I don’t believe in Jane Austen’s world -the world of her novels - no, not for a moment. I don’t like her world much either.
The attraction of the novels, in part at least, is the simple, regular, stable, unchanging world that they describe. Most readers would I expect, think that the novels give a fair account of one slice of society at the time. If you point out that they are confined to a closed circle on which the outside world does not impinge at all, the reply is likely to be that Jane Austen was not aiming to write a “War and Peace” and that anyway with poor roads, no radio and no T V, expensive post and few newspapers, news did not get about.
But that simply will not do. I claim that Jane Austen had what these days would be called an agenda. Hers was a time of unparalleled change. The industrial revolution then at its height, was destroying the former way of life of the whole nation. This was the era of Paine and Burke, of Voltaire and Rousseau. There were the beginnings of the campaign for parliamentary reform and the movement for the abolition of the slave trade was widespread. Then there was the war with France that went on through almost all of Miss Austen’s adult life. There were the Luddites breaking machinery. There were the Tolpuddle Martyrs and Peterloo was only just in the future.  And hanging over all, there was the menace of revolution. It was not “time’s winged chariot hurrying near” but the rumble of the tumbril that worried the establishment. There was fear of anarchy and chaos.
The idea that Jane Austen and her characters were unaware of all this is not credible. But if you don’t like the prospect of turmoil why not create a fictional world on which the real world does not impinge? The fictional world is perhaps a subconscious escape. Might it not be to the author almost as real and more absorbing as the actual world?
Now if you are to write a novel about an unchanging world you cannot write a saga where children are born grow up, grow old and die, where sons supplant fathers, and where there is joy and tragedy. But not much might occur in a single year. What might take place in such a short time and have little impact on events and society. I can think only of courtship and marriage and that is what all five novels are about. What else can explain this restriction of subject other than a need to exclude change?  Within that short time it is reasonable for no one to make or lose a fortune except by inheritance and for no one to die.
Miss Austen leaves her joyful heroines at the altar rail. That is perhaps wise since statistically the chances of married bliss would seem to be poor. In the five novels combined only the Westons and the Crofts, and perhaps Aunt and Uncle Gardiner are happily married, and the first two of those couples are childless. Set against this are a bunch of ill assorted pairings; Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram, Sir Walter and Lady Eliot, the Dashwoods both current and deceased, Sir John and Lady Middleton, the Musgroves, poor Charlotte and Collins, and of course Mr and Mrs Bennet.
Jane Austen takes further precautions to exclude the risk of change. The cast is limited in number, in associates, in social range and in age. There are no old people, no one who is likely to be much over 50 except Mrs Bates in “Emma”.  There are not many children either and none is central; all are viewed, in most cases disapprovingly, from Miss Austen’s adult position. The main characters have few associates who might distract them. There are no grandparents. Agreed life expectancy was less 200 years ago but more from child mortality than early adult death. A man of 20 could reasonably expect his three score years and ten. Few of the young adults can even muster a full complement of parents. Darcy, Bingley, Col Brandon, Willoughby, Wentworth, and Knightley, can’t manage to rustle up one of either sex between them; a careless lot it would seem.
Then there must be a rigid social code; clearly you cannot have everyone doing their own thing. Jane Austen certainly creates such a code although a wholly negative one. The great sin is “impropriety”, that is to transgress the code by doing something or rather by doing anything. Those guilty of impropriety- Marianne in “Sense and Sensibility”, and to a lesser degree Emma Woodhouse - must repent before they can be readmitted. Even in “Pride and Prejudice” the wayward Lydia at least conforms to the outward form of the code by getting married. The cardinal virtue is not propriety as much as avoidance of impropriety. All Jane Austen’s heroines - Elinor Dashwood, Fanny Price, Anne Elliot, even under a veneer of independence Elizabeth Bennet - conform; and inevitably a mighty dull bunch they make. Emma Woodhouse is more interesting- until she sees the error of her ways.
