As a teenager, I read Pride and Prejudice for pleasure, not knowing what an impact it could have. While I later read Sense and Sensibility, my first academic approach to Austen was not until a freshman course where I was assigned Northanger Abbey. Studying her time period and writing style piqued my intellectual curiosity and I knew I needed to read more of this unique author. Over the next year, I read her remaining three novels, and, as I read, it became more obvious that I wanted to study Jane Austen in depth.
That fall, in a class where we looked at Pride and Prejudice through a Marxian critique, my professor encouraged me to pursue graduate school. He told me that I was answering questions with questions—a sign to him that I was ready for the next level. At his suggestion, I enrolled in a graduate seminar.
A junior surrounded by graduate students, many of them teaching as well as attending classes, I easily felt intimidated. However, my time in the “Trans-Atlantic Age of Revolution” seminar taught me so much about formulating intellectual opinions, about the late 18th Century, and about graduate school itself. I wrote my seminar paper on a quasi-radical reading of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. After critiquing some of the arguments in Marilyn Butler’s Jane Austen and the War of Ideas as well as drawing from Claudia Johnson’s Jane Austen; Women, Politics, and the Novel, I was able to begin defining the framework of my reading of Austen’s works—a spirited young woman redefining class. I saw her works not as revolutionary, certainly, but definitely as progressive. She cultivated stylistic developments, especially free-indirect discourse—a key to the development of both the Modern novel as well as the Modern man. More importantly, though, she redefined what it meant to be a gentleman, from a statement of status to a commentary on behavior. While challenging, this course was one of the most formative of my experience at the University of Washington.
While in school studying the English novel, I have also fallen in love with studying Ancient Greek culture. I graduated from a Classical Christian high school where reading Homer, Aeschylus, and Plato; learning Latin; and training in Aristotelian Rhetoric were universal requirements for graduation. So when picking classes for my first quarter of college, Classical literature was a naturally safe choice. Not only did I excel in the class, I loved it. A few courses later, I decided to minor in Classical Studies. The experience of studying Classical culture, art history, mythology, and literature has been a delight, but, more than that, it has thoroughly equipped me for interdisciplinary study of the Neo-classical and Romantic eras because of their response to Classical art and thought.
As I pursued both a major in English and a minor in Classics, I received encouragement from multiple professors to pursue graduate school. One of these informed me of the St. Peter’s College Summer Study Abroad program and recommended their course, “Reading Jane Austen.” It sounded like a dream: studying at the oldest English-speaking University in the world, in the very geography of Austen’s narratives, studying my favorite author. I applied and was accepted for summer 2011.
The summer I spent in Oxford changed my life. While there, of course, I learned quite a lot about Austen and her context, from the financial uncertainty our own times mirror to the way in which she responded to the literary climate of her day to the influence war and sickness, location and culture had on her writing. Writing three research papers during this short program also exposed me to several more Austen critics, especially familiarizing me with the works of R. W. Chapman and Lionel Trilling. I also learned so much from my tutor, Dr. Catherine Dille—not only about Austen, but about my capabilities as well. She challenged me to set my sights higher than I had previously and, specifically, to apply to Oxford.
Having this experience also showed me, by contrast between Oxford and the University of Washington, more of who I am as an academic. I learned that I tend towards New Historicism than a New Criticism. I realized that, while I appreciate the theory I have learned at my alma mater, especially in their English Honors program, I do not thrive on studying theory. I want to read and research and draw from the texts rather than simply read a work through Marx’s glasses or Freud’s glasses or anyone else’s. It taught me that I place far more value on the past, that I still believe in the possibility of a text truly being elevated to a “classic,” and that I was more suited for a more conservative and interdisciplinary approach to education. For these reasons, and many more, I found myself at home in Oxford. That being said, I believe that the American education I have received—with its focus on critical perspectives, literary theory, and 20th and 21st century literature—will allow me to represent why the study of Austen is still pertinent and applicable.
By applying to the M.St. 1660-1830 course, I hope continue an interdisciplinary study of the English novel and specifically Jane Austen. Even after studying what I have of her, I still have questions about Austen’s unique place in the literary canon. I am interested in the projects of Kathryn Sutherland and Fiona Stafford and their works that see Austen in the light of Romanticism. I would also like to look at the influence and connection to other authors in her works. For instance, I am planning on writing my honors thesis on the link between Shakespeare and Austen, despite being of different genders, times, and genres. Finally, I am still very interested in studying the degree to which she was a conservative or a progressive. After investigating these and many more questions about Austen and the English novel, my hope is to obtain my D.Phil. and become a literature professor. I read once that books come alive “not only when read, but when shared.” This being true for me, I want to impart my passion for literature while remaining a life-long student.
Love it. This is fabulous. :)
ReplyDeleteWow. You did it! :D
ReplyDeleteTechnically, I believe that you are missing "to" in the first sentence of your last paragraph.
Content-wise, wow. Beautifully written, great details... you bring the reader along from high school to present day with the right balance of descriptions and "glossing."
Well done, dear!