Jane Austen For Beginners

by Robert Dryden

  Prince Regent

  In 1815 Austen’s brother Henry became extremely ill, and Jane hurried to his bedside in Hans Place in London in order to nurse him back to health. Since Henry had been a successful banker, he had friends in high places. Thus, when Jane arrived she was introduced to a physician who was in the employ of the Prince Regent. When this physician learned the identity of his patient’s sister, he informed Austen that the Prince was a fan of her novels and that he owned several copies. When the physician notified the Prince that Miss Austen was in London, the Prince made an invitation to Jane to come and visit Carlton House and meet with his librarian. The Prince’s instructions to his librarian were to “show her the library and other apartments, and to pay her every possible attention.” The Prince also requested that if Austen had a book in progress, that he would not object if she were to dedicate it to him. Emma was already at the press, but there was time to affix the dedication, and so it was done. The dedication reads: “To His Royal Highness The Prince Regent, This Work Is, By His Royal Highness’s Permission, Most Respectfully Dedicated, By His Royal Highness’s Dutiful And Obedient Humble Servant, The Author.”

  This was the extent of Jane Austen’s brush with celebrity. She made a little money from the novels while she was alive, but for the most part she remained obscure and anonymous. As well, her writing never changed her life. She didn’t join a literary circle, she didn’t have tutorials with writer friends, and she didn’t join a radical woman’s group. As her nephew states:

  Jane Austen lived in entire seclusion from the literary world: neither by correspondence, nor by personal intercourse was she known to any contemporary authors. It is probable …

  … that she never was in company with any persons whose talents or whose celebrity equaled her own; so that her powers never could have been sharpened by collision with superior intellects, nor her imagination aided by their casual suggestions. Whatever she produced was a genuine home-made article. Even during the last two or three years of her life, when her works were rising in the estimation of the public, they did not enlarge the circle of her acquaintance. Few of her readers knew even her name, and none knew more of her than her name.

  Indeed, Jane Austen’s reputation took the better part of two centuries to mature. Taking into consideration the frenzy of popularity that has arisen during the last twenty years, you would think differently. Building slowly, her celebrity has finally exploded.

  Death

  Jane Austen’s fatal illness, thought at the time to be Addison’s disease, started as a physical complaint in the year 1816. This coincided with extreme financial difficulties for Austen’s brother Henry. Henry, who had made an excellent recovery after his nearly fatal illness the year before, was now suffering a monetary crisis; his bank was failing fast and would soon leave him penniless. And after his long banking career was in ruins, he, like his father and brother James before him, turned to the church.

  During Henry’s crisis, Austen was busy working on a novel that she was calling “The Elliots” (the working title for her last novel published under the name Persuasion). She was feeling a lack of energy, but she was not the type to complain or to overdramatize a health situation. She was stoic about it and not interested in receiving sympathy from others when it wasn’t warranted. Austen’s mother had been a hypochondriac, so Jane resisted calling special attention to her ailments.

  Tomalin reports that in the summer of 1816 Austen was experiencing intense back pains. She was taking on a lot of responsibility in entertaining several of her nieces and nephews, and was trying to complete Persuasion, so she was certainly not taking it easy. On July 18 of that summer she completed a draft of Persuasion, but she proceeded to rework the text, particularly the final two chapters. Then in March 1817 she acknowledged that the novel was finally complete. (Since it was published posthumously, we don’t know if Jane intended for the novel to be called Persuasion or if the idea came from Henry or Cassandra.)

  By January 1817, Austen insisted that she was feeling better, and wrote that she was “stronger than I was half a year ago.” She was able to walk from Chawton into the town of Alton (about a mile away), but she wasn’t able to make the return trip. Austen self-diagnosed her illness as rheumatism, and was confident that it was getting better. Indeed, between the months of January and March 1817, in addition to completing revisions on Persuasion, she wrote eleven chapters of her final, unfinished work, Sanditon. Her will to produce and create was forceful and impressive; however, on the 18th of March she had an attack that left her finally unable to write. By mid-April she was bedridden.

