Jane Austen's (1775–1817) distinctive literary style relies on a combination of parody, burlesque, irony, free indirect speech and a degree of realism. She uses parody and burlesque for comic effect and to critique the portrayal of women in 18th-century sentimental and Gothic novels. Austen extends her critique by highlighting social hypocrisy through irony; she often creates an ironic tone through free indirect speech in which the thoughts and words of the characters mix with the voice of the narrator. The degree to which critics believe Austen's characters have psychological depth informs their views regarding her realism. While some scholars argue that Austen falls into a tradition of realism because of her finely executed portrayal of individual characters and her emphasis on "the everyday", others contend that her characters lack a depth of feeling compared with earlier works, and that this, combined with Austen's polemical tone, places her outside the realist tradition.

Often characterized as "country house novels" or "comedies of manners", Austen's novels also include fairy tale elements. They have less narrative or scenic description and much more dialogue than other early 19th-century novels. Austen shapes a distinctive and subtly constructed voice for each character.

Her plots are fundamentally about education; her heroines come to see themselves and their conduct more clearly, and become better, more moral people. While Austen steers clear of the formal moralizing common in 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. The extent to which the novels reflect feminist themes has been extensively debated by scholars; most critics agree that the novels highlight how some female characters take charge of their own worlds, while others are confined, physically and spiritually. Almost all Austen's works explore the precarious economic situation in which women of the late-18th and early-19th centuries found themselves.

Austen's novels have variously been described as 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. 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 novel character.

Styles

Parody and burlesque

Austen's juvenile writings are parodies and burlesques of popular 18th-century genres, such as the sentimental novel. She humorously demonstrates that the reversals of social convention common in sentimental novels, such as contempt for parental guidance, are ridiculously impractical; her characters "are dead to all common sense".Waldron, 17; Litz, 7–14. Her interest in these comedic styles, influenced in part by the writings of novelist Frances Burney and playwrights Richard Brinsley Sheridan and David Garrick,Grundy, "Jane Austen and literary traditions", 203; Kirkham, 35; Litz, 14–17. continued less overtly throughout her professional career.Doody, "The short fiction", 98.

Austen's burlesque is characterized by its mocking imitation and its exaggerated, displaced emphasis.Lascelles, 49, 55–72; Fergus, 20. For example, in Northanger Abbey, she ridicules the plot improbabilities and rigid conventions of the Gothic novel.Johnson, 35; see also Litz, 51–53; Fergus, 20–24; Mudrick, 39–40. However, she does not categorically reject the Gothic. As Austen scholar Claudia Johnson argues, Austen pokes fun at the "stock gothic machinery—storms, cabinets, curtains, manuscripts—with blithe amusement", but she takes the threat of the tyrannical father seriously.Johnson, 35; see also Mudrick, 46–48. Austen uses parody and burlesque not only for comedic effect, but also, according to feminist critics, to reveal how both sentimental and Gothic novels warped the lives of women who attempted to live out the roles depicted in them.Gilbert and Gubar, 119; see also Kirkham, 35. As Susan Gubar and Sandra Gilbert explain in their seminal work, The Madwoman in the Attic (1979), Austen makes fun of "such novelistic clichés as love at first sight, the primacy of passion over all other emotions and/or duties, the chivalric exploits of the hero, the vulnerable sensitivity of the heroine, the lovers' proclaimed indifference to financial considerations, and the cruel crudity of parents".Gilbert and Gubar, 151.

Irony

Irony is one of Austen's most characteristic and most discussed literary techniques.Brownstein, "Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice", 34; Litz, 107–111; Mudrick 1–3. She contrasts the plain meaning of a statement with the comic, undermining the meaning of the original to create ironic disjunctions. In her juvenile works, she relies upon satire, parody and irony based on incongruity. Her mature novels employ irony to foreground social hypocrisy.Mudrick, 1.

