Growing Older with Jane Austen, by Maggie Lane

 I love this cover!

The reviews in JASNA News, the newsletter of the Jane Austen Society of North America, tempt me with every issue. That's where I discovered this. I had already read two of Maggie Lane's books, Jane Austen and Food and Jane Austen and Names, both of which I found very interesting and informative (particularly the book on food). I also have her Jane Austen's England on the TBR shelves.

As you would guess from the title, this book is an exploration of age and aging in Austen's work. It draws on her letters as well as her novels, the juvenalia, Lady Susan, and the unfinished works (The Watsons and Sanditon). Maggie Lane also incorporates the real-life experiences of Austen, her family and friends. As she writes in the Introduction,

    Unlike her parents and six of her seven siblings, who all lived into their seventies, eighties or even, in one case, nineties, Jane Austen did not see old age. She was just forty-one when she died, in the very prime of her writing life. But she did share, with everyone who outlives youth itself, the experience of growing older. Jane Austen at forty was a different woman from Jane Austen at twenty.
    Like any thinking person, she was aware of the changes in herself wrought by time. . . 

There are chapters on "The Loss of Youth and Beauty," "Old Wives" and "Old Maids," "Four Dowager Despots," and "The Dangerous Indulgence of Illness." Maggie Lane points out that Austen's main characters are young, but each book has a large supporting cast of people in different phases of their lives. Much of her discussion focuses on these characters. I had not appreciated before how

With the lightest of touches, Jane Austen grounds her characters in the age range they inhabit. Small details of clothes, hair or deportment, or more frequently and consistently of speech, outlook and habit, help us perceive her older characters to be middle-aged or elderly. We experience them as older people, acting and speaking in ways that distinguish them - yet without exaggerated effect - from the youthful cohort whose foils they are. In fact, from infancy to senescence, her characters act in age, while not sacrificing individuality.

I knew that Jane Austen with her many nieces and nephews appreciated the importance of aunts, but I had not realized how few grandparents there are in her books. She never knew her own, and none of her heroines has one. Jane Fairfax of Emma is the only major character to have a grandparent, in Mrs. Bates - and an inactive one, "a very old lady, almost past every thing but tea and quadrille." So Austen's heroines lack any guidance from that earlier generation, as do the parents of the heroines (some of whom stand in need of help and advice themselves, like Mrs. Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility).

I found the last chapter, "Nothing to Do but to Die," very interesting. Again, I had not considered how few deaths occur in Austen's novels (there are more, and comic ones, in the juvenalia). "Death is never gratuitous in Austen," Lane writes; "it always has some function to perform in terms of plot or character." Mrs. Churchill's death in Emma, the only one to take place in the course of the story, frees Frank Churchill to marry Jane Fairfax. Mrs. Tilney's off-stage death in Northanger Abbey is the only one described in any detail, and hearing the story from Henry Tilney has a huge impact on Catherine Morland and on their relationship. In this chapter Maggie Lane also considers the deaths in Austen's own family, including her own. In a short "Conclusion," Lane asks what Austen's life would have been like had she not died so young. "Professionally, she would surely have grown in both output and reputation. . . Did she have a Cranford in her? Or a 'Condition of England' novel?" How I wish we could know.

Reading this has moved Jane Austen's England up my reading list. And from the bibliography I had a couple of other titles in mind, Jane Austen's Family through Five Generations (Maggie Lane) and Jane Austen and the Body (John Wilshire).

Jane and Her Gentlemen, by Audrey Hawkridge

The subtitle of this book, published in 2000, is "Jane Austen and the Men in Her Life and Novels." Audrey Hawkridge has held one of my dream jobs, working for the Jane Austen Memorial Trust at Jane Austen's House in Chawton. Visiting the House was by far the highlight of my last trip to Great Britain. I have never moved so slowly through a museum - I wanted to see absolutely everything. (I may have even touched a couple of things, accidentally of course.)

This joins my extensive collection of "Jane Austen and..." books (the clergy, marriage, food, crime, and so on). I see that Ms. Hawkridge has also written Jane Austen and Hampshire, which I expect will be added to the collection at some point.

Ms. Hawkridge begins with a brief biography of Jane Austen. She then looks at the men in Austen's family, her father and brothers, as well as her nephew and first biographer, James Edward Austen-Leigh (the son of her oldest brother James). Next she covers the fictional men in Austen's novels, suggesting possible links to her family. Austen's naval brother Frank, for example, rejected the idea that Captain Wentworth of Persuasion was based on him, but admitted that "the description of [Captain Harville's] domestic habits, tastes, and occupations have a considerable resemblance to mine." I remember Austen mentioned in one of her letters that Frank made fringe for the drawing-room curtains of the house they were sharing in Southampton. The final section covers Austen's romantic interests, starting of course with Tom Lefroy, whose family removed him from a promising flirtation because he could not marry the daughter of a country rector with no money of her own. Ms. Hawkridge argues that Austen chose to remain single, rejecting at least one offer of marriage, and settled contentedly into life as a spinster. She also suggests that Mr Knightley of Emma is the best match for Austen herself - dismissing Edmund Bertram, Edward Ferrars and Colonel Brandon as unheroic and anaemic. (That may be true of the book's Col. Brandon, but not of Alan Rickman's smouldering Colonel.)

I enjoyed looking at Jane Austen's life and works from this angle, and it made me wish for a companion book on the women in her life. I find Austen's mother fascinating, with her quick wit, her hypochondria, and her pride in the family nose. I'm equally interested in the Austen women's friendship with the Lloyd sisters, particularly Martha, who came to live with them at Chawton. Her sister Mary, James Austen's second wife, was apparently sometimes difficult to get along with, though all kindness in Jane's final illness. I appreciated Ms. Hawkridge's point that Jane (and Cassandra) spent a lot of time and energy on their brothers' concerns, including helping with their families. I had not realized how much Austen wrote about their health problems in her letters, which say very little about her own. (Her brother Edward seems to have inherited their mother's tendency to hypochondria.)

Sunday miscellany: Bookish connections, reading & baking, and a Christmas present

Good morning from a stormy Houston! Our ridiculous winter heat wave has finally broken, but the cold front is bringing us some treacherous weather. We're under a tornado watch, and with the terrible storms in the Dallas area, I'm keeping an ear out for the weather alerts. My sister in El Paso just sent a picture of her backyard deep in snow - not quite a white Christmas, but close.

I was amused by a couple of bookish connections in the last couple of days. First, in the Christmas chapters of Orley Farm, Anthony Trollope wrote about children "who could not hurry fast enough into the vortex of its dissipations." That made me laugh, not just with the eager children, but because it reminded me of Jane Austen. In gently critiquing the novel her niece Anna was writing, Austen wrote,

Devereaux Forester's being ruined by his Vanity is extremely good; but I wish you would not let him plunge into a "vortex of Dissipation". I do not object to the Thing, but I cannot bear the expression; - it is such thorough novel slang - and so old, that I dare say Adam met with it in the first novel he opened... (Letter, Sept. 28, 1814)

Trollope uses a similar phrase later in the book, "a vortex of ruin and misery."  He was a big fan of Austen's novels, but he died two years before the first edition of her letters was published, so he could not have seen this. I wonder what he would have thought of her advice to a fellow author.

Second, have you ever had a quotation from a book niggling away in the back of your mind?  It drives me crazy, until I can pin it down. From the massive biography of William Lloyd Garrison, I learned that Louisa May Alcott's father Bronson was a supporter of Garrison's work, and that her maternal uncle Samuel May was one of his closest friends and allies. I knew that there was at least one reference to Garrison in Alcott's novels, but I could not for the life of me track it down in the nine I own. I came across one completely by accident in Rose in Bloom, while trying to find a different quote about obligatory Christmas presents.

