Abstract. For English literature and beyond, 2025 is a paramount year, celebrating the 250th anniversary of someone very special, who has been called even the “greatest novelist writing in English” (Looser 2017), namely Jane Austen (1775–1817). The present study aims, on this major event, to contextualize in a novel manner Jane Austen’s texts within the ideological movements of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, especially with reference to the French and American Revolutions and their bidirectional influence on the protofeminist struggles. For this purpose, we decided to select the three most significant works written by Jane Austen, namely Emma (1816), Persuasion (1818) and Pride and prejudice (1813), chosen as a result of our redefinition of Jane Austen’s creative periods, particularly that of adulthood, in three distinct phases, while also considering previous attempts in defining the author’s works, although none of which have so far been able to adequately connect all the available information regarding Austen’s life and work. Thus, to achieve this, we will use a comparative critical method with significant biographical, documentary and intercultural links, followed by close reading and textual analysis with references to Jane Austen’s life and fiction, while having access to the author’s personal documents (private letters and memoirs of her relatives), many of which we had access on-site as a result of our research visit to Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, Hampshire, on the 20th of August 2024. Moreover, we seek to explore a rather neglected issue in literary history, namely the distinction between the Romantic Hero and the Romantic Heroine with its applicability to Jane Austen’s novels, this paper being one of the few that explicitly and extensively articulate the definition of Austen’s protagonists as “Romantic Heroines.” Furthermore, as a result of the neoclassical structure closely adopted by Jane Austen, we can observe various mythological features in the protagonists in Emma, Persuasion and Pride and prejudice, these being aspects which, as we will see, were clearly premeditated by the author. Thus, this paper will reveal how Jane Austen, from her perspective as a woman, perceived the status of women in her day, intentionally and intensively contributing to the conceptualization of the “Romantic Heroine,” thereby seeking to further uplift the female exquisiteness, ingenuousness and wit, shaping stories with powerful, confident characters of extraordinary bravery and determination.

Key Words: Protofeminism; French Revolution; American Revolution; Romantic Heroine; romanticism; neoclassicism; mythology; wit; creativity; Bluestocking

Trucu M (2025) Jane Austen and the Romantic Heroine: a woman’s perspective on women in Emma, Persuasion and Pride and prejudice. Creativity 8(2): 425–517. doi:10.22381/C8220252