Jane Austen For Beginners
Language: English
Pages: 176
ISBN: 1934389617
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Jane Austen's novels are classics. They have never been out of print, and have continuously been turned into countless movies and TV series, yet her works still remain largely misunderstood. On their surface, Austen's novels all involve characters from provincial communities in rural England, far removed geographically and thematically from greater social movements, war, industry, colonization, and imperialism. This impression could not be further from the truth. Jane Austen For Beginners explores the intentions behind Austen's work. Her examination of money and power, of the marriage market, of social class, and of the rending of the British social fabric of her day are among her many concerns. Jane Austen For Beginners will foster a deeper appreciation and understanding of Austen's greatest stories and most memorable characters.
taken in an orphan girl by the name of Eliza, who was of the same age as Brandon. They fell in love. Brandon equates the passionate feelings they shared for one another with Marianne’s feelings for Willoughby. At seventeen, Brandon’s father married off Eliza to Brandon’s older brother, who cared little for her. Brandon was sick about it and planned an elopement with Eliza, but a servant revealed their plans and they were stopped. Later while Brandon was in the East Indies serving in the army,
fatalities during the Napoleonic War. In comparison, death suffered at the hands of the enemy comprised only six percent of the toll. Yellow fever, smallpox, typhus, and scurvy were the leading killers, diseases which festered and proliferated because of poor hygienic conditions, poor diet, and cramped quarters. Disease also found its way into the naval community as a result of sanctioned prostitution. Since common sailors were denied shore leave during their tenure in the navy, their only
and she has no ability to gauge when her company is proving tiresome to her audience. Beyond the dependence women have on money and men in this early nineteenth-century English society, Austen also has a lot to say about how women spend their time. In short, there is simply not a great deal 97 book_2:Layout 1 copy 5/1/12 10:10 AM Page 98 for women of the gentry to do outside of visiting, socializing, and gossiping. Women of this social class have plenty of servants for all household and
Janeite products as “Austenmania,” a “virtual industry” of Austen production and money-making in the United States, Great Britain, and around the world. Since Austen’s novels are so preoccupied with money and the rise of the middle class, Austen herself would likely enjoy the knowledge that her work has generated such a frenzy of material production. There is no other literary novelist who is appreciated by such a wide spectrum of fans. Jane Austen’s legacy is an immense and ever-expanding
the British Empire is expanding. Windows in Austen’s texts provide us access. We are not on location in Antigua with Thomas Bertram, but we see how the ripple effects of empire-building are experienced back home in England and in 152 book_2:Layout 1 copy 5/1/12 10:10 AM Page 153 the private realms of the women who inhabit the domestic spaces. Austen also reveals a society that has much in common with our own consumer culture, where economic fates can change suddenly and dramatically for