#austen

Anyone who has the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of [two] facts: first, that of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness; second, that there are twenty-five elderly gentlemen living in the neighbourhood of London who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult to the chastity of their aunts. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#criticism #jane-austen #london

Jane Austen never repeats herself. ↗

— Mary Lascelles

#art

Jane Austen's narrative style seems to me to show (especially in the later novels) a curiously chameleon-like faculty; it varies in colour as the habits of expression of the several characters impress themselves on the relation of the episode in which they are involved, and on the description of their situations. ↗

— Mary Lascelles

#art

I suspect that Jane Austen's practice of denying herself the aid of figurative language which, as much as any of her other habits of expression, repelled Charlotte Brontë, and has alienated other readers, conscious with a dissatisfaction with her style that they have not cared to analyse. ↗

— Mary Lascelles

#jane-austen #art

The sole agents, indeed, in the action of her novels are individual human beings. And the comedy is the outcome of their making fools of themselves and of one another. ↗

— Mary Lascelles

#art

Others beside Jane Austen have made their Eltons, though none quite so cooly as she. ↗

— Mary Lascelles

#art

Charlotte Palmer is no sillier than Harriet Smith; and yet, how intolerable we should find it to see and hear as much of Charlotte as we do of Harriet! And would Miss Bates have been endurable if she had been presented in the mood and manners of Sense and Sensibility? ↗

— Mary Lascelles

#jane-austen #sense-and-sensibility #art

In Jane Austen it was the critical faculty that would not be quieted; and that faculty in her, played on men and women. ↗

— Mary Lascelles

#art

Sympathy compounded of liking and compassion in varying proportions evidently seemed to Jane Austen the most natural inventive to imaginative interest in a character. ↗

— Mary Lascelles

#art

I think the success of 'Downton' is partly because there are effectively 18 leading characters, all given equal importance, so it's enormously involving on many levels. But also, it's a new story. It's not like Dickens or Austen, where everyone knows the denouement. ↗

— Michelle Dockery

#austen #because #characters #dickens #effectively