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  1. Sep 2017
    1. The keen feeling of hazard and loss that attends Elizabeth’s point of view—the caution Jane gives her that Elizabeth’s habit of interpretation will “ruin [her] happiness”—is lost in a critical interpretation that celebrates her character as a representative of either social progress, cultural conservation or aesthetic consolidation.

      Moe excellently addresses how narrative and Elizabeth's ideas interferes (and mislabels) the possibilities of progressive and modern actions. Elizabeth ends her friendship with Charlotte (essentially) because of their difference of interpretation (of the "modern" action)

    2. Charlotte knows her views and states them without ambiguity, rendering Austen’s great formal innovation, free indirect speech, notably irrelevant.

      Interesting insight. Austen's narration style becomes unnecessary, as Charlotte's language speaks for itself (pardon the pun)

    3. Charlotte’s short speech is punctuated with terms of finality—“entirely,” “in the least,” “always”—even as it loosely follows a couple from “beforehand,” through marriage, to the horizon of having “passed your life.”

      Austin's use of diction to determine a major factor of Charlotte's decisions on marriage.

    4. This “Jane Austen,” the author of a body of texts that circulated across four continents within decades of their publication in England, has a less obvious relationship to the western ideal of the liberal autonomous individual

      A weak aspect to this article is that Moe often makes unclear transitions in her argumentation. This is one of these cases.

      Further, does this then mean that Austen has her own individual understanding of "modernity"? Then, perhaps, both Elizabeth and Charlotte are modern in their own respective ways.

    5. Charlotte Lucas poses this question to Austen studies and to a liberal feminist critical agenda: what if you choose less, choose safety, and choose constraint; choose, in Elizabeth Bennet’s words, a “humiliating picture” for yourself but nonetheless expect to be happy? Charlotte is largely overlooked in Austen criticism except to shadow Elizabeth Bennet, the “most modern and liberated” of Austen’s characters.50 Charlotte models a form of subjectivity that thus far has been temporalized into a version of the premodern that Austen was eager to transcend. Yet the relevance that she has for feminism today is acute, as we expand our focus to a global context that encompasses modes of female agency and fulfillment that are not oriented toward resistance or autonomy. Taking the relationship between Charlotte and Elizabeth not as a dynamic of oppression and liberation, but as an agonistic exchange that produces multiple forms of female subjec-tivity allows Austen’s fiction to become a richer and more productive site for imagining feminism’s multiplicity. Charlotte and Elizabeth’s differing expectations about conjugal intimacy suggest the multiplicity of roles marriage can have in mediating between self and society. In particular, Charlotte’s long overlooked perspective points toward the possibility of human flourishing in situations of restraint and of attaching significance to self-discipline and to submission to social expectations. We can recognize the significance of Charlotte’s presence in Austen’s narrative and her own claim “to be . . . happy” only when we no longer assume that emancipatory self-expansion exhausts the possibilities of empowered conjugality.

      This last paragraph is a tremendous conclusion that wraps up everything Moe pointed out in the thesis, thus successfully addressing what the article set out to achieve. However, I believe that within the content of the article, Moe did not consistently accentuate her arguments as well as she does in the last bit of her writing.

    6. More recently, some feminist criticism has turned away from describing female subjectivity as normatively governed by a will to resist. In looking to describe modes of female subjectivity outside a subversion/complicity duality and identify how women attached significance to inhabiting norms, as Charlotte Lucas did, this critical approach broadens our understanding of the multiple forms that subjectivity and agency take in the early novel.

      Interesting, especially since the majority of the article seemed to do what recent feminist criticism "has turned away against"

    7. subjective orientation toward freedom, progress, and self-growth that is so clearly formative for Elizabeth Bennet is not taken for granted by Austen as normative for all women. Charlotte Lucas marries Mr. Collins and expects to live a fulfilling life with him. Conscious of Elizabeth’s differing views, Charlotte anticipates being hurt by her friend’s disapprobation, but makes no excuses for her marriage as an act martyrdom or of submis-sion to crushing necessity

      Moe argues here that Elizabeth is the progressive one, yet it seemed to me earlier in the article that Charlotte's actions would be expressed as modern in their own way (at least that is what I gained from reading aspects of this article). Is Moe trying to prove both?

