#austen

Jane Austen did things with stories and characters that had simply never been done before. Do you like flawed characters who grow over the course of the story? Jane Austen pioneered the art of doing that in novels. Do you like it when a story is filtered through a character’s perspective, so you can hear their voice in the narration? Say thank you to Jane Austen.

I’m going to very, very generally summarise what novels looked like when Austen started writing. The first important thing is: they were an incredibly young genre. The first English book that everyone agrees ‘this is definitely a novel, not a collection of short stories, or an allegorical fable, or a political commentary’ is Robinson Crusoe, published 1719. Austen’s first book was published in 1811. That’s less than a hundred years!

Jane Austen was born in 1775, so this year marks her 250th birthday (in fact on the 16th December, but I'm doing while the weather is tolerable). So I decided to do what I've often said I would do and take a walk around the villages where she grew up (with Nevis of course - he's a big Austen fan).

According to the leaflet I had, the first church there is St Mary's, where her brother was curate (I was sure it was called something else - maybe some of the names have changed over the years, or I'm remembering wrongly. I could find out but I'm too tired right now). At the end is Deane House I'm pretty sure, home to the Harwood family in her time, so just before that would be Deane Church where her father had been rector in 1773.

Not sure those would have been there in Jane's time. But anyway, in Steventon itself, this phone box has been refurbished as a book exchange:

'Steventon's most famous resident was arguably Jane Austen'. I would say definitely. But maybe I don't know local history as much as I should. Maybe at one time this was the arts capitol of the world.

Anyway obviously there was more. Steventon Rectory where she was born was demolished, and a new rectory built later by her brother after her death. But it was getting pretty late in the afternoon by this point.

Had Darcy been more civil, had he made a little more effort to please, had he even merely mixed in Meryton society enough to make his general views, opinions and morals known, Wickham's stories would never have been so easily believed. But all of Meryton is absolutely overjoyed to have their dislike for Mr Darcy validated, and all he has to do is sigh tragically and look brave and they all start doing his work for him.

but anyway this is all to say i especially find persuasion funny because this kinda happens with wentworth in canon despite austen herself being a 19th century upper class woman and not a writer on ao3 LMFAO. all the actions he’s involved with as mentioned in canon are restricted to direct engagement with the napoleonic empire only with the exception of the battle of st domingo… where he would be allied with haitian revolutionaries against french slavers 😭 this coupled with the fact that the next major british naval actions were all in the mediterranean for greek independence like navarino or anti-smuggling/slave trade actions along west africa (like francis austen) means you could credibly and conveniently say wentworth will never step into the colonies despite being a part of one of the largest colonizing forces in his time, it’s so absurd. i think it’s especially strange because other austen novels don’t escape this looming sense of empire and its acceptance/accompanying nationalism, if that makes sense - tilney’s “we are English, we are Christians,” darcy’s “every savage can dance,” even the treatment of roma in emma, in a sense. and yet in the novel wherein i most expected to see this sort of thing, it never properly came… i wonder if it’s because austen says “anne wanted…a much higher tone of indifference for everything but justice and equity.” or am i giving austen far too much credit here? i would really be interested in your thoughts if possible 

mwah anon. im assuming we've all read edward said on austen in culture and imperialism re: mansfield park? its explicit where austen's positioning is – fanny price (our heroine, who is relatively the moral centre considering the narrative's contempt for everyone else in her house) asks her uncle about the slave trade in antigua that finances their living and the answer is a dead silence. it does not go beyond that for fanny price. we know (1) austen is pro abolition (2) she is aware of the slave trade in the west indies (slaves not emancipated till the 1830s after her death) and the plantations powered by it.

the reason you identify something of the sentiments of modernity in persuasion is because persuasion is a novel about modernity! it celebrates the merit based british navy where a man's courage and competence can grant him the just deserts that profligate, inherited aristocracy excludes him from because of his birth. it is an endorsement of the new british world order, opposed to slavery but not opposed to colonial plantations, opposed to aristocratic rank as organising force but not opposed to class as a system, opposed to provincial chauvinism but not to imperial nationalism. its heroes are middle class and cosmopolitan. they have bravely fought for the nation. they collect foreign curios they selected on their own travels for their homes. this is the bourgeois revolution happening in literature. austen's notion of appropriate moral sentiments towards those below the middle classes have always been nothing more than patrician and responsible charity throughout the books, see: anne doing so at kellynch.

i think you identify very accurately that wentworth is arguably relieved of having been a slaver. but i don't think austen is intending to soften imperial plunder or its violence at all unlike the elisions being made w modern writers that aim for racial reconciliation. poor, disabled mrs smith's concerns is that her dead husband's "properties" in the west indies could be recovered from mr. elliot's greed and negligence as the executor of the will. this revelation results in anne expressing sympathy for mrs smith, condemning mr. elliot and helping her retrieve said properties so she can be restored to her status. this is anne's dispensation of justice. in 1817, everyone knows said properties in west indies are plantations. it is known that the "prizes" of navy men like wentworth come from war and the capture of enemy ships and seizing their loot. mr & mrs croft talk intelligently of their time in the east indies. the navy men are feted for risking their lives, being entrepreneurial and living in discomfort away from home at the frontier. these are colonial national logics and i don't think austen is staking out a position opposed to them.

ok some fun citations