And no one can have a job since a job requires activity in the world and risks change; a job might imply ambition and either promotion or dismissal. So everyone must have inherited wealth; the only exceptions are retired naval officers and to some degree Sir Thomas Bertram who has unspecified business interests in the West Indies. Uncle Gardiner is vaguely in trade and in “Persuasion” Charles Musgrove is a rather ineffective farmer but these are marginal characters. There are a couple of clergymen but none does anything remotely connected with their calling. Perhaps vicars didn’t. Jane Austen’s father was one so she would certainly have known. In any case a “living” came by patronage not by merit; the gift of a “living” for Edward by Brandon makes that clear. Edward’s job was to provide Brandon with intelligent company not succour the needy of the parish. Darcy, Brandon, Knightley, Sir John Middleton and Sir Walter Elliot have estates but running the estate occupies none of their time and is of neither interest nor concern to them. No workers, no servants, no estate managers. Pemberly appears to be run by one elderly family retainer, whose sole function is to attest to Darcy’s sterling worth.
Miss Austen says her young women are not idle- the Dashwood girls are “always busy” - but doing what is a mystery. One might expect the intelligent Elizabeth Bennet to find walks interspersed with a little light sketching frustrating, but that would introduce the possibility, even the desirability, of change. Then, no one can have any views, experience or opinions. No religion, no politics, no social concern. No one can refer to their past or to plans for the long term future- beyond scheming to get their hands on an inheritance and vague ideas for “improving” an estate. Views, opinions and experience all raise the possibility that matters might be different from what they are. Then there are no household servants; of course servants were there and Mrs Bennet actually refers to a cook but they do not even have names, still less wants and desires. Similarly there are no poor. To have considered either might have raised the matter of their treatment and condition, and the possible need for change. The Price family is an exception but they are not an occasion for concern but of abhorrence.
The plot of “Pride and Prejudice” and also of “Persuasion” requires an estate available to rent. Were such common? I have not come across the practice elsewhere and it seems to me unlikely. Would Admiral Croft have wanted an estate for just six months? If he were in wealthy retirement surely he would have looked for a property to buy or lease. Who owned Netherfield Park? How did it come to be vacant? A large retained staff would have been needed to keep the place in a reasonable state. Admiral Croft appears to take on Kellynch Hall with less trouble than renting a gite for a fortnight.
Where by the way does the money come from to keep the inhabitants of Jane Austen’s world in idleness? Darcy, Knightley, Sir John Middleton, Brandon, Elliot have estates and perhaps so does Lady Catherine de Burgh, Admiral Croft and Wentworth may have prize money, but Bingley, Emma Woodhouse, Woodhouse himself, Mrs Smith, old Mr Westwood and the older Churchill’s even in a small way the Bennet’s, all just have money. Tony Tanner in his book “Jane Austen” who otherwise defends Miss Austen against every charge, refers to “fairy gold, clean of all trace of any possible origin in the economic realities of the time”. It is not that money is unimportant; quite the opposite as the famous opening lines of “Pride and Prejudice’ make clear. Miss Austen lets us know precisely what everyone is worth. The preoccupation with money is not surprising when marriage was the only career open to the vast majority of women.
How might the “fairy gold” actually have been acquired and what would the implications have been for the world of the novels? I cannot accept that all this has been left out simply because it is not relevant to the stories Miss Austen wished to tell and the characters she created. What is so implausibly left out would have been fatal to the stories; once let in the outside world and there is no getting it out again.
These strictures apply somewhat less to “Emma” than to the other works. The circle is larger and more socially diverse, and in Jane Fairfax a character who has a life in the greater world.
“Mansfield Park” is the key work. Here Jane Austen’s social philosophy is made quite clear. In the other novels the forces that threaten Jane Austin’s suspended world are simply not there. In “Mansfield Park” the disruptive forces of the poor and of fashionable society are fought and defeated.
What are the values encapsulated by Mansfield Park that are so crucial? Fanny makes them clear on her visit to her old home in Portsmouth. “The elegance, propriety, regularity, harmony, and perhaps, above all, the peace and tranquility of Mansfield Park, were brought to her remembrance every hour of the day, by the prevalence of every thing opposite to them here.” These values are essentially negative; they are largely the absence of their opposite. Peace is the absence of strife; harmony the absence of discord; tranquility the absence of noise and bustle. Appropriately Fanny defends these negative virtues in practice in a wholly negative way; she does nothing, she just passively resists; she resists not by action but by inaction.
