A Regency-style ball held in Winchester, the UK, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth Photo: IC PHOTO

Jane Austen, born in 1775 in Hampshire, England, was a novelist who portrayed the world of late 18th- and early 19th-century Britain with her distinctive touch. She occupies a unique position in world literary history, with the charm of her works deriving mainly from her characteristic female perspective and her keen, realist observation.

Austen’s novels have been repeatedly adapted for film and television, captivating audiences around the world. The year 2025 marks the 250th anniversary of her birth, and commemorations are being held globally. On this occasion, CSST interviewed scholars about Austen’s writing style, thematic concerns, and lasting influence.

Universal and enduring works

Austen’s novels are renowned for their sharp social observation and subtle satire. Amelia Dale, a lecturer in English at the Australian National University, noted that Austen frequently drew on the comic and satirical traditions of 18th-century British literature. In Northanger Abbey, for example, Austen engages with the comic tradition inspired by Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote. In doing so, she acknowledges a literary debt not only to Cervantes but also to British writers who followed him, such as Charlotte Lennox in The Female Quixote and Henry Fielding in Joseph Andrews. Austen’s sharp social observations and attention to detail was also shaped by the influence of Samuel Richardson. She particularly admired Richardson’s least popular novel, Sir Charles Grandison, and even adapted it with her family into a theatrical manuscript.

Although Austen’s fictional world appears relatively narrow, centered mainly on interpersonal relationships and middle-class life, Dale summarized two current scholarly views on whether this limitation affects the universality and durability of her work. One argues that Austen’s decision to constrain the focus of her great novels so tightly was a deliberate aesthetic choice and a crucial part of her artistic achievement. The other suggests that while Austen’s novels may seem narrow at first glance, they gesture toward broader social and historical issues—political instability in Britain, rural poverty, the decline of the aristocracy, debates on women’s education and status, the agricultural revolution, the shadow of the slave trade, and the Napoleonic wars. She engages with these subjects in subtle, elliptical ways.

Shawn Normandin, a professor of literature at Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea, observed that Austen’s seemingly restricted scope has perhaps discouraged many from reading her or taking her seriously. But the near-universal acclaim her works enjoy more than two centuries after her death demonstrates that such thematic restraint has not diminished either their relevance or longevity. Much of the important scholarly work on Austen has been carried out by non-British researchers, which, in Normandin’s view, has helped establish Austen as part of world literature rather than merely a symbol of Englishness.

Dale added that Austen has appealed to different kinds of readers in different eras. In Rudyard Kipling’s early-20th-century short story “Janeites,” British soldiers read and admire Austen’s work. Devoney Looser, a professor at Arizona State University in the US, provides a vivid account of Austen’s reception history in her book The Making of Jane Austen. Today, Austen is cherished by general readers and celebrated in academia.

Focus on daily life and women’s issues

Dale believes that one of Austen’s most significant contributions to the development of the novel was her focus on everyday life. Many earlier writers, both men and women, structured their narratives around sensational or extraordinary events—murders, duels, kidnappings, or miraculous reconciliations. Such events appear only rarely in Austen’s mature works and are often mentioned only in passing. Colonel Brandon’s duel with Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility is referred to so briefly a reader could almost miss it. In Pride and Prejudice, the elopement of Lydia and Wickham is treated not as a sensational scandal but as a crisis that affects Elizabeth and her family. In this way, Austen’s narrative art paved the way for later 19th-century realist writers who explored the drama of ordinary life.

Austen’s treatment of gender roles is also complex, according to Dale. In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet challenges certain conventions and rejects the rigid prescriptions for female conduct repeated by her sister Mary. Yet she is never portrayed as outrageously deviant; she remains a figure of respect within the moral framework of the novel, in contrast to her sister Lydia. In Sense and Sensibility, two very different models of female behaviour are presented: Marianne embodies the fashion of feeling and sensibility, while Elinor is more restrained and dutiful, following traditional rules. Yet both women endure deep unhappiness for much of the story, suggesting that women’s emotional lives are constrained less by personality than by economic insecurity. Economics, Dale observed, intersects constantly with gender in Austen’s fiction.

Dale further observed that Austen’s works are particularly attentive to how economics shapes social relationships. Competition for inheritances, dowries, and property often turns family members against one another. In novels such as Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, Austen exposes the hypocrisy and cruelty embedded in the inheritance laws and social customs of her time.

Generating cross-cultural appeal

According to Dale, Austen’s novels sold well in her lifetime, but her fame has grown dramatically in the two centuries since her death. Adaptations in film, theater, and television have been central to her international reputation. Her sustained cross-cultural appeal lies in her exploration of universal themes: love, economics, family, and social aspiration. In some respects, her novels resemble anthropological studies, offering insight into how private property and family structure interact within a particular class during a period of social and economic transition.

Juliette Wells, a professor of literary studies at Goucher College in the United States, observed that Austen created vivid, memorable characters who resonate far beyond her own cultural context. Readers everywhere recognize figures like the pompous and oblivious Mr. Collins and arrogant busybodies like Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Pride and Prejudice. Many also see versions of their own acquaintances in characters such as the gossipy Mrs. Bennet or the unkind and interfering Mrs. Norris from Mansfield Park. Likewise, the charm and charisma embodied by characters like George Wickham and Mary Crawford are instantly recognizable.

Wells added that readers continue to take courage from Austen’s heroines. Fanny Price in Mansfield Park embodies fortitude and quiet resilience; Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice who cares too much about her personal happiness to marry a man she doesn’t respect; and Anne Elliot in Persuasion rejects her family’s snobbery in admiration of the qualities of less-privileged people.

Renewed vitality in the digital age

In Dale’s view, Austen’s works continue to be adapted and reinterpreted for new audiences, and it is often the case that people encounter Austen first through adaptations rather than through her novels. Each adaptation offers a reinterpretation of the original, reflecting the social concerns of its time. Recent years have seen innovative digital experiments in adaptation, such as “The Lizzie Bennet Diaries” and “Emma Approved,” which retell Pride and Prejudice and Emma across interactive online media platforms.

In today’s digital age, Austen still captivates younger generations of readers. Normandin suggested that many young people, constantly under pressure to curate and commodify their identities on social media, sometimes find relief in the experience of reading Austen’s works in print.

The reception of Austen’s novels—including her adaptations and global communities of readers—has now become a field of study in its own right. Dale noted growing scholarly interest in Austen’s so-called “minor” works, such as her unfinished manuscripts Sanditon and The Watsons, as well as the pieces she wrote as a young writer.