| Description |
xiii, 251 pages ; 22 cm |
| Contents |
Machine derived contents note: A note on texts -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Jane Austen and the body -- 1. Sense, sensibility and the proofs of affection -- 2. 'Eloquent blood': the coming out of Fanny Price -- 3. Emma: the picture of health -- 4. Persuasion: the phychopathology of everyday life -- 5. Sanditon: the enjoyments of invalidism |
| Summary |
Drawing on modern - medical and feminist - theories of illness and the body, as well as on eighteenth-century medical sources, to illuminate the novels, this book offers new and controversial, but also scholarly, readings of these familiar texts |
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Jane Austen has been read as a novelist of manners, whose work discreetly avoids discussing the physical. John Wiltshire shows, on the contrary, how important are faces and bodies in her texts, from complainers and invalids like Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Woodhouse, to the frail, debilitated Fanny Price, the vulnerable Jane Fairfax and the 'picture of health, ' Emma. Talk about health and illness in the novels is abundant, and constitutes community, but it also serves to disguise the operation of social and gender politics. Behind the medical paraphernalia and incidents are serious concerns with the nature of power as exerted through and on the body, and with the manifold meanings of illness. 'Nerves; 'spirits' and sensibility figure largely in these books, and Jane Austen is seen to offer a critique of the gendering power of illness and nursing or attendance upon illness |
| Analysis |
English fiction |
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English fiction |
| Notes |
Includes index |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 241-248) and index |
| Subject |
Austen, Jane, 1775-1817 -- Criticism and interpretation.
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Austen, Jane, 1775-1817 -- Knowledge -- Anatomy
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Austen, Jane, 1775-1817 -- Knowledge -- Medicine
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Austen, Jane, 1775-1817.
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Human body in literature.
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Health in literature.
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Literature and medicine -- England -- History -- 19th century.
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Romance fiction, English -- History and criticism.
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Medicine in literature.
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Women and literature -- England -- History -- 19th century.
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Attitude to Health.
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Medicine in Literature.
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Women's Health.
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| LC no. |
91045042 |
| ISBN |
0521414768 (hc) |
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