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Write a note Social, Political and Literary on background of England during life of Jane Austen.

Jane Austen lived from 1775 to 1817. This period was a period of great political and social activity. It was, during this period that the American War of Independence was fought and won in 1776. The French Revolution took place (1789) beside the rise and fall of Nepolean etc. It was the period of Industrialization and the rise of the new rich class. It was also a period of Transition i.e., between the two periods. The age of Reason and Good sense and Age of Romanticism. There were three distinct classes of society. First, the landed aristrocracy and settled gentry. Second, the new rich class of industrialists and third, the workers, labourers etc. The class distinction were very rigid. It was the period when the power was gradually passing from the hands of the aristrocracy to the new rich class of industrialists who did not have the right to vote yet.

The novels of Jane Austen deals with the rural upper middle class. The aristocracy and lower classes have no place in her novels. Her novels do not deal with the events. Political and social events have no place in her novels. The upper middle class lived on earnings from rents and inheritances. Their respectability was in direct proportion to their wealth. The class distinction were very rigid. The traders who earned through were looked down upon. The upper middle class did not have to work to earn their living because they depended on their inherited property and the rents. So, they had no useful or worthwhile occupation. The female members kept themselves busy in needle work, music, dancing, drawing etc.

The great political turmoil left the English countryside untouched. But another great revolution of industrialization did not leave the country side unaffected. The great industries attracted workers and they moved from the English country side. Thus, new industrial complexes can cities came into existence and the villages. were depeleted of population. Goldsmith’s Deserted Village’ is an agonized outcry against growing industrilization.

Although the early novels of Jane Austen, such as, ‘Sense and Sensibility”. Pride and Prejudice’ and ‘Northnger Abbey’ were written at a time when S.T. Coleridge and William Wordsworth were issuing “The Lyrical Ballad’, which ushered in the Romantic Age, yet Jane Austen was totally unimpressed and untouched by romanticism. Romanticism upholds individual’s freedom from established norms. social, political, literary etc. It is emotional, informal and dynamic and allows free play to the artist’s imaginative faculty. Romanticism saw in Nature a transcendental power capable of improving upon the existing order of things which the romantics thought tragic. Jane Austen was nearer to the 18th Century neo classists in approach and supported the traditional values. She used almost no use of Nature in her novels. Jane Austen showed no awareness of Coleridge, Wordsworth Byron, Shelley, Keats, the great Romantic poets.

A decline had come over English novel writing after the great innovators of this form-Richardson and Fielding. The Gothic Romance, popularised by Horace Walpole etc, was in vogue when Scott and Austen appeared on the scene and stemmed the decline. Gothic Romances were two involved and ornate in conception and execution both. Magic mystery, supernatural, unnatural all formed part of such novels. Another strain was the novel of sentiment which incorporated many aspects of Gothic Romances besides empthasising emotional and pathetic situations in the preference to those of horror and suspense.

The village steventon, where Jane Austen was born, was in Hampshire. The countryside was beautiful and peaceful and the life was leisurely. The village consisted of a new cottages and the important families lived at some distance form each other on their estates. His father was the Rector and the Rectory was a house with a flat frontage and narrow roof, square rashed window and a trelised proch, the ground infornt had a curving drive with plantation of elm, chestnut and fur on one side of it.

Jane Austen was a close observer of life around her. She must have noted that her father The Rector and the Squire living in the Manor House, were the two central figures in the village life. She must have realized that the culture and social manners of her own house were not the same as that of others. All these objects can be observed in her novels abundantly.

Even though Jane Austen wrote about the world-that part of the world-she knew. She is always aloof and detached. She did not belong here also. She did not attack the aristrocracy, the privileged class. Since her genius was comic, not satirical, she invited ridicule on this class. The imperviousness of this class is recurring elements in her novels. These people were ignorant of any standard of values other than their own.

Summing up, it may be said that Jane Austen was keenly observant had a turn for satire, and had a strong sense of the ridiculus. As a little character Monger Jane Austen has plenty to say. Jane Austen chose comedy as her own sphere and excelled in it.