Jane Austen Responses
READER RESPONSE TO AUSTEN'S NOVELS
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. Contemporary reviewers found much to praise in them. Reviewing Emma for the Quarterly Review (1816), Sir Walter Scott characterized its strengths and weaknesses: The author's knowledge of the world, and the peculiar tact with which she presents characters that the reader cannot fail to recognize, reminds us something of the merits of the Flemish school of painting. The subjects are not often elegant, and certainly never grand; but they are finished to nature, and with a precision which delights the reader.... …show more content…
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 …show more content…
Horace Walpole suggested a principle that explains the differing responses of Austen and Bronte to life and writing novels: "This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel." Building on this comment, Ian Watt suggested that Jane Austen's novels, which are comedies, "have little appeal to those who believe thought inferior to feeling." Not all readers agree with Bronte, however, that Austen's novels lack emotion. For Virginia Woolf, Austen was "a mistress of much deeper emotion than appears on the surface. She stimulates us to supply what is not
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. Contemporary reviewers found much to praise in them. Reviewing Emma for the Quarterly Review (1816), Sir Walter Scott characterized its strengths and weaknesses: The author's knowledge of the world, and the peculiar tact with which she presents characters that the reader cannot fail to recognize, reminds us something of the merits of the Flemish school of painting. The subjects are not often elegant, and certainly never grand; but they are finished to nature, and with a precision which delights the reader.... …show more content…
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 …show more content…
Horace Walpole suggested a principle that explains the differing responses of Austen and Bronte to life and writing novels: "This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel." Building on this comment, Ian Watt suggested that Jane Austen's novels, which are comedies, "have little appeal to those who believe thought inferior to feeling." Not all readers agree with Bronte, however, that Austen's novels lack emotion. For Virginia Woolf, Austen was "a mistress of much deeper emotion than appears on the surface. She stimulates us to supply what is not