The mystery behind Jane Austen’s death is mainly due to the gross lack of understanding of disease during the Regency Era. As we learned from chapter one of Paula Byrne’s book The Real Jane Austen, young Miss Austen nearly died from a typhus infection when she was just a girl. One of several theories suggests that Miss Austen succumbed from a stress induced recrudescence of her original typhus infection, known as Brill-Zinsser Disease. However, because of the overwhelming incompetence of the medical field prior to the turn of the twentieth century, we can never truly be sure. By midway through the eighteenth century, the profession of apothecary was a booming business. Europe was plagued by disease, much of which was directly related to poor
Apothecaries, mostly men, were the first ones believed to trade in the Middle East. The knowledge of apothecaries gradually transmitted into Europe from merchants and traders. In the early Middle Ages the apothecary would cultivate all of the plants and herbs he would need for his medicines himself. In a later time, formal supply chains developed with individuals growing plants to order or supply to apothecaries. The recipes that each apothecary would use were passed down through the generations. These recipes were closely guarded seeing as the most successful apothecary would get more business.
Jane Austen died at the age of forty-one in Winchester, United Kingdom. A few months before her death, she made a will leaving everything to her sister Cassandra. The cause of Jane Austen's death is widely disputed. In 1964, Zachary Cope published an article in the British Medical Journal that suggested that Addison's disease was the cause of Austen's death. Before she had died, Austen had written many letters to her sister Cassandra complaining about her illness. In these letters she described many of the symptoms that occur when a person has acquired Addison's disease including skin discoloration, progressive weakness, and gastric upsets. Today, Addison's disease is the most widely accepted cause of Austen's death.
An author will often give his or her work a title that reflects the overall theme or meaning of the piece-this is certainly the case in Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice. A title may set the mood or describe a situation which otherwise might require several paragraphs to develop. Pride and Prejudice is a combination of humor, irony, and twists of events. Austen entitles her work Pride and Prejudice to emphasize subtly the fact that most characters in the work have a certain degree of pride or prejudice. Among the characters who display these traits are Mr. Collins, Mr. Wickham, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Miss Bingley, and, of course, Darcy and Elizabeth.
Jane Austen Society of North America, Inc. A Brief Biography. jasna.org. 26 April. 2014.
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...
Austen was raised in an unusually liberal family where her father was a part of the middle-landowning class. They had a moderate amount of luxuries, but were not considered well off. Unlike many girls of her time Austen received a fairly comprehensive education. She received this mainly through the undivided support of her family. Austen and her sisters, like most girls of their time, were homeschooled. Austen’s zealous parents encouraged the girls to play piano, read and write. Her parent’s encouragement led to her interest in writing. Austen’s father housed an extensive library filled with books which kept Austen occupied for years (“Sense and Sensibility” 119). Through her observant nature and passion to read and write, Austen was able to eloquently write of the many “hidden truths” of social and class distinction during her time. They included daily societal changes some of which foreshadowed future societal leniency. Familial support also extended societal norm of marriage. Her parents attempt...
Everyone has to enter into a new and unknown environment at some point in his or her life, but how would one expect a young, naïve girl, who has always lived a plain life with a poor family, to enter into a new, elegant, and cultured society? This is the situation that Jane Austen depicts for readers in Northanger Abbey and manages to present with appropriate satire and amusing humor. The young lady that Austen writes about is Catherine Morland; though she is well into her youth and almost a young adult, she is still immature and ignorant. Jane Austen successfully portrays and develops Catherine Morland toward maturity, heroism, and self-knowledge through having her leave her family for the first time, adapt to the sophisticated society of Bath, learn what life is really like outside the fictional novels she reads, and forge relationships with new people. “It,[Northanger Abbey], is the herald of Jane Austen's development of the theme of the heroine's transition from girlhood to womanhood” (Cummins).
To be a mentor is to hold influence over a person’s actions or education. Overall, “Emma” is a novel about the influence that people hold over each other, and how that influence can affect people. Conflict is built by different characters who view themselves as mentors struggling to assert their opinions over others and pupil characters who accept their mentor’s opinions without bothering to form their own.
"Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure will she have for it, even as an accomplishment and a recreation."
Both of the following Jane Austen novels, Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, are novels of purpose. These novels utilize the elements of love, individual rights, and moral perfection throughout the stories. These elements of love, individual rights, and moral perfection are shown mostly from the perspective of relationships. There are people who try and tamper with the elements of love, others individual rights, and some who suffer from moral imperfection. All in all this elements together make a novel of purpose.
Pride and Prejudice is a British novel written by Jane Austen. This book is one of the most cherished love stories in English Literature. Pride and Prejudice was written in the early 1800’s to replicate the relationships between men and women in Austen’s time. She portrayed Elizabeth, the second eldest of the Bennet daughters as fearless, independent, and more concerned about marrying for love than marrying for social status and stability. Elizabeth is able to still able to have the expectations of a woman without losing the ability to have her own opinion and strong state of mind. Austen created and highlighted one of the main characters, Elizabeth Bennet, to express the different morals she viewed, and how unalike she is from most of the young women in an early period of time.
Jane Austen is one of British literature’s most successful writers. Her enthusiastic writing and specific detailing are one of the many reasons Austen has a broad group of readers. Austen was even quoted by the novelist of that time to have a “talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with”- Sir Walter Scott (Graham3). Jane Austen’s proper upbringing and social standing in life, as well as her belief in the importance of social stability and class are clearly expressed throughout her classic novel Pride and Prejudice.
JANE AUSTEN, who writes the novel Emma, was the greatest novelist belonging to the second Romantic Age. She wrote only six novels of which Pride and Prejudice and Emma are famous.
Jane Austen, one of the most celebrated novelists, wrote seven of the most distinguished novels in the English language. Her first novel--which she started in 1795, revised in 1809 or 1810, and finally published in 1811—was Sense and Sensibility. Many agree that her most renowned work would be Pride and Prejudice. Austen began writing in her early twenties but did not publish her work until later in her life. She obtained a better education than most women of her time. Born in Steventon Village in Hampshire on December 16, 1775, Austen was born into an upper middle class family. She was the daughter of George Austen, a clergyman, and Cassandra Austen. Austen received her education at Reading Abby School. Before she was eighteen Austen had written three volumes of juvenilia and her first book was published at the age of thirty-five. Pride and Prejudice, originally titled First Impressions, was submitted to a London publisher by her father in 1797, a year after Austen began writing it. Although the novel was enjoyed by many of her friends and family, the publisher rejected it. She moved to Bath in 1801 and continued to work on First Impressions until 1805 when her father and a close friend passed away in which time she stopped writing for almost five years. In 1809 Austen moved to Hampshire at Chawton College, close to her hometown of Steventon and on January 28, 1813 Pride and Prejudice was published anonymously. Austen’s novels are about people of her societal class on courtship and marriage and throughout her life there were approximately fifteen anonymous reviews, three on Pride and Prejudice. James Edward Austen-Leigh, Austen’s nephew, wrote her first biography in 1870 portraying her as a benevolent, devout, “spin...
Part of the role that women fulfilled was the role of the weaker sex. Women were not considered equals to men, just merely side objects. They were viewed as frail and were to show no physical strength. In Pride and Prejudice, Austen writes, “ ‘To walk three miles, or four miles, or five miles, or whatever it is, above her ancles in dirt, and alone, quite alone! what could she mean by it?’” (Pride and Prejudice Austen 32). This talks of the headstrong character Elizabeth. It was unacceptable for a woman to have put herself in such a situation. This showed strength of independence in the character that was un-relatable to the other characters because women were expected to be weak and frail, such as when the one character Jane became sick with a sore throat and a headache she was laid up in bed for almost a full week. Jane wrote in a letter, “ I find myself very unwell this morning, which, I suppose, is to be imputed to my getting wet through yesterday. My kind friends will not hear of my returning home till I am better… excepting a sore throat and headache there is not much the matte...