Jane Austen's Families

June Sturrock

Description

“Jane Austen’s Families” provides insight into family dynamics in Jane Austen’s six novels, focusing particularly on interaction between parents and children. 

“Jane Austen’s Families” discusses the fictional families – such as the Bennets and the Bertrams – whose dynamics are crucial both to Austen’s plots and to her explorations of ethical complexities. The study focuses upon the central characters’ interactions with their own families and (to a lesser extent) with other family groups in an exploration of how emotional and moral development is both hindered and fostered by these interactions. Significantly, Austen chooses not to write about the orphaned heroines so often preferred by novelists of the period; rather, for a writer who cares intensely for what is natural and probable in fiction, the most common early experience of surviving the pains and pleasures of family life provides the richest material for her work.  

This study is historically grounded, reading Austen in the context of contemporary writing and visual culture in an exploration of her treatment of the relations between parent and child.  It examines Austen’s heroines as their parents’ daughters, responding to and resisting their upbringing, and shows how family interactions shape their courtships.  Inevitably this concern involves a consideration both of the ethics of parenthood and of the ethics these heroines acquire from their parents, through adaptation, imitation and resistance to what they are taught, directly and indirectly. Interactions between parent and child affect both the daughter’s experience and her active moral life.

Acknowledgements; References and Abbreviations; General Introduction; PART I: FAMILY DYNAMICS: Introduction; Chapter One: The Functions of the Dysfunctional Family: “Northanger Abbey,” “Sense and Sensibility,” “Pride and Prejudice”; Chapter Two: Spoilt Children: “Pride and Prejudice,” “Mansfield Park” and “Emma”;  Chapter Three: “Usefulness and Exertion”: Mothers and Sisters in “Sense and Sensibility,” “Mansfield Park,” “Emma” and “Persuasion”; PART II: FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS: Introduction; Chapter Four: Money, Morals and “Mansfield Park”; Chapter Five: Speech and Silence in “Emma”; Chapter Six: Dandies and Beauties: The Issue of Good Looks in “Persuasion”; Conclusion: “Creative Attention”;  Notes; Select Bibliography; Index 

