Jane Austen

by Fiona Stafford

  Although Jane Austen’s early versions of the novel that became Sense and Sensibility have not survived, it is not difficult to see its connections with the unpublished works that were preserved. If it began life as an epistolary novel in 1795, then it probably had something in common with ‘Love and Freindship’, ‘Lesley Castle’ and Lady Susan. Marianne’s farewell to Norland, her views on matrimony and the weather, her accident, rescue, romance, broken heart and near-fatal illness – these might all have been conceived initially as a parody of contemporary sentimental fiction, like so many of Jane Austen’s other pieces. When Laura and Sophia sigh and faint alternately on the sofa in ‘Love and Freindship’, it is designed to make fun of the literature of sensibility, with its swooning heroines and tearful heroes. In Lady Susan, Jane Austen took a different approach to the topic by creating a protagonist who seemed to lack any capacity for sympathy at all, but recognised the ways in which her more sensitive acquaintances could be manipulated. The largely realistic language and excessive selfishness of the central character, however, were paving the way towards a more subtle kind of humour, in which feeling might be allowed a place. As Jane Austen turned from Lady Susan to ‘Elinor and Marianne’, her new epistolary experiment probably attempted not only a more realistic style of correspondence than that of ‘Love and Freindship’, but also a more sympathetic representation of her young heroines’ emotions.

  Whether ‘Elinor and Marianne’ consisted entirely of the correspondence between sisters is not known, but it is easy to see how, in a first draft, Lucy Steele might have been represented largely through her own inelegant prose, Marianne’s romance with Willoughby might have flourished and been cut off through secret notes, or Colonel Brandon’s past might have been revealed in a long letter. When Jane Austen initially revised ‘Elinor and Marianne’ in 1797–8, she may have introduced the distinctive narration also adopted for Northanger Abbey, transforming most of the fictional letters into conversations. That she modified Marianne Dashwood’s expressions of sensibility at that stage, however, seems unlikely. Since Northanger Abbey includes self-conscious parody of Gothic novels, it is probable that the earlier alterations to ‘Elinor and Marianne’ would have been made to the narrative style and plot, but not to the spoof sensibility. By 1809, however, Jane Austen had begun to find the agonies of disappointed love less comical, or at least more worthy of serious consideration.

  Although the novel has often been read as a critique of the contemporary ‘cult of sensibility’, it would be a mistake to assume that Jane Austen herself was unsympathetic to Marianne Dashwood. Since the books most admired by Marianne were also favourites of Jane Austen’s, her creator would certainly have scored highly on Marianne’s litmus test for sensibility. Jane Austen’s letters, however, especially those written at excruciating moments, such as Elizabeth Austen’s sudden death, suggest that she was also capable of exerting herself and concealing strong feelings in order to spare those of others – just as Elinor Dashwood does. When her brother James read Sense and Sensibility, he saw at once that both the Dashwood girls were based on his sister, the author:

  On such subjects no Wonder that she shou’d write well,

  In whom so united those qualities dwell;

  Where ‘dear Sensibility’, Sterne’s darling Maid,

  With Sense so attemper’d is finely pourtray’d.

  Fair Elinor’s Self in that Mind is exprest,

  And the Feelings of Marianne live in that Breast.44

  The creation of an omniscient narrator meant, however, that Jane Austen’s own personality could wear a number of different masks in her fiction; though both the Dashwood sisters may be self-portraits, they also work as independent creations and convincingly individual characters. The obvious contrast between them may derive from Jane Austen’s own complicated internal divisions, but it also serves as a means of exploring ideas from different angles and revealing underlying unities in the face of more serious opposition.

