Brush Up on Your Jane Austen: Brief essays on the Austen family, style and technique in Jane Austen novels: Persuasion, North Anger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Sense and Sensibility

By Marciano Guerrero

Jane Austen lived between bookends made up of famous names; she was born a few years later than the Romantic poets William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834), and novelist Sir Walter Scott (1771 - 1832), and died when the poets Byron, Shelley, and Keats were already famous. It wa

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marc De Lima
• Release date: Jun 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9798218017118

Marciano Guerrero

Marc De Lima is a Columbia University graduate, retired college professor, and Vietnam Veteran, who has edited, translated, and authored over 100 books. He lives in NYC.

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BRUSH UP ON YOUR JANE AUSTEN

Brief essays on the Austen family, style and technique in Jane Austen novels: Persuasion,

North Anger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice,

Mansfield Park, Emma, Sense and Sensibility

by Marciano Guerrero

Introduction

Times were changing

Jane Austen lived between bookends made up of famous names; she was born a few years later than the Romantic poets William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834), and novelist Sir Walter Scott (1771 – 1832), and died when the poets Byron, Shelley, and Keats were already famous. It was a time of change in Europe, America, and all over the world since the British empire had possessions everywhere—the sun never set on the British empire.

The Industrial Revolution was taking hold around 1750. By 1776 Adam Smith published his economic treatise The Wealth of Nations, the industrial revolution was in full bloom. On the other side of the pond, the American colonists, fed up with George III policies—taxation without representation—broke into open armed insurrection against the crown, and fought for their independence. In 1776, the Americans declared their independence from England.

When the French Revolution triumphed, Jane Austen was 13 years old. It was a seismic political event.

Yet, Jane Austen authored her novels as if she was impervious to events and revolutions that were happening outside her life in the village where she lived most of her adult life. To spice up their observations, some critics also add that during her adult years, England was at war with France, and that she did not chronicle any of that turmoil.

In his book The Roots of Romanticism, philosopher Isaiah Berlin writes that from 1760 to 1830, something transforming occurred that there was a significant break in European consciousness. Of course, he is referring to the Romantic movement that altered the course not only of the arts but also of politics and social movements.

Jane Austen was very much aware of the changes springing around her, but she was no politician but an artist and a writer. She heeded some of what the Romantics were proposing: tolerance, decency, the defense of minorities (among them, women), and that the artist must be original. Only in this respect was she was a romantic, since her entire work is original and total repudiation of the old novelistic genres.

The Austen’s and France

Still, the French revolution was for a time a threat to the stability of English society. There was even some sympathy for the revolutionaries before the excesses of the Terror turned compassion into horror and fear.

What did Jane, herself, think of France, that apparent perennial enemy of England ever since the twelfth century? Except for a few short peaceful interludes, England was at war with France for the entire of Jane Austen’s adult life. Fanny Knight, Jane’s favorite niece, daughter of her rich brother Edward Knight, went in May 1806 to see with her own eyes the defenses at Dover.

In 1796, Napoleon was the Hitler of the

Second World War—an invading, conquering fiend. Since the fear of an actual invasion seemed imminent, the British fortified the entire coast of southern England. Naturally, Jane was not a great fan of France. When Nelson finally defeated Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo, travel between the two countries resumed, and people took advantage of the new freedom.

Raison et Sensibilite, or Sense and Sensibility, appeared in Paris the year of Waterloo, and Le Park du Mansfield and Les Trois Cousines or La Nouvelle Emma in 1816. By 1824, the French were reading in translation all the six major novels. Not bad for an author that had resentments for France.

Chapter 1 — The Austen Family

Jane Austen was born in the small village of Steventon in Hampshire on December 16, 1775; she was the seventh of the eight children—six boys and two girls—of the country parson, the Reverend George Austen. He was a classical scholar and a Fellow of his Oxford College, St John’s. His lineage came from Kentish yeomen engaged in the wool trade since the Middle Ages.

