Charlotte B. Austen Research Paper
“Anything like warmth or enthusiasm, anything energetic, poignant, heartfelt, is utterly out of place in commending these works: all such demonstrations the authoress would have met with a well-bred sneer, would have calmly scorned as outré or extravagant. She does her business of delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English people curiously well. There is a Chinese fidelity, a miniature delicacy, in the painting. She ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him by nothing profound. The passions are perfectly unknown to her: she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy sisterhood… What sees keenly, speaks aptly, and moves flexibly, it pits her to study: but what throbs fast and full, though hidden, what the blood rushes through, what is the unseen scat of life and the sentient target of death - that Miss Austen ignores.”
Though Charlotte Bronte, one of the finest English novelists, contradicted with and criticized Miss Austen’s novel writing in several ways, it is the latter who has proven …show more content…
to be a superior novelist. Even though Miss Austen’s novels are love stories and her career coincided with the Romantic Movement, but unlike Charlotte Bronte she was not a romanticist. Miss Austen believed in the importance of the set standards of society but at the same ridiculed those customs that were irrational and unnecessary through her heroines. Charlotte Bronte negated the general expectations of society from women through her writing and wrote instead on women who relied upon the respect of themselves, rather than society. It is through this aspect of self-reliance that Charlotte’s women received the fulfillment in their lives and conquered happiness. Being a complete romantic, Miss Bronte gave the world of literature the gift of the independent and modern women. Her women were determined to make their own way, and live their own lives in accordance to their own set of standards. Perhaps Charlotte Bronte’s opinion may appear to be convincing to some extent, it can be wholly rejected when we scrutinize the work of Miss Austen as a satirical moralist.
Although Miss Austen is classified as a modern novelist, her affinities lie more with the eighteenth century novelists than the nineteenth century’s. Her choice of subject, technique, skills and precision in craftsmanship are similar to the classic writers. The romanticists loved describing nature but if there is any mention of nature at all in Miss Austen’s work, it is very brief. They also glorified poor characters but in Miss Austen’s work there is an indifference towards the peasants and other lower classes. Unlike the work of Romantics, her work is free of unreserved emotion or overindulgent passion. She believed that the power of feeling should be controlled and be depicted in an intellectual manner. Her work had no room for the vivacious fun that was present in the work of the first novelists of the century. Her work indeed seems little touched by political events in her world or by major literary trends of her day. In her words, “My canvas is just a little bit of ivory, two inches wide, on which I work with so fine a brush.” It is true that the range of vision of Jane Austen is much smaller than most of the 18th century novelists, but the vision is much more intense. She did not weave in the Napoleonic Wars or the Industrial Revolution in the world she created. But this does not make her work weak or less interesting. On the contrary, it makes it self-contained, with the larger context supplied by Miss Austen’s continual awareness and scrutiny of the values. Her insights into the lives of women of her period, and her mastery of form and irony have made Austen one of the most noted and influential novelists of her time. Sir Walter Scott, one of the greatest European novelists during the time of Miss Austen, remarked in his 1826 diary that, "the big Bow-Wow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary common-place things and characters interesting from the truth of description and sentiment, is denied to me.” Though Miss Austen was aware of the narrowness of her range, it was exactly this aspect of rendering ‘ordinary common-place things and characters interesting from the truth of description and sentiment’ that contributed to her ability of intense description. Furthermore, because of her restricted and intense range, the nature of the novel can be best learned from her than from almost any other writer. Miss Austen’s historical importance among scholars and critics has been cemented because of her realistic and biting social commentary in her works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry. Her observation of the facts of real life became even more deep with maturity and she began to represent her later on work with striking justice. Lord David Cecil says; “Life is chaotic, art is orderly. The novelist's problem is to evoke an orderly composition which is also a convincing picture of life. It is Jane Austen's triumph that she solves this problem perfectly.” Her characters are not idealized or romanticized but they share common human follies and faults, thus making her a true pure novelist. The pure novelist is after perfection and representing life as it is, not as how it should be. This demands the acknowledgment of severe limits. Jane Austen’s work is an epitome of pure novel writing because of the clear recognition of limits. She concentrated upon human beings and their mutual reactions and delineated them in her novels. Walter Allan, the late English literary critic and novelist, said in The English Novel, “The writer of the pure novel sets out to delight us not by prodigality of invention, the