The Jane Austen Book Club (26 page)

Jane Austen is weirdly capable of keeping everybody busy. The moralists, the Eros-and-Agape people, the Marxists, the Freudians, the Jungians, the semioticians, the deconstructors—all find an adventure playground in six samey novels about middle-class provincials. And for every generation of critics, and readers, her fiction effortlessly renews itself.

 

—
MARTIN AMIS
, “
JANE
'
S WORLD
,”
The New Yorker

Emma
was written between January 1814 and March 1815, published in 1815. The title character, Emma Woodhouse, is queen of her little community. She is lovely and wealthy. She has no mother; her fussy, fragile father imposes no curbs on either her behavior or her self-satisfaction. Everyone else in the village is deferentially lower in social standing. Only Mr. Knightley, an old family friend, ever suggests she needs improvement.

Emma has a taste for matchmaking. When she meets pretty Harriet Smith, “the natural daughter of somebody,” Emma takes her up as both a friend and a cause. Under Emma's direction, Harriet refuses a proposal from a local farmer, Robert Martin, so that Emma can engineer one from Mr. Elton, the vicar. Unluckily, Mr. Elton misunderstands the intrigues and believes Emma is
interested in him for herself. He cannot be lowered to consider Harriet Smith.

Things are further shaken by the return to the village by Jane Fairfax, niece to the garrulous Miss Bates; and by a visit from Frank Churchill, stepson of Emma's ex-governess. He and Jane are secretly engaged, but as no one knows this, it has no impact on the matchmaking frenzy.

The couples are eventually sorted out, if not according to Emma's plan, at least to her satisfaction. Uninterested in marriage at the book's beginning, she happily engages herself to Mr. Knightley before its end.

 

Sense and Sensibility
was written in the late 1790s, but much revised before publication in 1811. It is primarily the story of two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. The death of their father has left them, with their mother and younger sister, financially pressed. Both women fall in love, each in her own characteristic way—Marianne is extravagant and public with her emotions, Elinor restrained and decorous.

The object of Elinor's interest is Edward Ferrars, brother to Fanny Dashwood, her odious, stingy sister-in-law. Elinor learns that Edward has been for some time secretly, unhappily, and inextricably engaged to a young woman named Lucy Steele. She learns this from Lucy, who, aware of Elinor's interest though pretending not to be, chooses Elinor as her special confidante.

Marianne hopes to marry John Willoughby, the book's only sexy man. He deserts her for a financially advantageous match. The surprise and disappointment of this sends Marianne into a dangerous decline.

When Lucy Steele jilts Edward for his brother Robert, Edward is finally free to marry Elinor. Edward seems quite dull,
but is at least her own choice. Marianne marries Colonel Brandon, the dull man Elinor and her mother have picked out for her.

 

Mansfield Park
was written between 1811 and 1813, and published in 1814. It marks Austen's return to novel writing after an interruption of more than a decade.

Ten-year-old Fanny Price is taken from her impoverished home to the estate of her wealthy aunt and uncle Bertram. There she is tormented by her aunt Norris, disliked by her cousins Tom, Maria, and Julia, and befriended only by her cousin Edmund. Her position is less than a daughter, more like a servant. Years pass. Fanny grows up shrinking and sickly (though very pretty).

While Uncle Bertram is away on business, Henry and Mary Crawford come to stay at the nearby parsonage. The Crawfords, brother and sister, are lively and charming. Both Maria and Julia are taken with Henry. Edmund is equally smitten with Mary.

Amateur theatricals are planned, then canceled by Uncle Bertram's return. But the rehearsals have already encouraged several damaging flirtations. Maria, humiliated by Henry's lack of real interest, marries Mr. Rushworth, a wealthy buffoon.

Henry then falls in love with shy Fanny. She refuses the advantageous match and, as punishment, is sent back to her parents. Henry pursues her for a time, then has an affair with Maria that results in her disgrace. Edmund's eyes are opened by Mary's casual response to this.

