Jane Austen and Her Times

by G. E. Mitton

The effect that Miss Burney’s stories had upon contemporary readers may be judged from a letter of Mr. Twining, a country clergyman of education and standing, who wrote in 1782 to her father, Dr. Burney: “I need not tell you that I gobbled up Cecilia as soon as I could get it from my library. I never knew such a piece of work made with a book in my life. It has drawn iron tears down cheeks that were never wetted with pity before; it has made novel readers of callous old maiden ladies, who have not for years received pleasure from anything but scandal. Judge, then, what effect it has had upon the young and the tender hearted! I know two amiable sisters at Colchester, sensible and accomplished women, who were found blubbering at such a rate one morning! The tale had drawn them on till near the hour of an engagement to dinner, which they were actually obliged to put off, because there was not time to recover their red eyes and swelled noses.”

Miss Burney’s works are real enough, and not lightly to be dismissed; she understood the human heart, and especially the heart of a girl, her sentimental side is perfect, but beyond that she ceases to claim anything out of the common. Her society types are types only; the gay young man, a rake, but charming at heart, whose excesses were but the wildness of an ill-brought-up youth, had been drawn many times before. When she goes beyond affairs of the heart she at once caricatures; her Captain and Mrs. Duval are gross and overdrawn even according to the manners of the age.

Miss Burney preceded Jane Austen by several years; Evelina was published in 1778, when the sister-author was but three years old; Cecilia came out four years later, and Camilla in 1796, the same year in which Pride and Prejudice was written, though it was not published until 1813. There is no doubt that Jane Austen owed much to her rival and predecessor, but her gifts were incomparably the greater. Miss Burney’s cleverness consisted in the portrayal of feeling in a young girl’s sensitive mind, her stories are stories of fashion and incident; Jane Austen’s are of country life, and simple everyday scenes. The one had its vogue, and, as an account of contemporary manners, the books have their value and delight now, especially Evelina, which stands high above its successors, each one of which is poorer than the preceding one; but none are to be compared with any of Jane Austen’s novels, which are for all time.

“Miss Edgeworth indeed draws characters and details conversations such as occur in real life with a spirit of fidelity not to be surpassed; but her stories are most romantically improbable, all the important events in them being brought about by most providential coincidences.” (Archbishop Whateley.)

It was a transition age from the conventional to the natural; as in the admiration of landscape, the love for natural gardens, the gradual disappearance of the formal and empty compliment to which women had hitherto been treated, we find taste changing, so in literature the conventional was giving way to the natural. Fielding and Smollett had broken down the barriers in this respect, they had depicted life as it was, not as convention had decreed it should be, hence their gigantic success; but the life they saw and rendered was the life of a man of the world, with all its roughness and brutality. Jane Austen was the first to draw exactly what she saw around her in a humdrum country life, and to discard all incident, all adventure, all grotesque types, for perfect simplicity. She little understood what she was doing, but herein lies her wonderful power, she was a pioneer. Jane’s writing had nothing in common with Mrs. Radcliffe, whose style is mimicked in Northanger Abbey. It had absolutely no adventures. The fall of Louisa on the Cobb is perhaps the most thrilling episode in all the books, yet by virtue of its entire simplicity, its naturalness, its gaiety, her writing never fails to interest. Perhaps the most remarkable tribute to her genius lies in the fact that, though her books are simplicity itself, dealing with the love-stories of artless girls, they are read and admired not only by girls and women, but more especially by men of exceptional mental calibre. It has been said that the appreciation of them is a test of intellect.

Though her novels are novels of sentiment, they never drift into sickly sentiment, they are wholesome and healthy throughout. With tragedy she had nothing to do; her work is comedy, pure comedy from beginning to end. And as comedies well done are the most recreative of all forms of reading, it is no wonder that, slight as are her plots, hardly to be considered, minute as are the incidents, the attention of readers should ever be kept alive. In all her books marriage is the supreme end; the meeting, the obstacles, the gradual surmounting of these, and the happy ending occur with the regularity of clockwork. And yet each one differs from all the others, and she is never monotonous. Every single book ends well, and it is a striking fact that there is not a death in one of them. When, after a slight improvement, Marianne, in Sense and Sensibility, grows worse—

“The repose of the latter [Marianne] grew more and more disturbed; and her sister who watched with unremitting attention her continual change of posture, and heard the frequent but inarticulate sounds of complaint which passed her lips, was most wishing to rouse her from so painful a slumber, when Marianne, awakened by some accidental noise in the house, started hastily up, and, with feverish wildness cried out, ‘Is mamma coming?’... Hour after hour passed away in sleepless pain and delirium on Marianne’s side, and in the most cruel anxiety on Elinor’s,” we know that in most books we should expect the worst, but with Jane Austen we are sure that it will all turn out well, as indeed it does, and our feelings are not unduly harrowed.

One point which is obvious in all the books is the utter lack of conversation, except about the merest trivialities, among women. In Sense and Sensibility it is remarked of a dinner given by John Dashwood that “no poverty of any kind, except of conversation, appeared.... When the ladies withdrew to the drawing-room after dinner, this poverty was particularly evident, for the gentlemen had supplied the discourse with some variety—the variety of politics, enclosing land, and breaking horses—but then it was all over, and one subject only engaged the ladies till coffee came in, which was the comparative height of Harry Dashwood, and Lady Middleton’s second son, William, who were nearly of the same age ... the two mothers though each really convinced that her own son was the taller, politely decided in favour of the other. The two grandmothers with not less partiality, but more sincerity, were equally earnest in support of their own descendant.”

The Christian names of that date were plain, and, for women, strictly limited in number; it detracts something from a heroine to be called Fanny Price or Anne Elliot; and Emma Woodhouse and Elizabeth Bennet are little better; Elinor and Marianne Dashwood are the most fancy names applied by Jane to any of her heroines.

Another point which may be noticed in the novels is that the outward forms of religion, beyond the fact of a man’s being a clergyman, are never mentioned, and that on all religious matters Jane is silent; but this does not signify that she was not herself truly religious at heart, for we have the testimony of those who knew her to the contrary, particularly that of her brother Henry in his preface prefixed to the first edition of Northanger Abbey, published after her death. But though actual religion does not appear in her pages, the lessons that the books teach are none the less enforced; had she been taking for her sole text the merit of unselfishness, she could not have done more, or indeed half so much, to further the spread of that virtue. To read the books straight through one after the other is to feel the petty meanness of self-striving, and the small gain that lies therein. The talk of the mammas, such as Mrs. Bennet, who are perfectly incapable of seeing their neighbours’ interest should it clash with their own; the picture of the egregious Mrs. Norris with her grasping at the aspect of generosity and self-sacrifice, without any intention of putting herself to any inconvenience thereby; the weakness of such characters as Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility, who allow themselves to drift along the lines of least resistance without a thought of the after misery they may cause: each and all of these are more potent than a volume of sermons.