In her essay Jane Austen and John Keats: Negative capability, Romance and Reality, Beth Lau connects the two writers previously not commonly associated. Most comparisons of Austen and Romantic poets are with Wordsworth and Byron, as it is known she read their works. Alas, even without her reading works of John Keats, parallels between ideas in their works can be made (Lau, 2006). The fact remains that concepts of Romantic period, canon and ideology are based on the assumption of shared characteristics among key writers of the era (Lau, 2006).
Some issues in comparison of Keats, Austen and negative capability may arise from the fact that negative capability is a Romantic concept, whereas Austen’s novel is from the Victorian period and follows …show more content…
She is, despite being judgemental about many characters and mistreated by just as many, able to enter the sufferings of those who mistreat her and empathize with them (Lau, 2006). In Mansfield Park, morality is a central theme, in the precise context I wish to focus on it deals with manners and duties, the acceptable and unacceptable. Whereas many of the essays about guilt, precisely Fanny’s guilt, tend to focus on her romantic interest and the aspect of her frowned upon romantic engagement and later marriage to her cousin, I will be concentrate on the guilt that has been bestowed upon her, even before she even arrived at Mansfield …show more content…
But as Duane also explains later on, the novel deals with issues bigger and less socially acceptable than that of unwanted adopted sister who slaves for her rich family. Austen’s novels are generally not to be taken literally, as most of them deal in metaphors and parodies of “situations of modern women”. Mansfield Park starts very innocently, a wealthy family taking a poor relative, a young girl, under their wing and ends up on a “scandal”, a social taboo. With that follows that the novel is far from conservative and actually deals with copious amounts of guilt. Of course, Austen herself lets us know of the guilt, and her personal lack of care at the notion of it, as a voice of the narrator in the last chapter, which begins with
Some issues in comparison of Keats, Austen and negative capability may arise from the fact that negative capability is a Romantic concept, whereas Austen’s novel is from the Victorian period and follows …show more content…
She is, despite being judgemental about many characters and mistreated by just as many, able to enter the sufferings of those who mistreat her and empathize with them (Lau, 2006). In Mansfield Park, morality is a central theme, in the precise context I wish to focus on it deals with manners and duties, the acceptable and unacceptable. Whereas many of the essays about guilt, precisely Fanny’s guilt, tend to focus on her romantic interest and the aspect of her frowned upon romantic engagement and later marriage to her cousin, I will be concentrate on the guilt that has been bestowed upon her, even before she even arrived at Mansfield …show more content…
But as Duane also explains later on, the novel deals with issues bigger and less socially acceptable than that of unwanted adopted sister who slaves for her rich family. Austen’s novels are generally not to be taken literally, as most of them deal in metaphors and parodies of “situations of modern women”. Mansfield Park starts very innocently, a wealthy family taking a poor relative, a young girl, under their wing and ends up on a “scandal”, a social taboo. With that follows that the novel is far from conservative and actually deals with copious amounts of guilt. Of course, Austen herself lets us know of the guilt, and her personal lack of care at the notion of it, as a voice of the narrator in the last chapter, which begins with