Assignment Paper No. 103 ( Literature of Romantic )

• Name:- Payal Bambhaniya

• Batch:- M. A. Sem. 1 ( 2022 - 2024 )

• Roll no. :- 16

• Paper no. & Name :- 103 - Literature of the Romantics 

• Assignment Topic :- Biography of Jane Austen 

• Subject code no. :- 22394

• Enrollment number :- 4069206420220002

• Email Id :- payalbambhaniya92@gmail.com

• Submitted to :- Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of English, MKBU.

Introduction of Jane Austen:-

Jane Austen ( 1775 - 1817 ) was an English Novelist known primarily for her six major Novels, which interpret, critique and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. We have so lately rediscovered the charm and genius of this gifted young women that she seems to be a novelist of Coleridge; and few even of her readers realize that she did for the English novel precisely what the Lake poets did for English poetry - she refined and simplified it, making it a true reflection of English life. 

Life:-

Jane Austen was born in the Hampshire village of Stevenson, where her father, the Reverend George Austen, was rector. She was the second daughter and seventh child in a family of eight - six boys and two girls. Her closest companion throughout her life was her elder sister, Cassandra; neither Jane nor Cassandra married. Their father was a scholar who encouraged the love of learning in his children. His wife, Cassandra, was a woman of ready wit, famed for her impromptu verses and stories. The great family amusement was acting. 

She began to write at an early age, and seems to have done her work on a little table in  family sitting room, in the midst of the family life. When a visitor entered, she would throw a paper or a piece of sewing over her work, and she modestly refused to be known as the author of novels which we now count among our treasured possessions. With the publishers she had little success. Pride and Prejudice went begging, as we have said, for sixteen years; and Northanger Abbey was sold for a trivial sum to a publisher, who laid it aside and forgot it, until the appearance and moderate success of sense and sensibility in 1811. Then, after keeping the manuscript some fifteen years, he sold it back to the family, who found another publisher. 

An anonymous article in the Quarterly Review, following the appearance of Emma in 1815, full of generous appreciation of the charm of the new writer, was the beginning of Jane Austen's fame; and it is only within a few years that we have learned that the friendly and discerning critic was Walter Scott. He continued to be her admirer untill her early death; but these two, the greatest writers of fiction in their age, were never brought together. Both were home - loving people, and Miss Austen especially was averse to publicity and popularity. She died, quietly as she had lived, at Winchester, in 1817, and was buried in the cathedrals.

Writing style and Characteristics of Jane Austen:-

Jane Austen's distinctive literary style relies on a combination of Parody, burlesque, irony, free indirect speech and a degree of realism. She uses Parody and burlesque for comic effect and to critique the portrayal of women in 18th century sentimental and Gothic novels.

Jane Austen's Novels have a number of distinctive features that make her work stand out from other literature of the time. Some recognisable characteristics and themes of Austen's work include:

1.Language and Gender : Austen's dialogue is written in the colloquial speech style of the time, capturing the realism of the way that people communicated when navigating the nuances of society. Many of Jane's Narratives center around gender constructs. Her novels focus specifically on what it means to a woman living in a period of repression and rigid social expectations of Proper female behavior.

2. Romantic comedy: Most of Jane's writing is a blend of romance and comedy, with many of her stories like Mansfield park and Emma - ending in engagements or an assumption that the romantic leads get married and live happily ever after.

3. Class and Morality: From Mansfield park, to Sense and Sensibility, to Northanger Abbey, many of Jane Austen's stories being with young, middle class or working class women being sent to live with wealthy relatives or neighbours, opening up a whole new social and romantic world to these young heroines. Jane Austen's Characters - like the irreverent Elizabeth Bennet of Pride and Prejudice - struggle with acting in accordance with their society.

