Top-Rated Free Essay
Preview

Letters to Alice - Letter 5 Analysis

Good Essays
605 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Letters to Alice - Letter 5 Analysis
Letter Five - interconnectedness between the writer and the reader
Social class: Weldon’s comment on social class in Canberra; “in pretty idiosyncratic suburbs where house prices define the status of the occupants and when you change houses you change your friends”, parallels to that in Austen’s time and novels.
Power and purpose of the writer
Since Austen, Weldon comments in a didactic tone; “any seminar on Women and Writing or Women Writers of the New Female Culture or whatever is instantly booked up – by men as well as by women – and readings by writers and in particular women writers – are so popular”
“But times, you see, have changed, and writers have had to change”
Human nature
“Men – I use the term generically to include the female…. Are like children; they tend to misconstrue lack of reproof as a lack of interest, as indifference”
Jane Austen vs today
Writers such as Jane Austen were more original with their writing and drew from personal experiences and by “reading aloud, listening to the sightings and coughings of her audience” Where as today many writers are influenced by TV and “will deny a sense of audience”
Motiff of the City of Invention
Once again she refers to the City of Invention saying you can visit and depart the city at your own will whilst being in the safety of your own room. “When you close the book …. Discover that you are changed yet unchanged!” Weldon believes this is all education is about.
Links to the city of Invention “In this City, virtue is rewarded and the bad are punished”
Comments on Austen and Pride and Prejudice
Aunt Fay comments that in Austen’s day, novels were meant to be read aloud so they are aurally effective – “so wonderfully read aloud.” She argues that Austen’s sense of audience and the effect of her text is what makes her novels so valuable.
She also makes the point that Austen’s works offer moral instruction, presenting Lizzy as “listening to the beat of feeling rather than the pulsing urge for survival” personification and imagery highlights how characters can be role-models for readers. Weldon also alludes to how Austen’s protagonist is more refined that the more primitive society around her. She surpassed society’s conventions. Readers are encouraged to question established practice and test it against moral integrity. “paying attention to the subtle demands of human dignity rather than the cruder ones of established convention”. Austen shows readers their faults and shows how their virtues can overcome them. There is hope and instruction. Hence Weldon credits Austen with social change: “prodding it quicker and faster along the slow, difficult road that had led us out of barbarity into civilisation”
Austen rewarding goodness – “If you are good, Jane Austen promised, you will be happy” Lizzy overcomes her prejudices so she can love and be loved by Darcy
“Jane Austen defines our faults for us, analyses our virtues, and tells us that if we will only control the one with the other, all will yet be well”

Letter 3
A contemporary view on Austen’s context
Microcosm - all her novels are parochial didactic tone asides in brackets > relate back to Alice. At times sarcastic: jolts readers and alice into the reality of Austen’s life. page 38 page 39- religious paradigms of the time, biblical allusions, sarcasm (rich people helping the poor)
41: Role of fathers and mother
42 2nd para: Alice and who she is role of unmarried women 44
48 Mr Bennet
49 writing is hard, sympathises with Austen, personifies language marriage 51 P&P Collins and Charlotte > parallels to Rich landowners in Aus

Letter 4
- Child birth

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The 1990s have seen Jane Austin novels become more popular than ever. Hollywood, as is its custom, has followed suit, bringing to the screen several Oscar-nominated films faithfully based upon the author's works during that decade. Why would our modern society still be charmed by these novels, written by a woman who never married or even traveled outside England? How can these 200 year-old stories be relevant to our jaded culture? Probably because, despite all the radical social changes that have taken place since Jane Austen's time, people haven't really changed all that much. Heckerling’s film Clueless, an adaptation of Emma, shows that although society’s values have changed, the status quo still exists and is just as rigid nowadays as it was in the nineteenth century. However, because Clueless is set in a different time to Emma and because Heckerling uses a different medium to Austin, there are bound to be changes between the two texts.…

    • 1054 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Ideas about the human condition can transcend time and expressed through different contexts while reflecting society’s changing values. Emma, written by Jane Austen reaffirms and challenges the conservative society of 19th century England, where moral growth is a result of strict social etiquettes and rigid class structure. However, Heckerling has taken similar ideas that speak powerfully about human nature to the different context of 20th century America, within the world of Clueless where a much fluid social structure is orientated around popularity and superficial materialism. While both texts are able to mirror the values and beliefs of its time, they convey similar ideas which are universal and relate to any context.…

    • 1100 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The two texts, Letters to Alice and Pride and Prejudice, mirror and contrast the central values shared and explored by evaluating them; presenting them against Jane Austen's context and that of Fay Weldon. Mirroring Austen's novel, Weldon presents the central values for women such as the social values of moral behaviour, independence, and, literary values of reading and writing, from Pride and Prejudice and adapts them to a 20th Century context. Weldon's novel's subtitle, On First Reading Jane Austen, suggests that the novel should serve as a filter to assist readers. The implication of this is that Weldon enables her readers to identify more fully the significance of Jane Austen as a writer, and, the significance of Pride and Prejudice as a piece of literature, exploring the ongoing relevance of its values concerning women.…

