User:Victoriaearle/Austen

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Misc[edit]

Last verified version [1]

Style notes[edit]

  • Parody - Waldron/Litz/Grundy/Kirkham/Doody/Fergus/Johnson/Mudrick/Gilbert and Gubar
  • Irony - Waldron/Litz/Gilbert & Gubar/Fergus/Kirkham
  • Free indirect speech - Mandal/Butler/Page
  • Conversation - Burrows/Page/Litz/Butler/Waldron

Jane Austen[edit]

Le Faye[edit]

  • Le Faye, Deirdre. Jane Austen: A Family Record. Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-521-53417-8. Jane Austen: A Family Record at Google Books
  • George Austen from a family of Kentish of 17th cent. gentrified wealthy wool merchants 1
  • The wealth was consolidated in the hands of the eldest sons of the family; George descended through from younger sons; he and his two sisters were impoverished, orphaned, and left with relatives who mistreated them. 3
  • Philadelphia trained as milliner but then went to India to find a husband; George entered St John’s College at Oxford at age 16 on a fellowship 4
  • Letters survive from Austens to the Walter family (George’s eldest half-brother) between 1770s to 1780s which give detail about the Austen family 5
  • George & William Walter (sons of George Austen’s half-brother) died in the West Indies (is one of these Cassandra’s fiancee?) 6
  • In 1759, George secured the curacy from Thomas Knight of Godmersham who was married to a distant Austen cousin 6
  • In 1764 George moved there when he married. 6
  • Cassandra Austen’s father = rector of All Soul’s College; she grew up with the gentry; her eldest brother inherited a fortune and large estate from his great-aunt Perrot 8
  • Unknown where or when Cassandra Leigh & George Austen met; probably in Oxford. They exchanged miniatures, he arranged to move to Steventon & rented Deane rectory; Steventon unfit to live in & needed renovations. 11
  • Cassandra had v small income, some Oxford leaseholds and the expectation of 1000 pounds at her mother's death 12
  • They were married on 26 April 1764 in Bath at St. Swithins, left for Steventon the next day. Cassandra wore a riding habit which was to be the only dress she had for the next few years. 12
  • George and Cassandra lived in Deane parsonage for four years 17
  • James born 13 February 1765 18
  • Cassandra nursed infants for a few months then sent them to be fostered until old enough to run around and talk 19
  • Second son George born 26 August 1766, probably George’s sister Philadelphia at the baptism b/c the Hancocks chosen as godparents. 19
  • Third son, Edward born 1767
  • 1770 to 1775 documented in letters from Austens to the Walters 22
  • Busy life at Steventon; it became clear the George was developmentally disabled, suffered seizures, may have been deaf & dumb b/c there is reference in Jane’s letters of learning sign language 22
  • George was sent away - too much strain for Cassandra 22 what year?? prob 1772
  • Cassandra visits London spring 1770, returned in August 22-23
  • Henry born at Steventon, 8 June 1771 24
  • Cassandra born 9 January 1773 25
  • George & Cassandra needed money & borrowed from Leigh-Perrot; March 1773 assumed living at Deane paying 100 pounds per annum 25
  • Still needed money George began to take in students 26
  • Francis born 23 April 1774 26
  • Jane born 17 December 1775 (a month later than expected); very bad winter 27

Nokes[edit]

