Jane Austen And The Victorian Heroine
by Cheryl A. Wilson /
2017 / English / PDF
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This book
This bookuses the figure of the Victorian heroine as
a lens through which to examine Jane Austen’s presence in
Victorian critical and popular writings. Aimed at
Victorianist readers and scholars, the book focuses on the ways
in which Austen was constructed in fiction, criticism, and
biography over the course of the nineteenth century. For
the Victorians, Austen became a kind of cultural shorthand,
representing a distant, yet not too-distant, historical past that
the Victorians both drew on and defined themselves against with
regard to such topics as gender, literature, and national
identity. Austen influenced the development of the
Victorian literary heroine, and when cast as a heroine herself,
was deployed in debates about the responsibilities of the
novelist and the ability of fiction to shape social and cultural
norms. Thus, the study is as much, if not more, about the
Victorians than it is about Jane Austen.
uses the figure of the Victorian heroine as
a lens through which to examine Jane Austen’s presence in
Victorian critical and popular writings. Aimed at
Victorianist readers and scholars, the book focuses on the ways
in which Austen was constructed in fiction, criticism, and
biography over the course of the nineteenth century. For
the Victorians, Austen became a kind of cultural shorthand,
representing a distant, yet not too-distant, historical past that
the Victorians both drew on and defined themselves against with
regard to such topics as gender, literature, and national
identity. Austen influenced the development of the
Victorian literary heroine, and when cast as a heroine herself,
was deployed in debates about the responsibilities of the
novelist and the ability of fiction to shape social and cultural
norms. Thus, the study is as much, if not more, about the
Victorians than it is about Jane Austen.