In particular Austen uses irony to critique the marriage market.Gilbert and Gubar, 112. Perhaps the most famous example of irony in Austen is the opening line of Pride and Prejudice: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." At first glance, the sentence is straightforward and plausible, but the plot of the novel contradicts it: it is women without fortunes who need husbands and seek them out. By the end of the novel, the truth of the statement is acknowledged only by a single character, Mrs. Bennet, a mother seeking husbands for her daughters.Mandal, "Language", 29–30; Litz, 107.

Austen's irony goes beyond the sentence level. As Austen scholar Jan Fergus explains, "the major structural device in Pride and Prejudice is the creation of ironies within the novel's action which, like parallels and contrasts, challenge the reader's attention and judgment throughout, and in the end also engage his feelings."Fergus, 93; see Litz, 107–111 for another discussion of structural irony. Austen's irony illuminates the foibles of individual characters and her society. In her later novels, in particular, she turns her irony "against the errors of law, manners and customs, in failing to recognize women as the accountable beings they are, or ought to be".Kirkham, 92.

Free indirect speech Austen is most renowned for her development of free indirect speech, a technique pioneered by 18th-century novelists Henry Fielding and Frances Burney.Page, 124; Mandal, "Language", 30–31. In free indirect speech, the thoughts and speech of the characters mix with the voice of the narrator. Austen uses it to provide summaries of conversations or to compress, dramatically or ironically, a character's speech and thoughts.Mandal, "Language", 30–31; Page, 121. In Sense and Sensibility, Austen experiments extensively for the first time with this technique.Butler, 189-90. For example,

As Austen scholar Norman Page explains, "the first sentence is straight narrative, in the 'voice' of the [narrator]; the third sentence is normal indirect speech; but the second and fourth are what is usually described as free indirect speech."Page, 122. In these two sentences, Austen represents the inner thoughts of the character and creates the illusion that the reader is entering the character's mind.Lynch, Economy of Character, 237. She often uses indirect speech for background characters. However, Page writes that "for Jane Austen ... the supreme virtue of free indirect speech ... [is] that it offers the possibility of achieving something of the vividness of speech without the appearance for a moment of a total silencing of the authorial voice."Page, 134.

Conversation and language

Compared to other early 19th-century novels, Austen's have little narrative or scenic description—they contain much more dialogue, whether spoken between characters, written as free indirect speech, or represented through letters.Burrows, "Style", 178; Page, 31. For example, in Pride and Prejudice, which began as an epistolary novel, letters play a decisive role in the protagonist's educationPage, 31. and the opening chapters are theatrical in tone.Page, 114–115; Mandal, "Language", 28–29; Jenkyns, 1–2; Lascelles, 106–107. Austen's conversations contain many short sentences, question and answer pairs, and rapid exchanges between characters, most memorable perhaps in the witty repartee between Elizabeth and Darcy.Page, 118. This has made Austen's fiction popular in quoted snippets and in books of quotation.Looser, v-xv.

Austen grants each of her characters a distinctive and subtly constructed voice: they are carefully distinguished by their speech. For example, Admiral Croft is marked by his naval slang in Persuasion and Mr. Woodhouse is marked by his hypochondriacal language in Emma.Litz, 51–53, Page, 140–147, Lascelles, 88–89. However, it is the misuse of language that most distinguishes Austen's characters. As Page explains, in Sense and Sensibility, for example, the inability of characters such as Lucy Steele to use language properly is a mark of their "moral confusion".Page, 20–22, 148–52; see also Mandal, "Language", 24–27, 31–32. In Catharine, or the Bower, Camilla can only speak in fashionable stock phrases which convey no meaning. She is unable to express real feeling, since all of her emotions are mediated through empty hyperbole.Waldron, 23–24. Austen uses conversations about literature in particular to establish an implicit moral frame of reference. In Catharine, or the Bower, for example, Catharine makes moral judgments about Camilla based on her superficial and conventional comments about literature.Butler, 170–172.

Realism