THE NATURE AND FUNCTION OF

SETTING

IN JANE AUSTEN'S NOVELS

Dissertation
submitted in partial fulfilment of the
requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts
in the Department of English
of Rhodes University

by

PATRICIA MARGUERITE WYNDHAM KELLY

January 1979
 PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This study examines the settings in Jane Austen's six novels.

Chapter I introduces the topic generally, and refers briefly to Jane

Austen's aims and methods of creating her settings. Short accounts

are given of the emphasis put on setting in the criticism of Jane

Austen's work; of the chronology of the novels; and of the use made

of this aspect of the novel in eighteenth-century predecessors.

Chapter II deals with the treatment of place in Northanger Abbey,

Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma.

The consideration of five nove l s together makes it possible to

genera l ize about aspects of place common to a ll , and to discuss part-

iculars peculiar to individual novels without, I hope, excessive

repetition. The chapter may be thought disproportionately l ong, but

this aspect of setting is most prominent and important in the

delineation of character . Chapter III discusses the handling of

spatial detail and time in these five novels. Chapter IV offers a

fuller analysis of what is the chief concern of this thesis, the

nature and function of setting, in respect of the single novel

~ersuasion, and attempts to draw together into a coherent whole some

of the points made in Chapters II and III. Persuasion separates con-

veniently from the other works, not on l y because it was written after

them, but more importantly because in it there is a new development

in Jane Austen's use of setting. Some critics, notably E.M. Forster

and B.C. Southam, have found startlingly new qualities in the

setting of Sanditon, and, certainly, the most striking feature of

the fragment is the treatment of place. But Jane Austen left off

ii
writing Sandi ton in March 1817 because of illness, and the twelve

chapters make up too small and unfinished a piece to be considered in

the same way as the other novels. The Watsons, too, except for some

references to it in Chapter I, does not come within the scope of

this dissertation.

Another introductory point needs to be made briefly. Where it

is necessary, the distinction between Jane Austen and the omniscient

narrator is observed, but generally, partly because it is clear that

Jane Austen's values are close to thos e of the narrator, and partly

because it is convenient, traditional and sensible to do so, the name

IIJane Austen" is used to refer both to the actual person and to the

narrator of the novels.

The conventions of bibliographical style used in this thesis

are those recommended by Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of

Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 4th ed. (Chicago and London:

University of Chicago Press, Phoenix Books, 1973); the MLA Style

Sheet, 2nd ed., 1970; and, where necessary in order to conform to

British conventions, Notes on the Presentation of Theses on Literary

Subjects, 3rd ed. (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1967). Errors in

spelling and_ punctuation in passages cited from Jane Austen's

juvenilia are not indicated when these are clearly the young author's

aberrations.

I should like to express my thanks to Miss Ruth Harnett for

her encouraging supervision , to the Staff of the Rhodes University

Library, a nd to Mrs H. Wells for typing the manuscr ipt.

iii
 CONTENTS

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . • . . . . • • . ii

TEXT AND ABBREVIATIONS . . • . . . . . . . . . v

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. . . . . . • . . • 1

CHAPTER II. PLACE. . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

CHAPTER III. SPATIAL DETAIL AND TIME 97

1. Spatial Detail. 97

2. Time. . 117

CHAPTER IV. SETTING IN PERSUASION . . . . . . 146

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . • . . . . . . . . 188

iv
 TEXT AND ABBREVIATIONS

The text used in this study is that of R.W. Chapman's edition

of the novels, Oxford University Press, third edition, 1932-34; the

Minor Works, Oxford University Press, 1954; and Jane Austen's

Letters, Oxford University Press, second edition, 1952.

The following abbreviations are used in the text:

NA Northanger Abbey

SS Sense and Sensibility

PP Pride and Prejudice

MP Mansfield Park

E Emma

P Persuasion

MW Minor Works

L Letters

v
 1

CHAPTER I

I NrRODUCTION

For Jane Austen (1775-1817) novel writing was an end in itself.

She was, Mary Lascelles explains, "as deep in love with the novel as a

poet is in love with poetry", and she lived her life "engrossed in

making an artefact which pleased her". 1 From the age of twelve on-

wards she wrote works for the entertainment of her family and friends,2

and the six novels for which she is known are the culmination of this

long apprenticeship. In keeping with an a lr eady established tradition

of the novel, her subject-matter is the courtship of the heroine, with

the complications of the plot finally resolved by her marriage. The

aspect of this topic which most interested Jane Austen is not the

outer action of the heroine's story, but her inner life, and the central

issues of the novels are the origin and deve l opment of the heroine's

love for the hero, the growth of the protagonists toward self-knowledge,

and the reconciliation of the individual and society. It is clear from

her novels that Jane Austen, with her Augustan attitudes, and much of

her morality and literary tastes acquired from her "dear Dr Johnson"

(~, p.l8l), agreed with him in thinking that the more like life a

fictional work is, the greater is the novelist's responsibility in

3
presenting valid moral instruction. The truth that she pursues

1
Mary Lascelles, "Jane Austen and the novelli, in Jane Austen:
Bicentenary Essays, ed. John Halperin (London: Cambridge University
Press, 1975), p.241.

2see Minor Works, pp.1-240.

3
Johnson, Rambler No.4.
 2

unremittingly in her novels is that quality, that kind of wisdom ,

which according to Johnson is necessary to the regulation of life

1
and which "is always found where it is honestly sought". It is,

perhaps, this honest search for truth and the consequent expression

of universal values on the part of Jane Austen that give her novels

their enduring quality and make them relevant to every age. Many

readers have commented on their unusual modernity: Christopher

Gillie attributes their special appeal in the twentieth century to

the emphasis which Jane Austen places on the need to understand our-
2
selves. other qualities which appeal to the modern read er are the
3
"flexible medium" of narration that enables the narrator to glide

easily and imperceptibly from outside comment into a character's

thoughts, and the remarkable illusion of actuality of the fictional

worlds. The constituents of any novel--the plot, characterization,

setting, atmosphere, structure, language, pOint of view, tone and

themes--re late closely to each other, and Jane Austen's novels are

particularly tightly integrated. This dissertation examines the

nature and function of the settings in Jane Austents complete and

mature work, and, of course, such a study necessarily inc ludes some

consideration of all aspects of the six novels.

