Is Jane Austen Art? According to Leo Tolstoy “Art begins when one person, with the object of joining another or others to himself in one and the same feeling, expresses that feeling by certain external indications (Tolstoy, #16).” The novel Persuasion by author Jane Austen is art by Tolstoy’s definition. Austen clearly expresses the feelings she wished to, through her characters, to her receivers such as love, pride and guilt. Austen communicates concepts of morality vicariously through her characters who serve as models for the following moral concepts, such as love, friendship and selflessness. Austen incorporated various degrees of three conditions: individuality, clearness, and sincerity in her works that makes Tolstoy’s premise plausible. To summarize Persuasion, Anne Eliot, on the advice of her friends and family, declined the marriage proposal of a naval captain named Wentworth eight and a half years prior to the start of the story. Wentworth was not thought of as noble prospect for the daughter of a baronet by Anne’s friends and family. In search for a wife, Captain Wentworth returns home only this time he would be consider a noble prospect for Anne to marry due to the fact that he is rich from prizes taken in the war. Even though the captain shows disdain and is cold …show more content…
Austen transmits the feelings of pride, guilt, and love to her receiver through the actions and conversation carried on by her characters. Not only is Anne a model of moral concepts but she is a model to young women. Austen proves that art should be moral by having Anne be the main character as opposed to her sisters or another one of the young female characters in the novel. Austen does a brilliant job of making the feeling that she wanted to transmit clear and sincere and individual to her readers. In regards to Tolstoy not only would he define Persuasion as art, but he would define it as great art for meeting these
Fowler, Karen J.Introduction. Persuasion. Jane Austen: The Complete Novels. By Jane Austen. New York: Penguin, 2006. 1091-1231. Print.
...iece, with lengthy, persuasive essay-like chapters throughout the text. Austen compresses her commentary and the narrator does not dominate the discussion. As it concisely conveys its message, Austen's work represents a development from Fielding's inflated treatise on the subject. The issue of the novel as respectable or as art was clearly an important issue of debate; the greatest speakers for both novelists were the "authors" of their respective texts.
In Northanger Abbey, Austen intended to reflect a contrast between a normal, healthy-natured girl and the romantic heroines of fiction thorough the use of characterization. By portraying the main character, Catherine Moorland, as a girl slightly affected with romantic notions, Jane Austen exhibits the co...
The literature output in Jane Austen’s creation is full of realism and irony. Janet Todd once asserted that "Austen creates an illusion of realism in her texts, partly through readably identification with the characters and partly through rounded characters, which have a history and a memory.” (Todd, The Cambridge Introduction to Jane Austen, 28.) Her works are deeply influenced between by late eighteenth-century Britain rationalism phenomenon and early nineteenth-century of romanticism.
Karl Kroeber described Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre to be “not strictly comparable” but like “different species of the same genus” (119). Characterization is very different in these two novels. It is different because Jane Eyre is a romantic novel, while Pride and Prejudice is a novel of manners, but it is also different because the authors use characterization for different means. Jane Austen means to explore the human character, and the way people interact with those...
Even though today Jane Austen is regarded for her writing, during her time she couldn’t even publish her work under her own name, because it was considered unladylike for women to be intellectual figures. Unlike J. K. Rowling and other English female writers today, who are well known for their works even without using their full names, Jane Austen lived within the sanctuary of a close-knit family and always published her works under a pseudonym that could not be traced back to her (jasna.org). Writing at the time was a male-dominated profession and women depended completely on men for their livelihood. During her upbringing she knew the importance of money to women in a severely classist and patriarchal society, and so marriage was the answer to the survival of women during this time (Helms 32). Even knowing these qualities were important in her life she criticized them. Jane’s writing is somewhat comical, because even while criticising those normal discriminations in her book Pride and Prejudice, the book was published with a prejudiced nameless cover, shedding even greater light on the lack of sense and shortcoming of sensibility of eighteenth century Great Britain. So in order for women to hide their identity while writing about things that were highly controversial they used male pen names. Female authors resorted to pseudonyms to become published and to not be shunned away by their readers, and only after they did this their work was taken as serious literature. Although we ask why do we see Jane Austen’s name printed on all her classical works? That is because we see it “today” in the current year. During her lifetime Jane Austen remained pretty much unidentified because all her novels were published anonymously unde...
The theme of social status and society is prevalent in the novel of Emma, through the characters Emma, Mr. Knightley, Mr. Churchill, and their situations and perspectives on life. Austen describes Emma as, “handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her” makes her outlook disparate from characters such as Harriet (Austen, Emma 3). Immediately through her description, Austen indicates Emma’s haughty perspective on society through her referencing her friends as “first set” and “second set.” Through Emma’s classification of her friends by their social status and importance, first set being the superior and second set being the inferior and locum, the reader is able to have a glimpse of Emma’s outlook on society and it’s classes. (Knowledge Notes). Emma once again portrays the theme of social status and society through her views of people in lower classes than she such as Harriet and Mr. Martin. After Emma meets Harriet for the first time, she immediately decides that Harriet’s “soft blue eyes, and all those natural graces, should not be wasted on the inferior society of Highbury, and its connections” (Austen, Emma 20). Because of the social class difference between her and Mr. Martin, Emma regards him as someone who is inferior and advises Harriet to refuse his proposal. She claims that though “his appearance was very neat, and he looked like a sensible young man, but his person had no other advantage; and when he came to be contrasted with a gentleman, she thought he must lose all the ground…” (Austen, Emma 27) and that Harriet deserves someone more advantageo...
