Corsets and Cravats: Jane Austen

Jane Austen was born at a Church of England (Anglican) rectory in Steventon, Hampshire, one of two daughters of the Reverend George Austen and his wife Cassandra (née Leigh).
She had 5 brothers: 2 followed in their father's path and joined the Anglican clergy, while two other brothers both pursued naval careers. A fifth brotherhad a disability, and did not live with the family.
Austen’s sister was named Cassandra, like their mother, and Jane tended to follow this naming practice in her novels.

In 1783, Jane was educated briefly by a relative in Oxford, then in Southampton; finally, from 1785–1786, she attended the Reading Ladies boarding school in the Abbey gatehouse in Reading, Berkshire.

Although she never married, Jane experienced at least two potential romances in her short life. In 1796, Jane had a flirtation with Tom Lefroy, later Lord High Justice of Ireland, who was the younger relative of a friend. She wrote two letters to Cassandra mentioning him. In a letter dated 9 January 1796, she wrote:

"After I had written the above, we received a visit from Mr. Tom Lefroy and his cousin George. The latter is really very well-behaved now; and as for the other, he has but one fault, which time will, I trust, entirely remove—it is that his morning coat is a great deal too light. He is a very great admirer of Tom Jones, and therefore wears the same coloured clothes, I imagine, which he did when he was wounded".

On 16 January 1796, there is another mention:

"Friday. — At length the day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, and when you receive this it will be over. My tears flow as I write at the melancholy idea".

It does not seem to have been a serious relationship and the love affair did not last long. However, it has been suggested that Austen might have had him in mind when she created the character Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.

In 1802, Jane received a marriage proposal from a wealthy, but "big and awkward" man named Harris Bigg-Wither, the younger brother of her friends Catherine and Alethea Bigg, and six years her junior. The marriage would have freed her from some of the constraints and dependency she experienced as a spinster. She initially accepted his offer, only to change her mind and refuse him the following day.

In 1801, following her father's retirement, the family moved to the fashionable spa city of Bath, which provided the setting for many of her novels. However, Jane, like her character Anne Elliot, seemed to have "persisted in a disinclination for Bath." Her dislike may have been influenced by the family's precarious financial situation and from being uprooted from her settled existence in the country.

Jane’s father died in 1805, and she, Cassandra, and their mother moved to Southampton. They lived there with Jane's brother, Frank, and his family for several years, before moving to Chawton in 1809. In Chawton Austen’s wealthy brother Edward had an estate with a cottage, where the three women lived.

In 1816, Austen began to suffer from ill health. In May 1817, she moved to Winchester to be closer to her doctor. Her condition worsened, and on 18 July 1817, she died at the age of 41 and was buried in Winchester Cathedral. When asked by Cassandra if there were anything she wanted, Austen responded with her last words: “Nothing, but death”.

It is now thought by some that Austen may have suffered from Addison's disease, a failure of the adrenal glands that was common in the 19th century because it is a frequent complication of tuberculosis. The disease was at that time unnamed. Others, such as biographer Carol Shields, have hypothesized that she died from breast cancer.

(source: wikipedia)

Writing style and influences

Jane began writing her first novel in 1789. Her family life was conducive to writing; the Austen family often enacted plays, which gave her an opportunity to present her stories. They also borrowed novels from the local library, which influenced her writing. She was encouraged to write, especially by her brother, Henry, who wrote a little himself. The theme of Austen's stories centered upon the limited provincial world in which she lived for the first twenty-six years of her life. Jane loved to write her novels in peace and she only shared them with her family when they were performing plays.

Among Jane's influences were Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, Walter Scott, Samuel Johnson, William Cowper, George Crabbe and Fanny Burney.

Austen owed much in particular to both Richardson and Fielding with regard to her concept of the novel. Her first work, Elinor and Marianne, (later modified and published as Sense and Sensibility) was epistolary in technique. Her choice of a third-person omniscient narrator showed the influence of Fielding but, unlike the latter, she did not allow the narrator to intrude so much during the course of the story. Indeed, direct comments on the part of the narrator are rare, Jane preferring to let subtle nuance and dialogue illuminate her attitude to the characters and unfolding events. Verbal and situational irony are frequently combined with superbly structured dialogues to reinforce judgments which would otherwise have to be made explicitly. Criticized for being repetitive, her plots are nonetheless well structured, and reveal a sincere love of perfection and minutiae of detail that she believed was one of the prerogatives of any potential writer.

It was not until 1811, six years before her death, that a novel she had written, Sense and Sensibility, was published, and it was at the expense of her brother, Henry, and his wife, Eliza.

(source: wikipedia)

Bibliography

Novels

Sense and Sensibility (1811)
Pride and Prejudice (1813)
Mansfield Park (1814)
Emma (1816)
Persuasion (1818) (posthumous)
Northanger Abbey (1818) (posthumous)

Shorter Works

Lady Susan (novella)
Sanditon (final novel fragment)

Juvenalia

The Mystery - an Unfinished Comedy
Lesley Castle - an Unfinshed Novel in Letters
Amelia Webster - an Interesting and Well-Written Tale
Henry and Eliza - a Novel
Edgar and Emma
Catherine, or the Bower (first novel attempt)
The Adventures of Mr. Harly, Sir William Montague,
Evelyn
The Three Sisters
Love and Freindship (the misspelling of "friendship" in the title is famous)
The History of England - By a partial, prejudiced, & ignorant Historian
The Watsons (incomplete novel; Austen's niece, Catherine Hubback, completed The Watsons and published it under the title The Younger Sister in the mid-nineteenth century.)
The Beautifull Cassandra
Jack and Alice
Frederic and Elfrida

Corsets and Cravats