Jane Austen

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SENSE AND SENSIBILITY (1811)

To Jane Austen there were people of sense and people of fine sensibility, but little sense. In this novel of early 19th century English life she makes it quite clear that she admires men and women of sense. Although the dialogue of this early novel may seem stilted at times and the characters overdrawn, they combine to give a clear picture of the manners of upper- and middle-class English society of that period.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1813)

In this masterpiece, Austen follows an empty-headed mother's scheming to find suitable husbands for her five daughters. With gentle irony, the author re-creates in meticulous, artistic detail the manners and morals of the country gentry in a small English village, focusing on the intelligent, irrepressible heroine Elizabeth. Both major and minor characters are superbly drawn; the plot is beautifully symmetrical; and the dazzling perfection of style shows Austen at her best.

MANSFIELD PARK (1814)

This novel is the antithesis of Pride and Prejudice in that it provides that darkness she found missing in the former. As such, Mansfield Park has sometimes been considered atypical of Jane Austen, as being solemn and moralistic. Mansfield Park condemns rather than forgives: "its praise is not for social freedom but for social statis. It takes full notice of spiritedness, vivacity, celerity, and lightness, only to reject them as having nothing to do with virtue and happiness, as being, indeed, deterrents to the good life." The heroine is also different, in that Austen chooses for her heroine a woman from the socially and financially precarious lower fringe of the middle class.