From a reading of Jane Austen's short stories what do we learn about women's lives in the late 18th century?

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From a reading of Jane Austen’s short stories what do we learn about women’s lives in the late 18th century?

Jane Austen was a major English novelist, whose brilliantly witty, elegantly structured satirical fiction marks the transition in English literature from 18th century neo-classicism to 19th century romanticism. 

Jane Austen was born on 16 December 1775, at the rectory in the village of Steventon, near Basingstoke, in Hampshire. The seventh of eight children of the Reverend George Austen and his wife, Cassandra, she was educated mainly at home and never lived apart from her family. She had a happy childhood amongst all her brothers and the other boys who lodged with the family and whom Mr Austen tutored. From her older sister, Cassandra, she was inseparable. To amuse themselves, the children wrote and performed plays and charades, and even as a little girl Jane was encouraged to write. The reading that she did of the books in her father's extensive library provided material for the short satirical sketches she wrote as a girl. 

At the age of 14 she wrote her first novel, Love and Freindship (sic) and then A History of England by a partial, prejudiced and ignorant Historian, together with other very amusing juvenilia. In her early twenties Jane Austen wrote the novels that were later to be re-worked and published as Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey. She also began a novel called The Watson’s, which was never completed. 

As a young woman Jane enjoyed dancing (an activity which features frequently in her novels) and she attended balls in many of the great houses of the neighbourhood. She loved the country, enjoyed long country walks, and had many Hampshire friends. It therefore came as a considerable shock when her parents suddenly announced in 1801 that the family would be moving away to Bath. Mr Austen gave the Steventon living to his son James and retired to Bath with his wife and two daughters. The next four years were difficult ones for Jane Austen. She disliked the confines of a busy town and missed her Steventon life. After her father's death in 1805, his widow and daughters also suffered financial difficulties and were forced to rely on the charity of the Austen sons. It was also at this time that, while on holiday in the West Country, Jane fell in love, and when the young man died, she was deeply upset. Later she accepted a proposal of marriage from Harris Bigg-Wither, a wealthy landowner and brother to some of her closest friends, but she changed her mind the next morning and was greatly upset by the whole episode. 

After the death of Mr Austen, the Austen ladies moved to Southampton to share the home of Jane's naval brother Frank and his wife Mary. There were , where Jane stayed with her favourite brother Henry, at that time a prosperous banker, and where she enjoyed visits to the theatre and art exhibitions. However, she wrote little in Bath and nothing at all in Southampton. 

Then, in July 1809, on her brother Edward offering his mother and sisters a permanent home on his  estate, the Austen ladies moved back to their beloved Hampshire countryside. It was a small but comfortable house, with a pretty garden, and most importantly it provided the settled home, which Jane Austen needed in order to write. In the seven and a half years that she lived in this house, she revised Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice and published them (in 1811 and 1813) and then embarked on a period of intense productivity. Mansfield Park came out in 1814, followed by Emma in 1816 and she completed Persuasion (which was published together with Northanger Abbey in 1818, the year after her death). None of the books published in her lifetime had her name on them — they were described as being written "By a Lady". In the winter of 1816 she started Sanditon, but illness prevented its completion. 

Jane Austen had contracted Addisons Disease, a tubercular disease of the kidneys (). No longer able to walk far, she used to drive out in a little donkey carriage, which can still be seen at the Jane Austen Museum at Chawton. By May 1817 she was so ill that she and Cassandra, to be near Jane's physician, rented rooms in Winchester. Tragically, there was then no cure and Jane Austen died in her sister's arms in the early hours of 18 July 1817. She was 41 years old. She is

Jane Austen writes in her short stories a tremendous amount of information about women’s lives in the late eighteenth century. At time of writing her stories, in the late eighteenth century, the Napolenic War was happening. Jane Austen’s stories were also a shock to the society because children at her age were interested in immediate environment. Jane Austen writing about real lives and the truth in her view was a shock; some people were deeply offended, as they knew they were some of the hysterical characters that Jane Austen created. In most of her stories she is known to be very satirical, which caused arousing thoughts in young women’s minds.  

In ‘The Three Sisters’ Jane Austin writes in epistolary form about 1792, and is one of her Juvenilia. It includes some of the irony characteristic of Jane Austen, for example, the reason why Mary Stanhope is the “happiest creature in the world”, but is perhaps less typical in being a rather brutal work.

The Three Sisters is a story based on the importance of social status to women at this time. This book focuses on the lives of young women in the late eighteenth century. It looks at the social cultural society in the eighteenth century. It deals with how women are treated, and what they believe in the terms of marriage, and what is most important to them. We see where priorities lye with women when deciding whether to marry or not. This short story is a proposal of marriage in the late eighteenth century.

Women at this time were seen as second class and they did not have say or many rights. They were property of their fathers and brothers. Women were to be married at an early age, like sixteen to twenty one, this is because they look more attractive and can marry early and support their family. Love didn’t seem to come into the situation, material objects and money only mattered in a marriage. Marriage was more of a business transaction, where the only thing that mattered was money.

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Mary is the oldest out of the three sisters, she has been proposed to by a rich middle age man. Mr Watts, is a rich man in his thirties, Mary is confused and doesn’t know whether to marry him or not. If she doesn’t accept the marriage her sisters have said they will and she will lose out and face a chance of not marrying anyone better.

Her mother believes this is a good offer and she should accept it. There is no sign of love or friendship, as they quarrel to each other about little things even though ...

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