Culture and Ideology in Jane Austen's England

The cultural characteristics of a community or national group are expressed through the manifestations of its culture: through its language, for example, and through the literature produced in a given historical era. Language contributes to fixing aspects of a cultural group through the written word. Different epochs have different language expressions, different languages have different interpretations, different cultures offer different manifestations of 'common sense'. Novels written in a particular historical period are written within the context of that historical era, and use the language that is characteristic of that era. This essay discusses the novels of Jane Austen in relation to the culture and historical period of the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Encglad and takes into consideration one important facet of the English culture of that era: the Church of England.