WHENJANE AUSTEN’S first novel Sense and Sensibility was published in 1811, the t-组卷网

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WHEN JANE AUSTEN’S first novel Sense and Sensibility was published in 1811, the title page simply read. ‘A Novel. In Three Volumes. By a Lady’. What could be greater justice than the fact that on her 200th death anniversary, that same anonymous lady gets her very own bank note? Austen is only the third writer to grace an English note (following William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens) and the first woman writer to do so. And really, no one can be unhappy with the honour.

When Austen died at 41, on June 18th, 1817, her profession as a writer did not make it to her epitaph. Her brother Henry chose instead to focus on her ‘charity, devotion, faith and purity’. While she never got to embrace the title of an author when she was alive, death has ensured her legacy. Her books have been translated into 40 languages and Pride and Prejudice itself has sold over 20 million copies. If her epitaph were to be written today, we could, perhaps, borrow from Virginia Woolf who wrote in The TLS of 1913, “More than any other novelist she fills every inch of her canvas with observation, fills every sentence with meaning, stuffs up every chink of the fabric until each novel is a little living world, from which you cannot break off a scene or even a sentence without bleeding it of some of its life. Her characters are so lively and vivid that they have the power to move out of the scenes in which she placed them into other moods and circumstances.”

The greatness of Austen is not only that she created the standard example of the modern novel, but that she continues to be relevant. Her novels have been endlessly adapted and modified because they still make sense today, because they can explain current sensibilities. Her characters can easily move out of London or Pemberley or Mansfield Park and be placed in Delhi or Shanghai or Beijing. Indianise the names, and we can all create our own comedy of manners. Mrs Bennet, the mimsy busybody, could easily be Mrs Batra, your Punjabi neighbour with an axe to grind and daughters to wed. Emma Woodhouse, the self-absorbed, privileged young lady could be Aisha of south Bombay, whose artifice overwhelms her potential. Mr Darcy could be your Mr Dasgupta, the dignified Bengali bachelor whose silence will be misunderstood as snobbery.

A fascinating study of Austen’s novels in facts, figures and charts published in The Guardian brings to light the world she knew and the only world she wrote about. All her characters(in her six novels) are independently wealthy who have no professions. Balls and picnics feature in all of her books. Evenings and afternoons are spent playing cards. And if romance is the base of her novels, then elopement is also a must. The servants speak no lines. The only historic event of the time that gets a mention is the Napoleonic War(1803-1815). The Industrial Revolution and French Revolution are not mentioned at all. The lovers will marry by the end.

Even if the plots of her six novels are simple enough, the success of Austen is her singular wit. It is a cleverness born from immediate observation but one which is universal in nature. She says it well in Northanger Abbey. ‘The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be extremely stupid.’

Two hundred years after her death, you have to be a fool to not enjoy her novels.

【小题1】What can we learn from the fact that Jane Austen’s photo on the English bank note?

A．To honor her publishing the first novel Sense and Sensibility.

B．To honor the most well-known writer in English literature.

C．To honor her outstanding contributions to English literature.

D．To show no one can envy her for her success.

【小题2】The author quotes Virginia Woolf’s comment mainly to show that ________.

A．Jane Austen was also fond of painting on the canvas.

B．Jane Austen lived in her own little world.

C．Jane Austen’s works possess superb writing techniques.

D．Jane Austen’s characters can move out of scenes magically.

【小题3】Which of the following statements about Austen’s works is NOT true?