Jane Austen: Writing What You Know

For this week’s blog, I would like to further explore the parallels between Jane Austen’s life and her novels. Firstly, her life in the country, her education at home, the close friendship with her sister, and her brothers’ careers as military officers are all reflected in Pride and Prejudice, as well as her other novels, through her characters and settings. In addition, she made visits to a brother in London and to a brother who lived on a wealthy estate, while also moving to and living in Bath with her family for a time, all of which indicate settings or travel destinations in her characters’ stories. Like the female party of the Dashwood family in Sense and Sensibility, after Mr. Austen’s death, Jane, her sister, and mother were forced to relocate, dependent on her brothers’ generosity, and eventually living in a cottage provided by one of her brothers. Austen also fell in love with a man who was forced to marry for money elsewhere, while rejecting a proposal from another whom she respected, but was not in love with. This is obviously reflected through the way in which Austen uses her novels to critique the marriage system for its economic priorities over considerations of romantic love.  Finally, Mr. Austen encouraged Jane to write and even promoted her novels, which may indicate a close relationship between her and her father like that of the one between Elizabeth and Mr. Bennett in Pride and Prejudice. Altogether, Jane Austen’s personal biographical information has close ties to the plots, characters, and criticisms integral to her novels. Although Austen was said to have lived a “quiet life,” we can see that she charted the interactions between the middle class and the wealthier classes of society in her novels, as well as pursued settings of both town and country, which relates to her personal acquaintance with a diverse range of people and locales (within England itself). Such a strong link between Austen’s life and novels enables the reader to gain a vivid and somewhat realistic picture of English society at the time, and more importantly, an idea of Austen’s perception of her society’s norms.

Sources:

http://www.jasna.org/info/about_austen.html

http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2013/januaryfebruary/feature/the-mysterious-miss-austen

Chawton Cottage where Jane lived after her father's death.

 http://www.jasna.org/info/about_austen.html