"Playing with Her Bracelets and Rings": Jewelry, Character, and Objectification in Jane Austen's Novels

The scene dramatizes significant parallels and contrasts between the purposes and responses of the Dashwood sisters and those of Robert Ferrars as both spend their temporal, emotional, and financial resources in the shop: staring, shopping, calculating price and value. The jewels in their case are f...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Persuasions : the Jane Austen journal (Print version) 2022-01, Vol.44 (44), p.202-211
Main Author: Benedict, Barbara M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Austen, Jane
Austen, Jane (1775-1817)
Families & family life
Jewelry
Morality
Novels
Power
Romantic period
Women
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Summary:The scene dramatizes significant parallels and contrasts between the purposes and responses of the Dashwood sisters and those of Robert Ferrars as both spend their temporal, emotional, and financial resources in the shop: staring, shopping, calculating price and value. The jewels in their case are family possessions, perhaps heirlooms whose preservation (albeit in altered form) binds the women in a family, rather than newly fashionable commodities. [...]since jewelry was considered-and often designated in wills-as women's personal property, handed from mother to daughter, it represented a specifically female inheritance. Nonetheless, Robert and Elinor's mutually commodifying stares-both of which express the characters' sense of empowerment-also indicate some important differences: whereas Robert acts out his power to rate the women based on their looks, Elinor keeps her thoughts, prompted by his words and behavior, to herself (although the narrator, of course, lets us in on her views). [...]although there is a further similarity between the Dashwoods' maternal jewels and Robert's personal purchase-since both are pricey objects obtained at a jeweler's shop and worn on the body-this similarity actually highlights a difference. In the context of the evaluation of precious materials-jewels, ivory, gold, pearls-this striking contradiction in terms contrasts the Dashwood sisters' social values with Robert's self-centeredness.
ISSN:0821-0314