Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Texts and abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The juvenilia, the early unfinished novels and Northanger Abbey
- 2 The non-heiresses: The Watsons and Pride and Prejudice
- 3 Sense and the single girl
- 4 The frailties of Fanny
- 5 Men of sense and silly wives – the confusions of Mr Knightley
- 6 Rationality and rebellion: Persuasion and the model girl
- 7 Sanditon – conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - The frailties of Fanny
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Texts and abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The juvenilia, the early unfinished novels and Northanger Abbey
- 2 The non-heiresses: The Watsons and Pride and Prejudice
- 3 Sense and the single girl
- 4 The frailties of Fanny
- 5 Men of sense and silly wives – the confusions of Mr Knightley
- 6 Rationality and rebellion: Persuasion and the model girl
- 7 Sanditon – conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
With the publication of Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen has by no means finished with the stereotypes of the oppositional polemical novel of the nineties, but her next work after the publication of Pride and Prejudice brings a somewhat different feature of contemporary fiction more centrally into play – the exemplary girl who battles with worldliness and vice, emerging ultimately victorious after innumerable tribulations, misunderstandings and accusations. She is often, though not always, orphaned, or for some other reason dependent on the protection of powerful relations.
Emmeline, Cecilia, Camilla and Belinda are examples of this kind of heroine, and though, as we have seen, Austen was not unreservedly admiring of either Fanny Burney or Maria Edgeworth, and had already parodied Emmeline in Northanger Abbey, they display enough signs of human frailty to be more to her taste than other pattern females who appear in novels which she specifically scorns in her letters to Cassandra and Anna. Sarah Burney's Clarentine (1798) concerns a girl who, despite temptations, never deviates, even in thought, from the accepted path of right conduct. Austen is unreservedly scathing about this one in a letter to Cassandra. Two other novelists are mentioned by her in disparaging terms – Hannah More, whose Cœlebs in Search of a Wife came out in 1808, and Mary Brunton, who published Self-control in 1810. All three novels clearly set out to instruct whilst at the same time entertaining a public hungry for fiction as well as for moral guidance.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Jane Austen and the Fiction of her Time , pp. 84 - 111Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999