creation of a large gallery of characters, the alternation of a large number of contrasted scenes, but by the attention to the formal qualities of composition, to design, to the subordination of the parts to the whole, the whole being the exploration of the relations between his characters or of their relations to a central situation or theme.” Jane Austen’s sense of reality is highly exceptional in Mansfield Park when she describes Fanny’s visit to her family after ten years in Portsmouth. Her realistic approach to this passage is so remarkable that had she paid attention to forming a realistic approach, she would have given work that would have been perhaps equally if not greater than her satiric writing. Fanny has all the longing in her heart to meet her mother and family but when she lives in the boisterous and impecunious environment, her sentimental notion of ‘home’ is injured. The greatest misery of all for Fanny was the endless chaos and commotion. At Mansfield Park, the daily routine follows with a cheerful orderliness. All the members of the household have their own place and importance. It was only Aunt Norris who created introduced small problems now and then, but they were almost negligible. Fanny’s realization of the reality of her household is not because her stay at Mansfield Park has made her a snob, but she is simply seeing the reality as it is. It is in this part of the story that Miss Austen proves her fairness and justice to characters. Fanny observes that Miss Norris would have been more of a respectable mother of nine children on a small income compared to her mother. Though Miss Norris is always attempting to put Fanny down and flattering the Bertams endlessly, Miss Austen has dealt with her justly. A moralist as satirist, Miss Austen creates a world of irony in both language and situation. She presents the moral and ethical elements in her novel with shades of comedy. A.C Bradley says, “There are two great distinct strains in Jane Austen. She is a moralist and humorist. Her view of life is comic; nevertheless there is a profoundly moral and ethical strain to it.” Andrew Wright says, “Irony in her hands is the instrument of moral vision.” What gives Miss Austen’s characters their value is that through them she expresses a highly serious criticism of life in terms of comedy. She is never soft for even a moment and this perhaps makes her the most unyielding, ruthless novelist in the world. Austen is intelligent enough to weave in her moral tensions to her art making her one of the most outspoken moralists in English, even though the subject matter of her novels may seem fairly insignificant: a young woman’s finding a husband. As Walter Allan comments, “She is, with Dr. Johnson, the most forthright moralist in English, and the authority which comes we feel, from vast experience of life, a massive common sense, and an integrity determined to face all the facts of life without seeking refuge in illusion is hers too.” It is this moralistic preconception of her vision that serves as the main feature of Jane Austen’s eighteenth century sensibility. According to F.R Leavis, the influential British literary critic of the early-to-mid-twentieth century, it is Jane Austen's deep moral preoccupation with life that serves to be the principle of organization and development of her work. In her most popular novel, Pride and Prejudice, she exposes the absurdities of the characters through satire. Although Lady Catherine’s snobbery, Mr. Collins pretentiousness, Darcy’s pride and Elizabeth’s prejudice are ridiculed, Miss Austen deals with very serious issues of society i.e., the issue of class system and entailment, of her time in her novel. Her eighteenth century moral concern is reflected through the attitudes of Lydia-Wickham, Collins and Catherine and of the Bennets. She condemns the irresponsible nature of Mr. Bennet and his wife, even if with laughs. In Mansfield Park, Mrs. Norris and in Emma, the Eltons are shown in a contemptuous scorn in a way quite different from that of the earlier characters. She treated her earlier characters with affection but as she matured, it seems that her contemptible characters became even hateful to her. Her talent of making her characters expose themselves in their own words through an economy of writing is simply remarkable. An example of such a comic dialogue can be found in the second chapter of Sense and Sensibility. Mr. and Mrs. John Dashwood discuss how to provide for his widowed mother and sisters in order to fulfill the promise he had made to his dying father. They begin by thinking of giving them three thousand pounds and end at deciding that only presents of fish and game when in season will be enough for them. Jane Austen defends and criticizes the social customs of her time through her characters. Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice is perhaps one of the best characters who constantly bring the absurdity of certain social customs to view. Ms. Bennet challenges the social customs of her time when she finds out that her sister is ill at the Bingleys’ by walking to Netherfield unaccompanied. It was a custom in those days that a lady under thirty years old should not walk alone without another lady, man, or servant unless walking to Church in the early morning. Elizabeth’s walk to Netherfield made her action slightly indecent. Miss Austen also exposes how absurd it was to expect a woman to be ‘accomplished’ through the discussion between Darcy and Elizabeth. Women from higher class are expected to be fluent in reading, riding, singing, playing piano, sewing, dancing and playing music. Through Elizabeth Bennet’s character, Miss Austen criticizes needlessly fastidious demands of the society.
