DOCSLIB.ORG

Jane Austen and Her Times

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Jane Austen and Her Times Jane Austen and Her Times G. E. Mitton Jane Austen and Her Times Table of Contents Jane Austen and Her Times.....................................................................................................................................1 G. E. Mitton...................................................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Preliminary and Discursive..........................................................................................................1 Chapter 2: Childhood.....................................................................................................................................9 Chapter 3: The Position of the Clergy.........................................................................................................14 Chapter 4: Home Life at Steventon..............................................................................................................21 Chapter 5: The Novels.................................................................................................................................34 Chapter 6: Letters and Posts.........................................................................................................................44 Chapter 7: Society and Love−Making.........................................................................................................49 Chapter 8: Visits and Travelling..................................................................................................................61 Chapter 9: Contemporary Writers................................................................................................................66 Chapter 10: A Trio of Novels......................................................................................................................72 Chapter 11: The Navy..................................................................................................................................81 Chapter 12: Bath..........................................................................................................................................88 Chapter 13: Dress and Fashions...................................................................................................................94 Chapter 14: At Southampton......................................................................................................................103 Chapter 15: Chawton.................................................................................................................................110 Chapter 16: In London...............................................................................................................................115 Chapter 17: Fanny and Anna.....................................................................................................................123 Chapter 18: The Prince Regent and Emma................................................................................................125 Chapter 19: Last Days................................................................................................................................129 i Jane Austen and Her Times G. E. Mitton This page copyright © 2002 Blackmask Online. http://www.blackmask.com • Chapter 1: Preliminary and Discursive • Chapter 2: Childhood • Chapter 3: The Position of the Clergy • Chapter 4: Home Life at Steventon • Chapter 5: The Novels • Chapter 6: Letters and Posts • Chapter 7: Society and Love−Making • Chapter 8: Visits and Travelling • Chapter 9: Contemporary Writers • Chapter 10: A Trio of Novels • Chapter 11: The Navy • Chapter 12: Bath • Chapter 13: Dress and Fashions • Chapter 14: At Southampton • Chapter 15: Chawton • Chapter 16: In London • Chapter 17: Fanny and Anna • Chapter 18: The Prince Regent and Emma • Chapter 19: Last Days Chapter 1: Preliminary and Discursive Of Jane Austen's life there is little to tell, and that little has been told more than once by writers whose relationship to her made them competent to do so. It is impossible to make even microscopic additions to the sum−total of the facts already known of that simple biography, and if by chance a few more original letters were discovered they could hardly alter the case, for in truth of her it may be said, "Story there is none to tell, sir." To the very pertinent question which naturally follows, reply may thus be given. Jane Austen stands absolutely alone, unapproached, in a quality in which women are usually supposed to be deficient, a humorous and brilliant insight into the foibies of human nature, and a strong sense of the ludicrous. As a writer in The Times (November 25, 1904) neatly puts it, "Of its kind the comedy of Jane Austen is incomparable. It is utterly merciless. Prancing victims of their illusions, her men and women are utterly bare to our understanding, and their gyrations are irresistibly comic. "Therefore as a personality, as a central figure, too much cannot be written about her, and however much is said or written the mystery of her genius will still always baffle conjecture, always lure men on to fresh attempts to analyse and understand her. The data of Jane Austen's life have been repeated several times, as has been said, but beyond a few trifling allusions to her times no writer has thought it necessary to show up the background against which her figure may be seen, or to sketch from contemporary records the environment amid which she developed. Yet surely she is even more wonderful as a product of her times than considered as an