Even though today Jane Austen is regarded for her writing, during her time she couldn’t even publish her work under her own name, because it was considered unladylike for women to be intellectual figures. Unlike J. K. Rowling and other English female writers today, who are well known for their works even without using their full names, Jane Austen lived within the sanctuary of a close-knit family and always published her works under a pseudonym that could not be traced back to her (jasna.org). Writing at the time was a male-dominated profession and women depended completely on men for their livelihood. During her upbringing she knew the importance of money to women in a severely classist and patriarchal society, and so marriage was the answer to the survival of women during this time (Helms 32). Even knowing these qualities were important in her life she criticized them. Jane’s writing is somewhat comical, because even while criticising those normal discriminations in her book Pride and Prejudice, the book was published with a prejudiced nameless cover, shedding even greater light on the lack of sense and shortcoming of sensibility of eighteenth century Great Britain. So in order for women to hide their identity while writing about things that were highly controversial they used male pen names. Female authors resorted to pseudonyms to become published and to not be shunned away by their readers, and only after they did this their work was taken as serious literature. Although we ask why do we see Jane Austen’s name printed on all her classical works? That is because we see it “today” in the current year. During her lifetime Jane Austen remained pretty much unidentified because all her novels were published anonymously unde…
…Plus. Web. 12 Apr. 2014.
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