...contention will define gender politics for this essay. Jane Austen and Mary Shelley, writing at the beginning of the nineteenth-century, joined their female contemporaries in a growing generation of authoresses who forged careers in discipline of male authority. In this respect, they are inescapably engaging with gender politics. Margaret Kirkham comments that ‘this burgeoning of the female talent...was bound to have a profound effect upon any young woman beginning to write once it had occurred’, suggesting that, regardless of whether the female intended to represent female concerns within their work; a female, in becoming ‘an author, was, in itself, a feminist act’ (Kirkham 33). With the status of the authoress in mind whilst analysing Northanger Abbey and Frankenstein, this essay will focus how Austen and Shelley engage with gender politics through characterization and narrative form, and the female concerns they address, both implicitly and explicitly, throughout their texts. Austen predominately engages with gender politics through her protagonist Catherine. Catherine is presented as the unlikely heroine; ‘no one...would have supposed her born to be a heroine’ (Austen 3). Austen subverts the expectation of an heroine as Catherine possesses ‘feelings rather natural than heroic’, provoking a reading of Catherine as a satire of the passive, unnatural, gothic heroine. When Catherine embarks...
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...Catherine Morland was born to be a heroine. We all have a stereotyped image of the hero or heroine. Yet in Jane Austen's Northhanger Abbey, Morland was shown to be an extraordinarily ordinary girl. She does not display the characteristics of a great hero or heroine that we have all come to aspect. Through the use of imagery and paradox, we, the reader, are shown an ordinary young girl who grows into an extraordinary women. The passage opens with a description of the family Morland was born into. A respectable clergyman of a father, a simple mother, and ten children, we are given the image of a standard, middle class family with a few extra children to look. One that most of us can relate to, but don't really image as a breeding ground for greatness....
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...Karolína Sailerová Long Essay 3. To what extent is Northanger Abbey a bildungsroman? Lisette Allen, MA (Cantab) English Skills and Cultural Communication 20 December 2012 1812 words Jane Austen is without doubt one of the greatest as well as most widely read novel writers in English literature. It is not easy to identify her with some literary movement. As Andrew H. Wright suggests in his book Jane Austen’s Novels, she is not really a writer of the nineteenth century to be called Romantic, “too much a person of her time to be called Classic, too original and too great to be considered a precursor or an apotheosis... .”[1] She is unique as well as her books are, especially Northanger Abbey. When thinking about this novel in detail, it becomes quite confusing, as Northanger Abbey can be placed in several generic categories. The most important one is bildungsroman. Bildungsroman is a German term for a novel of formation, as J. A. Cuddon states it means “literally an ‘upbringing’ or ‘education’ novel […] it refers to a novel which is an account of the youthful development of a hero or heroine […] it describes the processes by which maturity is achieved through the various ups and downs of life.”[2] We do see a development in the heroine of Northanger Abbey. However, Austen’s constant mocking of Catherine and her use of irony make it hard to distinguish to what extent Northanger Abbey is a bildungsroman and to what extent Jane Austen uses Catherine and her transformation as...
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...Her grandest gothic delusion is her perception of General Tilney as a cruel, gothic villain with horrible mysteries, intentions, and crime. Her desire for the gothic to be real at the abbey results in her latching on to anything that would fulfill her wish, in this case, the General’s less than affectionate manner towards his dead wife (181; ch. 22). The abbey amplifies her misconceptions with its locked doors and an inhabitant with “the air and attitude of a Montoni” (186; ch. 23). In the subsequent chapters, Catherine continues to delude herself with thoughts of murder or imprisonment, and these ideas blind her from the reality of the General just being a stern, manipulative, materialistic Victorian patriarch who hopes to gain a rich daughter-in-law....
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..."Jane Austen: Irony and Authority" Critic: Rachel M. Brownstein Source: Women's Studies 15, nos. 1-3 (1988): 57-70. Criticism about: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1775-1817) Nationality: British; English [(essay date 1988) _In the following essay, Brownstein focuses on several of Austen's novels, including Pride and Prejudice, to support her argument that Austen uses irony to convey a "discursive authority" from which women can derive pleasure in a patriarchal society.] It is a truth universally acknowledged, right now, that language is involved in giving and taking both power and pleasure. Whether we begin by asking if the pen is a substitute for the penis, or think about why we read stories of love and adventure, or consider, from any point of view, pornography or psychoanalysis, we end by analyzing ways people please themselves and assert authority over others by using words. (To observe that critics writing about pleasure and power have managed to get what measure of the good stuff they can is to state the merely inevitable.) Claiming that women writers are powerful--i.e. effective and influential--has been a focus of feminist critics concerned to dispute the canon, to rehabilitate forgotten writers, and to revise women's relation to the languages of power. That Jane Austen, unforgotten, canonized, and stunningly authoritative, has been a problem for feminists is not surprising: in the struggle for power between politically radical and conservative critics...
