News & Diary - 19.12.2025
Jane Austen and Literature: A blog by Anna Matthews
Jane Austen was a prolific reader with diverse interests which encompassed both contemporary and classical literature. She had many favourite authors; Samuel Johnson, Sir Walter Scott, Henry Fielding, Maria Edgeworth, John Milton, Lord Byron, Laurence Sterne and Ann Radcliffe, from all of whom she drew inspiration which she incorporated into her own work. It was Ann Radcliffe’s gothic novel The Mysteries of Udolpho that gripped young Catherine Morland so tensely in Northanger Abbey.
Jane Austen’s father, George Austen, being a classicist himself, encouraged her to read and provided her with access to his vast library, as well as the writing materials she required. Mr. Austen saw his daughter’s potential and talked to others with fatherly pride of her ‘effusions of fancy’! Jane Austen was very close to her father and her relationship with him arguably influenced her depiction of the relationship between Elizabeth Bennet and her father – kindly and humorous.
Jane Austen’s literary essence is her astute social commentary and satirical take on convention. In Austen’s novels, she challenges the constraints and inequalities placed on women in the Regency period, employing witty dialogue, sarcasm and irony. Austen portrayed her heroines as defiant of the gender expectations that society thrust upon them, whilst ensuring that they retained their powerful femininity.
Women at that time had very few legal, social or economic rights – few upper and middle-class women could own property, formal education was sparse, and a stigma was apportioned to a middle-class woman who worked for an income, such as Jane Fairfax in Emma. Marriage was therefore the only option for women to elevate their status and gain wealth and social acceptance, exemplified in the relationship between Charlotte Lucas and the sycophantic Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice.
Jane Austen’s literary genius subverts the social tradition that marriages should be based on economics through the characterisation of her heroines. Austen’s heroines defy social expectations by seeking intellectual parity in partnerships – seen through Elizabeth Bennet’s refusal of Mr. Collin’s proposal as ‘[her] feelings in every respect absolutely forbid it.’
Jane Austen advocates for love and mutual respect in all of her novels, illustrated in Jane Bennet’s exclamation in Pride and Prejudice, ‘Oh Lizzy! Do anything rather than marry without affection!’ Through various means, Austen’s heroines achieve love and mutual respect in their relationships: Elizabeth Bennet through assertiveness in Pride and Prejudice; Fanny Price & Edmund Bertram through gentle companionship in Mansfield Park: Elinor & Marianne Dashwood through patience and maturity in Sense and Sensibility; Henry Tilney through a loving proposal to Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey; Emma and Mr. Knightley through a mutual adoration in Emma; and through an enduring love match of Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth in Persuasion.