Tom, the eldest Bertram cousin, nearly dies of vice and dissipation; Fanny is fetched back to Mansfield Park to help nurse him. At the end of the book Edmund and Fanny marry. They seem well suited to each other, though not, as Kingsley Amis has pointed out, the sort of people you would like to have over for dinner.

 

Northanger Abbey
was written in the late 1790s, but published only posthumously. It is the story of a deliberately ordinary heroine named Catherine Morland. The book is divided into two parts. In the first, Catherine travels with family friends, the Allens, to Bath. There she meets two brother-sister pairs—John and Isabella Thorpe, and Henry and Eleanor Tilney. Her own brother, James, joins them and becomes engaged to Isabella. Catherine is attracted to Henry, a clergyman with witty and unorthodox manners.

General Tilney, father to Henry and Eleanor, invites Catherine to visit them at home; this visit makes up the second half of the book. The General is at once solicitous and overbearing. Under the spell of the gothic novel she has been reading, Catherine imagines he has murdered his wife. Henry discovers this and sets her humiliatingly straight.

Catherine receives a letter from James telling her that Isabella has ended their engagement. General Tilney, upon returning from London, has Catherine thrown out, to make her own way home. It is eventually understood that Catherine and James had been mistaken for people of great wealth, but the situation has been clarified.

Henry is so outraged by his father's behavior that he follows immediately after Catherine and proposes marriage. They cannot proceed without his father's permission, but this is finally given in the happy madness of Eleanor's marriage to a viscount.

 

Pride and Prejudice
was originally entitled
First Impressions
. It was written between 1796 and 1797, and heavily revised before its publication in 1813. It is the most famous of the novels. Austen herself characterized it as “rather too light and bright, and sparkling,” suggesting it needed some “solemn specious nonsense” for contrast. In an inversion of the classic Cinderella fairy tale,
when the hero, Fitzwilliam Darcy, first sees the heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, at a ball, he refuses to dance with her.

Elizabeth is one of five Bennet daughters, second in age only to the beautiful Jane. The Bennet estate is entailed on a male cousin, and although the girls are comfortable enough as long as their father lives, their long-term financial survival depends on their marrying.

The story revolves around Elizabeth's continued dislike of Darcy and Darcy's growing attraction to Elizabeth. When she meets the rake Wickham, he dislikes Darcy intensely; she is quickly won over by their shared distaste.

A subplot involves her father's heir, the Reverend Collins, who attempts to amend his financial impact on the family by asking Elizabeth to marry him. Elizabeth rejects him—he is pompous and stupid—so he proposes to Charlotte Lucas, Elizabeth's best friend, who accepts.

Darcy proposes to Elizabeth, but rudely. Elizabeth rudely rejects him. Wickham elopes with Lydia, the youngest Bennet sister, and Darcy is instrumental in finding the couple and buying Lydia a marriage. This, along with his steadfast love and improved manners, convinces Elizabeth that he is the man for her after all. Jane marries Darcy's friend Mr. Bingley on the same day Elizabeth and Darcy are married. Both sisters end up very rich.

 

Persuasion
was, like
Northanger Abbey
, published posthumously. It begins in the summer of 1814; peace has broken out; the navy is home. A vain and profligate widower, Sir Walter Elliot, is forced as an economy to let the family estate to an Admiral Croft, and move with his eldest daughter, Elizabeth, to Bath. A younger daughter, Anne Elliot, visits her delightfully whiny married sister, Mary, before joining them.

Many years before, Anne was engaged to Admiral Croft's
brother-in-law, now Captain Frederick Wentworth. Her family's disapproval and the advice of an old friend, Lady Russell, caused her to cancel the match, but she is still in love with him.

Wentworth comes to call on his sister and begins a series of visits to see the Musgroves, the family into which Mary Elliot has married. This keeps him often in Anne's path. She must watch as Wentworth appears to wife-hunt among the Musgrove daughters, favoring Louisa. On a trip to Lyme, Louisa suffers a bad fall, from which she is slow to recover.

Anne joins her family in Bath, though they seem neither to miss her nor to want her. A cousin, the heir to her father's title, has been attentive to her oldest sister. When Anne arrives, he turns his attentions to her.

