About Us: http://www.the-criterion.

com/about/
Archive: http://www.the-criterion.com/archive/
Contact Us: http://www.the-criterion.com/contact/
Editorial Board: http://www.the-criterion.com/editorial-board/
Submission: http://www.the-criterion.com/submission/
FAQ: http://www.the-criterion.com/fa/

ISSN 2278-9529

Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research Journal

www.galaxyimrj.com

www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English

ISSN: 0976-8165

Jane Austens Limited Range: The Psychological Aspect

Dr. Shalini Mathur

Associate Professor
IPS academy, Indore
Abstract:
In general two important Principles that direct any creative work are Reflections & Associations.
Reflections are the experience of artists or any situations they have faced or any firsthand
account narrated to them by someone close to them It also includes the feelings ,aspirations or
unfulfilled desires. All such reflections are expressed in creative way with the addition of
imagination that sometimes overstate and sometimes understate the reality. The work gains
popularity& becomes enjoyable when its readers are able to associate the details with their own
life. Jane Austen has scored her popularity basically on above mentioned two countsReflections& Associations. She drew all her material from her own experience. She never went
outside her experience, Austen is perhaps the only novelist before Charles Dickens who still has
a significant popular readership, Literary enthusiast in all the ages and from everywhere in the
world are able to associate themselves with her work .Probably her novels were a tool she had
used to vent out her deeply felt emotions, which remained unfulfilled. Novels were in a way
virtual world she had created to run away from her drab world in which she was not able to enjoy
love and settled life.
Keywords: Reflections,

Associations, Observation, Imagination, Restriction

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of good fortune must be
in want of a wife. Reading this quote any literary enthusiast can guess who the author is, as this
has been one of the most talked about quotations in English literature. This is the first line of
Pride and Prejudice, the single line that encompasses the theme of the entire novel. And who can
be more efficient in bringing out all the pages of a huge novel into one single line than the most
successful 19th century Romantic fiction author- Jane Austen. She is placed among the greatest
authors in the world of literature. She wrote six novels in all- Sense and Sensibility, Pride and
Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, yet all of them bear the
stamp of her craft and artifice. In her limited range she has performed miracles and so often her
name is compared with Shakespeare.
In general two important Principles that direct any creative work are Reflections & Associations.
Reflections are the experience of artists or any situations they have faced or any first hand
account narrated to them by someone close to them It also includes the feelings, aspirations or
unfulfilled desires. All such reflections are expressed in creative way with the addition of
imagination that sometimes overstate and sometimes understate the reality. The work gains
popularity& becomes enjoyable when its readers are able to associate the details with their own
life.

Vol. 6, Issue. V

207

October 2015

www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English

ISSN: 0976-8165

Jane Austen has scored her popularity basically on above mentioned two counts-Reflections&
Associations. She drew all her material from her own experience. She never went outside her
experience; her restrictions were conscious and deliberate, to maintain the authenticity
guaranteed by her own observation and inseparable from the aesthetic unity of her artefacts.
Consequently all the scenes belong to South England where she had spent a considerable period
of her life .Miss Austen exploited with unrivalled expertness the potentialities of seemingly
narrow mode of existence. From the outset she limited her view to the world that she knew and
the influences that she saw at work .She excludes from her books all aspects of life that cannot
pass through the crucible of her imagination. It explains why she wrote only about the upper
middle class that she knew; her restraint is commendable.
Jane Austen is one of the few novelists in world literature who is regarded as a "classic" and yet
enjoys a wide and popular readership .In this respect she stands parallel to Charles Dickens.
Though her fictional world--seen as an idyllic bygone time and place, still in the present time it
has entered into popular literary culture. Jane Austen is generally acknowledged to be one of the
great English novelists, so it is no surprise that her novels have remained continuously in print
from her day to the present.
Emma tells us of a delightful girl who is as essentially true to life today as she was in
the years when the Napoleon was the emperor. The ordinary commonplace incidents and
the day to day experiences formed the warp and woof of her novels.
Sir Walter Scott wrote in his diary that the talent of Jane Austen as a realist was the most
wonderful he had ever met with. That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements,
feelings and characters of ordinary life .It is this quality of Realist that makes her appeal fresh
forever .Literary enthusiast in all the ages and from everywhere in the world are able to associate
themselves with her work
The realism of Jane Austen is more truly psychological than that of Richardson, for it is
free from the tragic obsessions of moral conscience. With its greater freedom, it acquires
greater purity.[Legouis &Cazamians,964]
One of the most frequent criticisms of Austen is the narrowness of her subject matter. Her
characters' interests and Austen's interests may seem trivial, unimportant, particularly since she
wrote at a time when England was engaged in a life and death struggle with the French and
Napoleon. Though she focuses on the everyday lives and concerns of a few families in a small
country circle, her novels still have a profound effect on many readers. Lord David Cecil offered
one way to resolve this paradox;
Austen's is a profound vision. There are other views of life and more extensive;
concerned as it is exclusively with personal relationships, it leaves out several important
aspects of experience. But on her own ground Jane Austen gets to the heart of the matter;
her graceful unpretentious philosophy, founded as it is on an unwavering recognition of
fact, directed by an unerring perception of moral quality, and is as impressive as those of
the most majestic novelists.
In one way her limited range is in fact a blessing in disguise for her. She never tried to cross the
boundaries she herself had designed for her. . In the words of Cazamian,

