Jane Austen in Perspective: An introduction to Jane Austen

Study Guide
for students

Introduction | The boyfriend: Tom Lefroy | The friend: Mrs Anne Lefroy | The suitor: Harris Bigg-Wither |  The aunt & uncle: the Leigh-Perrots | The best friend: Martha Lloyd | The neighbours: the Digweeeds et al. | The sister: protector or vandal of Austen's legacy | The parents: George & Cassandra Austen 

The people in Jane Austen's life -
The quintessential Georgian parents: George & Cassandra Austen

Not all biographers or historians or critics view the Austen family in their Georgian context and occasionally we are presented with interpretations that tell us little about the social and economic forces determining Georgian life. Sometimes what we get is the worldview of those on the outside looking in. For example, when the Austens are accused of being ‘pseudo-gentry’, or conspirators in western cultural imperialism, or simply ‘conservative’. This last accusation has always struck me as eccentric, since the term ‘conservative’ is simultaneously opaque and pejorative. No one has ever defined what it means or what the alternatives to being conservative were in the Georgian period. 

Occasionally one hears similarly eccentric accusations levelled against Mr and Mrs Austen as parents: isn’t it awful they allowed their children to be wet-nursed and fostered in their early years; isn’t it dreadful they allowed their teenage son to be adopted by wealthy relatives; doesn’t Jane’s silence about Mrs Austen in her letters suggest she didn’t like her mother, or had a grudge against her mother, proof positive Mrs Austen was a cold and mean and bad mother! Have you failed this ‘lovely motherhood’ quest? Or have you done, or are you still doing, the best job of parenting you can under the circumstances? 

Irene Collins refutes these accusations and gives us important background to the Austen’s wet-nursing and fostering practices.^1,2 Jon Spence gives us more important background to the adoption of Edward Austen to the Knights.³ Reading their books will inform you about these subjects: here I will paint a broader picture of the context of Mr and Mrs Austen’s parenting style rather than speak of their daily practice as parents.

What is regarded as best practice in parenthood and normal in childhood will be debated as long as different models of parenthood and childhood are held in tension. No single model represents the truth or describes anyone’s lived experience in a changing world. Best practice in parenthood will always be measured against whatever model of childhood is accepted as normal in any given period, and the Georgian period saw the transition from neoclassical to romantic to early modern.⁴

At the beginning of the period, childhood ended at the age of reason, somewhere between five and seven years of age, after which the child was regarded as an adult.5 By the end of the period, childhood came to be seen as an extended time of frailty where children needed to be simul-taneously safeguarded and reformed by their parents.⁵ This extension of childhood has continued, first to the end of adolescence and now beyond adolescence as the inner-child of psychoanalysis ensures all of us remain pathological children from the womb to the tomb. Thank you dear Father Freud and Father Jung! 

The concept of family changed at the same time, moving from something extended and public and social to something nuclear and private and isolated.⁵ While the Austens lived in the middle of this transition, their style was demonstrably both scriptural and neoclassical.⁴ So perhaps they were lucky to have escaped the changing models of parenthood and childhood and family and stuck to the traditional models that worked for them and their extended family. 

We have a snapshot of Mr and Mrs Austen in Northanger Abbey, in the Morlands, a family Austen describes as normal and happy, balanced by an effective husband and wife who complement each other. By contrast, Austen describes three other dysfunctional families in her first novel: the Allens, a family that’s childless (and perhaps symbolically so); the Thorpes, a family without any father let alone an effective one; and the Tilneys, a family without any mother let alone an effective one. 

The heroine’s dilemmas begin when she leaves the transparent and sound judgement of her parents’ home in Fullerton and encounters the adult world of Bath and Northanger. There, whenever Catherine asks for plain answers, she is given equivocal speech: arch pleasantries, civilities, inanities, ambiguities, ironies, and lies. Every person she meets, every single one, including the hero, Henry, on whom her future happiness depends, speaks with a forked tongue. Only her parents are disinterested enough to tell her what she needs to know. 

Would Austen have such a keen sense of what made a maladjusted family had she not had an equally keen sense of what made a well adjusted family? And isn’t distinguishing between good and bad parenting, and demonstrating its consequences, what her novels are all about? Can you see Mrs Austen in Mrs Morland, whose ‘time was so much occupied with lying-in and teaching the little ones’ she had no time to worry about her daughter’s trip to Bath? But notice she still finds a moment to offer advice: wrap yourself up very warm about the throat when you go to the Rooms at night; try to keep some account of the money you spend; here is a little book for the purpose. Can you see Mr Austen in Mr Morland? He lets his daughter go to Bath, chaperoned by the closest thing to gentry Fullerton offers. In Bath she is able to make the closest thing to a debut a girl of her class can make. But instead of giving her carte blanche with his banker, or even £100, he gives her ten guineas and promises more when she wants it. According to my calculations, £100 in 1800 had the buying power of £5600 in 2005,⁶ and ten guineas in 1800 had the buying power of £590 in 2005,⁶ so Mr Morland was being generous but sensible. 

Catherine returns home dejected. Her hope of marrying the first man to ever pay her any attention, the first man to have ever danced and flirted with her, has been dashed! Dashed! Mr and Mrs Morland are supportive but measured. They don’t experience romantic alarm. They feel General Tilney has acted without honour or feeling, as a gentleman and a parent. They briefly go through the motions of ‘useless conjecture’ before putting Catherine’s experience behind them as a ‘strange business’ that is ‘not at all worth understanding’. They get on with life. They want their daughter to get on with life too. Mrs Morland is clear about this: Catherine, stop moping about; you’ve had a good time away; now you must try to be useful; I’ve got an essay upstairs for you to read; it’s about girls who’ve been spoilt by great acquaintance; I’ll go and get it if you don’t perk up. I’m sure it’ll do you good. 

For the Georgians, the business of life had a specific context very far removed from our present reality. They lived in the shadow of the Reformation, Civil War, Restoration, and Glorious Revolution. Their way of life was dominated by an unregulated capitalism that wasn’t constrained by the checks or balances or safety nets we depend upon.4 Agrarian change threatened their economic security. Events on the Continent threatened their national security. Their colonies, contracting in some parts of the globe, expanding in others, presented them with strategic and economic and moral difficulties (by the early 19th century slavery had been abolished in Britain but the slave trade was still thriving in some of its colonies). Their social life was determined by property and patronage. Their public and personal health was poor even among the wealthy. (Are most of us willing to admit that without modern medicine we wouldn’t be here, that had we lived in the Georgian period we would’ve died a long time ago?) There were high degrees of social mobility, upward and downward. Every class was restless and insecure and under threat.⁴ 

Salvation was mediated by the church but wellbeing was mediated by society. The linchpin of all this was the network of relationships between husband and wife, between the nuclear and extended family, and between the family and the broader community. When we criticise the Georgians for their social aspirations, we forget the reasons why they were so aspirational. They looked towards maintaining, consolidating and improving their position as much as they could. They balanced self-interest with social obligation.⁴ 

The Georgians lived by a social contract that provided a process and timeframe through which a family could move up the social ladder. Social mobility was recognized as the basis of communal wellbeing.⁴ Impeding social mobility was a sin: the sin Miss Woodhouse is guilty of in Emma. A successful marriage and effective parenting, and often adoption, lay at the heart of this social contract. Emma must learn to not interfere with Harriet Smith marrying Robert Martin, because that marriage is essential to the social contract, and the granddaughter of Harriet and Robert has every chance of becoming another Emma. For her part, Emma needs to remember where her own family came from, and she must accept the personal and public necessity of her becoming Mrs Knightley.⁴ 

George Austen descended from clothiers and landowners but his branch of the family suffered hard times.^1–3 A wealthy uncle, Francis Austen, paid for his education and at the age of 16 he received a scholarship to Oxford to study for ordination. Once ordained he was presented with the living of Steventon by its patron, Thomas Knight, another wealthy kinsman. George became engaged to Cassandra Leigh, an intelligent woman descended from a Lord Mayor of London during the reign of Elizabeth I, and the extended family of Leighs had academic connections with Oxford and included all classes of gentry.^1–3 Neither the Austens nor the Leighs were ‘pseudo-gentry’ or pseudo anything. 

During their long and successful marriage Mr and Mrs Austen produced eight children, whom they raised in a happy and loving environment to the best of their ability.^1–3 According to Irene Collins, through effective husbandry they improved the value of their living from £110 a year on their arrival to £600 a year on George’s retirement.^1,2 In today’s terms that’s an increase from £6,200 per annum to £34,000 per annum, which was no mean feat as the retail price index was slowly but steadily increasing while the value of the pound was slowly and steadily decreasing over the same period.⁶ 

In other words, prices went up and the purchasing power of the pound went down. Around the time of Jane’s death one needed £1.80 to purchase what £1 could buy at the time of her birth,⁶ so a 600% increase in the value of the Steventon living was good husbandry indeed. But if the Austens kept ahead of inflation there was a catch. There’s always a catch. Their yearly income was theirs but the asset that generated the income, Steventon, was not. They only had the use of it for a while, in trust. Their lives depended on the choices they made in their Georgian context. So they had to make the same choices as the wise and foolish stewards in the parable of the talents, and the wise and foolish virgins in the parable of the bridegroom.⁴ 

