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Writing Approach of Jane Austen
Jane Austen's influence on later English literature
Analysing jane austen as a writer
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Jane Austen was born on December 16th, 1775, in the village of Steventon, which was near Basingstoke, in Hampshire. Austen was the seventh of eight children of Reverend George Austen and wife, Cassandra. She was taught mainly at home by Mrs. Cawley, who was the sister of one of their uncles. From 1785-1786 Jane and her sister Cassandra went to the Abbey boarding school of Reading. At home Jane and her brothers and sisters loved to write and perform plays. Her father had over 500 books in his personal library, their Jane would read the books all day long. The material that she read helped her write short stories. When she was fourteen years old she wrote her first novel, Love and Friendship, and then later A History of England by a Partial, and Prejudiced and Ignorant Historian. From 1787-1793, Austen wrote Juvenilia. Most of the manuscripts were written for either her friends or family. At the age of 20, in 1795, Elinor and Marianne and Lady Susan was written. In her early twenties, Austen wrote, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Northanger Abbey, which were all late...
Throughout history, heroes/heroines have been stereotyped to look, behave and have certain backgrounds. Typically a hero is described as somebody who is strong in appearance, and usually an overachiever. However, in the novel, Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, Catherine Morland is depicted as a weak and unintelligent person that turns out to be a heroine. In order to make these descriptions, Jane Austen uses literary elements such as tone, imagery and the technique of describing others in order to describe the main character.
“A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of” (Austen). The bluntness of this quote fully encompasses the main theme of an advantageous marriage for the English novelist, Jane Austen. Her realism, biting irony and social commentary have gained her historical importance among scholars and critics (Southam). Austen’s major novels, including Pride and Prejudice, were composed between the years 1795-1815. During those twenty years England was at the height of its power facing many historical landmarks (Thomson). It is no coincidence that Jane Austen’s novel, Pride and Prejudice, coincides directly with the historical events of this time period.
According to author Jane Austen, “Vanity and pride are diverse things; however the words are frequently utilized synonymously. A man might be pleased without being vain. “Pride relates more to our sentiment of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others consider us.” Who was Jane Austen? What kind of woman was she in the world she lived in? Did she ever find love so indefinable in her own novel? Jane Austen appeared on the scene on December sixteenth, 1775. Jane was born to Reverend George Austen of the Steventon parsonage and Cassandra Austen of the Leigh family. She was to be their seventh youngster and just the second girl to the couple. Her kin were made up to a great extent of siblings,
Jane Austen died at the age of forty-one in Winchester, United Kingdom. A few months before her death, she made a will leaving everything to her sister Cassandra. The cause of Jane Austen's death is widely disputed. In 1964, Zachary Cope published an article in the British Medical Journal that suggested that Addison's disease was the cause of Austen's death. Before she had died, Austen had written many letters to her sister Cassandra complaining about her illness. In these letters she described many of the symptoms that occur when a person has acquired Addison's disease including skin discoloration, progressive weakness, and gastric upsets. Today, Addison's disease is the most widely accepted cause of Austen's death.
Although writings were fictional she used precise incidents and described her own life with extraordinary detail. Her writings were creating a window into the thoughts, actions, relationships, and morality of daily life. The honesty in her writing is an impeccable eye opener to how things really were (Sutherland, Jane Austen: Social Realism and the Novel). Jane also included the perspective of women in the gentry class. In the 19th century, women had limited opportunity. The main focus of a woman 's life was to be married into social respect and financial security. Austen included this aspect in her stories. With most of the life of a women being inside, it was crucial to include conversation in her fiction. Not only did she include it, but she “wrote some of the most natural and real-seeming conversations in literature.” (Sutherland, Jane Austen’s Social Realism and the Novel). Jane wrote her heroines to be realistic, average, everyday people to appeal to the modern day world. Her protagonists were most always “strong and firm in their determinations.” Instead of seeing heroes as unrealistic images portrayed in Gothic novels, she made a hero that wasn’t necessarily obvious. This appealed to most everyone in the century and no longer portrayed women as shallow, but as deep, strong characters that have emotions and needs just like everyone else (Christine 2012, Writer
Jane Austen wrote only about the world she knew, because she only lived in small villages on the south of England. Austen wrote about the normal daily life of women of her age and class. During the lifetime of Austen, she wrote about six books, but the book “Persuasion” by Jane Austen...
Jane Austen: A Study of Her Artistic Development. New York: Oxford University Press. 1965. O'Connor, Kate. The Anonymous Jane Austen.
