Life
Jane Austen was born in 1775 at a rectory in Steventon, Hampshire, one of two daughters of the Reverend George Austen (1731–1805) and his wife Cassandra (née Leigh) (1739–1827). Her brothers James and Henry followed in their father's path and joined the Anglican clergy (the latter towards the end of his life after a successful career as a banker), while her brothers Francis and Charles both pursued naval careers. There was also a brother with a disability, George, who did not live with the Austens. Her sister was named Cassandra, like their mother, and Austen tended to follow this naming practice in her novels, with eldest daughters named after their mothers.
She was very close to her sister Cassandra throughout her life. The abundant correspondence between them provides historians with the greatest insight into Jane's thoughts. Cassandra destroyed many of the letters after Jane's death, likely upon Jane's request. Cassandra drew the only undisputed life portrait of Jane, a somewhat rudimentary, coloured sketch that currently resides in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
In 1783, Austen was educated briefly by a relative in Oxford, then in Southampton; finally, from 1785–1786, she attended the Reading Ladies boarding school in the Abbey gatehouse in Reading, Berkshire.
She began her first novel in 1789. Her family life was conducive to writing; the Austen family often enacted plays, which gave Jane an opportunity to present her stories. They also borrowed novels from the local library, which influenced her writing. She was encouraged to write, especially by her brother Henry, who wrote a little himself. Her stories took as their theme the limited provincial world in which she lived for the first twenty-six years of her life. Jane loved to write her novels in peace and she only shared them with her family when they were performing plays.
In 1796, Jane Austen had a flirtation with Tom Lefroy, later Lord High Justice of Ireland, who was a younger relative of a friend of hers. Jane Austen wrote two letters to Cassandra mentioning him. In a letter dated 9 January 1796, she wrote:
"After I had written the above, we received a visit from Mr. Tom Lefroy and his cousin George. The latter is really very well-behaved now; and as for the other, he has but one fault, which time will, I trust, entirely remove—it is that his morning coat is a great deal too light. He is a very great admirer of Tom Jones, and therefore wears the same coloured clothes, I imagine, which he did when he was wounded". ”
On 16 January 1796, there is another mention:
"Friday. -- At length the day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, and when you receive this it will be over. My tears flow as I write at the melancholy idea".
It does not seem to have been a serious relationship and the love affair did not last long. However, it has been suggested that Austen might have had him in mind when she created the character Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.
In 1801, following her father's retirement, the family moved to the fashionable spa city of Bath, which provides the setting for many of her novels. However, Jane Austen, like her character Anne Elliot, seemed to have "persisted in a disinclination for Bath." Her dislike may have been influenced by the family's precarious financial situation and from being uprooted from her settled existence in the country.
In 1802, Austen received a marriage proposal from a wealthy, but "big and awkward" man named Harris Bigg-Wither, the younger brother of her friends Catherine and Alethea Bigg, and six years her junior. The marriage would have freed her from some of the constraints and dependency she experienced as a spinster. She initially accepted his offer, only to change her mind and refuse him the following day.
After the death of her father in 1805, Austen, her sister and her mother lived in Southampton with her brother Frank and his family for several years, before moving to Chawton in 1809. Here, her wealthy brother Edward had an estate with a cottage, where his mother and sisters lived. This house is now a museum and is a popular site for tourists and literary pilgrims alike. Austen wrote her later novels there. It wasn't until 1811, six years before her death, that a novel she had written, Sense and Sensibility, was published, and it was at the expense of her brother Henry and his wife Eliza.
In 1816, she began to suffer from ill health. In May 1817, she moved to Winchester to be closer to her doctor. Jane's condition worsened, and on 18 July 1817, she died at the age of forty-one and was buried in Winchester Cathedral. It is now thought by some that she may have suffered from Addison's disease, a failure of the adrenal glands that was common in the 19th century due to its being a frequent complication of tuberculosis. The disease was at that time unnamed. Others, such as biographer Carol Shields, have hypothesized that she died from breast cancer.
Works
England's first truly important female novelist, Jane Austen had difficulty in establishing a reputation for herself, despite the fact that she counted the Prince Regent among her admirers of the time. A novelist of manners, her work dealt with a limited social circle in society—that of the provincial gentry and the upper classes. As she stated in a letter to her niece, Anna: 'Three of four families in a country village are the very thing to work on.' She explored their relationships, values and shortcomings with detachment and irony, and her restrained satire of social excesses of the period was perhaps nearer to the classically minded moralizing of the eighteenth century than to the new age of Romantic rebellion and potential sentimentalism.
