JANE AUSTEN

Jane Austen

Jane Austen was born in 1775 at Steventon, Hampshire. Her family, that she was deeply attached to, belonged to the local gentry. Her mother came from an old family and her father was an educated clergyman; he possessed a rich library where Jane read lots of novels, histories, essays and sermons.

When the Austens moved to Bath, Jane was disappointed because she didn’t like that noisy town: so when her father died, she moved to Southampton together with her sisters. In a cottage at Chawton, she revised and published “Sense and Sensibility” and “Pride and Prejudice”(1813). There she also wrote her last novels.

 

“Sense and Sensibility” was written by Jane when she was 17. She read her novel to  her family that encouraged her to write. The two protagonists of the book, Elinor and Marianne, are two sisters standing for “sense” and “sensibility” respectively. Elinor is a self-controlled woman who waits for the man she loves and is involved in an impulsive engagement. On the contrary, the passionate Marianne learns at her expenses that brilliant young men are not always good husbands. She ends by getting married to an elder man whom she gets to a less passionate but more realistic happiness.

   

  “Pride and Prejudice”  

takes place at the beginning of the XIX century. Jane Austen, as usual, set in a small provincial district in the countryside.The characters belong to the rural gentry of the middle class; industrial towns and natural scenes as well as aristocracy and humble classes are excluded from Jane Austen’s works, as she wanted to deal with what she knew deeply. ‘Pride and Prejudice’  tells us the heart-warming story of getting the man of your dreams – and all the troubles that are connected with it. The Bennett family are living a calm and quiet life in Longbourn.  Mr. Bingley, a young man of good fortune, is going to become their neighbour. What a chance for silly Mrs. Bennett to get one of her five daughters married! With the arrival of Mr. Bingley, Mr. Darcy, and, later in the story, clergyman Mr. Collins and Officer Mr. Wickham, Mrs. Bennett tries her best to get those men’s attention for her daughters. The story is told by a third person narrator, who describes the physical appearance and the thoughts of her characters, and judges them adding a didactic purpose as well.