Jane Austen

Biography (1775 – 1817)

 Jane Austen was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret,
critique and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's
plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of favourable social
standing and economic security. Her works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of
the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism.
 Austen was writing in the “Regency” literary movement whose authors tended to focus on
themes of romance, social etiquette and courtship in “Novels of Manners”. While Austen steers
clear of the formal, didactic moralizing typical in late 18th and early 19th century literature,
morality—characterized by manners, duty to society and religious seriousness—is a central
theme of her works. Throughout her novels, serious reading is associated with intellectual and
moral development.
 Austen's novels have variously been described as both politically conservative and progressive.
For example, one strand of criticism claims that her heroines support the existing social structure
through their dedication to duty and sacrifice of their personal desires. Another argues that
Austen is sceptical of the paternalistic ruling "other", evidenced by her ironic tone. Consequently
critics are not unanimous in labelling Austen as a “feminist” writer.
 Within her exploration of the political issues surrounding the gentry, Austen addresses issues
relating to money and property, particularly the arbitrary quality of property inheritance and the
precarious economic position of women. Throughout her work there is a tension between the
claims of society and the claims of the individual.
 Austen is often considered one of the originators of the modern, interiorized, rounded, novel
character. Her unique and surprisingly “modern” style is created through a combination of
parody, burlesque, irony, free indirect discourse and a certain degree of realism. She often
contrasts the plain meaning of a statement with the comic, undermining the meaning of the
original to create ironic disjunctions. Her mature novels employ irony to foreground social
hypocrisy.

Austen’s irony

- What is irony? “Irony is the expression of one's meaning by using language that
normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.”
- There are three kinds – Verbal, Situational and Dramatic
- M.H. Abrams writes, “there remains the root sense of dissimulation, or of a difference
between what is asserted and what is actually the case”; two meanings are asserted
simultaneously and the surface meaning is shown to be superficial. Irony is always about
different degrees of knowledge.
- “Irony is a form of utterance that postulates a double audience, consisting of one party that
hearing shall hear & shall not understand, & another party that, when more is meant than
meets the ear, is aware both of that more & of the outsiders' incomprehension.” Henry
Watson Fowler
- Austen often creates an ironic tone through free indirect discourse in which the thoughts
and words of the characters mix with the voice of the omniscient narrator, but in the idiom
of the character focussed on.
- Austen tempts the reader to accept Elizabeth’s initial assessment of Wickham and Darcy
because Elizabeth’s voice sounds so much like the third-person omniscient narrator. In this
 way, Austen forces the reader to experience the same errors that Elizabeth makes and to
realize the difficulty of arriving at truth in a constantly shifting world. Elizabeth’s ironic wit
also defines nuances of her character in ways that make her stand out from the more one-
dimensional women in the novel.

Questions to consider:

1) Can you find any examples of irony in this extract?

2) What is the role of the narrator?
3) Can you describe Austen’s characterisation?
4) Explore Austen’s use of speech representation.
5) Can you find examples of humour in this extract?
6) Would you call this “realist” literature?
7) What themes are mentioned in this extract which are pervasive throughout the rest of the novel?

Virginia Woolf
Biography (1882 – 1941)