Jane Austen chose to present a particular social world, and

the physical background against which the action takes place is

much the same in each novel, although the atmosphere created by

1
Johnson, Rasselas, chap.I1.

2ChristoPher Gillie, A Preface to Jane Austen (London:

Longman, 1974), p.xii.
3
Barbara Hardy, A Reading of Jane Austen (London: Peter
OWen, 1975), p.14.
 3

details of setting differs. The characters belong to the landed

gentry and upper and middle classes, and they live in the country

houses and villages of the England which Jane Austen herself knew.

They may visit London and Bath, and seaside resorts. The outdoor

scenes are set in the gardens, parks, streets and countryside of this

realistic world, and the interior scenes, in the drawing-rooms and

dining - rooms of houses, and in the assembly rooms of public places.

In these rooms the characters are surrounded by the kind of objects

that come into people's daily lives: furniture, food, clothes,

possessi~ns, books, and other articles associated with leisure. The

period in which the novels are set seems to be that of Jane Austen's

youth rather than one strictly contemporary with the years in which

she revised or wrote them. For example, the action of Persuasion,

which was written in 1815-16, takes place in 1814-15, but Jane

Austen's twice mentioning the new improvements of the Cobb (P. pp.95 ,

109), made in 1793,1 suggests that her settings go back in time a

little. She visited Lyme in 1804,2 and, walking on the cobb,3 would

have seen the inscription recording the work done. All that we know

about Jane Austen, including a remark made by her nephew in the

Memoir (1871) about her style of dress in later life,4 indicates that

lAn inscription on a stone set into the Cobb at Lyme Regis

reads: "The Work extending 273 Feet west of this Stone was Erected
by James Hamilton Builder and Contractor with the Honble Board of
Ordnance to repair the Breaches made in the Cobb in Jany 1792 Under
the Direction of Capt D'Arcy Engineer 1793".
2
Letters, p.138.

3 Ibid ., p.142.

4J . E . Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen, ed. R.W. Chapman

(OXford: Clarendon Press, 1926), p.87.
 4

she was naturally conservative; but her settings may belong,

generally speaking , to the last decade of the eighteenth century

1
simply because these were impressionable years for her. Time in

the novels is the linear dimension of the Newtonian world, and the

essentia l chronology, the period during whi ch the main action takes

p l ace, is one year or less. Most of the protagonists, at some point

in their story , become aware of the import of past, present and

future in their lives.

It was not Jane Austen's intention to evoke a strong emotional

response in the reader through the presentation of place as a thing

in itself divorced from action. A small proportion of each novel is

devoted to the e lements of setting--place, spatial detail and time;

there is little authorial description of places and things; and what

there is is given in general terms, not particularised. Most of the

sparse, concrete details of the surroundings occur unobtrusively

throughout the narrative and dialogue. Nevertheless, so significant

is every reference to the physical background, so strong the power

of suggestion, so fine the discrimination that governs the selecti on

and treatment of such detail, that the setting plays an important part

in forwarding theme , plot and characterization, and in creating the

2
particular atmosphere of each novel. As has been said already , Jane

Austen believed , with Johnson, that fiction should "exhibit life in

its true state, diversified only by accidents that daily happen in

1
See Pride and Prejudice, pp.406-7 where R.W. Chapman makes
the point that , despite later revision, Jane Austen seems to have
conceived the events of Pride and Prejudice as belonging to the last
decade of the eighteenth century- -the years of the militia camps
at Brighton.
2
See p.l above.
 5

the world, and influenced by passions and qualities which are really

to be found in conversing with mankind" .. 1 At the same time as these

qualities of veri s imilitude, probability and naturalness increase

the need for sound moral instruction, they also, in Jane Austen's

hands, lessen the danger of the novels' becoming overtly didactic.

In his r eview of Persuasion in 1821, Richard Whately, Archbishop of

Dublin and an experienced writer and literary critic, praised Jane

Austen for not letting the moral element of her novels interfere with

their main purpose of entertaining. She keeps "the design of teaching

out of sight II , and lithe moral lessons ..... spring incidentally from the

circumstances of the storYi ... her's [sic] is that unpretending kind

of instruction which is furnished by real life; and certainly no

author has ever conformed more closely to real life, as well in the

incidents, as in the character sand descr iptions II .. 2 It is this

conformity to real life that is one of Jane Austen 1 s greatest achieve-

ments, and one of the functions of setting in the novels is to

contribute to the illusion of actuality, and give a sense of a solid,

"real" world; the remarkable impression of reality which a novel like

Emma leaves is partly suggested by the presentation of the environment.

In all the novels the realistic settings help to make the characters

lifelike; and the more credible the people in these fictional worlds,

the more convincing are their values and attitudes, their feelings

and behaviour.

Jane Austen was not only an observer of people. Her novels

and letters show that she enjoyed and was sensitive to her surroundings,

1
Johnson, Rambler No.4.
2
B.C. Southam, ed., Jane Auste n: The Critical Heritage
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968 ), p.95.
 6

the seasons, and weather in town and country,l and Henry Austen

describes his sister as having been "a warm and judicious admirer of

landscape, both in nature and on canvass" . 2 She admired William

Gilpin's work,3 and made extensive use of her knowledge of his prin-

ciples of the picturesque in her writing. The creating mind builds

on its own experience, and there is much in the novels--the delight

of many characters in country walks, and Anne Elliot's dislike of

Bath, for example--that reflects Jane Austen's own sense of beauty

and attitude to her surroundings. The juvenilia show that from an

early age she was aware of possible uses of setting in fiction. The

crude humour of the earliest parodies, which mock the absurdities

that she found in some contemporary novels, depends in part on the

nonsensical names of places and exaggeratedly conventional or

ridiculous descriptions of scenery.4 In these burlesques Jane

Austen enjoys making fun of aspects of setting which she later

treats seriously--the "sympathetic habitat"S (MW, p.181), the

opposition between country and town (MW, p.30), references to food

(MW, p.S3), the connection between objects and memory (MW, p.184),

the handling of time in fiction (MW, pp.l1, 12). The mature novels

reveal her ideas on the close relationship between people and their

environment. In the ironic "Flan of a Novel", written in 1816,

1
See, for example, Letters, pp.8S, 116, 148, 233.

2The "Biographical Notice" in Northanger Abbey, p.7.

