Like Shakespeare Jane Austen knew the inner nature by intuition, and had learned its outward expression by observation. Character not only affects the speech of each one of her men and women, but determines their destiny and shapes the plot of the story. The class she has chosen to represent is the least under the sway of circumstances of any in England. With money for all needs, and leisure for enjoyment, free from obligations which pertain to higher rank, character here develops freely and naturally. Not one of the matchmaking men or women, not even the intelligent Emma, succeeds in changing the life of those whom they attempt to influence. Character is stronger than any outside agency. In this respect, Jane Austen is decidedly at variance with Thomas Hardy or Tolstoi, but she is at one with Shakespeare.
In the opening paragraph of each book, character begins to assert itself. If Darcy had been without PRIDE, and Elizabeth had been without PREJUDICE; if Marianne had had her sensibilities under control; if Emma had not been blind; if Captain Wentworth had not been unjust and resentful—there would have been no story to tell, the course of true love would have run so smooth. But all of them are loving and faithful, and these qualities in the end conquer, and bring the stories to a happy conclusion.
Edmund Gosse thus writes of her delineation of character:
"Like Balzac, like Tourgenieff at his best, Jane Austen gives the reader an impression of knowing everything there was to know about her creations, of being incapable of error as to their acts, thoughts, or emotions. She presents an absolute illusion of reality; she exhibits an art so consummate that we mistake it for nature. She never mixes her own temperament with those of her characters, she is never swayed by them, she never loses for a moment her perfect, serene control of them. Among the creators of the world, Jane Austen takes a place that is with the highest and that is purely her own."
This seeming control of her characters is due largely to the fact that whatever happens to them is just what might have been expected. This is particularly true of the bad people she has created. Innocence led astray has been a popular means of exciting interest ever since Richardson told the sad story of Clarissa Harlowe. But there is no such incident in Jane Austen's books. Lydia, who hasn't a thought for anybody nor anything but a red-coat, and Wickham, who elopes with her without any intention of matrimony, are properly punished, by being married to each other, and the future unhappiness which must be their lot is due to their own natures. Willoughby had seduced one girl, trifled with the affections of another, and married an heiress, but he finds only misery, and sadly says: "I must rub through the world as well as I can." Henry Crawford, and his sister, with so much that is good in their natures, yet with a lack of moral fibre, are both unhappy. Each has lost the one they respected and loved and might have married. With what wit she leaves William Elliot, the all-agreeable man, the heir of Sir Walter, who, that he may keep the latter single, has enticed the scheming Mrs. Clay from his home:
"And it is now a doubtful point whether his cunning or hers may finally carry the day; whether, after preventing her from being the wife of Sir Walter, he may not be wheedled and caressed at last into making her the wife of Sir William."
And so punishment is meted out with that nicety of judgment which distinguishes every detail of her novels.
But Jane Austen has little interest in immorality. "Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery; I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can," she says in Mansfield Park. And her readers have observed that deeds of evil take place off the stage, while she records only what is reported of them in the drawing-room.
She dwells as little on misery as on guilt. She shows in her letters charitable regard for the poor people of Steventon and Chawton. She describes minutely the unkempt house of Lieutenant Price at Portsmouth with its incessant noise of heavy steps, banging doors, and untrained servants, where every voice was loud excepting Mrs. Price's, which resembled "the soft monotony of Lady Bertram's, only worn into fretfulness." Miss Austen's pen was able to portray scenes of squalor and vice; she chose to turn from them. Perhaps she felt instinctively that true æsthetic pleasure cannot be produced by dwelling on a scene in a book which would be repulsive to the eye. Miss Austen wrote before there was much serious interest in the lives of the poor. Their only function in literature had been to provoke laughter. The sensitive daughter of the rector of Steventon may have felt, as others have, that there was no occasion to laugh at the blunders and ill-manners of peasants, which were proper and natural to their condition of life. She did not need these people to entertain us. There were quite as funny people in the hall as in the cottage, funnier, even, because their humorous sayings spring from a humorous twist in their natures, not from ignorance.
Sir Walter Scott, after reading Pride and Prejudice for the third time, said: