Reading Jane Austen as a moral philosopherTHOMAS RODHAM Jane
Austen was a brilliant moral philosopher from whom we still have
much to learn today. Austen is celebrated as a literary icon
both for her genius and for her role in inventing the modern
novel. Her first novel, Northanger Abbey (though by a quirk, not
actually published until after her death) must particularly
delight the modern academic of literature with its recursive
irony and playful subversion of established rules and genres.
Austen goes so far as to integrate a running discussion of the
form, role, and importance of 'the novel' into the book, though
the casual (or modern) reader would miss most of her references,
allusions and parodies of her contemporary literary world. That
exuberant display of literary genius was somewhat curtailed in
Austen's later works, as she sought to balance literary style
with popular (commercial) appeal. The style Austen developed in
her later works was distinctive for its very conventionality, or
'social realism'.