GRIFFIN

Annotated Bibliography

How Have Jane Austens Heroines Influenced The Ideals of Early Feminism?

Michelle Griffin

Professor Malcolm Campbell

UWRT 1104

March 10th, 2017

Ascarelli, Miriam. A Feminist Connection: Jane Austen and Mary Wollstonecraft. Jane Austen

Society of North America, Vol. 25, NO. 1,Winter 2004.

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/. Accessed March 6th, 2017.

This article analyzes the connection between Mary Wollstonecraft, a noted Feminist

Writer, and Jane Austen, author of Pride and Prejudice. The article discusses both women

individually, delving into their personal lives and beliefs; it also brings up the long-standing

argument of whether or not Austen can actually be considered a feminist. Ascarelli pulls in the

perspectives of scholars in an effort to show both sides of the argument and then gives her own

perspective. Her stance is that Austen was a realist, understanding the complexity of a womens

role in the 19th century and that her understanding comes across as the ultimate Feminist stance.

Ascarelli goes in further talking about Austens work and how it draws illusions to

Wollstonecrafts beliefs. She gives specific examples from Mansfield Park and Pride and

Prejudice.

Miriam Ascarelli is a college writing instructor and author whose credentials spans from

Rutgers, New Jersey Institute of Technology, to The New York Times. Overall, the information

given seems to be reliable as it provides citations from scholars, as well as direct citations from

the works of both Wollstonecraft and Austen. The author makes an effort to show various sides

to an argument, showing a fair balance of varying opinions before giving her own. The source is

an article from the Jane Austen Society of North America. In comparison to the other sources, it

is very similar because it mentions Mary Wollstonecraft who Austen is often compared to.

In terms of usefulness, the article has given me a base of information for my research.

Ascarelli gives names of Austen critics who I can research more about and potentially use in my
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paper. The article has also raised more questions, prompting me to be more in depth about my

research and what exactly I should be focusing on.

Brown, Lloyd W. Jane Austen and The Feminist Connection. Nineteenth Century Fiction, Vol.

28, No. 3 December 1973, pp. 321-338.

The article focuses on Jane Austen and the idea of Feminist Tradition found within

English novels. It explains what exactly Feminist Tradition is and if there are any significant ties

between feminist themes attributed to Jane Austen and feminist viewpoints of contemporary

womens liberation movements. It also states when analyzing feminism in novels, its important

to examine it as a coherent body of opinions held by the novelist on the identity and social

functions of women. Taking Austens work for example, the female image has to be examined in

relation to the liberationist philosophy of feminist tradition in the writings of Mary

Wollstonecraft. In addition to this, the article pulls in themes from Persuasion and analyzes

characters such Captain Wentworth and A Vindication of The Rights of Women by

Wollstonecraft. Brown comes to the conclusions that there is a significant connection between

Austen and Wollstonecraft and that Austen is sympathetic towards the 18th century feminist

revolt.

In terms of reliability, not much could be found about the writer Lloyd Brown, aside from

a list of published books and articles. Reliability of information or knowledge from the writer

could be called into question because so little was found about him. However, the publishing

company (University of California Press) seems to be reliable, so there must be some validity

found within the article. My main concern with the article is that its much older, being published

in 1973. When it comes to literary criticism, date of publication is not as important because the

information stays the same for the most part. This article was intended for scholars and those
well versed in literature. The word choice and syntax of the article was inherently more

complicated than the other sources. For the average college student, this is an article that requires

additional effort to break down. The purpose was to present how Austen uses feminist themes

within her own pieces and comparing it to the works of Wollstonecraft. When comparing it to

the other articles, this articles presents a much more complicated topic with extensive research.

Due to the complexity of the article, I find it harder to use. It required me to look over the

article various times to break it down and understand what exactly it was trying to say.

Nonetheless, it does provide me with an extensive argument with plenty of examples that I could

refer to for my own paper.

Chang, Chun-Hui. The Impact of the Feminist Heroine: Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice.

International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature, Vol. 3 No. 3, May 2014.

The paper examines Elizabeth Bennet within Pride and Prejudice as a feminist heroine.

Chang focuses heavily on how Elizabeth Bennet does not conform to societal standards in

comparison to her sisters. Within the paper he asserts that Elizabeth Bennet is not a feminist to

the extreme but rather wants to assert dominance over the traditional expectations for women.

His paper is set up to provide historical context about feminist theories, relevant literature and

textual analysis. The analysis is broken up in different sections to focus on the different sides of

Bennets feminist nature. Chang discusses Assertiveness, Independence, and Gender Views; one

example being how Elizabeths outspoken nature led her to decline Mr. Darcys marriage

proposal due to his prejudiced view of her family. Unlike Jane, her older sister, Elizabeth was

not afraid to show/convey her emotions and thoughts towards others. Elizabeth also held the

belief that falsely showing sentiment was unacceptable, which for the time, was widely practiced

by women who were getting married to those they held no affection. Overall Chang comes to
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the conclusion that Elizabeths feminist nature can truly been seen when she is compared to her

sisters who serve as foils.

The author of the paper is not an accredited scholar, but rather a student. Because of this,

its possible that more errors could be found as well as the paper being under developed. The

targeted audience of the paper seems to be a professor of some sort. My assumption is that the

paper was written for a class, as its too short to be a dissertation. As such, I should take this

paper lightly and more so of an inspiration of how I could set up my personal paper. The actual

information seems reliable because it pulls directly from the book. However, the other

information about feminist theories could be wrong. The paper is published by the International

Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, but the author attends Tsinghua

University. The validity of this source is weaker compared to the others, but it still has a lot of

similar information that could be compared to the other sources.

Murphy, Sinad. Jane Austen: Feminist In Action. Huffington Post, October 14th, 2014,

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sinead-murphy/jane-austen-feminist-in-a_b_5978612.html.

Accessed March 6th, 2017.

The article written by Murphy discusses how Austen took the early feminist ideas and

found a new way to express them. She mentions how Mary Wollstonecraft was the first to lay

out the ideas, however it didnt take off in the way it should have in terms of popularity. So

Austen was at the forefront for circulating feminist ideas in a subtle way that made it seem

normal. She praises Austen by talking about the reviews Austen got from critics at the time,

reinforcing how she was able to get her feminist message across without being criticized for it.

Her whole take on the article is how feminist ideas will only go so far without a strategy to make
it work in the world. Using Austen as an example was a way to discuss how we can make the

difference in spreading Feminist ideas.

Sinad Murphy is a philosophy professor at Newcastle University and has written a book

called The Jane Austen Rules: A Classic Guide to Modern Love. Murphy is well versed in

literature pertaining to Jane Austen, which gives more validity to her argument. However it does

cause a biased perspective in terms of how she views Austen as a feminist. The articles purpose

was to open our eyes to how Austen cunningly reinforced feminist ideas in a time period where

women were constrained. People praised Austen without criticizing her for the feminist ideas she

had within her pieces. The audience is just anyone who has an interest in Jane Austen or

someone who is browsing around on Huffingtons website. I find that its been written in a way

anyone could understand the message. Unlike the other sources, this doesnt focus on comparing

her to Wollstonecraft but rather focusing on her acting as a pioneer for Feminism.

In terms of usefulness, I like the different perspective. The other sources did mention

Austens allusions to Wollstonecraft but the way Murphy worded her article made it seem

extremely interesting. I dont know how far this article would get me in terms of my research but

it was a good read and gave me something new to consider.