Widowhood, Coquetry, and Desire in Jane Austen’s Lady Susan

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper presents a reading of Jane Austen’s lesser-known early novella Lady Susan, examining the representation of widowhood as a critical foray into the modern discourse of female desire. Challenging the mainstream scholarship which emphasizes the authorial verdict on the amorous escapade of the eponymous heroine in one way or another, I demonstrate that the novel creates a less judgmental, less moralizing and more tolerant, more exploratory space for signifying capacious female desire. My first argument is that Austen, by taking a defamilarizing look at the discourses of motherhood and sensibility, the two powerful cultural scripts for constructing the ideal of domestic femininity, illuminates the performative nature of both and the possibility of critique as well. Next, I interpret coquetry as a transgressive strategy of deferral of marriage, whereby the patriarchal gender relation in the regime of heteronormativity is called into question. The heroine’s conclusive marriage, I contend, is not a submissive sign but another performativity that enacts the potential female agency. Lastly, I revisit the implications of the narrative shift in the conclusion chapter of the novel. I argue that the appearance of omniscient narration does not intend to nullify the heroine’s struggle but rather clarifies the conditions, meanings, and limitations of her desire. Elaborating these three related arguments, this paper aims at placing Lady Susan in a continuum of widow-coquette, the complex figure who interrogates the parameters of domestic femininity, and thereby placing Lady Susan as worthy of a significant precursor to Austen’s canon in its insight into the dynamic link between shaping of modern female sexuality and the narrative of marriage plot.

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