In 18th century England, approximately fifteen percent of women in London were prostitutes. Women faced challenges such as long work hours, despised jobs, and short lives due to ravaging tuberculosis (Weldon 37-39). Jane Austen, born 1775, in Hampshire, England, was removed from most of these challenges due to her wealth, but the constriction she felt and debasement she observed still disturbed her (Life v). Her entire life was channeled toward marriage, and her thoughts and opinions were seen as trivial and lesser because she was female. Austen found escape in literature, and channeled many of her life’s frustrations into her last novel, Persuasion. The novel became a place where she could immortalize herself and those close to her, live out …show more content…
After spending a quarter of a century in rural Steventon, Austen was unprepared and undisposed to urban society (Life v). This startling change of pace troubled Austen in her twenties, but in her forties the move would giver her the premise of Persuasion. The protagonist, Anne Elliot, was infused with as much of Austen’s views and personality as she could muster, and her feelings about moving were clear; she objected to Bath decidedly and hated to leave her home (Austen 14). Anne’s disapproval of Bath perfectly reflected Austen’s, and both viewed city life with distaste and suspicion. However, Persuasion acted as more than a forum for Austen’s anti-city sentiments. The novel also served as a memorial for her friends, family, and …show more content…
James Austen-Leigh, the writer’s nephew, describes his aunt’s family as one with “strong familial affection and firm union, never to be broken but in death” (“Jane Austen: A Biography” 15). Without this familial support, Austen may have never had the courage to write her radical novels. In fact, without the events that surrounded her family, Austen may have never written her novels at all. For example, after the death of her father in 1805, Jane Austen, along with her mother and sister, moved to her brother’s house in Southampton, and from there a cottage in Chawton (“Jane Austen: Persuasion” 152). These events would later become the starting points of Sense and Sensibility. Austen’s experiences examining social behaviors at balls also prompted the opening chapters of Pride and Prejudice. Even in Emma, Austen used her position in the gentry to compare the lives of those in upper and middle classes. However, although many of her novels included events in her life, all of them included one aspect that she never