"Regulated Hatred": An Aspect in the Work of Jane Austen- D. W. Harding

            Harding states that the impression of Jane Austen that is passed down deters many who might be her best readers from bothering to read her novels. The first impression is that she offers quite favorable openings to urbanity. There was also an impression that she provided a refuge for the sensitive when the contemporary world became too much for them. Harding originally believed that her scope was incredibly restricted, but that, within her limits, she did a great job at expressing the gentler virtues of a civilized order. He originally thought she was a “delicate satirist, revealing with inimitable lightness of touch” the comic weaknesses of the people she lived amongst and liked. Harding states that this impression made him certain that he did not want to read Austen and that he believe that this is a most misleading impression—though it may have some pieces of the truth.

            Harding claims that she is not a conventional satirist and that her object is the more desperate one of finding some mode of existence for her critical attitudes. She had to keep on reasonably good terms with those in her everyday life. She had a need for their affection and respect for the ordered, decent civilization they upheld, yet she knew that her existence depended on resisting any of the value that championed—this was her motivation to write. Her society’s ability to laugh at faults they tolerated in themselves and their friends, so long as the faults were exaggerated and could be thought of as mock assaults and not genuinely disruptive. This kind of satire, Harding says, is a means of self-preservation, not admonition.  One of Austen’s most successful methods is to giver he readers every excuse for regarding as rather exaggerated figures of fun people whom she herself detests and fears.

            Harding declares that caricature served Austen’s purpose perfectly, as one can never tell where the caricature leaves off and the real portraiture begins. He claims that it appears that Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth serve as undistorted portraits, whereas characters such as Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Mr. Collins lend themselves more towards caricatures than real people. The simplest comic effects are gained by bringing the caricatures into direct contact with the real people, as in Mr. Collins’s visit and his proposal to Elizabeth. The complexity of the characters come when the reader realized that though, at times, he is a caricature, at other times, he fits into the real world. Harding maintains Austen’s works are not only for those who care for relief and escape, but are also for those who need an ally against things and people which were to hateful to her.