    8. reframe Pride and Prejudice as a confrontation between alternative modes of female subjectivity, some of which, like Charlotte’s, suggest the possibility of an alternative genealogy for Austen’s relevance to contemporary feminists

      The "takeaway" of this article, even though it is not completely synonymous with the thesis.

    9. feminist critics tended to work within a liberal framework for evaluating individual agency as the pursuit of freedom

      Interesting point. Is Charlotte's decision considered "individual agency," or a casualty of the patriarchy?

    10. While the varieties of couples and companions demonstrate Austen’s interest in multiple modes of intimacy, for Elizabeth, Charlotte’s deviancy from “proper” intimacy in one area of her life disqualifies her in another.

      Something that I believe Moe should address is the question of whether "deviancy" is considered the same as "modernity"?

    11. One of the most powerful effects of Austen’s novel is to show how attitudes toward marriage provide overriding norms that dictate forms of intimacy outside those cultivated within the conjugal couple.

      Yes, and this is where the reconsideration of "modernity" also comes into play. What is a "modern" marital decision? Who is allowed to make such judgements?

    12. Elizabeth empties the ritualistic forms of her friendship with Charlotte of real feeling

      I appreciate that Moe points this out. I remember first disliking Charlotte and blaming her for the dissolution of her friendship with Elizabeth. But as Moe notes, it is Elizabeth that severs their emotional connection.

    13. Elizabeth treats Charlotte’s marriage as a form of moral deviancy

      Wouldn't "moral deviancy," then, be considered "modern" in a sense?

    14. Elizabeth, as we have seen, understands marriage as progressive, parallel to and inextricable from internal growth; Charlotte, by contrast, regards her internal narrative of growth and her social life as a single and then married woman as two separate strands: people are as likely to grow apart as grow together

      Moe reiterates her main argument towards the end of her article to pick up momentum and emphasize her thoughts.

    15. Charlotte’s marginalization highlights the limitations that Elizabeth’s views about intimacy place on her emotional and intel-lectual curiosity.43 Austen reminds us of the lack of communication between the two former friends by having Elizabeth hypothesize at the end of her visit that she knows Charlotte’s real feelings, though they go unvoiced: “Poor Charlotte!—it was melancholy to leave her to such society!—But she had chosen it with her eyes open; and though evidently regretting that her visitors were to go, she did not seem to ask for compassion” (P, 233). Though Woloch argues that Elizabeth, by this point in the novel (after visiting Rosings and having read Darcy’s revealing letter) “has become the consciousness around which the novel—as a totality—is oriented,” Elizabeth’s parting interpretation of Charlotte’s inner life offers another example of Elizabeth reading social situations aslant: she is confident Charlotte is “evidently regret-ting” her departure, but perplexed that not only does Charlotte not ask for compassion, but she does not even seem to.

      Wow! This is a great excerpt. Here, Moe not only identifies Elizabeth's misjudging of what a "modern" woman chooses, but she again also points out Elizabeth's flaw in putting words/thoughts in other peoples' mouths/minds. Charlotte is (assumedly) content in her role, but it is Elizabeth projecting her own fears onto Charlotte's decision that makes her, in the end, a poor friend to Charlotte. This, again, further the nearly impossible question: who is the more modern woman?