What is this “opposite” that Fanny finds in her family? I cannot do better than quote Tanner again. “The prose used to describe the Portsmouth household is the most violent Jane Austen ever used. People ‘rush’ and ‘push; children ‘squabble’ and ‘kick’; it is all ‘mismanagement and discomfort‘. The ‘smallness of the house’ is constantly emphasised, and the ‘thinness of the walls’ is stressed. The noise is constant and all pervasive; everybody is always in every one else’s way. ‘Nobody sat still’- ‘motion’ of the most mindless sort is perpetual. Fanny is ‘shocked’ and ‘stunned’ ”.
This extreme abhorrence is unjustified both objectively and in the context of the novel. At the start of the novel Fanny speaks of Portsmouth as her home. Surely a situation that generated such feelings of attachment must have had merits? Moreover it produced the invariably right thinking Fanny, a sister Susan of merit and an upright brother William considered to have the makings of a naval officer. If Portsmouth was as devoid of right behaviour as Fanny later claims and if the Jesuits are correct, Fanny should have been doomed, bar a miracle, before she arrived at Mansfield Park.
What is so very wrong with the Price household? Not cruelty, callousness, indifference, crime. Jane Austen could have written something like this without altering any of the “facts”. “Fanny was home again. Here was spontaneity, fondness and genuine affection. Here was liveliness and openness. How different from the rigid code of Mansfield Park that suppressed all real feeling. Here there was no Mrs Norris with her odiously patronising ways. They might be poor but at least they did not batten on the slavery of others. This was a real home and made Fanny see Mansfield Park in all its shallowness and pretension.”
The abhorrence felt for the Price household is genuine whether justified or not, so what is it that Fanny and Miss Austen fear? Can there be any doubt that the answer is revolution? The fear of an uprising by the poor and an unpleasant fate for the well-to-do, was all pervading at the time. The crowding into cities as the result of the industrial revolution made that seem the more likely. That is how later Marx saw it. The fear of the poor as a separate untamed and dangerous breed continued throughout the 19th Century.
The abhorrence of the Crawfords and the threat posed by of “Lovers’ Vows” is no more objectively justified than is the condemnation of the Prices. “Lovers’ Vows” is hardly a great and uplifting play. However the indiscretions the play allows are trivial not just from the position of the 21st century but from the standpoint of society at the time. The play is harmless enough. The Austen family indulged in amateur theatricals so it is not simply amateur acting that is evil. The Crawfords are shallow and pleasure seeking but neither characteristic is in itself a great sin and certainly not a crime. But they and the class that they represent are an outside force and anything beyond the closed world of Mansfield Park is a threat. The returning Sir Thomas acts like Christ driving the money-changers out of the temple. Perhaps that is a comparison Jane Austen intended.
Both the poor and fashionable society can be repulsed by steadfastness, tenacity and inertia. But with Sir Thomas and his business Jane Austin has a problem, a problem that she refuses to confront. We are told that Sir Thomas has “business interests in Antigua” but not what those are. There is no doubt at all that the business is producing sugar with slave labour. Jane Austen could have written “sugar estates” as easily as “business interests”, but then serious people like Fanny and Edmond would have had to have an opinion on the morality of slave owning and Sir Thomas’s role as the bastion of right values would have been undermined. The notion that those at Mansfield Park were unaware of the nature of Sir Bertram’s “business interests” is implausible but that is tacitly what we are asked to accept. The notion that slavery was accepted as part of the natural order is equally untenable. Abolition was a great popular movement at the time. In 1792 twenty percent of the entire male population of Manchester signed an anti slavery petition. Once write the word “slavery” and the book falls apart. Fanny would have been faced with a moral dilemma and Jane Austin’s heroines are not used to moral dilemmas. What should she do? What could she do? This little world of Mansfield Park, safe, secure, contained, right-minded, all built on slavery! Should she urge Sir Thomas to free his slaves, sell Mansfield Park and live a life of genteel seclusion? Should Fanny leave Mansfield Park dragging Edmond with her and devote both their lives to the abolition of slavery and the relief of those in semi slavery nearer to hand? George Eliot’s Dorathea would at the least have urged Sir Thomas to run a model plantation and a model estate at home, but not the negative Fanny Price.
Why does Jane Austen court this fatal danger? I believe the answer is quite simple. Sir Thomas has to be out of the way for the conflict between propriety and impropriety occasioned by the staging of “Lovers Vows” to take place. Where can he go? Not just to London on business since he could return at any time. Trade still occurred with Europe but Europe is not far enough either. Australia and South Africa are too far and why would Sir Thomas go to either? It has to be the West Indies. Except for the requirements of the plot there is no need for Sir Thomas to have business interests at all. Darcy, Knightley and Brandon manage quite well without. None of those has a profligate son to bail out but Miss Austen could have omitted the son or made Sir Thomas wealthier.
As it is Fanny and Jane Austen reserve their outrage not for slavery or the plight of the poor or the condition of women but for adultery. For Fanny the height of wickedness is Mrs Rushton’s elopement with Crawford. Lydia’s elopement in “Pride and Prejudice” is plausibly regarded as a social catastrophe, but that is not Fanny’s position. For Fanny elopement is a deadly sin. It is a “horrible evil”; “Fanny seemed to herself never to have been shocked before”; “There was no possibility of rest… the night was totally sleepless”; “It was too gross a compilation of evil, for human nature, not in a state of utter barbarism, to be capable of”; “The greatest blessing to everyone of kindred with Mrs Rushworth would be instant annihilation.” Dear me. This at a time when Nelson was swanning round Europe in a menage a trios with Lord and Lady Hamilton, the Prince Regent was having it away with anyone he fancied and Wellington was far from being alone in having a mistress. The great man said when threatened with exposure, “Publish and be damned.” There must be a reason for Miss Austen making Fanny respond so vehemently. The response is out of all proportion to the event itself so it must be the threat posed by any subversion of the ordered society of Jane Austen’s world. That Jane Austen’s world is a fiction does not mean she did not believe in it or need to defend it.

Whether what I have written contains literary criticism depends on what the novel aims to do. Jane Austen in “Northanger Abbey”, speaking not through a character, defines the novel as ”a work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.” A large claim but a vague one. I assume Miss Austen had “Northanger Abbey” in mind as a good example.
I would put the matter this way, for the vast majority of books that are classed as novels. The novel is about characters. Through them we understand about others and about ourselves. But a character reveals him - or her - self by actions and reactions occasioned by a situation; there needs to be a story and a plot of some sort. Whether we say, “I can now understand - empathise- with someone in that situation and I can see how I might behave in similar circumstances” or “ This is ridiculous; no human being would act like that! “ may depend on our range of sympathy and comprehension as well as on the merits of the novel. We may also say, “Plausible or not, I am simply not interested.” I read one Ripley novel; I shall not read another. Further the situation must be consistently realised. If the novel purports to be about an actual time and place then the author must get the detail right, especially if the plot is far fetched.  I eventually started but failed to finish “The da Vinci Code”. I could have accepted the preposterous plot but not the stretch Jaguar and Versailles in northwest Paris. And a novel must be decently written; “The da Vinci Code” fell well below my minimum standard. A novel may deal with social injustice but that is relevant only in that it presents the characters with difficulties, trials and moral choices. “North and South” works in those ways although the precise situation is long past. And of course a good novel should be a page-turner.
How do Jane Austen’s novels measure up? The novels all tell a story, in fact the same story, although there is enough variation on the theme to maintain our interest. Every story ends happily, and there is no privation and no tragedy along the way. The novels are certainly escapist literature for us and that is surely one reason for their enduring popularity. The books are well written and with a certain ironic detachment. There does though seem to me to be something a little cheap about wit and irony in a novel; the author is creating a character to be ridiculed and the character cannot answer back. The dialogue has a formality that may be appropriate to the period but from time to time a character launches into a disquisition of several hundred words and that I would have thought unrealistic. The novels are set in a precise recent time. This is not depicted inaccurately because it is hardly depicted at all; the stories exist without context. In such a severely restricted world it is difficult to generate situations that pose a moral dilemma still less physical danger. I have argued that Jane Austen must have been driven to this restricted context, time-frame and cast, by the social and philosophical imperative to resist change. However, a novel in which little happens, where there is no tragedy, no danger, no response to outside events, where no personal moral choices are required, cannot in my book, be great literature. The moral dilemma faced by Fanny Price is whether or not to be persuaded to take part in “Lovers Vows”, not whether living on the proceeds of slavery is justified. To say that Fanny’s problem is symbolic will not do since the novels are clearly advanced as realistic. For Jane Austen, Fanny’s problem is both real and critical. For me it is trivial and also unreal because the world of the novels is unbelievable.