Vol. 6, Issue. V

208

October 2015

www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English

ISSN: 0976-8165

The novels of Jane Austen rarely treat anything save the restricted circle of home life and
all social interests are gathered around it.[964]
It is indeed quite strange that she only preferred to write on the topic of love, match making
and marriage .All other issues surrounding human being are conspicuous by their absence in her
work She lived and wrote through the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, but no shadow of
those international turmoil is allowed to confuse the firm bright clarity of her vision. There are
no adventures in her books, no abstract ideas, no romantic reveries, no death scene. She could
not have acted more wisely than she did in avoiding dealing with affairs which from literary
stand point were of passing interest. Already the novels concerned with great wars that have been
written in last few years are as dead as mutton. They are as ephemeral as the newspaper that day
by day told us what was happening.Although this confinement to few topics was deliberate or
otherwise but it made her work contemporary in every age and their appeal extends up to the
whole world. Had she chosen to take some other course than the existing one, she might fail on
the second test of popularity of any literary creation i.e. association.
In almost all of her novels, Austen generally explores the same issues or questions, though she
explores them from different perspectives, under different situations, and with varied
consequences. This provides her creations a touch of Providence skill that has created countless
individual but everyone peculiar in his or her own way.
Her clear-sighted eyes read through the inner minds of those who live around her, or of
the beings whom she invents and animates, just as if those minds were
transparent.[Legouis &Cazamians,964]
However, this does not mean that the endings are necessarily different; being comic novels, they
all end with at least one marriage. Austen once said that she acquired perfection by working on
her two inches of ivory and in so doing she was obliged to repeat the same themes in her stories
though with the use of different plots. The themes which commonly appear in her novels are
Love, courtship, and marriage. She has also treated same subject in the light of Imagination &
fancy versus reason & judgment. Jane Austen also touched one very important aspect of fair
sexs life i.e. Freedom and constraint .In short readers find an echo of woman's education,
marriage, propriety of women in society in almost all of her works but in varied tone & pitch.
George Henry Lewes, writing in 1852, accorded her the status and identified issues that critics
would be repeating and arguing about for the next century and a half:
First and foremost let Austen is named, the greatest artist that has ever written, using the
term to signify the most perfect mastery over the means to her end. There are heights and
depths in human nature Miss Austen has never scaled nor fathomed, there are worlds of
passionate existence into which she has never set foot; but although this is obvious to
every reader, it is equally obvious that she has risked no failures by attempting to
delineate that which she has not seen. Her circle may be restricted, but it is complete. Her
world is a perfect orb, and vital. Life, as it presents itself to an English gentlewoman
peacefully yet actively engaged in her quiet village, is mirrored in her works with a purity
and fidelity that must endow them with interest for all time.

