JANE AUSTEN'S WRITINGS

JANE AUSTEN, THE AUTHOR.
1.An Overview
Jane Austen was born on 16 December, 1775, in Steventon, Hampshire, the seventh child of the parish rector, George Austen. She was very close to her family, especially her elder and only sister, Cassandra.
Jane began writing in her teens, and much of her juvenalia survives. In 1795, aged 19, she wrote Elinor and Marianne, later revised to become Sense & Sensibility . First Impressions, later called Pride & Prejudice , and Susan, which became Northanger Abbey, followed in quick succession.
Around 1800, when Jane was 25 and still unmarried, her parents decided to move to Bath. The actual move didn't take place until 1801 but Jane seems to have stopped writing. She didn't start again in earnest until 1810, apart from half a novel, The Watsons, which was written yet abandoned in 1804.
This silence coincides with a prolonged absence from her native Hampshire and a period of comparative upset and uncertainty: the move to unfashionable but still bustling Bath in 1801, a marriage proposal in 1802 - accepted and then rejected within a twenty-four hour period, the death of her father in 1805, moving to Southampton in 1806 before finally being given a modest but comfortable home back in her beloved Hampshire in 1809.
The second phase of Jane Austen's activities as a writer began in 1810 when she revised Elinor and Marianne for publication as Sense & Sensibility. Between 1811 and 1816 she wrote Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion, and had begun her last novel, Sanditon, which she never finished.In these years she finally found fame as an author, with the publication of Sense & Sensibility in 1811, followed by Pride & Prejudice in 1813, Mansfield Park in 1814 and Emma in 1815. Her name never appeared on any of her books while she was alive; they were instead inscribed as being 'By a Lady'. Perhaps this is because it was deemed a little racy for an unmarried lady of Jane Austen's class to indulge in the writing of novels. Inevitably, though, word spread about who she was.
Jane Austen died in 1817, at the age of 42, after a long illness. Persuasion and Northanger Abbey were published posthumously in 1818. In this publication her brother Henry wrote a short biographical note in which he names the author as Jane Austen and describes her life, and the months leading up to her death.
2.
In 1797, Cassandra's fiancé Tom Fowle died in the West Indies. They were to have married at Easter. Cassandra must have been devastated, but her sister's fortunes could not mar a very productive period in Jane Austen's writing life, hard at work as she was on First Impressions (Pride & Prejudice).
In 1798 Jane spent time in Bath with her relations, the Leigh-Perrots, and probably began work on Susan, later Northanger Abbey, soon afterwards, which is largely set in Bath. This novel, still entitled Susan, was bought by a London publisher, Cadell, for £10 but never published by him.
3.
By the time the Austens moved to Bath, the boys had all left home and their two sisters, in their late twenties, were looking decidedly spinsterly. Unexpectedly, in 1802, Jane received a proposal of marriage from Harris Bigg-Wither, an old friend of the family and six years Jane's junior. She accepted, but changed her mind overnight, retracting her acceptance the next morning and escaping back to Bath in distress. There is nothing to suggest that Harris Bigg-Wither was at all suitable as a life partner for Jane, but she hadn't handled herself very well.
It turned out to be Jane's last chance at marriage. The next few years of her life were characterised by further upset and her muse deserted her. But almost immediately upon settling back in Hampshire, her writing spirit returned. Her novel Susan was sent back, six years late, by its would-be publisher in 1809, but Jane was already at work revising Sense & Sensibility, which was to eventually be her first published novel.
4.
Many of Jane Austen's letters survive, but many were also destroyed - probably by Cassandra. Perhaps they showed Jane in a bad light. By the time of her early death in 1817 she was enjoying a reasonable amount of fame and the family seemed interested in preserving a rather saintly image of the author. Her brother Henry penned a biographical preface to the posthumously published Northanger Abbey and Persuasion which reads like a particularly cloying obituary: 'Faultless herself, as nearly as human nature can be, she always sought, in the faults of others, something to excuse, to forgive and forget.'
5.
In a time when gentlewomen were not properly educated, not allowed to work and generally not able to own property, not to make every effort to get married could be seen as irresponsible and a burden on the rest of the family. But Austen's heroines are not desperate to rush into marriage, and end up getting married because they fall in love, not the other way around. Sometimes rather sentimental, often stubborn, they are above all intelligent and quick-witted, willing and capable of learning from their mistakes.
6.
There is more similarity between Austen's heroes, who tend to be reserved and intelligent men.. Edward Ferrars, Edmund Bertram and Captain Wentworth take their careers seriously, and Darcy and Mr Knightly are often observed managing their estates and business affairs. Henry Tilney is rather less reserved but no less mature and sensible. Moreover there is a steadiness and constancy in the way they conduct themselves.
Above all, these men bring with them intimations of a life away from the oppressive society of the drawing-room and the often silly or mean-spirited influence of the older women who are prisoners in their own lives, reduced to spending all their time gossiping and match-making.
7.
Jane Austen's particular skill is to draw her characters so precisely that we feel we know them, or know someone very like them. Her anti-heroes, the Wickhams and Willoughbys of the stories, are charming and entertaining, not villains but weak and immature men who get themselves into sticky situations through selfishness and lack of judgement. A woman such as Mrs Bennett is excruciating, but she is also a victim of circumstances. Never taught anything other than how to charm a man into marrying her, saddled with five daughters and a husband who has all but absented himself from his responsibilities with regards to his family, she is in a difficult position and the reader cannot help but admire her energy, if nothing else!
8.
Jane Austen is rightly celebrated for the insightful portrayal of people and situations, but she is also an important factor in the development of the novel, the literary form she prized above all.
The modern novel owes more to Austen in terms of structure than, say, Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, or Samuel Richardson's Clarissa. When Austen was writing, the novel was in its infancy and many 18th-Century novels were sprawling, often epistolary affairs, long-winded and melodramatic. The novel was not particularly highly regarded as a literary form, it was seen mostly as a form of entertainment. The Austen family was very fond of novels, and the evidence is that the young Jane's avid reading was not particularly censored.
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