Why does Jane Austen ‘mania’ continue unabated in a postmodern world? How does the brilliant Regency novelist speak so personally to today’s women that they view her as their best friend?
Jane Austen’s Women answers these questions by exploring Austen’s affirming yet challenging vision of both who her dynamic female characters are, and who they become. This important new work analyzes the heroines’ relationships to body, mind, spirit, environment, and society. It reveals how, despite a restrictive patriarchal culture, these women achieve greatness. In clear, lively prose, Kathleen Anderson shares original theoretical insights from twenty years of studying Austen, and illuminates the novels as guidebooks on how to become an Austenian heroine in one’s everyday life. This engaging book will appeal to a broad readership: the serious student, the general lit-lover, and the Austen neophyte alike.
Tabla de materias
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Preface: ‘Nobody doubts her right to have precedence’: Jane Austen’s Heroine as Universal Subject
Part I: Women and the Body: Strength, Sex, and Austenian Wellness
1. ‘I am strong enough now to walk very well’: Vigor and Femininity in
Mansfield Park
2. ‘I always deserve the best treatment, because I never put up with any other’: Sexual Orthodoxy and the Quest for the Best Mate
Part II: Women’s Natures: Mood, Mind, Spirit, and Female Giftedness
3. ‘Determined to Be Happy’: The Path to Emotional Health in
Sense and Sensibility
Jordan L. Von Cannon, Co-author
4. ‘Ingenious or Stupid?’: Women’s Intelligences, according to ‘the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress’
5. ‘Born to Be Connected’: Female Monasticism and Vocation in Austen’s Novels
Part III. Women and Others: The Female Self in Environmental, Social, and Imaginative Space
6. ‘Mamma says I am never within’: Heroines’ Eco-affinities as Identityscapes
7. ‘What is the foolish girl about?’: Austen’s Feminist Fools Speak Out
8. ‘Unpropitious for Heroism’: Female Greatness in the Austenian Imagination
Notes
Works Cited
Index
Sobre el autor
Kathleen Anderson is Professor of English at Palm Beach Atlantic University and the coauthor (with Susan Jones) of
Jane Austen’s Guide to Thrift: An Independent Woman’s Advice on Living Within One’s Means.
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