Austens Manipulation of the Readers Emotions Towards Characters in Pr

Austen's Manipulation of the Reader's Emotions Towards Characters in Pride and Prejudice In her novels, Jane Austen employs the timelessly effective characterization agents of dialogue, action, and point of view to cleverly manipulate the reader’s emotions towards the characters. Austen successfully creates heroins in a time that it was not social acceptable to think of women in a heroic role. She is so successful in applying these characterization techniques in her story lines that she molds a positive feeling towards strong females without the reader even realizing the influence the author’s agents have had, at the same time creating a very entertaining story. In Pride and Prejudice as well as Mansfield Park for example, Jane Austen creates characters who are some of the finest products of strong and intelligent women, yet do not loose their femininity, of our civilization. She accomplishes this feat by using the dialogue and action of the characters to manipulate the reader’s feelings towards these women. Austen also uses irony, satire and humor in all of her novels to show how ridiculous conventional Victorian country life was. She had a plethera of social commentary to make, and although women in her time period were conventionally outspoken, she used her novels as a means to show women could be intelligent, humorous, and strong without loosing their femininity. Jane Austen was a child of the Enlightenment, an age when reason was valued while many romantic traditions were slowly coming to light in society. As one of the educated and intelligent women emerging from this era, Austen used the character of Elizabeth Bennet, in Pride and Prejudice, to epitomize the harmonious balance between reason and... ...he more valuable when contrasted with that of Kitty and Lydia, where Lydia simply encourages Kitty in foolishness and is insensitive to her when she is upset. Her high spirits,which can be construed as flirtatious, also attract Darcy to her, as illustrated by her demand that he help to sustain a conversation between them when they dance together at the Netherfield ball. Her character is in no way unfeminine, and it is no wonder that Darcy is attracted to her after he comes to know and understand her. From this, we can see that Austen has managed to create her ideal woman in Elizabeth. Her strength and intelligence are qualities that make her respectable and admirable to any man or woman, but the fact that she possesses a softer, feminine side makes her genuinely attractive in the eyes of the reader, and helps us to better appreciate her other qualities.