  • Cassandra burned letters in 1843 - of the letter she kept, she cut out pieces. 1
  • Family wanted to suppress Jane’s penchant for expressing herself overly truthfully and Cassandra claimed it was better to be tactful. 1
  • George sent away as an infant and never afterward referred to?? 2
  • Aunt Leigh-Perrot trial for larceny of Taunton assizes 2
  • Jane wrote a poem three days before her death. For months she’d been bed-ridden, suffering fever & backache and been moved from Chawton to Winchester to be near a physician. On St Swithin Day & the day of the Winchester races she wrote a six-stanza poem about death: in it St. Swithin curses racegoers for idleness. “When once we are buried you think we are dead/ But behold me immortal! 2
  • Before her death she took communion with her brothers, she’d written a will, and she dictated a satiric piece, “By vice you’re enslaved/You have sinned and must suffer … /You shall meet with your curse in your pleasures.” These were the last words she wrote. Henry mentioned the poem in his “Biographical Notice”. 2
  • Later the mention of the poem were excised from the “Biographical Notice” by family members who were horrified her last satiric joke had been made public 3
  • Not mentioned in Edward Austen-Leigh’s “Memoir of Jane Austen” (1870) nor in William and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh’s biography ‘’Jane Austen: Her Life and Letters’’ (1913). Her poem was replaced w/ an elegiac verse her eldest brother James composed. 4
  • Frank Austen (George’s uncle) lived at Sevenoaks; untrustworthy; Hancock (Philadelphia’s husband) sent diamonds from Bengal to George who is trustworthy 13
  • James, George and Edward sent to Cheesedown farm to be raised; father visited daily. 13
  • George takes living of Steventon parish from his cousin Henry Austen (who moves to a richer living) in 1761; George stayed in Oxford for the first 3 years of the living, left the parish work to another cousin, who is curate, but takes up residence at Deane parsonage before his marriage. 15
  • From family of wool merchants; the wealthiest in Kent mid-1500s to early 1700s 15
  • The family fortune left to the eldest son; George’s family were practically destitute 16-17
  • George’s father was a physician married to a physician’s daughter who died soon after his birth; he remarried; second wife sent George and his two sisters away to be raised by uncles; his father died a year after the 2nd marriage. 18
  • John Austen had the family wealth; lived at Sevenoaks. Uncle Frank took up residence nearby & didn’t want the children; they were sent uncle Stephen (bookseller) in London 19
  • He separated them & sent them out to live with various relatives. 20
  • George went to Oxford on a fellowship; Philadelphia went to Bengal to marry; Leonora lived on family charity. 20
  • Cassandra Leigh: dark hair, grey eyes. George met her at Oxford; her uncle was master of Balliol 20
  • She was considered witty; regretted the lack of education; Leighs were a distinguished aristocratic family; George concerned the life of a vicar’s wife beneath her, but her father a rector 21
  • Steventon a humble parsonage & she was discouraged at her first visit there; they had courted in Oxford far away from country life. He rented parsonage at Deane which was less dilapidated than Steventon 22
  • Cassandra’s father died in Bath in Feb 1764; she had to marry George Austen 22
  • Not the perfect match but he was intelligent, kind & had a good disposition & was handsome 23
  • They had support themselves on his clerical income (100 pounds a year) plus any other income (crops etc) plus George’s uncle Frank Austen had become quite wealthy through marriage and business 23
  • Frank bought two additional livings in parishes in Steventon to be taken up by George when they fell vacant 24 [check this; article & Le Faye mention Knight instead]
  • She was 25 when she married. Liked to write; opinionated. She was to inherit some leaseholds from her father & 1000 pounds at her mother’s death. 24
  • Her brother James had inherited an estate (Northleigh) from childless great-uncle for changing name from Leigh to Perrot-Leigh & was to marry an heiress 24
  • Cassandra & George married by licence on 26 April 1764 at St Swithin’s Church in Bath, in a simple ceremony; they left right afterwards for Hampshire without a honeymoon. 26
  • Hastings sent his son George from Bengal to England to be raised by George Austen 27
  • Spring of 1765, Philadelphia in London raising Betsy (Elizabeth/Eliza) who received a fortune from Hastings, her godfather 29-31
  • Cassandra felt isolated in Deane/Steventon. The landowner was Mr Thomas Knight (he had changed his name twice to inherit the estates of Steventon and Chawton), married to an Austen, provided the living to George 34 [what's the difference between providing a living and buying a living?]
  • Cassandra & George were poor, took to farming 34
  • George Hastings’ father known to both Austen & Leigh families; decided it would be best to leave him w/ George for his education; the parsonage was damp; the boy took ill & died (while Hastings & Hancock & Philadelphia were returning from India spring 1765) 35
  • Cassandra mourned deeply at the death of George Hastings, as did his father Warren Hasting when George Austen met him in London with the news. 35
  • Cassandra gave birth to James in Feb, 1765; George, Aug. 1766; Edward, October, 1767. Cassandra nursed the infants and once weaned sent them to a family in the village to be raised; Nokes speculates Cassandra meant to instill a sense of detachment according the aristocratic traditions of the Leigh family. She believed having her children sent to be fostered would breed independence (though it was an expense she and George could ill afford). George appears not to have shared her conviction, yet chose not to contradict. Much care was given in choosing godparents with means & influence (i.e. Edward’s godfather was Cassandra’s brother James Leigh-Perrot who had inherited a fortune.) 36
  • Both George and Cassandra received small inheritances spent on improvements to Steventon rectory where the family moved in 1768. 37
  • The family settled in and soon began to receive visitors; George’s half-sister with her daughter and his sister Philadelphia with Eliza were frequent visitors. At about this time they were forced to admit the four-year-old George wasn’t thriving, unable to speak and suffered fits. 39
  • 1771, Henry born. 41
  • George protested against fostering & Henry brought back home at six months old. 42
  • Cassandra’s brother-in-law (surgeon) wrote from India to Philadelphia: “That my brother and sister Austen are well I heartily rejoice, but I cannot say that the news of the violently rapid increase of their family gives me much pleasure; especially when I consider the state of my godson who must be provided for without the least hopes of being able to provide for himself.” 42
  • Cassandra didn’t think four children in six years a “rapid increase”, but by the time George was six it was no longer possible to ignore his illness, whether it was mental infirmity or madness and a decision was reached to send him away from home to protect the other children from witnessing his ill-health. He was sent away - “There were to be no visits, no letters, no family memorials… “; 43
  • Cassandra born January 1773, first girl. 43
  • Their income increased (George handled some business matters for Hancock’s imports from India, the living at Deane opened & George handled both parishes), but it was still modest and George began to take in boys as pupils to prepare for university 44.
  • Summer 1775 Cassandra expecting seventh child in Nov (Frank born the year before); but Jane not born until 17 December, George writing to his sister that “Cassy certainly expected to have been brought to bed a month ago” 51

