Jane Austen - Life, Style

letteratura inglese

Jane Austen

Life

: born in Steventon (south-west of England)

-father was rector of the church

-sixth of seven children

-uneventful life within the circle of her very close, affectionate family

-never married

was educated at home by the father showed interest in literature

writing very early

1787: first writings

from 1795 and 1796 completed "Elinor and Marianne", basis of "Sense and sensibility", then "Pride and prejudice" (1813)

1798 wrote Northanger Abbey

when her father died, her family settled at Chawton, where she produce her most nature works

Mansfiedl Park (1814)

Emma (1816)

Persuasion (1818)

: die because of Addison's disease in Winchester (buried in Winchester Cathedral)

her novel had been published anonymously until her brother adding a "Bibliographical Notice of the Author" to Northanger Abbey and Persuasion while he was supervision them publication

Style

-insight into the psychology of the characters

-subtitles of the ordinary events of life (balls, walks, tea-parties and neighbours)

-omniscient narrator

-technique of bringing the character into existence through dialogue

-use of verbal and situational irony

-restricted her view to the world of the country gentry

Novels

-traditional values of families are property, decorum, money and marriage (people from different countries as a result of the growing social mobility)

-take place in England (the oldest)

London

Bath

Seaside resorts

occur gossip, flirts, reductions, adulteries

produce villains:

unscrupulous relatives,

reducers, gamblers,

social climbers

Treatment of love

-analysis of character and conduct

-checked common sense and moral principles of the previous generation through her own direct observation and spontaneous feeling

-amusing and deals with the serious matters of love, marriage and parenthood

-happy ending

-make interesting the concentration of the steps through which the protagonists successfully reach this stage in their lives (how the protagonist reach it)

-romantic love where individual values achieve high definition, usually in conflict with the social code

-in line with her general view that strong impulses and intensely emotional states should be regulated, controlled and brought to order by private reflection, to fulfill a social obligation (usual feature is the heroine's reflection after a crisis or climax>understanding and coming to terms with her private feelings allows her personal judgment to establish itself god secures her own moral autonomy)