FEMININE CONSCIOUSNESS IN JANE AUSTEN’S NOVELS
FEMININE CONSCIOUSNESS IN JANE AUSTEN’S NOVELS

Summary/Abstract: The feminine ethos of Austen’s novels is primarily located in her view of social life. This view is characterized by a definition of moral life, a concern for the actual and immediate quality of social existence, a belief in human interdependence, and a value for social cooperation and personal adaptability. Persuasion is at heart a feminist novel, the prototypical novel of feminist “reading” - a nonpolemical examination of the restrictions, the crippled inner life and the monotonous outer life of feminine existence. It marks the beginning of a tradition in literature that includes Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf – all very different writers but all joined in their critical concern with the nature and meaning of feminine life.

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