Essay on Jane Austen 's Representations Of Women

Jane Austen’s Representations of Women There is an old saying that literature is an epistemic way to know about any culture. Literature aims to study society and gives a realistic representation of life and people who live in that culture. This study will focus on the interpretation of English culture in the eighteenth century. Each literary work focuses on different issues and has hidden purposes from presenting these issues. As such, the significance of the literature results in the readers’ better understanding of the society. Jane Austen’s fiction portrayed the social world of English society in the eighteenth century. Austen’s fiction also demonstrates the values of the English gentry class, women’s position in English society and the significance of women’s culture, Christian morality, estate management, and the importance of belonging to a genteel class. English gentry class confines its values on possessing wealth, possessing a good reputation, and belonging to the aristocratic class. As a female writer, Austen concentrates the readers’ attention on the women’s status and position in English society in both aristocratic, as Emma (in Emma), and middle class, as Elinor and Elizabeth (in Sense and Sensibility). She argues that the social world of the English society creates limited opportunities for women to represent and support themselves. Austen is aware of the economic vulnerability of women who have limited access to financial stability. These women…