Legette, Casie
TR 11:10 AM
Park Hall 144
In this class we will read all six of Austen’s novels, as well as her fascinating juvenilia. We will also put Austen in context, reading her alongside 18th- and 19th-century essays on manners, marriage, and gender, as well as at least two novels by other authors: Frances Burney's Evelina and the anonymous The Woman of Colour. In addition to thinking about the place of Austen's work in the history of the novel, we will also consider the way that studies of Austen and her novels intersect with gender history, social history, and the history of slavery. We will think about conditions for women in the time period, about how ideas of class operate in the novels, and about the importance of the fact that during Austen's lifetime, Britain’s economy was powerfully dependent on the income generated by the labor of enslaved people in the colonies of the British Caribbean. Although we will focus on Austen’s own historical context, we will not neglect our own. We will conclude the class with a consideration of the many revisions and adaptations of Austen in contemporary popular culture.