Remediating the Novel of Real Life: Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen

Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen belonged to the same generation of women novelists, and both were well acquainted with the literary world of their time. Especially focused on novel writing, they created, in similar and dissimilar ways, new forms of the popular genre of the realistic novel of domestic life, the so-called ‘novel of manners’, that their predecessors had experimented before them and their generation took inspiration from and imitated with success. This essay analyses Edgeworth’s use of this genre in her novel "Belinda" (1801) as a complex story from real life and its interlink with Jane Austen’s novels of manners with special attention to "Pride and Prejudice" (1813). Specifically, this essay investigates how both writers, Edgeworth and Austen, intertwined and imitated the complex social, moral and political scene of their time, and how gender roles and religion beliefs were made pivotal issues in both their works of fiction.