"Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen"
Jane Austen was born at Steventon, Hampshire, on 16 December 1775. She was the seventh of eight children of Reverend George and Cassandra Leigh Austen. Austen was very closed to her by three years elder sister, Cassandra, who was the only person that Jane wanted read her written work and constantly asked for her opinion. (Magill Critical Survey of Short Fiction 119-120)
From about the time she was twelve years old, Austen began writing spirited parodies of the popular Gothic and sentimental fiction of the day for the amusement of her family, but her attempts at more sustained and serious work began around 1794. At first the form of her work was a novel in letters, which was a popular form at the time. Such was the form of her novel "Sense and Sensibility", an epistolary work that was completed between the years 1795 and 1797, entitled "Elinor and Marianne" (Magil Critical Survey of Long Fiction 159-160).
In 1801 her father retires and Jane with her parents and her sister moved to Bath, but few years later in 1805 her father died. After his death, the church took the house that the Austen family used to live in. Her nephew James Edward Austen - Leigh in A Memoir of Jane Austen describes their financial state: "For the next for years Mrs. Austen and her two daughters, with a small income, were living first in lodgings" (339), which were the years that Jane Austen had stopped writing.
In 1808 her brother Edward Austen provided them with a permanent residence in Chawton Cottage, and at this house Austen decided to revise her earlier work "Elinor and Marianne." She worked very delightedly for its revision; as Jane herself wrote in one of her letters to her sister Cassandra: "I am n...
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---. Jane Austen. Vol 1. Critical Survey of Short Fiction. Salem Press: 1993. 119-123.
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Litz, A. Walton, Jane Austen: A Study of Her Artistic Development. Oxford University Press, 1965, p. 198.
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.
...line of thinking makes perfect sense when we consider Jane Austen's tendency, particularly in Sense and Sensibility, to use her writing as a vehicle for not only entertainment but also instruction. We may view the varying representations of mothers then, not only as examples for Elinor to learn from, but for us as readers as well.
Although writings were fictional she used precise incidents and described her own life with extraordinary detail. Her writings were creating a window into the thoughts, actions, relationships, and morality of daily life. The honesty in her writing is an impeccable eye opener to how things really were (Sutherland, Jane Austen: Social Realism and the Novel). Jane also included the perspective of women in the gentry class. In the 19th century, women had limited opportunity. The main focus of a woman 's life was to be married into social respect and financial security. Austen included this aspect in her stories. With most of the life of a women being inside, it was crucial to include conversation in her fiction. Not only did she include it, but she “wrote some of the most natural and real-seeming conversations in literature.” (Sutherland, Jane Austen’s Social Realism and the Novel). Jane wrote her heroines to be realistic, average, everyday people to appeal to the modern day world. Her protagonists were most always “strong and firm in their determinations.” Instead of seeing heroes as unrealistic images portrayed in Gothic novels, she made a hero that wasn’t necessarily obvious. This appealed to most everyone in the century and no longer portrayed women as shallow, but as deep, strong characters that have emotions and needs just like everyone else (Christine 2012, Writer
Scott, Walter. "Scott on Jane Austen." 1826. Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage. Ed. B. C.
Jane Austen was born December 16, 1775 in Steventon, England to George and Cassandra Austen. Jane had many different types of education. At age six she was sent away to Oxford with her sister Cassandra. Three years later, they both got sick and were sent to Madame Latoelle, who conducted Abbey School. After the Abbey School, they were sent home to be educated by their father. Jane was never married but was very close. In 1801, she was engaged to a man named Blackall, but all ended it because of his sudden death. In 1802, another man proposed, but she declined because she did not love him. In 1802 her first novel, Northanger Abbey, was published. In 1812 published her most famous book Pride and Prejudice, originally known as First Impressions. Later she died in Winchester, England on July 18, 1817.
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