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A Truth Universally Acknowledged?: (Post)Feminist Rewritings of Austen‘S Marriage Plot

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A Truth Universally Acknowledged?: (Post)Feminist Rewritings of Austen‘S Marriage Plot View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ScholarBank@NUS A TRUTH UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED?: (POST)FEMINIST REWRITINGS OF AUSTEN‘S MARRIAGE PLOT MARIA LORENA MARTINEZ SANTOS (M.A. English Studies: Language, University of the Philippines) A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2011 Santos i Acknowledgments I wish, first of all, to acknowledge my family and friends for their help and encouragement throughout the writing of this thesis. I thank my husband, Joseph Nathan Cruz, for starting me on the path to this study, my mother, Dr. Paz Verdades Santos for giving me valuable feedback, and my son, Elias Yusof Santos Cruz, for keeping me motivated. My thanks also go to my ―moral support‖ system in Singapore, particularly classmates Gene Navera and Angeline Wong who shared the PhD journey with me. For their support and assistance, I thank friends and colleagues from the University of the Philippines, particularly Dr. Rose Bumatay-Cruz, Dr. Wendell Capili, Dr. Frank Flores, Dr. Mila Laurel, and Dr. Naida Rivera, as well as Prof. Marifa Borja-Prado of the Ateneo de Naga University. Secondly, this thesis would not have been possible without the research scholarship provided by the National University of Singapore and the endorsement of my application to upgrade to the PhD programme by the Department of English Language and Literature. I must also give thanks to Dr. Walter Lim for his facilitation of my viva voce. Lastly, and most importantly, I am deeply indebted to my supervisor, Dr. Ross G. Forman, for his guidance and invaluable support throughout this project. I offer my heartfelt thanks to him and to thesis panel members Dr. Ryan Bishop and Dr. Jane Nardin and thesis examiners Dr. Suzanne Daly and Dr. Deidre Lynch, whose insightful criticism enabled me to develop a better understanding of my subject. Santos ii Contents Introduction: A Truth Universally Acknowledged? 1 Chapter 1: Austenian Sequels: Reopening the Marriage Plot 41 Chapter 2: Austenian Retellings: Rewriting the Marriage Plot 72 Chapter 3: Austenian Offshoots: Reconfiguring (Post)feminist Austens 118 Chapter 4: (Post)feminist Paratexts and Contexts of Austenian Spinoffs 159 Conclusion: (Post)feminist Incarnations of Austen 208 Bibliography 228 Santos iii Summary Nearly two centuries after she wrote them, Jane Austen‘s novels continue to be meaningful, particularly to women readers. In the last two decades, the Austen industry has produced over 150 woman-authored offshoot novels which engage with Austen‘s marriage plot. These largely romance- oriented Austenian intertexts bring about a critical re-evaluation of Austen‘s novels and, more importantly, how women today interpret them and apply these meanings to their everyday lives. My thesis examines eleven spinoffs intentionally ―grafted‖ onto Austen‘s narratives, life, and world in order to examine what in (perceptions about) Austen and the marriage plot are so meaningful to certain readers today. A key argument I make is that these spinoffs serve as venues for informal feminist debates and what I refer to as (post)feminist gestures. My introduction provides an overview of the spinoff phenomenon and introduces the approaches I use to analyze these Austenian palimpsests as sites of (post)feminist discourse. In my first three chapters, I utilize feminist narratology to analyze the spinoffs within the formal categories of sequel, retelling, and offshoot in order to draw out and identify patterns in the methods of and motivations for revisiting/reworking her fiction. In my fourth chapter, I harness cultural/reception theory to examine the spinoffs‘ ―paratextual‖ and contextual aspects. Specifically, I look for what guides the (post)feminist reshaping of Austen in the ways in which authors and publishers mediate Austen to the reader and in the readers‘ responses to these rewritings. Santos iv Unified by their connection to Austen and their acknowledgment of popular culture‘s linking of her works with romance, these spinoffs nevertheless make divergent (post)feminist interventions. Austen‘s own depolemicized yet political approach to gender debates of her time allows her rewriters to both celebrate and interrogate subjects like love, courtship and marriage, constructions of femaleness and femininity, and the desire to have both love and independence. Romance-oriented spinoffs and those that attempt to provide more than a fantasy escape call attention to the enduring appeal of the love-story aspects of Austen‘s fiction and to the reasons for this. While some merely identify the fixation on romance and the happy marriage ending, others question and problematize this or to seek to explain it and offer alternatives – not to Austen but to romantic readings of her. Thus, although many spinoffs lack literary merit, offer ―unsanctioned‖ readings of Austen, and contain conflicting