Denaturalizing Lady Bountiful: Speaking the Silence of Poverty in Mary Brunton’s Discipline and Jane Austen’s Emma

Abstract

This essay argues that Mary Brunton’s non-canonical novel Discipline and Jane Austen’s Emma question the notion of upper-class philanthropy by deconstructing the image of “Lady Bountiful” through their failed philanthropists, Ellen Percy and Emma Woodhouse. In so doing, these novels grant the poor a plaintive voice that indicates how both local and institutional entities are incapable of addressing societal inequity. The essay also suggests that reading these novels in tandem uncovers important possibilities for rethinking how the domestic women’s novel engages in broader questions of social justice for the economically underserved.