The extent to which Austen's novels are realistic is vigorously debated by scholars. The lack of physical description in her novels lends them an air of unreality. In Austen novels, as Page notes, there is a "conspicuous absence of words referring to physical perception, the world of shape and colour and sensuous response".[33] Yet, Austen carefully researched the background of her novels, using almanacs and road books to accurately describe the chronology and geography of her fictional worlds. Alastair Duckworth argues that she displays "a concern that the novelist should describe things that are really there, that imagination should be limited to an existing order."[34] Austen's prose also repeatedly contains "a relatively small number of frequently-used words, mainly epithets and abstract nouns indicating personal qualities—qualities, that is, of character and temperament rather than outward appearance".[35] This allows readers to feel as if they know the characters "intimately as a mind ".[36] Many scholars view this connection between the reader and character as a mark of realism. For example, Janet Todd writes that " Austen creates an illusion of realism in her texts, partly through readerly identification with the characters and partly through rounded characters, who have a history and a memory. "[37] However, there is little agreement regarding the depth of Austen's characters. Butler has argued that Austen is not primarily a realist writer because she is not interested in portraying the psychology of her heroines. Seeing Austen as a polemicist against sensibility, Butler argues that she avoided "the sensuous, the irrational, [and] the involuntary types of mental experience because, although she cannot deny their existence, she disapproves of them."[38]
At the time Austen was writing, the historical novels of Walter Scott and early realist novels of Maria Edgeworth had already initiated the realist tradition.[39] Austen's novels are sometimes seen as an outgrowth of these new genres. In an early review of Emma, Scott himself praised Austen's ability to copy "from nature as she really exists in the common walks of life, and presenting to the reader... acorrect and striking representation of that which is daily taking place around him".[40] However, as Austen scholar William Galperin has argued, Austen could not have participated in nineteenth-century realism—the realism with which she later became associated—because it had not yet been fully defined. He argues Austen's novels were part of the beginning phases of realism.[41] Therefore instead of seeing Austen as a realist writer, he sees her as a picturesque writer on the cusp of realism. Her attention to detail, probability, and oppositionality, lead him to call her the "historian of the everyday".[42]
John Wiltshire argues that Austen's works may also be distinguished from the realist tradition in their treatment of illness and health. In the realist tradition, good health is taken for granted, as part of the invisible background, and characters who are ill, or injured, or deformed, become prominently visible for that reason. In Austen's works, the issue of health is in the foreground—Emma's good health, Mr. Woodhouse's hypochondria, Fanny Price's "physical insecurity." Health (good or bad) is an important part of the characterization of many of Austen's principal characters, and beginning with Mansfield Park becomes a crucial element in the unfolding of her plots. For a woman, health is a commodity, making her more or less appealing to the patriarchal male gaze (e.g. Marianne is more "marketable" after her illness).[43]
