Jane Austen(pp.206-207)

Novels of Romantic love

Love is always subordinated to social conventions

Jane Austen's novels

She was born in 1775, the seventh child of the rector of thevillage of Steventon, Hampshire

She was educated at home

She went through an uneventful, quiet, domestic life inprovincial southern England

She cultivated at an early age her talent of writing (althoughher novels were published many years later, i.g. Sense andSensibility, 1811, Pride and Prejudice 1813)

Jane Austen's novels (2)

The setting and the characters of her novels:

All her novels are set in the provincial world of southern England

Her characters belong to the landed gentry and the country clergy (rural middle class)

Jane Austen's novels (2)

The setting and the characters of her novels:

All her novels are set in the provincial world of southern England

Her characters belong to the landed gentry and the country clergy (rural middle class)

Jane Austen's novels (3)

The plots and the themes:

The plots revolve around the theme of love and marriage and are centred on the experience of a young woman who develops a new consciousness of herself and understanding of other people through a series of errors and delusions. All her novels end with the young woman's happy marriage.

J. Austen uses witty and precise dialogues in order to describe the life of her characters.

Jane Austen's novels (4)

Love is not passionate or tragic. Her novels deal with polite exchanges between the two sexes.

Gentle irony and fine psychological insight are useful in order to focus on human frailties.

For her use of irony and for the didactic aim of her novels, her interest in society and in its values, she is very different from the qualities of most Romantic art, therefore she is considered un-Romantic. She admired the Augustan classics and from Richardson and the epistolary novel she learned how ordinary events could offer infinite psychological possibilities.