【单选题】

Not a few of JaneAusten’s personal acquain-

tances might have echoed Sir SamuelEgerton
Brydges, who noticed that "she was fair and
Line handsome, slight and elegant, but with cheeks a
(5) little too full," while "never suspect[ing] she was
an authoress." For this novelist whose personal
obscurity was more complete than that of any
other famous writer was always quick to insist
either on complete anonymity or on the propriety
(10) of her limited craft, her delight in delineating just
"3 or 4 Families in aCountry Village." With her
self-deprecatory remarks about her inability to
join "strong manly, spirited sketches, full of
Variety and Glow" with her "little bit (two Inches
(15) wide) of Ivory," JaneAusten perpetuated the
belief among her friends that her art was just an
accomplishment "by a lady," if anything "rather
too light and bright and sparkling." In this respect
she resembled one of her favorite contemporaries,
(20) MaryBrunton, who would rather have "glid[ed]
through the world unknown" than been "sus-
pected of literary airs—to be shunned, as literary
women are, by the more pretending of their own
sex, and abhorred, as literary women are, by the
(25) more pretending of the other!—my dear, I would
sooner exhibit as a ropedancer."
Yet, decorous though they might first seem,
Austen’s self-effacing anonymity and her modest
description of her miniaturist art also imply a
(30) criticism, even a rejection, of the world at large.
For, as GastonBachelard explains, the miniature
"allows us to be world conscious at slight risk."
While the creators of satirically conceived
diminutive landscapes seem to see everything as
(35) small because they are themselves so grand,
Austen’s analogy for her art—her "little bit (two
Inches wide) of Ivory"—suggests a fragility that
reminds us of the risk and instability outside the
fictional space.Besides seeing her art metaphori-
(40) cally, as her critics would too, in relation to
female arts severely devalued until quite recently
(for painting on ivory was traditionally a "lady-
like" occupation),Austen attempted through self-
imposed novelistic limitations to define a secure
(45) place, even as she seemed to admit the impossi-
bility of actually inhabiting such a small space
with any degree of comfort.And always, for
Austen, it is women—because they are too
vulnerable in the world at large—who must
(50) acquiesce in their own confinement, no matter
how stifling it may be.
The passage focuses primarily on
A、JaneAusten’ s place inEnglish literature
B．the literary denigration of female novelists
C．the implications ofAusten’s attitude to her work
D．critical evaluations of the novels of JaneAusten
E、social rejection of professional women in the 18th and 19th centuries