Reading Jane Austen beyond Love and Marriage
超越愛情與婚姻：閱讀珍．奧斯汀

The novels of Jane Austen (1775-1817) are rare in British literature for having both scholarly and popular appeal. Pride and Prejudice has long been featured at the top of various recommended reading lists. The novel has also been adapted into numerous plays, movies and TV series – so well received among the public around the world, that it is seen as the model romantic love story. However, beyond this cliché, modern research has found that Austen’s works are full of profound reflections on issues such as social class norms, prejudices, hypocrisies, personal (especially women’s) pursuit of happiness and moral choices. Interestingly, because Jane Austen never preaches about these issues in seriousness, but cleverly displays them between the lines, different readers can draw completely different conclusions about her thought and stance, or even fail to notice these reflections completely, but still enjoy these stories of gentry, women and men, living in the turn of the 18-19 century England.



This course selects Jane Austen’s three more light-hearted and lively works, namely Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma as reading materials. During the class, students will attend a lecture before they read excerpts of important passages from the novels under the guidance of the lecturer. They will discover Jane Austen’s art of writing, understand and appreciate how she uses fascinating love stories, vivid character interactions and humorous dialogues to convey deep thinking on issues of ethics, society and values.

Participants will read original English works, while in-class explanations and discussion will be mainly in Cantonese, supplemented by English.