Thursday, October 18, 2012

Jane Austen

The women imagined by Jane Austen

Austen imagines women as graceful, charming and intelligent. She reflects the manners of her period. English upper middle class society spent a lot of time socializing during her age. She has effectively captured the leisure of her society.

Her novels are women oriented and portray the power of women in family life. Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice or Mrs. Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility  are women of strategies. They plan to settle their daughters well through marriages.

Conversation is the core of Austen's novels. Every character speaks for many minutes, analyzing the qualities of other characters.

Austen launches characters in an omniscient style. She says about Elinor as a woman who can govern her emotions. Her younger sister Marianne never learnt the art, says the novelist. After establishing the framework of their character in the first chapter like this, she never breaks it. She does thorough justice to the way she has defined their qualities till the end of the novel. Elinor is always self-controlled. Marianne is always flamboyant.  Similarly, Elizabeth is flashy always and Jane is ever soft. Hence we can say Austen creates flat characters.

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