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A Country Picnic
An innocous occasion like a country outing becomes -in Austen's hands- a veritable watershed. In
Emma, a picnic is the setting for the arrogant heroine's fall from grace, and marks a turning-point in the novel.
A Gothic Novel
Austen's early novel, Northanger Abbey, displays the impish spirit of her girlhood writings. In it
she parodies the poplular Gothic novel in all its melodrama of style and subject.
Friends and Sisters
In her novels, Jane Austen creates a galaxy of female characters from the delightful to the odious.
THe subtlety and intimacy of female relationships is one of her art. She depicts men solely in relation to women - negotiating
the pitfalls of the drawing room rather than the battlefield.
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