isolated figure; therefore the object of this Jane Austen and Her Times 1 Jane Austen and Her Times book is to show her among the scenes wherein she moved, to sketch the men and women to whom she was accustomed, the habits and manners of her class, and the England with which she was familiar. Her life was not long, lasting only from 1775 to 1817, but it covered notable times, and with such an epoch for presentation, with such a central figure to link together the sequence of events, we have a theme as inspiring as could well be found. In many ways the times of Jane Austen are more removed from our own than the mere lapse of years seems to warrant. The extraordinary outburst of invention and improvement which took place in the reign of Queen Victoria, lifted manners and customs in advance of what two centuries of ordinary routine would have done. Sir Walter Besant in his London in the Eighteenth Century says, "The passing of the Reform Bill in 1832, the introduction of steamers on the sea, the beginning of railways on land, make so vast a break between the first third and last two−thirds of the nineteenth century, that I feel justified in considering the eighteenth century as lasting down to the year 1837; in other words, there were so few changes, and these so slight, in manners, customs, or prevalent ideas, between 1700 and 1837, that we may consider the eighteenth century as continuing down to the beginning of the Victorian era, when change after changechange in the constitution, change in communications, change in the growth and extension of trade, change in religious thought, change in social standardsintroduced that new time which we call the nineteenth century." According to this reckoning, Jane Austen may be counted as wholly an eighteenth−century product, and such a view is fully justified, for the differences between her time and ours were enormous. It is impossible to summarise in a few sentences changes which are essentially a matter of detail, but in the gradual unfolding of her life I shall attempt to show how radically different were her surroundings from anything to which we are accustomed. It is an endless puzzle why, when her books so faithfully represent the society and manners of a time so unlike our own, they seem so natural to us. If you tell any half−dozen people, who have not made a special study of the subject, at what date these novels were written, you will find that they are all surprised to hear how many generations ago Jane Austen lived, and that they have always vaguely imagined her to be very little earlier than, if not contemporary with, Charlotte Brontë or George Eliot. So far as I am aware, no writer on Jane Austen has ever touched on this problem before. Her stories are as fresh and real as the day they were written, her characters might be introduced to us in the flesh any time, and, with the exception of a certain quaintness of eighteenth−century flavouring, there is nothing to bring before us the striking difference between their environment and our own. It is true that the long coach journeys stand out as an exception to this, but they are the only marked exception. If we had never had an illustrated edition of Jane Austen, nine people out of ten at least would have formed mental pictures of the characters dressed in early Victorian, or perhaps even in present−day, costume. It is only since Hugh Thompson and C. E. Brock have put before us the costumes of the age, that our ideas have accommodated themselves, and we realise how Catherine Morland and Isabella Thorpe looked in their high−waisted plain gowns, when they had arrived at that stage of intimacy which enabled them to pin "up each other's trains for the dance." Or how attractive Fanny Price was in her odd high crowned hat, with its nodding plume, and the open−necked short−sleeved dress, as she surveyed herself in the glass while Miss Crawford snapped the chain round her neck. The knee−breeches
Load more

Recommended publications
  • INTRODUCTION: DID JANE AUSTEN REALLY MEAN THAT? 1. the Novels Oj}Ane Austen, Edited by R
    NOTES INTRODUCTION: DID JANE AUSTEN REALLY MEAN THAT? 1. The Novels oj}ane Austen, edited by R. W. Chapman. Further references from Austen's novels are to this edition and are included in the text. 2. Claudia Johnson forged a new direction for Austen studies in Jane Austen: WrJmen, Politics, and the Novel. I am deeply indebted to her work as weil as to that of William H. Galperin, The Historical Austen, Deidre Shauna Lynch, The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture, and the Business ofInner Meaning, and Mary Ann O'Farrell, Telling Complexions: The Nineteenth-Century English Novel and the Blush. That said, different concerns do shape my project. O'Farreil and I share a central focus on the body in Austen, though we tend to move in dissimilar directions about the kind of somatic work this novelist performs; while O'Farrell commits herself to an understanding of the blush as an expression of pleasure, she also analyzes it in su btle Foucauldian terms as a regulatory device. Lynch's book places Austen at the capstone of her ambitious study of the relationship between the novel's development and economic change; in this context, she demon­ strates how the kind of "characters" associated with the novel (individ­ uals with depth) emerge as a way for people to accommodate themselves to a new and commercialized world. I share with her an interest in the play between surface and depth in characters, and my focus on material objects opens an avenue, I hope, for further explo­ ration of how Austen uses things to foster a sense of inwardness for the characters in her fiction.