Fergus[edit]

  • Fergus, Jan. "Biography". Jane Austen in Context. Ed. Janet Todd. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-521-82644-6. 3–11
  • Biographical information is scarce 3
  • The only remaining biographical material written before her early death are some letters. 3
  • Most of JA’s surviving letters were written to her older sister Cassandra. 3
  • Cassandra, three years older than Jane, censored the letters, removing mention of illness and unhappiness. 3
  • JA & Cassandra were v. close, lived most their lives together; Cassandra read Jane’s work as she produced it. 3.
  • JA’s brother Henry wrote a “Biographical Notice” published in 1818 after her death. Other family members supplied biographical materials and reminiscences that established the family legend that JA “was an ideal unmarried domestic woman, the modest, helpful, unassuming product of a large, happy family that formed the centre of her life.” 3
  • JA’s nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh was the first to embellish the plain biographical facts with anecdotes about manners and customs of her period in his 1869 ‘’Memoir’’, a tactic subsequent biographers were to follow. 4
  • Modern biographies attempt to include facts the family omitted: her unhappiness at leaving Steventon; the existence of George, her disabled brother; that two other brothers, Frank and Charles, were sent to serve in the navy as boys and were gone for many years at a time; a wealthy aunt was prosecuted for theft; Cassandra was briefly engaged but her finance died of yellow fever in Jamaica; two sisters-in-law died in childbirth; her brother suffered bankruptcy > the suppression of these events caused some modern biographers to paint JA as “an embittered, disappointed woman trapped in a thoroughly unpleasant family.” 4
  • According to Jan Fergus, the challenge to the Jane Austen biographer the polarising views. 4
  • Money: JA did begin writing for money and was pleased with her earnings for ‘’Sense and Sensibility’’ 4
  • page five not available
  • Father’s death in 1805 left Jane, Cassandra, and her mother without a home or income; Edward pledged a small stipend and the cottage at Chawton. 6.
  • Jane’s mother, Cassandra Leigh came from aristocracy but she herself only received a small annual income (122 pounds per annum) after her husband’s death; the family money went to the men; brother, son and grandson 6
  • The bulk of the family fortune passed to Cassandra’s childless brother James Leigh-Perrot (list of his properties); his property passed to Jane’s eldest brother’s son, James Edward - her biographer. 6
  • At his death Leigh-Perrot left nothing to female relatives, particularly his sister, Jane who was already in an advanced state of illness, took a turn for the worse. [CP] 6
  • She had about two years of formal schooling away from home but otherwise her education was self-directed. 6
  • System of patriarchal inheritance & its inequities permeates her early writing, particularly her early published work, S & S & P &P 6
  • Both S&S & P&P were rewritten from early work, the drafting of which began as early as her teen years 7.
  • In the 1790, as she was writing the earliest drafts of her novels, JA began to socialize, going to balls, mixing with local gentry, visiting relatives [CP] bringing her class and gender position into focus. 7
  • Fergus says that marriage “was a possibility for Austen in her twenties though her lack of fortune made it unlikely”. 7
  • Cassandra became engaged to a young clergyman, who left her 1000 pounds at his death of yellow fever when his patron brought him to Jamaica 7
  • Jane flirted with Tom Lefroy at this period; she was sent away 7
  • In 1801 Jane’s father turned his living over to his son and moved with the women to Bath; “tradition says she fainted when she learned of his intention”. 7
  • She disliked Bath. While living in Bath she had an offer of marriage from a wealthy heir, Harris Bigg-Withers, five years younger. After accepting him in the evening, the next morning she retracted the acceptance, and abruptly left the house where she was visiting met him. In rejecting his offer she cut off the possibility of having a home and future financial security, despite her father’s lack of income and the real possibility of living in poverty. 8
  • After the 1790s and particularly after the move to Bath in 1801, she seems to have considered writing as a means of earning money. In 1797 she attempted to have an early draft of Pride & Pred published, a version titled ‘’First Impressions’’ 8
  • Her father negotiated with the publisher as it was conventional for a female author to have a male relative enter into negotiation on her behalf; later Austen took on the role herself. 8
  • Northanger Abbey drafted before the move to Bath (1798-99) 8
  • page 9 missing

Litz (Chronology of Composition)[edit]

  • Litz, A. Walton. “Chronology of Composition”. Ed. J. David Grey. New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986. ISBN 0-02-545540-0 (47-52) The Jane Austen companion at the Internet Archive
  • Debate re JA’s work pre-1811 47
  • Steventon 1775-1801
  • 1788-93 - Juvenilia 47
  • 1794 or 1795 >> writes Lady Susan w/out conclusion 47
  • c. 1795 writes Elinor and Marianne >> Sense & Sensibility in epistolary form 47
  • October 1796 to August 1797 >> writes draft of First Impressions, original to Pride and Prejudice 47
  • November 1797 begins Sense and Sensibility in present form 47
  • 1798-1799 begins Northanger Abbey (first called Susan, later called Catherine) 47