  The attack was so severe that Austen was encouraged to visit the town of Winchester (about 15 miles away), where she would receive the best care from capable physicians. She was still writing in letters that she was feeling better, saying she was “low but recovering strength,” and continued to demonstrate an outward optimism. However privately, just before her departure to Winchester, she penned her will and testament, and addressed it to Miss Austen—Cassandra was to act as the executor of her will. In Winchester she and Cassandra stayed on College Street at the home of family friends. They arrived in town on May 24th. By July 18th, Jane Austen had left this earth. Her sister Cassandra wrote: “She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow, I had not a thought concealed from her, & it is as if I had lost a part of myself.”

  Jane Austen was buried in Winchester Cathedral. This honor was bestowed on her not because she was a great author, but because her brother Henry had connections in the church. As Tomalin puts it: “It was Henry surely who sought permission for their sister to be buried in the cathedral; splendid as it is, she might have preferred the open churchyard at Steventon or Chawton. But Henry knew the bishop.” Her epitaph, carved on the stone covering Austen’s grave, speaks about her assets as a human being, but as previously noted, it entirely leaves off the fact that she was an author.

  Jane Austen’s Epitaph:

  In memory of

  JANE AUSTEN,

  youngest daughter of the late

  Revd. GEORGE AUSTEN,

  formerly Rector of Steventon in this County. She departed this Life on the 18th July 1817, aged 41, after a long illness supported with the patience and the hopes of a Christian.

  The benevolence of her heart, the sweetness of her temper, and the extraordinary endowments of her mind obtained the regard of all who knew her, and the warmest love of her intimate connections.

  Their grief is in proportion to their affection they know their loss to be irreparable, but in the deepest affliction they are consoled by a firm though humble hope that her charity, devotion, faith and purity have rendered her soul acceptable in the sight of her

  REDEEMER.

  In the year 1900 Jane Austen’s descendants commissioned a brass plaque acknowledging the author’s literary contributions and had it installed next to her tomb in Winchester Cathedral. Finally Jane Austen received recognition from her family for her writing. Then in 1929 Austen received an even more important homage from Virginia Woolf in her work entitled A Room of One’s Own. An ardent feminist, Woolf argues for the importance of Austen’s contribution to the lives and letters of women writers, not least in terms of their struggles to achieve autonomy in a male-dominated society. Woolf’s praise is in part an acknowledgment that, despite social pressures to conform, Austen refused to be persuaded. Jane Austen knew well that she was a woman writing in a man’s world—a patriarchal society that had not yet come to accept and appreciate the intelligence and creativity of the fair sex. Yet Austen ignored the conventions of her society. Woolf states that Austen “wrote as women write, not as men write. Of all the thousand women who wrote novels then, [she] alone entirely ignored the perpetual admonitions of the pedagogue—write this, think that. [She] alone [was] deaf to that persistent voice, now grumbling, now patronizing, now domineering … that voice which cannot let women alone.” Austen could have married, and she could have had
children. But she refused to settle; she refused to fulfill her society’s expectations of a woman’s proper role and duty because—like Elizabeth Bennett, Fanny Price, and Anne Elliot—she had not yet found true love and refused to compromise. So when there was no Fitzwilliam Darcy or Edmund Bertram or Frederick Wentworth, Jane Austen created them in her imagination. Her six brilliant novels are her offspring. They helped show women how to live life on a woman’s own terms, just as Jane had done. And now in the twenty-first century, these novels continue to enlighten women and men to the possibilities that result when mutual respect and true love are achieved in marriage.

  This universal message—communicated now to myriad twenty-first-century readers of Austen’s fiction and viewers of screen and television adaptations of her works—is perhaps best expressed by the modern-day character Amanda Price in the 2008 British miniseries Lost in Austen. Miss Price explains why she identifies with Austen’s novels: “I love the love story. I love Elizabeth. I love the manners and the language and the courtesy. It’s been part of who I am and what I want. I’m saying … that I have standards.” Modern-day Miss Price articulates something that is timeless. Therefore, we should all—men and women alike—place flowers at the tomb of Jane Austen for the novels and their message of aiming for true love and mutuality when choosing a life partner.