    16. By portraying Charlotte as a superior helpmeet who is more than Mr. Collins deserves, Austen hints that the distinction Elizabeth makes between full, scripted banality and empty, untrammelled elegance is a false one

      Something a reader should question, however, is the context of Darcy's comment. Does he say this because it's truly how he feels, or because he wants a wife in Elizabeth, as well? Also interesting how because Darcy makes opinion of Charlotte as a wife, it becomes assumed as "correct"

    17. a happy married future can hold more of the same, not the wholesale change Elizabeth anticipates

      By comparing Pride and Prejudice's concerns of marriage to Emma and Mansfield Park, Moe improves her argument about Austen's comprehension of marriage by using relevant texts to apply to Charlotte and Elizabeth's respective situations.

    18. Are these scenes meant to be savored or overcome? They might be evidence of Austen’s “zest for the small concerns,

      Moe engages her reader by posing a question. Further, Austen's consideration of the "small concerns" seems relevant to Burrows' argument that the small words largely matter to Austen's writing.

    19. Time was full for Charlotte, though “not yet” weighing on her, while Elizabeth imagines her own as promisingly empty

      One of Elizabeth's flaws, I believe, is that she often feels that everyone should think and react like her. She does not understand why Charlotte would marry Collins, but is not truly willing to try and empathize with her decisions.

    20. free indirect speech translates the internal contradictions of Austen’s characters to her readers.36 Charlotte is granted by Austen that formal device which critics have long agreed mediates the complexity of her characters at other moments—when her motives shift from relieving Elizabeth of Mr. Collins’s irksome companionship to thinking about the benefits of securing him as her own husband, for example—but here, when Charlotte wants to make clear to her friend that she has not chosen an unhappy life, she is articu-lately straightforward. Charlotte’s mode of communication only adds to Elizabeth’s discomfort about her friend’s attitude toward intimacy.

      More mention of narrative and strong example of Austin's FID. Charlotte's language changes when her subject manner changes. Does Austen choose to make Charlotte a complex, or flat character? I find it amazing that Austen's language (which, as a reader, is easy to overlook) provides so much detail and depth to her characters and their situations.

    21. But, Charlotte’s cathexis of marriage as an institution stands in striking comparison to Elizabeth’s acute surprise at her own hidden internal depths and her sudden discovery of a change of heart about the object of her affection. Charlotte does not experience a sudden change of heart, nor does she acknowledge that fear of approaching middle age prompted her sudden engagement, since I think we are supposed to believe her (Elizabeth certainly does), when she reveals “marriage has always been [her] object.”

      Moe's comparison of Elizabeth and Charlotte strengthens her arguments about the institution of marriage within this time frame. Though both women have different expectations of what mate they will end up with, they are both inherently and consciously seeking marriage. But how does this play into the concept of modernity? Does that make them both un-modern? Or does the method of how they both were marriage make their distinct in their different levels of modernity?

    22. Charlotte seems to inhabit the worst of both worlds; even in the domestic sphere her movements, conversation, and enjoy-ment are all checked.

      Moe seems to contradict herself at times. Is Charlotte "modern"? Within the same paragraph, she seems to promote Charlotte choice, while also diminishing it. Or is Moe trying to argue that despite an optimistic, "modern" thought process, women's happiness and success are still in the hands of the men they marry? It is unclear.

    23. From Charlotte’s perspective, personal fulfillment, growth, and happiness progress (or regress) with equal precariousness inside or outside the couple, and a loving marriage appears to her as an external, only occasionally relevant condition of her future internal well-being. Marriage is a tolerable constraint within which her flour-ishing does not have to be seriously curtailed.

      I would argue that this is a "modern" determination of marriage for the period.

    24. She severs the moral and conceptual bonds linking marriage to progress, conjugal harmony to personal growth, and future happiness to the judgment of character, all of which Elizabeth teaches herself throughout the novel to see as natural and necessary.

      I think this is a very interesting insight. However, I think Moe does herself a disservice by briefly mentioning this finding without further description. Since part of her argument relies on narrative/text, a further exploration of this idea and Charlotte's particular language would have enhanced her many points.

    25. Charlotte detaches marriage from a timeline of improvement. She has no easy hopefulness about marriage and progress, couples adapting together, happiness augmenting in time, or self-growth and marriage working in tandem.

