Nora Nachumi & Stephanie Oppenheim 
Jane Austen, Sex, and Romance 
Engaging with Desire in the Novels and Beyond

The first of its kind, this collection brings together writers from diverse academic and nonacademic worlds to explore how Austen’s readers experience and process her novels’ erotic power.


Are Jane Austen’s novels sexy? For many Austen lovers, the answer is a resounding ‘Yes!’ From the moment Colin Firth stripped down to his breeches and shirt in the 1995 BBC
Pride and Prejudice, screen adaptations inspired by Austen’s novels have banked on their ability to depict sexual tension and romantic desire. Meanwhile, the success of spin-offs, sequels, and elaborations confirms that Austen’s novels have become a potent aphrodisiac for everyday readers. Clearly, the fourteen million viewers who watched Firth’s unveiling were onto something: Austen’s novels turn people on.


Jane Austen, Sex, and Romance: Engaging with Desire in the Novels and Beyond brings together a range of voices-from literary scholars to video game designers-to explore how different types of readers experience the realm of desire and the erotic in all things Austen. In this timely collection, writers, critics, journalists, and authors of internet content weigh in on sex and romance in Austen’s works and in the conversations and creations the novels inspire-from sequels to critical analyses to online role-playing games. Contributors examine what is at stake for each set of Austen enthusiasts when Eros is added to the equation, in so doing building on the long tradition of Austen criticism and enriching our appreciation of the novels.

Table of Content

Acknowledgments

Introduction –
Nora Nachumi and Stephanie Oppenheim


Part I: The Novels

1. Austen’s Teasing, or What the Wit Wants –
Mary Ann O’Farrell

2. Performing (Dis)comfort: Queer Possibilities in Jane Austen’s
Mansfield Park – Jade Higa

3. Taking Hands: The Fisting Phantasmic in
Sense and Sensibility –
Christien Garcia


Part II: Austen Fan Culture and Austenesque Fiction

4. Always Wanting More: Desire and Austen Fan Fiction –
Marilyn Francus

5. Unconquerable Attraction: Darcy and Elizabeth’s Falling in Love in Austenesque Novels –
Maria Clara Pivato Biajoli

6. What’s Hidden in Highbury? –
Stephanie Oppenheim

7. Passion and Pastiche –
Diana Birchall


Part III: Austen on Stage, on Screen, and Online

8. In Search of Colin Firth’s Bum –
Nora Nachumi

9. Jane Again –
Rachel Brownstein

10. Touching Scenes: Austen, Intimacy and Staging Lovers’ Vows –
Elaine Mc Girr

11. Jane’s Player’s: Sex and Romance in the Virtual World of Jane Austen –
Judy Tyrer

12. To You Tube from Gretna Green: Updating Lydia Bennet for the Digital Age –
Margaret Dunlap


Part IV: Austen in Conversations and Contexts

13. Erotic Austen –
Devoney Looser

14. The Shadow Jane –
Laura Engel

15. In Bed with Mr. Knightly: How Austen and Her Readers Understand Sexual Compatibility –
Deborah Knuth Klenck and Ted Scheinman

Afterword: Sex, Romance, and Representation in Uzma Jalaluddin’s
Ayesha at Last –
Juliette Wells

Notes on Contributors

Index

About the author

STEPHANIE M. OPPENHEIM is Associate Professor of English at Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY.