Novel, a creation of the west is expected to have emerged in the 17th cen. but it took its form in the 18th cen. that is, it became popular as a literary work. The prominent English novelists of this century were namely Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne and Tobias Smollett.
The
emergence of novel as a form of realistic narrative in the 18th cen.
came about with an acceleration in the changes that had been taking place in
the social structure of the Europe since the Renaissance. The realistic form of
novel presents the segment of life and society, in more or less approximate
terms, which has been seen and experienced by actual men and women of a
particular period. In fact, the realist novel aims to present a live stamp of
everyday life complete with situations that have a beginning, middle and end.
The problems hit close to the readers as they can immediately connect to the
characters and their issues.
A decline in the
significance of novel had taken place by the time of Jane Austen, who was born
in 1775 in Hampshire. By the end of 17th cen., as a consequence of
compromise affected through the Glorious Revolution, the class which was
engaged in the conflict came forward in a relatively unified social formation.
Large sections of the people became engaged in professions as trade and
industry. A workable consensus evolved from different interpretations of the
values of enlightens humanism, to create the ideals of reason and good sense.
As the views differ from person to person, the consensus was not unified in
meaning despite their structural unity.
All the novelists of the 18th
cen. show an awareness of these inner contradictions and tensions and attempted
to project them in their works. The novels of immediate predecessors of Jane
Austen became sentimental and unrealistic because of the exaggeration and
hyperbole as well as the inability to repudiate the consensus which appears
unsatisfactory to them.
Jane Austen, the novelist
consciously and deliberately adopted the 18th cen. tradition of
realism in the novel but she did not adopt the method and techniques nor she
imitated the values and attitudes. She made creative use of the inherited
tradition. She adopted her own realistic style to deal with the issues and
problems of contemporary social developments such as position of women in
society, lack of rights for women, importance of marriage and inability of
women to choose an independent life for themselves. Further she tried and found
a proper comic resolution to conflicts with an awareness of their acuteness.
Jane Austen came from the section having
strong connections with middle classes which belonged to profession of trade
and industry. This helped her in working towards a resolution of the conflicts
because it had a real interest in preserving stability. She refused to include
magical, miraculous and emotional effusiveness in her works. Instead of
choosing heroic figures, she made a choice of ordinary human beings. Her choice
of subject and the way of expressing is same as that of the 18th
cen. novelists. The mode of novel which was getting eloped, she made a revival
i.e. it was Jane Austen who made the development of realist novels.
Life in Jane Austen’s
novels is governed by an easy decorum and moments of fierce passion. Deep
moments never occur. In her first novel Pride and Prejudice, we
have middle class people pursuing the common round. The style is smooth and
unobtrusive, but covers a delicate pricking of irony that is agreeable and
masterly in its quiet way. Sense and Sensibility her second novel
followed the same general lines as its predecessor. The incidents of Northanger
Abbey are common place and characters flatly average. Her other three
great novels Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion are
of the same type as the earliest ones. If there is any development it is seen
in the still more inflexible avoidance of anything that is unusual or
startling. Jane Austen’s novels are all much the same, yet subtly and
artistically different. All her novels are the replica of realism i.e. they are
realist novels.
Jane Austen’s qualities are
of a kind that are slow to be recognized for there is nothing loud or garish to
catch the casual glace. Thus, she has won her way to a foremost place and
through her works made the development of realist novels.
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