      I appreciate how Moe is connecting her argument about Charlotte to the concept of "time" and progression, while not directly mentioning modernity. This is a clever method of implying her argument without outright saying it.

    26. Homely and 27

      This is an odd way to begin a sentence, paragraph, and new section. I'm also pretty sure she should write out "twenty seven," rather than "27."

    27. Her expectations that individual flourishing takes the form of unconstraint form a striking contrast to the role that self-discipline and the repetitious practices of everyday existence promise to play in Charlotte’s married life.

      Moe's language is a bit ambiguous here; is she critiquing or promoting Charlotte's choice? "Self-discipline" is a positive quality and outcome of her marriage to Collins, but "repetitious . . . existence" is made to seem both dreary and wrongful. Of course, no one decision can be simplified to "good" or "bad," but I find her language in this point--which should be a strong closer to the paragraph--to be misleading.

    28. Defending her future against the claims of the present (her embarrassing family, her disappointing friend), means that the future expands, freed of its current burdens, to accommodate a future self who will have grown with “greater importance” and a future couple whose mutual progress demands a marital space purified of all intrusions.

      It's interesting that so many contemporary readers see Elizabeth's marriage as very conventional, when she is striving to fulfill this "future self." I would be interested in seeing Moe identifying the many critiques of Elizabeth's marriage as non-modern, and working through them to defend her argument.

    29. The recognition of mediocrity exchanged by two characters, whom nineteenth-century readers recognized as “of superior order” to common novel characters, transfigures their self-consciously lacking public performances—his bad manners, her mediocre piano playing—into performances of intimacy, rather than class allegiance or simple dilettantism

      Great point. Moe's description of Elizabeth and Darcy's connection through their "modern" misbehavior, as presented through narrative, addresses the points of her argument. However, this is quoted/paraphrased from a text (The Critical Review/Annals of Literature) from 1813, which I do not think is necessarily appropriate or relevant for such a modern (pardon the pun) article.

    30. By doing just what she ought, Charlotte falls short of what Elizabeth would have a self-respecting woman do: surpass expectations by getting the more pedestrian ones wrong. She later gets Darcy to admit that his attraction flourished under her practice of not trying to please. Much of the flirtation between Darcy and Elizabeth draws on a mutual desire not to meet expectations

      Moe defines what Elizabeth considers a "self-respecting," modern woman to be. By clearly stating this, Moe clearly accentuates the points and support to her argument.

    31. Elizabeth’s process of self-realization through discovering how wrong she was is consistent with her more general practice of negatively inhabiting social expectations. Her course of self-affirmation through negation is opposite to that of Charlotte Lucas, who, despite her age and appearance, surprises and overjoys her family by doing just what young ladies are supposed to do and what everyone supposed she would fail to do: marry.

      Moe purposely poses the two characters against each other to express their severe difference in behaving "modernly." Yet, this succinct sentence is a disservice to the full reasoning for Charlotte's choices. It is easy to judge Charlotte as a contemporary reader, but her decision--though not remarkable--it still not something we should completely bash.

    32. The intensity and dogmatism with which Elizabeth discovers—and relishes—how wrong she was, how mistaken she is capable of being, shines with a characteristically Austenian comic effect. The mirror of self-scrutiny reveals to her not only that she misjudged Wickham and shortchanged Darcy, but, more pleasurably, a portrait of a woman who makes and moves past mistakes

      Probably why Elizabeth Bennet is one of Austen's most beloved characters! She is incredibly human and relatable.

    33. An ideal man is an incomplete catalog of qualities waiting to be augmented, and in an ideal couple, each participant accrues from the partner precisely that which their relationship demonstrates each lacks alone. By this logic, falling in love catalyzes recognition of one’s short-comings, even as it promises to compensate for them.

