Illnesses as Engravers of Destinies in Jane Austen's Novels

Placing focus on three of Jane Austen’s recognized texts – Pride and Prejudice, Emma and Sense and Sensibility – the aim is to examine the role of illnesses inside the novels and the implications located among those places of the texts where illnesses actively enter and become part of the narration. The symptoms and ailments can assume sign-expressive functions as well as being merely functional to the development of the story, being relegated to a direct correlation with the specific condition of weakness. Consequently, illnesses accentuate the characters, and the relational and linguistic elements of the diegesis, which appear to perform as a communicative model that leads up to modifying the social relationships and the very destinies of the characters.