Vol. 6, Issue. V

209

October 2015

www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English

ISSN: 0976-8165

Jane Austens first published work, Sense and Sensibility, a romantic novel, appeared in the year
1811. The world was first introduced to her portrayal of realism in English literature. Wisdom,
self- control, emotion, enthusiasm, love, romance and heartbreak- all the basic realities of life are
portrayed through Austens characters the Dashwood sisters- Elinore, Marianne and Margaret.
At the end of the novel, the reader is given full freedom to decide whether sense and sensibility
has emerged or not. This book is a beautiful and powerful introduction to Austens classics, a
sensible, sensitive and delightful read about the extraordinary power of women
Pride and Prejudice is considered to be the finest novel of Jane Austen, and is a work of art in
the history of English fiction. It has an incomparable freshness and sharpness of outline .It is
modelled on Shakespeares Much Ado About Nothing. In Shakespeares scintillating comedy
Benedick and Beatrice who hate each other in the beginning of the play ultimately married in the
end. Similarly in Jane Austens novel we have the exhibition of pride and prejudice, and their
ultimate union in the end. Pride is represented by Darcy and prejudice by Elizabeth. They are
ultimately united in a hilarious spirit.
Northanger Abbey, which was actually written first, although published last, and is the youngest
and funniest novel, a spoof of the gothic novels of Mrs. Radcliffe that Jane Austen loved to read
as a girl. The heroine of the novel Catherine Morland, is just 15, growing from a tomboyish
adolescence into womanhood. The plot of Northanger Abbey revolves around the question: Who
will Catherine marry, and how will she get to the altar? The theme, however, focuses on a
different question: Austen believed that the novel could help readers to become mature; it could
serve as a moral instructor, with a similar role as the weekly sermons. Though the incidents of
the novel are commonplace and the characters flatly average yet the treatment is deft and
touched with the finest needle point of satiric observation.
Mansfield Park probably composed around 1810; Austen debates a central issue for her: Should
a woman marry for love or for interest, prudently, that is, with an eye toward finances? The
ironic opening of Mansfield Park recalls the decisions on this all-important question of three
sisters of the Ward family. The novel tells us that there is no magic formula for happiness. This
opening sets the stage for the novel proper, the story of Fanny Price, the namesake daughter of
Frances, adopted from her impoverished house in Portsmouth to Mansfield Park, a grand estate,
where she is never quite accepted. In the course of the novel, Fanny manages to resist pressures
and make the right marriage choices. She becomes the mistress of Mansfield Park and a leading
figure in society. She represents to a considerable degree the value held dear by Jane Austen. The
novel has a new gravity and represents the reaction of Jane Austen to the wave of Evangelism
that had engulfed and swept quite respectable lady novelists of the times.
Austens fourth novel Emma, published in 1815, is a novel about the dangers of love and
romance executed in a distorted way. Emma Woodhouse, the main protagonist of the storybeautiful, witty and slightly- spoiled young woman, is blind to her own mistakes she makes by
fixing matches for others and remaining unaware of her own feelings for Mr. Knightley. The
story is completely devoid of Austens conventional romance and romantic marriage themes.
This is a beautiful story of relationships and a tale of love- never expressed.

Vol. 6, Issue. V

210

October 2015

www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English

ISSN: 0976-8165

Persuasion, the last novel by Austen, was published posthumously in 1818 This is a moving love
story on a simple plot, centred along the main character- Anne Elliot and her representation of
women characters as the rational creatures, at the mercy of men. Men have had every advantage
of us in telling their own story. the pen has been in their hands. 'Persuasion' portrays mature
love. Anne Elliot is an untypical a heroine as Austen ever portrayed. At the age of 26, she is
already considered an old maid who has no chance of winning a husband in the face if the
younger and livelier girls. She rejects two very good offers of marriage because she is still in
love with Wentworth with whom she broke her engagement at the age of 19. This novel is a
pleasant and thought- provoking read, different from other Austen novels in certain aspects,
perhaps the best of the best among all Austen novels.
A deeper study of Austens limited range forces us to contemplate why she has never tried to
step out of herself designed boundaries and even in that limited range she has only picked up
issues related to love, match-making & marriages. An in depth probing indicates towards some
psychological aspect of the whole issue. This is human nature that once we strongly feel for a
thing and are able to acquire it, then very soon we tend to forget the intimate inclination that we
once felt for that thing: the possession of a thing in a way devalues it but if we are unable to
acquire that desired thing, the feeling for that thing stays in our conscious and subconscious
mind. This might be a reason for her limited range in the selection of themes. As she never
married, although she is said to have been in love once with a gentleman she met at the seashore
when she was twenty-five. Unfortunately he died immediately thereafter without even leaving
his name, and there are those who claim that the constancy she wrote of in Persuasion was her
own.
There is one more reference we find about episode of such happenings in her life .On the eve of
her twenty-seventh birthday, a young man named Harris Bigg-Wither, who was six years her
junior, proposed marriage and she accepted him; only to change her mind overnight and break
the engagement the next morning. Selfishly, we can only regard that episode as a close call,
because if she had married Harris Bigg-Wither, the world might have been denied the six novels,
although, of course, it would have been richer in Bigg-Withers.
One cannot change or control ones emotions. One can only learn how to be with them, living
peacefully with them, transmuting them (which means releasing them). One can manage them,
but one cannot control them .We can play all sorts of games with our minds, denying reality is
something we all do. However, its much harder to hide reality when we write things down. Our
feelings remain within us until we release them. Probably her novels were a tool she had used to
vent out her deeply felt emotions, which remained unfulfilled. Novels were in a way virtual
world she had created to run away from her drab world in which she was not able to enjoy love
and settled life.
Through her novels, Austen asks the most important questions in a womans life. How does any
woman determine the course that her life will take? Such decisions depend on the situation in
which the woman finds herself. For Austen, novels, particularly great works of morality such as
her own, can help women negotiate these paths. In Pride and Prejudice and Sense and
Sensibility, Austen while tackling these themes portrays the need for a balance in life and not to
give way to an excess of pride, prejudice, sense or sensibility. However in Mansfield Park, she
portrays the heroine as being always right which is not too appealing to us for she does not seem