      But couldn't this definition of marriage, then, apply to Charlotte and Mr. Collins? Before their marriage, Elizabeth thought quite highly of Charlotte. Couldn't Charlotte's strong qualities improve Mr. Collins'? And though he is not an exceedingly charming character, I am sure he has a few qualities that Charlotte could be improved from.

    34. Understanding social forms as the moral fabric created by so many individual participants helps explain how Elizabeth can imagine herself personally affected by actions not directed at her.29 Actions must be sincerely felt so that social norms, like marriage, can be naturalized as self-expression. She would like Charlotte to feel secretly repulsed by her marriage or to discover that her friend’s equanimity disguised feeling oppressed by the circumstances that cornered her into marrying without love. It is Charlotte’s equanimity in the face of marrying Mr. Collins that most disturbs Elizabeth and helps her clarify her own expectation that a woman’s internal well-being should be either jeop-ardized or affirmed by marriage

      At first, this concept seems a bit unrelated to the article, as Moe begins to discuss Elizabeth Bennet's sensitivity and the impact of other characters' choices on her. However, this is Moe's method of bringing up narrative, again, as she describes Austen's methods of using narrative to expose this emotional, affected side to Elizabeth. She also bridges this back to the discussion of marriage and why Charlotte's marriage feels so personally offensive to Elizabeth.

    35. her policing throughout the novel of a “proper way of thinking” with regard to actions in general and marriage in particular

      So true! But that spirit is what makes Elizabeth Bennet the extraordinary Austen heroine she is!

    36. Elizabeth’s discontent stems from the way that she grafts individual choice onto social forms. Marriage, for Elizabeth, should not be defined by its being an omnipresent social form; it should be made meaningful by the intentions behind it.

      Moe aptly presents her argument again, as she argues that Elizabeth's frustration with Charlotte, for example, has to do with her own issues managing her frustration with "social forms." Moe allows the reader to "fill in the blank" here, as the reader can use this piece of information to better understand Elizabeth's reaction to Charlotte--her frustration is in Charlotte's refusal to resist the social forms that inherently oppress women and impact the emotional aspect of marriage. By giving her reader room to make this judgement herself, Moe's argument consequently becomes more concrete.

    37. older woman reminds Elizabeth, that to call such ubiquitous events injurious is to place mistaken emphasis on what is merely ordinary

      Another conflict of modernity. Young thought versus older thought.

    38. Identifying her own suffering with Jane’s, she tells Mrs. Gardiner, “We do not suffer by accident,” by which she expresses how Bingley’s abandon-ment and Charlotte’s betrayal painfully revealed to her that persons whom she had thought were “independent” were in fact “slave[s]” to material comfort, the opinions of friends, or the easiest social path.

      Moe here argues that Austen manipulates Elizabeth's narrative to compare her own pain/conflict with Charlotte to that of Jane's with Bingley. Her analysis of Elizabeth's character strengthens her argument's credibility.

    39. Elizabeth’s confidence that “independent” young men with “indepen-dent” fortunes always act freely is undercut at several points by the sly Austenian voice, who lauds “the fire and independence of [Mr. Collins’s] character”

      This is also interesting for a modern reader in the discussion of what makes a young man act "manly" or not, bringing up, again, a discrepancy in modernity, but now this difference is between Austen and her contemporary reader.

    40. interpreting action as intention involves quite a bit of circumstantial squinting, but that making claims about injury also involves taking responsibility for one’s own interpretive position—a mandate, as we shall see, it is not clear Elizabeth fulfills when she judges Charlotte (P, 167). (That Elizabeth’s intentionalist thinking has irreparable consequences for her regard for Charlotte is anomalous in a narrative about misjudgment and repentance.

      "Narrative about misjudgment and repentance" is essentially caused, in the case of Elizabeth and Charlotte, by conflicting modernities

    41. styles of judgment, with the often surprising suggestion that a critical reading of others’ behavior is not necessarily more incisive—especially because detachment is difficult to maintain with regard to marriage.

