Jane Austen in Literature’s Litany of Libbers
Jane Austen is a significant figure in the line of feminist literary luminaries. In the world of her books, as well as the world around her, marriage was very much thought to be a necessity for young ladies; success and upward mobility were almost entirely placed upon a woman’s ability to secure a favorable marriage. That said, where Jane Austen’s oeuvre makes strides against the patriarchal status quo is the agency she places in her female characters to control the arrangements that govern their futures. Austen’s female characters strive for equality with their male counterparts; the stories come to resolution only when the pair find a mutual respect and equivalent share in their partnership.
Austen spent her teenage years developing these renegade women in her writing, authoring stories of young women who would drink, steal, overeat, and all other manner of “un-lady-like” behavior. Influences may have been readily available, as Jane’s and her elder sister’s formal schooling was short-lived (Jane was only 10 when illness brought her and her sister home) and her homeschooling was framed by a household of six brothers, cleric apprentices who would board at the Austen home under the tutelage of Jane’s father, and a small operational farm to tend.
At age 15, Jane’s father moved the family from the country to town, where “society life” made its impression on Jane. When Jane was 20, her father died suddenly, requiring the Austen women to downsize and travel to live with relatives, further cementing the shift away from country life for the next four years, at which point, her brother, Edward, secured a house on his Chawton estate for the Austen women. It’s at this warmly received homestead that Jane Austen was able to revamp her earlier stories and get them published. Pride and Prejudice, originally authored in 1797 (age 22) entitled “First Impressions,” was finally published in 1813 (age 38) after the Chawton house treatment.
Jane Austen’s work is prized for depicting the life and struggles of the middle class and elevating the female characters with agency and choice, while poking fun at the genre of sentimental comedy which was very popular for the era.
A Libber Legacy
Sappho (620 B.C.E. - 570 B.C.E) was an ancient Greek poet from the island of Lesbos in Greece. Her work included odes to goddesses and descriptions about the education and instruction for the community of women of which she was the leader.
Christine de Pizan (1364 – 1430) was a court writer in medieval France. Started out by writing ballads that were quickly noticed by the court officials who took to being patrons of her work. From her position as writer she rose in status and position to consult and advise the newly situated young dauphin on how to govern.
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was a philosopher, writer, and activist for women’s rights. She wrote a huge range of texts, from a children’s book to a history of the French Revolution.
Mary Shelley (1797 - 1851) was the daughter of Mary Wollstoncraft and was an early pioneer of the science fiction and horror genres.
Fanny Burney (1752 - 1840) was a satirical novelist, diarist, and playwright whose works, like those of Austen’s, poked fun at high society’s notions of decorum while maintaining a lens for what it means to be a woman navigating these terrains of pomposity.
Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) was an American journalist, editor, critic, translator, and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movement. She was the first American female war correspondent and full-time book reviewer in journalism. Her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century is considered the first major feminist work in the United States.
Lucretia Mott (1793 - 1880) was a powerful orator whose writings and activism pursued the course of freedom and equality. She was an ardent supporter of the abolishment of enslavement, and for the rights to vote, to an education, and economic aid for Black Americans and women alike.
Florence Nightingale (1820 - 1910) was a writer, reformer, statistician, and founder of modern nursing. Her work paved the way for greater education and professional opportunities for women. Her writings advocated for healthcare accessibility, greater resources to combat hunger in India, and abolishing prostitution laws that brutally targeted marginalized classes of women. Much of her writing was educational and accessible to a wide range of reading abilities. She also wrote about religion and mysticism.
Charlotte Bronte (1816 - 1855) was a novelist and poet and the eldest of the three Bronte sisters. Her novel Jane Eyre, originally published under the pseudonym Currer Bell, was a smash hit even as it took a pointedly critical look at religious and educational institutions while identifying the failures of a society that insists on rigid lifestyles for women. This is echoed in greater depth in her third novel Villette.
