Hardly an innocent diversion: Music in the life and writings of Jane Austen

This interdisciplinary study is an historical examination and critical reevaluation of the role of music in the lives of eighteenth-century women as it is reflected in the writings of Jane Austen. It investigates the gender divisions that structure British music history, as well as the cultural constructions of femininity and masculinity through music---constructions which Austen both supported and contested.;Although the eighteenth century witnessed a remarkable demand for the recently invented pianoforte and the proliferation of printed music, conventional music history records little of the female musicians for whom these goods were intended and whose study and performance filled eighteenth-century middle- and upper-class homes with music: Austen herself played the pianoforte nearly every day for over 30 years. Research for this dissertation included the recovery and preservation of Austen's musical manuscripts, as well as hundreds of hand-written pages of her favorite pieces of music, a sampling of which are reproduced here. The recent work of feminist musicologists provides new understanding of the ways in which gender informs musical canon formation; that many of the composers whose music Austen played have disappeared from history underscores the marginalization of these composers and the women for whom they wrote.;The examination of Austen's letters about music demonstrates how she adopted some of the prevailing ideas regarding music---for example, her mistrust of professional musicians---while dearly contesting others. Her constant pairing of "books and music" in her letters and novels points us to how thoroughly she relied on both to examine the important issues of women's lives. Finally, the dissertation's critical analysis of how music functions as a thematic and structural trope in Austen's fiction reveals the ways in which Austen challenges the musical and "extra musical" assumptions of her time, and thus illuminates her position in and towards the culture of female accomplishment.