Empowerment of Love for Jane Austen’s Females: A Case of Creativity in Familiarity (original) (raw)
Related papers
A QUEST FOR FEMININE IDENTITY IN JANE AUSTEN’S PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
PUNE RESEARCH, 2021
Literature has always acted as a mirror to the society. As the human society evolved slowly and gradually, literary writings, especially the novels played a pivotal role in reflecting and expressing the social scenarios and defining the human psyche. Women are the most integral part of the social discourse. Since centuries, they have strived hard in search of their true identity and worth. Turning through the pages of literary history, we can easily trace the footmarks of the transformation in the position of the females through societies and ages. Women writers and critics have given a glimpse of the social norms and structures prevalent during their times through their writings. Jane Austen is one such poignant writer from the Romantic Period of English Literature who broke apart from the traditionally accepted storyline through her youthful spirits and portrayal of strong female protagonists, who could think for themselves and take their own decisions. Born in a society that hugely discriminated between the rights given to men and women, Austen, since her childhood developed an internal anguish against the unjust social system. This even resulted in her being unmarried throughout her life and continued writing as a profession to be financially independent. Austen always advocated marriage in her novels, but she believed in marriage for love and not for gaining social status. Women during Austen’s times were expected to be submissive and timid. They were considered incapable of thinking wisely and hold own individuality. Her novels parodied the then conventional novel plot of love, marriage and courtship through youthful playfulness and subtle irony. Her female protagonists were the heroes of her novels; they were progressive as well as headstrong. They did not believe in social conformity in the male dominated society.
Ladies Come First: Strong Female Voice in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice
Journal of English Language and Linguistics, 2022
This research paper aims to investigate the critical feministic issues reflected by Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice. The story widely reflects the English society of the Regency period. Specifically, this article sheds light on Austen's writing which comes in response to the Georgian Era. Accordingly, the position of woman has been terribly marginalized, including inequality, scarcity of women schools, class distinction, and prohibition of legacy that were noticeably questioned. These unjust practices where woman regressively faced, have been analysed on the light of the .
The Discourse of Gender and Marriage in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion
Jane Austen's reputation as a great English novelist, and as one who was able to raise the female voice at such a time when women could not be heard, or even get published, had been recognised by the likes of Leavis, Richards and Bloom – who consider her works as examples of the best that had been thought of and said in the world – thus worthy of inclusion in the great tradition. This paper examines Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion as products of a feminist state of mind. This way, it presents the pitiable depiction of the female in the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries – a period characterised by the need for women to preserve themselves from want through the institution of marriage. The paper also explores how Austen employed the narrative form which allows her heroines to recreate and redefine themselves through the medium of dialogue and feminine thinking.
A Feminist Look towards Jane Austen’s 'Pride and Prejudice'
Jane Austen (1775-1817), one of the prominent female authors who represents her feminist beliefs through her novels. Pride and Prejudice is one of her renowned novels, which portrays Austen’s opinions about women, marriage, identity, patriarchal society, depiction of women by the men etc. Xuiqing Wang, a Chinese critic claims in his article named ‘Analysis of the Feminism in Pride and Prejudice’, “Austen cared about women’s social position and claimed for women’s right to work and attempted to seek for the value of women in society and her effort to subvert the male-dominated value system can be seen in her novels” (2). Through the characters, plot, conversations among the characters and narrator’s selection of ironic words, Jane tries to reflect her own feminist beliefs in this novel.
2016
This study examines Jane Austen’s realistic interpretations of eighteenth-century English society with a particular focus on representing women’s oppressions in Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma. Austen, in these three novels, criticizes several issues related to women’s status in English society and focuses on how men and women should be treated equally. In the novels, she argues that English society creates social order, women’s oppressiveness, and gender inequality through arbitrary social norms and traditions. This paper mainly focuses on two areas that restrict women’s roles in their society: the marriage plot and the educational system. Austen’s purpose of presenting these issues is to voice women’s rights and improve their conditions. She also offers her readers unusual descriptions of female characters in order to correct the stereotypical images of women during the period. Finally, this paper aims to show Austen’s success in redefining women’s status and change the misconceptions of women in British society.
