Different Approach of Women as Heroine in Social Situation in Jane Austen’s Novels

Pages:106-107
Asra Anjum (Department of English, CMJ University, Shillong)

Jane Austen’s final novel Persuasion remains the most critically neglected text in her canon. At the time of its publication it was criticized for being “a much less fortunate performance than [her previous novels]” and viewed as little more than a substandard version of her practice of writing stories “devoid of invention…obviously all drawn from experience” (The Critical Heritage, 80, 84). For years, critics did not challenge these unimpressed opinions that served as the consensus on Austen’s final and ultimate contribution to the world. A closer look at Persuasion, however, reveals it to be Austen’s most revolutionary and socially interesting novel for the way that it portrays the role of the heroine in the world of 19 th century England. Persuasion is Austen’s most radical novel because it accounts for and endorses a philosophy where action is based upon emotion, instinct and interest for one’s own personal happiness. Additionally, in Persuasion, Austen engages in a language of allusion through the situations and characters that elicits her first novel, Pride and Prejudice. This evocation indicates that Austen intends for these two bookends of her career to be in direct dialogue with one another, and that Persuasion is a powerful revisioning of Pride and Prejudice.[1]