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MISS AUSTEN never attempts to describe a scene or a class of society with
which she was not herself thoroughly acquainted. The conversations of ladies
with ladies, or of ladies and gentlemen together, are given, but no instance
occurs of a scene in which men only are present. The uniform quality of her work
is one most remarkable point to be observed in it. Let a volume be opened at any
place: there is the same good English, the same refined style, the same
simplicity and truth. There is never any deviation into the unnatural or
exaggerated; and how worthy of all love and respect is the finely disciplined
genius which rejects the forcible but transient modes of stimulating interest
which can so easily be employed when desired, and which knows how to trust to
the never-failing principles of human nature! This very trust has sometimes been
made an objection to Miss Austen, and she has been accused of writing dull
stories about ordinary people. But her supposed ordinary people are really not
such very ordinary people. Let anyone who is inclined to criticise on this score
endeavor to construct one character from among the ordinary people of his own
acquaintance that shall be capable of interesting any reader for ten minutes. It
will then be found how great has been the discrimination of Miss Austen in the
selection of her characters, and how skillful is her treatment in the management
of them. It is true that the events are for the most part those of daily life,
and the feelings are those connected with the usual joys and griefs of familiar
existence; but these are the very events and feelings upon which the happiness
or misery of most of us depends; and the field which embraces them, to the
exclusion of the wonderful, the sentimental, and the historical, is surely large
enough, as it certainly admits of the most profitable cultivation. In the end,
too, the novel of daily real life is that of which we are least apt to weary: a
round of fancy balls would tire the most vigorous admirers of variety in
costume, and the return to plain clothes would be hailed with greater delight
than their occasional relinquishment ever gives. Miss Austen's personages are
always in plain clothes, but no two suits are alike: all are worn with their
appropriate differences, and under all human thoughts and feelings are at
work.—From "Fraser's Magazine," January, 1860.
NOTWITHSTANDING a certain reticence and self control which seems to belong to
their age, and with all their quaint dresses, and ceremonies, and manners, the
ladies and gentlemen in "Pride and Prejudice" and its companion novels seem like
living people out of our own acquaintance transported bodily into a bygone age,
represented in the half-dozen books that contain Jane Austen's works. Dear
books! bright, sparkling with wit and animation, in which the homely heroines
charm, the dull hours fly, and the very bores are enchanting....
She has a gift of telling a story in a way that has never been surpassed. She
rules her places, times, characters, and marshals them with unerring precision.
Her machinery is simple but complete; events group themselves so vividly and
naturally in her mind that, in describing imaginary scenes, we seem not only to
read them but to live them, to see the people coming and going—the gentlemen
courteous and in top-boots, the ladies demure and piquant; we can almost hear
them talking to one another. No retrospects; no abrupt flights, as in real life:
days and events follow one another Last Tuesday does not suddenly start into
existence all out of place; nor does 1790 appear upon the scene when we are well
on in '21. Countries and continents do not fly from hero to hero, nor do long
and divergent adventures happen to unimportant members of the company. With Miss
Austen, days, hours, minutes, succeed each other like clockwork; one central
figure is always present on the scene; that figure is always prepared for
company....
Some books and people are delightful, we can scarce tell why; they are not so
clever as others that weary and fatigue us. It is a certain effort to read a
story, however touching, that is disconnected and badly related. It is like an
ill-drawn picture, of which the coloring is good. Jane Austen possessed both
gifts of color and drawing. She could see human nature as it was—with
near-sighted eyes, it is true; but having seen, she could combine her picture by
her art, and color it from life....
It is difficult, reading the novels of succeeding generations, to determine how
much each book reflects of the time in which it was written; how much of its
character depends upon the mind and mood of the writer. The greatest minds, the
most original, have the least stamp of the age, the most of that dominant
natural reality which belongs to all great minds. We know how a landscape
changes as the day goes on, and how the scene brightens and gains in beauty as
the shadows begin to lengthen. The clearest eyes must see by the light of their
own hour. Jane Austen's hour must have been a midday hour—bright, unsuggestive,
with objects standing clear without relief or shadow. She did not write of
herself, but of the manners of her age. This age is essentially an age of men
and women of strained emotion, little remains of starch, or powder, or courtly
reserve. What we have lost in calm, in happiness, in tranquillity, we have
gained in intensity. Our danger is now, not of expressing and feeling too
little, but of expressing more than we feel....
Miss Austen's heroines have a stamp of their own. They have a certain gentle
self-respect and humor and hardness of heart in which modern heroines are a
little wanting. Whatever happens they can for the most part speak of gayly and
without bitterness. Love with them does not mean a passion so much as an
interest—deep, silent, not quite incompatible with a secondary flirtation.
Marianne Dashwood's tears are evidently meant to be dried. Jane Bennet smiles,
sighs, and makes excuses for Bingley's neglect. Emma passes one disagreeable
morning making up her mind to the unnatural alliance between Mr. Knightley and
Harriet Smith. It was the spirit of the age, and perhaps one not to be unenvied.
It was not that Jane Austen herself was incapable of understanding a deeper
feeling. In the last written page of her last written book there is an
expression of the deepest and truest experience. Anne Elliot's talk with Captain
Harville is the touching utterance of a good woman's feelings. They are speaking
of men and women's affections. "You are always laboring and toiling," she says,
"exposed to every risk and hardship. Your home, country, friends, all united;
neither time nor life to call your own. It would be hard indeed (with a
faltering voice) if a woman's feelings were to be added to all this."
Farther on she says eagerly: "I hope I do justice to all that is felt by you,
and by those who resemble you. God forbid that I should undervalue the warm and
faithful feelings of any of my fellow-creatures. I should deserve utter contempt
if I dared to suppose that true attachment and constancy were known only by
woman. No! I believe you capable of everything great and good in your married
lives. I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic
forbearance, so long as—if I may be allowed the expression—so long as you have
an object; I mean while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the
privilege I claim for my own (it is not a very enviable one, you need not court
it) is that of loving longest when existence or when hope is gone."
She could not immediately have uttered another sentence—her heart was too full,
her breath too much oppressed.
Dear Anne Elliot! sweet, impulsive, womanly, tender-hearted!—one can almost hear
her voice pleading the cause of all true women. In those days, when perhaps
people's nerves were stronger than they are now, sentiment may have existed in a
less degree, or have been more ruled by judgment; it may have been calmer and
more matter-of-fact; and yet Jane Austen, at the very end of her life, wrote
thus. Her words seem to ring in our ears after they have been spoken. Anne
Elliot must have been Jane Austen herself, speaking for the last time. There is
something so true, so womanly about her, that it is impossible not to love her.
She is the bright-eyed heroine of the earlier novels matured, chastened,
cultivated, to whom fidelity has brought only greater depth and sweetness
instead of bitterness and pain.—From "The Cornhill Magazine," August, 1871.
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