Of all of Austen<&trade>s works, Lady Susan tends to stand alone in style and character development. The titular character of the novella in particular presents a literary conundrum for critics and readers of Austen. In an attempt to understand the character and why Austen wrote her, Lady Susan has been considered as a œmerry widow (Lane), a Machiavellian power figure (Mulvihill), and an indication of Austen<&trade>s familiarity with gossip and adultery (Russell). Despite these varied and colorful readings, critics have failed to fully resolve the differences between Lady Susan and Austen<&trade>s more beloved, maidenly heroines such as Elizabeth Bennet and Anne Elliott.This paper delves into one explanation that has hitherto been overlooked”Lady Susan<&trade>s relationship to the Restoration rake character trope. In light of Lady Susan<&trade>s philandering, independent, and mercenary ways, as well as her likeable yet reprehensible personality, the connection to the Restoration rake is readily apparent. Reading Lady Susan as a rake better informs critical understanding of this character and sheds new light on Jane Austen<&trade>s own perspectives on gender, while also forming a dialectic for critics and audiences for their own perspectives on gender, gender roles, and acceptable behavior. To accomplish this task, this paper explores Austen<&trade>s own early experiences with theatre and her predilection for theatrical allusions, the rake character<&trade>s genealogy and influence on literature, and a close reading of the novella in context of Restoration comedies.

The Romantic era, from roughly the middle of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century, was a period of rapid and revolutionary social change. Progressing in parallel was the form of the novel, which rose from relative disrepute to the foremost literary genre. While neither a prolific writer nor one that was very popular during her lifetime, I argue that Jane Austen and her inimitable style can be figured at the nexus of these two transitions. This dissertation presents a comprehensive study of Austen’s style across her body of work, from her early manuscripts through her published novels and ending with her unfinished draft. Using historical, digital, sociological, and narratological methods, I interrogate Austen’s style on three interrelated levels—moving from the most insular effects to the broadest applications of her narrative technique. First, I explore the progression of Austen’s style across her canon, particularly focusing on the development and maturation of her free indirect discourse. Second, I locate Austen’s style in the evolution of the novel. I begin with constructing her literary lineage, which I argue is tied to female writers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and move towards understanding how her use of free indirect discourse was necessary for the emergence of the novel’s modern form. Third, I consider Austen’s style as a means of imagining and critiquing the changing social spaces of her contemporary moment, specifically in terms of how the layered vocality of her narrative technique reflected Britain’s movement from the rigid structures of rank and honour to the fluid categories of class and dignity. / Graduate

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This dissertation examines the role of sibling kinship in shaping the poetry, drama, and fiction of English Romanticism (1789-1832). While critics have long associated Romanticism with a myth of solitary authorship and an archetype of isolated genius, I demonstrate that Romantic authors imagined subjectivity in the plural, curating a vision of identity-formation that is collective, shared, multiple, and relational. Embodied in the portrayal of sibling relationships, this inter-subjective paradigm delivers new frameworks for understanding the Romantic self as situated within networks of others—networks of those who are not quite the same yet not quite different; those who are both familiar and yet unknown. My study is the first to present a sustained consideration of the way Romantic writers invoked literary siblinghood as a model for the collaborative and collective nature of selfhood, and I propose that this focus on lateral sibling kinship offers alternatives to the conventional reproductive lenses through which the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century family has been previously understood. Drawing from recent work in feminist and queer theory, psychology and psychoanalysis, and sociocultural histories of kinship, this dissertation contributes new readings of canonical texts by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Joanna Baillie, William Wordsworth, Jane Austen, and Mary Shelley. Chapter One considers two stage dramas by P. B. Shelley and Baillie as rewritings of Sophocles’s Antigone. In both plays, sisters use their fraternal-sororal relations to redefine familial systems of reproduction via horizontal means of transmission rather than through vertical lines of biological inheritance. In Chapter Two, I extend this discussion of sibling networks to Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads, where, I suggest, we find trans-subjective inter-relations that define the poet’s vision well beyond autobiographical references to his sister Dorothy. Austen’s novels serve as the focus of Chapter Three, which argues that the self-contained “I” of the Bildungsroman genre, as Austen incorporates it, in fact depends upon intimate epistemological exchanges between sororal characters who undergo a mutually influential process of development. Chapter Four concludes with a discussion of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I suggest that the author critiques her central male protagonist for his failures to recognize how the reciprocity of male-female sibling sympathies underlies homosocial bonds. Taken together, these readings advance a version of Romantic subjectivity based upon lateral integration rather than egotistical solipsism. / 2027-02-28T00:00:00Z

