Last month was Jane Austen July reading month. I read two pairs of books that are about or by Jane Austen. Unusually for me, I read three non-fiction books and one novel.
Jane Austen at Home & Selected Letters
Jane Austen at Home is an excellent biography with a good balance of information and entertainment. It’s largely in chronological order, from Austen’s birth to her death, mentioning all her works.
In addition to herself, I got to know her family particularly well. They played a big role in her life. For example, who was the first one to encourage her to not only write but also to publish; who took the financial risk to help her major novels to get published and personally harassed the publishers; all the different addresses she lived in and with whom; who visited her when she was dying, and who didn’t.
Lucy Worsley’s take on Austen’s life and works is interesting. She thinks the most important thing in her novels is not love or marriage, and what Jane valued most in life was not marriage either, but sisterhood and female friendship between single women. There are many examples in the biography and it certainly was the case when she was sick during the last months of her life.
It gives a great deal of historical detail which helps make sense of her life and also helps makes sense of her letters. I’ve shared my thoughts and observations of the first half of her letters in my last post, I’ll only talk about the second half of her letters here. It’s particularly interesting to hear her talking about her novels.
When she wrote the novels in secret, you couldn’t tell at all, she didn’t mention them even to her dearest sister Cassandra. Only after the novels were published or very close to being published, did she start writing about them. And she wrote quite a lot!
They had an unwitting friend who didn’t know Austen was the author of this new novel. They invited her over and spent two evenings reading Pride & Prejudice out loud and closely watched this friend’s reaction. On the first evening, Austen was pleased that this friend “really does seem to admire Elizabeth”; on the second evening this friend had not pleased her so well, and Austen blamed her mother for not reading it properly.
She genuinely loved what she created,
“I must confess that I think her [Elizabeth Bennet] as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, & how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least, I do not know.”
She searched through portraits in galleries for a likeness of her heroines and managed to find Mrs Bingley –
“It is not thought a good collection, but I was very well pleased – particularly (pray tell Fanny) with a small portrait of Mrs Bingley, excessively like her. I went in hopes of seeing one of her Sister, but there was no Mrs Darcy; – perhaps however, I may find her in the Great Exhibition which we shall go to , if we have time… Mrs Bingley’s is exactly herself, size, shaped face, features & sweetness; there never was a greater likeness. She is dressed in a white gown, with green ornaments, which convinces me of what I had always supposed, that green was a favourite colour with her. I dare say Mrs D. will be in Yellow.”
After being to another exhibition,
“I am disappointed, for there was nothing like Mrs D. at either. – I can only imagine that Mr D. prizes any Picture of her too much to like it should be exposed to the public eye. – I can imagine he would have that sort of feeling – that mixture of Love, Pride & Delicacy.”
She criticised Pride & Prejudice in one letter,
“The work is rather too light & bright & sparkling; – it wants shade; – it wants to be stretched out here & there with a long Chapter – of sense if it could be had, if not of solemn specious nonsense – about something unconnected with the story; an Essay on Writing, a critique on Walter Scott, or the history of Buonaparte – or anything that would form a contrast & bring the reader with increased delight to the playfulness & Epigrammatism of the general stile.”
I wonder if that gave Thackery the idea of Vanity Fair. When I first started, it read very much like a Jane Austen novel, about marriage, about income, female friendship, and valiant soldiers. It’s even set during the Napoleonic Wars which is the same time period as Austen. But one difference is that Vanity Fair does comment on bigger historical events like the Battle of Waterloo which I loved.
What Matters in Jane Austen & Pride and Prejudice
It’s been a while since I last read Pride & Prejudice and I’ve forgotten a lot of the details. It goes without saying, but I was once again struck by how good a story it is. I listened to it on audiobook in big chunks and the progress of her feeling was straightforward and easy to follow.
I was mostly impressed by the energy of Lizzy Bennett, e.g. after she failed to persuade her father not to let Lydia go to Brighton, she was anxious, but if her father’s mind was made up, she was happy to get on with life and stop worrying about it; after looking forward to the trip to the Lakes for months, she was told she couldn’t go after all, she was disappointed for a couple of lines and she was content again – I really admire the easiness of her mind.
The reading experience was made more interesting because of What Matters in Jane Austen.
It’s a collection of essays observing and analysing some quirky themes that are in all of Austen’s novels. I would have never paid any attention to these details let alone make the connection that they are actually her techniques or intentional themes.
I paid special attention to these themes while reading Pride & Prejudice. Here are a few examples:
One interesting detail is the characters’ age – how old they are in the book and how old we imagine them to be – Mr Collins was only 25, different from the actors in most screen adaptations; if Jane the eldest daughter was 23, Mrs Bennet was probably only in her 40s.
Another thing is sisters’ relationships – we think of Jane and Elizabeth immediately, they were closest friends and their intelligence and senses were on the same level, but there were other types of sisterhood: Lydia & Kitty, Miss Bingley & Mrs Hurst, Mrs Bennet & Mrs Philips.
It also makes me think of those women who did not have sisters, the ones that come to mind immediately are Miss Darcy and Miss de Bourgh – they both had a lady companion but no sisters. It’s interesting to notice the things in common between these two women: they both spoke very little and felt very timid and fragile. Could having sisters make you a more robust person, even though the outcome could be for good as Jane and Lizzy, or for evil as Lydia and Kitty?
Another example is how people address each other, especially between husband and wife – according to the book, it was rare in Austen’s novels that husband and wife refer to each other with their first name, e.g. Mrs Bennet always referred to her husband as ‘my dear Mr Bennet’, but I did notice Mr Collins called Charlotte Lucas ‘his amiable Charlotte’ as soon as they were engaged.
These are interesting things to pay attention to while reading Pride & Prejudice. It makes a familiar story fresh and more enjoyable to re-read.
About Pride & Prejudice itself, my only complaint is that it’s too light as the author wrote in her letter. I love a story more when there’s a zooming out and zooming in, like Vanity Fair and A Tale of Two Cities.
There are minute descriptions of what happens in a woman’s mind, pride, frustration, humiliation, regret, joy. It focuses intensively and inwardly on oneself. There’s a world out there, which through her brothers, Austen was connected and well aware of. But she decided not to include them in her stories. Austen wrote in one of her letters about a battle that just happened in Europe,
“How horrible it is to have so many people killed! – And what a blessing that one cares for none of them!”
I find it quite shocking. She knew about it but she chose not to care. Did she really not care at all? I’m sure there are subtle feelings and fine nuances in that statement. One thing, for example, she must have been glad her brothers in the navy were safe and alive. She might mean she knew no one among the numbers that were killed and she was thankful for it. Each family must mourn their own loss. Maybe she didn’t care for any of them and she was brutally honest about it.
But that’s a rather accurate sentiment of Pride and Prejudice: thousands of people were dying on the battlefields, but Lizzy Bennet’s feeling was hurt because her beauty was judged as only tolerable.
I know that’s controversial! My dislike of the inward-looking-ness of Pride & Prejudice is just a personal preference, not a defect of Austen’s works. Austen was aware of this characteristic of her works, writing to her nephew about his writing, she famously wrote,
“What should I do with your strong, manly, spirited Sketches, full of Variety & Glow? – How could I possibly join them on to the little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush, as produces little effect after much labour?”
She limited herself to a two-inch wide piece of canvas and made a splendid world.
A Day of Small Things 