A highly sophisticated artist, Miss Austen focused on the following certain themes in her literary work: social class, middle class manners, gender issues, and courtship and marriage.
It is because of her interest in such themes that her novels are timeless and still read with great interest even today. Austen’s novels concern themselves with the landed gentry in England. Their social importance is primarily based on inherited property, the history of their families, and morals and manners. There is a very elaborate and subtle class-structure. She has fixed certain standards of reference by which manners are judged in her novels, the code of behavior being rather unyielding. This is why her novels are often identified as “novels of manners.” By modern standards, the world that she has created is too rigid and formalized. Such a class-structure and code of behavior is plainly beyond the understanding and of value to many modern
readers.
Miss Austen stresses upon the importance of being conventional in her novels. All those who challenge conventions and customs end up disgraced from their social circles. In Pride and Prejudice, Lydia and Wickham lose their respect because of their elopement. In Miss Austen times, a woman who engaged in sexual activity or even if there was a mere implication of it, she was considered ineligible for not only marriage but also for any respectable position such as governess, teacher, or paid companion. That is why so much effort was made in finding the couple in order to get them married. In Mansfield Park, Maria Bertram, Henry and Mary Crawford come to unhappy endings because of challenging conventions.
For Miss Austen, it was very vital for her to make a reasonable marriage for having a secure future. Same is the case with her characters in all of her novels. This is because for both legal and customary reasons, wealth was not shared equally among the members of the landed gentry. Issues of entailment and dependency on the uncertain generosity often forced the women to seek financial security through affluent marriages, even if their own happiness had to be sacrificed. . Her plots, though embedded in satire and comedy, draw attention to the dependence of women on marriage to protect their social standing and economic security. In Pride and Prejudice, Charlotte Lucas marries Mr. Collins purely for the sake of financial security. Miss Austen also delineated those characters in her novels that are on the margins of the gentry and are desperately hopeful in elevating themselves into the gentry’s social class. Mr. Wickham from Pride and Prejudice attempted to elope with Georgiana Darcy for her fortune. In Mansfield Park, Henry and Mary Crawford, the dazzling brother and sister make attempts to become a part of the landed gentry. Henry was unable to resist his sexual powers over Maria and Mary loses Edmund because of the lightness of her attitude on the elopement of her brother with Maria. Because these characters have poor and selfish personalities, they have a poor ending.
The criteria by which Miss Austen judges her characters are: * self-command, * just consideration of others, * knowledge of the heart, * and a principle of right derived from education
As we have discussed in the beginning, Miss Austen is not a romanticist nor did she support romanticism. Those characters that possess the virtue of self-command are respectable in her world but those who lack it are otherwise. Mrs. Bennet and Lydia Bennet from Pride and Prejudice are highly irresponsible which makes them appear foolish to not only the other characters in the novel but also to the reader. Similarly, Marianne Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility is unreserved with her emotion. Her unconcealed flirtatious affair with Willoughby makes her the talk of the town. On the other hand, Elinor’s reserved temperament earns her a respectable status among their society.
The realization of self-knowledge is one of the most important parts of Miss Austen's theme. Every heroine that she has created is stripped of her illusionary self and comes to see her reality- who she is, where she came from, and what she truly needs before she can see where she is going to. Possessing the capacity of self-knowledge is what makes her heroines intellectually admirable. Emma is a story of how a young, spoilt and strong-willed Emma learns to see herself as she truly is, others, and her relationships more clearly and then puts and effort in improving her character. Elizabeth Bennet realizes her prejudice against Mr. Darcy and changes her opinion of him after he has shown the improvement of manners towards the end of Pride and Prejudice. There is always an improvement of mind in Miss Austen’s heroines which in turn increases the knowledge of their hearts.