A wealthy uncle funded George Austen’s education at Tonbridge School and later at Oxford. In 1764, after being ordained as a preacher, he married Cassandra Leigh at Walcot Church in Bath.

Cassandra Leigh was the youngest daughter of the Reverend Thomas Leigh; she had aristocratic cousins, and her uncle Theophilus was president of Trinity College, Oxford. A woman of great constitution, mental fortitude, and wit managed with obvious success the upbringing of her eight children, in the Rectory at Steventon, a little village near Basingstoke in Hampshire.

There, at the Rectory, Jane Austen spent the first twenty-five years of her life in idyllic existence.

George Austen, besides his religious duties, farmed the small plot of land he owned, earning enough income to support his growing family not only in comfort but also with dignity and financial means as proven by their carriage and fine horses. Jane Austen’s infancy coincided with the Anglo-American war, a source of private and public concern to their father, who was a trustee for an estate on the island of Antigua. This connection was to be important to her later, but as a girl she was more impressed by the keen interest of her two clever elder brothers in the social and political events emerging in the republican states of America. Her two ambitious, career-minded younger brothers were concerned as naval officers to learn something of North American history and geography.

The Austen brothers

The six boys were James, George, Edward, Henry, Frank, and Charles.

George Austen

George Austen - (1766-1838) Jane’s second brother was nine years older than her. He was an invalid and cared for in a neighboring small town. Although he was sickly George lived for twentyone years after his sister.

Edward (Austen) Knight

Edward (Austen) Knight - (1767-1852) was Jane’s third brother. A rich and childless cousin adopted Edward in the early 1780’s so that he could inherit their estate of Gosherham, in the county of Kent. To honor his cousin, Edward changed his last name to Knight. His oldest daughter Fanny Knight (17931882) was a favorite with both of her aunts; Jane dedicated some of her Juvenilia works to her.

Charles John Austen

Charles John Austen - (1779-1852) Jane’s sixth and youngest brother, entered the Royal Naval Academy at Portsmouth at 12 in 1791. He fought in the British navy during the Napoleonic wars with his brother Frank. He also rose to the rank of admiral, dying in 1852 at 73.

Francis William Austen

Francis William Austen - (1774-1865), usually called Frank, was only a year older than Jane and was her fifth brother. He also entered the Royal Naval Academy at Portsmouth at 12 and fought in the British navy during the Napoleonic wars. He eventually rose to the rank of admiral and knighted for his knighted for gallantry in battle.

Frank took part in Nelson’s celebrated run to the West Indies in search of the enemy, and later, as commander of the ship Elephant, he captured an American privateer, the Swordfish, in the Baltic. Charles, on board the frigate Unicorn, captured of the French ship La Tribune after a 200-mile chase and with his prize money, bought two topaz crosses which he sent to his sisters. In Persuasion, Jane Austen writes warmly of the Navy, giving glowing accounts of Captains Wentworth, Harville and Benwick, and of Admiral Croft. In Mansfield Park, Jane uses this incident of the war booty when the young midshipman William Price buys an amber cross also with his prize money, sending it to his sister Fanny, for her to wear at her first ball.

After the war with France ended, Frank Austen

did not go to sea again for thirty years. His last appointment was to the post of commander-in-chief of the North American and West Indies Station. His official residences were in Bermuda and Nova Scotia, but much of his time he spent at sea. The role of admiral had to be carried out with an almost vice-regal dignity and conscientious attention to naval efficiency and to the diplomatic duties involved on shore, such as pursuing slave ships trading under Brazilian and Portuguese flags, the warships at his command had duties; the British Government had outlawed the slave trade in British territories. It was also required that a show of force, both naval and military, should go into action to protect property and British interests in Venezuela and Nicaragua. The admiral made courtesy calls in the U.S. His memoirs, written much later, show a much-reserved person yet a comment on American manners after a visit to Saratoga Springs is sharply critical of:

"Some vile habits especially that of frequent discharges of saliva, and that without much regard to where they may be… and there was a sort of flippant air amongst the women which seemed rather at variance with the retiring modesty so pleasing in the