Characteristics of Austen’s Writings
Jane Austen is known as an English writer, who first gave the novel its modern character through the treatment of everyday life.
Although Austen was widely read in her lifetime, she published her works anonymously. The most urgent preoccupation of her bright, young heroines is courtship and finally marriage. Austen herlf never married. Her best-known books include PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1813) and EMMA (1816). Virginia Woolf called Austen "the most perfect artist among women."
Austen was well connected with the middling-rich landed gentry that she portrayed in her novels. In Chawton she started to write her major works, among them SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, the story of the impoverished Dashwood sisters, and Elinor, who try to find proper husbands to cure their social position. The novel was written in 1797 as the revision of a sketch called Elinor and Marianne, compod when the author was 20. According to some sources, an earlier version of the work was written in the form of a novel
in letters, and read aloud to the family as early as 1795.
Austen's heroines are determined to marry wily and well, but romantic Marianne of Sen and Sensibility is a character, who feels intenly about everything and los her heart to an irresponsible ducer. "I could not be happy with a man who taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter into all my feelings; the with books, the same music must charm us both." Reasonable Elinor falls in love with a gentleman already engaged. '"I have frequently detected mylf in such kind of mistakes," said Elinor, "in a total misapprehension of character in some point or another: fancying people so much more gay or grave, or ingenious or stupid than they really are, and I can hardly tell why or in what the deception originated. Sometimes one is guided by what they say of themlves, and very frequently by what other people say of them, without giving onelf time to deliberate and judge."' When Marianne likes to read and express her feelings, Elinor prefers to draw and design and be silent of his desires. They are the daughters of Henry Dashwood, who son, John, from a former marriage. After his death, John inherits the Norland estate in Susx, where the sisters live. John's wife, the greedy and
lfish Fanny, insists that they move to Norland. The impoverished widow and her daughters move to Barton Cottage in Devonshire. Marianne is surrounded by a devious heartbreaker Willoughby, who has already loved another woman. Elinor becomes interested in Edward Ferrars, who is proud and ignorant. Colonel Brandon, an older gentleman, doesn't attract Marianne. She is finally rejected by Willoughby. "Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to discover the falhood of her own opinions, and to counteract, by her conduct, her most favorite maxims."
In all of Austen's novels her heroines are ultimately married. Pride and Prejudice described the clash between Elisabeth Bennet, the daughter of a country gentleman and an intelligent young woman, and Fitzwilliam Darcy, a rich aristocratic landowner. Their relationship starts from dislike, but Darcy becomes intrigued by her mind and spirit. At last they fall in love and are happily united. Austen had completed the early version of the story in 1797 under the title "First Impressions". The book went to three printings during Austen's lifetime. In 1998 appeared a quel to the novel, entitled Desire and Duty, written by Teddy F. Bader, et al. It followed the ideas Jane Austen told her family. Emma
was written in comic tone. Austen begun the novel in January 1814 and completed it in March of the next year. The book was published in three volumes. It told the story of Emma Woodhou, who finds her destiny in marriage.
Emma is a wealthy, pretty, lf-satisfied young woman. She is left alone with her hypochondriac father. Her governess, Miss Taylor, marries a neighbor, Mr. Weston. Emma has too much time and she spends it choosing proper partners for her friends and neighbors - blind to her own feelings. She makes a protégée of Harriet Smith, an illegitimate girl of no social status and tries to manipulate a marriage between Harriet and Mr. Elton, a young clergyman, who has t his sight on Emma. Emma has feelings about Mr. Weston's son. When Harriet becomes interested in George Knightley, a neighboring squire who has been her friend, Emma starts to understand her own limitations. He has been her moral advir, and cretly loves her. Finally Emma finds her destiny in marriage with him. Harriet, who is left to decide for herlf, marries Robert Martin, a young farmer.
Austen focud on middle-class provincial life with humor and understanding. She depicted minor landed gentry, country clergymen and their families, in which marriage mainly determined women's social status. Most important forher were tho little matters, as Emma says, "on which the daily happiness of private life depends." Although Austen restricted to family matters, and she pasd the historical events of the Napoleonic wars, her wit and obrvant narrative touch has been inexhaustible delight to readers. Of her six great novels, four were published anonymously during her lifetime. Austen also had troubles with her publisher, who wanted to make alterations to her love scenes in Pride and Prejudice. In 1811 he wrote to Thomas Egerton: "You say the book is indecent. You say I am immodest. But Sir in the depiction of love, modesty is the fullness of truth; and decency frankness; and so I must also be with you, and ask that you remove my name from the title page in all future printings; 'A lady' will do well enough."