...an only find true happiness in marriage with someone who shares similar manners and treasure people’s qualities over their look and status. This is when Anne’s sensibility allows her to disregard her family’s persuasion and become determined to fulfill her love with Wentworth.
Austen was a recondite writer with a new inside perspective with an outside view on life in the early 19th century. Born on December 16, 1775, Austen was a curious child given the unseal luxury of an education. Her father was a part of the gentry class and raised a family of ten, but was not well off by any means (Grochowski). Sense and Sensibility, written by Jane Austen, tells a dramatic story of three sisters and their emotional journey where they encounter love and betrayal. Because Jane Austen was raised in a liberal family and received a comprehensive education, her dramatic analysis of societal behavior in Sense and Sensibility was comparable to the hidden truths of social and class distinctions in 18th and 19th century Europe.
Jane Austen is known for the use of free indirect discourse in her works. She uses this, along with vivid language to critique the social values of society during the feminist movement. One of her most famous works in which she uses both free indirect discourse and vivid language is Pride and Prejudice. Within Pride and Prejudice, Austen uses many different scenes to portray her thoughts on the social values of her era, but some of them do not contribute to the work as a whole. The social values of men, women, and the reasons for marriage are revealed in Pride and Prejudice in the scene of the Meryton ball and provide a direct connection to the theme of the hazards of first impressions.
Jane Austen's Persuasion is a dark novel. From the jolting breaks in the romantic drama--the falls of little Charles and Louisa Musgrove--to the heroine's depressing existence--Anne Elliot has a "great tendency to lowness" (Austen 66)-- to the overall autumnal mood, the work is at times a gloomy, though always interesting, read. Perhaps its darkest facet though is the ubiquitous presence of an antagonist. While Mr. Elliot appears, most blatantly, to be the villain, in actuality, it is Lady Russell, whose persuasions are both manipulative and, frighteningly, pervasive, who should truly bear that stigma.
Anne’s mother had ensured the stability and upkeep of the estate before she passed away, and she also kept track of the finances. When the idea of marriage arises with Mr. Elliot, Anne is captivated with taking the place of her mother at Kellynch. Austen states “The idea of becoming what her mother had been; of having the precious name of “Lady Elliot” first revived in herself; of being restored to Kellynch, calling it her home again, her home for ever, was a charm which she could not immediately resist”(Austen 130). When Anne realizes that Mr. Elliot plans to sell off the estate when he does inherit it, she quickly resists the idea of marriage with him. Austen uses Anne as a character who of the traditional aristocratic society but is open and encouraging towards the navy and the social shift they have started. Anne visits Kellynch while the Croft’s inhabit it and at first she has bitter feelings towards them in her home. However Austen writes of her change of opinion, “for she had in fact so high an opinion of the crofts, and considered her father so very fortunate in his tenants, felt the parish to be so sure of a good example, and the poor of the best attention and relief, that however sorry and shamed for the necessity of the removal, she could not but in conscience feel that they were gone who deserved not to stay, and that Kellynch-hall had passed into better hands than its owners”(Austen 102). Anne is well aware of the social shift happening, and Austen uses Kellynch to represent the internal change of inhabitants with the social change happening externally. Although Sir Walter still feels as though he owns Kellynch legally, the Croft’s seem to embody the idea and persona that comes with living in a grand estate such as Kellynch, Anne remarks how they have earned the right to live in that house and set a good example for society because of
It related her books to everyday life and appealed to the modern reader (Mullan, 2015, How Jane Austen’s Emma Changed the Face of Fiction). The way Jane wrote provided a gentle, easy-to-follow rhythm, using literary devices to move towards subjects floating through irony and criticism. This allows the reader to view the subject through humor and enjoyment but also clearly understanding the point Jane is trying to make (Collins, 2009, What Would Jane Do?).
Jane Austen's writing style is a mix of neoclassicism and romanticism. Austen created a transition into Romanticism which encourages passion and imagination in writing instead of a strict and stale writing style. It is very emotional and follows a flowing not structured form. Mixing these two styles was one of Austen's strongest talents, which gave her an edge in the literary world. No other author in her time was able to create such a strong transition between writing styles. Austen used her sharp and sarcastic wit in all of her writing including in one of her most famous works; Pride and Prejudice. She could create a powerful and dramatic scene and immediately lead it into a satirical cathartic scene. We see these in various locations in Pride and Prejudice. She was able to use her experiences as well as her intense knowledge to create meaningful insights into her words, regardless of what topic she would be discussing. She often talks about marriage, or breaking the roles of what a person should be. She made controversial works that praised imperfections which praised the...
Taylor, Matthew. "What Persuasion Really Means in Persuasion: A Mimetic Reading of Jane Austen." Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis and Culture 11 (2004): 105-23. Project MUSE. Web. 24 Feb. 2011. .