Jane Austen's Use of style in Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, and Pride and Prejudice

Arguably one of the greatest novelists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Jane Austen has proven herself through her definitive grasp of the English language to have a heightened sensitivity to universal patterns of human behavior. For a woman who had written three novels by her twenty-third year, she was quite accomplished in a world that existed on paper. Austen's style is a unique blend of wit and detail, which tends to portray the quiet, …

…identifiable with the nineteenth century itself. Austen uses the formulaic approach of "happiness" achieved by marriage of the heroine to a perfect suitor, where either one or both learn valuable lessons, to inform each generation of readers about the circumstances associated with "happiness" during her lifetime. Austen's work is characterized by an exceptional ability to relate the conditions of society, and an acute awareness of the limitations and mystery of the human mind and personality.