranks of genteel society, since she has few other attributes on which to bank her future. Finally, Mansfield Park’s Mary Crawford has learned that marriage is a state that is filled with deception and disappointment, so she ignores her...

Though companionate marriage was becoming more prevalent in the long eighteenth century, marriage... more Though companionate marriage was becoming more prevalent in the long eighteenth century, marriages for economic convenience or gain were still common and are reflected by Austen’s minor women who settle. In Pride and Prejudice Charlotte Lucas needs a husband, and she sees marriage as a pragmatic transaction. The intrinsic value of the Darcy marriage is privileged over the expressed value of the Collins marriage. This representation is complicated with the wealthy Maria Bertram in Mansfield Park who marries a buffoon merely to increase her already high expressed value and then takes ownership over her own body, transgressing both the moral code and the rules of that market. Maria’s dilemma emphasizes a woman’s lack of control over her place on the marriage market while revealing the importance of preserving personal credit (intrinsic value) in order to retain financial credit and thus her expressed value. The issue is further complicated in Emma with Jane Fairfax’s story, which refle...

LUCY STEELE HAS A SECRET, but she is surprisingly willing to share her secret with Elinor Dashwoo... more LUCY STEELE HAS A SECRET, but she is surprisingly willing to share her secret with Elinor Dashwood. Lucy is pretty but illiterate, shrewd but rustic. She shares mercenary values, however, that resonate with women above her station, and she counts on the good character of Elinor to assist in her speculative plans. She is not interested in love or even marriage to a good man; her only aim is to move up in society. As Lucy shares her secret with Elinor, she also reveals her real worth to the reader. By analyzing Lucy's character as a commodity on the marriage market, we can better understand Jane Austen's take on value: what might be perceived as valuable in the marketplace might not have real or intrinsic value. Lucy knows that her value is based on mere perception; in a consumer economy the skill of speculation may be necessary. Although Austen might be revealing that Lucy's unscrupulous speculation is necessary in the marriage market, she clearly does not celebrate its e...

Book review of Everybody\u27s Jane: Austen in the Popular Imagination, by Juliette Wells

A review of Mansfield Park: An Annotated Edition, edited by Deidre Shauna Lynch

Jane Austen’s minor female characters expose the economic and social realties of British women in... more Jane Austen’s minor female characters expose the economic and social realties of British women in the long eighteenth century and reflect the conflict between intrinsic and expressed value within the evolving marketplace, where fluctuations and fictions inherent in the economic and moral value structures are exposed. Just as the newly-minted paper money was struggling to express its value, so do Austen’s minor female characters struggle to assert their intrinsic value within a marketplace that expresses their worth as bearers of dowries. Austen’s minor female characters expose the plight of women who settle for transactional marriages, become speculators and predators, or become superfluous women who have left the marriage market and battle for personal significance and existence. These characters illustrate the ambiguity of value within the marriage market economy, exposing women’s limited choices. This book employs a socio-historical framework, considering the rise of a competitiv...

A review of Jane Austen on Film and Television: A Critical Study of the Adaptations by Sue Parrll

I don't know if Jane Austen had anything to do with my own retreat from the rogues in my life, bu... more I don't know if Jane Austen had anything to do with my own retreat from the rogues in my life, but I do know that I've always been fascinated by the rogues in Jane Austen's novels-especially the ones who capture the attention, if not always the hearts, of the most headstrong heroines: Marianne Dashwood, Elizabeth Bennet, and Emma Woodhouse. The more malleable ones-Catherine Morland, Elinor Dashwood, Fanny Price, and Anne Elliot-do not seem to need the rogues to show them their real match. These women, no matter their age, know their hearts from the start. Marilyn Butler notes that the headstrong heroines must rely on "objective evidence" rather than "private intuition" (101). The need to experience rather than merely believe is important even to Marianne Dashwood. Butler points out that "if feeling is an unreliable aid in choosing a husband, it is equally wayward as a general guide to conduct," as Marianne learns on the brink of death (10 I). This idea is not new; one early critic wrote a particularly vivid analogy of Jane Austen's use of the rogue in her plot development. In 1870, an anonymous reviewer of Pride and Prejudice saw the rogue as a meteor:

