ABSTRACT
This essay explores Jane Austen’s critical engagement with two threads of argument central to feminist legal philosophy: the public/private dichotomy that underpins liberalism and has been (and continues to be) used both to enact and to justify women’s exclusion from various forms of legal subjectivity; and the ethic of care that some feminist legal philosophers have deployed to stake a claim for women’s access to the public sphere, and/or the reshaping of the public sphere to reflect women’s experience. Reading Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Emma (1815) through the lens of feminist narrative jurisprudence, I argue that Austen advocates the breakdown of the public/private divide and the reformulation of women’s legal subjectivity and citizenship. Austen’s interrogation of two key strands of feminist jurisprudence, which have their origins in the Romantic era and remain pertinent today, reveals in new ways the enduring relevance, wisdom, and prescience of her novels in the modern era.