      How narrative informs the reader

    42. Jane’s willingness to construe everyone’s actions so as to think well of them is a narrative resource that Austen wields adeptly; who better to narrate with absolute surprise Lydia’s elopement and the revelation of Wickham’s character (“‘A gamester!’ she cried. ‘This is wholly unexpected. I had not an idea of it’”) (P, 305). Yet, Jane’s will-fully generous interpretive habits are more than comic; they contrast with the tendencies of other more sharp-tongued, detached critics whose predictive accuracy, it turns out, is not more reliable.

      This points to the discussion of narration. Moe reiterates her several theses by acknowledging the many aspects of her larger argument, as here she brings the reader back towards the narrative part of her discussion.

      Austen uses narrative to exercise Jane's kindness and willingness to see the best in others.

    43. The multiple styles of making judgments in Pride and Prejudiceare filtered through conjugality because marriage is action with the highest stakes.

      Not necessarily an original idea, but Moe manipulates this concept to aid her original thesis.

    44. ******

      The different theses Moe presents to her reader are all an original take on reading Charlotte and Elizabeth's argument, and Charlotte's individual views, especially considering the extensive description of the typical reading of these characters which Moe provides us with.

      This introduction, though at times distracted from the main point through inclusion of so many outside theories and readings of Elizabeth/Charlotte/Austen, definitely engages the reader, provides grounding for Moe's argument, and makes this subject appear significant in understanding the conflict of modern viewpoints in Pride and Prejudice, as well as to better understand Charlotte as a character and her decisions.

    45. Austen’s work might instead be interpreted as the scene of agonistic coexistence in which the discus-sions between Elizabeth and Charlotte and the deterioration of their friendship animate competing conceptions of self, moral agency, and modes of affective living

      THESIS part 4: differences based on modernities animate "competing conceptions of self, moral agency, and modes of affective living." This ties Moe's earlier points about agency into the discussion of narrative and modernity.

    46. Charlotte Lucas offers a compelling point of departure for bringing the critical perspective of “multiple [ / ] modernities” into eighteenth-century novel studies.

      MAIN POINT/THESIS part 3: Charlotte is a different kind of character, applies to several forms of "modernities" and should be critically examined.

    47. development of modern subjectivity, where the modern subject is assumed to be oriented toward freedom and inner-directed action, overlooks some of the most intriguing aspects of disagreements among women in Austen’s novels and foregoes an opportunity, which becomes more pertinent to feminists every day, to make the novel relevant to subjects and especially to female subjectivities whose self-cultivation takes the form of perseverance, self-discipline, and the daily prac-tice of living in accordance with social practices that do not appear germane to liberation. Charlotte Lucas presents conceptual challenges to feminist theorists and gender analysts because her expectations do not fit those of a romantic plot.

      THESIS part 2: the development of "modern subjectivity." This can sometimes draw attention from disagreements between women in Austen novels. Charlotte challenges the "social practices that do not appear germane to liberation." She does not follow a romantic plot.

      Moe questions the problem with viewing Elizabeth as the sole modern, feminist character.

    48. By focusing on Charlotte Lucas, I aim to show that heterogeneous ways of thinking and feeling about marriage, about the decisions of other people (and of women, especially) are not only imaginable, but of interest to Austen.

      THESIS part 1: diverse methods of thinking/feeling about marriage and why this matters to Austen (through focusing on Charlotte)

    49. Yet, grounding Austen’s development of female subjectivity in novel studies has the unintended consequence of limiting the modes of female subjectivity recovered to those that fit the liberal paradigm of private, inner, autonomous selves screened off from (though foundational to) the public activities of communication, exercise of reason, and pursuit of freedom. This mode of proceeding makes subjects like Charlotte Lucas irrelevant and a hindrance to the consolidation of the novel form

      Moe finally refocuses on Charlotte and the common reading of Charlotte.

