Encyclopedia
Jane Austen was an
English novelist. Her insights into women's lives and her mastery of form and irony have made her one of the most noted and influential novelists of her era despite being only moderately successful during her lifetime.
Life
In 1775, Jane Austen was born at the rectory in
Steventon,
Hampshire, one of two daughters of the Rev. George Austen and his wife Cassandra . As an unmarried woman financially and socially dependant upon her parents, she remained in Steventon for most of her life. Her brothers James and Henry followed in the path of their father and joined the clergy, while Francis and Charles both pursued naval careers. She also had a sister, Cassandra, with whom she maintained a close relationship throughout her life. The abundant correspondence between the sisters provides historians with the greatest insight into Austen's past. The only undisputed portrait of Jane Austen is a somewhat rudimentary coloured sketch done by Cassandra, which currently resides in the National Portrait Gallery,
London. In 1783, she was educated briefly by a relative in
Oxford, then in
Southampton, and finally in 1785–1786 attended the Reading Ladies boarding school in the
Abbey gatehouse in
Reading, Berkshire. This uncommonly advanced level of education may have contributed to her early proclivity towards writing, and she began her first novel in 1789.
Austen's life was not nearly as eventful as that of her characters. In 1801 the family moved to the socially esteemed spa city of
Bath, which provides the setting for many of her novels, though Jane Austen, like her character Anne Elliot, seems to have "persisted in a disinclination for Bath", although her dislike may have been influenced by the family's precarious financial situation in that city. In 1802 Austen received a marriage proposal from a wealthy but "big and awkward" man named
Harris Bigg-Wither, who was six years her junior. Such a marriage would have freed her from some of the constraints and dependency then associated with the role of a spinster. Such considerations may have influenced her to initially accept his offer, only to change her mind and refuse him the following day. It seems clear that she did not love him. After the death of her father in 1805, Austen, her sister, and her mother lived in
Southampton with her brother Frank and his family for several years until moving to
Chawton in 1809. Here her wealthy brother Edward had an estate with a cottage, where he allowed his mother and sisters to live. This home is now a museum and is a popular site for tourists and literary pilgrims alike.
Austen lived the remainder of her life at Chawton, and wrote her later novels there. In 1816, she began to suffer from ill-health. It is now thought she may have suffered from Addison's disease, a failure of the adrenal glands that was often caused by tuberculosis. The disease was at that time unnamed. Her condition became increasingly unstable, and on July 18, 1817 she died at the age of forty one and was buried in
Winchester Cathedral.
Work
Adhering to a common contemporary practice for female authors, Austen published her novels anonymously, yet her anonymity kept her out of leading literary circles. Although all her works are love stories, and although her career coincided with the
Romantic movement in literature, Jane Austen was not an intensely passionate Romantic. Passionate emotion usually carries danger in an Austen novel and the young woman who exercises moderation is more likely to find real happiness than one who irrationally elopes with a capricious lover. Her artistic values had more in common with
David Hume and
John Locke than with her contemporaries
William Wordsworth or
Lord Byron. Among Austen's influences were
Samuel Johnson,
William Cowper,
Samuel Richardson, George Crabbe, and
Fanny Burney. It should be noted that excessive calculation and practicality also tends to result in disaster in Austen novels.
Her posthumously published novel
Northanger Abbey was the first of Jane Austen [i]'s novels to be completed for publication, though s ...
satirises the
Gothic novels of Ann Radcliffe, but Austen is most famous for her mature works, which took the form of socially astute comedies of manners. These, especially
Emma is a comic [i] novel [i] by Jane Austen [i], first published in 1816, about the perils o ...
, are often cited for their perfection of form, while modern critics continue to unearth new perspectives on Austen's keen commentary regarding the predicament of unmarried genteel English women in the late 1790s and early 1800s, a consequence of inheritance
law and custom, which usually directed the bulk of a family's fortune to eldest male heirs.
Her novels received only moderate renown when they were published, though Sir
Walter Scott in particular praised her work:
- "That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements of feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with."
In Austen's final novel
Persuasion, several characters read a work by Scott and praise it.
Austen also earned the admiration of
Macaulay ,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Robert Southey, Sydney Smith, and Edward FitzGerald.
Twentieth century scholars ranked her among the greatest literary geniuses of the English language, sometimes even comparing her to
Shakespeare.
Trilling wrote in an essay on
Mansfield Park,
- "It was Jane Austen who first represented the specifically modern personality and the culture in which it had its being. Never before had the moral life been shown as she shows it to be, never before had it been conceived to be so complex and difficult and exhausting. Hegel speaks of the "secularization of spirituality" as a prime characteristic of the modern epoch, and Jane Austen is the first to tell us what this involves. She is the first novelist to represent society, the general culture, as playing a part in the moral life, generating the concepts of "sincerity" and "vulgarity" which no earlier time would have understood the meaning of, and which for us are so subtle that they defy definition, and so powerful that none can escape their sovereignty. She is the first to be aware of the Terror which rules our moral situation, the ubiquitous anonymous judgment to which we respond, the necessity we feel to demonstrate the purity of our secular spirituality, whose dark and dubious places are more numerous and obscure than those of religious spirituality, to put our lives and styles to the question ..."
Negative views of Austen have been notable, with more demanding detractors frequently accusing her writing of being unliterary and middle-brow.
