Enit Karafili Steiner
Jane Austen’s six complete novels and her juvenilia are examined in the context of civil society and gender. Steiner’s study uses a variety of contexts to appraise Austen’s work: Scottish Enlightenment theories of societal development, early-Romantic discourses on gender roles, modern sociological theories on the civilizing process and postmodern feminist positions on moral development and interpersonal relations.
Austen is presented as a writer who not only participated in late eighteenth-century debates, but who is able to address twenty-first-century concerns of a theoretical and practical nature.
Literature, Eighteenth-Century Studies and Gender Studies
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