54 pages • 1 hour read
Sandra Gilbert, Susan GubarThe Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1979A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Inside the House of Fiction: Jane Austen’s Tenants of Possibility”
Chapter 4 Summary: “Shut Up in Prose: Gender and Genre in Austen’s Juvenilia”
Chapter 4 examines Jane Austen’s early work and her authorial decision to focus on her characters’ methods of escaping social and literary conventions rather than the conventions themselves. For example, Austen’s own “personal obscurity” and her documented self-deprecating attitude towards her work are not indications of polite decorum; rather, they reveal Austen’s strategic way of rejecting her surrounding world. Many male critics misread the fact that Austen’s characters live according to the dull social conventions of their time, trivializing her work with a vitriol that suggests insecurity; Henry James’s criticism, for example, barely conceals his fear that, as a novelist himself, he is actually in Austen’s debt.
In Austen’s 1790 novel Love and Freindship [sic], the characters of Laura and Sophia parody literary conventions of the day. They immerse themselves, for example, in stories of romance that “create absurd misconceptions” about love and relationships (115). By adhering to the rules of popular fiction that encourages such banal narratives, Austen demonstrates how “bankrupt that fiction is” (115). Austen’s sense of alienation from the society in which she lives and writes is clear in her mockery of conventions like romantic plotlines.
The Watsons, an unfinished novel by Austen, concerns the life of a widowed father of two sons and four daughters. The young women escape the boredom of their lives by reading romances and, eventually, rebelling against their family’s expectations by living the plots they have read. The various social markers that exist throughout the novel are a disguise for the transgressive mindset of the girls. Without a mother to guide them, the girls learn that they must rely on men to survive the world; in fact, marriage is the only way the girls can escape their father and seek, ironically, a kind of self-definition. By writing about plot lines like this one and engaging in literary double-talk, or “conversations that imply the opposite of what they intend” (127), Austen rejects the moralistic and patriarchal tone typical of other writers of the 18th century.
Life occurrences that range from boring but polite conversations to elopements with unsuitable men all prevent women characters in Austen’s early fiction from living according to their own rules. A close reading of Northanger Abbey, Austen’s first novel intended for publication, reveals that the imprisonment of women in belittling social conventions is Austen’s primary concern. In this novel, Austen parodies the gothic romance. Catherine Moreland, the protagonist of Northanger Abbey, lives according to a set of lies that prevent her from being an authority on her own life. Without primacy, Catherine grows up ignorant of reality, and her “most endearing quality is her inexperience” (132).
By parodying literary conventions already established by other writers, Austen interprets the genre of the novel according to her own principles. Austen’s juvenilia, therefore, demonstrates that she, like women in her society represented by her female characters, can indeed “find comfortable spaces to inhabit” (144), literally and figuratively.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Jane Austen’s Cover Story (and Its Secret Agents)”
Chapter 5 explores several angles to a recurring theme in Austen’s oeuvre: “the necessity of female submission for female survival” in tight places (154). Though Austen’s general form may appear correct and decorous, her characters consistently reflect Austen’s “rebellious vision.” The title character of Lady Susan is an example of a clever, duplicitous heroine who mistreats her passive daughter and punishes her for being weak. Marianne Dashwood, of Sense and Sensibility, is emotionally sensitive and dreamy, in contrast to her proper and unadventurous sister Elinor; though both women are disappointed in love, Marianne is punished for her openness to others, and she nearly dies of a fever brought on by her experience of heartbreak.
In Pride and Prejudice, sharp-tongued Elizabeth Bennett enjoys robust health, while her quietly agreeable sister Jane becomes an invalid. The title character of Emma might be able to resist the romantic clichés that surround her, but she manipulates the people in her life as if she were a writer making decisions about her characters’ lives. Emma fails as an artist when it is revealed that her “vulnerability as a female” means she can be manipulated herself (159). Northanger Abbey’s Catherine Morland also suffers for her flights of imagination. The familiar trope of a happy ending is never so simple for Austen’s female characters.
In Mansfield Park, Austen writes about the psychic split many women experience while managing the conflict between a desire for self-assertion in the wider world and the easy availability of a quiet domestic life at home. The relationship between Fanny Price and Mary Crawford exemplifies this split in individual women; their interests, preferences, and irritations exist in opposites. Fanny’s reticence means that she takes the role of the angel, while Mary’s alluring manner indicates that she takes the role of the monstrous siren. Mary does not live according to the rules of her society, so she “has to be annihilated” (168).
In several of Austen’s novels, a shrewish female character like “the hectic, scheming Queen, stepmother to Snow White” is often present to represent the reality of the angel’s flip side (172); this kind of “bitchiness” often leads to illness and death, like in the case of Mrs. Churchill in Emma. Daughters often live under the thumb of their fathers, and their state of being motherless represents the authority of men in society. These “tight places” inhabited by women characters can be overcome, but only a few of Austen’s heroines are able to “exploit the evasions and reservations of feminine gentility” successfully (183).
Part 2 Analysis
Chapters 4 and 5 undo the popular image of Jane Austen as a clever but demure female writer. According to Gilbert and Gubar, Austen herself cultivated her ladylike image strategically, asserting a feminist stance consistent with the presence other feminist notions that run throughout The Madwoman. Austen’s choice to manage her public image suggests that Austen had more power over her own life than previously believed: If Austen’s public believed that Austen was living according to the established rules, she would be left alone. In the quiet, undisturbed state engineered by Austen herself, Austen was able to write freely about her social observations. The social parody that characterizes Austen’s best work is evidence of her strategic success.
According to the authors, Austen’s strategizing suggests that she was not a passive figure who was willingly policed by the patriarchal rules set for her by the men in authority. Austen’s clever manipulation of the system made her a model feminist, enabling her to make the most of the confining “tight place” she occupied as a woman of Victorian England. In this tight place, Austen wrote, demonstrating that work could be done even from the imprisoned state of women at the time as long as no one suspected that such work was taking place. The theme of imprisonment runs throughout the entire collection of essays, and in Austen’s case, the authors suggest she made the most of her confinement, as did many of her female characters. Though patriarchy may have restricted the movement of women and limited their choices, Austen’s quietly powerful parodying of Victorian society ensures that she gets the last laugh.
The discussion of motherless daughters in Austen’s fiction draws attention to another important theme that links all of the chapters together. Without mothers to support them and guide them, young women must live under the control of the fathers, becoming their fathers’ surrogate wives in some situations, and thereby, becoming their own mothers. The isolation of this position is just as imprisoning as marriage, another domestic situation that benefits the patriarchy. This double bind, presented in Austen’s novels as fiction, was an unfortunate reality for many women living during Austen’s time.
In these chapters, Gilbert and Gubar employ psychological jargon to discuss symptoms of anxiety and schizophrenia they observe in several of Austen’s characters. By treating the characters as human beings who live with challenges to mental and emotional health, the authors bring them to life; no longer do these characters function merely as devices that mock the society in which the author lived. By enhancing the vulnerable qualities of Austen’s characters, the authors focus on characterization as an effective literary device for 19th-century women writers. This choice emphasizes the feminist tone and subject matter of the book as a whole; women writers are certainly worthy of careful, critical attention, and so are their characters.
