Awesome Austen artistry

PREMA SRINIVASAN

There has been a revival of interest in Victorian novelists among aspiring researchers and as an off-shoot of this academic interest there has been wide spread enthusiasm about rediscovering novelists of the late 18th Century, through the visual media. The film version of Pride and Prejudice, Emma and Sense and Sensibility, celebrated classics of Jane Austen (1775- 1817) have been immensely popular not just with the older generation but also with the channel flicking MTV generation.

The television serial of the novel Pride and Prejudice brought the entire family into their living rooms to follow the fortunes of the Bennet girls, to rejoice and bemoan according to the episodes dramatised. Emma Thompson as Marainne Dashwood became a memorable screen presence and sent hundreds of viewers in search of a copy of "Sense and Sensibility".

Jane Austen wrote her novels in the Romantic period (1799-1830) but was not a direct inheritor of the spirit of her age. On the other hand she is said to have been a literary descendant of Addison, Goldsmith and Miss Burney. Unlike Mrs. Radcliffe who wrote spine chilling Gothic novels, Jane Austen chose to write about a subject she was familiar with - love and marriage in a secluded community. Daughter of a Hampshire rector, she was a sensitive observer of the people around her, their foibles and affections, their affairs of the heart, their distress and triumphs. These countryfolk peopled her novels and she used them with a restrained sense of comedy but with a perfect sense of understanding. She was not a writer with a mission like Dickens, writing with a sense of outrage. She was amused with the limited landscape around her and she was content to portray that life with a high degree of realism. This portrayal acquired a timelessness by the nature of the subject and the keen witty dialogue and observations of the author. What the readers found in her was a highly finished piece of writing often referred to as "Two inch piece of ivory."

To be sure this author was not prolific in her output. She was her quizzical best in her first novel Pride and Prejudice (1797) and became more serious and analytical in her subsequent novels like Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Emma, and Mansfield Park. In Northanger Abbey she had a field day making fun of the gothic tradition of novelists particularly Mrs. Radcliffe. She was untroubled by the mood swings of the Romanticists and carried on her writing unmindful of fashion and contemporary trends.During the course of this fairly simple story we have hilarious diversions or subplots which add spice to the narrative scheme. Who could ever forget the pompous Mr. Collins who presumptuously proposes to Elizabeth? When he is turned down by Elizabeth, the mother is highly perturbed and requests Mr. Bennet to intercede in favour of the suit. But Mr. Bennet's advice to Eliza is one of the most humorous lines of the novel. Mrs. Bennet aghast that her daughter has turned down a highly suitable proposal threatens never to see her again. But Mr. Bennet in his cool mocking way declares "An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins and I will never see you again if you do". Like Elizabeth who could not but smile at such a conclusion for such a beginning we too are diverted by the manner in which the Collins episode is handled by this author who is an expert in her knowledge of human vagaries.

The plot is simple and conventional. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet blessed with five daughters live in Longbourn. "Genteel" by birth Mr. Bennet was a mixture of sarcastic humour, reserve and caprice; while Mrs. Bennet was a woman of "mean understanding, little information and uncertain temper... The business of her life was to get her daughters married, its solace was visiting and news". Jane, the first daughter is beautiful, blessed with good temper and cheerfulness of manner while Elizabeth, the second daughter, and the real heroine of the book is more spirited, intelligent and attractive with a pair of flashing black eyes. The Bennet girls are constantly reminded of the fact by their mother, that contracting a good marriage is the be-all and end-all of life and the plot revolves round this theme. Accordingly every eligible male is a potential suitor and this gives rise to hilarious as well as emotionally charged incidents. When the novel comes to an end we along with Mrs. Bennet are extremely gratified that both Jane and Elizabeth, the two most deserving daughters of the Bennet family are married according to their heart's desire. It is Mrs. Bennet's characteristic comment when she hears of Lizzy's engagement to Darcy, which lingers with the reader when all the knots are tied "Oh my sweetest Lizzy! How rich and great you will be! What pinmoney, what jewels, what carriages you will have! Jane's nothing to it-nothing at all! three daughters married! Ten thousand a year! O Lord... I shall go distracted". The over worked theme of love and marriage is so well drawn and with so much finesse by Jane Austen that readers across continents and centuries, continue to be swept along by the sheer interest in the narrative.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : Fated meeting
Next     : Seeing red !