Miss Austen’s work hardly brought her any personal fame during her lifetime. She received only a few positive reviews. It was after the publication in 1869 of her nephew's A Memoir of Jane Austen that exposed her to a wider public. Her popularity had increased by the 1940s so much so that she was included in the academia as a great English writer. Though Charlotte Brontë thought that Jane Austen was out of touch with enthusiasm and passions and that she was "a complete and most sensible lady, but she was a very incomplete woman," it is her moralistic vision, her observation of society, her style and craftsmanship of novel-writing and her avoidance of romanticism truly makes her the last exquisite flower of the eighteenth century.
Though Charlotte Bronte, one of the finest English novelists, contradicted with and criticized Miss Austen’s novel writing in several ways, it is the latter who has proven …show more content…
to be a superior novelist. Even though Miss Austen’s novels are love stories and her career coincided with the Romantic Movement, but unlike Charlotte Bronte she was not a romanticist. Miss Austen believed in the importance of the set standards of society but at the same ridiculed those customs that were irrational and unnecessary through her heroines. Charlotte Bronte negated the general expectations of society from women through her writing and wrote instead on women who relied upon the respect of themselves, rather than society. It is through this aspect of self-reliance that Charlotte’s women received the fulfillment in their lives and conquered happiness. Being a complete romantic, Miss Bronte gave the world of literature the gift of the independent and modern women. Her women were determined to make their own way, and live their own lives in accordance to their own set of standards. Perhaps Charlotte Bronte’s opinion may appear to be convincing to some extent, it can be wholly rejected when we scrutinize the work of Miss Austen as a satirical moralist.
Although Miss Austen is classified as a modern novelist, her affinities lie more with the eighteenth century novelists than the nineteenth century’s. Her choice of subject, technique, skills and precision in craftsmanship are similar to the classic writers. The romanticists loved describing nature but if there is any mention of nature at all in Miss Austen’s work, it is very brief. They also glorified poor characters but in Miss Austen’s work there is an indifference towards the peasants and other lower classes. Unlike the work of Romantics, her work is free of unreserved emotion or overindulgent passion. She believed that the power of feeling should be controlled and be depicted in an intellectual manner. Her work had no room for the vivacious fun that was present in the work of the first novelists of the century. Her work indeed seems little touched by political events in her world or by major literary trends of her day. In her words, “My canvas is just a little bit of ivory, two inches wide, on which I work with so fine a brush.” It is true that the range of vision of Jane Austen is much smaller than most of the 18th century novelists, but the vision is much more intense. She did not weave in the Napoleonic Wars or the Industrial Revolution in the world she created. But this does not make her work weak or less interesting. On the contrary, it makes it self-contained, with the larger context supplied by Miss Austen’s continual awareness and scrutiny of the values. Her insights into the lives of women of her period, and her mastery of form and irony have made Austen one of the most noted and influential novelists of her time. Sir Walter Scott, one of the greatest European novelists during the time of Miss Austen, remarked in his 1826 diary that, "the big Bow-Wow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary common-place things and characters interesting from the truth of description and sentiment, is denied to me.” Though Miss Austen was aware of the narrowness of her range, it was exactly this aspect of rendering ‘ordinary common-place things and characters interesting from the truth of description and sentiment’ that contributed to her ability of intense description. Furthermore, because of her restricted and intense range, the nature of the novel can be best learned from her than from almost any other writer. Miss Austen’s historical importance among scholars and critics has been cemented because of her realistic and biting social commentary in her works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry. Her observation of the facts of real life became even more deep with maturity and she began to represent her later on work with striking justice. Lord David Cecil says; “Life is chaotic, art is orderly. The novelist's problem is to evoke an orderly composition which is also a convincing picture of life. It is Jane Austen's triumph that she solves this problem perfectly.” Her characters are not idealized or romanticized but they share common human follies and faults, thus making her a true pure novelist. The pure novelist is after perfection and representing life as it is, not as how it should be. This demands the acknowledgment of severe limits. Jane Austen’s work is an epitome of pure novel writing because of the clear recognition of limits. She concentrated upon human beings and their mutual reactions and delineated them in her novels. Walter Allan, the late English literary critic and novelist, said in The English Novel, “The writer of the pure novel sets out to delight us not by prodigality of invention, the creation of a large gallery of characters, the alternation of a large number of