Jane Austen and the Body

Download or read book Jane Austen and the Body written by John Wiltshire and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992-09-24 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jane Austen has been thought of as a novelist of manners whose work discreetly avoids discussing the physical. John Wiltshire shows, on the contrary, how important are bodies and faces, illness and health, in the novels, from complainers and invalids such as Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Woodhouse, to the frail, debilitated Fanny Price, the vulnerable Jane Fairfax and the "picture of health," Emma. The book draws on modern theories of the body, and on eighteenth-century medical sources, to give a fresh and controversial reading of familiar texts.