Mothers and Daughters

Miriam Ascarelli argues for Jane Austen's role as a feminist in her time in her article "A Feminist Connection: Jane Austen and Mary Wollstonecraft". Jane Austen's novels have suttle aspects and ideas that promote feminism by questioning society's expectations for women with a gentle approach. One way Austen does this is by using the relationships between mothers and daughters in her novels to critique the expectations and standards that society had set for those roles specifically. She does this by characterizing them in ways that go against various aspects of the idealized woman. While her characters are unconventional, they are still able to be part of society and meet the ultimate expectation and goal of that time: marriage.