No matter how much Jane Austen admired Dr. This is not an aggressive combative tactic nor is it a mystification on the contrary, It is partly an act of seemly self‐effacement, partly a matter of tact, and partly - I think - an overt recognition that when a lady took up the pen, she would, necessarily, address herself to matters different from those with which men were engaged, and, perforce, write of the world in a different manner and from a perspective different from those of the male. Jane Austen writes, on the title pages of her novels, assertively and modestly, - “By a Lady”: the name withheld, the sex proclaimed. JANE AUSTEN'S NOVELS Social Change and Literary Form. It is as though part of them felt that they were engaging in an “unfeminine” activity - or recognized that men would not always welcome the intrusion of women into their privileged realm.Ī PORTRAIT OF JANE AUSTEN By David Cecil. Hence, partly, the degree of anonymity and the extensive use of pseudonyms employed by women writers in the 19th century. Men held the pen, and - with a few exceptions-only men published. So when the woman took up the pen, she was, in a certain sense, venturing into a male‐dominated realm, engaging in an activity traditionally reserved for males (except for letters and other kinds of private documents).
The pen had been mainly in the man's hand: It was the male who effectively owned and controlled the discourses within which the woman had to move and have (or fail to have) her being. I will not allow books to prove anything.” same time Jane Austen is, of course, making a serious point. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree the pen has been in their hands. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. At the “Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to exam pies in books. THIS is not a feminist pronouncement but a characteristic touch of Jane Austen's irony: The pen was now in her hand, and the warning not to trust books necessarily recoils on the text in which it is inscribed.
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