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Jane Austen Day

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Jane Austen Jane Austen, one of the major novelists in English literature, was born on 16 December 1775 and she died on 18 July 1817. She was a graceful girl, who enjoyed the social life that her small world provided. She soon developed the qualities of a careful observer of human society: she had a great ability to read right inside people.

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With irony, she explored human emotion and behavior. She began to devote to the writing in young age: she wrote novels of manners, giving portraits of the provincial middle-class. The plots of her novels are based on the traditional values of the land owners and the high middle class (ownership, decorum, money and marriage). The happy ending is a common element of her novels.

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Her most important works are :

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Sense and Sensibility (1811)

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Mansfield Park (1814)

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Emma (1815)

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Northanger Abbey (1818 posthumous)

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Persuasion (1818 posthumous )

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Pride and Prejudice (1813)

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Pride and Prejudice Pride and Prejudice was written between 1796 and 1797, and published in 1813. It is the most famous novel of Jane Austen.

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Elizabeth, the heroine of the story, is one of five daughters of Mr.Bennet, second in age only to the beautiful Jane. Although the girls' life is comfortable enough as long as their father lives, their long-term financial survival depends on their marrying, because if they dont find husbands, the Bennet estate will pass to a male relative.

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The story revolves around Elizabeth, a girl with a strong personality. When in the village arrive two rich gentlemen, Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy, the calm life of the girls is shaken. Bingley falls in love with Jane, and Darcy is attracted to Elizabeth, even if he believes he is socially superior to her. This makes Elizabeth angry, so she refuses his proposal of marriage.

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Only when they overcome their pride and prejudice they will be ready for a marriage of love. The novel ends with happy marriages of the two couples. In 2005 Joe Wright directed a film about this story. It had a lot of success and received different Oscar nominations.

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Jane Austen has left us an inestimable inheritance, throwing a witty look and never banal, but rather rich of irony and perspicacity on a dark side of the society of the epoch, that of a pure and sensitive femininity, but at the same time coerced by the rigid rules of the run to the marriage.

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Roberta Sabini III E