Apr 08 2020
Zoom session: April 7
Here’s a Dropbox link to the video of our live session yesterday. To view the whole thing, you’ll need to download it or add it to your Dropbox. You can, of course, delete after viewing. Please let me know if you have trouble accessing the video, and we can come up with another arrangement that works for you.
(I’m sorry that those of you not using video show up nameless here; I could see names live but they seem not to record. If you’d like to change this for future sessions, try adding an image to your Zoom profile.)
Thanks to those who were able to make it! If you weren’t able to join, and would still like to be present for this session, please watch the video and leave a comment below this post with your contribution.
One Response to “Zoom session: April 7”
I watched over the Zoom class discussion. I agree that there are subtle elements of the Gothic within the first volume. From the class discussion, I learned that this book was published a year after the end of the slave trade, which I believe encouraged the author to gain the courage to write about this topic. However, I don’t necessarily think Austen wrote this book. I think the topic of marriage itself was a common during the nineteenth-century, though I do imagine that the author of this book was most likely a white middle-class woman, who is imagining the life of a woman who is of mixed raced. However, unlike what most of the class believes, I am skeptical at the theory that Austen is the author. There is something that does not resonate with her style for me. I do think that the love for her father and the connection to her black ‘brothers and sisters’ is a bit disconnected. Though I think that Olivia’s father is trying to take care of Olivia physically (and not emotionally) by arranging her marriage to his nephew (of whom she had never met prior), I do think this was a common practice in nineteenth-century English society. Perhaps her father wanted to simply secure a stable spouse for his daughter, as any English father during the time period would. Professor brought up the point that arranged marriages, especially between cousins, was not that unusual.