Feminism in Jane Austen Essay -- essays research papers

Feminism in Jane Austen"I often wonder how you can find time for what you do, in addition to the assist of the house and how good Mrs. West could have written such books and collected so many hard works, with all her family cares, is still more a affaire of astonishment Composition seems to me impossible with a head full of joints of mutton and doses of rhubarb." -- Jane Austen, letter of September 8 1816 to Cassandra"I will only add in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a dowery of them too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire any thing more in woman than ignorance." -- Northanger Abbey"...when a young lady professes to be of a different opinion from her friends, it is only a prelude to something worse. -- She begins by saying that she is determined to think for herself, and she is determined to act for herself -- and then it is all over with her" -- the character of Mrs. Stanhope in chapter 6 of Maria Edgeworths Belinda Here basically "friends"="family"Jane Austen a womens rightist? That has not been the traditional view (in 1870, Anthony Trollope declared that "Throughout all her works, a impudent lesson of homely household womanly virtue is ever being taught"), but once the question has been asked (which it was not, until relatively recently), it is not hard to see some feminist tendencies. Of course, Jane Austen is not a simple ideologue -- when a character in a Jane Austen novel makes a broad statement that seems to stand up for women in general, this is actually usually done by an unsympathetic character (such as Isabella Thorpe in Northanger Abbey or Mrs. Elton in Emma), and is not meant to be taken seriously. In experience and Prejudice the main example is Caroline Bingleys statement to Darcy that "Eliza Bennet is one of those young ladies who seek to recomm end themselves to the other sex by undervaluing their own, and with many men, I dare say, it succeeds. But, in my opinion, it is a paltry device, a very mean art." Here Caroline Bingley is "undervaluing" Elizabeth, and Darcy sees through her easily. Conversely, Henry Tilneys teasing remarks on the subject of women during the head from Bath to Beechen Cliff in Northanger Abbey are no... ...in my life which had not something to say upon womans inconstancy. ... But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men." Anne Elliot " perhaps I shall. -- Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything."Northanger Abbey not only contains the "Defence of the raw", but what has seemed to me to be a strong statement -- Catherine Morlands faux-naf declaration & quotBut history, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in... I look at it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every knave the men so good-for-nothing, and hardly any women at all -- it is very tiresome."Here the last sentence is as succinct a summary as one could wish of the objections of feminist historiography, social history, and/or the Annales school to the traditional "Great Man" theory of history. (See also Jane Austens own farcical History of England.)