Despite the straightjacket that Jane Austen imposes on her characters, are they none-the-less memorable and do they expand our understanding? The characters can be separated into three; the major players, essentially the heroines and those who impinge on their fate; minor characters who are there to help the story along but who are not dealt with in depth; and the comic and ridiculous. I find the last group - Mr Collins, Lady de Burgh, Sir Walter Elliot, Mr Woodhouse - unsatisfactory. Lady de Burgh is a pantomime villain; we all hiss when she appears. Has there ever been such a pompous ass as Collins or a hypochondriac in the Woodhouse league or someone as vain and class obsessed as Sir Walter? They lack the complexity to be realistic or interesting, and they lack the vitality and eccentricity that Dickens would have given them. I find them neither plausible nor amusing.  We do not say, “He’s a proper Mr Woodhouse”, as we would say, ”He’s a proper Scrooge”.
There are a host of minor characters but few are memorable. I have known women as silly as Mrs Bennet but I am not fond of silly women. Mr Bennet is the most interesting male character and Jane Austen portrays him sympathetically; he shares Miss Austen’s sardonic outlook and above all he appreciates Elizabeth. Why though does Jane Austen make him so inadequate when faced with the elopement of Lydia with Wickham? One might excuse Mr Bennet his indolence on the same grounds as in “Sense and Sensibility”  Edward Ferrars is excused his lack of purpose; both were comfortably positioned and had no cause to exert themselves, and did not. But Bennet’s feebleness when action is required undermines the sympathetic picture that Jane Austen has created. Can it be that for Mr Bennet not Uncle Gardiner, to have worked with Darcy to engineer the marriage would have brought in the real world? As it is the arrangement is made effectively off-stage. And for Mr Bennet to have shown energy and initiative would have meant change, change of character. By the way how does Bennet pass the time? What is he up-to shut in his study all day? Has he a library of erotic literature perhaps?
The Crawfords are the most important of the other minor characters because their superficiality is one of the forces Fanny sets out to combat. But they are not substantial enough to be worthy adversaries and what they represent is scarcely a major threat to society. I have suggested why Jane Austen treats it as one but the disproportionate response is a weakness in the novel.
The major male characters are either upright- the potential husbands- or rakes, bounders, cads and all purpose villains.  Wickham, Willougby, Crawford and Mr Elliot are presented plausibly enough but the last is scarcely a villain and the villainy of the first three seems contrived. I suspect their real fault is not in being heartless seducers but in being a step down on the social scale as potential husbands. If all four are motivated by the prospect of gain why do not they all act like Mr Elliot; give it their best shot and if that is not successful try somewhere and someone else. Willoughby, Jane Austen tells us, eventually does just that.
The plot requires Willougby to behave inconsistently. He is portrayed as being genuinely attracted to Marianne and would have married her had his expectations of wealth not been dashed. Elinor and Jane Austen are largely convinced by his later apology and expression of regret. A superficial person, not a wicked one. But his treatment of Brandon’s ward is heartless and despicable. He arrives in Devon hot foot from seducing and abandoning Eliza. The plot requires the seduction since there must be a reason for the dashing of his prospects and hence for his jilting Marianne. That is not the only far-fetched matter demanded by the plot. The explanation for the existence of Brandon’s ward is melodramatic but she has to exist for Willoughby to seduce her.  However, for Eliza to be available for seduction Brandon has to claim he could not have had the girl in his household, an implausible and unsupported claim. And why should Willoughby set out to seduce Eliza anyway? There was no money in it. The seduction would be disastrous for the girl and do Willoughby no good. Indeed it proved to be disastrous for Willoughby as well, something he would have known was a risk. I can conclude only that Jane Austen required Willoughby to be disgraced and did not bother to make a plausible case either in action or character.
