Why Jane Austen’s Novels Are NOT ‘All The Same’
Hilary Mantel explains the differences in a line or two about each
Nothing frustrates Jane Austen’s most ardent fans — of whom I am one — more than hearing people complain that her six major novels are “all the same.”
Yes, the books are all novels of manners, set in England during the Georgian era. They all end in weddings, have vividly drawn heroines, and focus on a few families in a country village who belong to the gentry and have abiding concerns with money and property. The novelist Hilary Mantel writes in an essay on Austen in Literary Genius (Paul Dry Books, 2007):
“The single plot is this: a young woman must marry. Who will she marry? Will she make a good choice? She having chosen, will the man comply?”
Each novel has its own character
But from these basic materials, Austen wrested six distinctive novels, each with its own character. And perhaps no living novelist has briefly described their differences more aptly than Mantel, the author of the acclaimed Wolf Hall Trilogy. She writes in Literary Genius:
“Northanger Abbey is an exuberant satire on writers, readers, and their expectations; indeed, a joke about expectations in general. Sense and Sensibility is dark, almost a tragedy. Two girls must marry; Elinor is injured despite her moral poise and discernment, but her sister Marianne, vulnerable and generous-hearted, suffers far more deeply and seriously than we think this sardonic author will permit. Pride and Prejudice is a romance, a high comedy with an underlying note of panic….Mansfield Park is a problem novel, with its plaintive, unlikeable heroine….Emma is a complex farce that subverts sexual stereotypes. It offers an excruciatingly class-conscious and wrong-headed heroine, who appears to be in love with another girl when the story begins….Jane’s last completed novel, Persuasion, is a hushed and autumnal story, with a happy ending fished from the depths for an isolated, strong-minded heroine who had despaired of romance.”
Austen died at the age of 41 from a cause that has never been firmly established. Various experts have speculated that she succumbed to cancer, a hormonal disorder, or the effects of unpasteurized milk. Five years ago researchers at the British library proposed another cause: accidental poisoning from a heavy metal such as arsenic, used in her eyeglasses.
@janiceharayda has been the book critic for Glamour magazine and for the Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio’s largest newspaper.
You might like these posts on the novelist some critics call “Hungary’s Jane Austen” and on a more recent novel praised by Hilary Mantel:
