Jane Austen's Romantic Realism

A lot of people know this bright author, one of the most influent and representative of English literature, but do they know how similar this smart British girl was to the characters that she created and that Kate Winslet and Keira Knightley made world-wide famous?. The truth is that Austen’s novels not only tell a romantic story, they also picture the reality lived in the early 19^th Century’s England, and besides, reflex the author’s thoughts, desires and personality.

Austen was born in 1775 in the middle of a close-knit English family, and was educated mainly by her father and brothers. Since she was little, she developed a remarkable artistic ability, which was enriched by her love to reading, and encouraged by her parent’s constant support. However, her most famous works, such as Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816), won’t be written until her last years of life.

Some people seem to believe that Austen’s main characters had some resemblance with her own personality, actually, many people recognize the similarity between the author and Elizabeth Bennet, the protagonist of her most famous novel, Pride And Prejudice, ; both girls, in fact, have certain common characteristics, like their strong and independent attitude, as well as the confident and love that both felt to their older sisters.

Is also a curious fact that most part of her works was first published anonymously, because of the fact that women were not allowed to express most part of their ideas or thoughts in that time.

Austen’s defiance to this obsolete, old-fashioned rules can be also identified in most part of her works, and has represented an example of struggle and self-confidence, in a time when women we widely discriminated by the most cult societies of Europe and America.

One way or another, Jane Austen’s novels, truly represent masterpieces among the rich 19^th century English literature. Even when she died in 1817, her works is still studied and read as an example of romanticism and as critic to the English discriminatory and aristocratic society.