He is revealed by Anne's old school chum Mrs. Smith to be a villain. Louisa's engagement is announced, not to Wentworth, but rather to Benwick, a bereaved navyman who saw her often in Lyme. Wentworth follows Anne to Bath, and after several more misunderstandings, they marry at last.

IN WHICH
J
ANE
A
USTEN
'
S FAMILY AND FRIENDS COMMENT ON
Mansfield Park
,
OPINIONS COLLECTED AND RECORDED BY AUSTEN HERSELF
¹

My Mother—not liked it so well as P. & P.—Thought Fanny insipid.—Enjoyed M
^rs
Norris.—

Cassandra [sister]—thought it quite as clever, tho' not so brilliant as P. & P.—Fond of Fanny.—Delighted much in M
^r
Rushworth's stupidity.—

My Eldest Brother [James]—a warm admirer of it in general.—Delighted with the Portsmouth Scene.

M
^r
& M
^rs
Cooke [godmother]—very much pleased with it—particularly with the Manner in which the Clergy are treated.—M
^r
Cooke called it ‘the most sensible Novel he had ever read.'—M
^rs
Cooke wished for a good Matronly Character.—

M
^rs
Augusta Bramstone [elderly sister of Wither Bramstone]—owned that she thought S & S.—and P. & P. downright nonsense, but expected to like M P. better, & having finished the 1
^st
vol.—flattered herself she had got through the worst.

M
^rs
Bramstone [wife of Wither Bramstone]—much pleased with it; particularly with the character of Fanny, as being so very natural. Thought Lady Bertram like herself.—Preferred it to either of the others—but imagined
that
might be her want of Taste—as she does not understand Wit.—

 

IN WHICH
J
ANE
A
USTEN
'
S FAMILY AND FRIENDS COMMENT ON
Emma
²

My Mother—thought it more entertaining than M. P.—but not so interesting as P. & P.—No characters in it equal to Ly Catherine & M
^r
Collins.—

Cassandra—better than P. & P.—but not so well as M. P.—

M
^r
& M
^rs
J. A. [James Austen]—did not like it so well as either of the 3 others. Language different from the others; not so easily read.—

Capt
ⁿ
. Austen [Francis William]—liked it extremely, observing that though there might be more Wit in P & P—& an higher
Morality in M P—yet altogether, on account of it's [
sic
] peculiar air of Nature throughout, he preferred it to either.

M
^r
Sherer [vicar]—did not think it equal to either M P—(which he liked the best of all) or P & P.—Displeased with my pictures of Clergymen.—

Miss Isabella Herries—did not like it—objected to my exposing the sex in the character of the Heroine—convinced that I had meant M
^rs
& Miss Bates for some acquaintance of theirs—People whom I never heard of before.—

M
^r
Cockerelle—liked it so little, that Fanny w
^d
not send me his opinion.—

M
^r
Fowle [friend since childhood]—read only the first & last Chapters, because he had heard it was not interesting.—

M
^r
Jeffery [editor of the
Edinburgh Review
] was kept up by it three nights.

 

IN WHICH CRITICS
,
WRITERS
,
AND LITERARY FIGURES COMMENT ON
A
USTEN
,
HER NOVELS
,
HER ADMIRERS
,
AND HER DETRACTORS THROUGH TWO CENTURIES

1812—Unsigned review of
Sense and Sensibility
³

1814—Mary Russell Mitford, review of
Pride and Prejudice
⁴

1815—Sir Walter Scott, review of
Emma
⁵

1826—Sir Walter Scott eleven years later, after Austen's death, his enthusiasm having grown
⁶

1826—Chief Justice John Marshall, letter to Joseph Story
⁷

1830—Thomas Henry Lister
⁸

1848—Charlotte Brontë, letter to G. H. Lewes
⁹

1870—Unsigned review of James Edward Austen-Leigh's
A Memoir of Jane Austen
¹⁰

1870—Margaret Oliphant
¹¹

1870—Anthony Trollope
¹²

1894—Alice Meynell
¹³

1895—Willa Cather
¹⁴

1898—Unsigned article in
The Academy
¹⁵

1898—Mark Twain
¹⁶