Bath & Southhampton 1801-1809

  • 1803 > Susan revised and submitted for publication, sold to Crosby & Co but not published 47
  • 1803-1804 starts The Watsons >> unfinished 47
  • c. 1805 revises Lady Susan prob the conclusion 47

Chawton 1809 - 1817

  • 1809 > inquiries re Susan & Northanger Abbey; begins revising 47
  • 1809-1811 revises Sense & Sensibility, prepares for publication 48
  • Nov. 1809 S & S published 48
  • 1812 > complete rewrite of Pride & Predjudice 48
  • 1811 - 1813 writes Mansfield Park 48
  • Jan 1814 to March 1815 writes Emma 48
  • August 1815 begins drafting Persuasion 48
  • Jan - March 1817 works on Sandition > fragment 48
  • Dec 1817 - Jan 1818 post publication of Northanger Abbey & Persuasion 48
  • Juvenilia dates range from 1790 to 1793. She may have started writing as early as age 11, most of the juvenilia written by age 17. 48
  • Juvenilia - consists of three bound volumes - evidence suggests she revised some of these in 1809 49
  • Northanger written 1798-99 >> sold for 10 pounds in 1803 >> repurchased at the same amount in 1815. JA possessed another copy which allowed revisions during those years, though doubtful >> representative of her writing in early 20s 49-50
  • Published post >> meant to be titled “Miss Catherine” 50
  • Both Sense & Sensiblity & Pride & Prejudice saw extensive revisions while JA lived in Chawton, c. 1809 50
  • Started writing The Watson’s in 1804 but interrupted by father’s death in 1805 >> never completed 50-51
  • P&P offered for pub by father in Nov 1797 describes as “a manuscript novel, comprising 3 volumes, about the length of Miss Burney’s Evelina” > offered at author’s own expense. 51
  • 1813 re P&P JA writes Jan 29 to Cass >> “I have lop’t and crop’t so successfully … that I imagine it will be shorter than S&S altogether” > very “radical” revisions since “First Impressions” 51
  • Mansfield Park started Feb 1811 finished “soon after June 1813” per JA’s fragmentary diaries 51
  • JA recorded she wrote Emma from Jan 21, 1814 to March 29, 1815 52
  • Persuasion started on Aug 8 1815, finished Aug 6 1816 > had she lived it might have undergone another revision. Litz says she seems to have let mss rest before revisions 52

Grey (Chawton)[edit]

  • Grey, David J. “Chawton”. Ed. J. David Grey. New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986. ISBN 0-02-545540-0 (35-41) The Jane Austen companion at the Internet Archive
  • Chawton owned by the Knight family since c. 1585 35
  • Jane’s brother Edward adopted by his second cousin c. 1790 & inherited Chawton 35
  • He offered cottage at Chawton in 1808 after his wife’s death to Cass, Jane & mother who lived in cramped quarters in Southhampton w/ Francis Austen family 35
  • Chawton only 17 miles from Steventon 35
  • The three women and Martha Lloyd took up residence July 1810 35
  • Chawton a quiet village 35
  • She went to market; took walks; very little socializing 37
  • Very quiet and conducive to writing 38
  • All six of her novels emanated from Chawton where she was at her peak per Grey 38
  • In Chawton she revised the first three novels & wrote the second three 38
  • Sense & Sensibility published; P & P published 38
  • She didn’t leave Chawton until 1817 38

Themes[edit]

Keymer[edit]

