Essay about Concepts of Family and Home in Jane Austens...

Concepts of Family and Home in Jane Austens Persuasion In Jane Austens last completed novel, Persuasion, England is one large family with two distinct branches, the navy and the aristocratic upper class-it is no accident that the two large books consulted in the novel are the Baronetage and the Naval Lists. The naval family poses a threat to the aristocratic family; in fact, undertones of social instability riddle the text, through imagery of death, illness, and accident. The marriages of Anne Elliott, Louisa Musgrove, and Harriet Musgrove reveal a gentry which can only redeem itself through intermarriage with the professional meritocratic class, symbolically taking on their values of utility and social responsibility, and†¦show more content†¦This domestication of the navy as a group renders it an alternative family to the aristocratic class; on the one hand, there is the meritocratic, sea-faring navy, and on the other, the indolent, land-holding gentry. The embodiment of this superficial class is the Elliott family. In using the Elliotts as her prime example of the aristocracy, a family that purchased its nobility relatively recently, Austen undercuts their claim to privilege. This family serves almost as a metonym for the larger aristocratic family in general. Rather than showing the aristocratic family tree as a pyramid of increasing status with increasing responsibility, Austen portrays it as a social food chain of the flatterers and the flattered. For example, when Mrs. Clay quits Bath at the end of the novel, Sir Walter and Elizabeth are shocked and mortified...they had their great cousins, to be sure, to resort to for comfort; but they must long feel that to flatter and follow others, without being flattered and followed in turn, is but a state of half enjoyment (Persuasion 220). Unlike the landholders of other novels-Mr. Darcy of Pride and Prejudice and Mr. Knightley of Emma, for example-Sir Walter does not fit with Burkean m odels of beneficial aristocratic paternalism. His connection to the land is limited to ElizabethShow MoreRelated Chapter One of Persuasion by Jane Austen Essay1153 Words   |  5 PagesChapter One of Persuasion by Jane Austen Chapter one of Persuasion makes use of a highly economic narrative style, which celebrates Austen’s success as a novelist. Austen’s narrative style is so successful in chapter one of Persuasion as many of the characters are introduced to the reader along with the majority of the main themes which concern them in the novel. Austen clearly underlines that she is writing with a novelist’s voice, using traditional conventions of third person with pastRead MoreJane Austens Influence on Literature2794 Words   |  12 Pages Jane Austen was a romantic novelist who captivated English readers with her inspired writing skills. 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