Looking for Comfort: Heroines, Readers, And

LOOKING FOR COMFORT: HEROINES, READERS, AND JANE AUSTEN’S NOVELS A Dissertation by AMANDA E. HIMES Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 2006 Major Subject: English © 2006 AMANDA E. HIMES ALL RIGHTS RESERVED LOOKING FOR COMFORT: HEROINES, READERS, AND JANE AUSTEN’S NOVELS A Dissertation by AMANDA E. HIMES Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved by: Chair of Committee, Mary Ann O’Farrell Committee Members, Lynne Vallone Susan Egenolf Melanie Hawthorne Head of Department, Paul Parrish December 2006 Major Subject: English iii ABSTRACT Looking for Comfort: Heroines, Readers, and Jane Austen’s Novels. (December 2006) Amanda E. Himes, B.A., East Texas Baptist University; M.A., Baylor University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Mary Ann O’Farrell Comfort—with its various connotations of physical ease, wealth, independence, and service—is an important concept to Jane Austen, who uses comfort in her novels to both affirm and challenge accepted women’s roles and status in her culture. In the late eighteenth century, new ideas of physical comfort emerged out of luxury along with a growing middle class, to become something both English people and foreigners identified with English culture. The perceived ability of the English to comfort well gave them a reason for national pride during a time of great anxieties about France’s cultural and military might, and Austen participates in her culture’s struggle to define itself against France. Austen’s “comfort” is the term she frequently associates with women, home, and Englishness in her works. Austen’s depiction of female protagonists engaged in the work of comforting solaces modern readers, who often long for the comfort, good manners, and leisure presented in the novels. Surveys of two sample groups, 139 members of the Jane Austen Society of North America and 40 members of the online Republic of Pemberley, elicit data confirming how current readers of Austen turn to her works for comfort during times of stress or depression. Although some readers describe using Austen’s novels as a iv form of escapism, others view their reading as instructive for dealing with human failings, for gaining perspective on personal difficulties, and for stimulating their intellects. Austen’s fiction grapples with disturbing possibilities, such as the liminal position of powerless single women at the mercy of the marriage market and fickle family wishes, as much as it provides comforting answers. Comforts (decent housing, love in marriage, social interaction) are such a powerful draw in Austen’s works because women’s discomfort is so visible, and for many, so likely. Thus, Austen’s comfort challenges as much as it reassures her audience. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The completion of this dissertation is partly due to the untiring work of the John Brown University librarians, particularly Simone Schroder-Johnson, who admirably kept up with my numerous interlibrary loan requests. I would also like to thank members of the JBU community, for supper discussions and their interest in my work on Jane Austen and comfort: Brenda and Jeremiah Proctor, Lori and Galen Johnson, Anne and Preston Jones, Julie and Ed Ericson, Scott and Tasha Jones, Carli Conklin, Andrea Phillips, Holly and Leonard Allen, Hadden and Betty Wilson, and Derick Bingham. My chapter on Austen’s readers owes an enormous debt to Marsha Huff, coordinator of the JASNA 2005 Annual General Meeting in Milwaukee and those in attendance who responded so willingly to my survey on reading Austen. I also wish to thank the Republic of Pemberley’s webmaster, Myretta Robens, and the Pemberleans who enthusiastically answered survey questions and for their lively interest in the outcome of my project. I am indebted to the College of Liberal Arts, the Women’s Studies program, and the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research at Texas A&M University for grants and fellowships in support of this dissertation. I thank the interdisciplinary New Modern British Studies group and Kate Kelly for kindly hosting a presentation of my work in November 2004. Portions of the Mansfield Park section of Ch. III appeared in Persuasions 27 (2005): I thank editor Laurie Kaplan for permission to reprint it here. I would like to thank my committee, Lynne Vallone, Susan Egenolf, and Melanie Hawthorne, for useful and perceptive comments on every chapter. I am especially vi grateful to Mary Ann O’Farrell, whose thinking has inspired and challenged me, and who has generously done the extra work that accompanies directing a dissertation in absentia. For encouragement during difficult spots, for clear-sighted questions about Austen’s comfort, for telephone meetings on Sunday afternoons, for talks about our lives and families as well as our writing projects, I thank you. I am grateful to A&M friends, Amy Montz and Laura Cheshier, for email updates, advice, and the occasional meal. I particularly thank Sonya Sawyer for preempting the post office in photocopying and distributing my dissertation chapters to the committee. Her constant friendship and hospitality have been a godsend. My in-laws, Glenn and Jean Himes, have been unfailingly supportive, and the timely gift of a new computer is just one of many ways they have demonstrated their care. I especially thank my family for their love and faith over the past years: my brothers Nathan and Ross, for tolerating an extraordinary number of viewings of the 1996 BBC / A&E Pride and Prejudice miniseries; my “most beloved sister” Jerusha, for appreciating Austen’s epistolary advice on dating and marriage; my father Merl Estep, for leading the way into doctoral work and for teaching me how to think analytically; and my mother Vivian Estep, for introducing me to Jane Austen, and most recently, for attending the 2005 JASNA AGM with me. I cannot imagine having written this dissertation without your influence, early and late. Finally, I thank my beloved husband Jonathan, who has read every word of this dissertation and offered many astute comments. Your love, intelligence, and sense of humor (masquerade!) have made writing a comfort and a joy. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.................................................................................. v TABLE OF CONTENTS................................................................................... vii LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................. ix CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION...................................................................... 1 1.1 Theoretical Methodology ..................................................... 6 1.2 Chapter Descriptions............................................................ 8 II THE HISTORY OF COMFORT IN ENGLISH LIVES, 1750-1850................................................................................... 14 2.1 Beginnings: Austen, Burney, and Comfort in the Eighteenth Century......................................................... 14 2.2 Luxury: A Prelude to Comfort ....................................... 20 2.3 Middle-Class Comfort.................................................... 32 2.4 Comfort and English Nationalism.................................. 37 2.5 England versus France ................................................... 46 2.6 Comfort Associated with Women and the Home........... 52 2.7 Postscript ........................................................................ 64 III JANE AUSTEN’S “COLD COMFORT” NOVELS: SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, MANSFIELD PARK, and PERSUASION ........................................................................... 76 3.1 “Cold Comfort” in Austen’s Life and Works................. 76 3.2 Sense and Sensibility: The “Cold Comfort” of a Broken Heart.................................................................. 87 3.3 Mansfield Park and the “Cold Comfort” of an Empty Grate............................................................................... 100 3.4 Persuasion’s “Cold Comforts” of Illness, Indebtedness, and Warfare .................................................................... 120 3.5 Conclusion...................................................................... 134 viii CHAPTER Page IV JANE AUSTEN’S “WARM COMFORT” NOVELS: PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, EMMA, and NORTHANGER ABBEY ... 143 4.1 Pride and Prejudice: The Comforts and Discomforts of Kinship ................................................................................. 150 4.2 Emma: The “Warm Comfort” of Daughters ........................ 163 4.3 Northanger Abbey’s Carefree Comforts of Youth, Innocence, and Display........................................................ 185 V FANS OF JANE AUSTEN: READING THE NOVELIST IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY .......................................... 206 5.1 Surveys of JASNA (2005) and Republic of Pemberley (2006) ................................................................................... 216 5.2 Re-reading Austen................................................................ 221 5.3 Austen Film Adaptations...................................................... 232 5.4 Nineteenth-century British Culture ...................................... 238 5.5 Conclusions.........................................................................

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