  • Keymer, Thomas. "Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility". The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen. Eds. Edward Copeland and Juliet McMaster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. ISBN 0-521-49867-8. 21–38.
  • Walter Scott noted Austen's "resistance to the trashy sensationalism of much of modern fiction - 'the ephemeral productions which supply the regular demand of watering places and circulating libraries'." 21
  • NA and Emma "made clear that her relationship to the extravagant themes and overwrought conventions of fashionable genre fiction involved something more complex and interesting than outright rejection." 21
  • She "distances herself from escapist romance" 21
  • Wordsworth's Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800) excoriates the modern "frantic novel" 21
  • Like Wordsworth, she demonstrates discipline, innovation & demonstrates "that rhetorically less is artistically more." 21
  • In NA & Emma she parodies pop modern fiction (Gothic novels), shows her familiarity with the genre, yet she transforms rather that a complete rejection of the form 21
  • Find Tony Tanner's landmark essay "Anger in the Abbey" 24
  • Gothic novels: were well-esablished and immensely popular from Walpole's The Castle of Oronto (1764) to Thomas Love Peacock's satiric Nightmare Abbey (1818) 24
  • It's literature of terror, with "sensational stories of abduction and atrocities" 24
  • Filled with occult & supernatural, overwrought descriptions/hyperbole/remote settings where social mores are nonexistent 24
  • ancient monasteries & remote castles created "an atmosphere headily laden with psychosexual connotations" 24
  • Gothic settings became "mandatory" by end of 1800s > Critical Review" wrote in 1796, "Since Mrs Radcliffe justly admired and successful romances, the press has teemed with stories of haunted castles and visionary terrors; the incidents of which are so little diversified that criticism is at a loss to vary its remarks". 24
  • Between 1784 and 1818 32 novels contained "abbey" in the title 24
  • Austen's heroine's anticipation for Northanger evokes the trope 24
  • In NA Austen evokes the Gothic genre but "holds back from full-throttle parody" > instead she juxtaposes reality - descriptions of elegant rooms, modern comforts - with the heroine's "novel-fueled desires" 25
  • Austen sprinkles Gothic flourishes throughout NA ("motionless with horror") without being hackneyed 25
  • Austen understood the genre fiction of her period and saw its weaknesses and absurdities; her tone is "of amused condescension"; she mocks hackneyed plot devices such as "novels about sensibility, novels about adventurous foundlings, novels of virtue in distress" 25
  • She mocks most mainstream fiction published since Richardson & Fielding, including epistolary fiction which has become overused; she mocks domestic fiction, & modern artifices of the courtship novel 27
  • But she doesn't completely denigrate Gothic fiction: instead she transforms settings & situations, i.e the heroine is still imprisoned but in regulated manners, rules of the ballroom, etc. 29
  • S & S > parody less evident than NA; Sense is a "state-of-the-art regency novel" with emphasis on "female experience and emotion, and the struggles of young women against romantic obstacles and social conventions, it did not resist so much as repeat the popular, marketable routines of love fiction." 31
  • The characters in Sense are more complex than in staple fiction/ they have an interior life/ round characters are juxtaposed against flat 32
  • Sense introduces flexible indirect discourse 32
  • To some extent is a parody but again not a complete repudiation of sentimental fiction b/c "Marianne in her sentimental histrionics responds to the calculating world ... with a quite justifiable scream of female distress." 32

McMaster "Education"[edit]

  • Details of her own education = taught by her father & then sent to boarding schools - Oxford, Southhampton & Reading & afterwards she was self-taught. 140
  • Well read in Shakespeare; favorite authors = Richardson & Fielding 140
  • In her novels formal education occurs in the background - expensive finishing schools viewed with some disdain where rote learning & misc. facts were provided (for money) without context 140
  • Women were expected to have "accomplishments" - ie to learn music, drawing, languages (not dead) 140
  • Education as a profession = governesses & is given some consideration b/c one of the only "careers" available to women. 141
  • Boys & men go to universities, but she's not impressed with the "exclusively male enclaves of higher education" 141
  • McMasters writes, "For Jane Austen education involves much more than the mere gathering of information. Like John Locke, she considered that a system of education should address the whole person and be a moral as an intellectual training." 141
  • Moral education is a major theme: the Bertram sisters who are knowledgable about Roman emperors are "entirely deficient in the less common acquirements of self-knowledge" 141
  • Darcy learns self-knowledge & when he does he improves. 141
  • Moral education & self-knowledge acquired from mentors Austen provides for the main characters; the heroines provide the heroes paths to self-knowledge & moral conduct & hence the path to love. 142
  • All of the heroines "go through a process of learning involves acquisition of self-knowledge and the ability to judge and regulate their behavior" 142
  • Austen placed enormous value on learning; in her novels the most important lessons learned come not from books but from the examples the characters set for each other, comes through human interactions 142

Grundy "Education"[edit]

  • 500 books in her father's library 192
  • She was well-read 193-4
  • Richardson, Fielding & Smollett = first Eng. novelists followed by the school of sentimentalists & romantics (Walter Scott, Horace Walpole, Clara Reeve, Mrs Radcliffe, Sterne, Goldsmith) 196
  • Grundy writes, "The sentimentalists were virtually a thing of the past and the romanticists were in full career" > Austen rejects rejects sentimentalists & romantics & returns to Richardson/ Fielding for a "realistic study of manners" 196
  • She is the "slender thread which carried the strain of realism safely through the Romantic age from the hands of Fielding and Richardson to those of Thackeray and Trollop". 196
  • In her day the novel was thought as heir to Shakespeare, with its characteristics of dialogue, character and passion 196
  • She was heavily influenced by Johnson 202
  • She assumes his mockery, burlesque & morals (moral thinking) 203
  • Grundy writes, "For her and for her central characters books and life are not divided; books are a vital part of life." 211

McMaster "Class"[edit]