3 Ibid •

4see , for example, Minor Works, pp.S, 18, 26; and pp. 2S,:Lr
below.

SThis is Barbara Hardy's term; see A Reading, p.137.

 7

"according to hints from various quarters ll

for the entertainment of

nephews and nieces,! the heroine's father has lived "much in the

World" (MW, p.428) before retiring to the country, and then he and his

daughter are "never above a fortnight together in one place" (MW, p.429).

Such mobility is not for Jane Austen's protagonists, and the novels

show that her ideal environment, that which nurtures the virtues

that belong to "true gentility" <.~.' p.358), is established by time,

tradition, the "country habit" (~, p.168), and good husbandry.

Such a place, of course, is Donwell Abbey, the excellence of

which reflects Mr Knightley's character. The reader gains his

impression of Donwell Abbey chiefly through Emma's reflections upon

the place, and these reflections in turn reveal and confirm qualities

in Emma. Thus the reader's impression of place, especially in the

three later novels, is coloured by the cast of the mediating

character's mind and the nature of his or, more often, her feelings;

the character sees what she looks at in a characteristic manner, and

selects the features to which she is able or wishes to respond. In

this way the physical environment is made to convey a character's

dispOSition or social status; it may occasionally have symbolic mean-

ing or suggestion; or it may be shown as a force exerting an influence

either morally harmful or beneficial. The emphasis may be on the

description of the place, or on the qualities of the owner, or on those

of the character responding to it, or on all of these aspects. The

heroine's response to her surroundings is the most complex; and, given

frequent ly at a crucial stage in her development, as well as describing

1
B.C. Southam, Jane Austen's Literary Manuscripts: A Study
of the Novelist's Development through the Surviving Papers (London:
OXford UniverSity Press, 1964), p.79.
 8

or suggesting a place or object, it reveals her values, feelings and

quality of mind .

Because their surroundings are main ly created in this way by

the characters themselves and are therefore always connected to the

personal drama, the physical environment never becomes more prominent

than the characters, nor does it dwarf them. Scenery , l andscape and

houses in fiction Can be made to appear much larger than the people

in them, but Jane Austen does not set her characters as small figures

against a dominating background in the way that a writer like Hardy,

because of h is ideas about the universe, does in Tess of the

d'Ubervilles. For Jane Austen man is sti ll the chief object of

interest ; her focus is always on people and their relationships with

each other, and the whole fictional world is built on such a con-

sis tent and exactly-observed small scale that the ordinary becomes

extraordinaily significant , apparent minutiae carry implications of

weighty import, and humdrum moments of living take on an intensity

which makes a seemingly trivial and lightweight situation revealing

and important . Virginia Woo l f examines one such situati on and its
1
effects in The Watsons, an unfinished work written in 1804-5.

The Edwardses are going to the ball. The Tomlinsons'

carr iage i s passing; she can tell us that Charles is "being
provided with his gloves and told to keep them on"; Tom
Musgrave retreats to a remote corner with a barrel of
oysters and is famously snug. Her genius is freed and
active . At once our senses quicken; we are possessed with
the pecu liar intensity which she a lone can impart. But of
what is it all composed? Of a ball in a country town; a
few couples meeting and taking hands in an assembly room;
a little eating and drinking; and for catastrophe , a boy
be ing snubbed by one young lady and kindly treated by
another. There is no tragedy and no heroism. Yet for
some reason the little scene is moving out of all
proportion to its surface solemnity. We have been made
to see that if Emma acted so in the ball-room, how

1
See Southam, Literary Manuscripts, p.64 for this dating.
 9

considerate, how tender, inspired by what sincerity of

feeling she would have shown herself in those graver
crises of life which , as we watch her , come inevitably
before our eyes. Jane Austen is thus a mistress of much
deeper emotion than appears upon the surface. She
stimulates us to supply what is not there. What she
offers is, apparently, a trifle, yet is composed of
something that expands in the reader 's mind and endows
with the most endUring form of life scenes which are
outwardly trivial.

Mary Lascelles, developing Virgini a Wool f ' s brief analys i s, f inds a

further explanation of Jane Austen's method and achievement in this

respect. She writes of the delight and powerful suggestion which is

implied in understatement and which can operate only if scale is

2
truly kept.

This matter o f Jane Austen's small -scale fictional world has

led, especially in much nineteenth-centur y criticism, to the charge

that the small secti on of society that she writes about, the absence

of startling and unusual incident, and the narrow range of her

settings, are due to her own inexperience and restricted life , and
3
that such limitations of her art constitute a weakness. Since

1939, when Mary Lascelles published Jane Austen and her Art, the trend

in modern criticism has been to examine Jane Austen's narrative

technique in close relation to her meaning , and to place the novels

in a historical perspective. The result of these approaches is that

Jane Austen is now widely regarded "as a far more considerable,

lVirginia Woolf , "Jane Austen", in The Common Reader: First

Series (London: Hogarth Press, 1948), pp.173 - 74.

2Mary Lascelles , Jane Austen and her Art (Oxford: Cl arendon

Press, 1939; Oxford Paperbacks, 1963), p.135.

