Jane Austen’s Invisible Men: Beyond the Drawing Room
Abstract
Eighteenth-century society experienced a transition from an emphasis on the court
to a broader social sphere, from monarchical to greater egalitarian parliamentary
decisions, a transition of influence from the landed gentry to a rising professional
class, and further transitions in masculine behavior and political thought. Jane
Austen is one author in the long eighteenth century who provides insight into the
human experience of her society through fictional accounts of interactions between
men and women, thus providing some opportunity for insight through her works. Male
characters enter the narrow confines of Austen’s social spaces shaped by their individual
experiences in the masculine networks of larger society, such as military service,
family politics, societal political trends and societal conceptualizations of masculinity.
Men are a major focus of her stories because the heroines must interact with and develop
an understanding of them to determine the nature of further interactions. Investigating
the male characters’ broader experiences provides insight into the male experience
of the long eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Therefore, I explore the ways
that Austen portrays the unseen lives of her male characters with particular reference
to masculine networks and associated thought that influences their actions, as well
as their interactions.
Type
Master's thesisDepartment
Graduate Liberal StudiesPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/9239Citation
Hutson, Steven Myers (2014). Jane Austen’s Invisible Men: Beyond the Drawing Room. Master's thesis, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/9239.Collections
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