IInger Sigrun Bredkjær Brodey is a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the cofounder and director of the Jane Austen Summer Program and Jane Austen & Co., and the principal investigator of Jane Austens Desk.
Description
Reviews
Brodeys interpretations of Austens writings are subtle and penetrating, and discussions of popular Austen film adaptations shed light on how Hollywood tramples over the novels ambivalence. Austenites will want to take a look.
— Publishers Weekly
Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness examines the ambivalence embedded in Jane Austens happy endings, arguing that the novelist was resisting platitudes about marriage and favoring a more discerning, individualized understanding of happiness. Brodey writes with verve and clarity and draws judiciously on Austen criticism. Her book is savvy and insightful.
— Paula Marantz Cohen, author of Talking Cure: An Essay on the Civilizing Power of Conversation
This accessible and lively book quizzes the seemingly tidy happily-ever-afters of Jane Austens stories. Brodeys smart observations slide effortlessly back and forth between Austens era and our own. Recommended for newly enlisted Janeites as well as perennial re-readers!
— Janine Barchas, author of The Lost Books of Jane Austen
In this thoughtful and lively exploration of Austens novels and their afterlives, Brodey is the first to investigate how the books dismissive endings are self-conscious innovations—both artful and instructive. Brodeys nuanced readings illuminate the Janeite universe, teaching us to see a more complex (if imperfect) felicity.
— Susan Allen Ford, editor of Persuasions and Persuasions On-Line
From closely reading Jane Austens marriage plots and their conclusions, Brodey radiates outward to consider literary antecedents, biographical contexts, and present-day adaptations. Never before have the social significances, emotional resonances, moral meanings, and philosophical underpinnings of Austens notoriously problematic endings been so incisively explored and so convincingly explained.
— Peter W. Graham, author of Jane Austen & Charles Darwin: Naturalists and Novelists