Jane Austen at Home

 

The squirrel that I am, I read too many titles at the same time, consequently, I am still, this many months removed, engaged in my Jane Austen July TBR. Or was. I’d read Emma, The Murder of Mr. Wickham, and finally Jane Austen at Home: A Biography, by celebrated TV personality and historian Lucy Worsley.

I expect some few visitors here might be crying aloud, “Enough with Jane Austen, already!” You are in luck, then; my Jane Austen July reading has exhausted itself for the year. (I have to say, however, that if you did think that, then you are probably in the wrong place. I consume what I will, and much of it these days is, and will be, historically aligned, given the lists of unread books that I own and plan to tackle in the next while.)

I ought to have read this book before ever embarking on reading any Austen title. It is that illuminating. Moreover, it ought to be required reading for anyone considering reading Jane Austen. It is, obviously, a biography (and says as much in its title); but it is more than just a mere study of Jane’s life: It details her family’s circumstance prior to her birth; her early upbringing; her relationship with her parents; her extended family; her sister. And, perhaps more importantly, her relationship with her Georgian Period world. It is thus a feminist work. Of course it is. Jane may be one of English Literature’s first feminist authors. Granted, she was constrained in her feminism, given the world she found herself in, her status in the gentry, her family’s ecclesiastic and Tory leanings.

Steventon Rectory, Hampshire

Her world was a small one. Most women’s worlds were, then. Thus, the title: Jane Austen at Home. Most women had great need of finding a good match. How else might they have supported themselves, otherwise? If they did not marry well, and a great many women did not in her day – a natural outcome given the toll paid during the Napoleonic Wars – their prospects were limited, with diminishing prospects (destined to live on the charity of family for the rest of their lives), and an ever lessening standard of living (and that was if one was lucky enough to be a member of the gentry – imagine the poverty to be endured if she were not fortunate to be born to the upper classes). Jane’s life would ultimately be destined to just these reduced means, regardless her talent, regardless her having been a published author. She never made all that much money during her lifetime.

Chawton Cottage, by Anna Austen

Lucy Worsley’s book ought to be required reading for Janeites because it adds context to each of her novels. We can watch Jane’s life unfold through her fictional characters’ lives. She must navigate the world of the debutante. She is forced to leave her childhood home when her father retires and her brother assumes his parsonage. She must endure any family legacy she would be owed today bequeathed to others (most of whom had no need of the extra cash, already so flush they were floating). She grappled with the morality of familial sources of income (although her immediate family earned their income from her father’s parsonage, others did by the spoils of the Napoleonic Wars, slavery, and the opium trade – to say nothing of sketchy banking practices). One can unearth her life experiences from her text: family, friends, balls, romances, and betrayals. It’s all there, if you care to look for it.

Lucy Worsley did her research. Not only did she plumb Jane’s correspondence, she drew widely on other sources germane to the Regency era, both contemporary and “contemporary” to her years of life. How else could she have understood Jane? There was a lot going on. And the world was rather different than it is now. Jane lived during the Enlightenment and the social changes it was igniting. It was also a wilder, more freewheeling time than what was to follow, the more inhibited Victorian Age. War was raging. There were men in uniform everywhere. In that regard, Jane’s family had naval ties. One imagines, given Jane living close to the coast for a great deal of her life, that the threat of invasion from France was thought imminent. It evokes thoughts of the Second World War. And indeed, the Napoleonic Wars might be considered the “first” world war! One imagines whirlwind wartime romances, austerity, the worries concerning brothers fighting overseas; and most importantly – at least here – what might become of all the women when their fathers, brothers, and lovers should they pay the ultimate price (there was no social net then, beyond the charity of family).

And yet, for all that, Jane’s books are not Romances. She doesn’t concern herself with such stories, as she herself admitted that she had no experience with high adventure, and if she were to embark on such a story it would be so ridiculous that she might burst into fits of laughter at the attempt. So, she wrote about what she knew: house and home, family, courting, flirtations, marriages, and the worries women had concerning forging a future.

Like I said, I wish I’d read Lucy Worsley’s biography of Jane first. I would certainly have divined the greater depth hidden within her books I have hitherto read.