Austen's best-known work is Pride and Prejudice, which is viewed as an exemplar of her socially astute novel of manners. Austen also wrote a satire of the popular Gothic novels of Ann Radcliffe, Northanger Abbey, which was published posthumously in 1818. Adhering to a common contemporary practice for female authors, Austen published her novels anonymously; this kept her out of leading literary circles.
Austen's novels of manners, especially Emma, are often cited for their perfection of form. Modern critics continue to unearth new perspectives on Austen's keen commentary regarding the predicament of unmarried genteel English women in the late 1790s and early 1800s, a consequence of inheritance law and custom, which usually directed the bulk of a family's fortune to eldest male heirs.
Although Austen's career coincided with the Romantic movement in literature, she was not an intensely passionate Romantic and the social turbulence of early nineteenth-century England was barely touched upon in novels which concentrated on the everyday life and ostensibly trivial aspects of genteel society—balls, trips, dances, and an unending procession of marriage proposals. Thus, it could be argued she was more neo-classical in outlook. Passionate emotion usually carries danger in an Austen novel: the young woman who exercises twice a day is more likely to find real happiness than one who irrationally elopes with a capricious lover. Austen's artistic values had more in common with David Hume and John Locke than with her contemporaries William Wordsworth and Lord Byron.
Within her limited field, however, she did create a memorable range of characters whose dealings with love, marriage, courtship and social or personal rivalries were treated with a remarkable degree of objectivity and psychological depth. Although Austen did not promote passionate emotion as did other Romantic movement writers, she was also sceptical of its opposite—excessive calculation and practicality often leads to disaster in Austen novels (for example, Maria Bertram's marriage of convenience to the wealthy but dull Mr. Rushworth has an unhappy conclusion). Her close analysis of character displayed both a warm sense of humour and a hardy realism: vanity, selfishness and a lack of self-knowledge are among the faults most severely judged in her novels (e.g. in the case of Wickham and the flighty Lydia in Pride and Prejudice).
Literary Influences
Among Austen's influences were Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, Walter Scott, Samuel Johnson, William Cowper, George Crabbe and Fanny Burney.
Austen owed much in particular to both Richardson and Fielding with regard to her concept of the novel. Her first work, Elinor and Marianne, (later modified and published as Sense and Sensibility) was epistolary in technique. Her choice of a third-person omniscient narrator showed the influence of Fielding but, unlike the latter, she did not allow the narrator to intrude so much during the course of the story. Indeed, direct comments on the part of the narrator are rare, Austen preferring to let subtle nuance and dialogue illuminate her attitude to the characters and unfolding events. Verbal and situational irony are frequently combined with superbly structured dialogues to reinforce judgments which would otherwise have to be made explicitly. Criticized for being repetitive, her plots are nonetheless well structured, and reveal a sincere love of perfection and minutiae of detail that she believed was one of the prerogatives of any potential writer.
Novels
• Northanger Abbey (1798) -
• Sense and Sensibility (1811)
• Pride and Prejudice (1813)
• Mansfield Park (1814)
• Emma (1816)
• Persuasion (1818) posthumous
Shorter works
• Lady Susan (novella)
• The Watsons (incomplete novel)
• Sanditon (incomplete novel)
Juvenilia
• The Three Sisters
• Love and Freindship [the misspelling of "friendship" in the title is famous]
• The History of England
• Catharine, or the Bower
• The Beautifull Cassandra
Filmography
In popular culture, Austen's novels have been adapted in a great number of film and television series, varying greatly in their faithfulness to the originals.
Pride and Prejudice
• Pride & Prejudice (2005 film), starring Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet and Matthew Macfadyen as Mr. Darcy. Knightley's performance earned an Academy Award nomination, and the film was nominated for three additional categories (Original Score, Art Direction and Costume Design).
• Pride and Prejudice: A Latter-Day Comedy (2003), a modern-day independent film adaptation.
• Bride & Prejudice (2004), a Bollywood adaptation.
• Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), a modernized loose novel adaptation by Helen Fielding, which was made into a movie starring Renée Zellweger in the Elizabeth-inspired role of Bridget; Colin Firth, literally as Mr. (Mark) Darcy; and Hugh Grant as the Wickham-inspired Daniel. The 1995 BBC TV film is specifically referenced in the book and subsequent movie, intentionally naming Mr. Darcy after the Pride and Prejudice character. Zellweger's performance in the movie earned an
Academy Award nomination.
• Pride and Prejudice (1995 TV serial), BBC TV series starring Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet and Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy.
• Pride and Prejudice (1980 TV serial) (1980), BBC TV series starring Elizabeth Garvie as Elizabeth Bennet and David Rintoul as Mr. Darcy.
• First Impressions (1959), a Broadway musical adaptation.
