Abstract
Echoes and resonances of Shakespeare may be detected in Austen’s Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility in the leitmotif of incestuous sibling connections. In both Shakespeare and Austen, incestuous sibling connections are used to probe discourses of family, gender, class and domination and demonstrate how these discourses inform social, cultural and political worlds, and vice versa. In Shakespeare’s King Henry VIII and Hamlet, incest is used as a strategy to brandish and amalgamate power and to advance the interests of the ruling class in a blood-sustained time of violence, suppression and radical change. In Austen’s Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility, incest is still used as a defensive strategy to safeguard the family, and also as a means to create a more equitable balance in society between men and women during a violent revolutionary era of upheaval and tyranny.
This essay seeks to compare Henry VIII and Hamlet with Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility. The cultural-historical and intertextual connections between Shakespeare and Austen, with respect to incestuous family alliances and their ties to issues of control, succession and equality of status in their respective periods, offer a new perspective on the links between the two most popular English authors.
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Notes
- 1.
Some of the arguments about Austen come from my book Sibling Love and Incest in Jane Austen’s Fiction, but I have amplified my discussion and provided new examples to extend substantially the material of my earlier work in light of my research on incestuous relations in the Renaissance. See Glenda Hudson, Sibling Love and Incest in Jane Austen’s Fiction (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan/St. Martin’s, 1992; paperback 1999). Extracts reproduced here with permission of Palgrave Macmillan.
- 2.
Ellen Pollak , Incest and the English Novel, 1684–1814 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 169.
- 3.
Margaret Kirkham , Jane Austen: Feminism and Fiction, 2nd edn (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2000), 11.
- 4.
It is now a general consensus that King Henry VIII is a collaboration written by Shakespeare and John Fletcher. This was not known in Austen’s time.
- 5.
Charles Beecher Hogan, Shakespeare in the Theatre, 1701–1800 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1957), 294–312, 717; quoted in Elaine Bander, ‘The Other Play in Mansfield Park: Shakespeare’s Henry VIII’, Persuasions 17 (1995): 114. On Austen’s use of Shakespeare and King Henry VIII, see also Penny Gay, Jane Austen and the Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 10, 99; Paula Byrne, Jane Austen and the Theatre (London: Hambledon and London, 2002), 15; and Kirkham , Jane Austen: Feminism and Fiction, 112–16.
- 6.
On London performances, see Bander, ‘The Other Play in Mansfield Park’, 114; on the Bath performance, see Kirkham , Jane Austen: Feminism and Fiction, 112. See also Judith Page, Chap. 10 in this volume, which discusses Austen as a theatre-goer and makes connections between her viewing of Edmund Kean’s stage performance in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice at Drury Lane in March 1814 and her recently completed Mansfield Park. Clearly the theatre , and Shakespeare specifically, was very much on Austen’s mind around the time of Mansfield Park.
- 7.
All references to Austen’s fiction are from The Works of Jane Austen, ed. R. W. Chapman (London: Oxford University Press, 1933–1988), and are cited parenthetically in the text.
- 8.
See John Guy, Tudor England (London: Oxford University Press, 1990), passim. See also Maureen Quilligan , Incest and Agency in Elizabeth’s England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 33–4.
- 9.
Bruce Boehrer , Monarchy and Incest in Renaissance England: Literature, Culture, Kinship, and Kingship (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), 5, 3.
- 10.
Quilligan, Incest and Agency, 39.
- 11.
Marc Shell , Elizabeth’s Glass (Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 8–15.
- 12.
All references to Shakespeare’s works are from The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 2nd edn, ed. Stanley Wells (London: Oxford University Press, 2005), and are cited parenthetically in the text.
- 13.
Jason P. Rosenblatt, ‘Aspects of the Incest Problem in Hamlet’, Shakespeare Quarterly 29 (1978): 356.
- 14.
Ruth Perry , Novel Relations: The Transformation of Kinship in English Literature and Culture, 1748–1818 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 123.
- 15.
Sayre Greenfield, ‘The Source for the Theatricals of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park: A Discovery’, Persuasions 38 (2016): 121–57.
- 16.
On Austen’s knowledge and viewing of Kotzebue plays , see Byrne, Jane Austen and the Theatre, 36–42, 149–53; see also Gay, Jane Austen and the Theatre, 104–10, 123–4.
- 17.
See Ben Wiebracht, ‘First-Cousin Marriage in Tudor and Stuart England: 1540–1688’, Journal of Family History 40 (2015): 24. See also Sybil Wolfram, In-Laws and Outlaws: Kinship and Marriage in England (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987), 23–30; and Jack Goody, The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 56–59, 176–81.
- 18.
