Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (1811) is a novel of society and manners, following two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, in their bids for love and marriage. Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth (1905) focuses on New York’s high society and...

Marriage is at the heart of every Jane Austen novel, or, at the very least, at the end of them, as every one of Austen’s heroines find themselves at ‘The End’ with a husband, a fortune and lifelong happiness. In reality, however, women often had...

In the novel Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen employs various thematic elements in order to educate the reader on the nature of higher British society in the 19th century. One of the most impactful motifs in the book is the notion that class...

Jane Austen’s novels perform multiple functions individually as moral tales. However, they also occasionally work together to explore propriety in early nineteenth century England. Proper behavior for women often centered on their interactions...

Elinor’s mind is pulled in conflicting directions by her desires and obligations. Elinor loves Edward and wants to be with him, but after hearing about Lucy’s engagement to him, she withdraws her feelings. However, Elinor is aware of Lucy’s...

Although previously reprimanded by Henry for her overactive imagination, Catherine’s initial judgment of the General having the “air and attitude of a Montoni” proves to be true when she is ejected from Northanger Abbey. Montoni is the villain of...

The history of literature is arguably a cycle of repetition. It is the nature of the mind to return to subjects of perpetual interest, and to exorcise the eternal concerns of the human condition via artistic labor. The subjects upon which creative...

The realistic novel, characterized by its presentation of reality and rational philosophy, was a genre created in response to the romantic, or "gothic," novel and which was characterized by sensationalist escapism. In contrast to romanticism's...

Human nature undeniable has many facets is undeniable. Whether or not some character traits are superior to others, however, is debatable. One such deliberation is whether sense invariably triumphs over sensibility. Through her characters...

Jane Austen is commonly viewed as anti-romantic, but her novel Northanger Abbey possesses and promotes many of the ideas prevalent in romantic literature. Heroine Catherine Morland is an especially romantic character whose spontaneity, emotion,...

Sir Francis Bacon is often cited as the progenitor of the phrase “knowledge is power”. This sentiment, if true, would render helpless Catherine Morland of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. When the reader first encounters Catherine, she is an...

In the Victorian era, appropriate etiquette and manners were predetermined for both men and women. The society in which they lived maintained stereotypical gender roles more rigidly defined than at the present. The coming of age was difficult for...

The segment on pages 133-135* of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey relates the binary of light and darkness which symbolizes the interaction between Gothicism and reality in the novel, helping the reader to realize role of Catherine in the novel as a...

In both Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, the authors use the gothic style to represent fears or anxieties their female protagonists' lives. Both Jane Eyre and Catherine Morland suffer from gothic delusions when they...

The gothic phenomena, although short-lived, left an indisputably heavy influence on literary practices in the late 1700’s, particularly that of the ‘feminist’ literary space. Jane Austen’s questionable heroine, Catherine Morland, is both the...

The decision to become a female author in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a daunting task in itself, never mind choosing to narrate your work from a female, personal perspective. Such was the case of two famous texts that are read...

Jane Austen is universally known for her uniquely intimate and precise descriptions of every-day life in late 18th and early 19th century England, and her plots are oftentimes focused on the humorous adventures of women who attempt to navigate the...

For hundreds of years, women were among the many in the world that held little to no rights. Subordinate to their husbands, they were legally not allowed to own property, or even voice their opinions in the community. Clearly, this needed to...

Jane Austen, through the development of socially conscious female characters, is able to render a remarkably accurate depiction of the social structure present during the late 18th century. Her social commentary, however, highlights certain...

One’s life is shaped and modified as we grow through the relationships one makes, however little, even daily encounters can drastically change the course of life as a whole. In the blink of an eye, something happens, or rather someone happens to...

Jane Austen ’s Northanger Abbey has been widely analyzed as satire of the gothic novel and, at first glance, it seems there is more than enough textual evidence to support this claim. Throughout the novel, Austen employs a sarcastic narrative...

Gothic novels, irrational works of literature that attempt to hold the reader in constant suspense and fear through mystery, would utilize various components to captivate the audience. Common themes of isolation, villainous men, the supernatural,...

Though very little is told in terms of her backstory, Lady Russell is nonetheless one of those characters that almost covertly dictate the course of the novel in a quite radical manner. More precisely, the widow exerts a very high degree of...

Many times, in Austen novels, the conflict revolves around some sort of miscommunication between characters.Though it makes for an interesting read, it begs the question of how these numerous misunderstandings came to be in the first place. In my...