TPO 12 TASK 1

The reading and listening materials have a debate on a portrait of Jane Austen as a teenager. The passage puts forward that she is the theme of the portrait with many wonderful reasons. However, the lecture states that the passage’s view is questionable.

First, the writer suggests that Austen’s family gave agreement to use the portrait as a proclaim of Austen’s letters in 1882. However, the speaker says that in that time, Austen had been dead almost 70 years. Her family members actually did never seen herself and made sure the girl in the portrait whether she was or not.

Secondly, the author argues that Austen’s face in the picture clearly likes the people in Cassandra’s sketch. While the speaker does not think so. In fact, the Austen family was very large, which many female cousins and children who were very alike with Austen were teenagers as well . So, many experts believe that the true subject was Marianne Kempian.

Thirdly, the passage states that there is evidence that the painting was proved when Jane Austen was a girl because Ozias Humphrey’s style. In contrast, the speaker believes that the date of the portrait is much later. There is an old stamp indicated that a man had a black canvass, William Legg, did not sell it in London when Austen was a girl, but sell it when she was 27 old.