Up from Steventon
By
Robert W. Carton

Presented at a joint meeting of
The Fortnightly of Chicago and
The Chicago Literary Club
March 7, 2003

Summary

Jane Austen (1775 -- 1817) was a major English novelist. Despite having had only three years of formal education she was able to write six novels about the society of Regency England which stand out for their tight construction, knowledge of human nature, and perfect style. In this way she was able to extract excellence from her own limited background and from the mundane lives of the persons about whom she wrote.

The family was ordinary, even mundane. They lived in Hampshire in southern England during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The father was a rural clergyman. Apparently he was a good man, and good-natured. But there seems to have been nothing that might make him stand out from hundreds of other rectors of the Church of England in an era when that Church was distinguished by its support of the existing social order rather than by signs of spiritual exaltation. His family consisted of his wife and eight children, six boys and two girls. The children were not unusual with one exception, the younger daughter, Jane. We are talking, of course, about the great Jane Austen, who succeeded in writing novels which changed the course of British literature and which continue to delight us today. We want to look at the background from which she emerged and at the nature of her achievement.

Jane Austen was born on December 17, 1775, the daughter of the Rev. George Austen and his wife, Cassandra Leigh. They lived in Steventon, a tiny village in Hampshire, England, where her father was rector of the Anglican Parish and Church

When we say that Jane's origins and surroundings were "mundane" we don't mean that they were oppressive. Rather, the conditions under which the Austens lived were customary for the time. Their home was a rectory. They strove to maintain themselves on a limited income of 300 Pounds a year, much as did the families of rural clergymen throughout England in that period of the late eighteenth century. Despite their modest circumstances the Austens were members of the gentry, socializing with other clergy similar situated and with the local squires. That meant that the boys in the family had to be prepared for the only occupations suitable for them: the Anglican clergy, the law, or posts as officers in the army or navy. Two of the sons, James and Henry, were sent off to Oxford. Two more, Frank and Charles, early showed an interest in the Navy and were entered as cadets at the Portsmouth Naval Academy. Jane's brother Edward found favor in the eyes of rich relatives, the Knights, and ultimately was adopted by them to become Edward Knight and a country squire. Later in the story he was of great help to his mother and sisters. The sixth son, George, had early shown signs of mental insufficiency. He was packed off at the age of six to a neighboring farm and was not heard of again until his death in 1838 at the age of 72.

That left the two daughters. When Jane was seven years old and her sister Cassandra nine they were sent to Mrs. Cawley's School for Girls at Oxford. This experiment was not successful. The students and their instructors came down with typhoid fever. The girls were brought home seriously ill and only slowly recovered.

Very early Jane developed a deep affection for her sister, which was reciprocated and which lasted until Jane's death. When Jane was nine plans were made to send Cassandra to the Abbey School in Reading, a market town close to Steventon. Jane would not hear of her sister going off to boarding school without her. As her mother said about the two girls, "If Cassey were to have her head cut off, Jane would insist on having hers cut off too." So off they both went. The instruction at the Abbey School was not demanding. There were two or three hours of lessons each morning. The students spent the rest of their time gossiping or gazing out the windows. In good weather they walked in the park. At that time in England girls in their circumstances were not expected to master the classical education offered their brothers. Rather they were encouraged to learn how to paint, to play the piano, and to speak a little French. At the age of eleven Jane was brought back home from the Abbey School. Her formal education was at an end. It had totaled three years in undemanding schools. From then on Jane Austen lived in rural southern England. Initially the household consisted of her father, mother, and sister, as well as herself. After her father's death the three women lived together until Jane's death from Addison's disease in 1817 at the age of forty-one.

The question is: How did this girl, with almost no formal education, and living a life sharply circumscribed geographically and socially, write novels which we admire today for their purity of style and their profound knowledge of human nature? At least part of the answer lies in acknowledgement of the reality of genius. How otherwise can we explain Mozart or Shakespeare or Goethe? This mysterious quality of genius can be an underlying force behind excellence arising from the mundane. Let us look to see how in Jane's case her genius broke through the crust of her surroundings and allowed her to become a major artist.

