With Jane Austen we reach the centre of our subject: the establishment of the Woman’s School, the final expression of domesticity. If not, perhaps, more essentially feminine than Fanny Burney, she is more womanly. The charming girlishness of Evelina has here matured into a grown-up sisterly attitude towards humanity, which, without being either quite worldly or at all pedantic, is yet artistically composed. Whether consciously or not, she has spoken—within her chosen province—the last word for all women for all time. There is no comment on life, no picture of manners, no detail of characterisation—either humorous or sympathetic—which a man could have expressed in these precise words. Woman is openly the centre of her world; and, if men are more to her than fireside pets, she is only concerned with them as an element (or rather the chief element) in the life of women.
The comparison, already instituted, between the man-made “feminines” of Pamela and Clarissa Harlowe with Miss Burney’s “young ladies,” may be applied to Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse with added emphasis in every particular. The “woman” in them is more modern, nearer the heart of humanity, but still spontaneously of that sex.
“To say the truth,” confesses a contemporary reviewer, “we suspect one of Miss Austen’s great merits in our eyes to be the insight she gives us into the peculiarities of female character. Authoresses can scarcely ever forget the esprit de corps—can scarcely ever forget that they are authoresses. They seem to feel a sympathetic shudder at exposing naked a female mind. Elles se peignent en buste, and leave the mysteries of womanhood to be described by some interloping male, like Richardson or Marivaux, who is turned out before he has seen half the rites, and is forced to spin from his own conjectures the rest. Now from this fault Miss Austen is free. Her heroines are what one knows women must be, though one never can get them to acknowledge it. As liable ‘to fall in love first,’ as anxious to attract the attention of an agreeable man, as much taken with a striking manner, or a handsome face, as unequally gifted with constancy and firmness, as liable to have their affections biased by convenience or fashion, as we, on our part, will admit men to be. As some illustration of what we mean, we refer our readers to the conversation between Miss Crawford and Fanny (vol. iii. p. 102); Fanny’s meeting with her father (p. 199); her reflection after reading Edmund’s letter (p. 246); her happiness (good, and heroine though she be), in the midst of the miseries of all her friends, when she finds that Edmund has decidedly broken with her rival; feelings, all of them, which, under the influence of strong passion, must alloy the purest mind, but with which scarcely any authoress but Miss Austen would have ventured to temper the œtherial materials of a heroine.”
Again, Miss Burney, as we have seen, had first made it possible for a woman to write novels and be respectable. Yet even with her, authorship was something of an adventure. Her earliest manuscripts were solemnly burnt, as in repentance for frivolity, before her sorrowing sisters; needlework was ordained every morning by a not tyrannical stepmother; social duties occupied most afternoons and evenings. And if she must write, Dr. Burney was always ready enough at dictation, and any lady might act as secretary to such a father without reproach.
In the outside world, when her success was won, we can detect a similar attitude. The authoress of Evelina, indeed, was taken up everywhere and universally petted; but even literary Society never regarded her quite as one of themselves. We feel that she was always on show among them—a kind of freak, like the girl who cried to order at dinner-parties without spoiling her complexion; welcomed, but not admitted—as were actors, musicians, and others born and bred for the amusement of the great.
She herself never resumed work for its own sake after the first flush of popularity, in which she composed Cecilia. As lady-in-waiting, bored by tiresome punctilio; as Madame D’Arblay, happy in simple domesticity; her pen lay idle save when exercised by filial piety or specifically to earn money. The later novels were pure hack-work, obviously lacking in spontaneity.
It was reserved for Jane Austen, the daughter of a later generation, though actually dying before Miss Burney, to establish finally the position of woman as a professional novelist. True, she was even more domestic than her predecessor, and entirely without what we should regard as the necessary training or experience. Her family were seldom aware of the time given to work, simply because it never occurred to her that she might claim privacy or resent interruption. But they took a keen interest in the results, and evidence exists in abundance of their reading every completed volume with enthusiasm.
Of her own attitude towards her work, and of its reception with the public, there can be no doubt. She always regarded herself, and was regarded, as a professional. Circumstances might induce temporary silence, because she was domestic, modest, and affectionate; but if Jane Austen never complained—and we hear of no protest at the extraordinary delay in their appearance—we may be quite sure the novels were written for the public, by whom she felt confident one day of being read. The style is obviously spontaneous, of which the writing itself meant keen enjoyment; but the work was not done merely for the pleasure of doing it. It was her life—not because of any disappointment in love, if she experienced such, but because genius such as hers demands self-expression and commands a hearing. From the beginning, moreover, no one stopped to marvel that a woman could do so well: they judged her as an artist among her peers.
Jane Austen had none of the advantages of Miss Burney, who knew everybody, including the wig-maker next door. Apparently she took little interest in politics or social problems; and our ideals of culture suffer shock before her allusions to The Spectator, to read and admire which she holds the affectation of a blue-stocking. Admittedly she was a voracious novel-reader, but for her own pleasure merely; certainly not with any idea of historical development or artistic criticism. In all probability even her study of human nature was spontaneous and unconscious.
Yet she expected to be taken seriously. Miss Burney had ventured an apology for her art—a plea as woman to men which was daring enough for her generation, but still an apology. Miss Austen, speaking as much for the authoress of Evelina as for herself, shows far more confidence. She enlarges upon the skill and the labour involved in writing a novel, for which honour is due.[3] What she demands has been given her in full measure to overflowing. How closely her stories have wound themselves about the hearts of every successive generation, it were idle to measure or estimate. They are a part of our inheritance: appreciation is reckoned a test of culture.