Jane Austen the contemporary love poets struggles hard to get a rich among the English novelists. Her claim has been lately acknowledged. She suffered neglect and got scanty encouragement in her own generation. The manuscript of her own greatest novel Pride And Prejudice in 1797 (published-1813) will begins for sixteen years before it found a publisher. Her fame steadily grew and now she is recognised as one of the greatest novelist in realist and domestic fiction. Jane Austen is a highly sophisticated artist with much cleanness and neatness of his heart. Like Keats, she is also considered a protagonist of the theory art for art sake. She possessed the magic touch and a talent for miniature painting. No doubt her range is limited but her touch is true. She uses a little but two inches of ivory. Her work is indeed that of a miniaturist of illuminator. Jane Austen was a very careful artist. She wrote the novels with much care she introduced nothing in her novel that did not have a clearly defined reason and did not contribute to the plot, the drama of feeling and moral structure. She knew precisely what she wanted to do and she did it in the way that suited her last. The secret of her power lies in the complete mastery. She has been considered as a writer of a pure novel. The range of his novel was limited. Two or three family in a village are just the subject in which she worked. Decidedly, the range of her novel was limited but writing the limitation, she was non-pariel. No other writer of fiction has ever achieved such great result by such using insignificant means, none of her has material so severely limited expended such brevity and perfection of craftsmanship.
Jane Austen is a true classicist in his attitude towards morality and emotions. She was not cynical about love and she scolds the marriage of convenience. She believes that democracy is more important than happiness. She rightly believes through marriage may be made in heaven but they must be lived on heaven but they must be lived in earth. Poetry and passions were not within her range and the lyrical note in her novels is theme but she was a great novelist among her age. She gave a new to the novel, art and style which is once had particularly in fielding but which it had since last she describes the English country scene with skill and fidelity. She gives a glowing picture of the social manners of the 18th century. Her sense of reality is best presented in ‘Mansfield Park’ the whole passage in which Austen describes ‘Fanny’s journey’ is a masterpiece of realistic writing and shows what Jane Austen could have done. What is more, her artistic skill and perfection are manifested in her plot construction. Her plots are not simple but compound. They did not comprise barely the story of the hero and heroine. In ‘Pride And Prejudice‘ there are severe pairs of lovers and stories from the component parts of the plot but parts brought together into a single whole. In her novels, the parts are skillfully fured together as to form one compact whole. Her novels are not novels of action but are conversation. The place of action is taken over by conversation. It is said “no novelist since fielding is the master of structure”. Pride And Prejudice has not only humour of Shakespearean comedy but also its technique. For a paralleled to workmanship of the high order, one can look only to Shakespeare to such a comedy as much ado about nothing.
The great contribution of Jane Austen in the English novel is her skill in the splendid portrait glory filled with so many delightful and amusing man and woman. In her novels women are sometimes malicious and the man priggish. Her characters are not types but individual. She creates living characters both male and female and draws them in their private aspects. Her characters are not only living but are also original. Her male characters have a certain softness of temper but her female characters are almost perfect. The another significant feature of Jane Austen is that she is a satirist as well as moralist. Satire is an element in which Jane Austen lives but her satires are not harsh and bitter as that of swift with satire she combines love for morality. No wonder, her novels are good lessons in morality. Walter Allen rightly points out “Jane Austen was moralist on 18th century moralist”. In some respect was unlost and the finest flower of that century at its quint essential. Taste, sense and ethics, there are three principal elements in Jane Austen ethics.
In Jane Austen we find the quality of a dramatist, her genius was essentially dramatic. As a novelist Jane Austen employed the dramatic form used by fielding. Instead of describing analysing the characters, she makes them new themselves in their actions and dialogues. The plot is also carried forward through a succession off short scenes in dialogue. The plot of Pride And Prejudice is dramatic. Bakes point out that both the theme and plot structure of Pride an And Prejudice are remarkably dramatic. He divides the novel in to five acts of high comedy. Significantly Jane Austen’s attitude towards life is that of a humourist and this is perceptible. In pride and prejudice Elizabeth says “I dearly love a laugh” she laugh at follies and nonsense, whim and inconsistently. Folly is chief source of laughter in the novels of Jane Austen and she creates comic characters who provide nothing but laughter. Her memorable comic characters are Mrs. Bennett and Mrs. Collins. Despite all the characteristic features and contributions of Jane Austen towards English novel the use of irony is the conspicuous aspect of Jane Austen humour. A great service he had rendered to the English novel is her efforts towards the development of the flexible and smooth flowing prose style. Her prose nicely and easily and enables her narrative to proceeds onward without any hitch or obstacles. What is more, her style can be separated from her self or her methods. It is natural, easy flowing garment of her mind delighting in consisting and infinite detail. Jane Austen unleashed her influence and impacts not only on Victorian novelist but also many other novelist. Unquestionably Jane Austen is the greatest woman novelist as Shakespeare is the greatest novelist faithful observation, personal attachment and find sense of irony are the spectacular quality of Jane Austen. She can be considered the precursor of such careful novelist as George Eliot and Henry James.
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