Jane Austen Essay, Research Paper

Jane Austen

Jane Austen was born in 1775 in Stevenson, England. It was there were she started writing her first novel First impressions which was renamed Pride and Prejudice . She wrote it when she was only 14 years old. She and her Father turned it in to the publishers but they rejected it. It wasn t until 1809-1812 when Jane revised the novel into its final form, and finally published in January 1813.

The Society in which Jane grew up in was a strong one were high class was rooted in family connections and wealth. Austen was known for overlooking the assumptions and Prejudices of upper class England. However most of her novels argue the class or rank between wealthy and poor. In Austen s books snobs are often satirized, but then so are to the poor or those who are lower on the social scale. Wealth is looked on as self improvement in Austen world and for women that can only be accomplished by having a successful marriage, which explains the obsession in her novel Price and Prejudice ; with having wealthy gentlemen.

Austen has been accused of portraying a limited world, and the lower classes only appear in Pride and Prejudice briefly. She was perfectly aware of the poor around her, but she just wanted to write bout her own world. Austen had first hand knowledge of the more comfortable, social life that she portrays with her characters in her novel. Austen s apparent lack of interest in the lives of the poor maybe a failure on her part, but it was a failure shared by all English society in the 1800 s and on.