[Rose's] heroes ceased to be the world's favorites; and became such as Garrison fighting for his chosen people; Howe, restoring lost senses to the deaf, the dumb, the blind; Sumner, unbribable, when other men were bought and sold; and many a large-hearted woman working as quietly as Abby Gibbons, who for thirty years has made Christmas merry for two hundred little paupers in a city almshouse, beside saving Magdalens and teaching convicts.

Oh, the satisfaction of tracking down an elusive quote!  (Being more of a print reader, it never occurred to me until just now that I could easily search the digital editions of her books.)

Third, Melanie posted something from Little House on the Prairie in her Christmas greetings. It mentions little heart-shaped cakes that Mary and Laura find in their Christmas stockings, along with a tin cup and a stick of striped candy each. Every time I read about the Ingalls' family Christmases, I am struck by how grateful they were, for so little. Anyway, the mention of the cakes sent me off to find my copy of The Little House Cookbook, which includes a recipe for the cakes.

My copy has the same style cover as the books themselves - the familiar yellow.

Leafing through this, with all the familiar Garth Williams illustrations, has made me want to pull the books off the shelf again - and also bake some little cakes. They're made with lard, though, and I'm wondering if I can substitute shortening.

Finally, I only received one book for Christmas (not counting the one I bought myself, which hasn't arrived yet). It's one I've been wanting to read for a while:

I hope you are all enjoying the holiday weekend. Going back to work tomorrow will be a bit of shock, I have to say.

Sunday miscellany: bookish connections, new books, books delayed

Good morning!  It is another hot summer day here in Houston, perfect for staying inside to read - but then most days are, for one reason or another.  We're supposed to top 95 degrees today, with no break in sight for a while, but at least the tropics are quiet.  We've had enough storms to last us!

I am still working my way through Richard III.  With Shakespeare I often end up reading scenes aloud, which helps me follow the language.  That means that I generally only read Shakespeare at home!  Yesterday evening I finished re-reading Dorothy Dunnett's The Game of Kings, the first of the Lymond Chronicles.  Usually as I turn the last page I am already reaching for the second, Queens' Play, but I put it off for a while to read some other things.  I pulled this book off the TBR shelves, only to realize how it connects my recent reading.

Princess Alice was born Alice Christabel Montagu Douglas Scott, the granddaughter of the Duke of Buccleuch.  The Douglases and the Scotts are major characters in the Lymond Chronicles, particularly Wat Scott of Buccleuch and his son Will Scott of Kincurd in The Game of Kings. This book is filled with late Victorian and early Edwardian photos of the Scott family, and homes that I associate from the Chronicles with the Douglases, like Drumlanrig and Dalkeith.  In fact, I bought this at Half Price Books many years ago primarily for the pictures, and the Scott connection.  I had never made the connection with Richard III's title of Duke of Gloucester, however.  I don't know much yet about this Duke and Duchess, but I'm sure they were happier than Shakespeare's Richard and Anne. I've only read a few pages of the book, the first chapters of which describe a charming Edwardian childhood in a close-knit family, growing up between London and Scotland (Princess Alice was born in 1901).  It's funny (and sad) that I've had this book unread for so many years, but it does fit my theory that books unread "ripen" on the shelves until the right time.  And while I have been toying with the idea of a trip to Ireland next year, after following Somerville and Ross around Connemara, now I'm thinking of the Highlands and the Hebrides.

I don't follow Lois McMaster Bujold on social media, but I belong to an on-line reading group focused on her books.  For some time I've heard via the group that she has had a serious case of writer's block, with nothing published since the latest in the Vorkosigan saga, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, in late 2012.  Then came the exciting news of a new Vorkosigan book to be published next year - and focused on Cordelia, mother of the manic Miles and one of my favorite heroines.  The news of a novella set in her Five Gods series was a complete and happy surprise.  The three books of this series are set in an AU late-medieval Europe, with a Holy Family of Five Gods that frequently intervene in human events.  I love this series almost as much as the Vorkosigan books, and I have long been hoping for more.  The first, The Curse of Chalion, focused on the Daughter of Spring, and the third, The Hallowed Hunt, on her brother, The Son of Autumn.  The second book belongs to the Bastard, son of the Mother of Sumner, who also plays a big part in the other stories.  I was hoping for a book on the Mother, as well as the Father of Winter, but from this title of this novella, I knew we would be seeing more of the Bastard.

The Bastard, lord of demons and of untimely events, is such fun to read about, and I imagine to write about!  He does tend to take over the story a bit, when he appears, much like DEATH in Terry Pratchett's Discworld.  This novella is only available as an e-book, so I have made just my third purchase, and all novellas (I generally download free older books from Gutenberg and Google Books).  It's lovely to be back in this world, and I can already feel the pull to return to Chalion as well.

With so many good books to read, it feels churlish to whine about books that I can't have (yet).  But Hayley's review of one of the new British Library Crime Classics, Alan Melville's Quick Curtain, gave me that "I want to read this right now" feeling.  Unfortunately, there is a delay with their U.S. release.  I will be good and wait, but it does remind me again how spoiled I have become, with books so easily available.

And finally, our JASNA Houston group met yesterday, to watch Amy Heckerling's "Clueless," which some of our members had never seen.  I did, when it was first released, and I still remember when it burst upon me in the theater that I was watching a very clever adaptation of Emma.  Not having seen it in several years, I enjoyed seeing it again very much.  It certainly has some dated elements, like the massive cell phones the characters carry around, but overall we agreed the story itself doesn't feel too dated.  We were talking afterwards about how the bones of the story are there, even if the details don't always match up. Christian won't end up with a Jane Fairfax, but he turns out to be a much better friend to Cher than Frank to Emma.  And Cher has the kind of friend in Dionne that Emma herself lacks.  We may watch the Bollywood "Bride and Prejudice" another time. This was the first film viewing that I've been to, since I boycott the actual adaptations!

I hope that everyone has a lovely week!

Sunday miscellany: two bookish points and a mini-rewiew

I thought I would be spending this weekend with Pioneer Girl, the annotated edition of Laura Ingalls Wilder's unpublished autobiography, which finally (finally) arrived on Friday.  But instead I am reading another autobiography, Benjamin Franklin's.  I was already in the middle of it, and I found that I didn't want to put it aside, even for Laura Ingalls Wilder.  Though every time I look at Pioneer Girl I am sorely tempted.  No one told me there is a picture of Mrs. Boast!  Mrs. Boast!!  For some reason that made me giddier than anything else I've seen in my quick glances.  But I keep going back to Dr. Franklin, because his story is just so interesting. I feel like I've stepped through a door into 18th-century Philadelphia, with a side-trip to London.  Of course, his is a little Penguin paperback, while Pioneer Girl is a massive square hardback, which I will be toting around this week to the detriment of my back.

I nearly took both of them with me to our JASNA Houston meeting yesterday, just to have someone to gloat over Pioneer Girl with me.  The tea was delicious, as always.  It was disappointing that in the end, we didn't have enough people to play whist.  We played a Pride and Prejudice trivia game instead, which is always fun.  However, though the moderator was completely impartial, something was obviously favoring the opposite team.  Actual questions for them: Who did Mr. Collins ask to marry him after Elizabeth Bennet turned him down, and What was one reason that Mr. Collins gave for seeking a wife?  Actual questions for our team: Who did Lydia and Kitty dress up in women's clothes to fool visitors, and How many were supposed to be in Mr. Bingley's party for the assembly ball?   Needless to say, we lost.  (We also missed "How many dances did Bingley dance with Jane at the ball?" and "Who married 'a man of more fashion than fortune'?")  However, we successfully contested one point.  On the question, What was Jane Austen's father's name, after we tried "Mr. Austen," we decided on "George."  The card said "William," which I knew was wrong!  We weren't using our phones, just our wits, but I did have to look that one up.  I should have petitioned for a forfeit at that point.

