The Marriage Game:
Love, Money, Friendship, and Companionacy in Jane Austen's England
This Valentine's Day season program will take place at an historic home in Griffin. Marriage in Jane Austen's time was in a state of transition. Eighteenth-Century marriage was moving from a money- and land-based transaction to a companionate, choice-based relationship. However, that transition was not smooth or simple for the woman who experienced it. Neither marital choice based simply on emotional attachment nor conventional marriages compelled by filial duty could correct the gender-based imbalance of power that traditionally existed in marriage. Women sought a new kind of spousal relationship in which Eighteenth-Century women used rhetoric to redefine marriage.
Our speaker will be Dr. Laura E. Thomason, Associate Professor of English at Middle Georgia State College in Macon and author of --
"The Marriage Settlement" by William Hogarth ca 1743
Location: Historic Violet Bank House in Griffin, Georgia
Date: Saturday, February 21, 2015
Time: 2:00 - 4:00 pm
Travel Arrangements: Carpooling will be available - contact Erin at ee@jasnaatlanta.org if you need a ride
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About the speaker -- Professor Thomason
Laura Thomason was born in Columbia, Missouri. She received her B.A. in English Education from the College of Santa Fe (now Santa Fe University of Art and Design) in 1995, her M.A. in English from the University of North Texas in 2001, and her Ph.D. in English from the University of North Texas in 2005.
She is the author of The Matrimonial Trap: Eighteenth-Century Women Writers Redefine Marriage (Bucknell University Press, November 2013) and of several articles on gender issues in eighteenth-century literature. Her latest work examines the depiction of feminine friendship in Jane Austen’s Emma, a project developed at the NEH Summer Seminar “Jane Austen and her Contemporaries” at the University of Missouri.
Thomason is an Associate Professor of English at Middle Georgia State College (formerly Macon State College) in Macon, Georgia. Her teaching interests include book history and professional writing as well as gender and sexuality, eighteenth-century literature, and scholarly writing.
Outside of the classroom, Thomason is a ballroom dancer who competes at the silver/gold level in American Smooth and American Rhythm styles with her husband Daniel Boudreault.
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