"Slipping into the Ha-Ha": Bawdy Humor and Body Politics in Jane Austen's Novels

2000 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill Heydt-Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Jane Austen ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Venereal Disease ◽  
Marriage Market ◽  
Critical Comment ◽  
Body Politics ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Full Understanding ◽  
Mansfield Park ◽  
Patriarchal Culture

The novels of Jane Austen are filled with instances of sexually risqué humor, but this aspect of her comedy has rarely been recognized or subjected to extended critical comment and analysis. This essay examines the way in which Austen integrates bawdy humor into three of her novels-Emma, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion-in order to demonstrate the surprising prevalence of this material and to show how Austen marshals bawdy humor both in the service of a critique of patriarchal culture, including the system of marriage and courtship, and as a way to affirm the vigorous reality of female sexuality. In Emma Austen uses the riddle "Kitty, a fair, but frozen maid" as the basis of a subversive portrait of the profound linkages between courtship and venereal disease; in Mansfield Park (the novel perhaps most replete with sexual material) she wittily but also poignantly dissects the fine line between the marriage market and prostitution; and in Persuasion Austen's bawdy joking becomes a way to affirm the strength and pleasure of the female sexual gaze. This essay offers a more comprehensive view of the uses to which Austen puts her bawdy humor; it not only helps to clarify her fictional art but also breaks down the image of her propriety that has so long limited our full understanding of Austen and has rendered her less-chaste comedy especially unintelligible and inaccessible.

Persuading Rachel: Woolf and Austen’s “little voyage of discovery”

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Young Women ◽  
Jane Austen ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Mother Figures ◽  
Second Chance

In The Voyage Out, Clarissa Dalloway gives Rachel a copy of Persuasion as a gift and this seems to be an unusual choice given the disparity between Rachel, on the cusp of sexual awakening, and Anne Elliott, a mature woman given a second chance at happiness. But perhaps Austen’s novel, with its plot including a near fatal derailing of heterosexual romance, is an apt forerunner given Rachel’s own narrative arc. Indeed, there are several plot similarities, notably the ‘mother’ figures that play a role in persuading the young women in matters of the heart (see Froula and Schlack among others). Jane de Gay argues that the novel ‘probes the silence within a female tradition, represented by Jane Austen’, such as that about ‘female sexuality’. Towards the end of her essay, ‘Jane Austen’, Woolf speculates about the novels Austen may have written had she lived for longer, notably in the light of Woolf’s sense of ‘transition’ that she detects in Persuasion and the more ‘suggestive’ ways in which Austen may have examined what ‘people … leave unsaid’. She questions whether Austen may have been ready ‘in her own gay and brilliant manner, to contemplate a little voyage of discovery’ (Woolf 120, 118). In this paper I want to explore Woolf’s and Rachel’s ‘maiden voyages’ in the light of Austen’s final novel. How might the ‘tight plait’ of Persuasion be seen to unravel a little, to make room for a new plot – a mutiny, perhaps - hinging on the different avenues that persuasion might take us.

Satire and Realism in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: an Interpretative Analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Jane Austen ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Pride And Prejudice ◽  
Rigorous Analysis ◽  
Literary Life ◽  
Interpretative Analysis

Jane Austen is acknowledged for the application of realism and satire in her novels. This paper focuses on the analysis of realism and satire in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice; however, her entire oeuvre spotlights the features (of satire and realism) alongside robust feminism: typical of her literary taste and temperament, not necessarily of the Romantic Age which she lived in. Rigorous analysis and realistic observation reveals that the employment of realism and satire in Pride and Prejudice, are quite obvious, in all sorts of aspects including narrative, settings, themes and characters. Analysis of the novel under study leads to the observation that satire and realism go hand in hand in the said novel—intermittently—and thoughtfully. Conclusively, it is observed that Jane Austen’s literary life had a tremendous influence on how to subsume realism (primarily through matrimonies) of age and satire on a romantic society (whereby ideals collapse headlong), in Pride and Prejudice.

TYPES OF HEDONISM ON THE MAIN CHARACTER SIR WALTER ELLIOT IN THE NOVEL PERSUASION BY JANE AUSTEN

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-43
Author(s):  
Enggin Valufi ◽  
Retno Budi Astuti
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Jane Austen ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Philosophical Approach ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Descriptive Qualitative

Hedonism is a view of life in philosophy that seeks to avoid pain and make pleasure as the main goal in life. People who embrace hedonism tend to over-pursue pleasure. The hedonism lifestyle is mostly carried out by 18th century people especially the nobles who live in high culture. They are as close to hedonism as they are in the Persuasion novel by Jane Austen. Sir Walter Elliot the main character is a nobleman who did a lot of hedonism. Hedonism which is seen as too glorifying personal pleasure to ignore others. The purpose of this study was to find out the types of hedonism done by Sir Walter Elliot in Persuasion. This research uses descriptive qualitative method because all data are in the form of sentences. The researcher uses a philosophical approach and analyzes data using Weijers' theory as the main theory. The results of this study found that Sir Walter Elliot performed two types of hedonism, namely aesthetic hedonism and selfish hedonism.

