HAPPILY EVER AFTER: A READING OF JANE AUSTEN'S NOVELS (FEMINIST, SPATIAL, METAPHOR)

This dissertation is a reassessment of Jane Austen's canon in its historical, sociological, biographical and generic contexts. Its perspective is feminist, its methodology to closely examine the metaphors of domestic entrapment and images of female powerlessness reflected in patriarchal order and literary convention. The argument pivots on a close reading of spatial metaphors in all the novels.;The ruling argument of this dissertation is that Jane Austen's works subversively confront women's subjugation within the patriarchal order, through such techniques as parody, comedy, burlesque, irony. However, as her works progress, this confrontation becomes more overt, so that by her final novel, her heroine clearly defies the emblem of male authority. An adjacent argument is, that by subversively demonstrating women's suppression within social structures, Jane Austen's work provides the fantasy of liberation for women readers, and by writing about female disempowerment, she renders her own prose powerful.;Chapter I addresses the issue of correspondence between women--in this particular case, Austen's relationship with her sister Cassandra--and argues that the correspondence resulting from imposed silence and isolation constitutes one of the major bases in women's fiction. Chapter II concentrates on the juvenilia, which lays the foundation for themes of female disadvantage discussed at length in the completed novels. Chapter III assesses the relation between economics, marriage and female friendship in three novels: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma. Chapter IV addresses the parody of female Gothic in Northanger Abbey and the codification of female behavior in Mansfield Park, arguing that social codes and conventional images of women in the male canon act in concert to entrap and stigmatize women, to restrict their actions and constrict their possibilities. The argument in Chapter V is that, in her last finished work, Persuasion, Jane Austen liberates her heroine from patriarchal constraints and conventional representations of women, presenting radical new economic and romantic possibilities for heroines formerly trapped within the trivializing conventions of the male canon. Chapter VI demonstrates the various techniques by which Jane Austen subverts or subdues her conventional happy endings, suggesting the disparity between fiction and reality.