Discipline

Brunton, Mary, 1778-1818Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.4

Word count: 885K words
Chapters: 89

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Discipline by Mary BruntonAuthor: Brunton, Mary, 1778-1818,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Jan 6, 2012

Editor's review

Discipline is a long novel by the Scottish writer Mary Brunton, published around 1814. This Project Gutenberg electronic edition brings a work long overshadowed by Jane Austen back into readers' view. The novel has a moral lesson as its framework but is not dry preaching: the heroine's growth from frivolity and vanity toward self-restraint is interwoven with depictions of Scottish social customs and delicate psychological turns, offering both the emotional intensity of sentimental fiction and Enlightenment discussion of reason and character. Brunton's narrative pace is slow, and her sentences carry the long syntax of early nineteenth-century English, suitable for readers willing to slow down and savor classical English. As a public-domain e-book, it is convenient for searching and annotating on electronic devices, especially suitable as supplementary reading for literary history courses or as a reference text for comparing Austen, Burney, and other women writers of the same period. While reading, note the multiple meanings of the word "discipline" at the emotional, religious, and social levels.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who love nineteenth-century British fiction and want to expand beyond Austen to other women writers
English literature students researching women's education and moral fiction in the Enlightenment
Readers accustomed to public-domain English e-books who are willing to read classical English long sentences slowly
Culture enthusiasts interested in Scottish customs and the sentimental novel tradition

Not a good fit for

Contemporary fiction readers seeking fast-paced plots and strong dramatic conflict
Beginners with weak English who are unfamiliar with early nineteenth-century English syntax
Academic researchers seeking author biography or detailed annotations

Reading tips

Read one or two chapters first to adjust to the long syntax, then proceed at three to five chapters a week to avoid giving up due to language density.
Note the heroine's turning points of "self-restraint" while reading to grasp the book's arc of moral growth.
Read alongside Jane Austen's works of the same period to compare the two women writers' different treatments of women's education and marriage.
Use the e-book search function to find occurrences of "discipline" and observe how its meaning changes through the plot.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is the English difficulty of this book suitable for non-native readers?

The original is early nineteenth-century English with long sentences and classical vocabulary, requiring a certain vocabulary level for non-native readers. Try reading the first chapter first; if you can understand the general meaning with a dictionary, continue. Otherwise, read an abridged edition or introductory material first.

What are the features of the Project Gutenberg edition?

This is a free public-domain e-book released by Project Gutenberg, easy to obtain on computers, e-readers, or phones, with full-text search support. It usually contains no modern scholarly annotations or introduction, so readers need to supplement background material themselves.

What background should I know before reading this book?

A brief understanding of early nineteenth-century British women's education and the moral fiction tradition, as well as Scottish social customs, is advisable. Knowing the basic features of sentimental and didactic fiction helps in understanding the book's slower narrative pace and moral discussions.

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About the author

Brunton, Mary, 1778-1818 Author · Scottish · 1778–1818

Mary Brunton (1778–1818) was a Scottish novelist who died before reaching the age of fifty. Two novels by her survive: Self-control and Discipline, both centred on moral cultivation and self-restraint and belonging to the tradition of the British moral novel of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Because public information is limited, details of her life, education and the circumstances of her writing are difficult to establish, but her works are clearly concerned with characters' choices between emotion and duty, using narrative to explore the value of conduct and self-discipline. These two novels found readers in their day and secured her a place in the history of the Scottish novel. On the whole, Brunton's writing is grounded in argument and instruction, with a style weighted toward moral exhortation, and she is a figure worth noting in the study of women's fiction and the moral novel of the period.