Jane Austen作者、写作风格及代表作简介

Jane Austen

Jane Austen (1775-1817) is a famous English female writer. She is the first mature novelist. Although she was born in the romantic period, she is not a romantic writer. She tends to be realistic, but is influenced by romanticism in some ways. Austen came from a well-cultured country family. As she published her novels anonymously, she was not famous in her lifetime. Scott admired her talent for portraying ordinary life in a wonderful way. Among her numerous strengths are her exquisite, compact prose, her moral judgment, her wit, and her vivid character portrayal. She was not married in her lifetime.

One thing to note about her fiction is its limited subject. She wrote her novels for her own family circle. Her novels cover just that section of society to which she belonged: the country gentry and their lives in the rural village setting. There is hardly any aristocrat or a poor peasant to feature as her major characters. It reveals a principle in literary creation that one can show one’s best when one makes the best of one’s best knowledge.

Austen’s writing feature is unifying the realistic and detailed portrayal of outward manners and behaviors combined with inward psychological exploration. Other features of her writing are the complex and subtle portrayal of characters, a classic precision of structure, a vivid and humorous dialogue, her quiet irony and her simple delicate analysis of character. Because of her “limitation”, her novels have neither heroic passions nor astounding adventures. Austen is the founder of the novel dealing with unimportant middle-class people. Her writing style is easy and effortless.

Pride and Prejudice is Austen’s masterpiece. The story is mainly about Mrs. Bennet’s four daughters’ marriage. Elizabeth, the second oldest daughter and Darcy’s love is used as the main plotline and the other three daughters’ marriage as the subordinate plot. In the story, Charlotte and Mr. Collins marry for material wealth and social position. Lydia and Wickham marry for passion. While, Elizabeth and Darcy, Jane and Bingley marry for true love. The gallery of woman here is simply glittering. It is the panorama view of the female gender in the world of men. Austen uses love and marriage as the subject matter, and dedicatedly describes the middle class and upper class’s life during late 18th to early 19th century. The theme of the story is that maturity is achieved through the loss of illusions.