Jane Austen was the master of the Novel of Manner. She had a short and uneventful life: she was the daugther of a rector of a church, she received a complete learning and she was very linked to her sister Cassandra. After this short description we can understand how her style would be. The character that represents her attitude is Elinor in "Sense and Sensibility": she's a reflective woman, she has a lot of different qualities, but well balanced (reason and passion, sense and sensibility....). Marianne, that is the second heroine of the novel, instead, is more an impulsive and sensible character but she's an intelligent woman and along the novel she gradually acquires sense.
Also in "Pride and Prejudice" female characters have important roles. Elizabeth, the heroine, is a very clever woman capable of complex ideas and impressions. She has a really strong personality, she refuses the roles imposed on her by her family. We can see her attitude and strong personality when she accuses Darcy of pride and when she refuses his proposal of marriage: she is a really uncommon girl, expecially for the period in which she lives. Elizabeth's strong personality is in contrast with her sister's. Jane (this was her name), in fact, isn't a round character with her own personality, she is more a type, a flat character.
In these two works the female figures have a central role maybe because of the life and the education received by Jane Austen. But all these women are different from each others because the English author wanted to investigate and to show every different facet of the human mind, expecially the female mind.
Jane Austen succeeded in doing it introducing her characters in amorous weaves that usually ended with an happy ending (one or more weddings).
Francesco Poggi
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I think you have done a good work, but you haven't written about Mrs Bennet: an other important female figure in Austen's novels.
Mrs Bennet is Mr Bennet's wife, we can see her behaviour in the extract of "Pride & Prejudice", while she's talking to Mr Bennet about Mr Bingley: she wants her husband to permise Mr Bingley to marry one of their daughters. In the extract we can notice that she's a woman of mean understanding, uncertain temper, she is really curious, and her really wish is to get her daughters married. However she has a really strong personality and she is a flat character.
Lorenzo Quercioli
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