Denna uppsats analyserar Jane Austens roman Mansfield Park samt Elizabeth Gaskells roman Wives and Daughters för att utröna likheter och skillnader. Uppsatsen utgår ifrån en komparativ metod för att se hur romanerna närmar sig den romantiska konflikt som uppstår, samt karakteriseringar och värderingar. Syftet är att se hur romanerna är en del av/upprätthåller en motivtradition. Uppsatsen visar att romanerna i hög grad liknar varandra gällande intrig och motiv, och att de på så vis är en del av den romantiska motivtraditionen.

In this thesis, I maintain that a focus on a narrowly defined sense of ‘fidelity’ is used to discourage and devalue adaptations that work to comment on class, racial, and gender dynamics that the original author did not. An emphasis on strict fidelity can also be a misogynistic response to Austen adaptations’ popularity among young women. While certainly one may have legitimate aesthetic concerns in regards to adaptations of any form—novel, film, YouTube, or otherwise—it is important to scrutinize the claim that such artistic differences are not, in fact, rooted in general disdain for narratives and media embraced by, or seemingly embraced by, women (particularly young women). Just as importantly, the motivations of those claiming to produce feminist narratives must be equally scrutinized, as I have found that these content producers at times use the very real misogyny directed at young women and their interests in order to shield themselves from criticism of their own portrayals of women and feminism. I discuss the discourse around contemporary film and book adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, as well as evaluate two recent adaptations that have made waves in popular culture: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.

Through four novelists from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries-Haywood, Defoe, Austen, and Chopin-this work examines the way the mother's importance evolves throughout literature. In Haywood's works, motherhood is seen as a dominant force in her child's life, but not a dominant force in society. Defoe approaches motherhood in a dramatically different way; for him, motherhood is secondary to financial security, and this opinion is reflected in the lives and actions of his characters. In spite of the absence of a maternal influence, Austen's characters do not experience true hardship in the way that Haywood's and Defoe's do. However, their lives are adversely affected by this absence. Chopin's protagonist has never experienced a maternal influence, and this absence has dramatically affected her life. She is unsure about what she wants from life, and this knowledge, along with her realization of society's restrictions upon her, ultimately leads to her suicide.

Jane Austen, seen by some as the mother of all chick-lit, is synonymous with tales of love and marriage. Generally, scholars have classified the types of marriages Austen writes about as either companionate (a marriage based on love) or pedagogic (a marriage based on an older man training a younger woman to be his ideal wife). In comparing the companionate and pedagogic marriage models in Austen's Sense and Sensibility and Emma, however, one finds that these traditional definitions and classifications of the companionate and pedagogic marriages prove to be complicated. The companionate marriage is not only a marriage based on love, but also takes into account rank, wealth, social status, religious values, and moral character. The pedagogic marriage, on the other hand, includes not only a marriage where an older man takes a younger woman and “trains” her to be the perfect wife for him, but also when a woman admires a man's values and approach to the social world and changes her behavior to reflect those attitudes. Elinor Dashwood and Edward Ferrars from Sense and Sensibility and Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax from Emma are classified by scholars under the companionate marriage model. However, neither of these couples fits into the companionate model due to Elinor and Jane's lack of fortunes and Edward and Frank's lack of good character. Marianne Dashwood and Colonel Brandon from Sense and Sensibility and Emma Woodhouse and Mr. Knightley from Emma are classified by scholars under the pedagogic marriage model. Marianne and Brandon would fall under the category of the woman changing her behavior to reflect the behaviors of a superior man, while Emma and Knightley would fall under the category of an older man training the younger woman to be his wife. Marianne does undergo a transformation, but it is not a result of Brandon's values or influence. She changes based on self-reflection and then turns to Brandon and falls in love with him. Emma and Knightley, on the other hand, do start out with a mentor-pupil relationship. However, as the novel progresses, so does their relationship. By the end of the novel, Emma and Knightley equally teach each other and discover a relationship based on mutual respect and love. Therefore, none of the relationships fall neatly into their assigned categories; each relationship is more nuanced and full of complexities that can't easily be classified. By more clearly understanding the complexities involved in each relationship, readers can gain an even greater appreciation for Austen, thus helping them to value Austen as more than an author of chick lit.

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