  Chapter 2

  Sense and Sensibility

  Jane Austen began her first novel as a teenager in 1795, and the result would eventually be called Sense and Sensibility. The working title for her book was Elinor and Marianne, and in its first incarnation, Austen scripted the story as a series of letters. This fictional form is known as epistolary, and Austen was following the lead of pioneer English novelists of the eighteenth century, who invented the novel form initially as a series of letters or journal entries—as is the case in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa (1748). Surprisingly, Austen wouldn’t produce the final draft of her novel until 1810, some months after she moved to Chawton, Hampshire in 1809. The wide gap between draft and finished product is partly explained by those unproductive years of residence in Bath and Southampton from 1801 to 1809. It wouldn’t be until she returned to rural Hampshire that she would be reunited with her novel-writing, revising Sense and Sensibility at her table in Chawton Cottage between the years 1809 and 1810. She finally published the novel in 1811.

  As in Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice, a significant part of Austen’s plot in Sense and Sensibility revolves around the patriarchal legal issue of the entail, a property law conceived during the medieval period intended to keep a family’s land intact in the main (and male) line of succession. The law forbade an owner to sell his land. The entail is significant in Austen’s novel because it is a law that prevents women from inheriting property—even from their husbands. In this regard, Austen shows her reader the extent to which English society during this period in history was thoroughly sexist, and in a feminist sense, she demonstrates how women must negotiate and survive in such an extreme patriarchal environment. When Mrs. Dashwood’s husband Henry dies in the opening of the novel, she and her three daughters, Elinor (age 19), Marianne (age 16), and Margaret (age 13) all become homeless. Mrs. Dashwood is the second wife of Henry Dashwood. Because they have no male offspring, ownership of Henry’s estate, Norland Park, by law goes to John Dashwood, son of Henry via Henry’s first marriage. In his dying moments, Henry makes John promise to provide financially for Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters; however, John’s wife Fanny persuades her husband against providing well for them. Essentially the mother and her three daughters are put out on the street. At one moment they lived in elite luxury as members of the landed gentry, and in the next moment they have nothing and are completely dependent on the kindness of relatives and relations.

  Conceiving a plot in which a mother and her three daughters are forced to make their ways in the world without the oversight, guidance, and support of a father or brother allows us to read the novel through the lens of a feminist theme. Keep in mind that Austen’s representation of women is not recognizable as modern-day feminism, but it is a precursor. At face value, a woman writing in the early nineteenth century about women surviving on their own without men is a bold and uncommon act. And while her heroines might not be patriarchy-smashing rebels by today’s standards, Austen does create women who are smart, strong, and have a great deal of depth. They are not the typically meek, subservient, materialistic women who you would expect to meet on the marriage market of this time period. In Elinor especially, we meet a woman of substance. As the eldest daughter, she acts as the protector of the family. She always places the well-being of others before her own. And where Mrs. Dashwood and Marianne would seem (more typically) to be unhinged at times by emotions, Elinor is able to keep hers in check. We find a connection between the novel’s title and its plot when we explore the contrast between these female identities. Elinor is endowed with sense and plenty of it, while Marianne is the emotional one who is connected to sensibility. Some scholars have posited that the relationship between Elinor and Marianne mirrors the one Austen had with her own sister Cassandra. In that configuration, the elder Cassandra had the sense and Jane the sensibility.

  Also related to the feminist theme is the extremely precarious position that Marianne and Elinor find themselves in on the marriage market. Both young women are highly attractive, but their values on the marriage market are severely decreased because they are relatively poor—thus Austen teaches us about the extent to which this culture’s values are steeped in money and materialism. Austen reminds us that during this time in history, marriage was very much a market, and that more often than not, it was understood as an economic contract—an alliance between families determined to increase land, power, and financial status. Marianne’s love interest, Mr. Willoughby, for example, has no immediate fortune, and his rich patron aunt has temporarily cut off his inheritance due to his deviant past behavior. Therefore he must choose between true love (with relative poverty) and no love (with great wealth). Similarly, Elinor has feelings for Edward Ferrars. His problems are somewhat different, but suffice it to say for the moment that his family has also threatened to cut off his inheritance if he fails to marry for wealth and status. In both of these examples we see how marriage is intended to keep money and good breeding in the family.

