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Not feminist
- Jane Austen’s novels are not feminist in the way we mean it today. But they do hint at the need for equality between the sexes. Her heroines defy gender norms, and push for more agency in their own lives.
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While none of Austen’s characters exhibited an overt feminist desire to challenge and go against a societal norm, Austen herself did. By choosing not to marry and writing novels instead, Austen challenged the notion that unmarried women could not support themselves.
In other words, we need to examine female images in Jane. Austen's work in relation to the liberationist philosophy of that "feminist tradition" which preceded Jane Austen in the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, and which, of course, has blossomed into the feminist revolt of our time.
The feminist depreciation of Jane Austen hinges on the question of marriage. Like much contemporary discourse, current criticism of Austen is taken up with answering an ideological question: did she or did she not advocate traditional, patriarchal mar-riage? Feminists tend to argue that she did: despite the irony and satire, all the novels
- Fairy Tales Meet Social Critique
- Asserting Strength and Independence
- Demanding Respect
- A Long-Term Fight
Mr. Darcy’s first marriage proposal to Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice(1813) is the most famous moment in Austen’s most famous novel. It is also the most telling example of Austen’s remarkable ability to combine wish fulfilment with social realism, and fairy-tale romance with biting cultural critique. On one level, the scene between the two...
The stark power imbalance between them fills Darcy with certainty that Elizabeth will be delighted to learn that she has been singled out by a man of his influence and social standing, and that she will eagerly consent to the match. To be sure, as he outlines his plans for their future, he expresses his “hope” that she will accept him. But this is ...
Darcy is utterly confounded by her refusal, but what Elizabeth objects to in his behaviour is what millions of women from her day to ours have objected to. Operating from a position of much greater social and financial power, Darcy wants Elizabeth to agree to an arrangement that suits him, but not her. He presumes that he knows what she wants. He d...
Austen occupies a key position in the long continuum of modern feminist thought. As the great novelist and literary critic, Virginia Woolf, observed almost a century ago, “Austen is…mistress of much deeper emotion than appears upon the surface.” Elizabeth Bennet is her most sparkling character, and she plays the lead role in one of the most compell...
Jane Austen in fact possessed an appreciation for the feminist tradition of women writers like Astell and Wollstonecraft and incorporated it into her writing.
However, more important than the ‘Biographical Notice’ and Henry Austen’s slightly extended ‘Memoir of Miss Austen’ (1833) is James Edward Austen-Leigh’s Memoir of Jane Austen (1870), which transformed his aunt into a model of femininity and gave a new impetus to Austen’s Victorian afterlife.