Vol. 6, Issue. V

211

October 2015

www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English

ISSN: 0976-8165

to be human enough. In Emma she portrays the 'education' of the heroine who almost loses the
one person she has always loved, though unconsciously.
Jane Austens whole stock-in-trade was an almost unlimited capacity for specializing in what
may be designated as Storms in Tea-Cup. There never perhaps a writer who excelled more in the
delineation of minute of life. Give her an inch in socio-family matters; she could make it an
ell by her extra ordinary creative genius in this area. Man in relation to God, to politics to
abstract ideas, passed her by: it was only when she saw him with his family and his neighbours
that her creative impulse began to stir to activity. The people of the novels are neither of very
high nor very low estate and they have no great adventure .A picnic, a dance ,amateur theatricals,
or at most an elopement are the outstanding events. It is said that two men are never left together
in her novels, there are always ladies present. The stories at all events are told from a womans
point of view.
One of the greatest qualities of a novelist is his or her power to create living characters, and Jane
Austen possesses mastery in it .She infuses life and vitality in almost all of her characters; this is
the reason that they remain fresh, alive and active even in present time. An analogy of
Shakespearean description of Cleopatras charm can be used, to describe Jane Austins fictional
art that Time cannot wither it, nor custom stale its myriad variety. Somehow they do not grow
old and die; somehow humanity never loses its interest in them. Her characters are not only
living but also original. They are not types but individuals. Her unerring eye portrays human
characters with great precision and exactness. Her male characters have certain softness of
temper, but her female characters are almost perfect. It can be said that out of her small
parsonage house Jane Austens gay wand conjures innumerable troops of unique and peculiar
identity.
First and foremost let Austen is named, the greatest artist that has ever written, using the term to
signify the most perfect mastery over the means to her end. There are heights and depths in
human nature Miss Austen has never scaled nor fathomed, there are worlds of passionate
existence into which she has never set foot; but although this is obvious to every reader, it is
equally obvious that she has risked no failures by attempting to delineate that which she has not
seen. Her circle may be restricted, but it is complete. Her world is a perfect orb, and vital. Life,
as it presents itself to an English gentlewoman peacefully yet actively engaged in her quiet
village, is mirrored in her works with a purity and fidelity that must endow them with interest for
all time.
The very opening of Pride and Prejudice reflects writers over possessiveness for the theme and
that immediately capture the interest of a young heart irrespective of the age and place of
belongings:
"My dear Mr. Bennet," said his lady to him one day, "have you heard that Netherfield Park is let
at last?"
Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.
"But it is," returned she; "for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it."
Mr. Bennet made no answer.

Vol. 6, Issue. V

212

October 2015

www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English

ISSN: 0976-8165

"Do you not want to know who has taken it?" cried his wife impatiently.
"YOU want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it."
This was invitation enough.
"Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of
large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to
see the place, and was so much delighted with it, that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately;
that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house
by the end of next week."
"What is his name?"
"Bingley."
"Is he married or single?"
"Oh! Single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year.
What a fine thing for our girls!"
"How so? How can it affect them?"
"My dear Mr. Bennet," replied his wife, "how can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am
thinking of his marrying one of them."
"Is that his design in settling here?"
"Design! Nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he MAY fall in love with one
of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes."

Novels

Sense and Sensibility (1811)

Pride and Prejudice (1813)
Mansfield Park (1814)
Emma (1815)
Northanger Abbey (1818, posthumous)
Persuasion (1818, posthumous)

Works Cited:

Austen-Leigh, William and Richard Arthur. Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters: A Family
Record, London, Smith, Elder & Co. 1913 web
Cecil ,Lord David , Poets and Story Tellers OU.P

Cecil, David. Portrait of Jane Austen, Penguin (1978).

Vol. 6, Issue. V

213

October 2015

www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English

ISSN: 0976-8165

Cross, W. L, The Development of English Novel, London : The Macmillan Company,

1899. Print
Duckworth, Alistair. The Improvement of the Estate: A Study of Jane Austen's Novels,
(1971).
J.N.Mundra, AHistory of English LiteraturePrakash Book Depot.
Legouis and Cazamian, History of English LiteratureMacmillan India Limited.

Scott, P.J. Jane Austen: A Reassessment, (1982).

Watt, Ian, ed. Jane Austen: A Collection of Critical Essays, (1963).

Vol. 6, Issue. V

214

October 2015