Description

This SDG will explore Jane Austen's early fiction and her debt to the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft. After reading the sections of Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) that most heavily influenced Austen, we will look first at Austen's biography and her hilarious juvenilia, History of England and Love and Freindship (sic). We will then read her first three novels in the order in which they were written, in the context of the social and political debates of her time concerning the education, roles and legal standing of women, the competing values of reason and sympathy, and the political demands of the French Revolution. We will also discuss the best film adaptations of these novels.

Weekly Topics

Week 1. Wollstonecraft - selections from Vindication of the Rights of Woman (online)
Week 2. Austen's Biography / History of England / Love and Freindship (sic)
Weeks 3-4. Northanger Abbey
Weeks 5-7. Sense and Sensibility
Weeks 8 - Sense and Sensibility (dir. Ang Lee, with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslett)
Weeks 9-11 - Pride and Prejudice
Week 12 - Pride and Prejudice (BBC, with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth)