Jane's Influences
Depicts urgency for immediate reform
Throughout her life, Jane Austen looked to the works of many authors to serve as an inspiration for her own writing. Although she references a number of great novelists of the time in many of her own works, this site has chosen to focus on the two most influential female writer's that had the most profound impact on Jane and her style of writing. It is through Jane's humor that she satirizes the social wrongs of her society during this time. This inspiration stems in large part from the works of Francis Burney and Maria Edgeworth, both witty and didactic writers who had a voice to share with the rest of society in order to establish an awareness of the flaws that loomed in the surrounding culture, especially in the roles that women were supposed to conform to.