Jane Austen's Possessions and Dispossessions: The Significance of Objects

Who owns, who buys, who gives, who mentions, and who notices objects is always significant in Austen's writing. The trimming on a gown or the style of a carriage is made to place a character socially. Covetousness and meanness are clearly damned, but objects are used for more subtle forms of characterization; an attitude towards a meal, or a gift, or a tree is made more effective than a dozen speeches. If possessions are important, so is dispossession, which Austen suffered in her own life and whose effects she explores in the lives of her characters. Jane Austen's Possessions and Dispossessions looks at the significance of objects in Austen's major novels, fragments, and juvenilia.