The Rake in Jane Austen and British Culture

A Rake is a stock character that was used extensively in fiction. Rake is a shortened version of the phrase “rakehell” which is similar in definition to “hellraiser.” The name implies someone who stokes the fires of hell and makes them hotter. Etymologically, the word comes from from “the Old Norse reikall, meaning “vagrant” or… Read more

 “A Rake Revisted.” A Rake Revisted | Henry Hudson, https://henry-hudson.com/exhibition-4/. Austen, Jane. Emma. Pearson Education, 2008. Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Pearson Education, 2008. Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensibility. Oxford University Press, 1998. Berger, Carole. “The Rake and the Reader in Jane Austen’s Novels.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 15, no. No. 4, 1975, pp. 531–544. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/450009?casa_token=cD6PDr4jp1sAAAAA:3VwhdqkZMDDasYnCUhhwP0uir_sHe0IB1TufUVjoGEL2C_L6Ka-PIkbP57M9VFKGrpD8bm4CVcf8sideYIu_wyO7Qz0l82SRujxjP6yjhFNcJN_9bbA&seq=14#metadata_info_tab_contents. Brock, Charles… Read more

The Rake was not exclusively a literary character. On the contrary, there were several paintings and ink printings that contained the rake as their central figure. The most notable of these artistic portrayals is William Hogarth’s “The Rake’s Progress.” This set of 8 images published in 1734. The images detail the life of Tom Rakewell… Read more

Jane Austen treated her Rakes in a similar way to her contemporary authors. She seemed to reject the reformed Rake plot and moved instead toward having her Rakes live discontented with wives that make them unhappy. While Austen doesn’t condemn them to death, ruin, or some other horrible form of poetic justice, she does take… Read more

Rakes where not conjured into existence without a source that they were based on.  On the contrary, real Rakes existed in England since the middle ages. However, during the Restoration, gentlemen and lords ran rampant with rakish behavior. One earl, John Wilmot, the 2nd Earl of Rochester, was infamous for his escapades. Not only was… Read more

Immediately prior to Charles II’s restoration period, Britain was under the control of Oliver Cromwell’s extreme religious conservatism. As a result, the British people were repressed in what kinds of literature they could create or consume. Plays and literature that contained sexual or “immoral” content was banned (Puritanism). Therefore, after Charles II was instated as… Read more