Charlotte Brontė criticized the narrow scope of Austen's fiction:
- "Anything like warmth or enthusiasm, anything energetic, poignant, heartfelt, is utterly out of place in commending these works: all such demonstrations the authoress would have met with a well-bred sneer, would have calmly scorned as 'outré' or extravagant. She does her business of delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English people curiously well. There is a Chinese fidelity, a miniature delicacy, in the painting. She ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him with nothing profound. The passions are perfectly unknown to her: she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy sisterhood ... What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves flexibly, it suits her to study: but what throbs fast and full, though hidden, what the blood rushes through, what is the unseen seat of life and the sentient target of death--this Miss Austen ignores....Jane Austen was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete and rather insensible woman, if this is heresy--I cannot help it."
Mark Twain's reaction was revulsion:
- "Jane Austen? Why, I go so far as to say that any library is a good library that does not contain a volume by Jane Austen. Even if it contains no other book."
Austen's literary strength lies in the delineation of character, especially of women, by delicate touches arising out of the most natural and everyday incidents in the life of the
middle and
upper classes, from which her subjects are generally taken. Her characters, though of quite ordinary types, are drawn with such firmness and precision, and with such significant detail as to retain their individuality intact through their entire development, and they are uncoloured by her own personality. Her view of life seems largely genial, with a strong dash of gentle but keen irony.
Some contemporary readers may find the world she describes, in which people's chief concern is obtaining advantageous marriages, unliberated and disquieting. In her era options were limited, and both women and men often married for financial considerations. Female writers worked within the similarly narrow genre of romance. Part of Austen's prominent reputation rests on how well she integrates observations on the human condition within a convincing love story. Much of the tension in her novels arises from balancing financial necessity against other concerns: love, friendship, honor and self-respect.
Jane Austen today
Austen's work is today considered an important part of the English literary canon and is the subject of a massive body of scholarly and critical work. The novels are also widely read in a non-academic setting, simply for pleasure.
Since her death, Austen's unfinished novels and minor works, including her Juvenilia , have been published. Her major works have never been out of print.
Today, visitors remember Austen at two museums dedicated to her. The Jane Austen Centre in Bath is a public museum located in a Georgian House in Gay Street, just a few doors down the street from number 25 where Austen stayed in 1805. The Jane Austen's House Museum is located in Chawton cottage, in Hampshire, where Austen lived from 1809 to 1817.
Filmography
In popular culture, Austen's novels have been adapted in a great number of
film and
television series, varying greatly in their faithfulness to the originals.
Pride and Prejudice has been the most reproduced of her works, with six films, the most recent being the 2005 adaptation
directed by
Joe Wright, starring
Keira Knightley,
Donald Sutherland,
Matthew Macfadyen, and
Dame Judi Dench, as well as the 2004
Bollywood adaptation
Bride & Prejudice. Previously, there were five television series produced by the BBC, the most noteworthy being the well-loved 1995 version, starring
Colin Firth and
Jennifer Ehle. The 2001 film
Bridget Jones's Diary included characters and plot line inspired by the novel.
Emma is a comic [i] novel [i] by Jane Austen [i], first published in 1816, about the perils o ...
has been adapted to film five times: in 1932 with
Marie Dressler and
Jean Hersholt, a 1972
British television version, the 1995 teen film
Clueless, in 1996 with
Gwyneth Paltrow and
Jeremy Northam, and also in 1996 on British television with
Kate Beckinsale.
Sense and Sensibility is a novel [i] by Jane Austen [i] that was first published in 1811 [i]. ...
has been made into four films including the 1995 version directed by
Ang Lee and starring
Kate Winslet and
Emma Thompson .
Persuasion has been adapted into two television series and one
feature film.
Mansfield Park and
Northanger Abbey was the first of Jane Austen [i]'s novels to be completed for publication, though s ...
have both been made into films. The 1980 film
Jane Austen in Manhattan is about rival stage companies who wish to produce the only complete Austen play "Sir Charles Grandison" , which was rediscovered in 1980.
Writings
Novels
- Sense and Sensibility is a novel [i] by Jane Austen [i] that was first published in 1811 [i]. ...
- Pride and Prejudice belongs to the romantic-comedy genre and is the most famous of Jane Austen [i]'s ...
- Mansfield Park
- Emma is a comic [i] novel [i] by Jane Austen [i], first published in 1816, about the perils o ...
- Northanger Abbey was the first of Jane Austen [i]'s novels to be completed for publication, though s ...
posthumous - Persuasion posthumous
Shorter works
- Lady Susan
- The Watsons
- Sanditon
Juvenilia
- The Three Sisters
- Love and Freindship [sic; the misspelling of "friendship" in the title is famous]
- The History of England
- Catharine, or the Bower
- The Beautifull Cassandra [sic]
Notes
Further reading
- Knox-Shaw, Peter. Jane Austen and the Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN 100521843464
- Tomalin, Claire. Jane Austen: a life. Revised and updated edition. London: Penguin, 2000. ISBN 0140296905
- Le Faye, Deirdre. Jane Austen: A Family Record. 2nd. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 0521534178
External links
Works
- in
- : e-books in easy-to-read HTML format.
- : e-books in easy-to-read HTML format.
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Author information
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- : with profile and links to further articles.
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- : includes Cassandra Austen's original sketch.
- , by her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh. 1871 edition, from Project Gutenberg.
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Fan sites and societies
- : the largest Jane Austen site on the web.
- : A 19th century literature discussion site.
- : coverage of Jane Austen in popular culture.
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- : font based upon Austen's handwriting.