contrasted scenes, but by the attention to the formal qualities of composition, to design, to the subordination of the parts to the whole, the whole being the exploration of the relations between his characters or of their relations to a central situation or theme.” Jane Austen’s sense of reality is highly exceptional in Mansfield Park when she describes Fanny’s visit to her family after ten years in Portsmouth. Her realistic approach to this passage is so remarkable that had she paid attention to forming a realistic approach, she would have given work that would have been perhaps equally if not greater than her satiric writing. Fanny has all the longing in her heart to meet her mother and family but when she lives in the boisterous and impecunious environment, her sentimental notion of ‘home’ is injured. The greatest misery of all for Fanny was the endless chaos and commotion. At Mansfield Park, the daily routine follows with a cheerful orderliness. All the members of the household have their own place and importance. It was only Aunt Norris who created introduced small problems now and then, but they were almost negligible. Fanny’s realization of the reality of her household is not because her stay at Mansfield Park has made her a snob, but she is simply seeing the reality as it is. It is in this part of the story that Miss Austen proves her fairness and justice to characters. Fanny observes that Miss Norris would have been more of a respectable mother of nine children on a small income compared to her mother. Though Miss Norris is always attempting to put Fanny down and flattering the Bertams endlessly, Miss Austen has dealt with her justly. A moralist as satirist, Miss Austen creates a world of irony in both language and situation. She presents the moral and ethical elements in her novel with shades of comedy. A.C Bradley says, “There are two great distinct strains in Jane Austen. She is a moralist and humorist. Her view of life is comic; nevertheless there is a profoundly moral and ethical strain to it.” Andrew Wright says, “Irony in her hands is the instrument of moral vision.” What gives Miss Austen’s characters their value is that through them she expresses a highly serious criticism of life in terms of comedy. She is never soft for even a moment and this perhaps makes her the most unyielding, ruthless novelist in the world. Austen is intelligent enough to weave in her moral tensions to her art making her one of the most outspoken moralists in English, even though the subject matter of her novels may seem fairly insignificant: a young woman’s finding a husband. As Walter Allan comments, “She is, with Dr. Johnson, the most forthright moralist in English, and the authority which comes we feel, from vast experience of life, a massive common sense, and an integrity determined to face all the facts of life without seeking refuge in illusion is hers too.” It is this moralistic preconception of her vision that serves as the main feature of Jane Austen’s eighteenth century sensibility. According to F.R Leavis, the influential British literary critic of the early-to-mid-twentieth century, it is Jane Austen's deep moral preoccupation with life that serves to be the principle of organization and development of her work. In her most popular novel, Pride and Prejudice, she exposes the absurdities of the characters through satire. Although Lady Catherine’s snobbery, Mr. Collins pretentiousness, Darcy’s pride and Elizabeth’s prejudice are ridiculed, Miss Austen deals with very serious issues of society i.e., the issue of class system and entailment, of her time in her novel. Her eighteenth century moral concern is reflected through the attitudes of Lydia-Wickham, Collins and Catherine and of the Bennets. She condemns the irresponsible nature of Mr. Bennet and his wife, even if with laughs. In Mansfield Park, Mrs. Norris and in Emma, the Eltons are shown in a contemptuous scorn in a way quite different from that of the earlier characters. She treated her earlier characters with affection but as she matured, it seems that her contemptible characters became even hateful to her. Her talent of making her characters expose themselves in their own words through an economy of writing is simply remarkable. An example of such a comic dialogue can be found in the second chapter of Sense and Sensibility. Mr. and Mrs. John Dashwood discuss how to provide for his widowed mother and sisters in order to fulfill the promise he had made to his dying father. They begin by thinking of giving them three thousand pounds and end at deciding that only presents of fish and game when in season will be enough for them. Jane Austen defends and criticizes the social customs of her time through her characters. Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice is perhaps one of the best characters who constantly bring the absurdity of certain social customs to view. Ms. Bennet challenges the social customs of her time when she finds out that her sister is ill at the Bingleys’ by walking to Netherfield unaccompanied. It was a custom in those days that a lady under thirty years old should not walk alone without another lady, man, or servant unless walking to Church in the early morning. Elizabeth’s walk to Netherfield made her action slightly indecent. Miss Austen also exposes how absurd it was to expect a woman to be ‘accomplished’ through the discussion between Darcy and Elizabeth. Women from higher class are expected to be fluent in reading, riding, singing, playing piano, sewing, dancing and playing music. Through Elizabeth Bennet’s character, Miss Austen criticizes needlessly fastidious demands of the society.