• Pride and Prejudice (1952 TV serial), starring Ann Baskett as Elizabeth Bennet and Peter Cushing as Mr. Darcy.
• Pride and Prejudice (1940 film), starring Greer Garson as Elizabeth Bennet and Laurence Olivier as Mr. Darcy.
Emma
• Emma (1996 film), 1996 film directed by Douglas MacGrath and starring Gwyneth Paltrow as Emma and Jeremy Northam as Knightley.
• Emma (1996 TV drama), 1996 UK TV film starring Kate Beckinsale as Emma.
• Clueless (1995 film), modernization of the novel starring Alicia Silverstone in a California high school setting, directed by Amy Heckerling.
• Emma (1972 TV serial), 1972 UK TV film starring Doran Godwin as Emma.
• Emma (1960 TV serial), starring Diana Fairfax as Emma.
• Emma (1948 film), starring Judy Campbell as Emma.
Sense and Sensibility
• Sense and Sensibility (2007 TV serial), BBC series starring as Hattie Morahan as Elinor Dashwood and Charity Wakefield as Marianne Dashwood
• Kandukondain Kandukondain (2000), a contemporary Indian film set in the present, based on the same plot, starring Tabu as Sowmya (Elinor Dashwood), Aishwarya Rai as Meenakshi (Marianne Dashwood), with Ajit as Manohar (Edward Ferrars), Abbas as Srikanth (Willoughby) and Mammootty as Captain Bala (Colonel Brandon).
• Sense and Sensibility (1995 film), film starring Emma Thompson as Elinor Dashwood, Kate Winslet as Marianne Dashwood, with Hugh Grant as Edward Ferrars and Alan Rickman as Colonel Brandon. Directed by Ang Lee, this film was hugely successful.
• Sense and Sensibility (1981 TV serial), BBC series starring Irene Richard as Elinor Dashwood and Tracey Childs as Marianne Dashwood
• Sense and Sensibility (1971 TV serial), BBC series starring Joanna David as Elinor Dashwood and Ciaran Madden as Marianne Dashwood
Persuasion
• Persuasion (2007 TV drama), film, filmed in Bath in September 2006 for ITV, with Sally Hawkins as Anne, Rupert Penry-Jones as Wentworth, and Anthony Stewart Head as Sir Walter Elliot, and Julia Davis.
• Persuasion (1995 film), made-for-television film (which was released in US theatres by Sony Pictures Classics) starring Amanda Root as Anne and Ciarán Hinds as Captain Wentworth.
• Persuasion (1971 series), BBC miniseries starring Anne Firbank as Anne and Bryan Marshall as Captain Wentworth.
• Persuasion (1960 series), BBC miniseries starring Daphne Slater as Anne and Paul Daneman as Captain Wentworth.
Mansfield Park
• Mansfield Park (2007 TV drama), based on the novel, directed by Iain B. MacDonald. With Billie Piper as Fanny
• Mansfield Park (1999 film), based on the novel, directed by the Canadian Patricia Rozema, and starring Frances O'Connor, Embeth Davidtz, Sheila Gish and Harold Pinter.
• Metropolitan (1990 film) loose adaptation, written and directed by Whit Stillman, and starring Edward Clements, Carolyn Farina, Taylor Nichols, and Chris Eigeman (Jane Austen is also mentioned throughout the film)
• Mansfield Park (1983 TV serial) based on the novel, starring Sylvestra Le Touzel, Nicholas Farrell, and Anna Massey in 1983
Northanger Abbey
• Northanger Abbey (2007 TV drama), based on the novel, directed by Jon Jones and released in 2007, starring Felicity Jones as heroine Catherine Morland and JJ Fields as dashing Henry Tilney.
• Northanger Abbey (1986 film), based on the novel, directed by Giles Foster and released in 1986, starring Peter Firth in the role of Henry Tilney.
Non-book based
• The 1980 film Jane Austen in Manhattan is about rival stage companies who wish to produce the only complete Austen play "Sir Charles Grandison" (from the Richardson novel of the same title), which was rediscovered in 1980.[6]
• A semi-biographical 2007 film Becoming Jane, was directed by Julian Jarrold and stars Anne Hathaway as Jane. The film is based around her factual romance with young Tom Lefroy, who later became Lord High Justice of Ireland, played by James McAvoy. It is based loosely around the few facts that are available from this period of her life, mainly from letters to her only sister Cassandra.
• Another 2007 semi-biographical film, this one produced by the BBC for television, Miss Austen Regrets. It focuses on the last few years of Austen's life, in which she looks back on her life and loves. Jane Austen is played by Olivia Williams.
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