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Jane Austen on Love and Pedagogical Power
- SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 51, Number 4, Autumn 2011
- pp. 747-763
- 10.1353/sel.2011.0038
- Article
- Additional Information
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This essay notes initially recent prominence of theories of pedagogy that attempt to "de-mystify" it and reveal troubling power relations, and their subsequent contention that love is impossible in the student-teacher relationship. "Pedagogical" interpretations of Jane Austen's fiction, however, see pedagogy as essential to love. I argue that this is so precisely because of the power dynamics involved; drawing on Jessica Benjamin's psychoanalytic interpretation of G. W. F. Hegel's analysis of the "Lord-Bondsman," I suggest that Austen portrays the loving relationship as inherently involving the occupation and subsequent exchange of roles as superior and inferior, incarnated as "teacher" and "student."