Jane Austen (/den stn/; 16 December 1775 18 July 1817) was an

English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a
place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature. Her realism, biting ironyand
social commentary as well as her acclaimed plots have gained her historical importance among
scholars and critics.[1]
Austen lived her entire life as part of a close-knit family located on the lower fringes of the
English landed gentry.[2] She was educated primarily by her father and older brothers as well as
through her own reading. The steadfast support of her family was critical to her development as a
professional writer.[3] From her teenage years into her thirties she experimented with various
literary forms, including an epistolary novel which she then abandoned, wrote and extensively
revised three major novels and began a fourth.[B] From 1811 until 1816, with the release of Sense
and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815), she
achieved success as a published writer. She wrote two additional novels, Northanger
Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1818, and began a third, which was
eventually titled Sanditon, but died before completing it.
Austen's works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are
part of the transition to 19th-century realism.[4][C] Her plots, though fundamentally comic,[5] highlight
the dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security.[6] Her
works, though usually popular, were first published anonymously and brought her little personal
fame and only a few positive reviews during her lifetime, but the publication in 1869 of her
nephew's A Memoir of Jane Austen introduced her to a wider public, and by the 1940s she had
become widely accepted in academia as a great English writer. The second half of the 20th
century saw a proliferation of Austen scholarship and the emergence of a Janeite fan culture.

A working definition
Feminist criticism concentrates on:

The presentation of female experience in character and action, frequently pointing out the
misrepresentation of female characters by male authors, and challenging sexist views and
statements

The silence' of women in certain works of literature and how different those works might
seem if the female point of view were more fully represented

In terms of literary history, it draws attention to the work of overlooked or neglected female
authors, who are seen as constituting a separate literary tradition, which is different from - but
not necessarily inferior to - a tradition dominated by male writers.

Persuasion offers many opportunities for the first two of these approaches.

The female voice in Persuasion

Persuasion was groundbreaking in the impression it offered of the female consciousness. Anne's
success in finding her voice, using it, and being heard by others lies at the heart ofPersuasion. We
know her opinions, thoughts and feelings even when she doesn't voice them, because we see
everything and everyone in the novel from Anne's perspective. Through her representation of Anne's
inner life, Jane Austen gives us an exploration of the female consciousness that presents it
realistically and validates it as trustworthy:

Anne's reason is inextricably linked with her emotions and the two work in tandem to lead her
to conclusions that demonstrate insight and understanding of the world and those around her

Anne's instincts are valid. The novel demonstrates that, when she allows the reasoning of
others to override her natural instincts unhappiness occurs - as it did when she followed the
reasoning of others and rejected Captain Wentworth or is threatened as when Anne
realises the misery she would have endured if she had followed the reasoning of Lady Russell
and married William Elliot

As Anne gains independence, her instinctive and emotional responses begin to align with her
outward expressions and actions

Anne values her own instincts sufficiently to choose happiness, even though it means leaving
her family and marrying the man of whom they disapprove.

No voice and no choice

Persuasion is forward-looking in its demonstration of the happiness that can result from women
discovering their voice and trusting it. However, Anne's silence, with the refusal of others to listen
when she does speak, are significant indicators of:

the limitations imposed on women

the domination of the male point of view

an unwillingness to acknowledge the female perspective.

We see this when Anne briefly voices her opinion on the value of the navy in Chapter 3, and her father
silences her with a diatribe against them. Similarly, Anne's wise recommendations for retrenchment do
not even get proposed to her father, and her wishes for avoiding Bath are passed over. Instead, she
has to passively endure the consequences of her father's poor financial decisions.
Despite the fact that Austen does not portray Elizabeth and Mary sympathetically, a feminist viewpoint
must acknowledge that they too, being women, have little choice:

Elizabeth is subject to the selfish whims of William Elliot. His decision to marry someone else
for financial gain leaves her without a husband and under pressure to marry suitably before
she gets too old. Meanwhile, she continues to have to be dependent on her father (Ch. 1)

Charles' fitness as a father is not called into question when he decides to go to dinner with the
Musgroves rather than stay home with his sick son. However, when Mary wishes to do the
same, her motherly instincts are criticised. She gets her own way in the end, but the doublestandard is clear nevertheless (Ch. 7).

