Reshaping the Sexes in Sense and Sensibility

Moreland Perkins's Reshaping the Sexes in "Sense and Sensibility" is an accessible yet sophisticated exploration of Jane Austen's revision and reversal of sexual stereotypes. He argues that Austen's first published novel embodies her most sustained effort at correcting dominant concepts of gender in her era. Through an engaging, often witty analysis of the text, he demonstrates how the novel's protagonists deviate from ruling ideas of their sexes and reveal Austen's own feminist tendencies. Perkins shows that this underestimated novel offers important insights into Austen's notion of what a woman can be and a man should be, and into the deeply social conception of felt emotion that drives and structures her fiction. Gracefully written and deftly argued, this book makes a persuasive case for taking a fresh look at Austen.