MONTAIGNE/AUSTEN ESSAY

"Apples and Oranges"

     Style in literature certainly reflects through its authors, yet similarities remain prevalent when comparing almost any two authors with one another.  In the case of Michel de Montaigne, the essayist, and Jane Austen, the romantic, both authors display various thoughts and predictions of human nature within their common societies.  Although at first, the two writers' styles come off as differently as "apples and oranges," it only takes a couple of minor similarities in order to draw the two together.
     David Foster Wallace once wrote, "What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant."  Mostly, Montaigne's style of writing agrees with Wallace's quote.  Montaigne literally scratched the surface of every philosophical topic in his collection of essays, and as much as he probably would have loved to extend his essays and travel even further into his philosophies on idleness and cruelty and the like, there are definitely places within philosophy and the human mind that words cannot express.  Although Montaigne portrayed his views on various philosophical topics and strung along many allusions and references from his education in classic literature, he concluded his immense list of essays with "Of Experience," where he finally stated that it is human nature to employ experience when words simply cannot do the trick.  "By various trials experience created art."  Only in his last essay does Montaigne contradict Wallace's notion.
     Relating back to human nature, Jane Austen spent the entire novel, Pride and Prejudice, reflecting on the subject as well.  Although Austen did not necessarily incorporate the universal inclinations of humans that will persist throughout existence into her novel, she focused on the values and inclinations of the people found within the society she knew, which consisted of a class system by which reputation and rank outweighed personality.  In Pride and Prejudice, Austen displayed the British society and the class system that created arrogance within the higher class, as seen with Mr. Darcy.  All in all, through the utilization of the common plot scheme and style seen in modern literature, Austen managed to show how human nature bends to the desire to find love, while Montaigne would have rather chosen to write an essay on it.
     Montaigne and Austen are completely different individuals, but, as stated before, all writers indirectly possess at least a few similarities.  Just as both of their pieces contained an older style of English diction and were both written quite some time ago, the common theme of human nature was justified as well.  Although both authors wrote about this theme in very different ways, they are similar regardless.  "Apples and oranges" might be completely different fruits, but, in the end, one cannot argue against the fact that they are both round in shape and contain at least one thing in common.