Love and Freindship

Presentation: Written in epistolary form (like her new Lady Susan, which she later wrote and was not published), in 1790, when Jane Austen was fourteen, Love and Freindship is believed to be, One of the tales she wrote for the amusement of her family. The various episodes, a series of letters from the heroine, Laura, to Marianne, the daughter of her friend Isabel, "the Countess of Feullide," may have been created to be read by Jane Austen to her family, The family readings that took place at night in the house of the Austen. Love and Freindship (and not Love and Friendship, which is one of the many spelling mistakes of history) is clearly a parody of the novels that Jane Austen read in her childhood. The subtitle alone suffices to prove it: Deceived in Freindship and Betrayed in Love, which in a way contradicts the title. In form, the story resembles a fairy tale, featuring extraordinary coincidences and returns of fortune, but Jane Austen shows herself resolved to embarrass the conventions of romance stories, up to and including in complete failure Of romantic fainting, which end here always badly for the female characters. In this story already appear the acute humor and disdain of the romantic emotion that Jane Austen will show in the novels of his maturity.