Austen: Feminist and Revolutionist - An Annotated Bibliography
2019
Jane Austen portrays her novel heroines as outliers in the patriarchal society of Regency Britain. For example, in "Pride and Prejudice" (1813), Elizabeth Bennet chose to marry for love and not merely in pursuit of economic security, which is a flagrant violation of the standards expected of women. Due to strict inheritance laws, women are not able to inherit their family’s properties and so, must turn towards marriage for dependency (or as some critics argue, independency) and capital guarantee in their future. Families often see this as an opportunity to quickly accumulate wealth and push their daughters to marry a man of fine wealth, shaping the “universally acknowledged truth” that marriage is a critical step for women to survive and succeed unbeknownst of their inner desires for marriage shaped by true love and passion. Anyone who deviates from this norm is considered a radical and the voices of these activists are suppressed by the government. Jane Austen was one of the few critics who openly disagrees with the patriarchal expectation of an ideal woman who is to serve the man. She acquires the views of Mary Wollstonecraft’s version of an accomplished woman – one who is seen to be of a rational equal of men and able to make her own independent decisions. In this annotated bibliography, I will explore the arguments of six different critics of Jane Austen’s works, illustrating the main principles that they believe Austen was trying to push through the portrayal and personality of her characters. Some arguments will overlap and I will point out the similar and contrasting understandings between critics to develop a more comprehensive picture of Jane Austen’s liberal feminist ideas of marriage in the novels’ social environments and the thorough examination of the heroines will show that they represent rather unconventional views of marriage.
Through a close reading of Jane Austen’s last four completed novels, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion, the importance of character studies in literary criticism is highlighted. It is claimed that Austen’s heroines all epitomise a central concern with the possibility of personal freedom and growth in a restrictive society and a central observance of strive for truthfulness in human interaction. Going behind the romantic outer layer of each novel, this thesis analyses the narrative ploys applied to demonstrate the main characters’ need to fight for personal fulfilment as uncorrupted self-realisation. This reading underlines the author’s use of irony both on a textual, inter-textual and meta-level that explains the on-going research interest in her oeuvre. Unlike the majority of modern Austen studies, this thesis argues for the centrality of a character studies approach that focuses on the agency of Austen’s main characters. Regarding character studies as a valuable synergetic force in Austen studies, the heroines are seen as central to the novels’ message and narratology; style and composition are analysed as part of character studies rather than the other way around. In this context, some of Austen’s influential narratological devices such as free indirect speech, impressionistic dramatic effect, and ellipsis are analysed and a need for a new awareness of character in literary theory is underlined. The role of the narrator in connection to the author and reader and Austen’s manipulation with both in-text characters and reader through her narrator show how the act of reading in general, and specifically the act of reading character within the novels, are closely linked. Studying Austen’s mature work underlines the benefits of reading as authorial readers. This thesis claims that Austen’s deep concern with morally sound value systems and her main characters’ integrity stems from a number of philosophical and religious influences that can be described as a neo-Aristotelian outlook.
Women in the 18th Century: Abandoning Patriarchal Systems in Jane Austen
When addressing to Jane Austen’s literature as a feminist heritage, it comes to be quite controversial regarding the actual sense of the word feminist. In the eighteenth century it did not mean the same as it means today in the twenty-first century. Despite the obvious clues that Jane Austen has left to the reader in her works and through her characters, to think about them as a kind of heroines, they are far from the fact of being considered feminists as we would understand the term nowadays. Nevertheless, there are some striking things going on in all of her novels that must be reconsidered: women with more modern and progressive perspectives of English society that seem to be taking new directions and new social roles in the new century. The dependence on the father, brother or husband is not that obligatory anymore.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE AND FEMINIST MOTIVES IN JANE AUSTEN'S NOVELS
This study aims to explore feminist viewpoints in Jane Austen's works in general. As a famous 19 th Century novelist, Jane Austen tried to show the realities of women in her time. The common theme in all Austen's works includes the marriages of young women and the general social class structure of England in the 19 th Century. Jane Austen was a published female novelist who wrote under her own name which can be seen as an important feminist quality. She gifted six novels to readers about women centred in the thoughts, desires and behaviours of them. Besides, new innovations in the 19 th Century literature have also been mentioned in this study. ONDOKUZUNCU YÜZYIL EDEBİYATI VE JANE AUSTEN'IN ROMANLARINDAKİ FEMİNİST MOTİFLER ÖZET Bu çalışma, genel anlamda Jane Austen'in eserlerindeki feminist bakış açısını ortaya çıkarmayı amaçlamaktadır. Ondokuzuncu yüzyılın ünlü romancısı Jane Austen kendi çağının kadınlarının gerçeklerini göstermeye çalışmıştır. Austen'in bütün eserlerindeki ortak tema ondokuzuncu yüzyıl İngilteresi'nin genel sosyal sınıf yapısı ve genç kadınların evlilikleri ile ilgilidir. Jane Austen kendi adı altında yazmış olan kadın romancıdır ve bu özelliği ile önemli bir feminist özellik ortaya koyar. Yazar, okuyuculara kadınların düşüncelerini, taleplerini ve davranışlarını anlatan altı roman bırakmıştır. Bu çalışmada ayrıca ondokuzuncu yüzyıl edebiyat dünyasında meydana gelen yeniliklerden de bahsedilmiştir.