Styles and themes of Jane Austen In "Sense and Sensibility", Austen experiments extensively for the first time with this technique. For example, As Austen scholar Norman Page explains, "the first sentence is straight narrative, in the 'voice' of the [narrator]; the third sentence is normal indirect speech; but the second and fourth are what is usually described as free indirect speech." In these two sentences, Austen represents the inner thoughts of the character and creates the illusion that the reader is entering the character's mind. She often uses indirect speech for background characters. However, Page writes that "for Jane Austen ... the supreme virtue of free
The History of England (Austen) The History of England (Austen) The History of England is a 1791 work by Jane Austen, written when the author was fifteen. The work is a burlesque which pokes fun at widely used schoolroom history books such as Oliver Goldsmith's 1771 "The History of England from the Earliest Times to the Death of George II". Austen mockingly imitates the style of textbook histories of English monarchs, while ridiculing historians' pretensions to objectivity. It was illustrated with coloured portraits by Austen's elder sister Cassandra, to whom the work is dedicated. The second page of the "History" reads: Her "History" cites as