Sujets

• Literary criticism

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780857282972
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Jane Austen’s FamiliesJane Austen’s Families
June SturrockAnthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition frst published in UK and USA 2013
by ANTHEM PRESS
75-76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK
or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
244 Madison Ave. #116, New York, NY 10016, USA
Copyright © June Sturrock 2013
The author asserts the moral right to be identifed as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,
no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise),
without the prior written permission of both the copyright
owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested.
ISBN-13: 978 0 85728 296 5 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 0 85728 296 4 (Hbk)
This title is also available as an eBook.For Alan RudrumTABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ix
References and Abbreviations xi
General Introduction 1
Part I Family Dynamics
Introduction 11
Chapter One The Functions of the Dysfunctional Family:
Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice 15
Chapter Two Spoilt Children: Pride and Prejudice,
Mansfeld Park and Emma 33
Chapter Three “Usefulness and Exertion”: Mothers and Sisters
in Sense and Sensibility, Mansfeld Park,
Emma and Persuasion 47
Part II Fathers and Daughters
Introduction 67
Chapter Four Money, Morals and Mansfeld Park 71
Chapter Five Speech and Silence in Emma 85
Chapter Six Dandies and Beauties: The Issue
of Good Looks in Persuasion 99
Conclusion “Creative Attention” 111
Notes 119
Select Bibliography 135
Index 145ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Shorter and less complex versions of Chapters Three and Five appeared in
Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal, “Money, Morals, and Mansfeld Park: The
West Indies Revisited” appeared in Persuasions 28 (2006): 176–84 and “Dandies,
Beauties, and the Issue of Good Looks in Persuasion” appeared in Persuasions 26
(2004): 41–50, while Chapter Four is based on an entry in the 2006 Persuasions
On-Line (“‘I am Rather a Talker’: Speech and Silence in Emma” 28). I am
most grateful to Susan Allen Ford, the editor of the journals, and the Jane
Austen Society of North America for permissions and for encouragement.
Thanks are due to Jocelyn Harris, Diane McColley, Jack Martin and Alan
Rudrum for reading parts of this book at various stages. Alan Rudrum,
indeed, has read it all more than once and his comments, encouragement and
love have meant more to me than I can readily express. I am grateful to the
Jane Austen Society of North America, and to the various local chapters of
the society at which I have presented talks and papers over the years. Special
thanks are due to Keiko Parker. I have learnt much from the various graduate
and undergraduate students in Austen classes over the years. I am especially
grateful to Dr Corinna Wagner, now of the University of Exeter. I should
thank the staffs of the British Library, the Huntington Library, California and
Simon Fraser University Library. Any Austen critic writing in the early
twentyfrst century is indebted to the wealth of previous scholarship and discussion.
I hope I have fully acknowledged all these debts in the text and in notes. While
thinking about Jane Austen’s families I have been very conscious of my own
great good fortune as daughter, mother, grandmother, sister, niece and aunt.REFERENCES AND ABBREVIATIONS
All references are given in parenthesis after quotations and refer to works cited
in the Select Bibliography. Where the author has more than one item in the
bibliography an abbreviated form of the title is added to the page number.
Abbreviations of Jane Austen’s novels are as follows: NA (Northanger Abbey);
S&S (Sense and Sensibility); P&P (Pride and Prejudice); MP (Mansfeld Park); E (Emma);
P (Persuasion). GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Jane Austen’s families are not, for my purpose, the Austens, the Austen-Leighs,
the Leigh Perrots, or the Knights – actual historical families. My concern is
with the Bennets, the Dashwoods, the Bertrams – with the many fctional
families whose dynamics are crucial both to Jane Austen’s plots and to her
explorations of ethical complexities. Most Austen criticism tends to direct its
attention to the interactions of the lovers in the various novels. Given Austen’s
narratives, this concern is inescapable: the relations between Elizabeth and
Darcy and between Emma and Mr Knightley, for instance, are crucial to
my arguments at various points in this book. Yet my principal interest is the
central characters in interaction with their own families and (to a lesser extent)
with other family groups, interactions that both foster and retard emotional
and moral development.
1Signifcantly, Austen chooses not to write about orphaned heroines, in
this respect contrasting strongly with her contemporaries, Frances Burney
(Evelina, Camilla, Cecilia), Ann Radcliffe (Emily St Aubert) and Maria
Edgeworth (Belinda), and her successors, Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre, Shirley
Keeldar, Caroline Helstone, Lucy Snowe), George Eliot (Dorothea Brooke,
2Dinah Morris, Hetty Sorrel) and so on. “Orphan” narratives are convenient
enough for many novelists, allowing a protagonist to experience the shocks of
the world without the usual parental buffers, but for a writer such as Austen,
3who cares intensely for what is natural, possible and probable in fction, the
most common early experience of surviving the pains and pleasures of family
life provides far richer material. When Walter Scott writes of her ability to
communicate “the current of ordinary life” (59) he is surely referring largely
to her treatment of family life.
This study includes discussions of the various family interactions in Austen’s
novels, both intergenerational and intragenerational. Jane Austen writes often of
the power and complexity of the love between siblings, which, according to the
narrator of Mansfeld Park, while it is “sometimes almost everything” can also be
“worse than nothing” (MP 247). At an early stage in all her novels the capacity
for affection that is an essential part of the moral nature of all her protagonists 2 JANE AUSTEN’S FAMILIES
4shows itself through the love of a brother or sister, and sibling relations, especially
between sisters, are an important element in the moral growth of several of her
heroines, Marianne Dashwood being merely the most obvious example. Even
more signifcant are the relations between parent and child, and I discuss the
ways, both negative and positive, in which Austen’s heroines are their parents’
daughters – how they respond to and resist their upbringing. Inevitably this
concern involves a consideration of the ethics of parenthood and also the ethics
these heroines acquire from their parents, through adaptation, imitation and
resistance to what they are taught, directly and indirectly. Interactions between
parent and child affect both the child in herself and in her active moral life –
both what S. L. Goldberg calls “life-morals and conduct morals” (38–9). While
Austen’s marriage plots depend on the relations between men and women, she
is also deeply interested in intergenerational responsibilities, especially in the
obligations of the older generation towards the young.
All the same, Austen’s novels are never precisely ethically prescriptive. She
does not share much of her period’s taste for the didactic. In the fnal words
of Northanger Abbey she mocks narratives that provide (and readers who expect)
simplistic morals: “I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern, whether
the tendency of this work may be to recommend parental tyranny, or to reward
5flial disobedience.” As Bharat Tandon says, Austen does not indulge in “the
detachable, didactic sententiae of which some of her contemporaries were fond”
(Jane Austen 34). Most notable among such contemporaries was Hannah More,
whose Coelebs in Search of a Wife (1808) was the best-selling novel of the early
6 nineteenth century. Coelebs is structured as a quest for the perfect woman, an
unfallen Eve. Coelebs rejects various candidates for his hand for such faults
as vanity, coarse manners, over-valuing of accomplishments or wealth, and
eventually fnds the paragon he has been seeking. The contrast with Austen is
clear enough: she does not deal either with paragons or with those who aspire
to marry them. While it is certainly possible to provide an itemized list of
Austenian virtues (intelligence, charity, self-knowledge), such a list would be both
misleading (over-generalized) and less than interesting. In Austen’s fction moral
life is dynamic and not static as it is in Coelebs. It is complex rather than simple;
a matter of responding to precisely imagined situations rather than of acting
7out absolutes. The signifcance of self-examination in these novels – Marianne
Dashwood’s, Darcy’s, Elizabeth Bennet’s, S