‘Será que o antigo preconceito não é forte demais?’: a união no romance de Jane Austen*

Abstract

One of the defining features of Jane Austen’s major novels is the lack of any fictional incursion into the so-called Celtic fringe of the United Kingdom: Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Such interdiction, although deliberate, is at odds with Austen’s professed realism. This paper is invested in showing how her novels, all of them set in England and with English characters, compensatively engender a narrative reticence that exposes the incompleteness of the Union.