I have to write a seven page paper on one or two of Jane Austen’s novels (any of the six, except Sense and Sensibility). I read them all this semester, but they seem to blend together into a bunch of girls named Elizabeth or Catherine marrying someone with 10,000 pounds a year in income and a name I can’t remember. sigh I can’t think of an interesting topic and the paper is due Wednesday, any suggestions?
I had to write a paper on Emma my freshman year in college, but as that was many years ago I don’t remember what I wrote about, except that I started it off with the Groucho Marx quote about “Marriage is a wonderful institution. Then again, who wants to live in an institution?” Fortunately, I had a professor with a sense of humor (my paper on The Odyssey was called “There’s No Place Like Homer”), so I got an A.
Personally, I find Jane Austen annoying – it’s obvious from early on who will get paired up with whom. Which I suppose could be a paper topic if you’re feeling clever – “Predictable Liaisons, or Making Sure Everyone Lives Happily Ever After (Except for the Bad Guys)”.
OTOH, if you like the genre, I recommend reading Fanny Burney’s Evelina, which I thought was much better written. So there.
Jane Austen’s books actually reveal the darkness of her time: the terrible impotence of (particuarly un-moneyed and unconnected) women, the precariousness of their situation. Marriage for them was the only way to find financial security, otherwise they were forced to depend upon the charity of relatives, or live in near poverty.
Look beneath the brilliantly-sparkling dialogue and you will see the shadows looming.
There are women forced to remain with gambling, drunken, cheating husbands because to leave them would be shame. There are women “ruined” by a single affair who are forced to live in exile abroad.
Look at the terrible plight of Fanny, forced to leave her relatives when she refuses the hand of a man she knows is immoral and a wastrel (as is later proven).
Look at Charlotte, accepting the hands of the unbearable Mr Collins, because she knows she is plain, getting older, and not aristocratic or extremely rich, and this will be her only chance of matrimony and independance from the charity of friends and family.
Jane Austen was very much aware, as the reader should be, that while the plots of the book are quite realistic, many outcomes are fantasy. It is highly unlikely Lydia’s shame would have been saved in such a way in Pride and Prejudice.
Nor is it likely that Anne would have got a second chance with her sea-captain in Persuasion. Note that this is a semi-autobiographical work - Jane Austen herself turned down a marriage offer that she did not get the chance to reaccept.
Look at the desperation of Mrs Bennett to secure a wealthy husband for one of her 5 daughters. Note how the whole family face losing their home and income on the death of Mr Bennett, because of inheritance laws that entailed estates away from female descendancy.
Mrs Bennett is a horrific, socially embarrassing snob. But her behaviour is mitigated by the fact it is about a basic fight for survival. Her daughters have no influential connections and no dowries. She is desperate to do all in her power to
Or you could just flesh out istara’s post… 
…except I managed not to finish it because I accidentally deleted the end!!
It was supposed to be: “She is desperate to do all in her power to find herself and her daughters secure circumstances in life.”
I doubt you’d have time to flesh this out, especially since you’ve probably never been to Bath but I know that there’s this inside joke at the end of one of her books that only someone who knows the layout of Bath would get. BTW I’ve never read any Jane Austen, but she tells this guy that they need to talk and they head home, but they depart from where they were in such a way that would take a very very very long time to get home. You’d probably also have to do extra research.
Oh well, inside jokes are fun to explore.
Here are some links to some interesting writing about Jane Austen. But please don’t rip them off! It wouldn’t be fair on the authors or yourself. Plus they were very easy to find on Yahoo!, so you don’t want to turn in an identical essay to one of your classmates…
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8563/essays/essay2.html
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8563/essays/essay5.html
http://facstaff.uww.edu/hipchene/JAusten/home.htm
http://jasna.org/
Don’t know if this would fit in with the guidelines your teacher set for you, but how about comparing Austen’s novels with their modern remakes?
For example:
Emma/Clueless
or
Pride & Prejudice/Bridget Jones’ Diary
Just an idea.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman in need of a Jane Austen paper topic must be in want of advice from this message board.
istara, awesome post!
Maybe an interesting paper topic (expanding on istara’s post), is to take two novels and ask:
- What do the characters want?
- Who gets what they want?
- Who doesn’t get what they want?
Her novels alternately fed the hopes and dreams of her readers with stories of smart, poor-yet-respectable girls who for the most part get what they want in love - that fairy tale dream of a rich, kind man who loves them - in a time when NO ONE got what they wanted out of life.
Mansfield Park and Persuasion are rich territory for this I think.
Good luck.
You could take “Pride and Prejudice” and “Persuasion” and discuss how the behaviors stated in the titles serve to move the events in the books.
You could take the same two books, and explore the isolation that the main character feels within her family - in “Pride and Prejudice”, the main character has higher standards for her behavior and tends to feel disgusted by her family; but in “Persuasion” the isolation comes more from her family.
You could explore the comic characterizations in “Emma” - the woman who never stops talking, the backstabbing bitch, the hypochondriac father.
You could look at the underlying anger in the books, and the disgust Austen seems to show for most people.
I’m an English major, actually from England, with degree-level study of Jane Austen under my belt. Only too pleased to help:
“Given that any but the most superficial and brain-washed assessment of Austen makes it painfully clear she has no gift for pltting whatsoever, that her characters are largely inter-changeable nobodies with the depth and ‘inner life’ of a bus ticket, that her bloated, inherently sterile prose screams for drastic pruning, preferably with a well-fuelled chainsaw, and that her dialogue is passable fare for social historians but otherwise nothing special, in short, that her writing sucks, why does anyone waste hours of precious life wading through her entirely dreary, witless attempts at the novel form when there are, at a rough estimate, ten thousand better books by better writers sitting on the shelves of every book store and library in the world?”.
Best of luck.
You could talk about Austen and inadequate parents. I am hard pressed to think of a single good parent in all the novels. Maybe Catherine Morland’s parents, but they are absent, having entrusted Catherine to inadequate protectors.
Mrs. Bennet is well, Mrs. Bennet. Mr. Bennet openly shows his contempt for his wife and doesn’t save for dowries. Emma’s mother is dead and father narcissistic and hypochondriacal. Fanny Price’s parents are so unable to cope that they send her away, only to have her end up in the care of Lady Bertram, who is barely conscious , and Sir Thomas who is harsh and distant (geographically as well as emotionally). Mrs. Dashwood is so sentimental as to neglect real world concerns and dangerously encourages Marianne’s histrionics (whoops, no “Sense and Sensibility”). Anne Elliot’s mother is also dead, leaving her to the poor advice of mother figure Lady Russell and her vain, narcissistic, spendthrift father.