Literary Criticism 

To start off, Jane Austen’s novels are described as “...serious moral concern not only about love and marriage, but also other social relationships, such as kinships.” Emma, one of Austen’s well- known novels, shows a lack of parental responsibility from Emma’s father, Mr. Woodhouse; this challenges the typical position of a traditional father. Mr. Woodhouse is described as “poor, irresponsible, and selfish father…” a contrast to typical, strong and hardworking, father figures in most novels. Jane Austen seems to go against typical patriarchy and social expectations through her novels’ diverse family dynamics. Austen contrasts the idea that family members each have certain responsibilities and roles they must take on. Austen provides novels that contradict social normalities to show that these are realistic situations. These difficult family kinships are genuine situations that  help shape people’s lives and are true to real situations that occur in present times. 

Additionally, this criticism continues to talk about how sibling affection and friendships are key components to living a satisfactory life. In Emma, Emma’s blood sister and her are not very close and lack the sisterly connection that sisters ordinarily crave. Miss Taylor comes along and fills the void that is missing due to Emma’s mother and sister not being very active in Emma’s life. This goes to show that people often have to replace or fill the spots of absent family members to feel a sense of belonging. This example represents the aspiration for a strong connected family that most people desire and hope for. Austen includes examples of imperfect family dynamics to show how people are brought up and how they continue to develop and grow as a person. 

Austen is described as having “a high degree of wider cultural attention,” this often seems to be why there is conflict to whether she is a feminist or not. She is often viewed as “sneaky,” because she uses satire in order to portray her feminist ideas and message. She often discretely inputs her feminist views into her novel by pressing against male dominance. Additionally many of Austen’s characters in her novels bring about strong female dominant characters. This shows Austen’s vision on having strong willed women is important to have in her novels. While many people argue that Austen is not a feminist there are many ways that her writing shows secret feminism, it often just takes a deep dive into her novels. 

While Austen does show many qualities that show she is a feminist, there are many opinions that oppose this statement. Austen’s preservation shows that she may not have found her strong writing voice to take on Feminist views. While Austen has been described as  uninterested in or disconnected to the history of her time which makes her seem like she has no feminist values. Another point that is made in this criticism is that her novels seem to always end in marriage which allows the woman to always be connected to a man. Feminism and anti-feminism views ultimately depend on who is judging and the time period, and this can affect the viewpoint of how Austen is perceived. 

People often forget that Austen’s novels were originally published anonymously. Austen’s novels were one of the first to utilize a third person point of view during the 18th and 19th century. This provides an example of how Austen seemed to be way ahead of other authors during her time. Her controversial works were out of the ordinary for that time period which was one reason why her novels became so popular. Other authors began using the third person point of view after this. Austen became an influence on many upcoming writers through her up and coming works while establishing well known novels that are still observed and read today. 

Austen has many successful novels, however this criticism seems to take a deeper dive into how these novels were perceived by their readers. Austen's novel Sense and Sensibility is often described as one of Austen’s weaker novels because she is struggling with old and new writing habits. Pride and Prejudice offers a more stable writing style, which may contribute to the fact that Pride and Prejudice is one of her most well known novels. Mansfield Park shows a more of age interpretation. Mansfield park was written as Austen’s writing style was developed and becoming stronger. Emma was seen as a combination of Mansfield Park and Pride and Prejudice When Austen began writing this novel she had guessed that no one would like or relate to the main character, Emma, however many people related to her and enjoyed her qualities. Northanger Abbey was Austen’s earliest novel but did not get the revision that it needed. Finally, Persuasion was not like any of Austen’s previous novels, it strayed from tradition and interpreted more from poetry. This analysis of Austen’s novels gives insight to her time as a writer and her influential novels today. 

Austen is often praised for having realistic storylines that are reasonable within the world. Her writing style introduces real life situations that allow the reader to connect to her characters. Austen tends to connect her life into her character's lives. She introduces well-balanced characters with versatile traits. On the other hand, Austen had an unusual way of publishing her novels. Some novels took a long time to publish and others only were revised a couple of times. Austen was very inconsistent with the time period of when she would publish a novel. Austen has many great novels however the way she chooses to write them and in what time frame gives her a varying writing style that ended up benefiting her in many ways, through her popular and controversial novels.