Editing Jane Austen (section)

==Genre and style==
{{main|Styles and themes of Jane Austen|Marriage in the works of Jane Austen}}

Austen's works implicitly critique the [[sentimental novel]]s of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism.<ref>Litz (1965), 3–14; Grundy (2014), 195–197; Waldron (2005), 83, 89–90; Duffy (1986), 93–94.</ref>{{efn|Oliver MacDonagh says that ''Sense and Sensibility'' "may well be the first English realistic novel" based on its detailed and accurate portrayal of what he calls "getting and spending" in an English gentry family.<ref name="MacDonagh 1991, 65, 136–137"/>}} The earliest English novelists, [[Samuel Richardson|Richardson]], [[Henry Fielding]], and [[Tobias Smollett]], were followed by the school of sentimentalists and [[Romanticism in literature|romantics]] such as [[Walter Scott]], [[Horace Walpole]], [[Clara Reeve]], [[Ann Radcliffe]], and [[Oliver Goldsmith]], whose style and genre Austen repudiated, returning the novel on a "slender thread" to the tradition of Richardson and Fielding for a "realistic study of manners".<ref>Grundy (2014), 196</ref> In the mid-20th century the literary critics [[F. R. Leavis]] and [[Ian Watt]] placed her in the tradition of Richardson and Fielding; both believe that she used their tradition of  "irony, realism and satire to form an author superior to both".<ref>Todd (2015), 21</ref>

Walter Scott noted Austen's "resistance to the trashy [[sensationalism]] of much of modern fiction—'the ephemeral productions which supply the regular demand of watering places and [[Circulating library|circulating libraries]]'".<ref name = "Keymer21">Keymer (2014), 21</ref> Yet her relationship with these genres is complex, as evidenced by ''Northanger Abbey'' and ''Emma''.<ref name = "Keymer21"/> Similar to [[William Wordsworth]], who excoriated the modern frantic novel in the "Preface" to his ''[[Lyrical Ballads]]'' (1800), Austen distances herself from escapist novels; the discipline and innovation she demonstrates is similar to his, and she shows "that rhetorically less is artistically more."<ref name="Keymer21"/> She eschewed popular Gothic fiction, stories of terror in which a heroine typically was stranded in a remote location, a castle or abbey (32 novels between 1784 and 1818 contain the word "abbey" in their title). Yet in ''Northanger Abbey'' she alludes to the trope, with the heroine, Catherine, anticipating a move to a remote locale. Rather than full-scale rejection or parody, Austen transforms the genre, juxtaposing reality, with descriptions of elegant rooms and modern comforts, against the heroine's "novel-fueled" desires.<ref>Keymer (2014), 24–25</ref> Nor does she completely denigrate Gothic fiction: instead she transforms settings and situations, such that the heroine is still imprisoned, yet her imprisonment is mundane and real—regulated manners and the strict rules of the ballroom.<ref name="Keymer29">Keymer (2014), 29</ref> In ''Sense and Sensibility'' Austen presents characters who are more complex than in staple sentimental fiction, according to the critic Tom Keymer, who notes that although it is a parody of popular sentimental fiction, "[[Marianne Dashwood|Marianne]] in her sentimental histrionics responds to the calculating world&nbsp;... with a quite justifiable scream of female distress."<ref name = "Keymer32">Keymer (2014), 32</ref>

{{quote box
 | width=250px
 | bgcolor= #FFFFF0
 | salign=right
 | quote = The hair was curled, and the maid sent away, and Emma sat down to think and be miserable. It was a wretched business, indeed! Such an overthrow of everything she had been wishing for! Such a development of every thing most unwelcome!
 | source = — example of [[free indirect speech]], Jane Austen,  ''[[Emma (novel)|Emma]]''<ref>qtd. in Lodge (1986), 175</ref>
 | style = padding:1.25em
 | fontsize=90%
}}
Richardson's ''[[Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded|Pamela]]'', the prototype for the sentimental novel, is a [[Didacticism|didactic]] love story with a happy ending, written at a time women were beginning to have the right to choose husbands and yet were restricted by social conventions.<ref>Lodge (1986), 165</ref> Austen attempted Richardson's epistolary style, but found the flexibility of narrative more conducive to her realism, a realism in which each conversation and gesture carries a weight of significance. The narrative style utilises [[free indirect speech]]—she was the first English novelist to do so extensively—through which she had the ability to present a character's thoughts directly to the reader and yet still retain narrative control. The style allows an author to vary discourse between the narrator's voice and values and those of the characters.<ref>Lodge (1986), 171–175</ref>

Austen had a natural ear for speech and dialogue, according to the scholar [[Mary Lascelles]]: "Few novelists can be more scrupulous than Jane Austen as to the phrasing and thoughts of their characters."<ref>Lascelles (1966) 101</ref> Techniques such as fragmentary speech suggest a character's traits and their tone; "syntax and phrasing rather than vocabulary" is utilised to indicate social variants.<ref>Lascelles (1966), 96, 101</ref> Dialogue reveals a character's mood—frustration, anger, happiness—each treated differently and often through varying patterns of sentence structures. When [[Elizabeth Bennet]] rejects [[Mr. Darcy|Darcy]], her stilted speech and the convoluted sentence structure reveals that he has wounded her:<ref>Baker (2014), 177</ref>

<blockquote style="border-left: 3px solid #ccc;">
From the very beginning, from the first moment I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that the groundwork of disapprobation, on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike. And I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.<ref>qtd in Baker (2014), 177</ref>
</blockquote>

Austen's plots [[Marriage in the works of Jane Austen|highlight women's traditional dependence on marriage]] to secure social standing and economic security.<ref>MacDonagh (1991), 66–75; Collins (1994), 160–161.</ref> As an art form, the 18th-century novel lacked the seriousness of its equivalents from the 19th century, when novels were treated as "the natural vehicle for discussion and ventilation of what mattered in life".<ref>Bayley (1986), 24</ref>  Rather than delving too deeply into the psyche of her characters, Austen enjoys them and imbues them with humour, according to critic John Bayley. He believes that the well-spring of her wit and irony is her own attitude that comedy "is the saving grace of life".<ref name="Bayley26ff">Bayley (1986), 25–26</ref> Part of Austen's fame rests on the historical and literary significance that she was the first woman to write great comic novels. [[Samuel Johnson]]'s influence is evident, in that she follows his advice to write "a representation of life as may excite mirth".<ref name = "Polhemus">Polhemus (1986), 60</ref>

Her humour comes from her modesty and lack of superiority, allowing her most successful characters, such as Elizabeth Bennet, to transcend the trivialities of life, which the more foolish characters are overly absorbed in.<ref name="Bayley26ff"/> Austen used comedy to explore the individualism of women's lives and gender relations, and she appears to have used it to find the goodness in life, often fusing it with "ethical sensibility", creating artistic tension. Critic Robert Polhemus writes, "To appreciate the drama and achievement of Austen, we need to realize how deep was her passion for both reverence and ridicule&nbsp;... and her comic imagination reveals both the harmonies and the telling contradictions of her mind and vision as she tries to reconcile her satirical bias with her sense of the good."<ref name = "Polhemus"/>