3 B. C. Southam, ed., Critical Essays on Jane Austen (Lcndon:

Routledge & Kegan Paul , 1968), p.xiv.
 10

serious and wide-ranging writer than previous generations had

1
supposed" . She deliberately limited her subject-matter, and we

cannot necessarily conclude , like Richard Simpson in 1870, that she

"had no interest for the great political and social problems which
2
were being debated with so much blood in her day". The French

Revolution and the Napoleonic wars touched directly on her life in

that a cous in's husband was guillotined, and two of her brothers had

distinguished naval careers. The tone of a letter, written in 1816

to the Reverend J.S. Clarke, the Prince Regent's Librarian (~, pp.452-

53) . makes it c l ear that it was with no difficulty, re sentment or

regret that she rejected his suggestion that her next novel might be

a "historical romance, illustrative of the history of the august

House of Cobourg" (~, p.451). Jane Austen's choice of material was

more than the artist's recognition of the nature of her gift; working

on "3 or 4 Families in a Country Village" was, she wrote to her niece

Anna, "the delight of [ her] life " (~, p.401), and her novels were, we

know from many such remarks in her correspondence, a great joy and

source of happiness to her. In 1811 when she was in London visiting

fri ends , shopping, going to galleries and plays, and correcting the

proofs of Sense and Sensibility, she wrote to Cassandra: IINo indeed,

I am never too busy to think of S & S. I can no mor e forget it, than

a mother can forget her sucking child" (~, p.272); and when Pride and

Prejudice was published, she called the first copy her "own darling

child" (~, p. 297) .

1
B.C. Southam, "Jane Austen", in The English Novel: Select
Bibliographical Guides, ed. A.E. Dyson (London: Oxford University
Press, 1974), p.153.
2
Southam, Critical Heritage, p.250.
 11

Jane Austen's contentment with the small range of her subject-

matter and her relish in its fruitfulness may be reflected in the

passage in Emma when Emma looks out from the doorway of Ford's shop

and finds entertainment and food for thought in the sparse, ordinary

scene before her: "a mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing

nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer" (~, p.233). As

has already been said,1 littleness in these novels does not imply

triviality. Three extant prayers composed by Jane Austen (MW, pp.

453-57) express her understanding of the moral challenge presented by

the minutiae of everyday life. She realized that many human qualities

--integrity, fortitude, self-control, patience, kindness, and the l ack

of these--are exhibited and fully tested in the daily round of

domestic life. It may be that it is more difficult to express these

virtues in ordinary day-to-day existence than it is in the wide and

varied world of public life and great actions. The Jane Austen

heroine has to find self-expression and fulfilment in an extremely

restricted environment; many of the people close to her are

uncongenial, and she cannot move out of the limited social circle

cons i sting of her family, a few old friends, and some newcomers.

Marriage is the only honourable provi sion for a young woman,

especially one of small fortune., and a relationship based on love,

mutual understanding and respect is difficult to establish in a

social milieu in which any degree of intimacy between a young man

and woman is generally only possible in large mixed gatherings. All

the young women in the novels suffer under the limitations imposed

upon them by society, and Charlotte Lucas, who believes that

1
See p.8 above.
 12

"happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance" (pp, p.23),

is an example of one who does not succeed in reconciling the personal

and the social, and sacrifices lIevery better feeling to worldly

advantage" (Pp, p.125). The narrow range of settings in the six

novels mirrors the confined society in which the heroines live; time

and place are extremely restricted, and we see the effect of environ-

ment upon character, and the ways in which young women can yet find

inner freedom and happiness despite the limitations and difficulties

of their dependent situation. The hero's world is a wider one; the

men, when they leave the balls and drawing-rooms, return to their

estates, professions or sporting pursuits. It is, however, when he

is sharing the narrow domestic life of the heroine that the hero often

begins to understand himself and the heroine's true worth. At the

same time marriage for the heroine is more than a move into the house

and social circle of the man she loves; because of her own spiritual

growth, it takes her into a world of richer emotional, intellectual

and moral experience than the one in which she grew up.

When Jane Austen described her novels as "the little bit

(two Inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush, as

produces little eff ect after nruch labour ", she was not ser ious. She

did not really think that her concerns were unimportant and her

subject-matter trivial. But in the humorous and kindly-made comparison

of her own writing and her nephew's "strong, manly, spirited Sketches"

(~, pp.468-69) , we have her acknowledgement of her scale and method.

Like the miniaturist, Jane Austen takes a delight in intricate detail

and fine patterning, she draws clear but delicate outlines, and pays

scrupulous attention to minutiae which she sensitively and economically

selects. Mary Lascelles points out how small changes made in the
 13

1
rough drafts of The Watsons and Sanditon heighten effects and

accentuate characteristics, and suggests that Jane Austen "positively

enjoyed ll rewriting ;2 and B.C. Southam in his examination of the

extant literary manuscripts observes that, although faults and weak-

nesses remain in The Watsons, "the revisions show Jane Austen already

providing links and bridge passages, tightening the struct ure and

easing the narrative flow" 3 This was her method. She "lap't and

crop't" (!:' p.298), revised and rewrate,4 finished and polished,

until she was satisfied. Another aspect of her thoraugh workmanship

and art is the scrupulous care which she toak to get the facts of time

and place exactly right. Times, seasons, days of the week, distances,

facts about places, the locality of her characters' houses and lodgings

are all sa precisely a nd accurately worked aut that the facts of the

fictitiaus world chime harmaniously with those of actual life .

Suggested reasons far this precision and some .of its effects are given
5
in Chapters II and III.

It is partly because of such exactitude and the highly

palished finish that, despite the extremely sparing use of description

and reference to place and spatial material, we have a strong impres-

sion .of actuality and a lively picture of the scenes which are nat

1
The only surviving manuscripts of Jane Austen's work are
thase .of the juvenilia, Lady Susan, The Watsons, the Plan of a Novel,
two chapters of Persuasion t and Sandi ton. See Southam , Literary
Manuscripts, p.v.
2
Mary Lascelles, Art , pp.99-101.
3
Southam, Literary Manuscripts, p.67.
4
See pp.22-25 below.
5
See pp.34-35 , 121 belaw.
 14

described. What Southam calls Jane Austen's "masterful artistic

1
economy in the relation of means to an end" i s a commonplace in the

criticism of her work; by knowing the characters we can visualize

their environment, and only when description of place is necessary

does Jane Austen give it. In a letter to Cassandra she parodies some
2
lines f rom Scott1s Marmion: "I do not write for such dull elves /

As have not a great deal of ingenuity themselves" ( ~, p.298); she

expects her readers, to whom she courteously attributes an equality

of understanding, to participate intelligently and creatively in their

response to her novels, and, where setting is not described, to be

able to imagine t he kind of surroundings suggested, and take them for

granted as the narrator and characters themselves do. Readers of

Jan e Austen also have to use their intelligence to discern the

implications underlying the smooth and humorous surfaces, and the

subtleties of her ambiguous language. Her ironic vision penetrates

the false emotions and values, the self-deceptions and stupidities

,
of human-beings, and, sometimes kindly, sometimes severely, but always

justly, she exposes the truth beneath.

