Jane Austen
Women, Politics, and the Novel
9780226401393
Jane Austen
Women, Politics, and the Novel
"The best (and the best written) book about Austen that has appeared in the last three decades."—Nina Auerbach, Journal of English and Germanic Philology
"By looking at the ways in which Austen domesticates the gothic in Northanger Abbey, examines the conventions of male inheritance and its negative impact on attempts to define the family as a site of care and generosity in Sense and Sensibility, makes claims for the desirability of ’personal happiness as a liberating moral category’ in Pride and Prejudice, validates the rights of female authority in Emma, and stresses the benefits of female independence in Persuasion, Johnson offers an original and persuasive reassessment of Jane Austen’s thought."—Kate Fullbrook, Times Higher Education Supplement
"By looking at the ways in which Austen domesticates the gothic in Northanger Abbey, examines the conventions of male inheritance and its negative impact on attempts to define the family as a site of care and generosity in Sense and Sensibility, makes claims for the desirability of ’personal happiness as a liberating moral category’ in Pride and Prejudice, validates the rights of female authority in Emma, and stresses the benefits of female independence in Persuasion, Johnson offers an original and persuasive reassessment of Jane Austen’s thought."—Kate Fullbrook, Times Higher Education Supplement
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: The Female Novelist and the Critical Tradition
1. The Novel of Crisis
2. The Juvenilia and Northanger Abbey: The Authority of Men and Books
3. Sense and Sensibility: Opinions Too Common and Too Dangerous
4. Pride and Prejudice and the Pursuit of Happiness
5. Mansfield Park: Confusions of Guilt and Revolutions of Mind
6. Emma: "Woman, Lovely Woman Reigns Alone"
7. Persuasion: The "Unfeudal Tone of the Present Day"
Notes
Index
Abbreviations
Introduction: The Female Novelist and the Critical Tradition
1. The Novel of Crisis
2. The Juvenilia and Northanger Abbey: The Authority of Men and Books
3. Sense and Sensibility: Opinions Too Common and Too Dangerous
4. Pride and Prejudice and the Pursuit of Happiness
5. Mansfield Park: Confusions of Guilt and Revolutions of Mind
6. Emma: "Woman, Lovely Woman Reigns Alone"
7. Persuasion: The "Unfeudal Tone of the Present Day"
Notes
Index