Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness

Inger Sigrun Bredkjaer Brodey

Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness
Format
Hardback
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press
Country
United States
Published
11 June 2024
Pages
320
ISBN
9781421448206

Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness

Inger Sigrun Bredkjaer Brodey

Do Jane Austen novels truly celebrate-or undermine-romance and happy endings?

How did Jane Austen become a cultural icon for fairy-tale endings when her own books end in ways that are rushed, ironic, and reluctant to satisfy readers' thirst for romance? In Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness, Austen scholar Inger Sigrun Bredkjaer Brodey journeys through the iconic novelist's books in the first full-length study of Austen's endings. Through a careful exploration of Austen's own writings and those of the authors she read during her lifetime-as well as recent cultural reception and adaptations of her novels-Brodey examines the contradictions that surround this queen of romance.

Brodey argues that Austen's surprising choices in her endings are an essential aspect of the writer's own sense of the novel and its purpose. Austen's fiercely independent and deeply humanistic ideals led her to develop a style of ending all her own. Writing in a culture that set a monetary value on success in marriage and equated matrimony with happiness, Austen questions these cultural norms and makes her readers work for their comic conclusions, carefully anticipating and shaping her readers' emotional involvement in her novels.

Providing innovative and engaging readings of Austen's novels, Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness traces her development as an author and her convictions about authorship, novels, and the purpose of domestic fiction. In a review of modern film adaptions of Austen's work, the book also offers new interpretations while illustrating how contemporary ideas of marriage and happiness have shaped Austen's popular currency in the Anglophone world and beyond.

Order online and we’ll ship when available (11 June 2024)

Our stock data is updated periodically, and availability may change throughout the day for in-demand items. Please call the relevant shop for the most current stock information. Prices are subject to change without notice.

Sign in or become a Readings Member to add this title to a wishlist.