From Desk Doesn’t Get It And Never Will
This article gave us a severe throbbing pain directly above our right eye. The author says right up front that she is not a big Jane Austen reader, but still! But still!
It begins with a lot of oh-look-at-the-obsessed-Janeites-aren’t-they-cute-with-their-board-games-and-naming-their-cat nonsense. Then we rapidly proceed to complete nonsense.
Jane Austen was one of eight children of an aristocratic mother and a handsome father whose family had lost its money.
WHAT?
The unmarried Jane lived first with one sibling then another.
NO! It’s called “paying visits for long stretches of time” and WAS PERFECTLY NORMAL! Jane wasn’t Fanny Price for crying out loud!
“She lived well without having anything in her own right,” Davis said. “All of her novels are about getting married.”
Yes, they’re not about anything else. Sigh.
The language is difficult to read with an archaic vocabulary, Davis said. “Our vocabulary today is elementary.” The 19th century conversations “used long, convoluted sentences.”
Long, yes. Convoluted, no. They make perfect sense and are elegant in their construction. If you are not accustomed to it, slow down a little, but it is perfectly comprehensible. Jane did not write in middle English.
“They’re like people we know,” she said. “Some seem gracious but are scheming for position. There can be a lack of civility, and all are from dysfunctional families.”
Well. Some, certainly, but not all.
It’s nice to know that the upcoming biographical film about Jane Austen will clear up all these misapprehensions, isn’t it? *headdesk*
January 28th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Poor Mags! Just based on your post I am boycotting that article. I won’t waste time reading it.
Is you Cluebat getting worn out yet?
January 28th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
Poor Mags indeed! I don’t think the Cluebat can do much to the author of that article; she’s hopeless.
January 28th, 2007 at 9:06 pm
I would like to state, for the record, that I have no cats.
January 29th, 2007 at 5:18 am
So what exactly is the point of this ‘opinion piece’? What? And huh? Let’s just string a few unrelated observations together about cats and board games, and two female English ‘gothic’ (oh dear) writers who happened to write in the same centry, and there you have your Sunday column.
Pass the asprin when you’re finished with it please Mags.
January 29th, 2007 at 9:59 am
Well, that aristocracy is utter tosh. I seem to remember from the bios I’ve read that there was someone who had been knighted a few generations back in the maternal history, but Jane’s mother herself was neither titled nor of the peerage – requirements for officially belonging to the aristocracy.
As far as paternal family money – they did not ‘lose’ it. An older relative in the family that Jane’s paternal grandmother had married into was relatively well-off (it was either her father-in-law or his brother). When push came to shove, however, he did not provide for the widowed woman and her sons as he, in justice, should have. He simply left the money to other people.
Granny, however, was a fantastic woman, who pulled herself up by her bootstraps. She took on a job as a housekeeper at a good boy’s school to ensure that hers would at least get the education she was convinced they would need to make their way in the world. At one point she wrote a sort of history of the event for her sons, explaining why she did what she did. It is a marvelous document clearly written by a woman of strength, sense, ambition and determination. I can easily imagine Jane being descended from her.
January 29th, 2007 at 10:47 am
Oops, paternal GREAT-grandmother (not grandmother):
The Austen side of the family is characterised by the type of family dramas which resonate with us from Jane Austen’s own novels. Jane Austen’s great-grandmother (her father’s grandmother) was a most enterprising and resourceful woman called Elizabeth Weller, born sometime during the reign of Charles II, who married John Austen in 1695. Elizabeth and John Austen began their married life comfortably off: she was the daughter of a Tonbridge gentleman, and John Austen was the only son of a rich Kentish cloth manufacturer. They had seven children, one daughter followed by six boys. (It was their fourth son William who was the father of George Austen, Jane Austen’s father.) All promised smooth sailing, but there were rocks on which the family foundered quite early on: John Austen’s health was poor and in 1704, aged only in his mid-thirties, he died, leaving seven children aged nine and under – the youngest a baby – along with the debts which he had begun accumulating before his marriage. His Will entrusted the education of his children to his wife (remember there were six sons) and on his deathbed he asked his father to look after his children. And his father promised to do so, also promising that he would not allow the household goods to be sold off to service his son’s debts.
Alas, all was forgotten once the funeral was over. Old Mr Austen reluctantly agreed to hand over £200 to save the household effects, but before he could do so he too died. His Will made things much worse: he provided generously for Elizabeth’s eldest son, but left nothing at all to the other children. In behaviour reminiscent of John Dashwood’s in Sense and Sensibility, the executors of his Will, Elizabeth’s brothers-in-law (married to her husband’s sisters) managed to talk themselves out of honouring old Mr Austen’s promise about the household goods. Over the next few years, all of these were sold off so that the family could live – and so that Elizabeth could pay off her husband’s debts, which she did, in their entirety.
Her late husband’s family did not honour promises, but the same could not be said of Elizabeth Weller Austen. John Austen had entrusted her with his sons’ education and she took that seriously. In 1708 she got a job as housekeeper and matron at a schoolhouse in Sevenoaks, on the condition that in exchange for her work, her boys would be educated. It was a step down the social scale, but it achieved her purpose: in the following eleven years, her sons were educated and her daughter married. The eldest son, the beneficiary of his grandfather’s Will, showed no inclination to extend his good fortune to his six siblings, who all had to find their own way in the world. And they did.
And there were a couple of knights in Mrs Austen’s family history. Her grandmother had been the sister of someone who became a Duke. But it still didn’t make her an aristocrat.
January 29th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
I don’t own any cats either, but my husband and I (and our children) live with my parents, and my mother has several cats. None of Mom’s cats are named for Austen characters.
Any article that relies so much on sterotypes (and I’m basing this on all of your observations because I refuse to read the article on principle) and has so much misinformation is not worthy of being printed. One wonders if this publication has recently hired Jayson Blair as part of their editorial staff.
January 30th, 2007 at 11:51 am
I’m a spinster with no cats. Sorry to all those who believe the stereotype.
January 30th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
What bothers me the most was the source of the above quotes. The source of the quotes noted in Mags’ post was a local historian and former English professor! And the parts that weren’t in quotes were, I suspect, probably derived from the same interview with that person.
Where did this English professor get those ideas?
January 31st, 2007 at 1:18 pm
This uptight Austen whore has had an e-mail exchange with the author of the column (*blushes*). All the information indeed did come from the historian/professor. I pointed out a few of the most cringe-inducing inaccuracies. The writer’s going to ask her about them after attending the lecture she is giving (tonight, I think) that was mentioned in the article. If I hear anything interesting shall certainly let you know.
February 5th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Karenlee: ‘Well, that aristocracy is utter tosh.’
No, Karenlee, it’s not. JA did have an ‘aristocratic mother’. Being aristocratic is a matter of blood, not title. Mrs. Austen’s paternal grandmother, Mary Brydges Leigh, was the daughter of a Baron (later made a Marquess) of very, very ancient linage. Mary’s brother was the first Duke of Chandos. On the Leigh side, Mrs Austen was cousin to the Baron Leighs of Stoneleigh and when that line ended the title eventually was revived and the descendants of Mrs. Austen’s grandfather Theophilus Leigh still hold that title.
You can read about the Leigh and the Brydges (Chandos) families in The Complete Peerage.
The Austens were, comparatively speaking, nobodies.