    [Show full text]
  • Jane Austen's Reading
    Jane Austen’s Reading: The Chawton Years Gillian Dow and Katie Halsey Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors. Spectator 93 (16 June, 1711) Introduction to Jane Austen’s Reading The earliest description of Jane Austen‘s reading is Henry Austen‘s account in the ‗Biographical Notice of the Author‘ in the first edition of Northanger Abbey, published posthumously in December 1817. James Edward Austen-Leigh‘s Memoir of his aunt (1870) also describes her reading, drawing on the information in the ‗Biographical Notice‘. Henry and Edward focus firmly on authors considered in the nineteenth century to be ‗useful and entertaining‘. They both agree that she loved the works of Samuel Johnson, William Cowper, George Crabbe and Samuel Richardson, in particular Richardson‘s Sir Charles Grandison (1753-4). Henry Austen tells of her early infatuation with ‗Gilpin on the Picturesque‘, writing also that ‗her reading was very extensive in history and belles letters‘, and that she was ‗intimately acquainted with the merits and defects of the best essays and novels in the English language‘ (‗Biographical Notice‘, 330). James Edward suggests that what Henry had called ‗extensive‘ reading in history was actually ‗the old guides – Goldsmith, Hume and Robertson‘. He briefly alludes to her admiration of Sir Walter Scott‘s poetry and Waverley (1814), and quotes her joking determination to read no novels but Maria Edgeworth‘s, her relatives‘ and her own. James Edward then turns from Austen‘s reading: ‗It was not, however, what she knew, but what she was, that distinguished her from others‘ (Austen-Leigh, 78-80).
    [Show full text]
  • Jane Austen: the French Connection 107 with Footnotes on Every Page
    Jane Austen: t The French Connection :Li JOAN AUSTEN-LEIGH Joan Austen-Leigh is the co-founder, with Jack Grey and Henry Burke, of the Jane Austen Society of North America. For nineteen years, she edited this journal. Mr. Austen was once asked by a neighbor, a man of many acres, whether Paris was in France or France was in Paris. I cannot help but feel that I have almost as little right as that shamefully clueless squire to be addressing the subject of Jane Austen and the French Connection. Now, having delivered myself of that disclaimer, the first aspect of this subject that interests me, especially as I am deficient in that respect myself, is, how well did Jane Austen speak French? If she were here with us today, would she be quite at ease in Quebec City, choos- ing some gloves or purchasing a sponge cake? First, it’s time for a brief history lesson from your impartial, unprejudiced, and, until beginning to work on this paper, abysmally ignorant historian. I have now informed myself that sixteen years before Jane Austen was born, on September 13, 1759, Wolfe defeated Montcalm. The battle lasted one hour, and the history of Canada was forever changed. It has been estimated that there were, then, approximately sev- enty thousand French settlers. Today, in a Canadian population of about twenty-nine million, more than four million speak French only. Why do I tell you these things? Because the French, as a nation, have always been protective of their language and culture, and I have 106 PERSUASIONS No.
    [Show full text]
  • The Watchers of Sanditon
    The Watchers of Sanditon JULIET McMASTER Department of English, University of Alberta, Edmonron, AB T6G 2E5 I want to begin with that "close, misty morng" when Charlotte Heywood sallies forth from Trafalgar House with docile Mrs. Parker and little Susan to walk to Sanditon House, on their visit to Lady Denham. When they reached the brow of the Hill, they could not for some time make out what sort of Carriage it was, which they saw coming up. It appeared at different moments to be every-thing from the Gig to the Pheaton,-from one horse to 4; &just as they were concluding in favour of a Tandem, little Mary's young eyes distinguished the Coach- man & she eagerly called out, "T'is Uncle Sidney Mama, it is indeed." And so it proved. (Sanditon 425)' It's a bird! It's a plane! It's SIDNEy pARKER!-who is probably destined to be the hero of Sanditon.But seeing the hero is not easy: not for the heroine, and not for us readers either, who must rely on the heroine's young eyes to distinguish his identity and his place in the large pattern of events and characters that make up the novel. Jane Austen plays with that trope of identifying the hero elsewhere in her novels .In Sense and Sensibility, when Elinor and Marianne are out walking, they discem a man on horseback riding towards them. In a few minutes they could distinguish him to be a gentleman; and in a moment afterwards Marianne rapturously exclaimed, "It is he; it is indeed;-I know it is!" (SS 86), But she is "mistaken": it is Edward Ferrars, not Willoughby.