  Though Elinor quickly emerges as a figure of self-control and a foil for Marianne’s more outspoken attitudes, both sisters are characterised by their sensitivity. The ridicule of sensibility that many readers have perceived in the novel is rapidly modified by much stronger criticism of those characters who lack any feeling for others: Marianne’s passion for dead leaves has its comical aspect, but is still vastly preferable to the savage behaviour of Fanny Dashwood. If the revised novel retains some of the early jokes about contemporary literary trends, it is sustained by serious concerns about the conventions governing a society that prided itself on politeness. Despite the humorous surface, there is an underlying current of anger running through the scenes in which the open feelings of a healthy, seventeen-year-old girl are condemned as rude or unacceptable. Jane Austen’s frustration over the suffering of young women at the hands of their friends and relations is nowhere more apparent than in Sense and Sensibility, even though the novel carries an overt warning against unguarded emotional confessions. Elinor’s inclination to conceal the truth may prove to be wise counsel, but only because the Dashwood sisters are surrounded by self-seeking or insensitive characters who abuse their trust.

  Rather than endorse the social codes that prove so stifling to Marianne’s spirit, the novel criticises the hypocrisy of a society that seems civilised but offers little support to its more vulnerable members. Its sense of the injustices evident in everyday life and the way in which material success is not always enjoyed by the most deserving is apparent at once. After the death of Mr Dashwood, his daughters are ousted from their home by the unholy alliance of English inheritance law and their sister-in-law. The conversation may turn to gifts of china, but the actions being taken are brutal. The predicament of Mrs Dashwood and her three daughters makes an obvious comment on the dependency of wives, but this is itself qualified by the triumphant conquest of Norland that Fanny Dashwood accomplished through her own marriage. Jane Austen had developed a form in which her own experience could deepen her fiction because it was also tempered by rich knowledge of human society, drawn from years of careful observation. She knew very well that one family’s misfortune often proved to be the making of another’s prosperity, and that those on the way down were not necessarily spared further distress. Unlike so many of her contemporaries, however, she avoided a conventional presentation of suffering innocence, knowing that her story would carry greater conviction if the characters and their fortunes were more mixed, their afflictions closer to the real-life experiences of her readers.

  Realistic portrayal of the problems confronting so many people also allowed for a kind of social comment that was profoundly felt, but free of the polemical tone that had seized so many novels in the revolutionary decade of the 1790s. The pressure to marry that made the start of ‘The Watsons’ so uncomfortable is again evident in the Dashwoods’ enforced removal to Devonshire, and the embarrassing raillery to which they are then subjected at Barton Park. But it is countered by the devastating portrait of the Middletons, who fill their house with guests to dilute each other, or of Mr Palmer, who has been ‘soured by finding, like many others of his sex, that through some unaccountable bias in favour of beauty, he was the husband of a very silly woman’. Marriage might be the cup awarded by contemporary society to successful young women, but Jane Austen was well aware that it sometimes proved, if not poisonous, then decidedly blighting. While some female characters in the novel gain great advantage from their marriages, others suffer years of dullness and even misery. As so often in her fiction, Jane Austen paints a society in which fortune seems fickle and human beings cope in different ways with the difficulties they suddenly find themselves facing. The problems are pervasive, but the means of tackling them are individual.

  Despite its clear-sighted condemnation of individual shortcomings and prevailing social assumptions, however, the outlook of Sense and Sensibility is far from bleak. Some of those apparently introduced to try the patience of the heroines turn out to be their truest friends. Marianne’s alm
ost allergic reaction to Mrs Jennings, for example, is eventually shown to have been mistaken, while her quick judgement of Colonel Brandon and his flannel waistcoat is inverted completely. The negative portrayal of so many marriages is largely forgotten in the happiness that radiates from Elinor’s eventual union, which brings the potential tragedy of the novel to a traditional comedic conclusion. Her new narrative style, with its sympathetic focus on the Dashwood sisters and their varying responses to the world, enabled Jane Austen to qualify points without sacrificing consistency.

  Though far more restrained in tone than her anarchic early writings, Sense and Sensibility demonstrates a new kind of narrative freedom. In Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen had shown her interest in developing more convincing characters and a plot that could fully engage the reader, but in Sense and Sensibility she allowed real emotion into her narrative. Readers are encouraged not only to see the funny side of Austen’s young heroines, but also to mind very much about what they are forced to endure: the suspense of the novel depends on imaginative involvement with their lives. The handling of Marianne’s disappointment at discovering that the gentleman approaching on horseback is Edward Ferrars has a psychological acuteness that lifts the novel above mockery and sentimentality. Though still full of unresolved tensions, Sense and Sensibility is marked by Jane Austen’s peculiar genius, and makes an astonishing debut publication for a novelist.

