Novels’s setting and
characters.
deliberately limited setting and characters – “three
or four families in a country village” in the provincial world of southern
England, characters belonging to the rural middle class, the landed gentry and
the country clergy, described in the essential facts that make up his/her place
in society (age income ancestry marital situation/prospects social position)
Novels’ plots
The characters lead a quiet country life where love is
the disturbing and exciting element, as much as the polite exchanges between
the sexes and not the passionate and tragic love; a romantic and sentimental
view of love is rejected, and the exaggerated sentimentality of contemporary
novel is satirized.
A young woman develops her understanding of herself
and of other people through a series of errors delusions and experiences.
Dialogue and irony.
Clear witty precise dialogue describe the characters
and their lives, the moral is given through the story. The third –person
narrator is not obtrusive, irony is gentle and balanced, Austin’s observations does not present
Romantic heroes but smile at human frailties.
Irony is an 18th-century quality not a
Romantic one. Unromantic are Austin’s
insistence on morality, her insistence in society and her values, and the
didactic aim of her art.