  • McMaster, Juliet. “Class”. The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen. Eds. Edward Copeland and Juliet McMaster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. ISBN 978-0-521-74650-2. 111–126
  • Class differences are central themes in Austen's novels. Juliet McMasters writes that her "acute observation of the fine distinction between one social level and another was a necessary part of her business of a writer of realistic fiction". 111
  • As an unmarried woman her status existed outside of the game that consisted of trying to move up in rank. 111
  • She specialized in dramatizing the nuances & intricacies of the class system >> her characters assigned "enormous importance" to class distinctions 112
  • She avoids writing about royalty and the highest tier of the aristocracy; she is unimpressed with top tiers & titled ranks, i.,e treating those characters (baronets etc) as contemptible and fatuous 112
  • She respects the long-established but untitled land-owning families 113
  • She writes Cinderella stories: the heroine moves up in rank, prestige & fortune (income) 113
  • However Elizabeth Bennet considers herself equal in rank to Darcy; she's the daughter of a gentleman; he's merely a gentleman. Lady Catherine de Bourgh wd disagree w/ Elizabeth 114
  • For the most part she writes about landed gentry/country gentlemen who she imbues w/ moral & social obligations 114
  • Emma is a microcosm of Austen's world from Mr Knightly (whose name = rank) to the poor families receiving charity 114
  • She assigns a higher social rank to those who are committed to stewardship, ie. to Darcy 115
  • She highlights the unfairness of primogeniture & systems of inheritance & that sons are provided for but women not 115
  • She highlights the differences in rank between siblings, i.,e older/younger sons & between sons & daughters 115
  • The Bennet girls are turned out, the estate entailed to male cousin who she claims "shows precious little signs of being morally worthy of it" 115
  • Older sisters have more prestige than younger (i.,e Miss Bennet vs Miss Eliza) but in Austen's world equity prevails 116
  • When a woman marries her rank increases vis-a-vis her sisters' 116
  • In Austen's world older sons who are bred to inherit tend towards idleness & she is less sympathetic towards them than towards younger sons who have a living to earn 116
  • In general her sympathies lie with the professional classes i.,e clergy, although she does treat some members of the clergy to her satire, ie Mr Collins 116
  • The trade/mercantile classes = new money and worthy of suspicion particularly w/ their assualt on the gentility 119
  • Merchant classes = pretentious i.e Bingley who is rich but his money is "acquired by trade" & marriage to him is a danger to social status 119
  • McMasters writes, "In Jane Austen's world, human worth is to be judged by standards better and more enduring than social status; but social status is always relevant." 125
  • She uses an amused and often detached tone to describe social status, yet she details the status of each character 125
  • She describes cultural markers & status symbols: ie. houses/coaches/silks/satins/jewelry etc etc 125
  • McMasters writes, "As a sensitive and informed commentator on class, that huge topic of the nineteenth century, Austen shows us amply how such things matter. She also shows us how they should not matter too much." 125

Copeland "Money"[edit]

  • Copeland, Edward. “Money”. The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen. Eds. Edward Copeland and Juliet McMaster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. ISBN 978-0-521-74650-2. 127–143
  • The Cindarella story of the young beautiful woman with good manners and little money marrying the handsome man (whose haughty manners have moderated) with a great rank & income is so compelling that the BBC "turns its yearning gaze on Britain's historic houses, castles and gardens, their vast acres smiling in sunshine, their sweeping Capability Brown grounds ... " 127
  • Throughout her career Austen's attention was on the economy and its "would-be consumers, over-consumers and wise consumers" 127
  • The early novels show women whose overwhelming economic problem is a lack of fortune; the later novels "Mansfield", "Emma" & "Persuasion" "each in turn, move through an examination of the economy as measure of social morality, an agent of social disruption, as a source of national identity ... " 127
  • She is a member of the "pseudo-gentry" - gentry by profession/education/manners but w/out the income from the land, which is a fragile position b/c the death of the breadwinner = loss of income 127
  • Copeland writes: "In her novels Austen approaches the subject, money, from three different, but related, points of view. First, as a member of the pseudo-gentry, that is to say, the upper professional ranks of her rural society; second, as a woman in that society, severely handicapped by law and custom from possessing a significant power over money; finally, as a novelist who joins other women novelists in a larger conversation about money." 128-9
  • Incomes are discussed & detailed in the novels and consumer markers of rank are littered throughout 129
  • Copeland writes that in Austen's novels "The heartbeat of romance lies in a good income." 129
  • Austen's class represented "prudent economic prinicples" but in her novels characters with great land-based fortunes lack prudence 132
  • Pseudo-gentry women are the money managers though they have no legal control over money 133
  • In the 1st three novels money & romance = fear of debt; more complicated relationship w/ money in the later 3 novels 134
  • Copeland writes, "Austen is a shrewd observer of the economic terrain of her class" but she observes from a distance: as a woman, unmarried, unmoneyed 141

Style[edit]

Bayley (Characaterization)[edit]

  • Bayley, John. "Characterization in Jane Austen". The Jane Austen Companion. Ed. J. David Grey. New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986. ISBN 0-02-545540-0. (24-34)
  • Tolstoy said the novel should be about life: birth, marriage, love, faith, etc 24
  • In the 19th cent. the novel came "to seem the natural vehicle for discussion and ventilation of what most mattered in life" 24
  • Austen translated 18th cent lit traditions (sermons, poems, essays) & their subjects into the format of the 19th cent novel - she hasn't yet reached the seriousness of later novelists which is evident in her characterizations 24
  • Rather than delving deeply into the psyches of her characters, Austen enjoys them, according to Bayley for their humor & he says she believed in the absurdity of human existence 25
  • Her heroines, particularly Emma & Elizabeth Bennet, transcend - rather than being absorbed w/ trivialities they see the absurd [lots and lots and lots about this] 26

Polhemus (comedy)[edit]

  • Polhemus, Robert M. "Jane Austen's Comedy". The Jane Austen Companion. Ed. J. David Grey. New York: Macmillan, 1986. ISBN 0-025-45540-0. (60-71)
  • Austen influenced by Johnson's "a representation of life as may excite mirth" 60
  • Polhemus says "nothing seems more important or original about her than her comedy" 60
  • She was first woman to write great comic novels which is of historical and literary significance 60
  • The first to use comic fiction as a means to explore individualization in women's lives; explore gender relations; finding goodness in life 60
  • She fuses comedy w/ "ethical sensibility" & thereby creates tension b/c the two aren't always in union 60
  • Polhemus writes, "To appreciate the drama and achievement of Austen, we need to realize how deep was her passion for both reverence and ridicule .... and her comic imagination reveals both the harmonies and the telling contradictions of her mind and vision as she tries to reconcile her satirical bias with her sense of the good." 60

Kirkham (Feminism)[edit]

  • Kirkham, Margaret. “Jane Austen and Contemporary Feminism”. The Jane Austen Companion. Ed. J. David Grey. New York: Macmillan, 1986. ISBN 0-025-45540-0. The Jane Austen companion at the Internet Archive (154-159)
  • Richardson’s Pamela opened feminist concerns: questions re women’s right to education, questions re family’s right to choose a woman’s husband 154
  • After publication of Mary Wollstonecraft’s Mary (1788) and Fanny Burney’s Evelina (1778) “the novel was at least as important as the treatise, conduct book, or educational work in defining women’s attitudes toward the rights and duties of their own sex”. 154
  • Mary Astell wrote feminist treatises at end of 1600s, seeding feminist thought that continued throughout 18th cent and emerged at the end of the cent in fiction. 154
  • Austen is aware of these thoughts of proto-feminism; she “does show a clear and consistent commitment to the rational principles on which women of the Enlightenment based their case.” 155
  • Women were not denied the ability to reason, hence they deserved to be educated. 155
  • Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women believed strongly in educating women 155
  • JA, like Wollstonecraft, concentrated on ordinary women, “whose lives are unexceptional, though her heroines have more than their fair share of intelligence.” 156
  • JA eschews feminism and makes women equal: “women … may have different duties to fulfil; but they are ‘’human’’ duties.” qtd 156
  • JA’s heroines = human first; feminist second; yet her writing does reflect late 18th, early 19th cent feminism > she goes a step beyond. 158

Lodge (structure)[edit]

  • Lodge, David. "Jane Austen's Novels: Form and Structure". The Jane Austen Companion. Ed. J. David Grey. New York: Macmillan, 1986. ISBN 0-025-45540-0. The Jane Austen companion at the Internet Archive (165-179)
  • Richardson's Pamela is the prototype for the sentimental novel >> a didactic love story with a happy ending, written at a time women were beginning to have the right to choose husbands & yet were restricted by social conventions 165
  • Her literary realism is an attraction of her work 170
  • She describes conversations, gestures, b/c she makes them significant. 171
  • She doesn't use metaphor or symbolism 172
  • The narrative voice allows immediacy (and realism) - she abandoned Richardson's epistolary techniques in favor of greater flexibility in narrative 175
  • Narrative allows "free indirect speech"; she was the first Eng. novelist to use it extensively. 175
  • Free indirect speech = reporting a character's thoughts using his/her language w/out the benefit of dialogue tags 175
  • Free indirect speech gives access to a character's thoughts but unlike epistolary style, the author retains narrative control 175
  • W/ free indirect speech an author can vary discourse between narrator's voice and values and juxtapose w/ the character's indirectly spoken thoughts/values 176

Snips[edit]

She came from a family of six brothers and one sister. Her sister was Austen's closest friend and confidante throughout her life.[1] The eldest, James, was ten years older; the second son, George, was born deaf and mute and raised in the village by a local family. During her childhood Jane taught herself enough sign language to communicate with George, which suggests he may have visited the family home regularly.[2] Charles and Frank joined the navy as boys, at about age 10, both rising to the rank of admiral.[3] Edward was sold to be adopted, according to Park Honan[4] to Thomas Knight, whose name he took and estate he inherited in 1812.[5] Austen felt closest to Henry, who became a banker and, after his bank failed, an Anglican clergyman. Henry acted as his sister's literary agent, whose large circle of friends and acquaintances in London included bankers, merchants, publishers, painters and actors. He exposed her to a social world not normally visible from a small parish in rural Hampshire.[6]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Fergus (2005), 3; Tomalin (1997), 4, 142; Honan (1987), 23, 119.
  2. ^ Le Faye (2004), 18–20; Honan (1987), 24; Tomalin (1997), 9
  3. ^ Todd (2015), 3
  4. ^ Honan (1987), 25
  5. ^ Tucker (1986), 147; Le Faye (2004), 43–44
  6. ^ MacDonagh (1991), 50–51; Honan (1987), 24, 246; Collins (1994), 17

Sources (available)[edit]

  • Bayley, John. "Characterization in Jane Austen". The Jane Austen Companion. Ed. J. David Grey. New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986. ISBN 0-02-545540-0. 24-34
  • Bloom, Harold. Jane Austen's Pride and prejudice at the Internet Archive
  • Bonaparte, Felicia. "Conjecturing Possibilities: Reading and Misreading Texts in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice". Studies in the Novel vol. 37, no. 2, Johns Hopkins University Press (2005), 141-61. JSTOR 29533681
  • Brooke, Christopher. "Rank and Status." Critical Insights: Jane Austen. Ed. Jack Lynch. Hackensack: Salem, 2010. n. pag. Salem Online. Web. 27 Aug. 2016. ??
  • Butler, Marilyn. "History, Politics and Religion". The Jane Austen Companion. Ed. J. David Grey. New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986. ISBN 0-02-545540-0. 190-208
  • Copeland, Edward. “Money”. The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen. Eds. Edward Copeland and Juliet McMaster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. ISBN 978-0-521-74650-2. 127–143
  • Drum, Alice. "Pride and Prestige: Jane Austen and the Professions." College Literature vol. 36, no. 3, Johns Hopkins University Press (2009), 92-115. JSTOR 20642039
  • Fraiman, Susan. "Jane Austen and Edward Said: Gender, Culture, and Imperialism." Critical Inquiry, vol. 21, no. 4, (1995), 805-21. JSTOR 1344068
  • Gilbert, Sandra. The madwoman in the attic : the woman writer and the nineteenth-century literary imagination at the Internet Archive
  • Grey, J. David. The Jane Austen Companion. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1986. ISBN 0-02-545540-0. The Jane Austen Companion at the Internet Archive
  • Grundy, Isobel. “Jane Austen and literary traditions”. The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen. Eds. Edward Copeland and Juliet McMaster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. ISBN 978-0-521-74650-2. 192–214
  • Heydt-Stevenson, Jill. "Liberty, Connection, and Tyranny: The Novels of Jane Austen and the Aesthetic Movement of the Picturesque." Critical Insights: Jane Austen. Ed. Jack
  • Heims, Neil. "Jane Austen: A Cultural and Historical Context." Critical Insights: Jane Austen. Ed. Jack Lynch. Hackensack: Salem, 2010. n. pag. Salem Online. Web. 27 Aug. 2016.
  • Le Faye, Deirdre, ed. Jane Austen's Letters. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. ISBN 9780199576074
  • Le Faye, Deirdre. Jane Austen: A Family Record. Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-521-53417-8. Jane Austen: A Family Record at Google Books
  • Litz, A. Walton. "Recollecting Jane Austen." Critical Inquiry vol. 1, no. 3 (1975), 669-82. JSTOR 1342836
  • Lodge, David. "Jane Austen's Novels: Form and Structure". The Jane Austen Companion. Ed. J. David Grey. New York: Macmillan, 1986. ISBN 0-025-45540-0. 165-179
  • Lynch. Hackensack: Salem, 2010. n. pag. Salem Online. Web. 27 Aug. 2016.
  • Magee, William H. "Instrument of Growth: The Courtship and Marriage Plot in Jane Austen's Novels." The Journal of Narrative Technique, vol. 17, no. 2 (1987), 198-208.JSTOR 30225182
  • McMaster, Juliet. “Class”. The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen. Eds. Edward Copeland and Juliet McMaster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. ISBN 978-0-521-74650-2. 111–126
  • McMaster, Juliet. "Education". The Jane Austen Companion. Ed. J. David Grey. New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986. ISBN 0-02-545540-0. 140-142
  • Morrison, Sarah, R. "Of Woman Borne: Male Experience and Feminine Truth in Jane Austen's Novels." Studies in the Novel, vol. 26, no. 4 (1994), 337-49. JSTOR 29533008
  • Polhemus, Robert M. "Jane Austen's Comedy". The Jane Austen Companion. Ed. J. David Grey. New York: Macmillan, 1986. ISBN 0-025-45540-0. 60-71
  • Poplawski, Paul. (1998) A Jane Austen encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0313300178 A Jane Austen encyclopedia at the Internet Archive
  • Shaw, Valerie. "Jane Austen's Subdued Heroines." Nineteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 30, no. 3, (1975), 281-303. JSTOR 2933071
  • Stone, Donald D. "Sense and Semantics in Jane Austen." Nineteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 25, vol. 1, (1970), 31-50. JSTOR 2933134
  • Siebers, Tobin, Jane Austen, and Laurence W. Mazzeno. "Jane Austen And Comic Virtue." Critical Insights: Pride & Prejudice (2011): 337-367.
  • Tomalin, Claire. Jane Austen: A Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. ISBN 0-679-44628-1.
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