is meek, self-deprecating, pious, sickly, and self-righteous. For 'fhomas Hoberg, Fanny Price is ... more is meek, self-deprecating, pious, sickly, and self-righteous. For 'fhomas Hoberg, Fanny Price is "the passive Cinderella" who "is not like her canonical sis ters and that's the vvhole prohlern" (l 37), \vhile Arny J. Pa\vl speculates that Fanny's affinity to the eighteen th-century senti111ental heroine 1nakes he r a "problem," because Austen "atte1npts to take sorne forms of sen-tin1entalis1n seriously" (288). Many readers are unco1nfortable vvith Manifi.eld Park s ince Jane Austen includes aspects of the senti1nental novel and the fairy tale in a novel of 1nanners, and because Fanny, \vho suffers and prosper s, is an unusual heroine. This unease ,. vith /V[anifi.eld Park rnay corne fro1n the place-n1ent of gothic sy1nbols and character s 'vi thin the \VOrld of the English gentry. By under standing J\1anifi.eld Par/(s affinity •vith the gothic novels of the eighteenth century, \Ve 1night also understand our discornfo rt with Fanny Price. Since 1nany of the ingredients that one \voulcl expect in gothic fi ction, the "barbarous, 1 neclieval, s upernatural" (Varina 12), or the "spectres, n1onsters, de1 nons, corpses, skele tons, evi l aristocrats, rnonks and nuns, fainting heroines, and bandits" (Botti ng 2) arc no,vhere to be found in J\1anifi.eld Park, placing the novel \.Vi thin the genre is uncon1111on. Even so, central to Manifi.eld Park are several gothic ele1nents. First, v.1e can recogn ize character types: a fainting but virtuo us heroine, a terrorizing father figure, troubleso1ne aunts, and a duplici tous suitor. In addition , illicit sexuality and vice are in1portant the1 natic issues in the novel. Finally, "an aesthetics based on feeling and e1no-208 PERSUASIONS No. !!S

Jane Austen and William Shakespeare, 2019

Jane Austen often uses reading as a way to develop her characters. For instance, in Persuasion, C... more Jane Austen often uses reading as a way to develop her characters. For instance, in Persuasion, Captain Benwick’s melancholic disposition is revealed through his partiality for Romantic poetry, but Anne Elliot’s value for balance is expressed when she recommends moral essays. Other times, and not unfrequently, characters’ reading choice falls on the works of William Shakespeare—such as Hamlet, which Willoughby reads to Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, and the excerpts from Elegant Extracts we learn that Northanger Abbey’s Catherine Morland has memorized.

Women and ‘Value’ in Jane Austen’s Novels

One additional way to understand the potentially superfluous woman is to consider the heroine of ... more One additional way to understand the potentially superfluous woman is to consider the heroine of Mansfield Park. Fanny Price’s story begins in a minor space, since she has no expressed value. When Fanny is thrust onto the marriage market and has the chance to gain some expressed value, she finds a voice and refuses to be commodified. Thus, as Fanny Price asserts her rights not to settle for a marriage without affection, rejects the possibility of speculating on the marriage market, and sheds her superfluous and minor role, she ultimately earns her place as a heroine with solidified intrinsic value. Reading the six published novels of Jane Austen through the lens of economic valuation exposes the importance of expressed value in the marriage market of the long eighteenth century and its continuing conflict with intrinsic value. Even as English society was struggling to reconcile the supposed intrinsic value of gold and silver coins with the less certain expressed value of paper bank-notes, women on the marriage market were struggling to retain their intrinsic value as they were assessed by their expressed value or monetary worth. Even as a woman’s intrinsic value was enduring, her expressed value was more likely to find her a “preservative from want” and a “comfortable home.” Austen’s novels recognize the importance of expressed value for women’s survival, but they also question the devaluing of the intrinsic worth of women within that marriage-market culture.