And finally, a mini-review: after reading and loving Sharon Shinn's The Turning Season, I was very excited to get the first two books in the "Shifting Circle" series.  I had some pretty high expectations for the first, The Shape of Desire, and at first I was disappointed.  Told in the first-person present as well, it is narrated by Maria Devane.  She met shape-shifter Dante Romano in college, and they have been together ever since.  She has adapted her life completely around him, but his time in human form is steadily decreasing, and now she sees him only a few days every month.  This is a darker story than Kara's in the later book.  Maria is more isolated, by choice in order to keep Dante's secrets and her own.  I felt initially like she had lost herself in the relationship, like she was paying too high a price for a few days of manic happiness and sex with her lover, followed by weeks of isolation and depression.  But the story turns out to be more complicated than that, as does their relationship, and I found it increasingly absorbing.  Here again there was a surprise at the end that I did not see coming (though I can see in hindsight that hints were planted), and I found the ending very intriguing.  I would like to check back in on the characters - maybe they will appear in later books?  I don't know if Sharon Shinn will be writing more of this series, but I hope so. I still have one more to read, Still Life with Shape-Shifter, which is connected to the third book.  After I read that, I'm looking forward to exploring her other books, and would welcome any recommendations (Reading the End Jenny already mentioned one that is a take-off from Jane Eyre).

I hope everyone has a good week!  We are supposed to have some terribly wet and stormy weather starting tonight, which will be a great excuse to curl up with tea and cats and autobiographies.  Mrs. Boast, y'all!  And I just opened it randomly, to a picture of the Farmer Boy family!  Back to Ben, and then on to Laura!

Sunday miscellany: Sanditon, TV, and cats

Happy Sunday afternoon!  I hope it is the start of a good week.  We're supposed to see some fall-ish weather later in the week, which for Houston means temps in the low 80s.  Even more than cool weather, I am looking forward to Deborah Crombie's new book, To Dwell in Darkness, which will be released on Tuesday.  She will be signing at Murder by the Book on Friday, and I will be there.

Sanditon
Yesterday our Houston JASNA branch met, to discuss Jane Austen's last, unfinished work, now known as Sanditon.  Austen began it in January of 1817, but she had to give up working on it in March as her health declined, leading to her death that July.  Her manuscript is now at King's College, Cambridge, which has digitized it as part of their "Jane Austen Fiction Manuscripts" project (you can see the pages here).  The complete manuscript was first published by the Austen scholar R.W. Chapman in 1925, and one of our members brought her first edition to the meeting.  My own introduction to Sanditon was through a one-volume collection of the "Minor Works," part of The Oxford Illustrated Jane Austen (also edited by Dr. Chapman).  My edition includes the Juvenilia, Lady Susan, and The Watsons, as well as Sanditon.  I had only read Sanditon once, and it didn't leave much impression on me, I think because there is just so much in this combined edition.  I should have read the four very different works separately, each on its own terms - as I have done with the Juvenilia and Lady Susan.

Re-reading Sanditon was a revelation.  It is a satirical look at a seaside town on the south coast of England, which two of its residents are promoting with all their might.  One of the investors, Mr Parker, is as effervescent as Mr Weston in preaching the merits of "a young & rising Bathing-place, certainly the favourite spot of all that are to be found along the coast of Sussex."  He constantly points out the benefits of sea bathing and sea breezes, and with his coadjutor Lady Denham he schemes to lure people to fill the cottages and the Terrace waiting for summer visitors.  He is in hopes that his two sisters and brother will also come, and a funnier set of hypochondriacs I have never met.  His younger brother Arthur's lectures on why toast must be slathered with butter, and the horrors of green tea, top even Mr Wodehouse's paeans to gruel and Hartfield eggs softly boiled.  There is a young man who has read too many novels and aspires to be a seducer; Lady Denham, who has married twice and inherited both husbands' estates, to the discomfort of their families; Charlotte Heywood, a young woman staying with the Parkers, who watches all the antics with a cool, detached, amused eye; and most intriguingly, a young heiress from the West Indies, Miss Lambe, "half Mulatto."  In the discussion, Miss Lambe brought to mind "Belle" Lindsay, with whom Jane Austen may have been familiar through family connections.

I felt that in Sanditon, Jane Austen was trying something new.  The story has such energy, with people rushing around - it even opens with a carriage accident!  And as we considered in the discussion, it is focused on a commercial enterprise, creating a sea-side resort out of a sleepy village.  And while there are several eligible females, and three single men (if you count the hypochondriac Arthur), it isn't clear who if anyone will pair off.  I also think it is amazing that Austen could write such a satire of hypochondriacs while she herself was so ill.

I know there is a continuation of Sanditon, "By a Lady," which has been enthusiastically recommended to me.  I usually avoid Austen sequels and spin-offs like the proverbial plague, but I am a little tempted.  I so wish we could know what Austen intended with this story.  Have you read Sanditon, or the sequel?  If so, what do you think - about where Austen's story would have gone, about the story she did write, whether the sequel is worth reading.


TV
My Tivo box is acting up again.  It is claiming that it's unable to connect to my wi-fi, though everything else in the house can. Now it's stuck on a single screen, and nothing I've tried will unblock it.  The Tivo website hasn't been helpful, so the next step would be to call them, I guess.  At this point I can't even watch TV.  On the other hand, though, I am wondering if this isn't a good time to cut the TV cord - or at least cancel my cable.  My bill keeps inching up, but I only watch a very few of the 700+ channels available.  I have a premiere level, so I can get the Turner Classic Movies channel, but I record far more than I ever watch. And in reality, I generally end up flipping through channels, only to end up with something that I don't really want to watch, out of inertia.  I do watch stuff through Netflix streaming, but I can do that without cable.  And I have been reading about some of the other services, like Hulu and Apple TV, which seem more cost-effective.  I think I'm going to let the TV sit, see how it goes this week.  I think that having it shut off might give me more time to read, and maybe a bit more mental energy, especially if I cut out the mindless watching.


Cats
James at James Reads Books has announced the impending arrival of a new dog in their family.  I have also added to mine, a new cat.  She is two years old, so technically an "older cat," the kind that are harder to place, because people want kittens.  She's a "dilute calico," which I've learned means mostly white, with the calico colors "diluted" - red, brown, and grey splotches.  My older cat Sophie (aged 8) is Not Amused.  Here she is keeping a wary eye out:

Sophie is named for The Grand Sophie, but under the pressure of the newcomer, she is acting more like Eugenia Wraxton.  On my vet's recommendation, I now have a dry food called "Calm," which includes tryptophan.  The new kitty does not yet have a name.  She was originally Eowyn, and then Eve - neither of which I like.  She is totally copying Sophie, where she sleeps, sits, eats - even how she sits or sprawls.  And she so desperately wants to be friends!  I am considering little sisters' names, like Ginny Weasley, which would be appropriate for a red-head.  But after Sanditon, I'm also thinking of Charlotte.  I have never had this much trouble naming a cat!

A Jane Austen tour in 1901

Jane Austen: Her Homes and Her Friends, Constance Hill and Ellen G. Hill

When I came across references to this book in G.E. Mitton's 1905 biography of Jane Austen, I immediately added it to my reading list.  Published in 1902, it is an account of a literary pilgrimage by two sisters, Constance Hill, who wrote the text; and Ellen Hill, who illustrated it with her drawings.  The two were major fans of Austen's books.  As Constance Hill wrote in a preface,

[Her] undefinable charm . . . has exercised a sway of ever-increasing power over the writer and illustrator of these pages; constraining them to follow the author to all of the places where she dwelt and inspiring them with a determination to find out all that could be known of her life and its surroundings.

I have made Austen pilgrimages myself, first to her grave in Winchester Cathedral, to Bath and Lyme Regis, and finally a few years ago to her last home, at Chawton Cottage in Hampshire.  I was very intrigued by the idea of such a trip in 1901, less than a century after her death, and before she became the global icon that she is today.  I had to remind myself that in 1901, there were only a handful of books written about Jane Austen, including family memoirs, and an early edition of her letters. The Hills weren't the first Austen pilgrims, but they may have been the first to write about it.