  Once Jane Austen had relaxed the parodic grip on her storytelling, she had no difficulty in finding a publisher. Contemporary conventions initially prevented her from conducting her own business transactions, but, fortunately, Henry Austen was more than happy to act as her literary agent. He offered Sense and Sensibility to the London-based firm of Thomas Egerton, which accepted it at once. Although the agreement meant that Jane Austen would bear the production costs if the novel failed to sell, the risk turned out to have been well worth taking. Sense and Sensibility was published in October 1811, and immediately began to attract attention. Critical notices appeared in the press and, within three months of publication, the novel was being enjoyed in court, with no less prominent a reader than Princess Charlotte confessing to be among its admirers. Within two years, the first edition had completely sold out, making Jane Austen the handsome profit of £140. By then, she was hard at work on Mansfield Park, but, in the meantime, Thomas Egerton had shrewdly offered to buy the copyright of the novel that had begun to occupy her as soon as Sense and Sensibility was finished – Pride and Prejudice.

  The confidence that came with publication shines out of every chapter of Jane Austen’s next novel. She herself described Pride and Prejudice as ‘too light & bright & sparkling’, but this was hardly a confession of artistic failure.45 Once Sense and Sensibility had been accepted and was making its way into print, Jane Austen had turned her newly developed skills towards the old family favourite, ‘First Impressions’. Rejections might eventually be regretted more profoundly by those who had made them than by those who had been spurned, as Jane Austen’s revisions made abundantly clear. Both Cadell and Crosby would come to rue their failure to spot the true value of the works once submitted to their firms by the author of Sense and Sensibility. In Pride and Prejudice, hasty judgements and prolonged repentance are treated with all the exuberant humour of one whose own undervalued brilliance has at last been recognised. When Elizabeth Bennet is slighted by Mr Darcy at the Meryton assembly, her response is cheerfully resilient: ‘She told the story however with great spirit among her friends; for she had a lively, playful disposition, which delighted in any thing ridiculous.’ Her author’s temperament was similarly playful and, after years of silence and insecurity, she was now ready to turn painful experiences into funny stories, extending her circle to a vast audience of delighted admirers.

  The extent of Jane Austen’s revisions to ‘First Impressions’ is no more certain than that of the trans-formation of the earlier versions of Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility. No manuscripts survive to make detailed comparison possible. Jane Austen admitted in a letter to Cassandra that she had ‘lopt and cropt’ the story, but there are also references to her ‘writing’, which suggests fresh composition. The atmosphere of the novel captures the mood of the earlier letters, when Jane was in her twenties and describing her triumphs and disappointments on the dance floor. This smacks of its original creation in 1797 and it seems likely that, as Jane Austen revised the story in 1811–12, she reread some of the letters preserved by her sister, incorporating memories prompted by the details. The balls in Pride and Prejudice may owe something to the Steventon Christmas ball of 1798, for example, at which Jane remembered ‘Mr Calland, who appeared as usual with his hat in his hand, & stood every now and then behind Catherine & me to be talked to & abused for not dancing’.46 If this suggests that Elizabeth Bennet is a portrait of the author’s younger self, however, it is important to notice that, as the letter continues, we begin to hear more of Lydia: ‘We teized him however into it at last; – I was very glad to see him after so long a separation, & he was rather the Genius & Flirt of the Evening.’ Jane Austen not only had the draft of a novel, but also a stash of letters and personal experience to furnish her with the materials for her next book. Most important of all was the knowledge that it was the next book – that she was an author whose work mattered.

