"Jane Austen has been criticized as trivial by the same enlightened race of critics as think her incapable of depicting passion. But such a criticism reveals a complete failure to grasp the convention within which her art is constructed. For aesthetic reasons she limits herself, as we have seen, to the mood of comedy and the world of the small gentry in England. But comedy can deal, and always has since the days of the Greeks, with themes as important and significant as those of tragedy: while the life of an English Squire's wife is as serious as the life of any one else: it can no more avoid the central problems that face mankind during its sojourn on this planet. The visible structure of Jane Austen's stories may be flimsy enough; but their, foundations drive deep down into the basic principles of human conduct. On her bit of ivory she has engraved a criticism of life as serious and as considered as Hardy's."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Novelists from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomWomen authors from EnglandJane AustenWomen born before the 19th century
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Lord David Cecil, 'Introduction', in Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (1931), p. xiii
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jane_Austen
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Jane Austen
1775 – 1817
englische Schriftstellerin
160 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Jane Austen →
Related Quotes
"Everybody likes to go their own way- to choose their own time and manner of devotion."
"She knew what she knew, like a sound dogmatist: she did not know what she did not — like a sound agnostic."
"Comedy was implicit in the manner in which she told her story. Her irony, her delicate ruthless irony, was of the sub…"
"Jane Austen influenced me very much in a general way. I read her early with great pleasure and often since, and I thi…"
"Miss Austen's language deserves closer attention than it has received. She is not indeed one of the great writers of …"
"Jane Austen was born before those bonds which (we are told) protected women from truth, were burst by the Brontës or …"
"The daughter and sister of clergymen of the Established Church, she began life in the conservative fold, and even as …"
"The essence of her certainty is that the reforms she perceives to be necessary are within the attitudes of individual…"
"[I]n Northanger Abbey Jane Austen develops...her version of the revolutionary character, the man or woman who by acti…"
"[A]s her would-be biographer, I had to face the fact that information about Jane Austen the woman was limited and fra…"