Austen and Dickens’s Different Views on Their Female Characters and on Women in Nineteenth Century

Abstract

By looking at how authors characterize their characters in novels, by analyzing how authors make their characters talk, behave, think, we can catch a glimpse of how they think of their characters, as well as a specific social group those characters represent. In this paper, we will focus on Jane Austen and Charles Dickens’s different views on their female characters’ nature and on nineteenth century women’s nature in general by extension, based on their different female characterizations and their usages of language to do so in Northanger Abbey and Oliver Twist. Generally, this paper reaches the conclusion that Austen rejects female conformity in nineteenth century, while Dickens reinforces it.