Women and eloquence in Shakespeare and Austen

Abstract

Avoiding stereotypes, the female characters of both Shakespeare and Austen have recognizable voices, a linguistic competence that is confident and wonderfully varied as these young women make their way in their various worlds. Both writers' creativity in the comic and romance genres centres on allowing their female characters to speak with eloquence, and making their speech or silence a vital element of the plot. Austen, who knew her Shakespeare well, may have been influenced in her use of Shakespearean models for her eloquent heroines by the rise of the Shakespearean comedy actress in the second half of the eighteenth century. She “rewrites” Shakespeare's women and their plots to suit her own culture – to make them contemporary, particularly in relation to gender issues. Further, the effective speeches of her heroines utilize rhetorical tropes and structures similar to those found in the speeches of Shakespeare's eloquent women, as my analyses show. The eloquence of the heroines of both writers is a rich and complex appropriation of the masculine tradition of rhetoric.