So, at age eleven Jane was back in the rectory in Steventon, with no discernable occupation other than to grow up, get married, and raise children of her own. How did she occupy her time? For one thing, Jane liked to read and she had free access to her father's rather considerable library. Almost immediately after returning home she started writing. Much of this material has survived in three manuscript notebooks: Volume the First, Volume the Second and Volume the Third. They contain plays, verses, short novels and other prose. Especially she developed a fine nose for the pretentious. British fiction in the late eighteenth Century included such novels as Samuel Richardson's Sir Charles Grandson. Jane enjoyed making fun of this book, turning Richardson's sentimental moral episodes into comic sketches to be acted out in family gatherings at the Rectory. She had an irresistible impulse to deflate the solemn wind-baggary of Richardson's style.

Jane could not resist mocking revered historical figures. During this period of adolescence she wrote a History of England in which all the usual stereotypes were turned upside down. Thus King Richard III was presented as a "very respectable man" and Queen Elizabeth was called "a disgrace to humanity," a "pest of society" and "a deceitful betrayer." Jane liked puncturing balloons.

She also liked social life. She and her sister were called "two of the prettiest girls in Hampshire." The record shows that both of them attended in balls in the neighboring manor houses and towns, where they met members of socially compatible families.

In 1795, when Jane was nineteen years old, she started work on a novel about two sisters with opposite temperaments. It was originally called Elinor and Marianne, after the two heroines, but later was transformed into Sense and Sensibility. Ultimately it became the first of the novels to be published - by Egerton in November 1811, sixteen years after it had been written. The failure to bring this novel to publication promptly did not deter Jane. At the age of 21 she had finished work on the first draft of Pride and Prejudice. Her father was so taken by P&P that he offered it to a London publisher, Cadell, who promptly refused to review it. In this same period she worked on the third of her early novels, Northanger Abbey. She had modestly better luck with a publisher this time. Richard Crosby in London paid 10 pounds for the manuscript but never brought it to publication.

In 1801, when Jane was 25, the Austen family left Steventon and moved first to temporary lodgings in Bath and then, following Reverend Austen's death, to Southampton. Finally, in 1809, Jane and her mother and sister settled in a cottage provided them by her brother Edward in Chawton, another small Hampshire village, and there she lived until her death from Addison's disease in 1817. Jane had found herself unable to write productively during the Bath/Southampton period, but following the return to rural Hampshire she enjoyed a second period of productivity and produced her three final novels, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion. While settled in Chawton she finally achieved the recognition she deserved. Sense and Sensibility was published in 1811, Pride and Prejudice in 1813, Mansfield Park in 1814, and Emma in 1815. Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published after her death. All were commercial successes from the outset. Pride and Prejudice remained the favorite with the public, as it has up to the present time. During Jane's lifetime the novels appeared anonymously. However, her brother Henry was incapable of keeping a secret and the authorship of these books became widely known. Sir Walter Scott wrote a long complimentary review of Emma in the Quarterly Review for March 1816. On a visit to London during this period the Prince Regent learned that she was in town and ordered his librarian, the Reverend James Clark, to wait on her and show her every attention. Jane was pleased, although in a letter to her sister several years before she had referred to His Highness as "a great scoundrel." By the time of her death at age 41 she was widely recognized as an important writer and one of the masters of British fiction.

To illustrate Jane Austen's excellence, let's look at her last novel, Persuasion, which was published after her death, this time with an acknowledgement of the name of the author. Perhaps you have read Persuasion. If you haven't, perhaps I can persuade you to do so. It's as bright, as tightly constructed, and as readable as anything she ever wrote. Since it was written in Jane's second burst of creativity, approximately nineteen years after her work on Pride & Prejudice, its qualities show that her first novels were not accidents but rather early products of a life endowed with literary genius. Typically, Persuasion deals with the small group dynamics operating within a cluster of rather ordinary people: six families of neighbors and four other associated individuals in rural southern England in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. The story is simple. Seven years before the novel opens the nineteen year old Anne Elliott has fallen in love with and become engaged to marry a young naval officer, Commodore Frederick Wentworth. Anne's mother was dead, and she relied for guidance on her mother's best friend, Lady Russell. This personage persuaded Anne to break the engagement, reasoning that Commodore Wentworth was committed to a dangerous profession and had no independent fortune. Now, at the beginning of Persuasion Anne is still unmarried and still in love with Wentworth. She regrets bitterly her decision of seven years previously. In addition, as the author notes several times, she has lost her bloom -- whatever that means. What to do?!

