Jane Austen traces “the complex relationship between men and women from different social backgrounds.” Discuss with special reference to Pride and Prejudice.

Jane Austen was influenced by Fanny Burney and wrote to “relax into laughter at myself or at the other people.” She felt, “I must keep to my own style, and go on in my own way.” In her novels we get the flawless perfection of a great domestic novelist, giving her readers her own version of the human comedy. Her preoccupation with domestic life was so great that she has not recorded the stirring events of her times. Her novels remind us of the artistic impersonality and serene abstraction from life that we get in the work of Shakespeare.

She limits herself to a world which she know best. So Jane has compared her work to miniature painting on ivory “on which I work with so fine a brush as produces little effect after much labour.” Her novels – Pride and Prejudice‘, ‘Northanger Abbey’, ‘Emma’, ‘Mansfield Park’, ‘Persuation’ and ‘Sense and Sensibility’ do not present white heats of exalted imagination or momentary illuminations of the abysses of human life. She has painted in them steady stream of daylight on familiar objects, a perfect proportion and clearness.

Absolute transparency of her style is the medium in which her. characters breathe and move. It is illusive in its nature. Art was never applied to average material with so little ostentation and so wonderful an effect. Her characters do not grow in her mind as she writes. These steps fully realized from her mind into the book. In the opening pages of her novels there occur traits of character which we are able to appreciate truly only when we read them the second time. In them she handles and shapes freely the material supplied by life. Her novels contain authoritative descriptions of middle class life in the counties during the period of the Napoleonic war. But we should never forget that while giving the picture of the domestic life of her time; “Satire is the element in she lives.”

The characters she draws all are true human beings. With the normal light and shade of human character. She gives them a perfect freedom to express themselves and then she strikes a note of her own, in perfect tune with the speeches of her characters and at once there is a sublimation of character drawing a note of depth and solemnity tempering pure amusement. From mere triviality, the words become suddenly surcharged with a profoundly which stirs the reader to the entire depth of his moral being, and then once again the old gay common place of life. Comes back and the note of serenity is merged in the ebb and flow of human existence.

Her characters are the mirror of the 19th century specially in their treatment. There is naturalness and reality in speech and behaviour of the characters. They think, speak, and acts as real human beings do. Her portraits are remarkable for their finish, their closeness to human nature and the skill with which she exposes motives. She stands unrivalled in her power of revealing character by means of dialogue alone. She develops her characters to perfection. Each of her character has distinct personality.

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