The major episodes in the novels are generally fairly large

social gatherings--that is, fairly large in proportion to the

3
"population" envisioned in the novels --which lead to some kind of

1
Southam, Critical Essays, pp.xiii-xiv.

2Marmion vi.38:
I do not rhyme to that dull elf,
Who cannot image to himself ...

3In Mansfield Park, for example , twelve persons--all the ma in

characters and some others--sit in the drawing-room one evening to
discuss the play; and in Emma Miss Bates mentions the names of at
least sixteen people at the ball at the Crown Inn, and ten characters
assemble at Donwell Abbey.
 15

crisis for the heroine, and there sometimes follows a contrasting

episode when she is presented as alone and reflecting. Whether

scenes are out of doors or indoors, they resemble framed stage settings

with the focus on one or some or all of the characters whom Jane

Austen carefully places or groups to make conversations possible or

incidents convincing. An exact statement of where people are in

relation to each other and to furniture in a room is one of the means

she uses to build up to climaxes. Objects are referred to only if

they are necessary to the action, or if a character registers or res-

ponds to them, or if they reveal a character's feelings or values or

way of life. Norman Page in his study of Jane Austen's language

finds that her art depends on aural rather than visual effects; he

suspects that "few readers ever see her characters or settings with

much vividness ll , and cites Jane Austen's remark in a letter to

Cassandra about her mother's reading Pride and Prejudice aloud--

"though she perfectly understands the characters herself, she cannot

speak as they ought" (~, p.299)--which suggests that Jane Austen's

conception of dialogue in fiction included an element of quality of

. 1
V01ce.

The reader is aware of the atmosphere of places rather than

their appearance. Any description given or references to spatial

detail suggest the kind of place a house is, not so much what it

looks like. Logan Pearsall Smith, discussing the quality of aesthetic

beauty that in his opinion characterizes Mansfield Park and

Persuasion and is wanting in the earlier novels, defines a quality

1
Norman Page, The Language of Jane Austen (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1972), pp.119-20.
 16

also characteristic of the three later novels: " ... this effect of

richer colour and chiaroscuro is still more due to one subtle and

exquisite power which Jane Austen developed in the maturity of her

genius, the power of rendering what I shall call, for want of a

better term, the moral atmosphere of places, the tones, that is,

of collective feeling, the moral climates which are produced by,

and surround, different groups of people, and fill, as with a body

of dense and saturated air, the places where they live. 111 Anne

Elliot is the heroine most sensitive to the different moral climate

of "every little social commonwealth" (E., p.43); when she sadly

leaves Kellynch, we learn that she IIhad not wanted this visit to

Uppercross, to learn that a removal from one set of people to another,

though at a distance of only three miles, will often include a total

change of conversation, opinion, and idea" (~, p.42).

Time in Jane Austen's novels is a straightforward, uncomplic-

ated process. Novelists and critics have always acknowledged the

problem of time in fiction: Richardson in his prefaces frequently

·
d 1scusses t h e questlons
. 0 f 'lmme d'1acy and suspense; 2 in Henry James's

view "the stiffest problem that the artist in fiction has to tackle

lies in giving the sense of duration, of the lapse and accumulation

of time",3 and in 1941 Stephen Spender writes : "Modern literature

is obsessed with problems of time ,,4 But to Jane Austen time

lLogan Pearsall Smith, Reperusals and Re-collections

(London: Constable & Co., 1936), pp.368-69.
2
A.A. Mendilow, Time and the Novel (New York: Humanitas
Press, 1972), p.18.

3 Ibid ., p.17.

4 Ibid ., p.14.
 17

apparently presents no great problem. In keeping with the consist-

ently small scale of her fictional world, the dimension of time in

the novels is concentrated, ordered and manageable; there is no v ast

Tolstoian sweep of time covering an epoch in man's history. There

may be references to events before the heroine's lifetime--the opening

chapter of Mansfield Park, the account of Captain weston's marriage

to Miss Churchill in Emma , or the dates given in the Baronetage in

Persuasion--and at the end of each novel the reader feels that he

knows something of the kind of life that lies ahead of the

protagonists; but the action does not go back to a period that the

heroine cannot remember nor forward to a time much beyond her marriage.

It is clear, however, that Jane Austen knew well that "one of the

func tions of the storyteller is to be everywhere at the same time,

mindful of past history, conscious of the present and aware of the

possibilities of the future".l

That Jane Austen appears to manage time in her novels easily

and confidently is not to say that she was unaware of the difficulties

that beset the novelist in this respect. In the juvenilia she

parodies the kind of things that can go wrong with time in fiction--

instances of which she found in the novels which the whole Austen

f "l y so muc henJoye

am~ " d .2 Before she was fifteen she had written in

Chapter the Fifth of "Frederic & Elfrida": "At the end of 3 days

Captain Roger and Rebe cca were united and immediately after the

Ceremony set off in the Stage Waggon for the Captains seat in

1Jonathan Raban, The Technique of Modern Fiction: Essays

in Practical Criticism (London: Edward Arnold, 1968), p.57.

2
See Letters, p.38.
 18

Buckinghamshire" (MW, p.10); and two sentences further on: "Weeks

& Fortnights flew away without gaining the least ground; the Cloathes

grew out of fashion & at length Capt: Roger & his Lady arrived, to

pay a visit to their Mother & introduce to her their beautifull

Daughter of eighteen" (MW, p.11). In 1793 Jane Austen still enjoyed

this kind of crude burlesque of the nonsensical--she makes a character

travel "for three days & six Nights without Stopping" (MW, p.177)--

but in Northanger Abbey such mockery of the advance of fictional time

has lost the note of hilarious absurdity. Chapter thirteen opens:

"Monday, 'fuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday have now

passed in review before the reader; the events of each day, its hopes

and fears, mortifications and pleasures have been separately stated,

and the pangs of Sunday only now remain to be described, and close

the week " (~, p.97); and Alan D. McKillop comments: "This mocks

the day by day and hour by hour chronicle of Richardson's important

sequences, with an echo perhaps of Fanny Burney's solemn indications

of "
t1me ~n Cam~ 'II a .... ,,1 By the time she had written and revised

her novels, Jane Austen had mastered the techniques of dealing with

the various aspects of time that she needed.

