A Senior Capstone Experience by Savannah Nies ’26

Submitted to the Department of English

Advised by Dr. Katherine Charles

Contributor Biography: Savannah Nies is a 2026 graduate of Washington College who studied English and creative writing. She is originally from Kent Island, Maryland and after graduation she began to pursue a career in museum curation. While at Washington College, she worked with local Kent County museums through the Virtual and Augmented Digital Imaging Studio (VARDIS) and completed several internships digitizing educational spaces and their objects, leading her to realize her love for working in public education spaces. Currently she is working at Chestertown’s own Decoy Museum.

Short Description: This thesis worked towards showcasing how Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice displays anger as a potentially positive force to better oneself and others. Elizabeth Bennett is often seen expressing anger throughout the novel—in fact, the words “anger,” “angry,” and other variants are attributed to her more than any other one character—but the context of her anger expressions and their results vary so much as to necessitate the analysis of their power as being something which is able to drive the positive growth of not only Elizabeth, but those around her. In this project, I theorize how different types of anger expressions within numerous contexts, as well as their on-page results, are treated by the text and used in its larger demonstration of the positive potential of anger. Anger, often stigmatized as being a harmful or generally “bad” emotion, has been stripped of its quality as a widely felt, common emotion that can be learned from. Anger tells us about our values, morals, and beliefs as humans. This was true even in a time period when Elizabeth and her female peers would have been encouraged to repress this emotion and their expressions of it to present themselves as palatable to everyone around them, especially in spaces where potential suitors were present. In examining with this knowledge the way that Elizabeth’s anger is presented and responded to by herself and others, the anger seems to become an ever-evolving entity exposing one’s values and life background while changing with new experiences. Overall, this thesis worked towards theorizing and advocating for the value of anger as potentially positive, especially the anger of women, which has been more often stigmatized than that of men.

Read Savannah’s SCE below: