UVM Theses and Dissertations
Format:
Print
Author:
Ottenheimer, Lea
Dept./Program:
English
Year:
2008
Degree:
MA
Abstract:
This thesis is, in part, a response to a recent body of scholarship that presented a theory that the eighteenth-century literary tradition condemned female-authored women's use of humor as critique and this affected the way Jane Austen used humor in her fiction. In addition to investigating for textual evidence of this condemnation, this study posits that Austen's use of humor is instead a progression of the eighteenthcentury, satirical, literary tradition.
Chapter 1 ("The Feminist Critique") delineates the Theories of Eileen Gillooly and Regina Barreca and raises questions about the evidence, or lack there of, used to reach their conclusions. Chapter 2 ("Austen's Eighteenth-Century Literary Influences") examines a selection of eighteenth-century literature, Austen was known to have read, looking for evidence that Austen's use of humor was created as a reaction to a literary tradition condemning the female use of humor as critique. Chapter 3 ("A Critical Reading of Mansfield Park") attempts to illustrate how Austen's critical humor is expressed through an ironic juxtaposition of the fictionality of social roles and expectations and the imperfect reality hiding behind that ideology. Finally, chapter 4 ("A Resolution") proposes a theory about Austen7s use humor as critique through the juxtaposition of Mary Crawford and Fanny Price analyzed in regards to Michael McKeon's theory about Henry Fielding's use of a "double critique" in his novel Jonathan Wild.
The purpose of this thesis is to question the theory that Austen's use of humor was created in response to an English literary tradition of condemnation of female wit and propose that Austen's use of humor could actually be the progression of a complicated irony used by her literary progenitors, exemplified through Fielding.
Chapter 1 ("The Feminist Critique") delineates the Theories of Eileen Gillooly and Regina Barreca and raises questions about the evidence, or lack there of, used to reach their conclusions. Chapter 2 ("Austen's Eighteenth-Century Literary Influences") examines a selection of eighteenth-century literature, Austen was known to have read, looking for evidence that Austen's use of humor was created as a reaction to a literary tradition condemning the female use of humor as critique. Chapter 3 ("A Critical Reading of Mansfield Park") attempts to illustrate how Austen's critical humor is expressed through an ironic juxtaposition of the fictionality of social roles and expectations and the imperfect reality hiding behind that ideology. Finally, chapter 4 ("A Resolution") proposes a theory about Austen7s use humor as critique through the juxtaposition of Mary Crawford and Fanny Price analyzed in regards to Michael McKeon's theory about Henry Fielding's use of a "double critique" in his novel Jonathan Wild.
The purpose of this thesis is to question the theory that Austen's use of humor was created in response to an English literary tradition of condemnation of female wit and propose that Austen's use of humor could actually be the progression of a complicated irony used by her literary progenitors, exemplified through Fielding.