    [Show full text]
  • Jane Austen's Work As Popular Culture Phenomenon
    Jane Austen's Work as Popular Culture Phenomenon Bartolović, Ana Master's thesis / Diplomski rad 2012 Degree Grantor / Ustanova koja je dodijelila akademski / stručni stupanj: Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences / Sveučilište Josipa Jurja Strossmayera u Osijeku, Filozofski fakultet Permanent link / Trajna poveznica: https://urn.nsk.hr/urn:nbn:hr:142:699412 Rights / Prava: In copyright Download date / Datum preuzimanja: 2021-10-02 Repository / Repozitorij: FFOS-repository - Repository of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Osijek Sveučilište J. J. Strossmayera u Osijeku Filozofski fakultet Diplomski studij povijesti i engleskog jezika i književnosti Ana Bartolović Jane Austen's Work as Popular Culture Phenomenon Diplomski rad Mentor: doc. dr. sc. Biljana Oklopčić Osijek, 2012. Summary Jane Austen is considered to be one of the most brilliant British writers. Although she wrote only six novels, they are all highly praised and very popular. They are so popular that today one can find numerous film adaptations and fan fiction novels based on them. The first chapter deals with Austen, her life, family, relationships, and work. The second chapter is about her six novels, arranged here in the order in which they were published: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion, and Northanger Abbey. The third chapter reviews every film adaptation based on each of the novels. The fourth chapter deals with numerous novels written in the 20th and 21st centuries that are sequels, prequels, variations, or adaptations of Austen’s novels. There is also an extensive list of all those novels divided into categories according to the title of the book on which they are based on.
    [Show full text]
  • The Influence of Naval Captain Charles Austen's North American
    y y The Influence of Naval Captain Charles Austen’s North : u : American Experiences on Persuasion and Mansfield Park SHEILA JOHNSON KINDRED Sheila Johnson Kindred teaches Philosophy at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. As a member of the Nova Scotia chapter of JASNA and the Kent Branch of JAS she has lectured and published on Jane Austen in both North America and England, including a contribution to Jane Austen and the North Atlantic. T of Jane Austen’s naval characters sparkle with animation and authenticity. In Persuasion we meet Captain Frederick Wentworth , who has become very wealthy by the capture of naval prize and is known for his “great deal of intelligence, spirit and brilliancy” (26). In company is his sister , the good - humored Mrs. Croft, who makes a strong impression as the eminently practical naval wife of the likable Rear-Admiral Croft. In Mansfield Park Midshipman William Price delivers spirited narratives, which are “proof of . [his naval] knowledge, ener- gy, courage and cheerfulness” (236). These characterizations evince a surprising knowledge of sea -going life for someone who lived deep in the English countryside. So how did Jane Austen come by the information she needed to create these naval figures ? One of her most important sources was her brother Charles , who, as an officer in the British navy during the Napoleonic wars, was stationed in North America for over six years between 1805 and 1811. His naval expertise and ex - ploits cruising the Atlantic Ocean and capturing prize vessels, his love match to the beautiful young Fanny Palmer of Bermuda, and his social and professional life with “brother o fficers ” all find echoes in Persuasion and Mansfield Park .
    [Show full text]
  • Books Owned by Jane Austen's Niece, Caroline, Donated to Chawton House Library
    VOL.1 No .4, 2015 Inside this issUE Books owned by Jane Austen’s House of Lords Tea niece, Caroline, donated to Chawton House Library N APRIL THIS YEAR, a North American Friend of Chawton House Library, Sandra Visiting Fellow Alexis Pogorelskin enjoys IClark, came to visit us all the way from afternoon tea with Baroness Williams of Crosby. Texas, bearing gifts. And what special gifts they are! They include a first edition of Frances Burney’s Camilla (1796), and a great many Improved Visitor Experience books to enhance our secondary collection, and our holdings on the Gothic novel. They also included a small collection of books once belonging to Caroline Mary Craven Austen (1805-80). Here, Executive Director Gillian The reference to Jane Austen’s acting skills came Numbers Dow discusses the importance of just one of back to me when I examined the donation from triple as the volumes in this collection, and looks at Sandra Clark. Because one of the books is a book new display what it can tell us about women’s reading, of French plays, an 1813 edition of Stéphanie- cases arrive education for girls, and women’s lives in the Félicité de Genlis’s Théatre à l’usage des jeunes early nineteenth century. personnes. All of Caroline’s books now forming part of the Chawton House Library collection When Sandra Clark came with her generous are delightful material objects. And in the case donation, I was thrilled to see the volumes once of this one, it is of particular interest, since it belonging to Caroline Austen.