Gender
Since the rise of feminist literary criticism in the 1970s, the question of to what extent Austen was
a feminist writer has been at the forefront of Austen criticism. Scholars have identified two major
strains of 18th-century feminism: "Tory feminism" and "Enlightenment feminism". Austen has
been associated with both. Tory feminism, which includes such writers as Mary
Astell and Dorothy Wordsworth, is a tradition of thought which recognised that "women were
treated as an inferior class in a man's world".[95] Writers in this tradition urged women to counter
this discrimination through moral and spiritual self-cultivation and charitable service to the family
and community.[95]Butler has argued that Austen belongs to the Tory feminist tradition because of
her stylistic and thematic affinity to the writings of Maria Edgeworth.[96] Moreover, Austen's
"heroines' subordinate role in the family,...their dutifulness, meditativeness, self-abnegation, and
self-control" are characteristics shared by the heroines of conservative authors such as Jane
West and Mary Brunton.[97] Enlightenment feminism, which includes such writers as Catherine
Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft, is a tradition of thought that claims that "women share the
same moral nature as men, ought to share the same moral status, and exercise the same
responsibility for their conduct".[98]Margaret Kirkham has argued that Austen is part of this tradition
because, for one, her "heroines do not adore or worship their husbands, though they respect and
love them. They are not, especially in the later novels, allowed to get married at all until the
heroes have provided convincing evidence of appreciating their qualities of mind, and of
accepting their power of rational judgement, as well as their good hearts." [99] Anne, the heroine
of Persuasion, is an example of such a protagonist.[100] Kirkham argues that Austen knew and
admired the works of Mary Wollstonecraft, particularly A Vindication of the Rights of
Woman (1792).[101] Moreover, she and others argue that Austen's novels followed in the tradition
of the radical Jacobin novels of the 1790s, which often dealt with feminist issues.[102]
Throughout Austen's fiction, according to feminist critics, female characters comment on maleauthored texts and take charge of the creation of their own worlds. In their seminal work The
Madwoman in the Attic (1979), noted feminist critics Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue that
the literary world is dominated by men and their stories, and that Jane Austen recognised and
critiqued this. The best-known example is from Northanger Abbey, in which the heroine,
Catherine, complains that history "tells [her] nothing that does not either vex or weary [her]. The
quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for

nothing, and hardly any women at allit is very tiresome". Austen's juvenile parody of Oliver
Goldsmith's History of England is "authored" by "a partial, prejudiced, and ignorant Historian".
[103]

In such statements, Austen suggests that history is a masculine fiction and of little importance

