Jane Austen
Jane Austen was an English novelist who lived from 1775 to 1817. She is known for her witty and insightful portrayals of the lives of the English upper-middle class in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Her novels are known as classics of English literature and are used as educational tools all over the world. Dozens of films, television shows, and stage productions have been produced based on her works.
Austen’s works often explore the dependence of women on marriage for the pursuit of favorable social standing and economic security. With witty critiques on late 18th century sensibilities and excellent use of a new technique called free direct speech, her novels capture reader’s attention. She seamlessly weaves from a narrative voice to the thoughts and feelings of her characters. Her work in this field paved the way for many authors to explore the same technique.
Jane Austen was one of the first writers to create realistic, complex characters in her novels. Before her, most novels featured characters that were two dimensional – they were either wholly good or very wicked. In her novels Jane Austen mixes things up, creating characters who are true to life, with good and bad points, who mean well but get things wrong, or who behave badly but we can’t help liking them anyway.
Characters in her novels are disguised by their formal language and social etiquette of 200 years ago, but if we look past this we can see that her novels are full of people we can recognise from our everyday lives. We all know a complacent Mr Collins, a boy-mad party girl like Lydia Bennet or a lying Mr. Wickham. The formality of the Regency period may seem distant from our day-to-day experience, but the characters within it are still recognisable.
Austen was adept at challenging social norms – she never married and dared to become a full time writer. At the time, women were expected to be little more than homemakers and Jane Austen’s willingness to push this boundary and write left a huge impact on literature. Due to the negativity surrounding female authors, Jane never published her books under her own name and she was only publicly credited to be the author after her death. Today, her books are used as mandatory reading in high schools, used as teaching aids in writing workshops, and stand proudly on the shelves next to books of her male counterparts.
Jane Austen produced seven completed novels during her lifetime with three being published posthumously. Perhaps her most famous novel is Pride and Prejudice which has been adapted for film. An astonishing 30 million copies of her novels have been sold worldwide.
Authors like Jane Austen are stylistic innovators –not only opening the door for other female authors to follow in her footsteps, but using revolutionary writing styles that now allow others to explore styles of their own. Her creative spirit paves the way for authors to flex against ‘the rules’ of writing and push boundaries in the art. Our novels are genre-bending works that find a place in several categories such as science fiction/romance, inspirational fiction, autobiography.
Influenced by Austen and other authors like her, we pushed boundaries and created something new and interesting. Austen was a realist who combined social realism with a certain moral seriousness which is something that inspires our writing. The activities of our characters range from fantastical adventures to the norms of everyday life but in each we present the real-life social and moral aspects of each situation. As moralists like Austen, we analyze and critique human nature in several aspects of life and promote a greater good.
