World Literature

With Gothic novels earning bad name in the 18th century, the genre of novel was looked down upon. Jane Austen tried to uplift the genre through her novel ‘Northanger Abbey’. […]

The readers of ‘Persuasion’ knew that the peace in Jane Austen’s novel was only going to turn out to be temporary. This makes the final chapters of the novel, and its last lines, especially significant. […]

Though Jane Austen was personally aware of the aftermath of the French Revolution and war in Europe, in her novel ‘Persuasion’ she handled death, grieving, and loss in wartime in an unsentimental, realistic manner. […]

Jane Austen’s last novel ‘Persuasion’ focuses on the passage of time: on age and aging. Time has brought about differences in financial and social status, and also on physical appearances of the novel’s characters. […]

Jane Austen’s heroine in her novel ‘Persuasion’ is Anne Elliot. Her father is a vain widower, whose finances are in desperate state. Anne is shown as being sensible, but her value is lost on her family. […]

The protagonist Emma in the novel ‘Emma’ has money and social status. However, she is not as respectable, sensible, or pleasant as she believes herself to be. […]

Though the novel ‘Emma’ is named after the protagonist, Emma does not narrate everything. Jane Austen has brilliantly used the technique of free indirect discourse in the novel’s narration. […]

Not beautiful or elegant or dainty, but handsome. That’s how Jane Austen describes Emma Woodhouse in the beginning of the novel; an unconventional start for an unconventional heroine. […]

Jane Austen’s treatment of slavery and colonialism in ‘Mansfield Park’ is ambiguous. However, the novel is neither blind to, nor silent on, the exploitative nature of labor. It does prompts questions about power, work, and gender. […]