Their account opens with their arrival by pony-chaise in Austen's native Hampshire, or as they prefer to call it, "Austen-Land."  They follow her life chronologically, moving from Steventon, where she was born, to Bath and Southampton, then to Chawton.  They include chapters on her time in London, usually staying with her brother Henry; and at Godmersham, the Kent estate of another brother, Edward Austen Knight.  Along the way, they seek out the exact spots where Austen lived, or visited, or some cases, danced.  They are quite bold in knocking on doors and inviting themselves in for a tour.  Constance Hill quotes constantly from Austen's letters (in the 1884 Brabourne edition), as well as the memoir written by her nephew J.E. Austen-Leigh in 1870.  There are also frequent quotations from the novels, as the sisters look for sites of the events in the books.  Like them, I have walked along the Cobb in Lyme Regis, looking for the spot where Louisa Musgrove fell.  In addition, Constance Hill often cites a near-contemporary of Jane Austen, Mary Russell Mitford, whose family knew the Austens (I already have an e-version of her 1824 book Our Village - reading always begets more books).

In addition to these sources, the Hills must also have had the cooperation of some members of the Austen family.  They were given access to Austen's letters in manuscript, as well as unpublished family memoirs.  In addition, Constance Hill read one of the three notebooks in Austen's handwriting, which contain what are now called the "Minor Works," then unpublished. They were also allowed to handle Austen artifacts at Chawton, including her writing desk with the manuscript of The Watsons in a drawer.

I enjoyed - and envied - the sisters' travels in Austen-land.  More than a century later, I could relate to their enthusiasm for Austen's books, and their excitement at visiting the places associated with her life and her stories.  I was a little surprised to see her books described more than once as "racy," which made me wonder if the Hills had ever read Henry Fielding's Tom Jones or other books of that era.  For me their book works best as an appreciation of Austen, and a travelogue, rather than as biography.  I will take this book with me if I am lucky enough to make another Austen trip, particularly for the information they give on Bath in Austen's time.

I started off with an e-version of this book, but I was lucky enough to find a reprint by Kessinger Publishing.  It includes Ellen Hill's charming drawings, as well as other illustrations.  For the book's readers in 1902, this may have been their first look at Austen family portraits, or at Chawton Cottage itself.  We 21st-century Janeites are lucky to have so many photos available, in books and on-line - such a wealth of information, so easily accessible, unknown to earlier readers.

N.B. I have sadly neglected my Mid-Century of Books project, so I am glad that I can fill another year with this entertaining book.

A Janeite in 1905

Jane Austen and Her Times, 1775-1817, G.E. Mitton

I should point out that G.E. Mitton never used the term "Janeite" in this 1905 study of Jane Austen, though she did refer to her subject as "Jane" throughout.  Instead she labeled herself and other Austen devotées as "Austenites."  Whatever she called herself, she was an enthusiastic and informed reader of Austen's novels, as well as works about her, and the characters of the novels clearly lived in her imagination.  Mitton also wrote as a fellow author, a novelist, as well as a biographer and a travel writer (I particularly like the sound of her 1907 novel, A Bachelor Girl in Burma).

As the title suggests, Mitton's book is both a biography of Jane Austen and an exploration of the times in which she lived.  In the first chapter, she wrote that

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 book is to show her among scenes where in 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.

This is of course a standard approach to biography, but I don't know how ground-breaking it was in 1905, or if the focus on a women writer made Mitton's work unusual. It is certainly the earliest work on Austen that I have come across, other than A Memoir of Jane Austen, written by her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh and published in 1870.  In her study Mitton moved chronologically through Austen's life, discussing the minor works and the novels in order of creation, through chapters focused on her subject's childhood, life in Steventon, the role of the clergy in society, life in Bath, and so on.

Though G.E. Mitton wrote her book less than 90 years after Jane Austen died, she suggested that "the times of Jane Austen are more removed than the mere lapse of years seems to warrant." In support of this she cited the "extraordinary outburst of invention and improvement that took place in the reign of Queen Victoria," in trade, communications, and industry.  Of course, to the 21st-century reader, Mitton's world seems much closer to Austen's than to our own.  Part of the fascination of this book is the sidelights it gives into Mitton's world, such as when she compared the freedom of the "modern" girl, with her tailored suit and bicycle, to girls in Austen's time, hampered by long skirts and unable to venture out alone.  The skirts and corsets of 1905 don't look that much less confining than those of 1805, at least in 2014.  In another place Mitton commented that

There is one custom which we must all be thankful exists no longer, the intolerable fashion of morning calls.  Calls are bad enough now as custom decrees, but we are at least free from the terror of people dropping in upon us before the day's work is begun.

She also noted that Steventon was hard to find, and that the cottage at Chawton where Austen lived for many years was currently occupied by farm workers.  Clearly there were no omnibuses or charabancs full of Austenites arriving in the village at that time.

In the light of changing times and customs, it is interesting to read Mitton's comments on Jane Austen's books.  In her telling, Pride and Prejudice was universally acknowledged the best of the books, with Emma and Persuasion also highly rated.  Northhanger Abbey on the other hand was appreciated only by true Austenites.  Mitton felt that Emma is a more skillful book than Pride and Prejudice, showing Austen's development as a writer, but lacking the sparkle and fun of the earlier book.  Like many modern readers, she thought Mansfield Park the least interesting of the books, mainly because Edward and Fanny are so dull, not to say priggish, though she fully appreciated the awfulness of Aunt Norris.

While Mitton loved Pride and Prejudice, she took serious issue with Darcy, particularly his behavior at the Meryton assembly when he refuses to dance with Elizabeth. "It is inconceivable that any man with the remotest pretension to gentlemanly feeling" should behave that way.  In fact, Mitton went on to argue that Austen, like many women authors, had "an inability to grasp the code belonging to gentlemanly conduct."  This is one of several statements that took me aback, like her assertion that Austen became a pioneer in realistic fiction by accident or instinct, with no idea of what she was doing.  It is clear from the letters that Austen read widely in the fiction of her time, and I believe that she developed her ground-breaking style carefully and deliberately.  The parodies of the juvenalia show that she could write in the prevailing style when she wanted to.

Mitton quotes a great many late 18th century sources in exploring Austen's world, as well as some later contemporaries of her own.  Unfortunately, the book has no bibliography, and I admit I did not take the time to search out all of her references.  (I did note one, Constance Hill's Jane Austen, Her Homes and Her Friends, published in 1902, an e-version of which is now on my Nook.)  Mitton's work draws heavily on the Austen-Leigh Memoir, and also the two-volume edition of Austen's letters published by her great-nephew Lord Brabourne in 1884.  (The son of Austen's beloved niece Fanny, he inherited the bulk of the extant Austen letters.)  For a 21st-century Austenite, both have some drawbacks, which are reflected in Mitton's biography.  There is no reference to her brother George, who may have been mentally or physically disabled, and who was raised in a foster home. Lord Brabourne in editing the letters cut some of the humor and the caustic comments that were probably considered inappropriate for a rector's daughter, like a joke about her niece Cassy having fleas.  He was also sometimes careless in editing.  Mitten quoted an 1808 letter, referring to a "friend's" impending visit, on which she built a complicated theory about the "friend" being a suitor, perhaps someone Austen had come to care about, perhaps her last chance at marriage.  The letter actually refers to the coming visit of some "friends."  I think Mitton's reliance on the Memoir also explains her constant refrain that Jane Austen had a happy life, always contented and cheerful, free from worry and sorrow.  That seems a bit simplistic compared to the more modern biographies I have read.

In the end, this was a very interesting book, both for the information it gives about Britain in the late 18th and early 20th centuries, and for its author's appreciation of Jane Austen.  I had to remind myself that at the time G.E. Mitton was writing this, she could only know Austen's works by reading them, or perhaps by seeing a staged version.  I couldn't help wondering what she would think of the films, and the world-wide "Janeite" phenomenon.  She died in 1955, so maybe she saw the 1940 film, with Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson.  Her reactions would make an interesting codicil to this book.