    [Show full text]
  • Jane Austen Article Version 1
    56 Days: The Final Chapter of Jane Austen’s Life Jane Maxwell is a Cathedral Guide at Winchester with specialist knowledge of Jane Austen, and she is also a guide at Chawton House Library. In this article she has assembled some extracts of letters and writings, both from Jane and members of her family, which together tell the story of Jane’s last days in Winchester. On 24th May 1817 Jane Austen, accompanied by her sister Cassandra, departed from Chawton Cottage, and travelled to Winchester in the carriage of eldest brother James. They took up lodgings in the home of Mrs David, at No 8 College Street, the arrangements having been made by close friend Mrs Elizabeth Heathcote and her sister Miss Alethea Bigg. This was to be Jane’s home for the last 56 days of her life. As her life drew to a close, her letters related the intimate details of her final struggle. Fig 1 Jane Austen, rear view, by Cassandra Austen reproduced by kind permission of Belinda Austen 27th May 1817, Jane to nephew James Edward Austen: “I know no better way my dearest Edward, of thanking you for your most affectionate concern for me during my illness, than by telling myself as soon as possible that I continue to get better. I will not boast of my handwriting; neither that, nor my face have yet recovered their proper beauty, but in other respects I am gaining strength very fast. I am now out of bed from 9 in the morning to 10 at night – upon the sopha t’is true, but I eat my meals with Aunt Cassandra in a rational way and can employ myself, and walk from one room to another.
    [Show full text]
  • Jane Austen: a Family Record: Second Edition Deirdre Le Faye Frontmatter More Information
    Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-53417-8 - Jane Austen: A Family Record: Second Edition Deirdre Le Faye Frontmatter More information JANE AUSTEN: AFAMILY RECORD This book is the outcome of years of research in Austen archives, and stems from the original family biography by W. and R. A. Austen- Leigh, Jane Austen: her Life and Letters. Jane Austen: A Family Record was first published in 1989, and this new edition incorporates information that has come to light since then, and provides new illustrations and updated family trees. Le Faye gives a detailed account of Jane’s life and literary career. She has collected together documented facts as well as the traditions concerning the novelist, and places her within the context of a widespread, affectionate and talented family group. Readers will learn how Jane transformed the stuff of her peaceful life in the Hampshire countryside into six novels that are amongst the most popular in the English language. This fascinating record of Austen and her family will be of great interest to general readers and scholars alike. Deirdre Le Faye has been actively researching the life and times of Jane Austen and her family for the last thirty years. In 1995 she pre- pared a completely new edition of Jane Austen’s Letters. She has also written several other books: a short illustrated biography, Jane Austen (1998), Jane Austen’s ‘Outlandish Cousin’, the Life and Letters of Eliza de Feuillide (2002) and Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels (2002)as well as numerous articles in literary journals. © in this
    [Show full text]
  • A Chronology of Jane Austen and Her Family
    BOOK REVIEWS Sue Parrill, Editor The Austens et al from 1600 to 2003 A Chronology of Jane Austen and Her Family By Deirdre Le Faye. Cambridge University Press, 2006. xv + 776 pages. 7 B/W illustrations. $150.00. Reviewed by Peter W. Graham. A preliminary confession: I didn’t read every page of Deirdre Le Faye’s A Chronology of Jane Austen and Her Family before sitting down to review it. Nor is it likely that most readers will do so though some especially thorough Janeites will probably pore over every item in this reference book containing some 15,000 entries from May 20, 1600, (“Horsmunden: Francis Austen I, fifth son of John Austen I and wife Joan Berry, baptized.”) to July 19, 2003, (“Chawton: The Great House re-opens as Chawton House Library, the Centre for the Study of Early English Woman Writers, created by the Leonard X. Bossack and Bette M. Kruger Foundation”). Fascinating and seductive to the empirical sensibility, this repertory of facts will be of great use to Austen scholars, who in times to come will turn to the Chronology to ascertain where Jane Austen or members of her family were and what they were doing on a particular date. But the book offers far more than just a chronicle of the nuclear Austen family. It gathers together centuries of details about the travels, circumstances, publications, correspondences, financial transactions, wills, and possessions of generations of Austens, their kin, and their associates. Deirdre Le Faye was tireless in visiting county records offices, libraries, and archives both public and private to gather materials for her biography Jane Austen: A Family Record and for the notes to her edition of Jane Austen’s Letters.
