"That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself, like any now going; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me."
Sir Walter Scott proved the truth of the above statement in St. Ronan's Well, one of the least successful of his novels, which was written in imitation of Jane Austen.
Because Jane Austen confined her work so closely to ordinary middle-class people, she has been called narrow. But if we judge men and women not by dress and manners, but by what they are, these people furnish as broad a view of humanity as could be obtained by travelling up and down the world. A trained botanist will gather an herbarium from a country lane that will give a more extended knowledge of botany than a less skilful one could get by travelling through the woods and fields of a continent. Very few novelists have portrayed greater varieties of human nature than Miss Austen.
Jane Austen's style has been praised by all critics. George William Curtis wrote of her art:
"She writes wholly as an artist, while George Eliot advocates views, and Miss Brontë's fiery page is often a personal protest. In Miss Austen, on the other hand, there is in kind, but infinitely less in degree, the same clear atmosphere of pure art which we perceive in Shakespeare and Goethe."
While Miss Austen has been so often likened to Shakespeare, she is in no sense a romantic writer. She belongs purely to the classic school. She has the restraint, the perfect poise of the Greeks. She recognises everywhere the need of law. She accepts society as it exists under the restraints of law and religion. She no more questioned the English prayer book and the English constitution than Homer questioned the existence of the gods and the supreme power of kings. This feeling for law shaped her art. Her plots are perfectly symmetrical. There is no redundancy in expression. There is none of that wild luxuriance in fancy or expression so common in romanticism. Each word used is needed in the sentence, and is in its proper place. The strength of romanticism lies in its impetuosity; the strength of classicism lies in its self-control. This is the strength of Jane Austen.
Emotion in her books is so restrained that the superficial reader doubts its existence. Yet her characters feel deeply and are sensitive to the acts and words of those about them. Although their feelings are under control, they are none the less real. The reader watches, but is not asked to participate in their griefs.
As she never moves to tears, neither does she provoke laughter, but she lightens every page with a quiet glow of humour. Humour was as natural to her as to Elizabeth Bennet, whose sayings give the sparkle to Pride and Prejudice. Much of the humour in her letters consists of an unexpected turn to a sentence or an incongruous combination of words. She writes of meeting "Dr. Hall in such very deep mourning that either his mother, his wife or himself must be dead." She announces the marriage of a gentleman to a widow by the laconic message, "Dr. Gardiner was married yesterday to Mrs. Percy and her three daughters." And again she says that a certain Mrs. Blount appeared the same as in September, "with the same broad face, diamond bandeau, white shoes, pink husband, and fat neck." She sees through the affectations of society and observes the pleasure afforded by the small misfortunes of another as plainly as did Thackeray later. The wife of a certain gentleman is discovered "to be everything the neighbourhood could wish, silly and cross as well as extravagant." She finds continual source of enjoyment in people's foibles, and thinks that her own misfortunes ought to furnish jokes to her acquaintances, or she will die in their debt for entertainment.
In a less refined degree, this was the view of life of Miss Burney, her favourite author. Miss Austen was but three years old when Evelina made her début at Ranelagh, and not over seven when Cecilia visited her three guardians in London: Camilla was published in the year that it is thought that Miss Austen began Pride and Prejudice. During these years, Miss Burney's fame was undimmed. Consider yourself for a moment in a circulating library, in the year 1797 or 1798, suppose you are fond of novel reading, and have moreover the refined tastes of Miss Austen; you will find there no novelist who can hold a rival place to Miss Burney. Miss Austen refers to her both in her novels and letters. In only one passage in her novels has she interrupted her story to express a general opinion; that is in Northanger Abbey, where she praises the art of the novelist, and refers particularly to Cecilia, Camilla, and Belinda. In the same novel John Thorpe's lack of taste is emphasised by his calling Camilla a stupid book of unnatural stuff, which he could not get through. She evidently discussed Miss Burney's novels with the people she met; a certain young man just entered at Oxford has heard that Evelina was written by Dr. Johnson, and she finds two traits in a certain Miss Fletcher very pleasing: "She admires Camilla, and drinks no cream in her tea." But Miss Austen was no blind disciple of Miss Burney. All the odd characters which Miss Burney culled from the lower ranks of society were swept away by Miss Austen. Everything approaching tragedy or the improbable is avoided, but what is left is amplified and refined until there is no more trace of Miss Burney than there is of Perugino in the paintings of Raphael.
Artists in other lines have striven in their work for a unified whole. Most novelists have been more intent on pointing a moral or producing a sensation than on the technique of their writing. Their works as a whole lack proportion. They obtrude unnecessarily in one part and are weak in another. Miss Austen wrote because the characters in her brain demanded expression. Who could remain silent with Elizabeth Bennet urging her to utterance? She wrote with the greatest care because she could do nothing slovenly. Whatever place may be assigned to her as the years go by, her novels surpass all others written in English in their perfect art.