Q.19.

Within her deliberately restricted field, the art of

Jane Austen is perfect." Discuss.
Or
SELECTED
UNIVERSITY QUESTIONS
WITH ANSWERS 269
Iscuss Pride
inches of ivory'". and Prejudice as Jane Austen's world on "two

Or
The world of Jane
with reference Austen is a limited world". Illustrate
to Pride and Prejudice.
Or
What do you think can be
What is your own said in depreciation of Jane Austen.
reaction to her works:
Or
The visible structure of
enough, but their foundationsJane Austen's stories may be flimsy
of human conduct".
drive deep into the basic principles
Discuss with particular reference to Pride
and Prejudice.
Ans. Jane Austen's Limited World
A reading of Jane Austen's novels shows that her materials are
extremely limited in themselves. Her subject matter is limited to
the manners of a small section of country-gentry who apparently
never have been worried about death, or sex, hunger or war, guilt
or God.)
However the exclusions and limitations are deliberate. Jane
Austen herself referred to her work as "two inches of ivory". In
a letter to her niece Jane Austen _wrote, *three or four families in
a country village is the very thing to work on". Those three or four
families are the kind sheknew intimately the landed gentry, the
upper classes,the lower edge of the nobility, the lower clergy, the
officer cops ofthemilitary. The novels including Pride and Prejudice
exclude the lower Classes, not only the industrial masses of the big
cities, but also the agricultural labourers who must have been
numerous around Meryton and Longbourn.. She hardly touches the
aristocracy, and if she does it is only to satirise it-as for instance
Lady Catherine de Bourgh. The Bennets, the Lucases, the Bingleys
and Darcy all_belong to the class of landed country gentry, with
the Bennets.and the Lucases.athe.lower end of it and the Bingleys
and Darcy with their personal fortunes at the higher end of it. Very
rarelý as in Pride and Prejudice the country gentry may include
people like the Gardiners who are in trade.
Narrow Physical Setting
Pride and Prejudice like other Jane Austen novels has a narrow
 PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
270
Park, Longbourn,
physicalsctting. Thestory revolves around Netherficld
There is no reference
Hunsford Parsonage, Meryton and Pemberley.
ironices of English literary history
to naturc itsclf. It is onc of the
Romantic writers Wordsworth,
that at a time when the English
werc discovering external
Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats and others
characters imprisoned
nature, Jane Austen manages to keeP her
indoors. A trip to the lake district is
cancclled in Pride and Prejudice
at Pemberley is brief and fairly
and the only description of nature
generalized. 3
Since her settings are the drawing
rooms, ball rooms, parks and
was unlikely to ihtroduce
gardens of a civilized leisure class, she
adherence to the
lunatics, villains or ghostly figures. With strict
nothing terrible
probability of life in a country village, she allows
to happen. The greatest villainy that
disrupts-the-evenness of a Jane
with Lydia)
Austen novel is an elopement (Wickham may elope
as Darcy's
or may arise from an unkind word or social faux-pus
snubbing of Elizabeth at the Netherfield Ball. Jane Austen's theme
was also limited to love and marriage. In all of her six novels, there
are beautiful girls waiting for really eligible bachelors to get married
to. Beyond this, there is no other pursuit t0 engage them. It was
the period of the American war of Independence, of the French
Revolution and of the Napoleonic wars. But Jane Austen's characters
are blissfully unaware of these tumultous events. The only relevance
of the militia in a Jane Austen novel is its ability to provide girls
with handsome military officers to flirt with and if possible to marry
- Wickham and the other military officers in Meryton in Pride
and Prejudice. serve as objects for flirtation for Lydia and Kitty
the younger Bennet girls. Simílarly there is no discussion, of spiritual
or metaphysical issues and Mr. Collins the vicar is only an absurd,
comic figure satirized by Jane Austen.
Feminization of Her Novels
Another limitation of Jane Austen is the fcminization' of her
novels. Men do not appear except in the company of women. There
is no 'men talk' or depiction of male sports like hunting. This might
be one of the reasons for Darcy not appearing to bc a wholly credible
claracter. We never see Darcy except in the company of lizabeth
and since the novcl is unfolded from the heroinc's point of view,
we look at Darcy through Flizabeth's eyes. )
Her Detractors
These limitations of Jane Austen have occasioned some very
SELECTED
UNIVERSITY QUESTIONS 271
wITH ANSWERS

de criticisms and there is much that has been said in her

F ion. H.W. Garrod complains of the monotonous uniformity
materials, "A drab scenery, the worse for use, a thin plo
O1onably cut and by turning, relining and trimming made to
ty for five or six novels, a dozen or so stock characters
SC are Miss Austen's materials". Charlotte Bronte her m
amous critic, feels ost
a want of "passion" in her works and believes
be
Oy nothing
an author of the surface only: "She ruffles her readers
vehement, disturbs him by nothing profound,
Dusiness is not half so much with the . Her
human heart as with the human
ye, mouth, hands and feet". Wordsworth
were an admirable copy admitted that her novels
of life, but since the pervading light o
imagination was totally absent in them, they
could
him. Since, her women are eminently pre-occupied hardly interest
with economic
security a number of critics think that her text is just
money. And
since she looks at things from an ironic point of view,
it being
assumed that an ironist is only a detached and disinterested observer
of life, Leonie Villard and Marvin Mudrick conclude
that she does
not have any moral concern.
Perfection within the Limited World
But the limitations are self-imposed and within her deliberately
restricted field of art, Jane Austen is perfect. The restricted social
setting, purely local interests lend a sense of discipline to her art
and account for the accuracy and precision of portrayal. Her characters
stem from the class and society she knows well and hence they are
very realistic and life-like. Elizabeth Bennet is one of the most
delightful heroines one could come across in literature. She is not
the simpering, holier-than-thou heroine of a romantic novel, but
appeals by her ordinary and real next door girl image with wit,
humour and also very human failings of pride and prejudice. Her
characterisation_is indeed supcrb. She may choose her characters
from the country gentry but no two characters are ever repeated
in any of her novels. Mr. Elton, the vicar in Emma is totally different
from Mr. Collins the vicar in Pride and Prejudice. Similarly her
heroines are all different. Elizabeth is as different from Emma
Emma is from Fanny Price. About her characters, Macaulay comments
"She has given us a multitude of charäcters, all, in a certain sense,
commonplace, all such as we meet everyday. Yet they are all as
perfectly discriminated from each other as if they were the most
eccentric of human beings".
Her Skill and Craftsmanship cimie yinato
Within her limited theme and subject matter, Jane Austen is
SELECTED UNIVERSITY QUESTIONS
WITH ANSWERS 273
unparalleled in her skill in plot construction. In
Pride and Prejudice
Dot a single event or character is out of place and
each contributes
to the development of plot and theme. Following a logical and
coherent pattern the plot of Pride and Prejudice proceeds like that
of a drama from exposition, with the characters being introdiuced
in the first few chapters, the development of the complication with
Bingley's departure from Netherfield and Elizabeth's prejudice
against Darcy, to the brilliant climax at Hunsford parsonage where
Darcy proposes and is rejected, to the final denouement and resolution
with the marriages of the Bennet sisters after the Lydia-Wickham
elopement. The sub-plots of Lydia and Wickham, Charlotte and
Collins are all closely linked to the main Elizabeth-Darcy plot and
highlight the theme of the right marriage.
Jane Austen has a brilliant ear for dialogue and her characterss
revealthemselves through their speech. The witty and ironic language
add much beauty_to..Jane-Austen's art.
Conclsion
Thus, we may conclude that within her limited range Jane
Auster's"art is perfect. She handles, characters and events, dialogue
and plot with an exquisite and masterly touch, fusing all the elements
of novel into one, weaving and interweaving them so fine, that no
strand can be separated. Her visible structure may be flimsy but
she is profound in plumbing the psychological depths of her characters
and in delineating the basic principles of human conduct. On her
two inches of ivory, Jane Austen carves with a miniature delicacy
to present a polished and refined work of art.