Nonbinary Jane Austen

A bold and provocative analysis of Jane Austen as an early gender abolitionist

Chris Washington reads Jane Austen differently than we have classically understood her: rather than the doyen of the cisheteronormative marriage plot, the author theorizes how Austen envisions a nonbinary future that traverses the two-sex model of gender that we can supposedly see solidifying in the eighteenth century. Instead, Washington argues, Austen leverages the generic restraints of the novel to write a disguised autofiction in which Austen imagines herself as transgender and works to abolish gender exclusivity altogether. In doing so, she establishes a politics that ushers in a future beyond the cisheteronormative binary, one built on plurality and possibility.

Author: Chris Washington
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Published: 01/07/2025
Series: Forerunners: Ideas First
Pages: 106
Weight: 0.28lbs
Size: 7.05h x 5.09w x 0.37d
ISBN: 9781517917586