FACTS ABOUT JANE AUSTEN
G'day folks,
Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic
fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the
most widely read writers in English literature. This year marks the 240th
anniversary of Jane Austen's birth. Iris Lutz and Claire Bellanti of the Jane
Austen Society of North America review some interesting highlights of Austen's
life, career, and literary impact.
1.
Although she never married, Jane Austen
did become engaged -- for one night.
She
received and accepted a proposal of marriage on December 2, 1802, two weeks
before her 27 birthday. According to family tradition, Jane Austen and her
sister were visiting longtime friends Alethea and Catherine Bigg at Manydown
Park when their friends’ brother, Harris Bigg-Wither, made the offer.
Five-and-a-half years younger than Jane, Harris was, according to the author’s
niece Caroline Austen, “very plain in person -- awkward, & even uncouth in
manner . . . I conjecture that the advantages he could offer, & her
gratitude for his love, & her long friendship with his family, induced my
Aunt to decide that she would marry him . . . .”
Jane
Austen changed her mind overnight, however, and refused the proposal the next
morning. The awkwardness of the situation caused her to leave Manydown
immediately. We can only speculate what Jane Austen’s thoughts were about the
proposal. Perhaps she initially accepted because the marriage would have given
her financial security and the means to assist her parents and sister. And,
perhaps she changed her mind because she believed – as she later wrote to a
niece considering a marriage of convenience – that “nothing can be compared to
the misery of being bound without Love.”
Fortunately for her readers, she chose
to remain single and was able to focus on writing rather than running a
household and raising children.
2.
Jane Austen continued to imagine how the lives
of her characters evolved long after she finished a novel.
In A
Memoir of Jane Austen, her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh wrote,
“She would, if asked, tell us many little particulars about the subsequent
career of some of her people.” For example, Anne Steele, Lucy’s silly and
vulgar sister in Sense and
Sensibility, did not catch Dr. Davies after all. And, after the
close of Pride and Prejudice,
Kitty Bennet eventually married a clergyman near Pemberley, while Mary ended up
with a clerk who worked for her Uncle Philips. Some of the most interesting
revelations, however, related to Emma.
Mr. Woodhouse not only survived Emma’s marriage to Mr. Knightly, but also kept
his daughter and son-in-law living at Hartfield for two years. Deirdre Le Faye
has also noted in Jane Austen:
A Family Record that "According to a less well-known
tradition, the delicate Jane Fairfax lived only another nine or ten years after
her marriage to Frank Churchill."
3.
The surnames of a number of Austen’s characters
can be found within the prominent and wealthy Wentworth family of Yorkshire --
which also happens to intersect with Jane Austen’s own family tree.
Her mother, Cassandra Austen, née Leigh, was
the great grandniece of the first Duke of Chandos (1673-1744) and Cassandra Willoughby. Her mother
was also connected to Thomas, Second Baron Leigh of Stoneleigh (1652-1710), who
was married twice: first to Eleanor
Watson and then to Anne
Wentworth, daughter of the first Earl of Strafford.
As
the late Professor Donald Greene pointed out, “When the snobbish Sir Walter
Elliot says of the hero of Persuasion,
‘Mr. Wentworth was nobody … quite unconnected, nothing to do with the Strafford
family. One wonders how the names of many of our nobility become so common,’ it
adds to the piquancy of the satire that Jane Austen’s family was in fact
‘connected’ with the real-life Strafford Wentworths.”
Austen also used names from the Wentworth genealogy tree while
writing Pride and
Prejudice. Her hero Mr. Darcy, the nephew of
an earl, bears the names of two wealthy and powerful branches of the Wentworth
family: Fitzwilliam (as in the Earls Fitzwilliam of Wentworth Woodhouse, in
Yorkshire) and D’Arcy.
Professor Janine Barchas of
the University of Texas at Austin and author of Matters
of Fact in Jane Austen has also
noted that Austen used yet another Wentworth family name in the novel Emma:
“In the thirteenth century, a Robert Wentworth married a rich heiress by the
name of Emma Wodehouse.”
