Her novels ignore the industrial masses and agricultural labourers. They reside in a world of their own and don’t cast a look outside the boundaries of this self-constructed world. They are not interested in the outside affairs. They are, apparently, indifferent to death, sex, hunger, war, guilt and even God.

A careful review of the works of Austen clearly indicates that she has deliberately imposed this restriction of materials and themes upon her. She herself referred to her work as “two inches of ivory”. In a letter to her niece, she wrote, “three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on.”

If Austen shows the aristocracy only to satirize it as Lady de Bourgh. The Bennets, the Lucases, the Bingleys and Darcy all belong to the class of landed country gentry with the Bennets and the Lucases at the lower end of it and the Bingleys and Darcy with their persona fortunes at the higher end of it. People like Gardiner (in trade) have been shown very rarely, as in “Pride and Prejudice”.

Narrow Physical Setting

‘Pride and Prejudice’ like other novels of Austen have narrow physical setting. The story revolves round Netherfield Park, Longbourn, Hunsford Parsonage, Meryton and Pemberley. In an era when the English Romantic writers like Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats and others were in love with external nature, Jane manages to restrict her characters indoors. A trip to the Lake District is canceled in “Pride and Prejudice” and the only description of nature in Pemberley is generalized.

She adhered to the settings of ballrooms, drawing rooms, parks and gardens and allows nothing terrible to happen. The greatest villainy in her novels is elopement (as in the case of Lydia and Wikham) or social faux pus as Darcy’s snubbing of Elizabeth.

In the era of American War of Independence, French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, Austen’s theme was so limited that it revolved round the orbit of love and marriage. All her heroines had no other business than waiting for an eligible bachelor to get married to.

The only relevance of the militia in a Jane Austen novel is its ability to provide girls with handsome military officers to flirt with and if possible to marry __ Wikham and the other military officers in Meryton in Pride and Prejudice serve a subjects for flirtation for Lydia and Kitty the younger Benner girls, Similarly there is no discussion of spiritual or metaphysical issue and Mr. Collins the vicar is only an absurd, comic figure satirized by Jane Austen.

Feminization of Her Novel

Another limitation is feminization of her novels. There are no report men’s affairs. Darcy does not appear to be a wholly credible character. He is seen in the company of Elizabeth. The reader is looking him at from Elizabeth’s point of view.

Due to this limitation, Austen has earned a lot of criticism and depreciation as well. H. W Garrod complains of the monotonous uniformity of her materials,” A drab scenery, the worse for use, a thin plot unfashionably cut and by turning, relining and trimming made to do duty for five of six novels, a dozen or so stock characters__these are Miss Austen’s materials”. Charlotte Bronte her most famous critic, feels a want of “passion” in her works and believes her to be an author of the surface only: “She ruffles her readers by nothing vehement, disturbs him by nothing profound, ….Her business is not half so much with the human heart as with the human eye, mouth, hands and feet”. Wordsworth admitted that her novels were an admirable copy of life, but since the pervading light of imagination was totally absent in them, they could hardly interest him. Since, her women are eminently pre-occupied with economic security a number of critics think that her text is just money. And since she looks at things from and ironic point of view, it being assumed the tan ironist is only a detached and disinterested observer of life, Leonie Vallard and Marvin Mudrick conclude that she does not have any moral concern.

Perfection within the limited world

Her world is limited but within this limited world she deals every aspect perfectly. The narrow world does never create an image of narrow art. Nor do art or skill depend on the range and boundaries. Real talent always goes ahead whatever may be the range or theme.

The works of Jane Austen despite its restricted field, is perfect.

Purely local issues lend a sense of discipline to her art and enhance accuracy and precision of portrayal in her writings. Her old-intimacy with her characters makes them life-like and realistic. Elizabeth Bennet is the most delightful of creature that ever appeared in print. She is not the simpering and holier-than-thou heroine of a romantic novel but appeal by her next-door girl image with wit, humour as well as human flaws of pride and prejudice.

No two characters of Austen have ever been repeated in any of her novels. Mr. Elton, the vicar in “Emma” is totally different from Mr. Collins, the vicar in “Pride and Prejudice”.