Time within the limited span of a year or l ess moves forward

steadily. All the heroines at moments recall the past, but only in

the last two novels does Jane Austen relate events of the past at

some length in order to introduce an important episode on which

the plot, or part of it, depends. Early on in Emma a brief passage

l Alan D. McKillop, "Critical Realism in Northanger Abbey",

in From Jane Austen to Joseph Conrad, eds. Robert C. Rathburn and
Martin Steinmann, Jr. (Minneapolis. University of Minnesota Press,
1958), p.4l.
 19

gives a summary account of Mr Westonls first marriage and life up to

his marriage to Miss Taylor; and in Persuasion, after Anne learns that

the Crofts are taking Kellynch--she already knows that Mrs Croft is

Frederick wentworth's sister, her thoughts turn to her engagement seven

years before and the reasons for her breaking it off. Anne's

"recollections and feelings" (~, p.30) make the transition fran present

to past and back again natural and easy , as do the references, first

to Mr Weston and his marriage , and then to Frank Churchi ll and his

letter, in the passage in Emma. Jane Austen varies the narrative pace

by developing the action in several major episodes, during which,

because these are presented largely through dialogue, fictional time

moves slowly and the texture is dense; and also by joining these episodes

by means of passages of r apid narrative. Unobtrustive, naturally intro-

duced references to days, months, seasons, indicate t he advance of the

year, and the general impression is one of continuity with no noticeable

gaps in time. The satisfying sense of design, whi ch most of the

novels give, arises partly from the kind of setting that Jane Austen

chose for her stories; the restriction of time and place helps shape

their structure and determine their pattern. The live ly dialogue

and presentation of character give a vivid impression of the present

and of dramatic immediacy. All the heroines at some stage become

acutely aware of time and the relationship between past actions and

present happiness; and the novels demonstrate the i mportance of time

i n the progress towards self-knowledge and in the understanding of

complex personalities. One of the ways by which characters show their

quality is in their attitudes towards time, and in their use or abuse

of memory. Finally, the novels also express Jane Austen's own

attitude towards tradition and the changes that time brings to a way
 20

of life. All these aspects are developed and discussed in the

section on time in Chapter III, and considered with particular

reference to Persuasion in Chapter IV.

In Jane Austen's novels nothing is superfluous. But, although

setting is important, it is only comparatively recently that readers

have examined this unobtrusive element, and seen the close connection

between it and theme. In the nineteenth century there was not much

close criticism of Jane Austen's novels. Few critics of the period

consider setting, and none puts any emphasis on it. Scott does not

refer to it, and Whately mentions only the "vivid distinctness of

description, the minute fidelity of detail, and air of unstudied ease

1
in the scenes represented". Charlotte Bronte finds both the

characters and settings uncongenial: "I should hardly like to live

with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses. ,,2

G.H. Lewes praises Jan e Austen's underrated excellence and especially

admires her dramatic powers, but he does not appreciate her de liberately

limited range. Of her description, that IIcommon and easy resource of

novelists",3 he writes: "She seldom describes anything, and is not

felicitous when she attempts it. ,,4 Richard Simpson, in hi s

excellent and generally perceptive essay of 1870, sees no significance

in Jane Austen's settings: "In some of her novels she places her

coterie of families in Bath, or even in London; and then Bath society

comes in as a picturesque background; but it is only pictorial; it

has no more to do with the development of her drama or the explication

of her characters than the woods and the hills which she is much more

1
Southam, Critical Heritage, p.96.
2 . 3 Ibid ., p.1S7.
Ibld., p.126.
 21

fond of describing. 1.1 It is not until well into the twentieth

century, when the emphasis in criticism falls on Jane Austen's

technique, that critics give attention to her settings.

A turning point came in 1939 with Mary Lascelles's Jane

Austen and her Artl and since then the number of major studies has

steadily increased. But with regard to commentary on aspects of

setting, Virginia Woolf had written about the significance of

apparent trivialities in 1923, and L.P. Smith about moral atmosphere

in 1934. Mary Lascelles devotes about one tenth of her study to

place and time in the novels. Speaking of Jane Austen's represen~

tation of time, she makes the important observation that Hit is

rooted in her (gradually mastered) technique for using the conscious-

ness of her characters as a means of communication with the

2
reader II • Of the 794 works entered in the Annotated Bibliography

of Jane Austen Studies 1952-1972 by Roth and Weinsheimer, twenty-

four entries contain references to setting. Most of these entries

are studies of a single novel, about a quarter are full-scale

readings of Jane Austen, and a few deal with specific aspects of

setting. Since 1973 some valuable critical works on Jane Austen

have been published, notably those by Stuart M. Tave, Gillie, D.D.

Devlin and Barbara Hardy; and two collections of essays were assembled

to celebrate the bicentenary. Of the December issue of Nineteenth-

Century Fiction in 1975 (devoted entirely to Jane Austen) two of

the ten articles discuss aspects of setting. Barbara Hardy has

written in most detail about the physical environment in Jane

1 Ibid ., p.251.

2
Mary Lascelles, Art, p.178.
 22

1
Austen's novels, but all the critics mentioned above deal with

same features of setting. The most important insight that emerges

fran modern criticism on this topic is the observation, first made

by Mary Lascelles and stressed by Barbara Hardy, that Jane Austen's

representation of the physical environment is mainly rendered

2
through the consciousness of characters.