Wickham is hardly more plausible. The plot requires Wickham to run off with Lydia but with no intention of marrying her, in order that Darcy can do the noble act to set all to rights. But why would Wickham have done that? Lydia would have been disgraced but as with Willoughby, the business would have done Wickham’s admittedly dim prospects, no good. Not the way to prize a “living” out of Darcy. Before this Wickham had planned to elope with Darcy’s sister and marry her for her money. But in that he might have been disappointed since she was only fifteen and he would had to have waited six years before he could get his hands on her cash. Her guardians could well have tied the wealth in a trust by then. Surely the mercenary Wickham would have checked that before the venture.
Then there is Henry Crawford. Like Wickham he is portrayed as charming and his attraction to Fanny genuine if shallow; there was no money in it. Why though does he elope with Mrs Rushford? Elopement was a serious business leading to a precarious position both socially and financially. Can it be that Jane Austen wishes to strengthen the case against the fashionable world? Threatening change is not enough; the fashionable world must be shown to be wicked as well. To ram home the point Miss Austen has Julia elope with Yates.
Then there is Charlotte Lucas. She has to marry Mr Collins to provide a reason for Elizabeth visiting Lady de Burgh and so seeing Darcy again. Charlotte’s parents are well off, indeed rich, and she is the only child. Surely comfortable spinsterhood would have been much preferable to being Mrs Collins. And were there no respectable young men in business or farming who might have wished to marry a sensible girl with prospects?
There are a few minor matters that I suspect are none too plausible. The Bennets live in a house of modest size with none other close by. I searched in vain for such when we returned from Australia. Anything of that sort had once been a farm. Similarly what was the former function of the house Sir John lets the Dashwoods have? It was not a vacant farm labourer’s cottage.
Jane Austen seems to me to stretch or tighten class boundaries as the plot requires. The small town society described in Emma convinces me. Emma herself may be rich but she does not live in a stately home. She mixes not just with Knightley who I infer has a modest estate, but Elton the vicar, Harriet Smith of uncertain status, the genteelly impoverished Bates, and of course her ex companion and current Mrs Weston. But Knightley makes it quite clear that Harriet Smith’s station in life is as the wife of a respectable farmer and Emma is unaware of Elton’s designs on her because it is so socially improbable, it simply does not occur to her as possible. Yet Fanny Price leaps a social chasm. Surely she would have had unpolished manners and been prone to social gaffs, but it would seem not.
It is with Darcy and the Bennets that I have most difficulty. The Bennets are near the bottom of the class that Miss Austen recognises. Darcy is by some margin at the top. The Bennets live in a modest house where the girls have to share a bedroom. Pemberley is a stately home, it is reasonable to infer an order grander than Knightley’s or Brandon’s or Sir John Middleton’s estates or Kelynch Hall, or even Mansfield Park.   Would Darcy have accepted a dinner invitation from Bennet? I have my doubts. Darcy’s behaviour at the ball, the drawbacks he enumerates to marriage with Elizabeth and Lady de Burgh’s objections though pompous, are all in accord with what it is reasonable to infer are Miss Austen’s social opinions.
Why by the way does Darcy not have a title? An estate of that magnitude would have been awarded along with a title, unless bought recently with the profits of trade, and there is no suggestion of that. But ennoblement would have made marriage to Elizabeth even more far-fetched.
The society in “Emma” is far more homogeneous than that of “Pride and Prejudice” but it still never occurs to Emma that someone as low in the social scale as a vicar might have designs on her. Elizabeth though claims she is Darcy’s equal on the grounds that she is the “daughter of a gentleman.” Then as now a gentleman is one with “chivalrous instincts and fine feelings- a person of distinction”. Clearly Bennet is no gentleman in that sense. But gentleman could also mean someone of money and leisure, and though Bennet has the minimum of the former he has a surfeit of the latter. Neither Darcy nor Bennet need to do anything and don’t. Is Elizabeth saying, “My lover and my father are equals because both are idle and useless to society”? Not much of a case.