to women.[104]Feminist critics also focus on the role of the female artist in Austen's fiction. For
example, Claudia Johnson views Emma as a powerful heroine, an artist who controls her home,
her marriage choice, her community and her money. Emma composes stories for people's lives
and thereby represents the figure of the female artist.[105]
Despite arguing that Austen's novels have feminist elements, scholars have still noted that
women are frequently represented as confined in Austen's novels and that there are few
depictions of female authority figures. Women are literally confined in small spaces [106] but are
constrained even more effectively by social factors such as "miseducation" and "financial
dependency".[107] Gilbert and Gubar argue that women "must acquiesce in their own confinement,
no matter how stifling" because "they are too vulnerable in the world at large". [108] For example,
in Persuasion Anne Elliot describes the differences between men and women: "We live at home,
quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us. You are forced on exertion. You have always a
profession, pursuits, business of some sort or other, to take you back into the world immediately,
and continual occupation and change soon weaken impressions." [109] Butler points out that
Austen's novels lack depictions of female mentors or authority figures. In the novels, Butler
argues, women do not progress from ignorance to knowledge, for example, and many of them
are "oddly and even unnaturally ineffective". Instead, they marry authority figures. [110] As Gilbert
and Gubar put it, "becoming a woman means relinquishing achievement and accommodating
oneself to men and the spaces they provide".[111] For example, in Persuasion, as Mary and Louisa
grow up they lose their independence and become reliant on those around them. [112]
Austen's novels explore the precarious economic position of women of the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries. As Gilbert and Gubar explain, "Austen examines the female
powerlessness that underlies monetary pressure to marry, the injustice of inheritance laws, the
ignorance of women denied formal education, the psychological vulnerability of the heiress or
widow, the exploited dependency of the spinster, the boredom of the lady provided with no
vocation".[113] In exploring these issues, she continued the tradition of Burney's novels,
particularlyCecilia (1782) and Camilla (1796).[114] Worldly marriage is the theme of Austen's
unfinished novel The Watsons, which portrays a female economy in which the odds for marriage
heavily favour those young women whose fathers can and will pay a dowry. Physical
attractiveness and "accomplishments" are helpful but insufficient in the absence of adequate
funds for a marriage settlement.[115] After Mr. Watson dies, the family does not have sufficient
money for the dowries or support of the four daughters. As historian Oliver MacDonagh writes
"[m]atrimony was their only hope of escape from current penury and future ruin or near-ruin.
Dowerless, they were pursuing it with varying degrees of ruthlessness." [116] MacDonagh points out
that none of the marriages in Austen's fiction of which she approved was financially imprudent.
[117]

For Austen, marriage and children were a girl's natural and best aspiration. She advocated

sincere attachment, material prudence and circumspect delay in the choice of a marriage
partner. If the appropriate conditions were met, then marriage should follow.[118] Austen realised
that women without independent means felt very great pressure to marry someone who could
look after them, because otherwise they would be a burden on their families. [119] The marriage
market that Austen describes is quite detailed and well-understood by all concerned. For
example, as is explained in Mansfield Park, "Miss Maria Ward, 'with only seven thousand
pounds', had the good luck to captivate a baronet, 'her uncle, the lawyer, allowed her to be at
least three thousand pounds short of any equitable claim to it'. To indulge in a marriage less
lucrative than might have been expected was regarded as 'throwing oneself away', and someone
like Mary Crawford, who prided herself on her realism, could not bring herself to do it." [120]
Austen's depiction of sexuality is muted and indirect. While her depictions of Elizabeth and Darcy
in Pride and Prejudice include descriptions of their physical reactions to each other, which was
unusual at the time,[121] the climactic moment of this novel and her others are presented from a
distance.[122] Moreover, Austen does not turn her irony on sexual experiences.[123] Austen also often
refers to the sexual attraction between characters in oblique terms. For example, she writes that
Elinor considers the "unaccountable bias in favor of beauty", which caused an intelligent man to
choose a silly wife. This "unaccountable bias" represents sexual power, the physical attraction of
one body to another, "everything that cannot be said about the relations between men and
women".
Persuasion is Jane Austen's last completed novel. She began it soon after she had
finished Emma and completed it in August 1816. She died, at age 41, in 1817; Persuasion was
published in December of that year (but dated 1818).[1]
Persuasion is linked to Northanger Abbey not only by the fact that the two books were originally
bound up in one volume and published together, but also because both stories are set partly
in Bath, a fashionable city with which Austen was well acquainted, having lived there from 1801
to 1805.
Besides the theme of persuasion, the novel evokes other topics, such as the Royal Navy, in
which two of Jane Austen's brothers ultimately rose to the rank of admiral. As in Northanger
Abbey, the superficial social life of Bathwell known to Austen, who spent several relatively
unhappy and unproductive years thereis portrayed extensively and serves as a setting for the
second half of the book. In many respects, Persuasion marks a break with Austen's previous
works, both in the more biting, even irritable satire directed at some of the novel's characters and
in the regretful, resigned outlook of its otherwise admirable heroine, Anne Elliot, in the first part of
the story. Against this is set the energy and appeal of the Royal Navy, which symbolises for Anne
and the reader the possibility of a more outgoing, engaged, and fulfilling life, and it is this
worldview which triumphs for the most part at the end of the novel.