In D.W. Harding's critical essay about Jane Austen and her styles and methods of writing, he notes some of the ways in which Austen captures her readers specifically in her novel Pride and Prejudice. As Harding examines Austen's work, he focuses on the way in which her writing, though fictional and quite generalized, remains so relatable to her audience. One of Austen's main techniques in doing so was to create characters which contained faults and short comings also very common in her readers. Because of this quality of Austen's writing and composition of characters, she could utilize a key trait present in her surrounding society, being that people are "eager to laugh at faults they tolerated in themselves and their friends, so long as the faults were exaggerated", according to Harding.
Very critical to Austen's presentation of a easily relatable and believable text, according to Harding, was her maintenance of a very fine line between "real characters" and "caricatures". Such work, which according to Harding is somewhat narrow in scope and who's work is "limited", she is nonetheless very successful within her means of creating characters and a story which offers an agreeable escape from the real world. Harding explains that Austen's use of caricatures and of fictional comedic devices is in fact only mistaken for satire, while it is actually something different. With the use of both exaggerated caricatures, such as Mr. Collins, and more believable and plausible ones, such as Mr. Bennet, Austen also brings out a more simple and rudimentary mode of comedy, in which the fictional and real worlds clash together to put an emphasis on the criticisms she is trying to make and faults she is attempting to point out. Harding's review on Austen's work mainly applauds her in a successful accomplishment of so ironically capturing the interest, following, and enjoyment of the very people which her work directs its commentary towards, and as Harding puts it, that's exactly what Austen was aiming for.
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