I think few claim that Jane Austen does men well. I think she has neither sympathy for nor interest in the future husbands of her heroines. Is there anything at all that can be said about Edward, Brandon, Bingley, Edmund and Wentworth? Knightley at least corrects and finally schools Emma but the others are just there. None change during the narrative. Darcy is the only one for whom a case for change can be made. He pockets his pride sufficiently to marry Elizabeth and acknowledge Jane’s merits but that is unlikely to extend to Bennet, Mrs Bennet and the other girls - and why should it? The clearest sign of a change of heart is his tacit acknowledgement of the merits of Uncle Gardiner. Lydia’s elopement is the nearest there is to a crisis demanding action in all five novels; Darcy at least faces this crisis. By the way, it seems to me that Darcy’s fault is prejudice more than pride. He refuses initially to contemplate the possibility of merit in those lower in society; he treats them as another order rather than regarding himself as superior.
I am left with what are by common consent the only important characters, Miss Austen’s heroines; Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, Elizabeth Bennet, Emma Woodhouse, Fanny Price and Anne Eliot. Elinor and Anne are to my mind very similar; both are sensible, patient, practical, considerate.  I know women of similar character. They are a good pair; I admire them and I believe I would like them. But they are somewhat self-effacing; they tell me little about human nature and nothing about myself. And the plots do not require them to face difficulties that might reveal the depths of their characters. Most readers I believe find Fanny Price the least attractive of the heroines and I can see why. She is a prig. The revulsion she shows towards her family is sanctimonious and ungenerous, her reaction to the amateur theatricals out of all proportion and her response to the elopements of the Bertram sisters simply ludicrous. But it is her failure - and Miss Austen’s - to acknowledge that the “propriety” of Mansfield Park is built on slavery that is unforgivable.
Emma is rich, lively, attractive, intelligent and with some education given her time and station. Her problem is that she has nothing to do so she meddles. Jane Austen‘s solution to the meddling is not employment or even the suggestion that employment might have been an answer, had such been available. No, her solution is marriage to Knightley, which is a species of character lobotomy.
Then there is Elizabeth Bennet, usually thought of as the most attractive of the heroines. Clever, with a certain wit, but not with much else to recommend her. I assume she is cured of her prejudice as Darcy is of his pride. But Elizabeth’s misjudging of Darcy is understandable and is not a general fault of character; she does not believe the worst of everyone and take every piece of gossip as true. To have disbelieved Wickham would have needed evidence of Darcy’s merits and at that stage there was none. Indeed Darcy’s disdainful manner made Wickham’s slanders appear the more credible.
Miss Austen does not approve of Marianne Dashwood but I rather think I do. If “sensibility” means liveliness, generosity of spirit, openness, gaiety and trust, I am for it. If it means the risk of “impropriety” then so be it. “Sensibility” courts  disappointment and that Marianne suffers. Jane Austen contrasts Elinor’s stoicism favourably with Marianne’s open wretchedness. But stoicism can become a carapace that none can penetrate. The wife whose husband had suffered a boarding school education from an early age once complained to me, ”I’ve been married to Rex for 30 years and I don’t know what he thinks or what he feels about anything!” (To be spoken with a Morningside accent.) I am sure Marianne and Brandon had a very happy marriage and perhaps so did Jane and Bingley. With the marriages of Elizabeth and Darcy, Fanny and Edmund, Elinor and Edward, Emma and Knightley I can see little prospect of joy. What must life have been like for Mr and Mrs Knightley closeted with old Woodhouse, day after day, month after month, year after year? Terminal boredom!
You may suppose that I do not rate Jane Austen highly and you would be right. Why have a bothered to set down my reasons? Only because it is a lifelong habit to try to analyse my opinions especially where, as is often the case, they are at variance with the received view. Why if my opinion of Jane Austen is not high do I read her? Well it passes the time. Hers is a reassuring world if an unreal one. Nothing nasty happens, indeed nothing much happens at all. Her novels are an escape from our world in which far too much happens and not much of it pleasant.
June 2009