    [Show full text]
  • Henry James, Women Writers, and the Friendly Narrator
    Misreading Jane Austen: t Henry James, Women :L Writers, and the i Friendly Narrator WILLIAM C. DUCKWORTH, JR. William C. Duckworth, a retired chemical engineer, has published articles on chemi- cal technology and English literature, as well as poetry. He now confines himself to literary endeavors. A legion of Jane Austen’s readers would agree when Mal- colm Bradbury observes that Jane Austen, “a great artist working in a small compass,” has constructed a reader who can recover from her novels an experience of life “as serious and intense as even Henry James could wish for” (186). However, Henry James would not have agreed. Though he assigned to her a high rank among novelists, saying that she is “shelved and safe for all time,” “close to reality,” and that “the tissue of her narrative is close and firm,” he spoke patronizingly of her unconscious wool-gathering, criticized the absence in her works of striking examples of com- position, distribution, and arrangement, and called her heroines “she-Philistines.” One is surprised by these severe criticisms of the novelist he called “dear old Jane Austen,” who devised and prac- ticed literary techniques that he later developed. Why did Austen fail to win a perceptive reader like James who was so indebted to her? An examination of James’s view of women writers and Austen’s narrative technique, and of the relation of these two fac- tors to Henry James’s criticisms of Jane Austen, will enable us to better understand James’s comments on his great predecessor. In a letter of 8 April 1883, James wrote to the publisher of 96 PERSUASIONS No.
    [Show full text]
  • Jane Austen.Pdf
    Jane Austen was born on the 16th December, 1775 in Steventon, in England. She was an english writter. Jane and her family lived in Chawton in a very big house. Her father, William George Austen, educated his daughter alone. Jane's mother was Cassandra Leigh. Jane had got six brothers and one sister who is named Cassandra Elizabeth Jane Austen Austen. When Jane became an adult, she stood with her parents. She didn't have any children and she wasn't married. Later, she became a famous english writter. Jane's house The town of Chawton where Jane Austen lived with her family George Austen Cassandra Leigh Austen 1731 - 1805 1739 – 1827 James Austen Georges Austen Edward Austen Henry Austen Cassandra Austen Francis Austen Jane Austen Charles Austen 1765 - 1819 1766 – 1838 1767 - 1852 1771 - 1850 1773 - 1845 1774 -1865 1775 - 1817 1779 - 1852 Jane Austen spoke about her books with a lot of english writter like : - Fanny Burney - Samuel Richardson - Samuel Johnson - Henry Fielding - Charlotte Lennox Fanny Burney Samuel Richardson Samuel Johnson Henry Fielding Charlotte Lennox Jane wrote many novels : - Sense and Sensibility in 1811 - Pride and Prejudice in 1813 - Mansfield Park in 1814 - Emma in 1815 - Northanger Abbey in 1818 ( posthumous ) - Persuasion in 1818 ( posthumous ) Her books were about men and women who looked for happiness in love and marriage. She wrote very short stories in three volumes. The most famous of them are « The beautiful Cassandra » , « The three sisters » , « Love and Friendship » ; « The history ship » and The three volume « Catherine or the Bower » of Jane Austen On the years 1816, Jane Austen was starting to be sick.
    [Show full text]