The uses that Jane Austen makes of setting vary in each

novel. She seems to have became increasingly more aware of the

atmosphere of place and its effect on character, for, although

people always remain central, aspects of place and time are more

prominent and important in the later novels than in those she wrote

when young and later revised. The dates of composition of some of

the six novels are a complicated and sometimes a controversial

3
matter, and, in order to establish the chronology of the novels

for the purposes of this dissertation, a short account follows.

We know that in the long intervals between the first drafts and

publication Jane Austen rewrote and revised the original compositions

of Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice.

4
In a note, made probably after her sister's death, Cassandra

1 See Chapter 6 I "Properties and Possessions II I in A Reading,

pp.136-65. This appears slightly altered in Jane Austen's Achieve-
ment: Papers delivered at the Jane Austen Bicentennial Conference at
the University of Alberta, ed. Juliet McMaster (London: Macmillan
Press, 1976), pp.79-105. See also "The objects in Mansfield Park"
in Bicentenary Essays, pp.180-96.
2
See Mary Lascelles, Art, p.194, and Barbara Hardy, A Reading,
p.137.

3 see , for example, Q.D. Leavis, "A Critical Theory of Jane

Austen's Writings", Scrutiny 10 (1941-42): 61-87, 114-42, 272-94;
and Kenneth L. Moler, Jane Austen's Art of Allusion (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1968), p.119 .

4see Southam, Literary Manuscripts, pp.52-54.

 23

recorded the dates when Jane Austen began and finished each novel,

and it is on this memorandum and on references in the Letters that

our knowledge of the genesis of the novels is based. According to

the dates given by Cassandra, the earliest drafts of Pride and

Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey were written

before Jane Austen was twenty-five, and Mansfield Park, Emma and

Persuasion in the last seven years of her life, that is, after she

was thirty-five. Cassandra noted that Northanger Abbey was written

in 1798 or 1799. In 1803 the manuscript entitled Susan was sold to

a London firm, Crosby & Co., for £10, but unaccountably was not

published, and Henry Austen bought it back in 1816 after the publica-

tion of Emma. Jane Austen may at this time have revised the work~-

R.W. Chapman comments that "we are not bound to believe that nothing

was altered after 1803" (NA, p.xiii) --and she certainly wrote the

IIAdvertisement, by the Authoress ll

in 1816 to explain that the novel

had been intended for publication in 1803, and to prepare readers

for some parts of it "which thirteen years have made comparatively

obsolete" (NA, p.12). In March 1817, however, she put "Miss

Catherine" on the shelf (!:' p.484) and was apparently not planning

immediate publication. Five months after her death in July Henry

Austen published the work, together with Persuasion, under the present

title. As it stands, Northanger Abbey contains more of Jane Austen's

early writing than either Pride and Prejudice or Sense and

Sensibility, although the first versions of these novels were

written before it, and for this reason in this study it always comes

first when the novels are listed in chronological order.

Cassandra gives November 1797 for the composition of Sense

and Sensibility, and mentions the earlier version, Elinor and

 24

Marianne, which, according to W. and R.A. Austen-Leigh in Jane Austen:

1
Her Life and Letters (1913), was in epistolatory form. In April 1811

Jane Austen was correcting the proofs of Sense and Sensibility

(~, p.273), and it was published in November that year. The earliest

form of Pride and Prejudice, called First Impressions, was written

in 1796-97. In November 1797 Mr Austen wrote to the publisher Cade ll

offering a manuscript novel in three volumes, but nothing came of

this attempt. Two references in letters of 1799 reveal that the

work was read by the Austen family and their friends (~, pp.52, 67).

Chapman believes that Jane Austen made substantial changes to First

Impressions, or to a later version called Pride and Prejudice, in 1812,

and his evidence for this opinion is convincing, although , according

to Cassandra , Jane Austen was also working on Mansfield Park at this

period. His reasoning is based on calculations made by him and

Frank MacKinnon to demonstrate that Jane Au.sten used the almanac

2
for 1811-12 for the chronology of Pride and prejUdice. If we

accept this fact, he argues, "we must infer that the book as we know

it was substantially rewritten in 1812; for it is certain that so

intricate a chronological scheme cannot have been patched on to an

existing work without extensive rev i sion ll

(PP I p.xiii). This re..,...

casting of earlier material connects Pride and Prejudice with the

novels of Jane Austen's maturity, rather than with Northanger Abbey

and Sense and Sensibility .

The dates of composition and publication of the novels

which Jane Austen started to write after she settled at Chawton in

July 1809 are straightforward. Mansfield Park was begun in

1
R. W. Chapman, Jane Austen: Facts and Problems (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1948), p.42.

2see Pride and Prejudice, pp.401-8.

 25

February 1811, finished about June 1813, and published soon after

May 1814. Q.D. Leavis seems to be the only critic who thinks that
1
this novel is a reworking of the early epistolatory "Lady Susan".

For the composition of Emma Cassandra gives exact dates: Jane

Austen began it on 21 January 1814 and fin i shed it on 29 March 181 5.

Dedicated to the Prince Regent, it was published in December 1815,

but the date on the title page is 1816. We also have exact dates

for the writing of Persuasion: having started it on 8 August 1815 ,

Jane Austen finished the firs t draft on 18 July, and had rewritten

the second - last chapter by 6 August 1816. In March 1817 she told

her niece Fanny Knight that she had "a something ready for Publication"

and that it might "appear about a twelvemonth hence" (!;, p. 484).

Mary Lascelles suggests that Jane Austen, as was her custom, intended

to keep the manuscript by her in order to find out what faults still
2
lurked there. She was by this time very il l, and when she died

four months later, she had not gone over the whole of Persuasion to

give it the fine finish of the other major novels .

There is in the eighteenth-century novel a certain amount of

precedence for what Jane Austen does with setting. With Defoe,

Richardson and Fielding--although they wrote very different kinds of

novels--a new form of fiction had appeared in the first half of the

century , the defining characteristic of which, according to historians

of the novel, is "realism", a term that Ian Watt , in The Rise of the

1
Q.D. Leavis, "A Critical Theory of Jane Austen's Writings
(II): 'Lady Susan' into 'Mansfield Park"', Scrutiny 10 (1941 - 42):
114-42, 272 - 94.

