Tom Keymer > Quotes

“Victorian novelists such as George Eliot could write about female vocation as at least a meaningful ambition, but in the claustrophobic world of Sense and Sensibility, marriage is the only eligible destiny. In this respect, the courtship plot that structures all six of Austen’s published novels, though sometimes held to imply her endorsement of a patriarchal status quo, is equally a means of exploring themes of female disempowerment.”
― Tom Keymer, Jane Austen: Writing, Society, Politics

“Persuasion’s slightly unfinished quality is a matter of language, not plot. The novel’s prose is often nervy and jagged, with less of the epigrammatic clarity that marks Emma or Pride and Prejudice, and it’s to this feature that Persuasion’s air of passionate intensity is partly owing.”
― Tom Keymer, Jane Austen: Writing, Society, Politics