compare the ways in which the authors challenge perceptions of gender and power within a patriarchal society

‘When I discovered that I was being rewarded...for uplifting American morals, I confess I did despair.’^[1]Edith Wharton’s response to receiving the Pulitzer prize in 1921 certainly raises questions regarding her authorial intentions in The Age of Innocence^[2]. Her reaction suggests that it was not to uplift but to critique American society and address the flawed perceptions of gender and power that it upheld. Against the backdrop of slavery and the Napoleonic wars, Austen’s Mansfield Park questions the Georgian upper-class perceptions of gender and power, presenting the argument that patriarchal power is ultimately flawed. In these two novels, Austen and Wharton move away from a more traditional model of romantic heroine to create a‘different kind of heroine’ more fitting for the social critique they intend. Both use everyday language and familiar relationships - friends and family - to address significant social issues, directed to a mostly female audience who were typically excluded from political discussions. The authors challenge the perceptions of gender and power held in their society through a pair of heroines juxtaposed to illustrate that the patriarchal system is damaging to society as a whole. Yet the success of this critique lies as much in the penetrating criticisms made of the patriarchy as it does in the creation of a ‘different kind of heroine’.Reading the novels from a new historicist perspective, it is clear that Austen and Wharton were responding to complex social and political climates shaped by revolution and war, the damaging effects of which they had both experienced. In reaction to this, Austen creates something identifiably new; timid, dutiful and staunchly moral Fanny Price is far removed from the more charming Dashwood sisters and Elizabeth Bennet. Fanny was not written to charm the reader but to raise an important socio-economic point regarding the disempowerment experienced by those of a lower class, especially women. Austen raises the theme of social standing immediately in the opening of the novel, in describing how Miss Maria Ward ‘with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram’^[3]in comparison to her sister Miss Frances who ‘married, in the common phrase, to disoblige her family’^[4]. Austen introduces Fanny as a literal creation of social standing, shaped by the social scorn experienced as a consequence of a disadvantageous marriage. The title Mansfield Parkalso demonstrates Austen’s wider intentions of the novel to be more than a courtship romance; it is her only novel that she named after a location^[5]which not only broadens the scope away from just Fanny but also brings to mind Lord Mansfield who was instrumental in abolishing slavery in England during Austen’s lifetime. Wharton grew up in the Old New York in whichInnocenceis set and was deeply critical of the superficial ‘intellectual desert’ she was raised in.^[6]Her time in pre-war Paris also served as a ‘place of liberation’ as ‘intellectual women like her were listened to’^[7]. However, after her experience during the war, Wharton became a different author and the heroines of Innocenceare of a ‘very different kind’ as, having witnessed unrelenting conflict against the French, she ‘realised with new clarity that cultures can die’^[8]. It is often said by critics that Innocenceis a war novel, written in response to social upheaval; a historical documentation of a world that she was once a part ofand would soon be disrupted.Innocenceis a reflection of the fragility of the post-war world and the necessity of moving away from the old perceptions ^[1]http://www.pulitzer.org/article/questionable-morals-edith-whartons-age-innocence^[2][hereafter referred to as Innocence]^[3]Mansfield Park, page 1^[4]Mansfield Park, page 1^[5]Her brother named Northanger Abbey after Austen’s death^[6]Mead, Rebecca. “The Age of Innocence.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 19 June 2017, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/06/29/the-age-of-innocence-2^[7]Sciolino, Elaine. “Edith Wharton Always Had Paris.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 10 Oct. 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/travel/11footsteps.html.It is also of note that Paris was entering a time of open female engagement with social ideas and gender politics. The French feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir (author of The Second Sex) only lived less than a mile away from Wharton’s Paris residence. The Luxembourg Gardens were frequently visited by both writers.^[8]The Age of Innocence - Introduction viii