Similarly her heroines are all different. Elizabeth is as different from Emma as Emma is from fanny Price. About her characters, Macaulay comments “she has given us a multitude of characters, all , in a certain sense, commonplace, al such as we meet every day. yet they are al as perfectly discriminated from each other as if they were the most eccentric of human beings”.

Not Without Passion or Profundity

It is true that Austen chooses only those aspects of social behaviour than can lend themselves to ironic treatment—- the inconstancies and follies of human behaviour, hypocrisy, pretentiousness, incongruities of speech & conduct and self deception. But it does not mean that she touches only the surface. She is a mistress of much deeper emotion than appear on the surface. Her themes are love, marriage and courtship. All these go cheek by jowl with emotions and passions. Jane-Bingley involvements as well as Elizabeth-Darcy affair are matters touching the very strings of heart. Her distress at the elopement of Lydia and Wikham show her deep feelings. moreover, there are other emotions like jealousy and hypocrisy of Caroline Bingley, the cunning of Wikham, the snobbery and vanity of Lady de Bourgh, all have been depicted by Jane Austen with perfection of art. in Jane Austen, emotions are experienced within a social framework and hence they are controlled but they are not absent.

Moral Concerns

It would be wrong to say that she is not profound or lacks moral concern. she has depicted with skill the psychological workings of Elizabeth’s mind, her torment on recognizing her own prejudice even the lay reader can judge the moral values that is unobtrusive but ever present. She portrays the marriages of Lydia and Wikham, Collins and Charlotte and Bennets which by contract serve to highlight the propriety of the Elizabeth-Darcy marriage that is seen in the social context as it brings happiness not only for them but for all the people around. Andrew H. Wright says,

“She develops themes of the broadest significance, the novel go beyond the social record, beneath the didactic, to moral concern, perplexity and commitment. her novels may be read as broad allegories, in which, sense and sensibility, pride and prejudice, and a number of other virtues and defects are set forth and commented upon.”

Her Skill and Craftsmanship

Despite her limited theme and subject matter, she is unparalleled in her skill in plot construction. In “Pride and prejudice” not a single event or character is out of place and each contributes to the development of plot and theme. the Plot is knitted in coherent pattern and proceeds like that of a drama from exposition, with the characters being introduced in the first few chapters, the development of the complication with Bingley’s departure from Netherfield and Elizabeth’s prejudice against Darcy, to the brilliant climax at Hunsford Parsonage where Darcy proposes and is rejected, to the final denouement and resolution with the marriages to the Bennet sisters after the Lydia-Wikham elopement. The sub-plots of Lydia and Wikham, Charlotte and Collins are all closely linked to the main Elizabeth-Darcy plot and highlight the theme of the right marriage. Her characters reveal themselves through dialogue. The witty and ironic language add charm to her art.

Conclusion

She handles characters, events, dialogue and plot with an exquisite mastery of art. She weaves and interweaves different events into the pattern of her novels so nicely that no strand can be separated. Her visible structure may be flimsy but she is profound in plumbing the psychological depths of her characters and in delineating the basic principles of human conduct. On her two inches of ivory, she carces with a miniature delicacy to present a polished and refined work of art.

Richardson and fielding did much for the depiction of rural gentility but they exhibited these matters for romantic purpose. Austen depicts these families with the realism of Defoe and exactness of Crabbe.

Rubinstein says that she has no interest in “(1) a view of man’s mortality expressed in theological or existential terms; (2) a view of man’s ultimate earthly destiny as explicitly articulated in the language of special and political valuation; (3) a view of man’s most profound personal compulsion (next to his institute for survival) his sexuality.”

He further opines, “what she does, she does well, perhaps better than anyone -though of course we all know that there is so much more to life and to literature than this.”

David Cecil says that her “imaginative inspiration” was as surely limited as, for example, those of Hardy or A. Bennet.

Unlike the romantic poets, Scott and Jane accepted the limitations which society imposes on individual. Austen does not deal romance after Walpole and Mrs. Radcliff.

Edward Fitzgerald is more critical, “quite capital in a circle I have found quite understandable to walk in.” He complains that “She never goes out of the parlour.”

Jane Austen exhibits “an exquisite mastery of whatever can be mastered.” L. J. Clipper says, “She does not give the reader simplistic interpretation of life; she does not say to marry only for love, or only for family, or only for the good of society. She is not a philosopher but an artist who gives us particular individuals working under specific kinds of circumstances.”