Patriarchy in Jane Austens Sense and Sensibility Essay -- Jane Austen

Patriarchy in Jane Austens Sense and SensibilityDespite the detail that Jane Austen has become what Julian North describes as a conservative photograph in popular culture signified by her depictions of traditional twelvemonth and gender hierarchies, sexual propriety and Christian values, the clean _Sense and Sensibility_ provides, if not a feminist perspective, a feminist discourse lacking in Emma Thompsons film version (North 38). In this essay, I attempt to argue before long that the novel, which initially seems to uphold cultural norms of sexuality and does little to question womens subaltern position, can be read to undermine the patriarchy and peculiarly male-controlled courtship rituals. Next I seek to demonstrate how the films adaptation by Emma Thompson undermines its own feminist intentions to become another fresh 20th-century romantic-comedy prescribing a happy marriage to an attractive and wealthy man as a cure-all for the single womans woes (Giddings 11). Ironic ally the novel _Sense and Sensibility_, which many critics consider embodying the paradigm of conservative Georgian literature, appears staunchly, if graciously, countercultural in semblance to its 20th-century film adaptation. Two features of the novel can clearly be determine as providing a feminist perspective the discourse between intelligence and feeling which presents contrasting but complementary strands of female temperament and the sisterlike bond that provides the Dashwood women with a self-sustaining, if only temporary, method of resistance to an ineluctably progress patriarchy. Often linked to post-revolutionary ideological tumult, the triumph of sense over sensibility in the novel has spurred critics to identify it both as a right vi... ... Novel The Theory and Practice of Literary Dramatization_. New York St. Martins Press, 1990.Kaplan, Deborah. wad Marketing Jane Austen Men, Women, and Courtship in Two Film Adaptations. _Jane Austen in Hollywood_, ed. Linda Troost and Sayre Greenfield. Lexington U of Ky. P, 2001.North, Julian. Conservative Austen, Radical Austen Sense and Sensibility from Text to examine. _Adaptations from Text to Screen, Screen to Text_, ed. Deborah Cardwell and Imelda Whelehan. London Routledge, 1999._Sense and Senibility_. Dir. Ang Lee. Perf. Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Kate Winslett. 1995.Whelehan, Imelda. Adaptations The Contemporary Dilemmas. _Adaptations from Text to Screen, Screen to Text_, ed. Deborah Cardwell and Imelda Whelehan. London Routledge, 1999.