Beyond the Words: Jane Austen and the Happiness Problem
- 1 School of Foreign Languages, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, Nanchang, China
Abstract
Happiness is an important theme in Jane Austen’s novels. In this study, the author points to how social, economic, and cultural conditions of the nineteenth-century Britain worked together to create a complex phenomenon of happiness. Focusing on Jane Austen’s works, this study analyzes how happiness is explored through the lenses of love, economic security, personal growth, and socially appropriate marriage. I argue that Jane Austen’s novels construct an “ideologized discourse” on happiness, which is a narrative framework that naturalizes societal norms while masking their constructed nature through literary narration. This study concludes that the discourse in Jane Austen’s works plays a part in shaping the collective British psyche and notions of Britishness by codifying a middle-class ideal of happiness related to moral virtue, economic prudence, and social integration.
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