Abstract

This paper argues that Jane Austen is a satirist by likening her to James Gillray. Gillray, like Austen, is and was both a popular, pleasing artist and an ambiguous one, hard to read politically: Was he harder on Fox or Pitt? Here I compare a couple of characteristic Gillray images with Austen's works, showing they have stylistic affinities to Austen's style. Through an analysis of "Sense and Sensibility", this paper argues that by satirising the ruling class in her society, Jane Austen - like Gillray - portrayed some human creatures as monsters.