  The fact that the Dashwood women have no money also connects this novel with the theme of social class. The novel introduces us to various levels of social hierarchy. Colonel Brandon, his close friends and neighbors the Middletons, and the John Dashwoods, for example, are all monied members of the landed gentry. Their country estates have been passed down through the generations, and they are connected with an old English country-gentry tradition. Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters are also part of this landed-gentry heritage; however, with the loss of their husband and father, they are entirely cash poor and in dire straits. They will remain so until one or more of the daughters can marry a man with wealth enough to improve their situation. But in spite of these social and economic pressures, we see that Elinor and Marianne both value true love before wealth. As in Austen’s other works, true love (not money) is the primary goal in marriage.

  With the choice of love or money before many of the characters in the novel, it follows that Austen also presents us with the themes of temptation and greed. Characters like Elinor, Colonel Brandon, and Edward behave with manners that are noble, honorable, generous, selfless, and loving. They are not greedy characters, even when it appears that the circumstances they most desire might be in jeopardy, slipping from their grasps forever. These exemplary characters are rewarded by Austen. In Austen’s social vision, good manners and morals count for a great deal. Money and land are not the only measures of elite status in her English society. Decency, honesty, compassion, and sincerity count as well. But some of Austen’s characters cannot resist the lure of materialism. And as we will discover, there is a karmic price that they must pay for thei
r greed.

  Lastly, in Sense and Sensibility Austen is also satirizing the early nineteenth-century construct of the Romantic hero. In many regards, Willoughby fits this role perfectly. He is dashing, introspective, rebellious, and his early actions in the novel are heroic. He would seem to have much in common with Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pride and Prejudice fame. But where Darcy becomes more honorable and noble as his exterior layers are peeled away, Willoughby is the opposite. He acts the part of the rake or libertine and ultimately sells out at the end. Austen disguises her villain in a Romantic’s clothing. And while we’re not sure what to make of Colonel Brandon and Edward Ferrars for much of the novel, Austen surprises us later in the text by representing them as the novel’s true, if unlikely, Romantic heroes.

  • • •

  The first character that Austen represents as an example of greed, selfishness, and snobbery is Fanny Dashwood. Fanny has one son named Harry (who she spoils incessantly) and two brothers, Edward and Robert Ferrars. In this family, Fanny is in control—the domineering wife, mother, and sister. She controls her weak husband, she ensures that his stepmother and stepsisters get none of John’s inheritance, and since she detects that her brother Edward has feelings for Elinor, she is immediately motivated to push the Dashwood women out of her social circle and as far away as possible. In her dominance of the people around her, she would seem to be a strong feminine character, but her shallowness, vanity, and greed get in the way of attributing any praise to her.

  In contrast to Fanny, the Dashwood women are angelic, and it’s not long before they are blessed with a new place to live. A distant relative, Sir John Middleton, has offered the four women the opportunity to reside in a cottage on his property, Barton Park, in Devonshire. Thus, the lion’s share of the novel takes place in and around the Middleton’s cottage. Accommodations at the cottage in Barton Park are spartan compared with their former lodgings in Norland Park, but the Dashwoods are grateful. Their host, Sir John, is a vivacious, generous, and jubilant man, who is in the habit of throwing parties and enjoying every bit of social engagement that he can. His wife, Lady Middleton, is more reserved and distant than her husband, but Sir John compensates by conspiring with his wife’s mother, Mrs. Jennings, at matchmaking, parties, and jovial amusements. Sir John and Mrs. Jennings are excited by the prospect of locating a match for Marianne (since Elinor is believed to be spoken for by Edward). The most eligible bachelor in the area is Colonel Brandon, a quiet and highly honorable man in his mid-thirties, who is a close friend of the Middletons.