Women and ‘Value’ in Jane Austen’s Novels

Many women in England’s long eighteenth century found themselves unvalued creatures within a worl... more Many women in England’s long eighteenth century found themselves unvalued creatures within a world that saw only their (lack of) monetary worth. These vulnerable superfluous women struggle to retain their intrinsic value even as they have lost their expressed value. Both Emma’s Miss Bates and Persuasion’s Mrs. Smith have fallen from a more prominent place in society: they are poor, childless, and have been aged out of the marriage market. They play an important, albeit minor, role in the novels, each fighting her superfluity while exposing the pitiful state of the poor unmarried woman, ultimately warning the heroine of a plight she might have realized had circumstances been slightly different. Miss Bates has already disappeared from a marriage market in which she had little expressed value, and it is her struggle to assert her intrinsic value within her small corner of society that is both comic and distressing, yet ultimately revelatory. Mrs. Smith is a widow who was at one time successful on the marriage market but has found herself dependent on charity, and she must assert her tarnished but ultimately reclaimable intrinsic value to retrieve her lost fortune. Becoming a superfluous woman was a palpable danger for women in early nineteenth-century England because they had little expressed value. Miss Bates and her humility, Mrs. Smith and her resilience, expose an often overlooked dark side of women’s reality and provide a means to demonstrate the intrinsic value of apparent superfluous women while reflecting the difficult world in which they live.

Traditional marriage practices, following Anglican canon law, were codified in Lord Hardwicke’s M... more Traditional marriage practices, following Anglican canon law, were codified in Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1753, which was presumed to prevent so-called clandestine marriages and to protect the estates of the landed gentry. The social pressures and practices that prescribed, as well as those that resulted from, the marriage act and the marriage market are reflected in much of the fiction of the period, including Daniel Defoe’s Roxana, Sarah Fielding’s The Adventures of David Simple, Sarah Scott’s Millenium Hall, and Frances Burney’s Cecilia. These fictional works reveal a progression in thought about credit and a woman’s place in the market economy. Jane Austen’s novels would eventually extend and complicate this discussion about the importance of a woman’s credit in setting her value on the marriage market. Other writing of the period also addresses how women’s education and behavior helps to determine a woman’s intrinsic and expressed value. Assumptions about education and be...

Persuasions; The Jane Austen Journal, 2006

READERS ARE OFTEN UNCOMFORTABLE WITH Mansfield Park because Fanny Price is meek, self-deprecating... more READERS ARE OFTEN UNCOMFORTABLE WITH Mansfield Park because Fanny Price is meek, self-deprecating, pious, sickly, and self-righteous. For Thomas Hoberg, Fanny Price is "the passive Cinderella" who "is not like her canonical sisters and that's the whole problem" (137), while Amy J. Pawl speculates that Fanny's affinity to the eighteenth-century sentimental heroine makes her a "problem," because Austen "attempts to take some forms of sentimentalism seriously" (288). Many readers are uncomfortable with Mansfield Park since Jane Austen includes aspects of the sentimental novel and the fairy tale in a novel of manners, and because Fanny, who suffers and prospers, is an unusual heroine. This unease with Mansfield Park may come from the placement of gothic symbols and characters within the world of the English gentry. By understanding Mansfield Park's affinity with the gothic novels of the eighteenth century, we might also understand our ...

