Jane Austen's Career Spanning a Very Brief Time:
Jane Austen's six novels were published within seven years, although she had been writing some years before her publication. Sense and Sensibility was published in 1811. Pride and Prejudice was published next in 1813 though it was actually written earlier in 1796. Under the title, First Impression, Mansfield Park came out in 1814 and Emma in December 1815. Persuasion was published in 1817, and so also Northanger Abbey though it had been written much earlier in 1798-1799 under the title Susan. A measure of her artistic reputation is that at least three of these novels (Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma) are frequently considered among the best novels ever written.
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| Jane Austen’s Novels—A Critical Survey |
A Limited Range of Human Society:
Most of her characters are the kind of people she knew intimately, the landed gentry, the upper class, the lower edge of the nobility, the lower clergy, the officer corps of the military. She limits herself to the sphere which she understands and which she can control as an artist. She does not show any of the great agonies or darken side of human experience. There is no hunger, poverty, misery or terrible vices and very little of the spiritual sphere of experience. Nor do we see any political dimension or even discussions regarding major political happenings in any of her novels. Nature too, is rarely described and her characters are usually presented indoors with an occasional expedition or picnic thrown in.
Her Subject Matter Revolving Round Courtship and Marriage:
By the time we have reached the end of one of Jane Austen's novels, not only the hero and heroine but most of the other young people in the story have succeeded in pairing off in marriage. And it is from the courtship of the hero and heroine that the stories derive much of their tension. Marriages both good and bad, as well as the right and wrong reasons for marrying are discussed. The happy marriage is rarely seen until the hero and heroine marry and this is based on proper judgment and self - knowledge. The ability to judge is particularly important to the heroines, for it is upon this ability that their choice of a suitable husband depends. Therefore , they need to undergo a process of education whereby they overcome their sensibility (Marianne) or prejudice (Elizabennet) or delusion (Emma) or prudence (Anne Elliot) before they can make correct judgment and marry the man of their choice .
A Brief Critical Survey of Her Novels:
(1) Sense and Sensibility (1811):
This novel is satirical in tone and here in a subdued ironical tone Jane Austen ridicules sentimentalists. It is one of Jane Austen's simplest novels, the story deals with two sisters Elinor —the heroine represents a woman of sense, while Marianne her foolish foil represents a woman of sensibility. The satire is mostly directed against sensibility and sentimentality depicted in the character of Marianne. Jane Austen also ridicules the selfishness and worldly wisdom of Mrs. John Dashwood, and the henpecked nature of John Dashwood. The style is forcefully ironical, and the dialogues through which the comedy is represented are piquant and trenchant.
(2) Pride and Prejudice (1813):
Pride and Prejudice is considered to be the finest novel of Jane Austen, and is the work of art in the history of English fiction. Like her other novels it is concerned with the theme of marriages. There are seven marriages in Pride and Prejudice all of them intended to reveal the requirements of a “good” and a “bad” marriage. It is modelled on Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. In Shakespeare's scintillating comedy Benedict and Beatrice who hate each other in the beginning of the play are ultimately married in the end. Similarly, in Jane Austen's novel we have the exhibition of pride and prejudice, and their ultimate union at the end . Pride is represented by Darcy and prejudice by Elizabeth Bennet. They are ultimately united in a hilarious spirit. Here we have a perfect comedy of manners presented in a spirit of amusement devoid of bitterness.
(3) Mansfield Park (1814):
This novel is a study of the inhabitants of the house of that name, the country place of Sir Thomas Bertram, Bart, the values they live by, and the consequences of its heroine Fanny Price from a timid, passive girl to a mature and self - knowing woman. Fanny is inwardly shaped by a house, Mansfield Park, which is the symbol of a cultivated, harmonious way of life. The most dramatic exterior happenings are those that disturb that way of life.
(4) Emma (1815):
Emma has two interconnecting plots. The outward plot is concerned with the comings and goings, advances and reverses of a small circle of moderately well - born people in a provincial town, Highbury. The inward plot is concerned with the mind of the novel's heroine, Emma Woodhouse. The outward plot tells the love stories of three couples, whose weddings are the culmination of the novel. The inward plot traces the development of Emma's mind from ill - founded self - satisfaction, through several humiliations, to self - knowledge and good sense. The two plots are very closely linked, partly because almost all the action takes place around Emma, but principally because much of it is initiated by her. Her manipulation of the characters around her affects their stories, and also demonstrates her state of mind: her fancy, or imaginary perception of what a situation is or might be, leads her and them into many false positions.
(5) Northanger Abbey (1817):
This book begins as a burlesque of the Radeliffian horror novel, which was then all rage. The heroine, after a visit to Bath, is invited to an Abbey, where she imagines romantic possibilities, but is in the end ludicrously undeceived. The incidents of the novel are commonplace and the characters flatly average, yet the treatment is deft and touched with the finest needle point of satiric observation.
In Northanger Abbey as in Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen gave her view of what a novel should avoid. “She sheared away epic digressions. commonplace moralizing, hysterical sentiment, the lovely weather of Romance, and the prattle of young ladies to their confidents about their beaux and sprigged muslin robes.”
(6) Persuasion (1818):
It is the last work of Jane Austen. Satire and ridicule take a milder form in this novel. The tone of this novel is warmer and the portraiture of the character of Walter Elliot is sympathetic. Jane Austen gives to Anne Elliot the most moving love story she ever wrote, so tender in expression that it is a matter of tradition to believe it echoed some chapter from the story of her own life. Anne is forced by the social prejudice of her family to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a young naval office with whom she is deeply in love. The story is concerned with the gradual revival of his passion for her when the bloom of youth has faded and they are eventually married.
