 
Fact or Fiction:
Women, Marriage and Men
In Jane Austen's circles, women were almost wholly dependent on men
for their survival. Estates were passed from male to male, and only widowed women - who could be bequeateed their husband's
estates- onwed property.
Marriage was the only sure way for a woman to gain financial security
if, like the Bennets in Pride and Prejudice, there were no brothers to inherit the family money. In their case, the
estate could only be inherited by a male; thus Mrs. Bennet is anxious to marry off her daughters.
A man lacking fortune likewise looked for a suitable marriage, and
a prospective wife was more attractive if her husband was to inherit 'her' fortune. The themes in Jane Austen's novels were
no different to the realities of her own life -her youthful flirtation with Thomas Lefroy ened Lefroy when it became known
that neither had a fortune. Lefroy's relatives packed him off to Ireland where, after only a year, he became engaged to a
'considerable fortune'. He went on to become Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.
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Jane Austen
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Common Themes
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*~COMMON THEMES ~*
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The main theme of Austen's
first full novel, Sense and Sensibility, is that sensibility - responsiveness,
openness, enthusiasm - is highly desirable, but that it must be tempered by good sense and prudence. In other words,
a person needs both sense and sensibility for fulfillment and survival. Nineteen-year-old Elinor Dashwood, the elder of the
two sisters at the center of the story, combines both qualities; her 16-year-old sister, Marianne, is less balanced. In Sense
and Sensibility Austen challenges her readers and her characters to look closely at all facets of an individual's personality.
In so doing, Austen has been criticized for creating characters who are morally good, but too flawed to be appealing. For
instance, Elinor may strike an ideal balance between sense and sensibility, but she also can strike the reader as cold and
judgmental. Austen recognized that real people are flawed in significant ways, and so she did not permit the characters in
her romances to drift too far from life.
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As do Austen's earlier writings, Pride and Prejudice
displays the themes of appearance versus reality, and impulse versus
deliberation. Elizabeth, trusting her own impulses, makes a mistake about Darcy and his apparent arrogance that deliberation
and further experience eventually cause her to correct. Of Elizabeth, Austen wrote: "I must confess that I think her as delightful
a creature as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her...I do not know."
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Mansfield Park is Jane
Austen's most ambitious novel in length, in variety of characterization, and in the scope of its theme.
It centers on the effects of upbringing on personal morality in three families: the middle-class Bertrams, the fashionable
Crawfords, and the impoverished Prices. Austen has been praised for her presentation of the complex relations between the
members of the families, but as in Sense and Sensibility, she frustrates the expectations of her readers that the
hero and heroine be vital, attractive characters.
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An important topic in Mansfield
Park, as in Persuasion, and to a lesser extent in the rest of Austen's fiction, is religion. Near the end of
the novel, Edmund Bertram is ordained a priest in the Church of England in spite of Mary Crawford's insistence that a career
in the church is unchallenging and dull, unworthy of Edmund. The Anglican ministry, and its significance and importance (or
lack thereof), are discussed several times in the course of the novel.
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The subject of the novel Emma is self-deception, and the book's heroine is the personification
of this subject. The novel follows the evolution of the lovely Emma from a domineering, self-infatuated meddler into a chastened
young woman ready for marriage to the admirable and aptly named Mr. Knightly. He helps her to see herself more clearly and
guides her away from a future as disastrously, and comically, muddled as her past. Emma is considered not as witty
as Pride and Prejudice, and its heroine is not as appealing as Elizabeth Bennet. But Emma's self-delusion,
and the slow but progressive awareness by which she arrives at self-knowledge, give the novel a unity and perfection of form.
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"Austen, Jane," Microsoft® Encarta® Online
Encyclopedia 2005
http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2005 Microsoft Corporation.
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