Joan Elizabeth Klingel Ray

Cheat Sheet / Updated 09-01-2021

Jane Austen is the queen and inventor of the Regency romance (courtship literature set in England's Regency period, 1811–1820). Jane Austen's six most famous works (Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion) highlight the strict social etiquette of her day and the legal limitations that women of her social class endured. She also created memorable characters, from flirts and fools to some who displayed abnormal personality disorders.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

Austen is now so popular that even non-novel readers recognize the name from seeing it in various, unexpected places like tea mugs and dating guides. Her immediate Regency siblings and her future Victorian collateral descendants would faint at seeing their sister and aunt depicted like this. For they presented her as a near saint. But Austen has also stepped off the pedestal into the trenches of World War I and classrooms ranging from high school to post-doctoral school seminars. Starting the Saint Jane myth When Henry Austen wrote his biography of his sister for the posthumous publications of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, he presented a woman ready for sainthood:Faultless herself, as nearly as human nature can be, she always sought, in the faults of others, something to excuse, to forgive or forget. Where extenuation was impossible, she had a sure refuge in silence. She never uttered either a hasty, a silly, or a severe expression . . . She was thoroughly religious and devout; fearful of giving offence to God, and incapable of feeling it toward any fellow creature. . . . Henry's notice, of course, is understandably influenced by his feelings of loss over his 41-year-old sister. Henry also had recently become a clergyman of the Anglican Evangelical persuasion, so this recent career move certainly affected his decision to write of his sister's religious devotion. But imagine the shock when the edition of her letters came out in 1932. Here's another Austen one-liner from a letter that completely undercuts Henry's "incapable of feeling offence" line: "I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal" (Letter, December 24, 1798). Yet 1932 was still a long way from 1818 when Henry wrote the biographical notice. And so the Austens had time to perpetuate "Saint Jane." Victorianizing Jane Austen Austen's next biographer was a beloved nephew, James Edward Austen-Leigh. By the time he published A Memoir of Jane Austen in December of 1869 (though dated as 1870 on the title page), he was a mutton-chopped Victorian. And so it's not surprising that he presented this type of Aunt Jane to the world with the help of his two sisters; all three of them, the children of Jane Austen's eldest brother James, knew their aunt well and still remembered her. The Memoir opens by saying that Austen's life was "singularly barren" of events. This portrayal doesn't look too promising! And because the Victorian mindset is one of silence and coverup, the Memoir proceeds accordingly. Not that Austen has anything to hide. But the Memoir presents Aunt Jane as a simple woman who had "genius" and lived a happy Christian life without complexity. The sarcasm, cynicism, and satire that you've seen in her letters and even seen in some of her fiction are all missing. Nevertheless, the Memoir satisfied the appetites of a new generation of Austen readers for information on the author's life. And it boosted Austen's popularity! Taking Austen to the trenches In 1894, the English critic George Saintsbury coined the word "Janeite" to mean an enthusiastic admirer of Austen's works. But Rudyard Kipling popularized the term in a short story called "The Janeites," first published in 1924. Written in heavy cockney slang, the story isn't the easiest text in the world to read. But it's worth the effort. Here's the story in summary:Soon after WWI, the story's narrator goes to a Masonic lodge on cleaning day. One of the cleaners is Humberstall who'd been wounded in the head but who still returned to the Western Front as assistant mess waiter for his old Heavy Artillery platoon. A simple and uneducated man, he tries to explain how his boss, the senior mess waiter, was able to talk with the university-educated officers on equal ground because of their shared love of Jane Austen's novels. Humberstall is coached on the novels and is led to think that the Austen readers, or Janeites, are all members of a Masonic-like secret society. They scratch the names of Austen characters on the guns. Then all but Humberstall are killed by a hail of gunfire. When he quotes Emma to a nurse, another secret Janeite, she saves his life by getting him on the hospital train back to England. Humberstall still reads Austen's novels as they remind him of his comrades back in the trenches. "There's no one to match Jane when you're in a tight place," he says, noting the comfort her novels provide. Yet her comfort isn't all healing, for as the other Masonic Lodge cleaner notes, Humberstall's mother has to come and take him home from the Lodge because he gets "fits." WWI soldiers agreed that while they were overseas in the war, reading Austen was an effective mental escape from gas masks and bayonets. The Army Medical Corps advised shell-shocked soldiers to read Austen for the books' soothing effects. Supposedly, Mr. and Mrs. Rudyard Kipling found comfort in Austen's novels, which they read to each other after their son was killed in 1914 in WWI. Taking Austen to school Austen's novels became continuously available since 1833, when England's Bentley Standard Novel Series produced affordable editions of her works. In 1923, R. W. Chapman's edition of Austen's novels was published by Oxford University Press. This scholarly edition is one of the earliest of the works of any English novelist. While Austen had readership popularity before, she now had academic distinction. Scholars began to pay serious attention to her novels, proceeding with literary analyses. Austen's use of irony was especially appealing to American academic critics writing just after WWII because analyzing her verbal irony made use of a popular new critical approach that treated the text as an object in itself and studied that text in terms of how the author used language. A study in 1997–1998 by the National Association of Scholars showed that in the 1964–1965 academic year, 25 liberal arts colleges surveyed in the United States still had no courses that cited Jane Austen in their catalogs. When those same schools were surveyed in the 1997–1998 academic year, however, Austen had moved into third place, just behind those old standbys Shakespeare and Chaucer. Austen's appearance in college catalogs' course descriptions is likely the result of the Women's Movement and the expansion of the canon (literary texts that authorities consider as the best representatives of their times). For along with Austen on the 1997–1998 lists were Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Emily Dickinson, George Eliot, and Zora Neale Hurston. In the earlier list, no female writers were listed.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

England has numerous sites where you can explore the life and work of Jane Austen. The following are just the tip of the iceberg. When you get to your hotel or bed and breakfast in London, find one of the many free maps with the underground and train stations clearly marked on them (each underground/subway line is in a different color!), and prepare to immerse yourself in all things Austen. The British Library at St. Pancras, London The British Library in London is the official library of the United Kingdom, and they have Jane Austen's writing desk. Not to be confused with a conventional desk, her writing desk is about the size of a portable typewriter case (anyone remember typewriters?). Made of wood, the desk is sloped at an ergonomically correct angle for writing. If you lift up the top (which you won't be able to do because the desk is encased in glass), you can store desk items inside. Austen placed this desk on top of a small round table, which is at the Jane Austen Museum, and wrote her novels and letters. The British Library is at 96 Euston Road, London NW12DB. You can't miss it: a huge red brick complex with excellent signs. To get there, you have a few options: Originally, the British Library was within the British Museum. There is still a library within the British Museum, but it is just a general reference library now. The actual British Library moved out of the museum several years ago. There is wonderful stuff at the museum. But for Jane Austen's writing desk, you need to go to the new British Library, as directed. The descendents of Jane Austen's eldest brother James, the Austen-Leigh family, were in possession of the desk until fall 1999. The late Joan Austen-Leigh kept the desk safe in an old suitcase in a closet in her home in Canada. In 1999, Joan Austen-Leigh and her eldest daughter traveled to London and generously donated the desk to the British Library at a lovely ceremony. No. 10 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden Covent Garden isn't a garden at all. It is an area of shops and restaurants and is where the Royal Opera House is located. Jane Austen's brother Henry lived at No. 10 Henrietta Street in Covent Garden while he was a banker, and Jane Austen stayed with him when she visited London. (Note: If you're at the British Museum, you can walk to Covent Garden in about 10 to 15 minutes. Leave the museum by the main entrance and cross Great Russell Street. Follow the signs to Covent Garden.) Jane Austen's House Museum in Chawton Jane Austen wrote her novels at her home in Chawton. This home has been turned into the Jane Austen House Museum. Jane, Cassandra, Mrs. Austen, and Martha Lloyd moved to Chawton in 1809, and Austen resided there for the rest of her life, until weeks before her death 1817. While living here, she revised Elinor and Marianne into Sense and Sensibility and First Impressions into Pride and Prejudice, wrote Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion, and began Sanditon. The house contains many artifacts: the table on which she set her writing desk (now at the British Library), a quilt she helped make, and the Topaz crosses that her brother Charles brought back for his sisters from Gibraltar (which are the models for William Price's