As I reread all of Jane Austen’s six major works and Lady Susan, I started noticing a pattern: for her heroines, Austen tends to pair them with their foil. Put like that, it does sound almost too generic to be a pattern, but here’s what I mean:

• In Sense and Sensibility: Impulsive, emotional Marianne is contrasted with her sister Elinor, who although she feels a lot, is a lot more reined in with her emotions.
• In Pride and Prejudice: Elizabeth is the witty and charming heroine for me, and she’s paired with her sister Jane, who is much more reserved (to the point that Bingley could be persuaded that she didn’t love him)
• In Mansfield Park: Austen switches things around and makes her heroine the quiet, shy Fanny Price but gives her a foil in Mary Crawford, who almost feels like an amoral Elizabeth Bennet.
• In Emma: Emma feels like what Elizabeth might have become if she was rich (remember, Elizabeth’s flaw is that she judges too fast and thinks she is right) or Mary Crawford with a bit more of morals and she is contrasted against another Jane – Jane Fairfax, who is also shy (and like Jane Bennet, very beautiful)

The only two exceptions to this are Northanger Abbey, with the young heroine Catherine Morland being on the outgoing side, but having no foil character as her so-called best friend, Isabella Thorpe, is similarly outgoing. Eleanor Tilney is quieter, but I wouldn’t call her shy at all. There’s also Persuasion, where it’s arguable that Anne plays both roles – going from retiring and overlooked at the start to really being her own person in Bath and attracting the attentions of Captain Wentworth and William Elliot in earnest (which was sparked at Lyme). While Louisa Musgrove does come up at first as a seeming foil to Anne (or rather, the Anne that Wentworth hoped would be – steadfast in her opinions), I would argue that the lack of Louisa in the second part of the book disqualifies her from being Anne’s foil.

Writing this, it also appeared to me that Austen writes variations on the same character. Take her witty, outgoing, charming characters – Elizabeth Bennet is the one that is my gold standard, and I can easily find similarities with Mary Crawford (Amoral Elizabeth Bennet) and Emma (Rich Elizabeth Bennet). Actually, thinking about it, Lady Susan is also similar to Mary Crawford in how she’s charming but also lacking in morals. Of course, the very easy counterargument is: well how many different characters can you write? Don’t most people share some similarities?

Yes, the answer is yes. But given how innovative Austen was when it came to things like her narrative style, her treatment of sensibility, and how she could parody established genres like gothic fiction (see: Northanger Abbey), I wonder if all this is a coincidence, or if Austen was trying out different variations on a theme through her writing.

What do you think?