Sibling jealousy and aesthetic ambiguity in Austen's Pride and Prejudice
Margaret Ann Fitzpatrick Hanly1
1Toronto Institute of Psychoanalysis. cema.hanly@utoronto.ca
Abstract:
Jane Austen's most popular novel, Pride and Prejudice (1813), illuminates and is illuminated by psychoanalytic aesthetics. When Austen dramatizes unconscious oedipal/sibling rivalries, irony acts as a type of aesthetic ambiguity (E. Kris 1952). A psychoanalytic perspective shows that Austen uses a grammar of negatives (negation, denial, minimization) to achieve the dual meanings of irony, engaging the reader's unconscious instinctual satisfactions, while at the same time protecting the reader from unpleasant affects. Austen's plot, which portrays regressions driven by sibling jealousy, reveals that a new tolerance of remorse and depression in her heroine and hero leads to psychic growth.
Related Concept Videos
Jealousy in Romantic Relationships
Adler's Individual Psychology
Self-Discrepancy Theory
Law of Independent Assortment
Law of Independent Assortment
Self-Discrepancy and Its Effects