Mansfield Park

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Austen ◽  
Jane Stabler
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Mansfield Park ◽  
Sexual Jealousy ◽  
The Family ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face

‘Me!’ cried Fanny … ‘Indeed you must excuse me. I could not act any thing if you were to give me the world. No, indeed, I cannot act.’ At the age of ten, Fanny Price leaves the poverty of her Portsmouth home to be brought up among the family of her wealthy uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram, in the chilly grandeur of Mansfield Park. There she accepts her lowly status, and gradually falls in love with her cousin Edmund. When the dazzling and sophisticated Henry and Mary Crawford arrive, Fanny watches as her cousins become embroiled in rivalry and sexual jealousy. As the company starts to rehearse a play by way of entertainment, Fanny struggles to retain her independence in the face of the Crawfords’ dangerous attractions; and when Henry turns his attentions to her, the drama really begins… This new edition does full justice to Austen’s complex and subtle story, placing it in its Regency context and elucidating the theatrical background that pervades the novel.

Inference of Personality Projected onto Fictional Characters Having an Author's First Name

2001 ◽  
Vol 89 (3) ◽  
pp. 705-706 ◽  
Author(s):  
Herbert Barry
Keyword(s):  
Social Communication ◽  
Jane Austen ◽  
Personality Characteristics ◽  
Fictional Characters ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Pride And Prejudice

Jane Austen projected some of her personality characteristics onto her fictional namesakes Jane Bennet in the novel Pride and Prejudice and Jane Fairfax in the novel Emma. Wishful fantasy seems satisfied by two attributes of both Janes. They are very beautiful, and they marry rich men they love. A feeling of inferiority was expressed by two attributes of both Janes, depicted as deficient in social communication and subordinate to the heroine of the novel.

Elizabeth Bowen and Eudora Welty: Selected Correspondence

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-161
Author(s):  
Allan Hepburn
Keyword(s):  
Jane Austen ◽  
Gustave Flaubert ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Contemporary Fiction ◽  
Eudora Welty ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Elizabeth Bowen ◽  
World War ◽  
Comprehensive Theory ◽  
Second World

Over her career, Elizabeth Bowen published ten novels, yet she left no comprehensive theory of the novel. This essay draws especially upon ‘Notes on Writing a Novel’ (1945), ‘The Technique of the Novel’ (1953), and ‘Truth and Fiction’ (1956), as well as opinions that Bowen expressed in her weekly book columns for The Tatler, to formulate her key perceptions of, and rules for, writing a novel. Bowen defined her ideas by drawing upon the empirical evidence of novels by Elizabeth Taylor, Olivia Manning, H.E. Bates, Jane Austen, Gustave Flaubert, and numerous others. She gave particular thought to ‘situation’, by which she means the central problematic or the crux of the story. The situation precedes and fuels plot. The Second World War, Bowen claimed in her essays and reviews, had a decisive influence on heroism and contemporary fiction by heightening its scale and its repertory of situations.

scholarly journals Semiologinio modelio taikymas literatūros dėstymui: J. Austen romano pavadinimas MANSFIELD PARK

Literatūra ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (5) ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Leona Toker
Keyword(s):  
Jane Austen ◽  
Mansfield Park

Straipsniu iliustruojama, kaip semiologinį modelį galima būtų pritaikyti dėstant literatūrą universitete. Trys semiologinio modelio aspektai: semantika, sintaktika ir pragmatika – padeda suderinti detalią teksto analizę ir jo meninių, istorinių ir sociologinių kontekstų apibrėžimą. Straipsnyje apžvelgiamos kryptys, kuriomis galima plėtoti diskusiją apie Jane Austen romano Mansfield Park pavadinimą. Jos remiasi intertekstine toponimo reikšme, sociologine ir istorine abiejų pavadinimo dalių reikšme (semantika), vidiniais ryšiais tarp romano temų, jų plėtotės būdų ir romano pavadinimo motyvų (sintaktika) bei motyvų išdėstymo būdų priklausomybe nuo autorės pozicijos jos adresatų atžvilgiu (pragmatika).

scholarly journals “I cannot act!”: Fanny’s “Inaction” in the Economic Ideology Driving Mansfield Park

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Morgan O'Neil
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Mansfield Park ◽  
Inherent Value ◽  
Economic Ideology ◽  
Profit Value ◽  
British Culture

In early 19th century British culture, an ideology founded on economics permeates one of society’s most private affairs marriage between two individuals. In Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, the characters become a type of currency to be exchanged through marriage in order for others to gain power and wealth. Fanny Price, subjected to this objectification, comes to realize the inherent value that she possesses as a woman. Once she is given agency in the novel, she is able to live beyond the ideology of the novel. Her marriage allows her to recognize herself as being equal to her husband, Edmund Bertram, and join him in ownership of their property. Fanny and Edmund represent a new ideology that is founded on love and equality, rather than profit value. 

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