Noms, étiquette(s) et identités dans Persuasion, de Jane Austen

• Main Author: Marie-Laure Massei
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée 2014-06-01
• Series: Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens
• Subjects: Austen (Jane); Persuasion; naming; labels/etiquette; social hierarchy; landed wealth
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/cve/1232

Jane Austen’s last novel, Persuasion, dramatises the tensions inherent in the decline of the ancient landed order and of its traditional sources of authority, as the emergence of a new social hierarchy, in the wake of the Napoleonic wars, was leading to a questioning of signifiers: patronyms and titles are thus subject to constant reassessment in the novel while the honorific term ‘gentleman’ is threatened with devaluation. Labelled a ‘nobody’ at the beginning even though she embodies sense, constancy and fortitude, Anne Elliot is reborn as a heroine through her ability to read and decipher meanings, manners and behaviours: her new status and identity are then aptly signified by a telling mutation of the signifier after her marriage, freeing her from the sterile codes of the paternal narrative.