  In Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen seems to be exploring a series of conflicts that have to be resolved in secrecy, but in Pride and Prejudice everything opens up. Where Elinor’s caution about revealing feelings is endorsed by the course of the narrative, Jane Bennet’s proves almost disastrous. Mr Darcy’s failure to expose Wickham’s character means that Lydia and her family are unprepared for his predatory behaviour, while Darcy’s own clumsiness in expressing emotion results in many pages of mortification. The openness of Pride and Prejudice is very different from that of Sense and Sensibility, for Elizabeth’s outspoken wit offends only those characters whose outlook already seems inadequate. Unlike Marianne, who suffers public disapproval and personal anguish for her impulsiveness, Elizabeth behaves spontaneously and wins the immediate admiration of those who matter. Both heroines run, but where Marianne symbolically slips and falls, Elizabeth crosses ‘field after field at a quick pace, jumping over stiles and springing over puddles’. Nothing deters her, and the novel celebrates the success of a woman whose refusal to be cowed or uncomfortably confined leads eventually to personal happiness. In Sense and Sensibility, everything seems very difficult, but Pride and Prejudice exults in its own sense of possibility.

  Though so much lighter in tone than its predecessor, Pride and Prejudice is not without similar social concerns and sympathies. Again, the precarious situation of contemporary women is evident, but the iniquities of a system of male inheritance are now treated with comedy, by making it a subject ‘on which Mrs Bennet was beyond the reach of reason’. Her husband’s laconic recitation of the letter from his cousin Mr Collins (‘who, when I am dead, may turn you all out of this house as soon as he pleases’) shows that the Bennet daughters are no more secure than the Dashwoods, but it also reassures readers that, in such a good-humoured novel, nothing very distressing is likely to take place. Even when Charlotte Lucas accepts a husband for whom she can have little feeling, because, at twenty-seven, she needs a ‘comfortable home’, the potential misery is diffused by the force of Jane Austen’s fine comic touches. When Elizabeth visits the married couple, the more painful aspect of her perceptive observation is balanced by the wit of its expression: ‘When Mr Collins could be forgotten, there was really a great air of comfort throughout, and by Charlotte’s evident enjoyment of it, Elizabeth supposed he must be often forgotten.’ There is an additional joke, however, in the very idea that Charlotte’s new husband could ever be forgotten.

  Mr Collins, like Mrs Bennet and Lady Catherine de Bourgh, provides an exuberant kind of entertainment quite distinct from the quick wit of Elizabeth and her father, or from the embarrassing situational comedy of the Bennet family, or from the sat
irised speeches of Sir William Lucas and the Bingley sisters. The attitudes of these characters are exaggerated almost to the point of caricature, but the interaction with less extravagant creations keeps them within the realms of credibility, and thus crucial to the overall success of the narrative. The cast is vivid and varied, but no one is introduced purely to provide a comic interlude. Pride and Prejudice is controlled with great care, as character after character enters at just the right moment to fulfil their special role in the narrative design.

  The witty, conversational tone of the novel’s narrator keeps the story firmly grounded in the matter-of-fact, and Jane Austen was able to draw on the comedies she had seen performed first at home in Steventon and later in the professional theatres of Bath, London and Southampton. She had learned to love figures like Mrs Malaprop and Sir Lucius O’Trigger in her childhood, and now she had the confidence to create characters whose comic magnificence would surpass those of Sheridan by emerging so startlingly from the pages of a realistic novel. The kind of dialogue that propelled The Rivals or The School for Scandal could also be adapted for Pride and Prejudice, if only the characters’ voices could be distinguished sufficiently. With scenes that depicted five sisters at home, the need to create lines that were both convincingly natural and instantly recognisable was paramount. Elizabeth commands attention by her lively conciseness (‘Compliments always take you by surprise, and me never’), to which her elder sister provides the perfect foil. Lydia, as the youngest daughter, competes by using slang words (‘Lord!’) and mentioning the names of officers, while Kitty is reduced to coughing and exclamations. Mary, ‘the only plain one in the family’, has to rely on her determined accomplishments, and interrupts conversations with either a long quotation from a moral essay or an even longer concerto. Each daughter is easily identifiable through her speech and, in Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen developed her skills in characterisation by adapting the techniques of the stage to her endlessly flexible pages.