Jane Austen’S Novels And The Contemporary Social And Literary Conventions.
...The Introduction to Conduct Manuals 4
1.2. Patriarchy in Conduct Literature 4
1.3. The Private Sphere as Woman’s Domain. 5
1.4. Characteristics of ideal female features 6
1.5. Conduct Manuals and the Novels 9
2. Romantic Novels. 11
2.1. Introduction to the Novel. 11
2.2. The Novel of Manners, Sentiment and Emulation. 12
2.3 The Gothic Romance. 13
3. Jane Austen and Her Novels in relation to the Contemporary Literature. 15
3.1. Austen’s Criticism about the Contemporary Fiction. 15
3.2. Jane Austen as a Conservative Writer and as a Social Critic. 16
3.3. Austen’s writing in her own perception. 17
4. Pride and Prejudice. 20
4.1. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy – the Reversed Ideals. 20
22
5. Emma 23
5.1. Emma the heroine. 23
5.2. Men of sense and silly wives 26
5.3. Emma as the unusual learning. 28
Conclusions 30
Bibliography: 31
Introduction
The end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, both in literature and in everyday life aspects, can be characterized by a great deal of conventions and rules. The social conventions, in particular those concerning life of a young woman, were presented in conduct manuals. Many of these conventions were supported by plenty literary authors, who made their protagonists basing on the ideal image of woman which was shown in the conduct books. Moreover, the authors created their own way of writing, which was supposed to focus, by and large, only on the positive aspects of the character, making he or she a role model to be emulated by the reader.
Jane Austen, being a highly regarded author at that time, created a specific style of writing, which was negotiating with the existing conventions in many aspects. Her novels, which already had gained a considerable popularity among her contemporaries, are the attempts to present protagonists, which are neither the role models, nor they...
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