1. Unassimilable Style in Jane Austen's Narratives 2. Exploring immigrant experiences and assimilation through Jane Aust

1. Austen in Theory: The End. Term 2, Week 10 Sanditon and Jane Austen, or the Secret of Style

2. Some wrapup questions • Why are there no characters like Jane Austen—no older, unmarried female narrating figures—in Jane Austen’s fiction? • Where does the “double-voiced” (Ann Neumann) tendency in Austen go, at odds as it is with where the plots head; what are we meant to do with it?

3. Immigration stories:

4. Personal connections • One possible result of immigration is disproportionate attention to detail: small details seem off, may never normalize • Consider the ambivalences of the phrase “you’ll never fit in”: a sense that total passing will always elude one, that however much one may master the details (or indeed, because one may master the details too much), unmarked status is impossible • There’s a strong analogy here to how Austen narrates in Miller’s account: that the narrator ultimately sustains something unassimilable—he calls it “Style”—within these stories about the assimilation implied by the marriage-plot

6. On ascending the stairs, the Miss Dashwoods found so many people before them in the room, that there was not a person at liberty to tend to their orders; and they were obliged to wait. All that could be done was, to sit down at that end of the counter which seemed to promise the quickest succession; one gentleman only was standing there, and it is probable that Elinor was not without hope of exciting his politeness to a quicker despatch. But the correctness of his eye, and the delicacy of his taste, proved to be beyond his politeness. He was giving orders for a toothpick-case for himself, and till its size, shape, and ornaments were determined, all of which, after examining and debating for a quarter of an hour over every toothpick-case in the shop, were finally arranged by his own inventive fancy, he had no leisure to bestow any other attention on the two ladies, than what was comprised in three or four very broad stares; a kind of notice which served to imprint on Elinor the remembrance of a person and face, of strong, natural, sterling insignificance, though adorned in the first style of fashion.