Jane Austen Research Paper

Jane Austen is no doubt one of the most important writers in literary history. Her works have been read across generations and the popularity of her books is still remarkable. Jane Austen managed to write six great novels which are important for English literature. The important feature of Emma, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility is a young heroine being a main protagonist. Although the topics of her novels might seem similar, not all heroines are the same. Each heroine is a character with her own good and bad qualities. The actions of some heroines we can consider being exemplary, but there are heroines whose actions are mostly fallible. In Jane Austen and The Wars of Ideas Marilyn Butler

Perhaps bold is too strong a word for Emma Woodhouse and Elizabeth Bennet: lively is nearer” (53). The important point is that “the notion that a heroine should be faultless, which now sounds psychologically so improbable, would have been entirely familiar to a keen novel-reader of the period” (Mullan 305). With this in mind, it is interesting to think about Jane Austen’s decision to create not only one, but even more fallible heroines. Mullan considers the reasons for this decision when he says that “Austen loves blunders because they show the difference between what we can understand of her characters, and what they can understand of each other” (225). Moreover, he suggests that “redundant blunders can feel like penalties for Austen's heroines, destined for happiness but given an extra twist of pain first” (Mullan

In Emma there is the topic of blunders seen from the beginning of the novel. Vivien Jones argues that it is easy to acknowledge the fallible heroine in the centre of the novel as the title itself suggests the fact that “the main focus of Emma […] is heroine herself” (52). Notwithstanding, the topic of blunders plays a significant role in Pride and Prejudice as well, as Austen wrote it, according to Ryle, due to her interest in “what sorts and degrees of pride do not go with right thinking and right acting” (Ryle qtd. in Southam