Blameless? Faultless?
Posted by Ann on October 15, 1997 at 23:13:29:
In response to Re-Bronte vs. Austen, written by Patti on October 15, 1997 at 20:31:27
] But to me, Austen is all ritual. Feeling is human; it's a part of life. Actually I think Bronte's characters were more human, not the good, attractive blameless people that make up Austen's heroines. Jane Eyre was human and admitted her faults, her emotions likewise.
But most of Austen's novels revolve around the heroine discovering that she has lots of faults and then striving to overcome them. I don't see that at all in Bronte. People in JE have faults, but they never seem to recognise them and strive to overcome them.
Elizabeth Bennet, Marianne Dashwood, and particularly Emma all have lots of problems and the stories are driven by those faults. The very titles of two of the novels point this out: Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice.
JA writes in a far more natural style with more realistic dialogue. Her stories also hang together much better than JE. It is extremely hard to pick apart an Austen plot (except, perhaps for the whole Mrs. Clay/Mr. Eliot thing in Persuasion--which might be attributed to the fact that Austen died before she finalised that book). On the other hand, I can find lots of different things in JE that do not make sense.
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