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THE IMPRESSION of the condition of the Church of England in the eighteenth
century which is conveyed by the character and writings of Laurence Sterne
receives some necessary modification from a study of the life and works of Jane
Austen. Her father, the Reverend George Austen, held the two rectories of Deane
and Steventon in Hampshire, having been appointed to them by the favor of a
cousin and an uncle. He thus belonged to the gentry, and it seems likely that he
entered the church more as a profession than a vocation. He considered that he
fulfilled his functions by preaching once a week and administering the
sacraments; and though he does not seem to have been a man of spiritual gifts,
the decent and dignified performance of these formal duties earned him the
reputation of a model pastor. His abundant leisure he occupied in farming the
rectory acres, educating his children, and sharing the social life of his class.
The environment of refined worldliness and good breeding thus indicated was that
in which his daughter lived, and which she pictured in her books.
Jane Austen was born at Steventon on December 16, 1775, the youngest of seven
children. She received her education—scanty enough, by modern standards—at home.
Besides the usual elementary subjects, she learned French and some Italian, sang
a little, and became an expert needle-woman. Her reading extended little beyond
the literature of the eighteenth century, and within that period she seems to
have cared most for the novels of Richardson and Miss Burney, and the poems of
Cowper and Crabbe. Dr. Johnson, too, she admired, and later was delighted with
both the poetry and prose of Scott. The first twenty-five years of her life she
spent at Steventon; in 1801 she moved with her family to Bath, then a great
center of fashion; after the death of her father in 1805, she lived with her
mother and sister, first at Southampton and then at Chawton; finally she took
lodgings at Winchester to be near a doctor, and there she died on July 18, 1817,
and was buried in the cathedral. Apart from a few visits to friends in London
and elsewhere, and the vague report of a love affair with a gentleman who died
suddenly, there is little else to chronicle in this quiet and uneventful life.
But quiet and uneventful though her life was, it yet supplied her with material
for half a dozen novels as perfect of their kind as any in the language. While
still a young girl she had experimented with various styles of writing, and when
she completed "Pride and Prejudice" at the age of twenty-two, it was clear that
she had found her appropriate form. This novel, which in many respects she never
surpassed, was followed a year later by "Northanger Abbey," a satire on the
"Gothic" romances then in vogue; and in 1809 she finished "Sense and
Sensibility," begun a dozen years before. So far she had not succeeded in having
any of her works printed; but in 1811 "Sense and Sensibility" appeared in London
and won enough recognition to make easy the publication of the others. Success
gave stimulus, and between 1811 and 1816, she completed "Mansfield Park,"
"Emma," and "Persuasion." The last of these and "Northanger Abbey" were
published posthumously.
The most remarkable characteristic of Jane Austen as a novelist is her
recognition of the limits of her knowledge of life and her determination never
to go beyond these limits in her books. She describes her own class, in the part
of the country with which she was acquainted; and both the types of character
and the events are such as she knew from first-hand observation and experience.
But to the portrayal of these she brought an extraordinary power of delicate and
subtle delineation, a gift of lively dialogue, and a peculiar detachment. She
abounds in humor, but it is always quiet and controlled; and though one feels
that she sees through the affectations and petty hypocrisies of her circle, she
seldom becomes openly satirical. The fineness of her workmanship, unexcelled in
the English novel, makes possible the discrimination of characters who have
outwardly little or nothing to distinguish them; and the analysis of the states
of mind and feeling of ordinary people is done so faithfully and vividly as to
compensate for the lack of passion and adventure. She herself speaks of the
"little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work," and, in contrast with
the broad canvases of Fielding or Scott, her stories have the exquisiteness of a
fine miniature.
---- W.A.N.
READ again, and for the third time at least, Miss Austen's very finely
written novel of "Pride and Prejudice." That young lady has a talent for
describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life which
is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big bow-wow strain I can do
myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary
commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description
and the sentiment, is denied to me.—From "The Journal of Sir Walter Scott,"
March, 1826.
We bestow no mean compliment upon the author of "Emma" when we say that keeping
close to common incidents, and to such characters as occupy the ordinary walks
of life, she has produced sketches of such spirit and originality that we never
miss the excitation which depends upon a narrative of uncommon events, arising
from the consideration of minds, manners, and sentiments, greatly above our own.
In this class she stands almost alone; for the scenes of Miss Edgeworth are laid
in higher life, varied by more romantic incident, and by her remarkable power of
embodying and illustrating national character. But the author of "Emma" confines
herself chiefly to the middling classes of society; her most distinguished
characters do not rise greatly above well-bred country gentlemen and ladies; and
those which are sketched with most originality and precision, belong to a class
rather below that standard. The narrative of all her novels is composed of such
common occurrences as may have fallen under the observation of most folks; and
her dramatis personæ conduct themselves upon the motives and principles which
the readers may recognize as ruling their own, and that of most of their own
acquaintances.—From "The Quarterly Review," October, 1815.
SHAKESPEARE has had neither equal nor second. But among the writers who, in
the point which we have noticed, have approached nearest to the manner of the
great master we have no hesitation in placing Jane Austen, a woman of whom
England is justly proud. She has given us a multitude of characters, all, in a
certain sense, commonplace, all such as we meet every day. Yet they are all as
perfectly discriminated from each other as if they were the most eccentric of
human beings. There are, for example, four clergymen, none of whom we should be
surprised to find in any parsonage in the kingdom—Mr. Edward Ferrars, Mr. Henry
Tilney, Mr. Edmund Bertram, and Mr. Elton. They are all specimens of the upper
part of the middle class. They have all been liberally educated. They all lie
under the restraints of the same sacred profession. They are all young. They are
all in love. Not one of them has any hobby-horse, to use the phrase of Sterne.
Not one has a ruling passion, such as we read of in Pope. Who would not have
expected them to be insipid likenesses of each other? No such thing. Harpagon is
not more unlike to Jourdain, Joseph Surface is not more unlike to Sir Lucius
O'Trigger, than every one of Miss Austen's young divines to all his reverend
brethren. And almost all this is done by touches so delicate that they elude
analysis, that they defy the powers of description, and that we know them to
exist only by the general effect to which they have contributed.—From essay on
"Madame D'Arblay," 1843.
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