As might be expected (since this is a novel) through a chain of circumstances, Wentworth reappears in the little Somerset village where they all live. He is now a rising Captain in the British Navy. A series of captures by ships under his command have made him a rich man, with a fortune of twenty thousand pounds, worth perhaps several million dollars in today's market. Initially he and Anne barely speak to each other. She is embarrassed and frightened; he is resentful and aware of the change in Anne's appearance. The book retails the steps by which these two good people draw closer to each other, until finally, in the next to last chapter, they recognize their love. Captain Wentworth breaks the ice with a letter to Anne: "I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope ." and more of the same. Then he leaves the room. The letter is left for Anne to read. Anne's reaction is typical for Jane Austen, "Such a letter was not soon to be recovered from. Half an hour's solitude and reflection might have tranquillized her; but the ten minutes only, which now passed before she was interrupted, with all the restraints of her situation, could do nothing towards tranquility." Anne is a smart girl. She quickly finds a way to say "yes," and the happy pair starts communicating. By the way, the presence of Captain Wentworth in the neighborhood and a little sea air have restored Anne's "bloom."

Jane Austen was the master of the short characterization. Here is how she deals with Anne's father, the baronet Sir Walter Elliot: "Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot's character; vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably handsome in his youth; and, at fifty-four, was still a very fine man. He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to the blessing of a baronetcy; and the Sir Walter Elliot, who united these gifts, was the constant object of his warmest respect and devotion."

The author was also a master of dialogue. In the following discussion Anne has attempted to warn her older sister, Elizabeth, of the danger to the family if an adventuress, the rather plain but insinuating widow, Mrs. Clay, is allowed to accompany Elizabeth and Sir Walter to Bath. Anne is concerned that Mrs. Clay may persuade Sir Walter to marry her and then run off with what is left of the family fortune. Here is Elizabeth's reply: "I think very differently," answered Elizabeth, shortly; "an agreeable manner may set off handsome features, but never alter plain ones. However, at any rate, as I have a great deal more at stake on this point than any body else can have, I think it is rather unnecessary of you to be advising me." So much for Elizabeth.

Jane Austen wrote from a culture of confidence. In the period in which she was active England was engaged in the Napoleonic Wars. The Duke of Wellington referred to Napoleon Bonaparte as "Boney" and defeated his armies on one battlefield after another. England was entering a century in which it would be the supreme power in Europe and the world. Jane Austen's novels reflect that confidence. They are realistic, totally honest, and devoid of cant. Unlike works by most of her contemporaries, they are effortlessly readable today. Additionally they are amusing. The language is wonderful. Every word in Pride & Prejudice or Persuasion is precious.

Her life was mundane in the sense of "ordinary". Who could be more mundane (in the sense of "worldly") than some of her clergymen, Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice or Mr. Elton in Emma? And yet from this ordinary life and these mundane people she was able to achieve a peak of creative excellence and to summon up characters and a world that continue to fascinate us even today.

Robert W. Carton

Bibliography -- Jane Austen

Books

Austen, Jane: Sense and Sensibility
London; published by Egerton 1811

Ibid. Pride and Prejudice
London; published by Egerton 1813

Ibid. Mansfield Park
London; published by Egerton 1814

Ibid. Emma
London; published by John Murray 1815

Ibid. Northanger Abbey
London; published by John Murray 1817

Ibid. Persuasion
London; published by John Murray 1817

Cecil, David: A portrait of Jane Austen
New York; Hill & Wang 1979

Nokes, David: Jane Austen, A Life
New York; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997

Shields, Carol: Jane Austen
New York; Viking, 2001

Articles

Encyclopedia Britannica: Jane Austen 1775 - 1817