The theme of social status and society is prevalent in the novel of Emma, through the characters Emma, Mr. Knightley, Mr. Churchill, and their situations and perspectives on life. Austen describes Emma as, “handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her” makes her outlook disparate from characters such as Harriet (Austen, Emma 3). Immediately through her description, Austen indicates Emma’s haughty perspective on society through her referencing her friends as “first set” and “second set.” Through Emma’s classification of her friends by their social status and importance, first set being the superior and second set being the inferior and locum, the reader is able to have a glimpse of Emma’s outlook on society and it’s classes. (Knowledge Notes). Emma once again portrays the theme of social status and society through her views of people in lower classes than she such as Harriet and Mr. Martin. After Emma meets Harriet for the first time, she immediately decides that Harriet’s “soft blue eyes, and all those natural graces, should not be wasted on the inferior society of Highbury, and its connections” (Austen, Emma 20). Because of the social class difference between her and Mr. Martin, Emma regards him as someone who is inferior and advises Harriet to refuse his proposal. She claims that though “his appearance was very neat, and he looked like a sensible young man, but his person had no other advantage; and when he came to be contrasted with a gentleman, she thought he must lose all the ground…” (Austen, Emma 27) and that Harriet deserves someone more advantageo...
Austen was a recondite writer with a new inside perspective with an outside view on life in the early 19th century. Born on December 16, 1775, Austen was a curious child given the unseal luxury of an education. Her father was a part of the gentry class and raised a family of ten, but was not well off by any means (Grochowski). Sense and Sensibility, written by Jane Austen, tells a dramatic story of three sisters and their emotional journey where they encounter love and betrayal. Because Jane Austen was raised in a liberal family and received a comprehensive education, her dramatic analysis of societal behavior in Sense and Sensibility was comparable to the hidden truths of social and class distinctions in 18th and 19th century Europe.
To be a mentor is to hold influence over a person’s actions or education. Overall, “Emma” is a novel about the influence that people hold over each other, and how that influence can affect people. Conflict is built by different characters who view themselves as mentors struggling to assert their opinions over others and pupil characters who accept their mentor’s opinions without bothering to form their own.
In Jane Austen’s social class and coming of age novel, Emma, the relationships between irony, insight and education are based upon the premise of the character of Emma Woodhouse herself. The persona of Emma is portrayed through her ironic and naive tone as she is perceived as a character that seems to know everything, which brings out the comedic disparities of ironies within the narrative. Emma is seen as a little fish in a larger pond, a subject of manipulating people in order to reflect her own perceptions and judgments. Her education is her moral recognition to love outside her own sheltered fancies and her understandings of her society as a whole.
In Jane Austen's Emma the eponymous heroine is "handsome, clever, and rich" but she also suffers from arrogance and self-deception. With the good judgement of Mr Knightley, and her own self scrutiny, Emma experiences a movement of psyche, from arrogance and vanity through the humiliation of self knowledge to clarity of judgement and fulfilment in marriage. The tone of the novel and the episodes where Emma is self deceived progresses from the light comedy of Mr Elton's gallantry and the eventual mortification to the sombre depression of Emma's belief that she has ruined her own chances of happiness by bringing Mr Knightley and Harriet together. Although at times the reader is able to laugh at her mistakes, as she moves slowly and uncertainly to self knowledge and maturity, the reader, like Mr Knightley, comes to take her seriously, for in the novel serious moral and social issues are dealt with, issues which directly concern her. While we may be 'put off' by her mistakes, and flights of illogical fancy, these are also the very qualities which endear her to us.
Jane Austen's writing style is a mix of neoclassicism and romanticism. Austen created a transition into Romanticism which encourages passion and imagination in writing instead of a strict and stale writing style. It is very emotional and follows a flowing not structured form. Mixing these two styles was one of Austen's strongest talents, which gave her an edge in the literary world. No other author in her time was able to create such a strong transition between writing styles. Austen used her sharp and sarcastic wit in all of her writing including in one of her most famous works; Pride and Prejudice. She could create a powerful and dramatic scene and immediately lead it into a satirical cathartic scene. We see these in various locations in Pride and Prejudice. She was able to use her experiences as well as her intense knowledge to create meaningful insights into her words, regardless of what topic she would be discussing. She often talks about marriage, or breaking the roles of what a person should be. She made controversial works that praised imperfections which praised the...
Fergus, Jan. “Biography.” The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen. Ed. Janet Todd.
Jane Austen was born December 16, 1775 in Steventon, England to George and Cassandra Austen. Jane had many different types of education. At age six she was sent away to Oxford with her sister Cassandra. Three years later, they both got sick and were sent to Madame Latoelle, who conducted Abbey School. After the Abbey School, they were sent home to be educated by their father. Jane was never married but was very close. In 1801, she was engaged to a man named Blackall, but all ended it because of his sudden death. In 1802, another man proposed, but she declined because she did not love him. In 1802 her first novel, Northanger Abbey, was published. In 1812 published her most famous book Pride and Prejudice, originally known as First Impressions. Later she died in Winchester, England on July 18, 1817.