A classic account of Jane Austen in the context of eighteenth century feminist ideas and contemporary thought.

The Woman of Colour is a unique literary account of a black heiress’ life immediately after the abolition of the British slave trade. Olivia Fairfield, the biracial heroine and orphaned daughter of a slaveholder, must travel from Jamaica to England, and as a condition of her father’s will either marry her Caucasian first cousin or become dependent on his mercenary elder brother and sister-in-law. As Olivia decides between these two conflicting possibilities, her letters recount her impressions of Britain and its inhabitants as only a black woman could record them. She gives scathing descriptions of London, Bristol, and the British, as well as progressive critiques of race, racism, and slavery. The narrative follows her life from the heights of her arranged marriage to its swift descent into annulment and destitution, only to culminate in her resurrection as a self-proclaimed “widow” who flouts the conventional marriage plot. The appendices, which include contemporary reviews of the novel, historical documents on race and inheritance in Jamaica, and examples of other women of colour in early British prose fiction, will further inspire readers to rethink issues of race, gender, class, and empire from an African woman’s perspective.

Why does Jane Austen "mania" continue unabated in a postmodern world? How does the brilliant Regency novelist speak so personally to today's women that they view her as their best friend? Jane Austen's Women answers these questions by exploring Austen's affirming yet challenging vision of both who her dynamic female characters are, and who they become. This important new work analyzes the heroines' relationships to body, mind, spirit, environment, and society. It reveals how, despite a restrictive patriarchal culture, these women achieve greatness. In clear, lively prose, Kathleen Anderson shares original theoretical insights from twenty years of studying Austen, and illuminates the novels as guidebooks on how to become an Austenian heroine in one's everyday life. This engaging book will appeal to a broad readership: the serious student, the general lit-lover, and the Austen neophyte alike.

Traditional critics of Jane Austen's novels consider her fiction from the perspective of male literature, male social values, and male myths and assumptions about women. These critics often give excellent readings of Austen, but they mitigate their own best efforts by trying to separate her life from the fiction and the fiction from her awareness of women's predicament in society. In Jane Austen and the Province of Womanhood, Alison Sulloway offers a fresh and comprehensive vision of Austen as a moderate feminist. Her studies of the letters, fictional fragments, and minor works, as well as novels, reveal a systematic pattern of feminist plots, themes, motifs, and symbols. She traces the influence on Jane Austen of Anglican conduct literature in addition to the progressive novels written by such women writers as Frances Burney and Maria Edgeworth. Austen's covert acknowledgment of the previously ignored "feminist revolt of the 1790s," Sulloway contends, accounts for the dammed-up energy behind her protective mask of irony. Sulloway perceives Austen and her heroines as survivors attempting to find decent solutions in a society whose owners and managers saw scant need to consider women's dignity. Her book is mediatory, just as Austen, that "provincial Christian gentlewomen," also mediated between the traditional forces of hostility toward women and the counter-forces of radical disruptions. Finally, Sulloway contends, the greatest beauty of Austen's fiction is not in her subtle depiction of the strains of eighteenth-­century womanhood but in a certain joy­—"Austenian joy"—that transcends grief and anger at various human abuses. More than stoic resolution, it is a comedic gift and a moral resilience that signifies grace under pressure. Sulloway com pares it to the instinctive courage of a soldier who rejoices when a single bird sings during a lull in the bombing. To read Jane Austen for this vision is to appreciate fully her gallant wit and her compassion. Jane Austen and the Province of Womanhood will benefit any Austen scholar as well as students and teachers of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature.