Paper-103 Assignment: Jane Austen

        

Paper-103 Assignment: Jane Austen 

 Name: Avani Jani

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

Enrollment N/o.: 4069206420220014

Roll N/o.: 04

Subject code & Paper N/o.: 22394- Paper 103: Literature of the romantic period.

E-mail Address: avanijani.18@gmail.com

Submitted to: Smt. S.B. Gardi Department of English- M.K.B.U.

Date of submission: 7th November, 2022

             Society has never been kind to the Women who write. We barely find countable women with their literary contributions. Jane Austen is one of them.People Who knew Jane Austen described her as pretty She was attractive, both in appearance and in personality The only authenticated likeness is an amateurish pencil and watercolor drawing, now in the National Portrait Gallery, Lon don, by Jane's elder sister, Cassandra . Yet Cassandra's drawing shows a woman more sharp-featured than appealing: the eyes are large and beautiful, glancing keenly at something to the left of the picture, and the eyebrows are well marked. Her curls escape charmingly from the cap, but there are lines of disappointment running from nose to mouth, and the mouth itself looks small and mean. She looks like a peevish hamster. Her niece Anna Austen Lefroy, daughter of Jane Austen's eldest brother, dismissed the portrait as hideously unlike. An even more mysterious picture of Jane by Cassandra is a pencil and watercolor sketch giving a back view of her in a pale blue dress, and in which most of the face is concealed by a large blue bonnet. Although it was said by a fellow author that her cheeks were ' a little too full ' when she was a young girl, she was agreed to be good-looking, with a fine complexion of rich color, brown rather than fair. Her reddish-brown hair curled naturally. A lock survives but time has ached it. Her nose was narrow and possibly rather long, like those of her mother and sister. (Myer #)

Birth and Family Life

Jane Austen came into the world on December 16th, 1775. Born to Reverend George Austen of the Steventon rectory and Cassandra Austen of the Leigh family. She was to be their seventh child and only the second daughter to the couple. Her siblings were made up largely of brothers, which in some ways forced a close relationship with her elder sister, Cassandra (not to be confused with the mother who also carried the name Cassandra - but further referred to as Mrs. Austen). In order of birth, the Austen children were as follows: James, George, Edward, Henry, Cassandra, Francis, Jane, and Charles. Of all the brothers, it would be Henry with which Jane would form the closest bond, playing the part of Jane's literary agent in the later stages of her writing.

Growing up, the Austen children lived in an environment of open learning, creativity, and dialogue. Mr. Austen worked away in the rectory and also tried his hand at farming on the side to earn more money for the growing family. Additionally, he would take on teaching roles within the home to outside children for additional funds. The Austen children would all grow within this close-knit family with Jane herself forming an exceptional bond with her father.

In 1783, at the age of 8, Jane and her sister Cassandra were sent off to boarding school for their formal education. Education would consist of the appropriate teachings of the time, which included foreign language (mainly French), music, and dancing. Returning home, the rest of Jane's education centered mainly around what her father and brothers could teach her and, of course, what she could learn from her own reading. As Mr. Austen was part of the church, he kept a large collection of literature in his home library. This library was open to Jane and Cassandra as well and the two made extensive use of it in both reading and writing endeavors, with Jane taking the lead in both. Mr. Austen fed Jane's interest in writing by supplying his books, paper, and writing tools to allow her to explore her creative side. By all accounts, life inside the Austen homestead was a casual environment where many an attempt at humor was made with some very good debating going on on the side.

It became quite common for the family to invest time and energy into making home-based productions of existing plays or writing and acting out their own creations. One can only assume that it was in these exercises that the true talent of Jane Austen was being nurtured - through observation, improvisation, acting, and participation.

Despite her youthful popularity, all of Jane's relationships with men came to nothing. Her obstinate heart forbade her to marry except for love. The flippant, flirtatious teenager faded into a middle-aged maiden aunt, dowdy not because she chose to be - indeed she loved clothes but because she was poor. In a society where dowries were looked for, her poverty may well have been one of the reasons she never married. The plots of Jane's novels and her refusal to marry for convenience make it plain that she believed in marrying for love, she knew that in the real world most men had a way of falling in love with girls who brought money with them. We have reason to be selfishly grateful that Jane Austen never did attach a husband. With a growing family, she would have found it hard to concentrate, even if she had married a rich man. If she had married a younger son or a clergyman she would have been equally poor and rather more harassed. Instead of direct descendants, she left us the inimitable novels. (“Jane Austen Biography”)

Works:

Jane Austen completed only six official works during her lifetime. While this may present something of a seemingly limited representation of her talents, today each work is well-known and recognized around the globe, highly regarded for their clear messages delivered by a memorable cast of characters. No doubt her actual life and personal interactions benefited her writing prowess for each work takes on a life of its own.

Jane Austen, (born December 16, 1775, in Steventon, Hampshire, England—died July 18, 1817, in Winchester, Hampshire) was, an English writer who first gave the novel its distinctly modern character through her treatment of ordinary people in everyday life. She published four novels during her lifetime: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1815). In these and in Persuasion and Northanger Abbey (published together posthumously, 1817), she vividly depicted English middle-class life during the early 19th century. Her novels defined the era’s novel of manners, but they also became timeless classics that remained critical and popular successes for over two centuries after her death

Her earliest known writings date from about 1787, and between then and 1793 she wrote a large body of material that has survived in three manuscript notebooks: Volume the First, Volume the Second, and Volume the Third. These contain plays, verses, short novels, and other prose and show Austen engaged in the parody of existing literary forms, notably the genres of the sentimental novel and sentimental comedy. Her passage to a more serious view of life from the exuberant high spirits and extravagances of her earliest writings is evident in Lady Susan, a short epistolary novel written about 1793–94 (and not published until 1871). This portrait of a woman bent on the exercise of her own powerful mind and personality to the point of social self-destruction is, in effect, a study of frustration and of a woman’s fate in a society that has no use for her talents.

The listing below (ordered by publication date) covers Jane Austen's six completed novels (note that two were published after her death), her two unfinished novels, and her 'Juvenilia;' stories. Despite her short time behind the writing desk, Jane Austen remains one of the most well-known and admired writers in literary history.  Persuasion is the shortest read and should provide you with a good foundation for her writing style. It comes in at just 24 chapters. Her more 'classic' works are Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, and Emma. Based on our statistics, the order of popularity (from most to least) for the novels in modern times is as follows: Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, Persuasion, Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Mansfield Park.

Juvenilia Stories:

Lady Susan (unfinished)

From Juvenilia:

  Volume the First

    Jack and Alice

    Henry and Eliza

  Volume the Second

    Love and Friendship

    The History of England

  Volume the Third

    Catharine; or, The Bower

    Evelyn

Jane Austen spent her entire life in a poor relationship. Although socializing with richer neighbors and visits to landed relatives gave her an insight into the way wealthy people lived, it was very different from her own life of genteel poverty. She lived on the outside looking in. A younger daughter, less admired than her sister, who took precedence over her, she was a mere " Miss Jane Austen. " As a single woman without money, she was marginal to society. Her equivocal position molded her outlook, and her surviving letters betray moments of bitterness. Although a rich man proposed, her obstinate heart prevented her from marrying except for love. Despite a few years of growing reputation as a writer, which she keenly enjoyed, hers was a life of disappointment and frustration. Her criticisms of other writers show she knew the value of her own work and she fretted that it was not better paid. She admitted being greedy for money and begrudged Walter Scott his place among the novelists when he was already rich and famous as a poet. Such recognition she received came late in her short life, and during her lifetime only four of her books were published, all of them anonymously.

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Works Cited

“Jane Austen Biography.” Jane Austen, https://www.janeausten.org/jane-austen-biography.php. Accessed 6 November 2022.

Myer, Valerie Grosvenor. https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=KC4hPCXf2jwC&oi=fnd&pg=PP11&dq=jane+austen+biography&ots=1J_LnIojL7&sig=uJZxEwKVUm2_osZrxqKC0xwVYfk&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=jane%20austen%20biography&f=false.