Text 1: Critic Aldridge praises Jane Austen's narrators for their irony, which gently exposes the vanities of her characters without ever abandoning sympathy. Austen's free indirect style, she argues, lets the narrator inhabit a character's perspective and quietly mock it in the same sentence — a technique that demands and rewards careful reading.
Text 2: Critic Reyes admires the same technique but reads it differently. Austen's irony, she argues, is not gentle but cutting; the narrator's apparent sympathy is a mask for severe moral judgment. The "careful reading" Aldridge celebrates is, in Reyes's view, the unmasking of an author whose surface civility conceals a sharper edge than is usually acknowledged.
The authors most clearly disagree about
- A
whether Austen is a major novelist.
- Bcheck_circle
whether Austen's irony is gentle or severe.
- C
whether Austen uses free indirect style.
- D
whether Austen's irony rewards careful reading.
Explanation
Both critics endorse the same technique and the importance of careful reading; they differ on the tonal character of Austen's irony — gentle vs. cutting. C captures this disagreement.