    • 1502 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Through Letters to Alice, Weldon discusses the importance in the value of literature. This is displayed through use of the imperative ‘you must read”. Her observing of literature linking to the transcendence of time is examined when adopting the metaphor of the city of invention, which educates the readers of what good literature is and the solid foundations that make it withstand time. Aunt Fay says “Through reading literature we learn about the way people thought and how they lived, the ways we are different and the things we share”, suggesting an implicit link to Austen’s work. Weldon writes that good literature has the ability to “transcend time and reach…

    • 2183 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    “He was the proudest, most disagreeable man in the world, and everybody hoped we would never come there again.” (3) These were the feelings that Miss Elizabeth Bennet possessed at the start of Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen weaved a marvelous tale of love in its rarest and truest form. This love was formed out of a once burning hatred. The transformations throughout Austen’s masterpiece shows how true love fights through the boundary of pride and prejudice which exists in the society of Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy. Jane Austen captivates us through the characters of Darcy and Elizabeth through their altering feelings for one another and the world causing anxiety for the readers at first but ultimately an overwhelming relief for the readers.…

    • 1309 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout the novel Austen develops Anne’s character steadily, and purposefully shows her evolution from a timid and nervous spinster to a confident and liberated young woman. This dramatic transformation is conveyed through her own actions and the perception of the other characters towards her.…

    • 944 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    However, Austen contradicts this third voice by the dialogue which establishes Emma to be a character of good intentions “No papa, nobody thought of you walking”. This contrast between third person and dialogue creates a discrepancy between Emma’s thoughts and Austen’s intrusive moralistic views. From the irony present here, satire is created, encouraging the…

    • 847 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Jane Austen’s novel, ‘Northanger Abbey’ [NA], oppositions feature strongly as a method which the author uses often to parody the public’s expectation of what a gothic should consist of, and as a method of highlighting the ridiculous expectations novels can create for people in the real world. Frequently throughout the novel, Miss Austen even breaks the fourth wall of writing to comment on how unlike a traditional gothic novel certain aspects of NA are, such as Catherine’s trip to Bath as well as Catherine’s general upbringing and childhood. Introducing Catherine as the average and understated young woman who is to be the main character, or at the very least the one around whom the narrative revolves, the reader’s expectations of a heroine are instantly challenged, Austen even tells the reader that Catherine preferred more male dominated activities like cricket to “the more heroic enjoyments.” By creating this challenge for the reader, Austen not only allows he novel to stand out from other Gothic novels, which were extremely prevalent at the time but she also gives the reader a narrative hook, forcing them to question, ‘why is Catherine the main character is she is so normal?’.…

    • 861 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Jane Austen’s famous work, Pride and Prejudice, is entwined with each character’s social, political, and personal vanity, especially Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Elizabeth Bennet. Without these comedic elements this piece would never have come as far as it has.…

    • 629 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    PB: The values and attitudes that Austen has chosen to explore in Emma address the strict nature of social classes and the consequence of self-awareness.…

    • 635 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Weldon's Letter To Alice

    • 1254 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Fay Weldon’s non fiction text, Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen, uses Jane Austen’s novel, Pride and Prejudice, to create connections between the values of the modern world and that of Austen’s. Through a range of literary techniques, Weldon is able to compare the values of the 20th century to that of regency England in the 19th century. The values that Weldon draws upon include, marriage, the social hierarchy and the importance of reading and literature.…

    • 1254 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Fay Weldon’s epistolary non-fiction Letters to Alice (1984) enables the further understanding of Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice (1813) achieved through the intertextual connections explored, in which offer a postmodern interpretation and discussion of Pride and its Regency context. The reader, consequently is given opportunity to adopt Weldon's perception of the novels issues and themes, ultimately reshaping the audience's experience in reading Pride. Austen challenges the contexts values through the…

    • 681 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” (Austen 3). With the popularity of the Enlightenment, female authors came out of the shadows and started displaying their work for all the world to see. Jane Austen, being one of them, took a stance on upper class society in 19th Century England, by mocking the standards of the elites. By using irony and humor to do so, Ms. Austen grabs the reader’s attention, by having characters that are relatable to readers in her time and to readers all over the world. An example of that is Pride and Prejudice by showing how different characters throughout the novel view the society’s norm, whether they think it is right or wrong. Some characters in the novel marry for financial status; some for love; & some just to be the first to get married. The sociological approach is how a literary work shows how society interacts in the novels time. It may go into political, economic, and cultural ways that define the people within the country. Jane Austen, growing up in an upper-class home, does personally understand how society works and that makes her the best person to write these kinds of…

    • 617 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Cited: Austen, Jane. The Complete Novels of Jane Austen Volume I. New York: Modern Library, 1992. Print.…

    • 1810 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    3. Dramatizing the Consciousness of the character: In this progressive method of narration Jane Austen takes her readers into the mind of her characters. She records very minutely the entire thought process of the character and reveals the feelings and emotions of that character. In Ch.36 Jane Austen records in great detail the mental change that took place in the personality of the heroine Elizabeth after she had read and reread several times Darcy's letter:…

    • 1516 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays