Misreading in Jane Austen: Narrative Authority, Reader Complicity, and False Interpretations in Pride and Prejudice and Emma

The present thesis examines the phenomenon of misreading in Jane Austen’s novels Pride and Prejudice and Emma, focusing on the relationship between narrative authority and reader complicity. It argues that misreading functions not merely as a device that delays the development of the plot, but as a central condition through which both characters and readers interpret other people and the world without sufficient evidence, construct mistaken judgements, but eventually recognise the limitations of their own perspectives. The analysis first explores the social and cultural conditions that make misreading almost inevitable in both Austen’s historical context and her fictional worlds. It then examines the emergence and development of the novel as a genre during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and considers the ways in which Austen engaged with and adapted its conventions. The thesis subsequently analyses how Jane Austen constructs misreading through narrative techniques such as focalisation, free indirect discourse, irony, reported speech, gossip, letters, and omissions, which shape the characters’ interpretations while simultaneously guiding and challenging the expectations of readers. The study shows that in Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet’s misreading emerges from prejudice, excessive pride in her own discernment, and the disparity between social performance and inner character. In Emma, misreading emerges from the heroine’s privileged social position, which enables her to construct and impose imagined narratives upon the lives of others. Ultimately, drawing on reader-response theory, this thesis suggests that Austen’s novels transform misreading into a shared interpretive process between characters and readers, making it a necessary tool for moral awakening, the acquisition of discernment, and the development of more responsible reading practices.