Jane Austen and Her Times

by G. E. Mitton

Another instance is in the case of Lady Middleton, who obviously had not married either for love or for suitability, but only for convenience; she is a cold woman, incapable of passion in the usual sense, but her nature breaks out in an adoration of her children which is neither for their benefit nor for hers. We see this again and again in real life; it is the cold, unloving wives who idolise their children because they are theirs, a feeling which is not real love but a kind of extended selfishness, an instinct which, in the case of animals, finds expression in licking their young. The books abound in similar true touches, put in apparently without effort, and almost without thought. When one considers that out of the mass of novels of that age, then, as now, circulated and read by the aid of libraries, such books as Hannah More’s Cœlebs in Search of a Wife and Mackenzie’s Man of Feeling and Man of the World were read and praised almost universally as being far superior to the usual run of novels, one gains some idea of the poverty of matter and manner that must have disgraced the ruck. Both these “masterpieces,” so acclaimed as they were issued, are the dullest, driest stuff, without a gleam of humour, any attempt at a story, or any vivacity of expression or character. The general style is, “Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So are to-day expected. Mr. So-and-So is a pious, virtuous man, I am afraid I cannot say so much for his wife,” and thereupon follows a long verbose description of the two, who when they appear on the scene do and say nothing to indicate any characteristics, but are mere dummies, pegs on which to hang the discourse that precedes their entry. A favourite device for filling up the pages that must be filled, is the narration by some secondary character of all that has ever befallen them since their birth. Even Miss Burney is not free from this; in Cecilia at least the characters break into narration as easily as some persons do into song. With this kind of stuff to set the standard, the miracle of Jane’s books becomes more admirable than ever, for anyone who has ever attempted to write knows how exceedingly difficult it is to resist the influence of the conventional canons in vogue.

MISS BURNEY (MADAME D’ARBLAY)

Jane Austen seems to have been also as far ahead of her time in the use of simple direct English as she was in construction and effect. She is at least a generation in advance of average contemporary letters and journals, in which the phrasing is often ponderous; the sonorous roll of heavily-weighted sentences in the Johnsonian style, then so much admired, does not ever seem to have occurred to her.

Yet even in her lively, crisp narration there are a few phrases that strike on a modern ear as unaccustomed. Such is the use of the active for the passive tense, “tea was carrying round”; the elision of the final “n” in the infinitive, “but she said he seemed very angry at being spoke to”; the use of adjectives for adverbs (often reproved as a form of slang in the present day), “she must feel she has been acting wrong.” The general use of men’s surnames by women occurs in the earlier books, but we see an indication of change in this respect in the passage of Jane’s lifetime, for in Emma it is considered vulgar of Mrs. Elton to address Mr. Knightley without the prefix. There are little ways of expressing things that are not now in vogue, men are “gentlemanlike,” ladies “amiable,” also “genteel and elegant”; one phrase which has now descended to the realm of the lady’s-maid was then quite good English, “so peculiarly the lady in it.” “Excessively” takes the place of our “awfully,” we hear continually such expressions as “monstrous obliging,” “prodigious pretty,” and “vastly civil.”

We have not hitherto noticed Miss Edgeworth’s, Miss Ferrier’s, or Miss Mitford’s work, though they are generally considered as belonging to the clever group of women writers who illumined the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, because in this chapter we are dealing only with Jane Austen’s own novels, not with contemporary writers except as they affected her, and at the time when she wrote her first books none of these writers had published anything, and could not therefore possibly have influenced her. Miss Edgeworth’s first novel, Castle Rackrent, came out in 1800, and Miss Ferrier’s Marriage in 1818, after Jane was in her grave.

Jane Austen’s own novels were written at such widely differing times, and the interval between writing and publication was so great in some cases, that the subject suffers from some confusion in the minds of those who have not looked into the question closely. As the order of writing is everything, and the order of publication a mere accident, we will take them as they were written. This was in two groups of three each. Pride and Prejudice was begun in October 1796 and finished the following August; Sense and Sensibility was begun in 1797 and finished in 1798, in which year Northanger Abbey was also written. Then there was a long gap, in which she produced only a fragment to be noted hereafter, and not until 1812 was Mansfield Park written; four years later, in 1816, came Emma, quickly followed by Persuasion. Of all these the first to be published was Sense and Sensibility in 1811, and the dates of publication will thereafter be noted in chronological order in the book as it progresses.

Besides these two distinct groups of three novels each, there is another of the unfinished fragments, which never became real stories. These consist of Lady Susan, a comedy in the form of letters, which is ended up hastily with a few paragraphs of explanation; and The Watsons, an unfinished tale, of which the end was told by Cassandra Austen from remarks that her sister had made. Both of these are included, as has been said, in Mr. Austen-Leigh’s Memoir, and it seems a pity that they should not form a volume in one of the neat series of Jane Austen’s novels now published, as to a real Austenite they contain much that is valuable, and are full of characteristic touches. Of the complete novels Pride and Prejudice is admittedly the best; there are several candidates for the second place, but the superiority of Pride and Prejudice is unquestioned. It was the earliest of the books written, under the title First Impressions, and as such it is referred to in Jane’s correspondence: “I do not wonder at your wanting to read First Impressions again, so seldom as you have gone through it, and that so long ago;” this was to her sister in 1799, and later on she adds, with the playfulness never long wanting, “I would not let Martha read First Impressions again upon any account, and am very glad I did not leave it in your power. She is very cunning, but I saw through her design, she means to publish it from memory, and one more perusal must enable her to do it.”

There has been great diversity of opinion as to the relative merit of the remaining books, but the concensus of opinion seems to declare for Emma, the last but one in point of time, which shows that the author’s genius had not abated. This book is totally different from the first, it lacks the sparkle and verve which runs all through Pride and Prejudice, but it has perhaps more depth and is something softer and more finished also.