Ruined castles set amidst wild
mountains, aristocrats, suffering heroines and scenes "noisy with floods
of hysterical emotion"—the stuff that Gothic romance is made of—these
we may for a while put aside as we step into the genteel, rational and sensible
world of Jane Austen for whom "three or four Families in a country village is the
very thing to work on."
Here we have "no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck."
We need to confine our vision to drawing rooms and social gatherings. How
many among us would relish the thought of living in these elegant but confined
houses? Yet, it is in the confined and unvarying society of a country neighborhood
that Austen constantly offers us fresh insights into human nature through
her characters, for "people themselves alter so much that there is something new
to be observed in them forever."
Jane Austen (1775-1817), the author of novels like Sense and Sensibility, Pride and
Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion, is undoubtedly one of the greatest of English novelists. A
`fine painter of life,' her exquisite touch rendered an aura of distinction to
things supposedly ordinary and commonplace. Her universe might be a limited one,
but it has the authenticity of experience—the upper middle-class English
society, which she knew intimately. No wonder, realism is her forte. She could also
"Reveal so frankly and with such sobriety / the economic basis of society."
Money, she tells us in her novels, is the key to success in society; but she had
nothing but contempt for a marriage based on social advantage.
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