and sometimes problematic (post)feminist gestures, such rewritings are an important part of larger debates not just about Austen but about gender and reception that spans Austen‘s past and the contemporary moment. Santos 1 Introduction: A Truth Universally Acknowledged? Rewriting Austen’s “Truths” about Marriage Jane Austen, now canonical author of six novels that end in marriage, assessed the small scale of her writing by describing it as the ―little bit (two inches wide) of ivory‖ on which she worked ―with so fine a brush‖ (Austen- Leigh 130). Today, Austen‘s ironically described ―bits of ivory‖ have been expanded exponentially by scholars, enthusiasts, and those who wish to follow in her literary footsteps. Nearly two centuries after the publication of her novels, Austen‘s work continues to be meaningful to modern-day readers and to women in particular. We are living in ―a Jane Austen universe,‖ says Jennifer Frey in an article that surveys the booming industry of film adaptations of her novels, ―Austeniana‖ gift items, and, more recently, the plethora of chick lit books (D04). People magazine describes as a ―Jane Austen moment‖ (qtd. in Sikchi) this period in which twenty-first-century and (an imagined) nineteenth-century culture converge in fascinating ways. In a novel entitled Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, a modern-day woman trapped in 1813 sees Austen as the only constant in her life – ―Men might come and go but Jane Austen [is] always there‖ (Rigler 33). Similarly, the modern protagonist of the television mini-series Lost in Austen, who enters the world of one of Austen‘s novels, believes that the love story, manners, language, and courtesy of Pride and Prejudice have become part of who she is and what she wants. This most popular of Austen‘s novels begins with an ironic statement about marriage: ―It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in Santos 2 possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife‖ (1).1 In Austen‘s work, the so-called universal truth is an illusion maintained by a society driven by the forces of the marriage market, and her opening line subtly and playfully emphasizes economic motivations rather than love or desire. Intriguingly, however, products of the ―Jane Austen industry‖ of the 1990s and 2000s seem to ignore Austen‘s irony by suggesting that today‘s readers have never been more eager to acknowledge this ―universal truth.‖ This is evident in various manifestations of what scholars have called ―Austenmania,‖ ―the Jane Austen phenomenon,‖ or the ―Austen boom‖ – the nineties and ―noughties‖ resurgence of interest in all things Austen marked by an explosion of Austenian film adaptations, rewritings, and other commercial spinoffs.2 For example, in numerous highly romanticized film and television adaptations of Austen‘s novels, a trend catalyzed by the 1995 BBC television miniseries adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, the courtship/marriage plot becomes the defining characteristic of Austen‘s fiction. Kathryn Sutherland observes that adaptations of these novels tend to be ―hypertrophically romantic,‖ often flattening ―romance‘s subtle gradations and [dissolving] any implied opposition to the mass genre whose devices Austen sought both to suppress and enlist‖ (354). Similarly, many cinematic modernizations/reworkings of these, such as Clueless, Pride and Prejudice: A 1 During Austen‘s lifetime, Pride and Prejudice was the most popular of her novels ―both with the public and with her family and friends‖ (Fergus, ―The Professional‖ 22). Robert Morrison says it has ―always been Jane Austen‘s most popular novel‖ (1); other scholars, such as Louise Flavin, Robert P. Irvine, and Laurie Kaplan, concur. Results of a 2008 Jane Austen survey revealed Pride and Prejudice to be the favorite novel of 53% of 4,501 respondents, and Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy to be the favourite heroine and hero (Kiefer). Nielsen BookScan, an electronic book sale counter, produced findings in 2002 that the novel sold as many as 110,000 copies in the US, not counting academic sales (Waldman).1 2 Claudia Johnson in ―Austen Cults and Cultures‖ and Suzanne R. Pucci and James Thompson in Jane Austen and Co.: Remaking the Past in Contemporary Culture use the term ―Austenmania,‖ and the latter refer to ―the Austen phenomenon‖ (4). Deidre Lynch talks of an ―Austen Boom‖ in her introduction to Janeites: Austen’s Disciples and Devotees. Santos 3 Latter-Day Comedy, and Bride and Prejudice, are structured and marketed as romantic comedies; although they may all not end in marriage, the resolution they offer is the love story‘s successful culmination. Late-2000 biopics or fictionalized films of Austen‘s life, such as Becoming Jane and Miss Austen Regrets, even take on a romantic angle by speculating on secret love affairs that may have inspired an author who never married. The former features an early romantic relationship, purportedly the basis of her courtship novels, while the latter portrays an older Austen reflecting upon her ―lost loves‖ (―Masterpiece: Miss Austen Regrets‖).
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