- Virginia Woolf was an English writer, considered one of the most

important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use
of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. A leading figure in
literary impressionism and inventing a new way of rendering “reality” or
“lived experience”.
- Woolf was born into an affluent household in South Kensington, her
father Leslie Stephen was famous academic. Her mother died when she
was 13 and she explores this loss through much of her work.
- Woolf began writing professionally in 1900. Following her father's death
in 1904, the Stephen family moved from Kensington to the more
bohemian Bloomsbury, where, in conjunction with the brothers' intellectual friends, they
formed the artistic and literary Bloomsbury Group. Her sister, the painter, Vanessa Bell also was
part of the set.
- In 1912, she married Leonard Woolf, and in 1917, the couple founded the Hogarth Press, which
published much of her work. They were also the first to publish Sigmund Freud.
- They rented a home in Sussex (Charleston) and moved there permanently in 1940.
- Woolf also had romantic relationships with women, including Vita Sackville-West, who also
published her books through Hogarth Press. Both women's literature became inspired by their
relationship, which lasted until Woolf's death.
- She suffered badly from mental illness her whole life and she was institutionalised several times
and attempted suicide at least twice. According to Dalsimer (2004) her illness was characterized
by symptoms that today would be diagnosed as bipolar disorder, for which there was no
effective intervention during her lifetime. In 1941, at age 59, Woolf died by drowning herself in
the River Ouse at Lewes.
- Her best-known works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927)
and Orlando (1928) (there is also a film with Tilda Swinton). She is also known for her essays,
including A Room of One's Own (1929). Woolf became one of the central subjects of the 1970s
movement of feminist criticism and her works have since garnered much attention and
widespread commentary for "inspiring feminism”.
- In her poetic writings, visual and auditory impressions are created by the fusion of stylistic
virtuosity and intense lyricism. The poetic vision of Virginia Woolf’s novels is so powerful that it
elevates the ordinary and commonplace settings, even the war-time setting in most of her
 novels. She was highly aware of the mental and material realm of “reality.”; the material realm is
the present exteriorised in the shape of “nature” and “society”, whereas the mental realm is
inside the consciousness that shores the impressions, and significant instances of existence.

What was Modernism?

The modernists sought “to find an aesthetic order or historic pattern to substitute for the crumbling
certainties of the past” . A parallel movement occurred in the art world with the Impressionists and
Post-Impressionists. What they sought was a new way of seeing—more personal, more expressive.
In philosophy, as well, new ways of perceiving reality were being theorized. Henri Bergson’s concept
of time had a significant impact on both writers and painters. “Modernism,” says Schwarz, “stressed
that we lack a coherent identity and sought techniques to express this idea”. In an essay entitled
“Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown,” Woolf wrote that “on or about December, 1910, human character
changed”. The first Post-Impressionist Exhibition in London created quite an upheaval in all areas of
the art and literary world.

“Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad
impressions—trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides
they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves
into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls differently from of old; the moment of
importance came not here but there. . . .Life is not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; but
a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to
the end. . . Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us
trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident
scores upon the consciousness. Woolf, Modern Fiction 1919

What is Impressionism and Literary Impressionism?

McCarthy asserts that the Impressionist painters’ main interest was in “analysing the play of light
and shadow into a multiplicity of distinct colours,”; what is new in the Post-Impressionists is a more
“scientific interest in the representation of colour,” and in “the method of representing the vibration
of light by painting objects in dots and squares”. The Post-Impressionists, through this more abstract
method, wanted to get under the surface of the things, to convey somehow the “emotional
significance which lies in things, and is the most important subject matter of art”.
Impressionistic literature can basically be defined as when an author centres their story or
attention on a character's mental life by exploring their impressions, feelings, sensations and
emotions, rather than trying to interpret or necessarily explain them. The term is used to describe a
work of literature characterized by the selection of a few details to convey the sense impressions left
by an incident or scene. This style of writing occurs when characters, scenes, or actions are
portrayed from a subjective, fragmentary, sensory point of view of reality.
Another essential feature of literary impressionism is its emphasis on time, both time
passing and the duration of moments in time. The effect is somewhat like looking at a Seurat
painting up close and seeing only dots of color, and then stepping back to see the scene in its
entirety. “Impressionist prose,” Kronegger explains, “seems to be an exercise in discontinuity. The
traditional stable world is dissolved into the unfinished, the fragmentary. . . .Impressionist writers
have found a way to write prose which is not bounded by a beginning and an end”.

Claude Monet « Quand vous sortez pour peindre, essayez d'oublier quels objets vous avez
devant vous, un arbre, une maison, un champ ou quoi que ce soit. Pensez seulement ceci : voici un
petit carré de bleu, de rose, un ovale vert, une raie jaune, et peignez exactement comme ils vous
apparaissent, couleurs et formes exactes, jusqu'à ce qu'ils vous donnent votre impression naïve de la
scène qui se trouve devant vous.»