giving an amber cross to his sister Fanny in Mansfield Park). You can find more about the Jane Austen House Museum at its Web site. The museum also contains a shop where you can buy all things Austen. The house has a lovely garden, where you can sit and enjoy the flowers or even eat your picnic lunch. St. Nicholas Church and the Chawton House Library When you've finished with the Jane Austen House Museum, visit these sites, which are just a short, pleasant walk on a sidewalk from her house. While living at Chawton, the Austens worshipped at St. Nicholas Church, and the two Cassandras — Mrs. Austen and Jane's sister — are buried behind the church. You can enter the church and also see the graves. The Chawton House Library (formerly called the Chawton Great House) is where Edward Austen lived when in Hampshire county; during part of Jane Austen's life at Chawton, her brother Frank and his family lived here, too. The Chawton Great House became the Chawton House Library for the Study of Early Women Writers in 2003, and only pre-arranged users with appropriate credentials can enter the library. But it's a beautiful building to view from the outside, and the landscaping around the house has been re-planted to look like what it did in Austen's day.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

For many Austen fans, reading one of her novels is taking an armchair vacation back to England in the early 1800s, known as the Regency. They see this period as a time of tea and etiquette. The Austen who conjures up such ideas may even inspire people to take up Regency dancing and Regency fashion. This is when Austen, the novelist, becomes to her readers "Jane," their friend. Hearing the friendly, welcoming narrator Readers may love Dickens, but you likely won't hear Dickens's fans calling him "Charles." Yet Austen fans easily call Austen "Jane." Jane is that wonderfully witty, wise, and well-spoken narrator who's a friendly and welcome companion as you read the novel. For example, in Austen's early, frustrated attempt at getting published, the narrator in Northanger Abbey tells you of the marriage of the lovely and charming Eleanor Tilney to a presumably equally lovely and charming young Viscount, who never appears in the novel, but whose laundry lists do appear from Catherine Morland's snooping. Listen to the narrator:My own joy on the occasion is very sincere. . . . [Eleanor's] husband was really very deserving of her; independent of his peerage, his wealth, and his attachment, being to a precision the most charming young man in the world. Any further definition of his merits must be unnecessary; the most charming young man in the world is instantly before the imagination of us all. The narrative voice you've just heard is attractive; it invited you into the book by saying "us all." Keep in mind the obvious — that it's only in a novel that you encounter a narrator in whose company you read for hundreds of pages. Can you point to a narrator who's more lovely and charming than Austen? Hearing "Jane, the friend" become the witty, terse narrator Sometimes, however, "Jane, the friend" gets a little terse, but never with the reader. Instead, Austen uses her characters as the butts of her jokes. For example, in Persuasion, she sets up a conversation between Mrs. Musgrove and Mrs. Croft. Mrs. Musgrove exclaims to her new friend, " 'What a great traveler you must have been!' " and Mrs. Croft replies:Pretty well, ma'am, in the fifteen years of my marriage. I have crossed the Atlantic four times, and have been more than once to the East Indies and back again . . . But I never went beyond the Streights — and never was in the West Indies. We do not call Bermuda or Bahama, you know, the West Indies. Now "Jane," the narrative voice, enters: "Mrs. Musgrove had not a word to say in dissent; she could not accuse herself of having ever called them anything in the whole course of her life." So much for Mrs. Musgrove's knowledge of geography! Although this narrative voice sounds like it has quite a little bite to it, remember that in Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Bennet's delightful sarcasm has to come from someone. And that someone, of course, is Austen. The sarcasm that appears in the narrator's quip about Mrs. Musgrove's ignorance of geography and throughout Mr. Bennet's speech first appeared coming from Austen, herself, in the first full publication of her remaining letters in 1932 under the editorship of R. W. Chapman. These letters reveal an Austen who could be cynical, nasty, cruel, and sarcastic. Here are some examples:Mrs. Hall, of Sherborne, was brought to bed yesterday of a dead child, some weeks before she expected, owing to a fright. I suppose she happened unawares to look at her husband. (October 27, 1798) Poor Mr. Hall: He's now down in history as having such a frightening face that his wife's glancing at him caused her to immediately bear a premature dead baby. She was only 22 when she wrote that. But she didn't soften with age. Here she is at 32:Only think of Mrs. Holder's being dead! — Poor woman, she has done the only thing in the world she could possibly do to make one cease to abuse her! (October 14, 1813) Not only does Austen make jokes about dead babies, but about dead ladies, too! And even in speaking of Mrs. Holder's death, Austen shows neither kindness nor sympathy for the recently deceased.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