Let’s look more closely at one aspect of that context: the adopting out of Edward Austen to the Knights. As a picture tells a thousand words look at the silhouette from the Knight Collection at Chawton House Library (below). It shows Edward Austen being presented by his father to Mrs Knight. Mrs Austen is looking up from her game of chess, while Mr Knight stands behind her. As you can see, the adoption was thought momentous enough to be captured in art, and it was momentous because it framed a covenant that reflected the Georgian social contract.⁴ 

Silhouette showing Edward Austen being presented by his father to Mrs Knight. 
Mrs Austen is looking up from her game of chess, while Mr Knight stands behind her. 
From Chawton House Library.

Both the adoptive and biological parents of Edward Austen had a series of socially-constructed and genetic expectations when they agreed, for their mutual benefit, that he should become a Knight while still remaining an Austen. Their expectations were fulfilled, as the adoption brought great benefits to both families. One by-product was an environment that supported Jane during her most brilliant and productive years. While we cannot say with certainty that her six major novels would not have been written or published without Edward’s support, we can say that after her father’s death, in the absence of a husband or an income, Austen’s life as a single woman was vulnerable and her literary career would have been rendered much more difficult without the support of her brother. Extended families were important. 

The Austens weren’t poor but neither were they wealthy. Apart from a few small legacies, their large family had to exist on income from the Steventon living.^1–3 There were many demands on that income, and because there was no pension system or social welfare, as we now understand them, that income would cease on George Austen’s retirement. Their second son, George, was physically and intellectually disabled and had to be placed in care and supported for the rest of his life; their two daughters, Cassandra and Jane, never married and had to be supported for the whole of their lives; and their five healthy and able sons – James, Edward, Henry, Francis and Charles – had to be launched into the world to support themselves.^1–3 Fortunately, the Austens were relatively well connected and belonged to an extended family that understood how the welfare of its nuclear families was interdependent and therefore a matter of mutual concern.

For example, the circumstances of Mrs Austen and Cassandra and Jane were significantly reduced following Mr Austen’s retirement in 1801, and were reduced further by his death in 1805. Edward came to the rescue and offered them a cottage on his Chawton estate, Jane’s home until her own death in 1817, in which she would write and publish her finest novels. But, as Jon Spence points out, in 1814 distant relatives of the Knights threatened to bring a lawsuit claiming a legal right over the Chawton and Steventon estates, and had their litigation been successful, Edward would have lost a significant proportion of his income and property and his ability to provide for the Austens would have been greatly reduced.³ There was a risk Chawton Cottage would pass into other hands, forcing the Austen women to look for another home.³ So while there may be a natural tendency for individuals and families to seek mutual advantage, there is no guarantee extended families can or will nurture their nuclear families. That’s why there’s a strong theme of social and economic vulnerability pervading Austen’s novels.⁴ 

In Sense and Sensibility, we laugh at the comic description of Mrs John Dashwood, but she is an evil character who strikes me as on a par with (or perhaps worse than) Goneril and Regan in King Lear. She lobbies her husband to throw his mother and step-sisters out of their family home, violating both natural justice and common law, and dishonouring his dying father’s wishes. In Mansfield Park, we read how Sir Thomas Bertram is happy to support his niece, Fanny, until his circumstances are ‘rendered less fair’ by losses in Antigua and his eldest son’s dissipation and extravagance. Then, even Sir Thomas, whom we assume has pots of money, considers it ‘not undesirable’ to ‘be relieved from the expense’ of Fanny’s support and any ‘obligation for her future provision’. 

In all her novels Austen shows how Georgian fiction reflects the starkness of Georgian reality. If the Austens enjoyed a better standard of living than many Georgians it was still modest and frail and contingent and couldn’t be taken for granted. That’s what informed Mr and Mrs Austen’s parenting style more than anything else. 

Michael Giffin 

References: 

1. Collins I, Jane Austen and the Clergy, London: Hambledon Press, 1994. 
2. Collins I, Jane Austen: The Parson’s Daughter, London: Hambledon Press, 1998. 
3. Spence J, Becoming Jane Austen, London: Hambledon Press, 2003. 
4. Giffin M, Jane Austen and Religion: Salvation and Society in Georgian England, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. 
5. Ariès P, Centuries of Childhood, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973. 
6. Webb D. Inflation: The value of the pound 1750–2005. Research Paper 06/09. London: House of Commons Library, 2006.

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10 April 2007