Jane Austen: Sibling Rivalry Unconscious Fantasy and Change

From the Introduction by author: Love Rivalry and the UnconsciousJane Austens novels have been praised by the literary critics loved by the ordinary reader and made into many films (Southam 1967; Wiltshire 2001). Psychoanalytic readings of the six great novels elaborate Austens famous description of her subject to her niece Anna. You are now collecting your People delightfully getting them exactly into such a spot as is the delight of my life;-3 or 4 Families in a Country Village is the very thing to work on (Le Faye 2011 p. 287). Austens plots and language dramatize the love and mutual identifications the jealousy and competitive strivings of family life as young women and men fall in love and marry. Austens narrative method free indirect discourse presents the conflicted feelings and impulses of her heroines and heroes as they separate from their families relive early sibling and oedipal rivalries and form attachments outside the family.