Jane Austen’s Six Novels
Jane Austen’s Six Novels
This chapter analyzes Jane Austen's six novels, arguing that each is a chronicle of how a heroine learns to think strategically. For example, in Northanger Abbey, Catherine Morland must learn to make her own independent choices in a sequence of increasingly important situations, and in Emma, Emma Woodhouse learns that pride in one's strategic skills can be just another form of cluelessness. In Pride and Prejudice, people's strategic abilities develop the least. Sense and Sensibility explores through the sisters Elinor and Marianne Dashwood how strategic thinking requires both thoughtful decision-making and fanciful speculation. The chapter also examines Persuasion and Mansfield Park. In all six novels, Austen theorizes how people, growing from childhood into adult independence, learn strategic thinking.
Keywords: novels, Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, cluelessness, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, speculation, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, strategic thinking
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