2012 JASNA Essay Contest Third Place Winner High School Division
Shilpa Kamala Saravanan A&M Consolidated High School College
Station, TX  Truths Universally Acknowledged: Jane Austen and
Manipulation  The cover of my edition of Pride and Prejudice
shows two women on a balcony with a well-dressed man lurking in
the shadows behind them, watching, waiting. The sinister man
seems as though he knows all about the two women, their deepest
secrets, everything, and will use whatever he needs from them to
accomplish his own dastardly ends. The women stare out into the
distance, not knowing, not caring.  Of course, this is not quite
what Pride and Prejudice is about. However, that sort of
sinister, manipulative man is well represented in Jane Austen’s
work. Characters manipulate each other in all sorts of ways,
sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. Often, the resistance to
this manipulation is seen in the main characters, the ones we
ought to admire, and the tendency to succumb seen in those who
Austen has given us lea