The modern imagination of the governess: Reshaping Sanditon with post-feminism

This article provides a methodology for how post-feminism intervenes in the creation of classic characters in Jane Austen’s works. Through Charlotte’s multifaceted and contradictory approach to characterization, it materializes the mechanisms of post-feminist ideology’s reconcile the femininity during the Regency period. Starting from Andrew Davies’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s last unfinished novel Sanditon, this article adopts a substantial comparative analysis of the original and the adapted representative heroine Charlotte, Lady Denham’s femininity, and it highlights the gap between the successful femininity represented by Charlotte and the representative perfect womanhood in the nineteenth century. In addition, through Charlotte’s contradictory post-feminist nature between her desire for affection and self-fulfilment, this article argues that behind the successful femininity represented by Charlotte is a return to the traditional family structure, thereby maintaining the patriarchal agenda.