Jane Austen and Modernization : Sociological Readings

Jane Austen wrote when sociology was being established as the new discipline to understand social issues such as urbanization and industrialization. Drawing on landmark sociologists such as Durkheim and Bourdieu, this study argues that the novels of Austen were heavily influenced by these early developments in sociology.

Jane Austen and Modernization presents something of a conundrum. How can Austen be yoked to a vast series of historical changes that postdate her writing life by at least half a century? The canonization of Austen and the development of a popular readership was 50 years in the making though and during these years, readers and critics of all stripes responded to Austen''s work as representative of a social and historical formation that they themselves felt they were losing. This same half century corresponds to the development and institutionalization of sociology, the social science promulgated to answer the questions of modernity, to provide the tools and vocabulary to understand the period''s erosion of social and moral cohesion. James Thompson argues here that the early sociologists - Durkheim, Weber, Simmel and Goffman - share a concern about social cohesion with Austen. Through sociological analysis of six novels, this book highlights the dynamic and dramatic process of individuation and offers an original, interdisciplinary intervention.