Do Jane Austen novels truly celebrate—or undermine—romance and happy endings?
How did Jane Austen become a cultural icon for fairy-tale endings when her own books end in ways that are rushed, ironic, and reluctant to satisfy readers thirst for romance? In Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness, Austen scholar Inger Sigrun Bredkjær Brodey journeys through the iconic novelists books in the first full-length study of Austens endings. Through a careful exploration of Austens own writings and those of the authors she read during her lifetime—as well as recent cultural reception and adaptations of her novels—Brodey examines the contradictions that surround this queen of romance.
Brodey argues that Austens surprising choices in her endings are an essential aspect of the writers own sense of the novel and its purpose. Austens fiercely independent and deeply humanistic ideals led her to develop a style of ending all her own. Writing in a culture that set a monetary value on success in marriage and equated matrimony with happiness, Austen questions these cultural norms and makes her readers work for their comic conclusions, carefully anticipating and shaping her readers emotional involvement in her novels.
Providing innovative and engaging readings of Austens novels, Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness traces her development as an author and her convictions about authorship, novels, and the purpose of domestic fiction. In a review of modern film adaptions of Austens work, the book also offers new interpretations while illustrating how contemporary ideas of marriage and happiness have shaped Austens popular currency in the Anglophone world and beyond.
IInger Sigrun Bredkjær Brodey is a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the cofounder and director of the Jane Austen Summer Program and Jane Austen & Co., and the principal investigator of Jane Austens Desk.
Do Jane Austen novels truly celebrate--or undermine--romance and happy endings?
Brodeys interpretations of Austens writings are subtle and penetrating, and discussions of popular Austen film adaptations shed light on how Hollywood tramples over the novels ambivalence. Austenites will want to take a look.
— Publishers Weekly
Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness examines the ambivalence embedded in Jane Austens happy endings, arguing that the novelist was resisting platitudes about marriage and favoring a more discerning, individualized understanding of happiness. Brodey writes with verve and clarity and draws judiciously on Austen criticism. Her book is savvy and insightful.
— Paula Marantz Cohen, author of Talking Cure: An Essay on the Civilizing Power of Conversation
This accessible and lively book quizzes the seemingly tidy happily-ever-afters of Jane Austens stories. Brodeys smart observations slide effortlessly back and forth between Austens era and our own. Recommended for newly enlisted Janeites as well as perennial re-readers!
— Janine Barchas, author of The Lost Books of Jane Austen
In this thoughtful and lively exploration of Austens novels and their afterlives, Brodey is the first to investigate how the books dismissive endings are self-conscious innovations—both artful and instructive. Brodeys nuanced readings illuminate the Janeite universe, teaching us to see a more complex (if imperfect) felicity.
— Susan Allen Ford, editor of Persuasions and Persuasions On-Line
From closely reading Jane Austens marriage plots and their conclusions, Brodey radiates outward to consider literary antecedents, biographical contexts, and present-day adaptations. Never before have the social significances, emotional resonances, moral meanings, and philosophical underpinnings of Austens notoriously problematic endings been so incisively explored and so convincingly explained.
— Peter W. Graham, author of Jane Austen & Charles Darwin: Naturalists and Novelists
