Behind the Irony: Persuasion, Emma and Pride and Prejudice

Introduction

This paper analyzes three of Jane Austen's famous novels including “Persuasion”, “Emma” and “Pride and Prejudice”. All the three novels revolve around the theme of love and marriage, the typical genre in which Austen writes her novels. These novels also highlight Austen's passion for feminist movement.

Discussion

Austen portrays Anne Elliot as a quiet rebel within this world. She is a woman who comes to recognize her personal dignity and worth in a society that has little use for women as people. She is sensitive to her own feelings and to the feelings that others have. She questions and ultimately rejects the social order represented by her family, seeing aristocratic values as bankrupt. She is equally repulsed by the crass manipulations of people such as her cousin William, whose quest for financial security motivates his pursuit of marriage partners, and Mrs. Clay, who schemes throughout to marry Anne's widower father for the same reason (Brown, 23).

Viewed from a twentieth century perspective, Anne may be seen as a quiet feminist. She is unwilling to accept without comment the social restrictions placed on women. Whenever possible, she spends her time with men so that she can converse with them about issues of importance; she is not willing to be limited to discussions of domestic matters. She is unwilling, too, to accept the notions that men are more rational than women, and that they are better suited for certain forms of responsibility. At the moment of the only real crisis in the novel, when Louisa Musgrove is injured in a fall and thought to be near death, Anne remains calm and lends assistance while the other women dash about frantically. Austen wants readers to see that, emotionally and intellectually, if not economically, Anne Elliot is able to be self-sufficient. Through Anne, Austen provides a stern critique of the country aristocracy who believe that their bloodlines make them exempt from rules of courtesy or from acknowledging the personal worth of individuals outside their class.

Meanwhile, in Emma, Jane Austen tells the story of a young woman described by the narrator of the novel as “having rather too much her own way” and possessing “a disposition to think a little too well of herself.” Although Austen claimed that her heroine was someone “whom no one would like but myself,” Emma Woodhouse has captivated readers and critics, many of whom have ...