Jane Austen's Adventurous Wives

Title: Jane Austen's Adventurous Wives
Creator: Jordan-Clark, Chris
Relation: Sensibilities Vol. 63, p. 37-44
Publisher: The Jane Austen Society of Australia
Resource Type: journal article
Date: 2021
Description: Adventure might not be the word that first springs to mind when you think of Jane Austen. ‘Adventure’ and ‘adventurous’ are not words that appear frequently in her novels. In fact, when they are used, six times in the completed novels and more often in her private correspondence, the implied meaning is mostly that which modern readers would term ‘misadventure’: the meaning of ‘adventurous’ has obviously changed over time. The common modern perception is that Austen wrote quiet, domestic fiction that encapsulated, and fulfilled, the female reader’s longing for romance. However, in her own time, her novels were not seen as romantic. The fact that they end with marriage should not confuse us into thinking that these stories are romances. Austen's women are often adventurous but it is her secondary characters that are the truly adventurous wives. This article looks at the adventurousness, or otherwise, of some of Austen's fictional women.
Subject: Jane Austen; feminism; literature; female characters
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1499854
Identifier: uon:54795
Identifier: ISSN:1323-8418
Language: eng
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