Works :-

Very few English writers ever had so narrow a field of work as Jane Austen. Like the French novelists, whose success seems to lie in choosing the tiny field that they know best, her works have an exquisite perfection that is lacking in most of our writers of fiction. With the expectation of an occasional visit to the watering place of Bath, her whole life was spent in small county parishes, whose simple country people become the characters of her novels. Her brothers were in the Navy, and so naval officers furnish the only existing elements in her stories; but even these alleged heroes lay aside their imposing martial ways and act like themselves and other people. Such was her literary field, in which the chief duties were of the household, the chief pleasures in county gatherings, and the chief interests in matrimony. Life, with its mighty interest, passions, ambitions, and tragic struggles, swept by a great river; while the secluded interests of a country parish went round and round quietly, like an Eddy behind a sheltering rock. We can easily understand, therefore, the limitations of Jane Austen; but within her own field she is unequalled. Her characters are absolutely true to life, and all her work has the perfection of a delicate miniature painting. Her Six major works are below.

• Pride and Prejudice
• Sense and sensibility
• Northanger Abbey
• Mansfield Park
• Emma
• Persuasion

Pride and prejudice :-

"It was a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

                      - Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice is a romantic novel. It was a published anonymously in three volumes in 1813. A classic of English literature, written with incisive wit and superb Character delineation, it centres on the turbulent relationship between Elizabeth Bennet, the daughter of a country gentleman, and Fitzwilliam Darcy, a rich aristocratic landowner. It contains 61 chapters. Although Austen shows them intrigued by each other, she reverses the convention of "first impressions": "pride" of rank and fortune and "prejudice" against the inferiority of the Bennet family hold Darcy aloof, while Elizabeth is equally fired both by the "pride" of self - respect and by "prejudice" against Darcy's snobbery. Ultimately, they come together in love and self understanding. The intelligent and high-spirited Elizabeth was Jane Austen's own favourite among all her heroines and is one of the most engaging in English literature.

The work, which Austen initially titled First Impressions, is the second of four novels that Austen published during her lifetime. Although pride and Prejudice has been criticized for its lack of historical context, the existence of its characters in a social context that is rarely entered by events beyond it is an accurate portrayal of the enclosed social world in which Austen lived. She depicted that world, in all its own narrow pride and prejudice, with unswerving accuracy and satire. 

Sense and sensibility:-

Sense and sensibility tells the story of the impoverished Dashwood sisters. Marianne is the heroine of "Sense and Sensibility". She becomes infatuated with the attractive John Willoughby, who seems to be a romantic lovers but is in reality an unscrupulous fortune hunter. He deserts her for an heiress, leaving her to learn a dose of "sense" in a wholly unromantic marriage with a staid and settled bachelor, Colonel Brandon, who is 20 years her senior. By contrast, Marianne's older sister, Elinor, is the guiding light of "sense" or predence and discretion, whose constancy towards her lover, Edward Ferrars, is rewarded by her marriage to him after some distressing vicissitudes.

Mansfield park :-

In its tone and discussion of religion and religious duty, Mansfield park is the most serious of Austen's Novels. The heroine is Fanny price, is a self - effacing and unregarded cousin cared for by the Bertram family in their country house. Fanny emerges as a true heroine whose moral strength eventually wins her complete acceptance in the Bertram family and marriage to Edmund Bertram himself, after that family's disastrous involvement with the meretricious and loose living Crawford.

The most widely read of her novels is Pride and prejudice; but three others, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, and Mansfield park, have slowly won their way to the front rank of fiction. From a literary viewpoint Northanger Abbey is perhaps the best; for in it we find that touch of humour and delicate satire with which this gentle little woman combated the grotesque popular novels of the Udolpho type. Reading any of these works, one is inclined to accept the hearty endorsement of sir Walter Scott: "That Young lady has a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big bow- wow strain I can do myself, like any now going; but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and Characters interesting from the truth of the description and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me. What a pity such a gifted creature died so early."

Conclusion:-

Thus, we can say that she was a bright, attractive little woman, whose sunny qualities are unconsciously reflected in all her books. Jane Austen's life gives little opportunity for the biographers, unless, perchance, he has something of her power to show the beauty and charm of common

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References:-

Southam, Brian C.. "Jane Austen". Encyclopedia Britannica, 29 Sep. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jane-Austen. Accessed 4 November 2022.

W. J. Long, English Literature. Sahitya Sarowar.