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Strong Female Characters: Jane Austen's Vs Western Kentucky University TopSCHOLAR® Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Honors College at WKU Projects Spring 4-30-2018 Strong Female Characters: Jane Austen's vs. The Mashups' Rachel McCoy Western Kentucky University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/stu_hon_theses Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, and the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons Recommended Citation McCoy, Rachel, "Strong Female Characters: Jane Austen's vs. The ashM ups'" (2018). Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects. Paper 740. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/stu_hon_theses/740 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by TopSCHOLAR®. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors College Capstone Experience/ Thesis Projects by an authorized administrator of TopSCHOLAR®. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS: JANE AUSTEN’S VS. THE MASHUPS’ A Capstone Experience/ Thesis Project Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Bachelor of English Literature with Honors College Graduate Distinction at Western Kentucky University By Rachel T. McCoy ***** Western Kentucky University 2018 CE/T Committee: Professor Walker Rutledge, Chair Professor Robert Hale Doctor Christopher Keller Copyright by Rachel McCoy 2018 ABSTRACT The comparison of Strong Female Characters in Jane Austen’s novels Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility, with the altered characters in the monster mashups by Seth Grahame-Smith and Ben Winters, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, respectively, reveals differences between the two society’s understanding and portrayal of strength and femininity. Because these texts are so closely connected – Austen is listed as a co-author of both mashups – the differences evident in the representations of women more clearly reveal the differing cultural values. Close textual analysis of the development of three primary female characters – Marianne Dashwood, Elinor Dashwood, and Elizabeth Bennet – through their respective novels and their parallel journeys in the mashups demonstrates that the mashups have weakened the characters. Though the mashups are advertised as making Austen’s characters into Strong Female Characters, Austen’s women are already strong. Keywords: Jane Austen, Mashups, Strong Female Characters, Popular Literature, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility iii DEDICATION I dedicate this thesis to all of my family and friends who experienced my obsession with Jane Austen and still encouraged me to keep going – especially anyone who has played “Marrying Mr. Darcy” with me. I love you all. Thank you so much. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would first like to acknowledge my family, especially my parents. Their life- long encouragement has made this project possible, and without them I would never have had the courage to take on this project, let alone finish it. I would also like to thank my friends, who have listened to me talk through my ideas and my complaints in equal measure. Their continual willingness to be my sounding board has been invaluable. And, of course, this thesis would not be possible without the efforts of Professor Rutledge. His suggestions and encouragements have been invaluable. Thank you so much for keeping me accountable during this process. I would also like to thank Professor Hale for working on this project. Thank you both. It has been an honor to work with you. v VITA EDUCATION Western Kentucky University , Bowling Green, KY May 2019 B.A. in English Literature – Mahurin Honors College Graduate Honors Capstone: Strong Female Characters: Jane Austen’s vs. The Mashups’ Simon Kenton High School, Independence, KY May 2015 FIELDS OF STUDY Major fields: English Literature and Mathematics PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE The Distance Learning Testing Center, WKU Aug. 2017- Proctor and Team Lead Present Dominach’s Taekwondo Academy Aug. 2014- Staff Instructor Present AWARDS & HONORS President’s Scholar 2015, 2016, 2017 Award of 1906 Presidential Scholarship, WKU, 2015-2018 INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE Harlaxton College, Harlaxton, England Jan. 2017- April 2017 PRESENTATIONS McCoy, Rachel. “Strong Female Characters: Jane Austen vs. Monster Mashups.” Paper presented at the Kentucky Honors Roundtable Conference. Highland Heights, KY, 30 Sept. 2017. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iii Dedication .......................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined. Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... v Vita ..................................................................................................................................... vi Foreword ............................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter One: Marianne Dashwood ..................................................................................... 8 Chapter Two: Elinor Dashwood ....................................................................................... 22 Chapter Three: Elizabeth Bennet ...................................................................................... 37 Afterword .......................................................................................................................... 52 Works Cited ...................................................................................................................... 58 vii FOREWORD Jane Austen – a beloved, never-out-of-print author – is today often sadly confined to the genre of chick lit and therefore dismissed by some contemporary readers. As a result, a few writers have felt the need to update her Regency novels to reflect the current fascination with the supernatural as depicted in such televisions series as The Walking Dead. A specific complaint about Pride & Prejudice (1813) and Sense & Sensibility (1811) is that they present marriage as the ideal ending. With the intention of mocking and capitalizing upon these works, Seth Graham-Smith and Ben Winters have modified the novels by adding zombies and sea monsters to create Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009) and Sense, Sensibility, and Sea Monsters (2009). These novels are mashups, which is one of three distinct categories that authors utilize when adapting texts. The other two are parodies and modernizations. Parodies model or imitate another work in order to create a comic effect by keeping the style and changing the content. They change the intent of the piece, which is reflected in this genre’s occasional use as a political tool, despite the inherent humor such changes bring. Having a long history, parody is used alongside satire by exaggerating a point to highlight its ridiculousness. Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” is an example of how pointed the combination of satire and parody can be, but a more straightforward parody is Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes, which parodies the then current chivalric genre. Modernizations involve the original content, such as dialogue, while updating the setting without changing 1 the intent of the work. This form of adaptation has been applied to many Shakespeare plays, where the dialogue is intact, but the setting has been greatly altered. Mashups, however, combine two or more significant elements or plots, which invariably change the story. In the cases of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, an existing story is combined with monsters to create a sort of “franken-story” that retains elements of the original. This is different from a modernization because a modernization keeps the meaning of the story the same, while the different elements in a mashup invariably pollute, change, or dilute the original meaning. A mashup is also different from a parody because while it does often highlight an element of ridiculousness, it is not making an overall joke nor a political point as a parody does. The mashup genre has done well in recent years, as evidenced by the sales of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. A year after being published, there were over a million copies of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in print in addition to 375,000 copies of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (Deahl). This does not mark the end of the popularity of this sort of work either; in 2016, a movie adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was released after much anticipation. On the other hand, Austen’s novels have not only continued to survive but have thrived, with over 20 million copies of Pride & Prejudice alone sold to date (Frost et al). The benefit of looking at Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, which are the result of modern cultural trends, alongside such time-honored works as Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility, is that the surprising similarities and differences between the two cultures become ripe for analysis. Scholars have begun the task of using mashups, modernizations, and parodies as lenses 2 through which to analyze contemporary culture and traditional literature. There are over a dozen published articles on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies as well as several masters’ theses. Katherine Koballa’s
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