I don't know if Jane Austen had anything to do with my own retreat from the rogues in my life, bu... more I don't know if Jane Austen had anything to do with my own retreat from the rogues in my life, but I do know that I've always been fascinated by the rogues in Jane Austen's novels-especially the ones who capture the attention, if not always the hearts, of the most headstrong heroines: Marianne Dashwood, Elizabeth Bennet, and Emma Woodhouse. The more malleable ones-Catherine Morland, Elinor Dashwood, Fanny Price, and Anne Elliot-do not seem to need the rogues to show them their real match. These women, no matter their age, know their hearts from the start. Marilyn Butler notes that the headstrong heroines must rely on "objective evidence" rather than "private intuition" (101). The need to experience rather than merely believe is important even to Marianne Dashwood. Butler points out that "if feeling is an unreliable aid in choosing a husband, it is equally wayward as a general guide to conduct," as Marianne learns on the brink of death (10 I). This idea is not new; one early critic wrote a particularly vivid analogy of Jane Austen's use of the rogue in her plot development. In 1870, an anonymous reviewer of Pride and Prejudice saw the rogue as a meteor:

The historical foundation for the terms expressed value and intrinsic value reflect the debate ab... more The historical foundation for the terms expressed value and intrinsic value reflect the debate about economic value. As we read Jane Austen’s fiction, it is also difficult not to consider her characterizations as reflecting realities she exposed, supplementing our reading with historical data and other fictional and nonfictional representations of the time in order to ground our understanding within the lived reality of her contemporary readers. Concerns about the balance of trade, the existence of credit, the use and regulation of paper money, the distribution and redistribution of wealth, the division of labor, and the value of commerce are reflected in various pamphlets and treatises published in this period. Overlapping with the ongoing debate about value among the economic writers was the development of the novel—most notably for this study, popular circulation narratives that not only reveal the reading public’s fascination with circulating money, but also expose the split bet...

As the result of multiple wars and a high infant mortality rate for males, some women were driven... more As the result of multiple wars and a high infant mortality rate for males, some women were driven to extremes in order to secure a place for themselves on the marriage market. The speculating minor women are often prettier and more vibrant than the heroines, but their intrinsic value is often tarnished. Northanger Abbey’s Isabella Thorpe is trained to make her way in the world by securing the proposal of the most eligible bachelor she can trap with her beauty and her charm, revealing that gambling and fiction-making represent some of the most troubling aspects of the marriage market culture. Sense and Sensibility’s Lucy Steele, is well-schooled in marriage-market behavior, using flattery and manipulation and creating secret alliances to move up in the ranks of genteel society, since she has few other attributes on which to bank her future. Finally, Mansfield Park’s Mary Crawford has learned that marriage is a state that is filled with deception and disappointment, so she ignores her...

Though companionate marriage was becoming more prevalent in the long eighteenth century, marriage... more Though companionate marriage was becoming more prevalent in the long eighteenth century, marriages for economic convenience or gain were still common and are reflected by Austen’s minor women who settle. In Pride and Prejudice Charlotte Lucas needs a husband, and she sees marriage as a pragmatic transaction. The intrinsic value of the Darcy marriage is privileged over the expressed value of the Collins marriage. This representation is complicated with the wealthy Maria Bertram in Mansfield Park who marries a buffoon merely to increase her already high expressed value and then takes ownership over her own body, transgressing both the moral code and the rules of that market. Maria’s dilemma emphasizes a woman’s lack of control over her place on the marriage market while revealing the importance of preserving personal credit (intrinsic value) in order to retain financial credit and thus her expressed value. The issue is further complicated in Emma with Jane Fairfax’s story, which refle...

LUCY STEELE HAS A SECRET, but she is surprisingly willing to share her secret with Elinor Dashwoo... more LUCY STEELE HAS A SECRET, but she is surprisingly willing to share her secret with Elinor Dashwood. Lucy is pretty but illiterate, shrewd but rustic. She shares mercenary values, however, that resonate with women above her station, and she counts on the good character of Elinor to assist in her speculative plans. She is not interested in love or even marriage to a good man; her only aim is to move up in society. As Lucy shares her secret with Elinor, she also reveals her real worth to the reader. By analyzing Lucy's character as a commodity on the marriage market, we can better understand Jane Austen's take on value: what might be perceived as valuable in the marketplace might not have real or intrinsic value. Lucy knows that her value is based on mere perception; in a consumer economy the skill of speculation may be necessary. Although Austen might be revealing that Lucy's unscrupulous speculation is necessary in the marriage market, she clearly does not celebrate its e...