Coincidentally, 40 years after the appearance of Sense and Sensibility, Austen’s niece Catherine Anne Hubback published The Wife’s Sister; or the Forbidden Marriage (1851), a novel that deals sympathetically with the outlawed marriage of a brother and sister-in-law in England. Hubback goes to great lengths to reveal the vulnerability of women in these situations, and urges reform of the laws dealing with the issue.
- 19.
Bander , ‘The Other Play in Mansfield Park’, 112, 116.
- 20.
Boehrer , Monarchy and Incest in Renaissance England, 4.
- 21.
Shell , Elizabeth’s Glass, 296.
- 22.
Terri Clerico , ‘The Politics of Blood: ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore’, English Literary Renaissance 22 (1992): 416.
- 23.
Richard McCabe , Incest, Drama, and Nature’s Law 1550–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 228–9.
- 24.
John Ford, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 1.1.34.
- 25.
Susannah Mintz , ‘The Power of Parity in Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 102 (2003): 194. Likewise, Molly Smith insists that Ford’s play ‘reflect[s] a deep cultural reticence towards accepting without question the gendered hierarchies which had hitherto dominated Renaissance sociopolitical systems.’ See Molly Smith, Breaking Boundaries: Politics and Play in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 110.
- 26.
Francis Hutcheson, A System of Moral Philosophy, vol. 2 (New York: Augustus Kelley, 1968), 172.
- 27.
See also Barbara Benedict, Chap. 5 in this volume, ‘Jewels , Bonds and the Body: Material Culture in Shakespeare and Austen’, on Edmund’s chain as a symbol of love and also of exchange.
- 28.
Shell , Elizabeth’s Glass, 8–15.
- 29.
Quilligan, Incest and Agency, 35–6.
- 30.
Kirkham, Jane Austen: Feminism and Fiction, 118–19.
- 31.
Perry, Novel Relations, 242.
- 32.
Mary Corbett , Family Likeness: Sex, Marriage, and Incest from Jane Austen to Virginia Woolf (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), 156.
- 33.
See also Glenda Hudson, ‘Consolidated Communities: Masculine and Feminine Values in Jane Austen’s Fiction’ In Jane Austen and Discourses of Feminism, ed. Devoney Looser (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 1995), 101–16.
- 34.
As McCabe argues, ‘Sexuality is political, as politics is sexual, and incest functions as an appropriate metaphor for political disturbance by virtue of received concepts of natural law uniting public and private morality in the interests of the familial state.’ See Incest, Drama, and Nature’s Law, 120.
- 35.
Boehrer , Monarchy and Incest in Renaissance England, 115.
Bibliography
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Corbett, Mary. Family Likeness: Sex, Marriage, and Incest from Jane Austen to Virginia Woolf. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008.
Ford, John. ’Tis Pity She’s A Whore. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Gay, Penny. Jane Austen and the Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Goody, Jack. The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Greenfield, Sayre. ‘The Source for the Theatricals of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park: A Discovery’, Persuasions 38 (2016): 121–57.
Guy, John. Tudor England. London: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Hudson, Glenda. Sibling Love and Incest in Jane Austen’s Fiction. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan/St. Martin’s, 1992; paperback 1999.
———. ‘Consolidated Communities: Masculine and Feminine Values in Jane Austen’s Fiction’. In Jane Austen and Discourses of Feminism. Edited by Devoney Looser. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 1995: 101–16.
Kirkham, Margaret. Jane Austen: Feminism and Fiction, 2nd edn. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2000.
McCabe, Richard. Incest, Drama, and Nature’s Law 1550–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Mintz, Susannah. ‘The Power of Parity in Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s A Whore’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 102 (2003): 269–91.
Perry, Ruth. Novel Relations: The Transformation of Kinship in English Literature and Culture, 1748–1818. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Pollak, Ellen. Incest and the English Novel, 1684–1814. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.
Quilligan, Maureen. Incest and Agency in Elizabeth’s England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.
Rosenblatt, Jason P. ‘Aspects of the Incest Problem in Hamlet’, Shakespeare Quarterly 29 (1978): 349–64.
Shell, Marc. Elizabeth’s Glass. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993.
Smith, Molly. Breaking Boundaries: Politics and Play in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998.
Wells, Stanley, ed. The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 2nd edn. London: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Wiebracht, Ben. ‘First-Cousin Marriage in Tudor and Stuart England: 1540–1688’, Journal of Family History 40 (2015): 24–38.
Wolfram, Sybil. In-Laws and Outlaws: Kinship and Marriage in England. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987.
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Hudson, G.A. (2019). Forbidden Familial Relations: Echoes of Shakespeare’s King Henry VIII and Hamlet in Austen’s Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility . In: Cano, M., García-Periago, R. (eds) Jane Austen and William Shakespeare. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25689-0_9
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