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Jane Austen, queer theory and the return of the author - edited version
Introducing a special issue of Women's Writing on Jane Austen, Mary Waldron warns of "two dangers…in the ease with which critics currently feel able to pick any aspect of human life and employ it in some disquisition about Austen." The "more serious" pitfall-which Waldron calls "the "why-not" approach"-involves "the identification of supposed oblique references within Austen"s texts which provide links with issues of present-day concern, often involving strained and unlikely interpretations of language and allusion." As an instance she cites Susan M. Korba"s cry of "Why shouldn't Emma be a lesbian?"-a question which depends, in Waldron"s view, "on what is not in the text" and which therefore risks "identifying a novel which Austen might perhaps have written, but didn"t." 1
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.
Jane Austen and her Readers, 1786–1945
2009
Jane Austen and her Readers, 17861945 is a study of the history of reading Jane Austens novels. It discusses Austens own ideas about books and readers, the uses she makes of her reading, and the aspects of her style that are related to the ways in which she has been read. The volume considers the role of editions and criticism in directing readers responses, and presents and analyses a variety of source material related to the ordinary readers who read Austens works between 1786 and 1945.