Although many might consider Jane Austen to be outdated and clichéd, her work retains an undying appeal. During the last decade the English-speaking world has experienced an Austen renaissance as it has been treated to a number of film and television adaptations of her work, including Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility. Film critics such as Bill De Lapp (1996) and Sherry Dean (1996) have commented on the phenomenal response these productions received and have been amazed by Austen’s ability to compete with current movie scripts. The reasons for viewers and readers enjoying and identifying with Austen’s fiction are numerous. Readers of varying persuasions have different agendas and hence different views and interpretations of Austen. This thesis follows a gynocritical approach and applies a feminist point of view when reading and discussing Austen. Austen’s novels - Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Persuasion – are re-read and reevaluated from a feminist perspective in order to call attention to Austen’s awareness of women’s second-class position in her society. Women’s experiences in Austen’s time are compared to women’s experiences in society today in order to illustrate, in some way, the tremendous progress the feminist movement has made. In addition, by examining what Austen reveals about the material reality of women in her time, it is possible to explore the legacy that modern women have inherited. Literary critics such as André Brink (1998), Claudia Johnson (1988), and Gilbert and Gubar (1979) believe Austen to create feminist awareness in her novels. There are critics, however, who do not view Austen as necessarily feminist in her writing. Nancy Armstrong writes in Desire and Domestic Fiction (1987) that Austen’s objective is not a critique of the Abstract iv old order but rather a redefinition of wealth and status. In Culture and Imperialism (1993) Edward Said implicates Austen in the rationale for imperial expansion, while Barbara Seeber argues in “The Schooling of Marianne Dashwood” (1999) that Austen’s texts should be understood as dialogic. Others, such as Patricia Beer (1974), believe Austen’s fiction primarily to be about marriage since all her novels end with matrimony. My own reading of Austen takes into consideration her social milieu and patriarchal inheritance. It argues that Austen writes within the framework of patriarchy (for example by marrying off her heroines) possibly because she is aware that in order to survive as a woman (writer) in a male-favouring world and in a publishing world dominated by men, her critique needs to be covert. If read from a feminist perspective, Austen’s fiction draws our attention to issues such as women’s (lack of) education, the effects of not being given access to knowledge, marriage as a patriarchal institution of entrapment, and women’s identity. Her fiction reveals the effects of educating women for a life of domesticity, and illustrates that such an education is biased, leaving women powerless and without any means of self-protection in a male-dominated world. Although contemporary women in the Western world mostly enjoy equal education opportunities to men, they suffer the consequences of a legacy which denied them access to a proper education. Feminist writers such as Flis Henwood (2000) show that contemporary women believe certain areas of expertise belong to men exclusively. Others such as Linda Nochlin (1994) reveal that because women did not have access to higher education for so many years, they failed to produce great women artists like Chaucer or Cézanne. Austen’s fiction also exposes the economic and social system (of which education constitutes a major part) for enforcing marriage and for enfeebling women. In addition, it illustrates some of the realities and pitfalls of marriage. While Austen only subtly refers to Abstract v women’s disempowerment within marriage, contemporary feminist scholars such as Germaine Greer (1999) and Arnot, Araújo, Deliyanni, and Ivinson (2000) explicitly warn women that marriage is a patriarchal institution of entrapment and that it often leaves women feeling unfulfilled. The issue of marriage as a patriarchal institution has been thought important and has been addressed by feminists because it contributes to women’s powerlessness. Feminist scholars today find it imperative to expose all forms of power in order to eradicate women’s subordination. bell hooks comments in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (2000) on the importance of revealing unfair power relations in order to eliminate oppression of any kind. Austen does not necessarily express the wish to eradicate forms of power or oppression in her novels. Yet, if we read her work from a feminist point of view, we are made aware of the social construction of power. From her fiction we can infer that male power is enshrined in the very structure of society, and this makes us aware of women’s lack of power in her time. Austen’s novels, however, are not merely novels of powerlessness but of empowerment. By creating rounded women characters and by giving them the power to judge, to refuse and to write, Austen challenges the stereotyped view of woman as either overpowering monster or weak and fragile angel. In addition, her novels seem to question women’s inherited identity and to suggest that qualities such as emotionality and mothering are not natural aspects of being a woman. Because she suggests ways in which women might empower themselves, albeit within patriarchal parameters, one could argue that she contributes, in a small way, to the transformation of existing power relations and to the eradication of women’s servile position in society.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nmmu/vital:10994 |
| Date | January 2003 |
| Creators | Kollmann, Elizabeth |
| Publisher | University of Port Elizabeth, Faculty of Arts |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Masters, MA |
| Format | xi, 168 leaves, pdf |
| Rights | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University |
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