Jane Austen

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Jane Austens Emma
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Jane Austen 1775-1817

• wrote domestic fiction--all her novels are only
  concerned with a small circle of friends
• believed one should write only from ones
  experience, thus she never writes a scene set
  outside England
• her plots concern themselves with women and their
  choices of mates--believed choice of whether and
  whom to marry crucial to women
• saw marriage as the foundation of social order

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Austens literary forerunners

• 18th century 1st personautobiographical novels
• Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe
• 18th century epistolary (in letters) novels
• Samuel Richardsons Pamela
• 18th century 3rd personlimited omniscient novels
• most novels by women novelists, ie. Frances
  Burney, that focused the omniscient narrator only
  on the heroine
• 18th century 3rd personomniscient novels
• Henry Fieldings Tom Jones

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Point of View in Austen

• Not 1st person autobiographical
• too focused on one individual
• too knowing of that persons thoughts
• Not 3rd person omniscient
• narrative voice misses out on lots of information
• Not exactly 3rd person limited omniscient
• the narrative voice is not fixed on one person
• Free indirect stylea floating 3rd person limited
  omniscient narrator

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Highbury and its environs