Romancing Jane Austen: Narrative, Realism and the Possibility of a Happy Ending

We celebrate Jane Austen as the mother of the English realist novel, but have you ever wondered why she insists on giving her mature heroines the 'perfect happiness' that can only be realized in the romance? Romancing Jane Austen asks the reader to consider Austen's happy endings as a 'prophetic' rather than merely 'illusory' answer to the contradiction that feminine subjectivity represents for history. A happy ending for the feminine subject? But that would be against all the empirical odds...

Author: A. Tauchert
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Published: 12/16/2005
Pages: 192
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.82lbs
Size: 8.82h x 5.88w x 0.65d
ISBN: 9781403997470

Review Citation(s):
Choice 11/01/2006 pg. 485

About the Author
ASHLEY TAUCHERT is Senior Lecturer in the School of English, Exeter University, UK. Her previous works include Mary Wollstonecraft and the Accent of the Feminine and Gender, Teaching and Research in Higher Education.