Because of the charm of her plots, their setting in merry old England, and the Victorian-styled costumes and 1850 setting used in the first film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice in 1940), you may view Austen as Victorian. (This isn't your fault . . . the 1940 film misled you!) But Jane Austen lived between 1775 and 1817, and her novels came out between 1813 and 1818, the year after her death, which places her and her work in the Georgian period of English history. For over 100 years (from 1714 to 1830) the four kings of England were all named George, suggesting their parents had little imagination. So this was known as — guess what? — the Georgian period in British history. This period lasted until 1837 when Victoria became queen, which then began the Victorian era. (There was a brief stint with a king named William from 1830 to 1837, but the period was still named the Georgian period. Poor guy didn't even get a period named after him: the Willie period!) In Austen's lifetime, England's monarchs were George III — the king who lost the American colonies — and his eldest son, George, the Prince of Wales, who reigned as the father's regent or substitute when George III was severely ill. Besides living when the two Georges, king and regent, reigned, Austen's work and personality display the satire, candor, and openness of the Georgian mindset — the prim and prissy days of the Victorian era came just two decades after Austen's death in 1817. Examining Austen's Georgian satire Like Fanny Burney, an earlier Georgian novelist whom Jane Austen admired, Austen writes about young women entering society and the marriage mart. Austen's novels also reflect the humorous satire and irony of Henry Fielding. Satire is a type of literature that aims to correct folly, vice, and stupidity, frequently through ridicule. Austen uses satire, a keynote of Georgian literature, a great deal. For example, she ridiculed the patronage system that gave church ministries to sometimes undeserving, unsympathetic men through Pride and Prejudice's stupid, lumbering Mr. Collins. He's full of himself and usually behaves like a pompous fool — unless he behaves like an agent of punishment disguised as a Christian clergyman. Austen shows Collins's lack of ministerial qualities just as Fielding showed Thwackum's in Tom Jones. (Thwackum, a clergyman, is excessively prone to corporal punishment: He likes to smack 'em — thus, Thwackum!) In Austen's novel, Collins's advice to Mr. Bennet that he "throw-off [his] unworthy child from [his] affection forever" (referring to Lydia, who has lived out of wedlock with Wickham), "leave her to reap the fruits of her own heinous offence" (meaning, cast her off or even let her become a whore!), and "never . . . admit [her] into [his] sight" again, leads Mr. Bennet to remark sarcastically, "That is his notion of Christian forgiveness!" Preferring candor over prudishness In her personal life, Jane Austen was no prude. But neither was she indecent in speech — which, let's face it, is all too common today — nor in behavior. She was simply a realist, and with her Georgian openness, she acknowledged life as it was. For example, she reported to her sister that she was "disgusted" by the outright "indelicacies," such as those she saw in the first 20 pages of a French novel, Alphonsine. In this book a 15-year-old male character refuses to consummate his marriage to the girl he has married and then discovers that his wife has been sleeping with her 18-year-old page. But Austen wasn't too prim to include in Mansfield Park a vulgar joke about sodomy to emphasize the less-than-ladylike character of its teller Mary Crawford. Replying to a query about her orphaned youth, Mary explains her "acquaintance with the navy" through living with her uncle, Admiral Crawford:Certainly, my home at my uncle's brought me acquainted with a circle of admirals. Of Rears, and Vices, I saw enough. Now, do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat. Austen has Mary make the remark as an example of the bad "education" that hero and heroine Edmund and Mary ascribe to her upbringing — an upbringing that particularly pains the highly moral clergyman-to-be Edmund, who is in love with this "remarkably pretty" and lively young woman. A Victorian prude would never include a joke like that, but with two brothers serving as officers in the Royal Navy, Austen undoubtedly heard of the sodomy prevalent among a ship full of men sailing around the oceans for months at a time. Having read and reread Fielding's Tom Jones (1749), a bawdy novel with sex treated as a hearty roll in the hay without any disgust, Austen writes the sodomy joke to tell her readers something about Mary. Likewise, Austen's novels also include other taboo topics of her day: Seduced young women Out-of-wedlock pregnancies Couples who live together out of wedlock Adulterers Austen is a social realist, like Fielding, and she presents the temper, follies, and problems of the times in her fiction.