Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel
Johnson places Jane Austen in a tradition of 18th-century women novelists who, while not overtly reformist, are skeptical of conservative ideology. These novels use the vocabulary of the family as a paradigm for the condition of the state, focusing on "the discourse rather than the representation of politics." Johnson, widely read in 18th-century philosophy, social analysis, and fiction, speedily rescues Austen from the "a-political" charge often leveled against her. She is less successful on the novels themselves, tending to isolate issues and insights without following through on their role in the novel or oeuvre as a wholeas when she sees Austen's heroes as exemplifying patriarchal positions without discussing their function as the object of the heroine's love. Suzanne Juhasz, Univ. of Colorado, BoulderCopyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.