edit]Genre

Jane Austen famously wrote to her nephew James Edward Austen that his "strong, manly, spirited Sketches, full of Variety and Glow" would not fit on "the little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush, as produces little effect after much labour."^[44] Austen novels have often been characterized as "country house novels" or as "comedies of manners". Comedies of manners are concerned "with the relations and intrigues of gentlemen and ladies living in a polished and sophisticated society" and the comedy is the result of "violations of social conventions and decorum, and relies for its effect in great part on the wit and sparkle of the dialogue."^[45] However, Austen's novels also have important fairy tale elements to them. Pride and Prejudice follows the traditional Cinderellaplot while " Persuasion rewrites the Cinderella narrative, as it shifts the fairy tale's emphasis from the heroine's transformation into a beauty to the prince's second look at her face."^[46] However, Fanny, in Mansfield Park, rejects the Prince Charming character and at least one scholar has suggested that in this Austen is signalling "a general attack on the dangers of 'fiction'".^[47]

Austen's novels can easily be situated within the 18th-century novel tradition. Austen, like the rest of her family, was a great novel reader. Her letters contain many allusions to contemporary fiction, often to such small details as to show that she was thoroughly familiar with what she read. Austen read and reread novels, even minor ones.^[48] She read widely within the genre, including many works considered mediocre both then and now, but tended to emphasize domestic fiction by women writers, and her own novels contain many references to these works. For example, the phrase "pride and prejudice" comes from Burney's Cecilia, and the Wickham subplot in Pride and Prejudice is a parody of Tom Jones. ^[49]

Austen's early works are often structured around a pair of characters. For example, Sense and Sensibility is a didactic novel based on the contrast between the beliefs and conduct of two heroines, a novel format that was particularly fashionable in the 1790s and exemplified by Edgeworth's Letters of Julia and Caroline and Elizabeth Inchbald's Nature and Art. ^[50] Because circulating libraries often used catalogues that only listed a novel's name, Austen chose titles that would have resonance for her readers; abstract comparisons like "sense and sensibility" were part of a moralistic tradition and eponymous heroine names were part of a new romantic novel tradition.^[51] Elinor, representing "sense", and Marianne, representing "sensibility", articulate a contrast "between two modes of perception", according to Butler.^[52] "Marianne's way is subjective, intuitive, implying confidence in the natural goodness of human nature when untrammelled by convention. Her view is corrected by the more cautious orthodoxy of Elinor, who mistrusts her own desires, and requires even her reason to seek the support of objective evidence."^{[52][n 2]} However, other critics have argued that the contrast between the two characters is not a strict binary. For example, Marianne reasonably discusses propriety and Elinor passionately loves Edward.^[54]

Between 1760 and 1820, conduct books reached the height of their popularity in Britain; one scholar refers to the period as "the age of courtesy books for women".^[55] Conduct books integrated the styles and rhetorics of earlier genres, such as devotional writings, marriage manuals, recipe books, and works on household economy. They offered their readers a description of (most often) the ideal woman while at the same time handing out practical advice. Thus, not only did they dictate morality, but they also guided readers' choice of dress and outlined "proper" etiquette.^[56] Austen's fiction built on and questioned the assumptions of this tradition, reacting against conduct book writers such as Hannah More, John Gregory, and Hester Chapone.^[57] Beginning with the juvenilia, as early as Catherine or the Bower, Austen viewed this genre as thoroughly mindless and irrelevant to social realities.^[58]