At home in Highbury

Emma, Jane Austen

Emma is the climax of Jane Austen's genius and the Parthenon of fiction. She wrote it in fifteen months, and with a dazzling poise and certainty which are transmitted to the reader at the very first sentence  . . .  [I]t was published by John Murray in 1816. A century and a half of spontaneous appreciation has accompanied this, the happiest of love stories, the most fiendishly difficult of detective stories, and a matchless repository of English wit, since it emerged from Albermarle Street on that winter morning.  (Ronald Blythe, Introduction to the Penguin Classics Edition, 1966)

I have always loved that introduction to my old Penguin Classics.  As I've mentioned elsewhere, Pride and Prejudice was the first of Jane Austen's novels that I read, but I think it was Emma that made me a Janeite.  I have the clearest memory, thirty years later, of the delight I felt in reading it for the first time, the absorption in the events at Hartfield and Randalls, and the shock when I realized how just how cleverly Austen, like Frank Churchill, had pulled the wool over my eyes.  As with all detective stories, there is such fun in re-reading, to note how the author lays her traps, and to recognize where I, like Emma, was decoyed on to the false trails.

I think of Emma as a Christmas book.  In part that is because the first volume of the story comes to its climax at Christmas, when John and Isabella Knightley are visiting Hartfield with their children.  There is the Christmas Eve dinner at Randalls, which ends with Emma and Mr. Elton alone in a carriage.  During the interminable drive back to Highbury, she is forced to listen to his presumptuous, alcohol-laced proposals, and he is forced to endure not just her emphatic refusal but the mortifying suggestion that he should marry Harriet Smith instead.  Fortunately for Emma's conscience and her peace of mind, the snow falling that night is deep enough to keep her home from church on Christmas morning, so she doesn't have to face Mr. Elton again, and it also keeps Harriet with her streaming cold away from Hartfield.

I also think of Emma as a Christmas book because my mother gave me a copy for Christmas the year I first read it, one of the orange Penguins, and I stayed up all night re-reading it.

I won't say too much about the story itself, with its complicated plot, but I wanted to mention a couple of things that struck me, reading this again for the umpteenth time.  Aside from the title character, when I think of this book I think of two others: Miss Bates and Mrs Elton.  Miss Bates is introduced, by the narrator, in Chapter III of the first volume.  I particularly noticed this time how the authorial voice first presents her in a very a positive light:

[She] enjoyed a most uncommon degree of popularity for a woman neither young, handsome, rich, nor married.  Miss Bates stood in the very worst predicament in the world for having much of the public favour; and she had no intellectual superiority to make atonement to herself, or frighten those who might hate her, into outward respect. She had never boasted either beauty or cleverness. Her youth had passed without distinction, and her middle of life was devoted to the care of a failing mother, and the endeavour to make a small income go as far as possible.  And yet she was a happy woman, and a woman whom no one named without good-will.  It was her own universal good-will and contented temper which worked such wonders.  She loved every body, was interested in every body's happiness, quick-sighted to every body's merits; thought herself a most fortunate creature, and surrounded with blessings in such an excellent mother and so many good neighbours and friends, and a home that wanted for nothing. The simplicity and cheerfulness of her nature, her contented and grateful spirit, were a recommendation to every body and a mine of felicity to herself.  She was a great talker on little matters, which exactly suited Mr. Woodhouse, full of trivial communications and harmless gossip.

Reading that made me realize how much my opinion of Miss Bates has been shaped by Emma's, who a few chapters later describes her, while good-natured, as "so silly - so satisfied - so smiling - so prosing - so undistinguishing and unfastidious...." (I have also probably been prejudiced by knowing real-life "great talkers on little matters," and by the fear of becoming one myself.)  Other characters acknowledge that Miss Bates can be a bit overwhelming in the full flow of her conversation, but no one else says as much about it as Emma does (even before the Box Hill incident).  I can't help thinking that here is another of Emma's errors in judgement, perhaps an immaturity in her, which sees only the irritating and the ridiculous.  I feel like this reading was the first time I really noticed that Miss Bates doesn't even appear in the first volume - we only hear of her from the other characters.  It is only in the second chapter of Volume II that we meet her in person, "active and talking."

Generally, Emma's actions are kinder than her words, with Miss Bates, at least up until the ill-fated expedition to Box Hill.  Mrs. Weston, who is pregnant, stays home to keep Mr. Woodhouse company. I found myself wondering whether Emma would have behaved differently - better - if her oldest friend and former governess had been there.  I can't help but think that both she and Frank Churchill would have restrained themselves a bit.  It is such a difficult scene to read, not just for the distress that Emma's joke causes Miss Bates, but also for the strain that Jane Fairfax is clearly under, particularly once the reader knows how Emma is unconsciously making it worse for her.  Reading this time, I was also struck by the impropriety of Emma telling Frank Churchill her suspicions about Jane and the Dixons.  It is sheer speculation on her part, the kind of gossip that could damage a young woman's reputation, and she has no business telling it to anyone, particularly a gentleman that she has just met.  I noted that she never breathes a word of it to Mr. Knightley or Mrs. Weston, who would not have approved.

A great deal of the comedy in this book comes from the dreadful Mrs. Elton, who arrives about half-way through the story, demanding all the attentions due a bride and constantly talking up the glories of "my brother Mr. Suckling," his carriages and his estate near Bristol.  Emma finds her first uncongenial and then insufferable, and I think as readers we're meant to agree (her author certainly doesn't defend her).  However, Emma herself commits some of the same sins.  Just as Mrs. Elton is overly familiar, with her "Knightley" and "Jane," Emma is as well.  She forms an immediate friendship not just with Harriet, whose status as a "natural child" places her far below Emma's level socially, but with Frank Churchill.  She is also too friendly with Mr. Elton, welcoming him frequently to Hartfield and including him in social events like the dinner at Randalls. Granted, it's with the aim of encouraging him to fall in love with Harriet, but that isn't how it looks to him or to the gossips in Highbury.  And where Mrs. Elton wants to take over Jane Fairfax, managing her life for her, Emma actually does that to Harriet, to the point of persuading her to reject (against her own inclinations) the marriage proposal from Robert Martin.  Like Mrs. Elton, Emma can be fatuously self-satisfied, sure of her own judgement, as when she assures John Knightley that Mr. Elton is in no danger of falling in love with her; or when she tells his brother, "with a confidence which staggered, with a satisfaction which silenced, Mr. Knightley," that Frank Churchill is completely indifferent to Jane Fairfax.  With all the self-knowledge that Emma gains in the course of this story, I'm not sure she ever sees how thin a line sometimes separates her from Mrs. Elton.

Emma includes some of my favorite lines from Jane Austen's books.  Emma's companion on a drive to Randalls is her cranky brother-in-law John Knightley, grousing all the way.  Emma "dreaded being quarrelsome; her heroism reached only to silence."  She also takes refuge in silence when irritated with Mr. Weston and Mrs. Elton over the proposed expedition to Box Hill: "Emma denied none of it aloud, and agreed to none of it in private."  And while many consider Captain Wentworth's letter in Persuasion as the most romantic scene Jane Austen ever wrote, I have to put in my vote for Mr. Knightley's declaration: "If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more."  I once wrote that on an anoymous card to a young man, on whom I had the kind of painful crush that left me completely tongue-tied in his presence.  But since I properly attributed the quote to Emma, he probably went off searching for someone named Emma.

Jane Austen famously wrote of Emma that she was planning to write about a heroine "which no one but myself would like."  Instead, she gave us a young woman who with all her faults does have a loving heart, good principles, a strong sense of duty, and the all-important sense of humor - someone who can also learn and grow.  I like her in spite of her very human faults, and I love watching her story unfold in the little world of Highbury.  This might be the best book that Jane Austen ever wrote; it is certainly one of my very favorite (as perhaps you might have guessed from the Batesian length of this post).

Jane Austen's fans

Among the Janeites, Deborah Yaffe

Our Houston-area chapter of the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) is discussing this book at our monthly meeting on Saturday.  The author will even join us for a brief chat via Skype.  When the book was first suggested, there was some talk of a chapter focusing on a well-known Texas Janeite, who attends the annual conferences in elaborate Regency outfits.  In fact, she travels to and from the conferences in costume, even on airplanes.  From that, and from the cover of the book (which you can see here), I thought it might be a satirical look at the eccentricities and excesses of Jane Austen's fans.

Instead, from the first page Deborah Yaffe establishes herself as one of us.  And not just as a Janeite; she was from a child the kind of compulsive reader that I think many of us were and still are, though she was reading Trollope and Thackeray when I was still reading Laura Ingalls Wilder and Nancy Drew.  She was a Janeite long before Colin Firth and his wet shirt in the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice created legions of new fans almost overnight.  (I may be the only Jane Austen fan on the planet who has not seen that Pride and Prejudice, and I admit to a slight prejudice against the "wet-shirt Darcy" obsessives. I have gotten some nasty looks when I point out that the scene doesn't actually take place in the story Austen wrote.)

Recognizing the global "Austen phenomenon" that took off in the mid-1990s, Yaffe "set out to examine Janeite obsessiveness from the inside, and maybe to figure out along the way what kind of Janeite I was myself."  She states that her book is "a work of journalism, not a scholarly study of Jane Austen appreciation . . ."   It is based on interviews with a range of Austenites, primarily in North America, but also on her own experiences as a fan.  In the interests of research, she ordered a custom-made Regency gown, and a corset to go under it.  She traveled to England with a JASNA tour, and she attended the 2011 annual general meeting in Fort Worth.  She immersed herself in fan fiction, modern continuations and sequels (something that has never, ever appealed to me).  One chapter focuses on Sandy Lerner, the American millionaire, co-founder of Cisco, who funded the restoration of Chawton House and the establishment of a research library focused on women writers of the 17th and 18th centuries.  Other chapters discuss Janeites on-line, the founding of JASNA, and teaching Austen in colleges and universities, among other topics.

Yaffe defines a Janeite as someone who enjoys and engages with Jane Austen's work.  As she points out more than once, there are many different ways of appreciating and enjoying Austen.  I count myself a Janeite of long-standing.  As I've mentioned elsewhere, I was introduced to Austen's work by the 1980 BBC Pride and Prejudice.  I've read and re-read her novels for many years, and I've gone on to read about her life and the world in which she lived.  I now have about three times as many books about Austen as by Austen.  I've visited Bath and Chawton and Winchester.  I've enjoyed meeting other Janeites through JASNA, as well as through the Yahoo Janeites group (which features in Yaffe's book). I'd like to attend the annual meeting one day.  But I am a book-based Janeite, who prefers not to see the films.  (I made an exception for the Ciaran Hinds-Amanda Root Persuasion; the book is still better).  And I don't think I'll be buying a Regency dress.

This was an interesting and entertaining exploration of "the world of Jane Austen fandom," as the subtitle says, and I am looking forward to discussing it with the Houston Janeites.

Another visit to Bath

Persuasion, Jane Austen

One of the new books I'm most eagerly anticipating is What Really Matters in Jane Austen, by John Mullan.  I've been enviously following Audrey's posts on her reading of it.  I'd planned all year to re-read Persuasion for the Classics Challenge but never got around to it.  Then the Bath setting of Georgette Heyer's Black Sheep made me take Persuasion straight off the shelf as soon as I'd finished it.

As much as I compare Heyer to Austen, I've never read their books back to back, and I was a little concerned that Heyer might suffer by comparison. But while she is no Jane Austen, I don't think she ever tried to be, and her books are perfect in their own way.

It has been a couple of years since I read Persuasion.  Reading so much about the novels and Austen herself keeps the characters and stories fresh in my mind, as does the discussion on the Janeites listserv to which I belong.  But in the end I am always drawn back to the novels themselves, to Austen's wonderful words.  And, speaking for myself, I don't want adaptations, plays, films, or even audiobooks.  All of those are interpretations of Austen, someone else's vision and version - and in many cases, additions to Austen's stories (do not get me started on Colin Firth skinnydipping, which I haven't actually seen but have heard about many, many times).

Though I don't know if I could pick a single favorite among Austen's novels, Persuasion would be at the top, with Emma and Pride and Prejudice.  But Anne Elliot is easily my favorite of her heroines, "the elegant little woman of seven and twenty, with every beauty excepting bloom, with manners as consciously right as they were inevitably gentle. . ."  Though she is not a wit like Elizabeth Bennet, she has a good sense of humor.  Her principles are as strong as Fanny Price's, but she has the confidence and firmness Fanny lacks, while avoiding Emma Wodehouse's arrogance.  Like Elinor Dashwood, she bears with a suffering sister while concealing her own heartache, even though Mary's infirmities are mostly imaginary.  Of all Austen's heroines, she must be the greatest reader, of the greatest variety, or she could not recommend to Captain Benwick, on a moment's notice, "such works of our best moralists, such collections of the finest letters, such memoirs of characters of worth and suffering," not to mention the poetry they have already been discussing in such detail.  In that, I think, she must mirror her creator.  Anne is a likeable character and a sympathetic one.  Her vain, spendthrift father Sir Walter and her condescending older sister Elizabeth have no use for her, and we judge them accordingly.  (But then which of Austen's heroines has a perfectly happy home life, except perhaps for Catherine Morland?  At least Anne does not have to suffer an Aunt Norris.)

I think her story is also the most romantic among Austen's heroines.  She and Frederick Wentworth were very much in love when she was persuaded to break their engagement, at the urging of her godmother and friend Lady Russell, who objected to

a young man, who had nothing but himself to recommend him, and no hopes of attaining affluence, but in the chances of a most uncertain profession [the Navy], and no connexions to secure even his farther rise in that profession . . .

So Anne gave him up, but she never forgot him.  Then chance brings the now-Captain Wentworth back into her circle, and she finds her feelings unchanged.  Initially he seems bent on showing her what she lost, flirting with young friends of hers and ready to marry one of them.  But as the story unfolds, she sees hints that perhaps he is not as indifferent as he seems, and she cannot help hoping that what she now sees as her mistake eight years ago can be rectified.

Elizabeth over at The Bamboo Bookcase has been posting about favorite Christmas scenes in books, which got me thinking about Austen, since several feature in her novels.  In Pride and Prejudice, the Gardiners come to spend the holidays at Longbourn, and they take Jane back to London with them when they return.  In Emma of course there is the Christmas Eve dinner at the Westons, after which Emma is trapped in a coach with Mr Elton and forced to listen to his proposal.  In Persuasion, we have a Christmas scene that could have come from Dickens or Alcott.  When Anne and Lady Russell visit the Musgroves, they find

On one side was a table, occupied by some chattering girls, cutting up silk and gold paper; and on the other were tressels and trays, bending under the weight of brawn and cold pies, where riotous boys were holding high revel; the whole completed by a roaring Christmas fire, which seemed determined to be heard, in spite of all the noise of the others.

Lady Russell finds it all a bit too much, telling Anne, "I hope I shall remember, in future, not to call at Uppercross in the Christmas holidays."

Persuasion was of course left unfinished at Jane Austen's death.  It was edited  by her brother Henry for publication with Northanger Abbey.  I don't believe that the story we have now, as much as I love it, is the story that Austen herself would have published, if she had lived to complete it.  She had already tightened up, and to my mind much improved, the story by editing out a scene where Captain Wentworth is sent to ask Anne if the rumors that she is to marry her cousin Mr Elliot are true.  This famous "cancelled chapter" seems awkward and forced.  Instead, we get the scene in the Musgroves' parlor at the inn, where Captain Wentworth leaves one of the world's greatest love letters for Anne.  I think that Austen must have originally intended something different with the Mrs Smith-Mr Elliot-Mrs Clay subplot, since she makes a point of Anne planning to consult Lady Russell about it, but putting it off for a day.  But that is all sheer speculation on my part of course, and it takes nothing away from my enjoyment of the wonderful book that we do have.

This Sunday I look forward to celebrating Jane Austen's 237th birthday with the Greater Houston JASNA chapter, and Janeites around the world!

Introducing kids to Jane Austen

I was thrilled to find a copy of this tonight.  I'd seen and coveted a friend's, which she got for her new granddaughter.  My nieces are both too old and too young to appreciate it, which means I get to keep it for myself.

If you can't read the lower right corner, it says, "a counting primer by Jennifer Adams"  (Alison Oliver is the artist).  This is the cleverest thing, well worthy of Jane Austen.  The numbers are represented by characters and events from Pride & Prejudice, with funny illustrations, like Elizabeth on the cover above, in a top that reads "I ♥ Darcy."  The number 2 is "2 rich gentlemen," Messrs. Bingley and Darcy.  The number 4 is "4 marriage proposals," though sadly Mr Collins's to Charlotte is not included.  My favorite number is 10: "10,000 pounds a year."

I see that the same team has also done Jane Eyre and Romeo and Juliet.  I'm hoping for Emma or Persuasion, myself.

Jane Austen and marriage

Jane Austen & Marriage, Hazel Jones

I don't read much literary criticism. As important as books have always been to me, I never wanted to study literature. I feel like I didn't learn the language of lit crit, so I can't understand much of it. But I do enjoy reading biographies of my favorite authors, discovering more about their lives and the context of their writing. With Jane Austen, I also enjoy books that explore an aspect of her worlds, real and fictional, through her novels and her own life. I think of these as the "Jane Austen and" books. One of my favorites is Maggie Lane's Jane Austen and Food. I've also learned a lot from Irene Collins' Jane Austen and the Clergy, Susannah Fullerton's Jane Austen & Crime, and Mary Waldron's Jane Austen and the Fiction of Her Time. When I saw a review of Jane Austen & Marriage in the JASNA newsletter, I added it to my list.

I enjoyed this informative and entertaining book very much. Hazel Jones notes in her introduction that marriage in Jane Austen's time is a complex subject: "These were years of great change and great resistance to change, creating a state of flux in that trickiest of personal relationships, marriage." One of the more influential changes was the growing ideal of companionate marriage, based on love, rather than marriage for social or financial gain. If the goal was a loving, stable, lasting relationship, rather than a marriage of convenience, the choice of a partner became critical, and the criteria different. How did one make the best choice, and who should do the choosing? Jones argues that the ideal of companionate marriage also challenged traditional views of dominant husbands and subservient wives, though she notes that many traditionalists criticized what they saw as radical theories bent on destroying marriage and family.

Jones explores several different aspects of marriage, including courtship, the wedding itself, the honeymoon, marital problems, the arrival of children, and naturally, given Austen's own life, the fate of those who never married ("spinsterhood" vs. "single blessedness"). In discussing each aspect, Jones draws on Austen's experiences and that of her family and friends, particularly as described in her letters, as well as the lives of her fictional characters. In addition, she brings in the experiences of Austen's contemporaries though their letters and journals, as well as newspaper articles. Jones also relies on conduct manuals and advice books, including the sermons of Rev. James Fordyce, which Mr. Collins chose to read aloud to his cousins, at least until Lydia's yawns offended him. Jones has great fun pointing out the absurdity of some of their arguments, though a few times she seems to take them a bit personally, and a tone of irritation slips through, as in her description of the Rev. Thomas Gisborne, who "deprecated the 'rage of rambling' and brandished St Paul - woman must be a 'keeper at home' - as a big stick to beat wandering females back indoors."

Each of Jane Austen's heroines ends up in a companionate marriage, though each takes a different route and a different hero. Her parents' marriage was a companionate one, as were her brothers'. I had not considered the effect of her parents' marriage on her own view of marriage. I've always been more intrigued by the lack of strong mothers in Austen's books, given her close relationship with her own mother. But in her circle of family and friends, she had many different varieties of marriage to study. From them, Jones contends, she developed an understanding of marriage that combined practicality with romance:

No Jane Austen heroine marries for money: affection is always part of the equation - yet the recognition that romance alone would neither keep body and soul together nor sustain marital accord is a crucial element underpinning all of her writing.

At the same time, Austen recognized the toll that marriage could take on a woman, in constant child-bearing, in marital problems. But single women, particularly those who like Austen herself lacked financial resources, faced many difficulties and hardships, including the ridicule society expressed for "old maids." Jones argues, though, that "Jane Austen knew that for her, the prospect of becoming an old maid at last was her best chance of self-fulfillment," because it gave her the space, the time, to concentrate on her writing. As she told her family, "her books were her children."

Jane Austen and crime

Jane Austen & Crime, Susannah Fullerton

Jane Austen & Crime is one of those books that make me see Jane Austen and her works in a very different light.  Like Maggie Lane in Jane Austen and Food, or Irene Collins' Jane Austen and the Clergy, Susannah Fullerton explores an aspect of the Georgian period through Austen's life and her writings.  These books remind me that, as much as I enjoy the novels, the Letters, and the Minor Works, I don't know enough about the context in which she was was writing, the every-day things that made up her world and that inform the worlds of her novels.  Even more than the biographies of Jane Austen, these books enrich my reading of her books.

Before reading this book, the only crime I could think of in Austen's novels was the theft of turkeys in Emma.  I had read about her aunt Jane Leigh Perrot, who in 1799 was accused of stealing a piece of lace worth 20 shillings from a shop in Bath.  If convicted, she could have faced the death penalty, though it is likely she would have been sentenced to transportation instead, but fortunately she was found innocent.  A later Austen connection was not so lucky.  John Knatchbull, the brother-in-law of favorite niece Fanny Austen Knight, was hung in Sydney in 1844, for murder committed in the course of a robbery.  Fullerton doesn't tell us how this news impacted the Austen or Knatchbull families.  In 1811, Jane wrote to Cassandra, "I give you joy of our new nephew [Frank Austen's second son], & hope if he ever comes to be hanged, it will not be till we are too old to care about it."  By 1844, Jane had been dead more than 25 years; Cassandra would die the next year, perhaps before the news even reached England.

After introducing us to John Knatchbull, Fullerton goes on to a general discussion of crime in the Georgian period.  She then looks at several categories of crime, such as those against life and property, crimes of passion, social and Gothic crimes.  She ends with a discussion of punishment and the law.  She has chapters on specific crimes like murder and suicide (against life), adultery and elopement (passion), and poaching and dueling (social).  Much of the information was new to me, and the details are fascinating.  I had no idea that in Austen's time, half the prisons in England were privately owned and operated.  Among the owners were the Bishops of Ely and Durham, the Dukes of Portland and Leeds.  From the chapter on poaching I learned that there were strict controls on who could hunt game, including a property qualification that essentially limited shooting to the rich and landed.  There was also a qualification for owning sporting dogs, as well as a dog tax.  In Sense and Sensibility, Willoughby's pointer is actually a status symbol, as are Charles Musgrove's dogs in Persuasion.  Fullerton argues that Austen disagreed with the draconian laws against poaching, which cut the poor off from an important food supply.  She points to Mr. Rushton in Sense and Sensibility, who is fanatical about catching poachers, suggesting that by making "the most stupid character [Austen] ever created" the anti-poaching poster child, Austen was actually signalling her disagreement with his ideas.

Fullerton also argues that Austen dealt with crime much more lightly in the Minor Works and in her early letters, while the novels and later letters show a more thoughtful approach.

 "As a young writer she employed elopements for comic purposes - the juvenalia are full of hilarious elopements . . . The more mature Jane Austen however, puts eloping couples through serious tests of character . . . Sexual immorality and the deliberate flouting of social rules are no longer funny and characters can no longer escape unpunished after such behaviour."

I particularly enjoyed Fullerton's frequent citations and quotes from the Minor Works, many of which were unfamiliar to me - and really funny.  In the section on elopements, she quotes from "A Collection of Letters" one from a "Miss Jane," who confesses to a friend that after eloping she kept her marriage a secret even after her husband's death:  "My Children, two sweet Boys & a Girl, who had constantly resided with my Father & me, passing with him & with every one as the Children of a Brother (tho' I had ever been an only child) . . ."  Clearly, it's time for a re-read of the juvenalia, though Fullerton's book makes me want to re-read all the novels, looking for crime and the criminals.  As she reminds us in her conclusion, "The woman who once wrote: 'Pictures of perfection make me sick and wicked' very deliberately included crime in her fictional world."

Jane Austen's letters

Jane Austen's Letters, Deirdre Le Faye, ed.

Reading Irene Collins' book Jane Austen and the Clergy made me want to re-read Jane Austen's letters.  As I mentioned in my post about the book, Collins quotes frequently from the letters.  Many of the quotes were familiar, and brief as they were, they still seemed to speak in Austen's voice.

I've read Deirdre Le Faye's edition of the letters several times over the past few years.  The first time was rather frustrating, especially reading Jane's letters to her sister Cassandra, which make up the bulk of the book.  They are almost telegraphic in style, and I felt they were in a code to which I had no key.  I was also concerned with checking every reference note, trying to keep track of the many, many people mentioned in the letters, as well as the locations.  As I have read more about Austen and her family, and have figured out the more important people in her world, I can read the letters with less effort and more enjoyment.

I have now accepted that I will never fully decode the letters to Cassandra.  In that telegraphic style, Jane's brief sentences and one-liners conveyed a world of meaning to her sister, based on their shared lives.  In these letters especially is a world of context that is lost to us, and perhaps more importantly, a continuing conversation, of which we catch only snatches.  Jane noted this herself:

"I have now attained the true art of letter-writing, which we are always told, is to express on paper exactly what one would say to the same person by word of mouth; I have been talking to you as fast as I could the whole of this letter" (L.29, 1801).

I also have a strong feeling that Jane, the younger sister, was constantly trying to make Cassandra laugh, or to spark a reaction out of her.  To my mind, this accounts for some of the lines that seem heartless or in questionable taste, the ones that are always quoted to show that Jane Austen wasn't a meek little spinster, like "Mrs Hall of Sherbourn was brought to bed yesterday of a dead child . . . I suppose she happened unawares to look at her husband" (L.10, 1798).  These particularly waspish comments appear more in the early letters, and they are more in keeping with the broad humor of some of the Early Works.

I noted this time the very different tones in the letters to her brother Frank, to their family friend and adopted sister Martha Lloyd, and to her nieces and nephew.  Though there are of course family references and jokes, they seem almost formal in comparison to the letters to Cassandra.  Letters to her niece Anna, regarding a novel that Anna was writing, amount to almost a tutorial on writing fiction, giving us Jane's views on characterization, location, and plot:

"You are now collecting your People delightfully, getting them exactly into such a spot as is the delight of my life; - 3 or 4 Families in a Country Village is the very thing to work on" (L.107, 1814).

I love the references to Jane's own work:

"I would not let Martha read First Impressions again upon any account, & am very glad that I did not leave it in your power. -She is very cunning, but I see through her design; -she means to publish it from Memory, & one more perusal must enable her to do so" (L.21, 1799).

"My greatest anxiety at present is that this 4th work [Emma] shd not disgrace what was good in the others. But on this point I will do myself the justice to declare that whatever may be my wishes for its' success, I am very strongly haunted by the idea that to those Readers who have preferred P&P. it will appear inferior in Wit, & to those who have preferred MP. very inferior in good Sense"  (L132(D), 1815).

Le Faye includes at the end of the book the letters that Cassandra Austen wrote to her niece Fanny Austen Knight, describing Jane's last days and her death, sharing her grief at the loss of "a treasure, such a Sister, such a friend as never can have been surpassed."  Cassandra was the first editor of her sister's letters, physically removing parts of letters and apparently destroying others entirely, possibly because they contained frank discussions of family members.  Though we can regret what Cassandra destroyed, in reading these letters I am so grateful for what she retained, and for this marvelous view into Jane Austen's mind and heart.

On a side note, this is my 100th post.  Somehow that doesn't seem possible, and then somehow it feels like I've been doing this forever.  Thank you for reading along.

Jane Austen and the clergy

Jane Austen and the Clergy, Irene Collins

As I've mentioned before, my TBR pile has several strata, one of which is books about Jane Austen.  Like many Janeites, I now own far more books about her than by her.  I really enjoy the ones that focus on an aspect of her life or of her novels, and Jane Austen and the Clergy does both.  It is not a biography of Austen, though it covers the facts of her life.  It places her life in what Irene Collins argues is its most basic context:

"The life in which [Austen] felt thoroughly at home was that of the country clergy. Biographers usually mention as important the fact that her father, two of her brothers and four of her cousins were clergymen, but none so far has demonstrated the extent to which she was involved in their situation and way of thinking."

The book is organized topically, with chapters on Austen's clerical connections, the training of clergymen, their parishes, rectories, and income.  I particularly enjoyed the chapters on patronage and on the parson's wife.  During Austen's lifetime, landowners like Colonel Brandon and Lady Catherine de Bourgh controlled the appointments to at least 5,500 churches.  Most of Jane's clerical connections, starting with her father, received appointments from family and friends.  Jane's sister Cassandra could not marry her clergyman fiancé, Tom Fowle, until he got a good parish from his family's patron.  While waiting, Tom accepted a position as a chaplain on a military expedition to the West Indies from the same patron; he died there of yellow fever.  Cassandra never married, though she would have made an excellent clergyman's wife, in Collins' view.

Collins argues that there has been little serious study of the Church of England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in part because of a lack of primary sources.  In exploring her topics, she draws from the few contemporary sources as well as later historical works.  But she also draws from Austen's life, letters, and novels:

"Parsons' daughters were thick on the ground at the time, but few have left as many of their own writings or been honoured with as many reminiscences by friends and relatives as she has. The evidence provided by this material is worthy of at least as much attention as the journals of the handful of contemporary parsons . . .  much quoted by historians."

It was interesting to see how Collins weaves these different sources into her history.  I really enjoyed seeing Austen's clergymen used as examples, and also put into the context of the real Church of England at the time.  Characters like Mr. Collins and Mr. Elton are so memorable, and stand in such contrast to Henry Tilney or Charles Hayter.  Though Austen may have made the occasional error in her writing, like having apple trees bloom out of season, she made none in the clerical parts of her books.

The last chapter, "Worship and Belief," considers Austen's own faith and religious practices.  An appendix includes three prayers written by Austen and probably used for family worship on Sunday evenings.  I have read these before in other books, and I find them touching in their pleas for forgiveness and anxiety to do better tomorrow.

My only quibble with this book is that Collins seems to assume a familiarity with the Church of England, using terms like "rector" and "vicar" without explaining the difference, as she does also with "living" and "benefice."  In a discussion of tithes, Collins explains that

"In almost half the parishes of England the 'great tithes' (levied on cereal crops such as wheat and oats) had been 'impropriated' by a layman, leaving only the 'small tithes' (on produce such as lamb, chickens, fruit and eggs) for the parish priest . . .  Whoever held the great tithes was technically the rector of the parish. He might himself be a clergyman, willing to carry out the spiritual duties of the benefice; if not, he must appoint a vicar or a curate."

I had not known this, I'd never heard the word "impropriation" before, and now I want to know more: how did one go about impropriating the great tithes, and how did that practice develop?  Was it passed on in families as an inheritance, or did each new generation have to impropriate for itself?

This was a very interesting and informative read, and when I meet Edmund Bertram or Edward Ferrars again, I will better understand them and their place in Jane Austen's world.