Love and Freindship | Jane Austen
Love and Freindship [sic] is a juvenile story by Jane Austen, dated 1790, when Austen was 14 years old. It is thought to be one of the tales she wrote for the amusement of her family. It resembles a fairy tale as much as anything else, featuring wild coincidences and turns of fortune, but Austen is determined to lampoon the conventions of romantic stories, right down to the utter failure of romantic fainting spells, which always turn out badly for the female characters. Love and Freindship (the misspelling is one of many in the story) is clearly a parody of romantic novels Austen read as a child. This is clear even from the subtitle, "Deceived in Freindship and Betrayed in Love", which completely undercuts the title. |