Modeling Gender: Mansfield Park as Conduct Book?
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This essay delves into Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, exploring its alignment and departure from conduct book and conduct literature, particularly those authored by women in the eighteenth century. Despite the numerous conduct books by female authors, their distinctive traits, distinguished from male counterparts, have been overlooked and undervalued. Therefore, I employ “distant reading,” the opposite concept of “close reading,” using computational methodologies to shed light on how female authors portrayed the ideal woman differently from the submissive and passive ideal typically described by male authors. Furthermore, myriad of scholars have identified Mansfield Park as conduct literature or suggested the connection between them. However, considering the complexity of the plot, a more nuanced exploration is necessary, rather than framing the novel in a binary manner as either conduct literature or not. To deviate from black and white conclusions, I propose an alternative lens by exploring how the results of distant reading relate to the novel Mansfield Park. I utilize computer programs such as Antconc and Rstudio to extract word frequency lists, revealing commonalities and gender-based differences between male and female conduct book authors. Given that religion and self-love emerge as two major themes in the list, I begin by providing a historical context to elucidate why these themes held significance for female authors. Subsequently, I conduct an analysis of the narrative of Mansfield Park, concentrating on character traits and their responses to various events. Lastly, by highlighting aspects within Mansfield Park that seem incongruous with the classification as conduct literature, I examine Austen’s critique of the genre.
Abstract
This essay delves into Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, exploring its alignment and departure from conduct book and conduct literature, particularly those authored by women in the eighteenth century. Despite the numerous conduct books by female authors, their distinctive traits, distinguished from male counterparts, have been overlooked and undervalued. Therefore, I employ “distant reading,” the opposite concept of “close reading,” using computational methodologies to shed light on how female authors portrayed the ideal woman differently from the submissive and passive ideal typically described by male authors. Furthermore, myriad of scholars have identified Mansfield Park as conduct literature or suggested the connection between them. However, considering the complexity of the plot, a more nuanced exploration is necessary, rather than framing the novel in a binary manner as either conduct literature or not. To deviate from black and white conclusions, I propose an alternative lens by exploring how the results of distant reading relate to the novel Mansfield Park. I utilize computer programs such as Antconc and Rstudio to extract word frequency lists, revealing commonalities and gender-based differences between male and female conduct book authors. Given that religion and self-love emerge as two major themes in the list, I begin by providing a historical context to elucidate why these themes held significance for female authors. Subsequently, I conduct an analysis of the narrative of Mansfield Park, concentrating on character traits and their responses to various events. Lastly, by highlighting aspects within Mansfield Park that seem incongruous with the classification as conduct literature, I examine Austen’s critique of the genre.
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