Synopses & Reviews
Who owns, who buys, who gives, who mentions, and who notices objects is always significant in Austen's writing. The trimming on a gown or the style of a carriage is made to place a character socially. Covetousness and meanness are clearly damned, but objects are used for more subtle forms of characterization; an attitude towards a meal, or a gift, or a tree is made more effective than a dozen speeches. If possessions are important, so is dispossession, which Austen suffered in her own life and whose effects she explores in the lives of her characters. Jane Austen's Possessions and Dispossessions looks at the significance of objects in Austen's major novels, fragments, and juvenilia.
Synopsis
Who owns, who buys, who gives, and who notices objects is always significant in Austen's writing, placing characters socially and characterizing them symbolically. Jane Austen's Possessions and Dispossessions looks at the significance of objects in Austen's major novels, fragments, and juvenilia.
About the Author
Sandie Byrne is University Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Oxford and Director of Studies in English Literature and Creative Writing at the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education, UK. She is the author of a number of articles and books on nineteenth- and twentieth-century writing.
Table of Contents
List of Abbreviations
A note on the texts
Introduction
1. Austen Possessions and Dispossessions
2. Sense and Sensibility Giving and Taking
3. Pride and Prejudice: General Impressions
4. Mansfield Park Benevolence and Gratitude
5. Emma The Obliged and the Obligated
6. Persuasion Loss and Retrieval
7. Northanger Abbey Signs taken for Wonders
8. The Early Writing and Fragments
9. The Land and the Big House
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index