Online research in philosophy

This paper attempts to analyze the social commentary of Jane Austen's early novel, Northanger Abbey. Austen had the rare ability to observe temporary customs of her age and see in them that which was universal. Her perception cuts through culture and identifies the human characteristics that underlie culture. Austen uses the actions of her characters to portray her perception of humanity. This paper reduces those character actions to ideas. Furthermore, those ideas lead to an overall ethic that evolves from Austen's insights, which in the context of the story sometimes appear peripheral. But this paper focuses on only her social commentary, and therefore uncovers in the narrative a theme that lays bare the plot. The uncovered theme reveals Austen's belief that the human soul has an independent identity, but that the environment can entangle the soul and suppress it. Relating that truth to reality sheds light on the well-known phenomenon of social interaction.

This presentation explores the narrative personas of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey and how the narration can affect the readers' perception of the illustrated events, characters, and society. It argues that there are two narrative voices; one voice makes opinionated comments directly to the reader and one voice relates the story objectively. The biased narrative persona can influence the readers and the impartial persona allows readers to gather their own conclusions about events, characters, and society. Northanger Abbey demonstrates the importance of the narrator as a character whose voice acts as a mediator between the reader and the action of any story.

Illustrates how Hume and Austen complement one another, each providing a lens that allows us to expand and elaborate on the ideas of the other Proposes that ...

Taking the novels of Jane Austen as an exploration of Joseph Raz's problem of authority in law, this paper explores whether a positivist account of authority maps onto Austen's account of human experience. While both Austen and Raz agree that the source of authority cannot itself be an exclusionary reason, Austen's novels suggest that social role and emotional connection play a bigger role in evaluating authority than Raz's account would suggest. Most notably, Austen's characterization of her heroine Fanny Price suggests that a non-positivist stance toward authority may generate more moral criticism of law than a positivist approach.

Ever since the publication of Mansfield Park readers and critics have debated how to understand the novel and particularly its heroine Fanny Price. Some have disliked Fanny, have thought of her as prudish and priggish, and perhaps have preferred Mary Crawford and wished for a different ending to the story. Others have defended Fanny’s virtue, her judgment, and her mind, regarding them as quite superior to the virtue, judgment, and minds of all of the other women in the novel, and all the men too, excepting (perhaps) Edmund. The debate, quite clearly, is about what Jane Austen was up to in a novel with a heroine so different from those in her other novels. The question is unclear in part because the narrator’s voice in Mansfield Park is so much like Mary Crawford’s voice. In her article “Searching for Jane Austen in Mary Crawford,” Emily Auerbach offers us quotations from Mary Crawford and from Jane Austen’s own letters and challenges us to figure out which are which—and it is very difficult. Mary Crawford, like Jane Austen, is frequently sparkling and edgy while Fanny is not, yet Fanny is the star.