Conclusion: ‘such an alternative as this had not occurred to her’

Abstract

Women seem so far to have survived their disconnection from the ‘higher’ realms of knowledge, but remain at a tangential relationship to ‘objective’ knowledge today:

The sciences — as the paradigm of modern academic disciplines — maintain the self-serving and misleading pretense of ‘dispassionate objectivity,’ an attitude which promotes a sense of separation between self and other, observer and observed, scientist and nature.⁵⁴⁸

The point is rather that the Enlightenment must examine itself, if men are not to be wholly betrayed. The task to be accomplished is not the conservation of the past, but the redemption of the hopes of the past.

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer,

Dialectic of Enlightenment ⁵⁴⁵

Art deals not with the real but with the conceivable; and criticism, though it will eventually have to have some theory of conceivability, can never be justified in trying to develop, much less assume, any theory of actuality.

Northrop Frye, ‘The Archetypes of Literature’ 546

In Prudie’s dream, Jane Austen is showing her through the rooms of a large estate. Jane doesn’t look anything like her portrait. She looks more like Jocelyn and sometimes she is Jocelyn, but mostly she’s Jane. She’s blond, neat, modern. Her pants are silk and have wide legs. […]

Jane arrives again. She is in a hurry now, hustling Prudie past many doors until they suddenly stop. ‘Here’s where we’ve put your mother,’ she says. ‘I think you’ll see we’ve made some improvements.’

Prudie hesitates. ‘Open the door,’ Jane tells her, and Prudie does. Instead of a room, there is a beach, a sailboat and an island in the distance, the ocean as far as Prudie can see.

Karen Joy Fowler, The Jane Austen Book Club⁵⁴⁷