Jane Austen’s Dual Politics and Discourse of Authority

Abstract

The dissertation entitled “Jane Austen’s Dual Politics and Discourse of Authority” concerns to the theme of centrality for women, in three of the novels of Jane Austen, named Emma, Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility.These novels are about rebellion and submission of women against patriarchy so as to acquire the consciousness as well as the identity to them. As a Gynocritic, Jane Austen rejected the prevailing concept of all-male and takes the women as the individual and places her in the social setting faced with the choice that is private and personal. A recurrent theme of her novels is the heroine resistance to the effort of patriarchal community to force her into a social role at the cost of her own identity. Similarly, in terms of narrative mode and structure, her work takes element of the conventional novel and quietly subverts them, without revealing any crack on the surface. The compact neatness of her novels belies the shrewd critical mind that delighted in sifting the available narrative conventions while manipulating some of her own advantage. Hence, the interest lies on the way Austen responds to the two opposite impulses, as her politics that tries to undermine the patriarchal propensity and to create new femininerealm, full of freedom, equality and justice. Her emphasis on the redefinition and re-visionary re-reading of the women and their truths are, the core of this thesis.