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...Pride and Prejudice JANE AUSTEN Level 5 Retold by Evelyn Attwood Series Editors: Andy Hopkins and Jocelyn Potter Pearson Education Limited Edinburgh Gate, Harlow, Essex CM20 2JE, England and Associated Companies throughout the world. ISBN-13: 978-0-582-41935-3 ISBN-10: 0-582-41935-2 First published in the Longman Simplified English Series 1945 First published in Longman Fiction 1993 This adaptation first published in 1996 This edition first published 1999 10 NEW EDITION Contents page Introduction Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 The Bennets New Neighbours at Netherfield Jane Gains an Admirer Mr Collins Mr Wickham The Ball at Netherfield Mr Collins Makes a Proposal of Marriage Netherfield Is Empty Mr Collins Makes Another Proposal V 1 3 9 18 22 27 33 36 38 40 43 46 48 53 59 65 70 73 80 84 89 This edition copyright © Penguin Books Ltd 1999 Cover design by Bender Richardson White Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Set in ll/14pt Bembo Printed in China SWTC/10 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Jane Goes to London All rights reserved; no part of this publication may he reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Publishers. Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Elizabeth Visits Hunsford Lady Catherine de Bourgh Visitors to Rosings Mr Darcy Elizabeth Receives a Letter Elizabeth and Jane Return Home The Regiment...
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...2013B Carefully read the following excerpt from the short story “Mammita’s Garden Cove” by Cyril Dabydeen. Then write a well-organized essay in which you analyze how Dabydeen uses literary techniques to convey Max’s complex attitudes toward place. ‘Where d’you come from?’ Max was used to the question; used to being told no as well. He walked away, feet kicking hard ground, telling himself that Line he must persevere. More than anything else he knew 5 he must find a job before long. In a way being unemployed made him feel prepared for hell itself even though he knew too that somewhere there was a sweet heaven waiting for him. How couldn’t it be? After all he was in Canada. He wanted to laugh all of 10 He continued walking along, thoughts drifting back to the far-gone past. Was it that far-gone? He wasn’t sure . . . yet his thoughts kept going back, to the time he was on the island and how he used to dream about 15 being in Canada, of starting an entirely new life. He remembered those dreams clearly now; remembered too thinking of marrying some sweet island-woman with whom he’d share his life, of having children and later buying a house. Maybe someday he’d even own 20 a cottage on the edge of the city. He wasn’t too sure where one built a cottage, but there had to be a cottage. He’d then be in the middle class; life would be different from the hand-to-mouth existence he was used to. 25 His heels pressed into the asphalt, walking on. And slowly he...
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...2013B Carefully read the following excerpt from the short story “Mammita’s Garden Cove” by Cyril Dabydeen. Then write a well-organized essay in which you analyze how Dabydeen uses literary techniques to convey Max’s complex attitudes toward place. ‘Where d’you come from?’ Max was used to the question; used to being told no as well. He walked away, feet kicking hard ground, telling himself that Line he must persevere. More than anything else he knew 5 he must find a job before long. In a way being unemployed made him feel prepared for hell itself even though he knew too that somewhere there was a sweet heaven waiting for him. How couldn’t it be? After all he was in Canada. He wanted to laugh all of 10 He continued walking along, thoughts drifting back to the far-gone past. Was it that far-gone? He wasn’t sure . . . yet his thoughts kept going back, to the time he was on the island and how he used to dream about 15 being in Canada, of starting an entirely new life. He remembered those dreams clearly now; remembered too thinking of marrying some sweet island-woman with whom he’d share his life, of having children and later buying a house. Maybe someday he’d even own 20 a cottage on the edge of the city. He wasn’t too sure where one built a cottage, but there had to be a cottage. He’d then be in the middle class; life would be different from the hand-to-mouth existence he was used to. 25 His heels pressed into the asphalt, walking on. And slowly he...
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