Sibling jealousy and aesthetic ambiguity in Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

Full Abstract

Jane Austen's most popular novel, Pride and Prejudice (1813), illuminates and is illuminated by psychoanalytic aesthetics. When Austen dramatizes unconscious oedipal/sibling rivalries, irony acts as a type of aesthetic ambiguity (E. Kris 1952). A psychoanalytic perspective shows that Austen uses a grammar of negatives (negation, denial, minimization) to achieve the dual meanings of irony, engaging the reader's unconscious instinctual satisfactions, while at the same time protecting the reader from unpleasant affects. Austen's plot, which portrays regressions driven by sibling jealousy, reveals that a new tolerance of remorse and depression in her heroine and hero leads to psychic growth.

Author information

Author/s: Hanly, Margaret Ann Fitzpatrick (MA);

Affiliation: Toronto Institute of Psychoanalysis. cema.hanly(-atsign-)utoronto.ca

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Biography; Historical Article; Journal Article

Journal: The Psychoanalytic quarterly (Psychoanal Q), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2009-Apr; vol 78 (issue 2) : pp 445-68

Dates: Created 2009/06/10; Completed 2009/06/18;

PMID: 19507448, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 6/18/2009, IMS Date: 18 Jun 2009 00:00:00)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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