Jane Austen (1775-1817)

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Jane Austen (1775-1817)

• By Zheng boren

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INTRODUCTION

• Jane Austen, English novelist, noted for her
  witty studies of early-19th-century English
  society.
• With detailed descriptions, Austen portrayed the
  quiet, day-to-day life of members of the upper
  middle class. Her works combine romantic comedy
  with social satire and psychological insight.

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• Two common themes in Austens books are the loss
  of illusionsusually leading characters to a more
  mature outlookand the clash between traditional
  moral ideals and the everyday demands of life. In
  most of her novels, her characters correct their
  faults through lessons learned as a result of
  tribulation. Because of her sensitivity to
  universal patterns of human behavior, many people
  regard Austen as one of the greatest novelists of
  the 19th and 20th centuries.

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LIFE

• Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire, England.
  
• She was the seventh child of eight, and her
  family was close, affectionate, and lively. She
  lived most of her life among the same kind of
  people about whom she wrote.
• Her lifelong companion and confidant was her
  older and only sister, Cassandra.

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• Dozens of relatives and friends widened Austens
  social experiences beyond her immediate family.
• The Austens were devoted readers of novels at a
  time when reading novels was regarded as a
  questionable activity. They also provided a
  delighted audience for Janes youthful comic
  pieces, and later for her novels.

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• Jane had almost no formal education, but she read
  extensively and critically.
• At age 13 she was already writing amusing and
  instructive parodies and variations on
  18th-century literaturefrom sentimental novels
  to serious histories.
• By the time she was 23 years old, Austen had
  written three novels Elinor and Marianne, First
  Impressions, and Susan, which were early versions
  of, respectively, Sense and Sensibility (1811),
  Pride and Prejudice (1813), and Northanger Abbey
  (1818). A fragment, Lady Susan, which scholars
  date between 1793 and 1795, most likely also
  belongs to this period, but it was not published
  until 1871.

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• In 1801 the family moved to the town of Bath.
  After Janes father died in 1805, Jane,
  Cassandra, and their mother moved several times,
  eventually settling in 1809 in the village of
  Chawton, very near Steventon. Austen lived and
  wrote there for the last eight years of her life.
• Living a quiet life in the countryside, she kept
  her eyes steadily upon the people and incidents
  about her, and wrote about the small world she
  lived in.

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• She herself compared her work to a fine engraving
  made upon a little piece of ivory only two inches
  square. The comparison is true. The ivory surface
  is small enough, but the woman who made drawings
  of human life on it is a real artist.
• All of Austens novels were originally published
  anonymously. Several of them went through two
  editions in her lifetime.
• Pride and Prejudice was particularly praised, and
  Emma (1816) received a favorable review from
  English writer Sir Walter Scott, who was a
  prominent literary figure of the time.

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About Her Works

• Jane Austen began writing around the age of
  twelve. Her works were later published
  anonymously due to the prejudice again women
  writers then.
• Sense and Sensibility, her first novel, tells a
  story about two sisters and their love affairs,
  but Pride and Prejudice, originally drafted as
  "First Impressions" in 1796, is the most
  delightful of Jane Austen's works and Northanger
  Abbey satirizes those popular Gothic romances of
  the late 18th century. Those are her first three
  novels in the period from 1795 to 1798, but it
  took her more than 15 years to find a publisher.

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Assessment

• Jane Austen has brought the English novel, as an
  art of form, to its maturity, and she has been
  regarded by many critics as one of the greatest
  of all novelists.
• The Prince Regent was an admirer and kept a set
  of Jane Austen's novels in each of his
  residences. Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis
  Stevenson praised her work and Tennyson, T. B
  Macaulay and Archbishop Whately compared her to
  Shakespeare.

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Assessment

• Critics included Charlotte Bronte and Elizabeth
  Barrett Browning who found her work limited.
• Generally speaking, Jane Austen was a writer of
  the 18th century, though she lived mainly in the
  nineteenth century. She holds the ideal of the
  landlord class in politics, religion and her
  works show clearly her firm in the predominance
  of reason over passion, the sense of
  responsibility, good manners and clear-sighted
  judgment over the romantic tendencies of emotion
  and individuality.

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Reference

• www.allmovie.com
• www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/janeinfo.html
• www.goucher.edu/library/jausten/jane.htm
• www.geocities.com/Athens/8563/
• http//www.webschool.cn/yssx/wxez/03/01.htm
• http//www.lnu.edu.cn/englishw/novel/a27.html
• http//www.oklink.net/wgwx/novels/lingsan/pride/in
  dex.htm