Jane Austen’s Persuasion and the Creation of Balance in Gender Roles through Courtship and Marriage

Abstract

British society in the early nineteenth century saw several marked changes, especially those directly affecting the middle class.  It was a time known widely for its social restrictions and rigid domestic doctrines, especially on the female gender.  However, despite unbending social expectations, female writers of the period portrayed one of the strictest institutions of all, marriage, as a form of female empowerment against a dominating patriarchal world.  Austen’s Persuasion puts into perspective changes in the values of society during her lifetime. More than just mirroring the society, Austen infuses her own ideals of courtship, domesticity and marriage in her work.  By analysing the novel alongside the historical changes of the time, this paper argues that, in Persuasion, Austen disassociates women from the traditional idea of domesticity by distancing them from the realm of the hearth and by giving them greater say and decision over their future.  She gives women qualities that were deemed to be “masculine.”  Moreover, Austen draws the men in the novel closer to the domestic sphere and feminises their masculinity.  By doing so, Austen creates the ideal heterosexual relationship.  In order for a relationship to work, the lovers have to embrace both their masculine and feminine characteristics and a failure to do so will result in obvious and often reproachful flaws.