| dc.description.abstract | This analysis follows Jane Austen’s exploration of womanhood and autonomy within her last completed novel, Persuasion. It investigates her commentary on the feminine experience under the rigid traditionalism of the Regency era. Although this morally conscious era placed significant pressure on both sexes to regulate their appearances, women faced additional pressures. They worked to oppose the ideals of the post-Edenic woman present in many conduct manuals. This fallen and wanton woman catalyzed a phallic fear of the immoral woman in a patriarchal society. Additionally, women’s bodies needed to be seen and evaluated for marriageability and to fulfill their function as extenders of the family legacy. This analysis borrows from contemporary film theorist Laura Mulvey, who conceptualized these ideas as the “male gaze.” Mulvey’s conceptualization of the “male gaze” identifies the objectification of women within modern film theory and its representative society as the securing and exaltation of male superiority and pleasure. Although Austen did not have access to this term during her time, I argue that she has access to the concept through her lived experience in the Regency era. Through her heroine in Persuasion, Jane Austen explores the relationship between the female body and the gaze to confront hyper-traditionalism and the passive womanhood it prescribes. While previous scholars apply the term "male gaze" to the Austen canon, this research extends such scholarship by introducing an independent authority, the female gaze. Rather than evaluating the body as an object to be looked at, desired, and commodified, the female gaze investigates the significance of all that lies beneath its surface. By looking at the relationship between the male and female gaze, the construction of femininity and masculinity prescribed by rigid traditionalism constrains the autonomy and expression of both sexes. Film theory, psychoanalysis, literary criticism, conduct literature, and other secondary scholarship richly contribute to and inform the literary analysis central to this study. In taking a feminist, historical, and literary theoretical framework, this research argues that a balanced and complementary relationship between the male and female form provides solace in their union and freedom from the hyper-male gaze rampant in oppressive traditionalism. This analysis explores Austen’s last completed novel, Persuasion, and its construction of femininity and masculinity that results not from blindly accepting and acting in accordance with patriarchal standards but from a complementary relationship between the male and female gaze. | |