4. Jane
Austen took her writing very seriously.
She began writing stories, plays and poetry
when she was 12 years old. Most of her “Juvenilia,” as the material she wrote
in her youth is called, was in the comic vein. She wrote a parody of textbook
histories, The History of England
… by a partial, prejudiced and ignorant historian, when she was 16 years old.
She also wrote parodies of the romantic novels of “sensibility” that were
popular in her day. Austen’s family members read aloud and performed plays for
each other, and she learned about writing from these activities and the
comments her family made about her own efforts. By the age of 23, Austen had
written first drafts of the novels that later became Sense
and Sensibility, Pride
and Prejudice and Northanger
Abbey.
From
the letters she wrote to her sister, Cassandra, and other family members, one
can see that Jane Austen was proud of her writing. She enjoyed discussing her
latest work, sharing news about a novel’s progress at the printer, and offering
advice on the craft of writing to other aspiring authors in the family. She
also carefully tracked comments made by family members and friends about Mansfield Park and Emma and referred to Pride and Prejudice as her “own
darling child.” Jane Austen continued writing throughout her adult life until
just before she died in July of 1817.
5.
Jane Austen’s life was not limited to a
sheltered country existence.
On the surface, her life seems to have been
quiet and secluded; she was born in a small country village and lived there for
25 years. Her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh published A Memoir of Jane Austen in
1869, which reinforced the image that she was a demure, quiet maiden aunt in
the best Victorian tradition. However, she led a very active life with travel
and social contacts of many types. Through her family and friends she learned a
great deal about the world around her.
Jane Austen frequently stayed with her brother Henry in London,
where she regularly attended plays and art exhibits. Her brother Edward was
adopted by wealthy cousins, eventually inheriting their estates in Kent
(Godmersham) and Hampshire (Chawton) and taking their name (Knight). Over a
period of 15 years, Austen visited Edward’s Godmersham estate for months at a
time, mixing with his fashionable and wealthy friends and enjoying the
privileged life of the landed gentry. These experiences are reflected in all of
her fiction.
Jane Austen was also well
aware of the horrors of the French Revolution and the effect of the Napoleonic
Wars on the people and the economy of Britain. Her cousin’s husband was
guillotined during the French Revolution, and her brothers Francis (Frank) and
Charles were officers in the Royal Navy, serving on ships around the world
during the conflict. Sir Francis William Austen (one year older than Jane)
advanced through the ranks and was eventually knighted. He was promoted to
Admiral of Fleet in 1860. Rear Admiral Charles John Austen (four years younger
than Jane) had his own command and was serving in North America by 1810. From
correspondence and frequent visits with these two brothers and their families
she learned much about the Navy, which she incorporated into Mansfield
Park and Persuasion.
6.
Men read Jane Austen, too.
Jane
Austen’s novels are sometimes viewed as “chick-lit” romances, leading some men
to think they wouldn’t enjoy reading them. But, Jane Austen has always had male
admirers. Her books are not just about romance; they have a serious
instructional purpose clothed in novel form. Her believable characters,
realistic plots, moral themes, comedy, and dry wit appeal to both men and
women.
British
Prime Minister Harold Macmillan admitted to reading Austen’s novels, and Winston Churchill
credited her with helping him win World War II. Rudyard Kipling
read Jane Austen aloud to his wife and daughter each evening in an effort to
raise their spirits after his son, fighting in WWI, was reported missing and
believed dead. Even after the war,
Kipling returned to Jane Austen with “The Janeites,” a short
story about a group of British artillery soldiers in WWI who bonded through
their shared appreciation of the novels of Jane Austen.
And one of her male contemporaries,
Sir Walter Scott, praised her writing in his journal: “Also read again, and for
the third time at least, Miss Austen’s very finely written novel of Pride and Prejudice. That
young lady had a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and
characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met
with.”
Clancy's comment: I must say I really had to make myself read Pride and Prejudice whilst in school.
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