    50. Austen develops heroines like Elizabeth Bennet to be ambassadors for novelistic generic acceptance at the same time that they are agents of social reform. The marriage plot is the exemplary union of both, carried forward by Elizabeth Bennet as the upwardly mobile bourgeois female subject who becomes responsible for the modernization of aristocratic culture into which she is accepted.

      Moe acknowledges Elizabeth as the "modern" character, though her modernity is still restrained by the necessity of her getting married.

    51. In the tradition of feminist criticism I’ve been discussing, the Austenian heroine and her romantic choices are exemplary not only of the modern individual, but also the novel genre, so that the interaction between genre and indi-vidual agency unfolds through the marriage plot

      Now we seem to be back on topic, concerning narrative and modernity, in reference to the marriage plot.

    52. Austen’s novels were diagnostic of her social world and conservative in the sense that they offered social compromises rather than fractious challenges to the uncertain social future of her moment.

      OK, clearly Moe has done her research, as she has provided a great number of sources about Austen's writing, Austen's characters, Austen's personal/written setting, and so forth. The consistent inclusion of reputable sources strengthens Moe's argument (as it makes her assertions seem well based on research), but I am finding it also a bit distracting. She is jumping from topic to topic with inexplicit transitions, and providing so much outside detail, that it is taking away from her own contentions. More analysis, as I have highlighted here, is what would make this article even better.

      Also, this notation makes sense, as it extends to Charlotte's marital decisions.

    53. The agency of the critic is exemplified in discovering and naming the overlooked agency of Austen’s female subjects, who in themselves demonstrate Austen’s attentiveness to the limits of patriarchal norms and her willingness to transgress.

      Again, Moe is using secondary sources to accentuate that Austen writes about women constrained by patriarchy. Here, however, she includes the concept of "Agency" (for both critic and character), which connects to her argument about Charlotte's actions.

    54. been to emphasize Austen’s overlooked expansive subtexts and allu-sions, her wide, even global appeal and relevance.

      Transition into feminist readings of Austen from giving examples of older critiques (of secondary sources) of Austen's work. This aids her argument and supports her challenging of previous readings of the work.

    55. Through both analysis and prescription, paying attention to how women can take powerful stances, even from positions of weaknes

      Like Charlotte? Moe should make this connection more explicit. If Auerbach is not associating Charlotte to this label, Moe should.

    56. Austen exposed the patriarchal conditions of her historical moment and the way romantic conventions coded for power and wealth, while simultaneously using the constraints of her provincial and domestic settings to her advantage, demonstrating the duplicitous aptitude of romantic narratives to make those conditions visible

      Important point. By evaluating Austen's patriarchal setting and consequential ability to write about women during this constrained period, Moe extrapolates upon Austen's achievements as a writer, further subverting Lewes' critique. Thus, she denounces the past reading of Austen to promote her own, modern and feminist, reading.

    57. determined by recent feminist literary critics’ efforts to revise the long history of Austen scholarship

      Moe writes this article to combat the frequent reading of Charlotte Lucas' decision to marry Collins, focusing on a feminist literary critical lens.

    58. I will argue that the agonistic relationship between Elizabeth and Charlotte exemplifies competing claims about the development of the person through conjugal intimacy. Ultimately, marriage in Pride and Prejudicebecomes a divisive lens for imagining future selves as well as justifying current happiness.

      Another point of Moe's argument. She contends that marriage and "conjugal intimacy" develops characters differently, based on their opinions on the subject.

    59. My focus on Charlotte Lucas resonates with recent critical trends that depart from the assumption that the novel’s telos, particularly as revealed in the courtship plot, is the representation of personhood through characterological depth and interiority

      One of the main purposes of the article. Moe sets out to oppose, or at least challenge, previous readings of the novel (and is thus her placement within a scholarly discourse), to reconsider how actions of "characterological depth and interiority" are formed within the courtship plot, and how it is impacted by cultural modernity. She does this through a reading of Charlotte Lucas.

