Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 The Juvenilia: Untying the Knots
- 2 Lady Susan and Northanger Abbey: Riot in the Brain
- 3 Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice: Allowing for Difference
- 4 Mansfield Park: Emancipating ‘Puny’ Fanny Price
- 5 Emma: The Art of Quarrelling
- 6 Persuasion: Developing an ‘Elasticity of Mind’
- Afterword
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Introduction
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 The Juvenilia: Untying the Knots
- 2 Lady Susan and Northanger Abbey: Riot in the Brain
- 3 Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice: Allowing for Difference
- 4 Mansfield Park: Emancipating ‘Puny’ Fanny Price
- 5 Emma: The Art of Quarrelling
- 6 Persuasion: Developing an ‘Elasticity of Mind’
- Afterword
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
the civilization which has taken place hitherto in the world has been very partial … the civilized women of the present century, with a few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities and virtues exact respect.
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)The question at the outset of this book concerns the picture that emerges when reading Jane Austen's fiction from the perspective of a civilization in process. Albeit invested in the ways in which men and women, children and adults, navigate civil society, this is not another study about Austen the archetypal author of good manners. While moral development is at the heart of this book, it has been my care to avoid what one scholar has recently lamented ‘books that perpetuate the view of Austen as a moral tutor, a sort of Miss Manners for the ages’ do, namely, purport an understanding of ‘manners as monolithic – as near-universal and timeless behavioural ideas or, worse still, a set of rules to be followed’. This is not to say that such books offer no valuable insights, but that the present study seeks to delve into the implications of Austen's awareness of what Norbert Elias has christened ‘the civilizing process’ that underlies individuation and social manners.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Jane Austen's Civilized WomenMorality, Gender and the Civilizing Process, pp. 1 - 26Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014