Manchester University Press
Conclusion
Abstract
Representing their protagonist’s subjectivity at the crossroads of a shifting patriarchy, Elfrida and Persuasion contribute to destabilizing the sentimental novel. Through tension between satire and sentimentality, Gibbes and Austen share irony behind their third-person narrators. While for the heroines’ fathers, identity is engrained in “alienation” or the transference of property, for the protagonists, “alienation” means estrangement from family and self because of the paternal obsession over property. For both novels, the love triangle represents tension between waning patrimony and expanding empire: Elfrida setting the aristocratic Ellison against the humble Wilmot; Persuasion setting the Elliot heir against Wentworth, earning wealth through naval conquest. Both novelists threaten to collapse the hero/villain binary, eastern riches allowing Gibbes’s Wilmot to buy the ancestral estate of Elfrida’s mother, the navy men in Persuasion renting patriarchal estates. Wilmot’s new wealth anticipates Persuasion’s shift to capitalism from aristocratic entitlement. Both use anticlimax to unite hero and heroine prematurely, forcing them to separate until they resolve entanglements involving the heroine’s father and the hero’s rival. With the reunited couples transformed, both gesture towards a fragile new society promising the ascendency of female agency. Though each novel promises the heroine liberation from her expected passivity as daughter and wife, she must overcome her mother’s legacy of passivity. Subverting the story of male prodigality and homecoming, Gibbes stands at the center of a lineage begun by Behn’s satire of the masculinist repudiation of female agency, culminating with Anne Elliot’s prismatic consciousness navigating a shifting patriarchy during the rise of modernity.
Abstract
Representing their protagonist’s subjectivity at the crossroads of a shifting patriarchy, Elfrida and Persuasion contribute to destabilizing the sentimental novel. Through tension between satire and sentimentality, Gibbes and Austen share irony behind their third-person narrators. While for the heroines’ fathers, identity is engrained in “alienation” or the transference of property, for the protagonists, “alienation” means estrangement from family and self because of the paternal obsession over property. For both novels, the love triangle represents tension between waning patrimony and expanding empire: Elfrida setting the aristocratic Ellison against the humble Wilmot; Persuasion setting the Elliot heir against Wentworth, earning wealth through naval conquest. Both novelists threaten to collapse the hero/villain binary, eastern riches allowing Gibbes’s Wilmot to buy the ancestral estate of Elfrida’s mother, the navy men in Persuasion renting patriarchal estates. Wilmot’s new wealth anticipates Persuasion’s shift to capitalism from aristocratic entitlement. Both use anticlimax to unite hero and heroine prematurely, forcing them to separate until they resolve entanglements involving the heroine’s father and the hero’s rival. With the reunited couples transformed, both gesture towards a fragile new society promising the ascendency of female agency. Though each novel promises the heroine liberation from her expected passivity as daughter and wife, she must overcome her mother’s legacy of passivity. Subverting the story of male prodigality and homecoming, Gibbes stands at the center of a lineage begun by Behn’s satire of the masculinist repudiation of female agency, culminating with Anne Elliot’s prismatic consciousness navigating a shifting patriarchy during the rise of modernity.
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- Acknowledgements viii
- Abbreviations ix
- Introduction 1
- 1 The Life and Adventures of Mr. Francis Clive (1764) 21
- 2 The American Fugitive: or, Friendship in a Nunnery (1778, 1784) 72
- 3 Transnationalism in the Anglo-Indian novels: Zoriada, or, Village Annals (1786) and Hartly House, Calcutta 115
- 4 Elfrida; or Paternal Ambition (1786) 154
- Conclusion 208
- Bibliography 224
- Index 234
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- Acknowledgements viii
- Abbreviations ix
- Introduction 1
- 1 The Life and Adventures of Mr. Francis Clive (1764) 21
- 2 The American Fugitive: or, Friendship in a Nunnery (1778, 1784) 72
- 3 Transnationalism in the Anglo-Indian novels: Zoriada, or, Village Annals (1786) and Hartly House, Calcutta 115
- 4 Elfrida; or Paternal Ambition (1786) 154
- Conclusion 208
- Bibliography 224
- Index 234