    60. Sandra Macpherson, whose reconceptualization of the individual as “matter in motion”

      An example of a scholar with a new spin on modern subjectivity.

    61. Charlotte embodies the precariousness of self-realization and well being in a world with limited goods.7

      Moe uses strong secondary sources (especially Perry and Woloch) to help support her reading of the primary source. This consistent reiteration of ideas, through various quotes, help affirm her argument and strengthen her introduction.

    62. Narratives have limited resources—formal development, narrative attention, and thematic social goods—that are unequally distributed between protagonists and minor characters. In the process of being “minored,” the many clarify the one; in Pride and Prejudice, minor characters “contribut[e] to the development of Elizabeth’s consciousness.”5 As Elizabeth’s close friend and, in many ways, catalyst for her development, Charlotte is both a minor character par excel-lence and a register of the costs of such a system of individuation

      It is important to relate the concept of cultural modernity and Charlotte's choices to narrative, as that is the main point of the argument (though Moe's thesis is not clearly stated just yet). Also fascinating to label all the minor characters are developmental aspects to Elizabeth; this is quite dehumanizing, but is quite arguable. Austen, therefore, purposefully has Charlotte marry Collins as part of further promoting Elizabeth's vehement feelings about marriage.

    63. Charlotte’s views seem “not sound” to Elizabeth because they are anachronistic to developing standards of mutual regard that govern modern hetero-sexuality

      Moe is methodically challenging Austen readers who nearly worship Elizabeth Bennet and believe she can do no wrong by using quotations here, implying the idea that although Charlotte does not abide by the same ideology of marriage that Elizabeth does not mean that she is "wrong" for making these choices. This is a purposeful, and clever, way for Moe to extend Charlotte's likability.

    64. Ruth Perry characterizes Charlotte as a “vestigial figure,” whose attitude toward marriage stands within Austen’s novel for a receding premodern eighteenth century.2

      Interesting concept, yet this seems to belittle the value of Charlotte's decisions/thoughts.

    65. narrative of cultural modernizatio

      "Cultural modernization" is terminology to consider throughout this entire piece. What does it mean to be "culturally modern"? Do the characters of this text (Charlotte, specifically) perform actions that are "culturally modern"? Moe states that Austen critics have labeled Charlotte/Elizabeth's conflicting ideas on marriage a result of "cultural modernization," but what does this really mean? Who is defining this? This concept, however, is part of the core of this article's purpose.

    66. Yet, Charlotte’s stance is important to think through two hundred years later as a reminder of the multiplicity of attitudes toward intimacy, conjugality, and self-fulfillment in Austen’s fiction. This multiplicity remains unstudied by a tradition of Austen criticism that too often remains bound, even in contemporary feminist forms, to the analytic and prescriptive parameters of liberal personhood as those are under-stood to have emerged at the end of the eighteenth century.

      Moe points out that many Austen critics do not view Charlotte's decisions regarding marriage as "modern," yet as a victim of the 18th century patriarchy, Charlotte's actions make a lot of sense.

    67. Because of Charlotte’s disgraceful attitude toward marriage, “all the comfort of intimacy was over” for the two women (P, 174).

      Moe does an excellent job at providing pivotal quotes from the text to support her characterization of Elizabeth and Charlotte's vastly different opinions on marriage. For an introduction, Moe's explanation of their different views to ground her eventual argument is effective, as it draws the reader in, and establishes the validity of her eventual assertions.

    68. anxiety about her economic future and a conviction that marriage was a social necessity for young women

      Let's not also forget that Charlotte is older than Mr. Collins by two years He is 25 (99) and she is 27, as Moe's later quote states. This makes her "scheme" even more successful, as he would still marry her despite her burgeoning "old maid" status.

    69. MELINA MOE

      She works in the fields of both 18th Century Literature, as well as Women's, Gender, and Sexuality studies at Yale University