A highly sophisticated artist, Miss Austen focused on the following certain themes in her literary work: social class, middle class manners, gender issues, and courtship and marriage.
It is because of her interest in such themes that her novels are timeless and still read with great interest even today. Austen’s novels concern themselves with the landed gentry in England. Their social importance is primarily based on inherited property, the history of their families, and morals and manners. There is a very elaborate and subtle class-structure. She has fixed certain standards of reference by which manners are judged in her novels, the code of behavior being rather unyielding. This is why her novels are often identified as “novels of manners.” By modern standards, the world that she has created is too rigid and formalized. Such a class-structure and code of behavior is plainly beyond the understanding and of value to many modern
readers.
Miss Austen stresses upon the importance of being conventional in her novels. All those who challenge conventions and customs end up disgraced from their social circles. In Pride and Prejudice, Lydia and Wickham lose their respect because of their elopement. In Miss Austen times, a woman who engaged in sexual activity or even if there was a mere implication of it, she was considered ineligible for not only marriage but also for any respectable position such as governess, teacher, or paid companion. That is why so much effort was made in finding the couple in order to get them married. In Mansfield Park, Maria Bertram, Henry and Mary Crawford come to unhappy endings because of challenging conventions.
For Miss Austen, it was very vital for her to make a reasonable marriage for having a secure future. Same is the case with her characters in all of her novels. This is because for both legal and customary reasons, wealth was not shared equally among the members of the landed gentry. Issues of entailment and dependency on the uncertain generosity often forced the women to seek financial security through affluent marriages, even if their own happiness had to be sacrificed. . Her plots, though embedded in satire and comedy, draw attention to the dependence of women on marriage to protect their social standing and economic security. In Pride and Prejudice, Charlotte Lucas marries Mr. Collins purely for the sake of financial security. Miss Austen also delineated those characters in her novels that are on the margins of the gentry and are desperately hopeful in elevating themselves into the gentry’s social class. Mr. Wickham from Pride and Prejudice attempted to elope with Georgiana Darcy for her fortune. In Mansfield Park, Henry and Mary Crawford, the dazzling brother and sister make attempts to become a part of the landed gentry. Henry was unable to resist his sexual powers over Maria and Mary loses Edmund because of the lightness of her attitude on the elopement of her brother with Maria. Because these characters have poor and selfish personalities, they have a poor ending.
The criteria by which Miss Austen judges her characters are: * self-command, * just consideration of others, * knowledge of the heart, * and a principle of right derived from education
As we have discussed in the beginning, Miss Austen is not a romanticist nor did she support romanticism. Those characters that possess the virtue of self-command are respectable in her world but those who lack it are otherwise. Mrs. Bennet and Lydia Bennet from Pride and Prejudice are highly irresponsible which makes them appear foolish to not only the other characters in the novel but also to the reader. Similarly, Marianne Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility is unreserved with her emotion. Her unconcealed flirtatious affair with Willoughby makes her the talk of the town. On the other hand, Elinor’s reserved temperament earns her a respectable status among their society.
The realization of self-knowledge is one of the most important parts of Miss Austen's theme. Every heroine that she has created is stripped of her illusionary self and comes to see her reality- who she is, where she came from, and what she truly needs before she can see where she is going to. Possessing the capacity of self-knowledge is what makes her heroines intellectually admirable. Emma is a story of how a young, spoilt and strong-willed Emma learns to see herself as she truly is, others, and her relationships more clearly and then puts and effort in improving her character. Elizabeth Bennet realizes her prejudice against Mr. Darcy and changes her opinion of him after he has shown the improvement of manners towards the end of Pride and Prejudice. There is always an improvement of mind in Miss Austen’s heroines which in turn increases the knowledge of their hearts.
Miss Austen’s work hardly brought her any personal fame during her lifetime. She received only a few positive reviews. It was after the publication in 1869 of her nephew's A Memoir of Jane Austen that exposed her to a wider public. Her popularity had increased by the 1940s so much so that she was included in the academia as a great English writer. Though Charlotte Brontë thought that Jane Austen was out of touch with enthusiasm and passions and that she was "a complete and most sensible lady, but she was a very incomplete woman," it is her moralistic vision, her observation of society, her style and craftsmanship of novel-writing and her avoidance of romanticism truly makes her the last exquisite flower of the eighteenth century.