2
Mary Lascel les, Art, p.38.
 26

1
Novel , examines at length. This new kind of novel rejected the

traditional plots which had served te llers of stories in all forms

since classical times; the plot now has to be acted by "particular

people in particular circumstances", and "characters ... can only be

individualized if they are set in a background of particularized

2
time and place ll •

Defoe, Richardson a nd Fielding set their characters, who

belong to all classes, in the contemporary social environment, and

a common aim is to present an illusion of reality. A way by wh i ch

Defoe achieves a sense of verisimilitude is his extensive use of

movable objects; Robinson Crusoe , especially , is memorable for the

list of provisions taken aboard ships, the hardware that Crusoe

retrieves from the wreck, and the things that he makes on the island.

Richardson, too, takes full advantage of the feminine point of view and

fills Pamela with an abundance of seemingly unselected a nd minutely des-

cr ibed domestic detail. All three novelists use actual place names.

Defoe at times creates a strong sense of locale by including vivid

details, for instance, of Newgate prison in Moll Flanders: there is

no long description, but r eferences to the noise, stench and genera l

nastiness create the atmosphere that fills Moll Flanders with fear

and horror. And the lists of London parishes with the precise

numbers of the dead help to give A Journal of the Plague Year i ts

documentary realism. Defoe's works show his knowledge and relish of

all aspects of the great c ity, but Richardson's heroines are country-

lsee Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel (London: Chatto &
Windus, 1957; Pelican Books, 1972), pp.10-37.

2 Ibid ., pp. 16, 23.

 27

bred girls, and his own fear and distrust of London pervade his
1
novels. His details of day-to-day living give an impression of

the physical reality and moral atmosphere of houses and interiors.

He does not describe natural scenery_ Fielding gives no description

of London and few names of districts there, but the references to

fashion, balls, the play and opera su.g gest life in the Town. He

does not list minutiae as Richardson does, we have no sense of his

interiors, and his descriptions of scenery are brief and conventional.

Barbara Hardy gives Fielding the credit for introducing into fiction

the sympathetic habitat because Squire Allworthy's house reflects

2
his character, status and way of life. This house is also the
3
first Gothic mansion in the English novel.

Time, like place, in these novels is wide-ranging. The

action spans a period of years, and there is seldom an urgent sense

that time is limited. All three novelists attempt to convey the

reality of time. Defoe's works are the most loosely constructed in

this respect: sentences like "The rainy season of the Autumnal

Equinox was now come,,4 and IIWe lived in an uninterrupted course of

5
ease and content for five years" su9gest the passing of time in

Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders respectively, and his time scales
6
are sometimes contradictory and inconsistent . Richardson's

1 Ibid. , p.205.
2
Barbara Hardy, A Reading, pp.136-37.
3
Watt, Novel, p.29.

4Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (New York: W. W. Norton &

Co., 1975), p.89.

5Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders (London: J.M . Dent & Sons,

1936), p.162.
6
Watt, Novel, p.26.
 28

extraordinarily detail ed time schemes are unprecedented; the almost

minute-by-minute account of inner life and daily experience in th e

dated letters gives a strong sense of continuous time, but the

extremely slow and unvar i ed pace often makes tedious reading.

Fielding, using the device of the intrusive narrator, manages the

advance of time and the tempo of the novel with skil l . Mary

Lascell es describes his method: "He presents scenes of which the

pace approximates, as nearly as the conventions of the stage demand,

to clock-time , and links them to one another by his custom of

addressing the reader in the intervals; thus pledging his credit for

the continued existence of his characters, but vary ing the pace of

that existence. " l Another innovation i n Tom J ones , appropriately

pertinent to a study of Jane Austen ' s methods of presenting time

and place , is the accurate time scheme: incidents are chronologically

consistent with each other and with the historical events of the

year 1745, and critics conjecture that Fielding must have worked

with an actual almanac. He is also careful over the exact location

of, and distances between, places, and the timing of journeys .

We can tell something about the settings in the popular

sentimental novels of the eighteenth century from Jane Austen's

burlesques of these in the juvenilia. Her mockery of the absurdities

in the treatment of time has already been illustrated,2 and her

childhood compositions show a similar delight in ridiculing conven-

tional descriptions of place. She may not have been much more than

1
Mary Lascelles, Art, p.186.

2
See pp.17-18 above.
 29

1
twelve when she made her characters walk "in a grove of Poplars

which led from the Parsonage to a verdant Lawn enamelled with a

variety of variegated flowers & water ed by a purling Stream, brought

from the Valley of Tempe by a passage underground" (MW, p. 5). At

this age she could a lso juxtapose romantic cliche and the

ludicrously banal : characters walk "in a Citron Grove which led

from her Ladyship's pigstye to Charles Adams's Horsepond"(MW, p.18);

and others rest themselves in a place suited to meditation: IIA Grove

of full-grown Elms sheltered us from the East--. A Bed of full-grown

Nettles from the west--. Before us ran the murmuring brook & behind

us ran the turn-pike road" (MW, p. 97). The adult Jane Austen admired
2
Maria Edgeworth whose Irish stories, especially, have a realistic

quality that is very different from the world of the sentimental

novel. Marilyn Butler compares Maria Edgeworth's economy to Jane

Austen's, and describes her method of presenting realistic background:

"The sense of contemporary actuality is fortified by street-names in

real towns; consistent dates, culled from almanacks; journeys timed

with atlases and time-tables; lawsuits, carefully checked with legal

3
experts. II Castle Rackrent (1800) is filled with realistic detail

used to show character, Irish habits and farming activities, but

in "Lame Jervas" (1799), a moral tale of honesty and hard work,

there is no attempt to create the atmosphere of the tin mine, nor

of London and the east when Lame Jervas makes good, and unconvincing

1
See Minor Works, p.l for Chapman's dates of the juvenilia.

2
See Letters, p.405.

3Marilyn Butler, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1975), p.155.
 30

conventional references to weather and scenery are used to indicate

time and place. Jane Austen had read all the "horrid" novels

mentioned by Isabella Thorpe (NA, p.40) ,1 and the quality and tone

of her parody of a Gothic atmosphere suggest admiration rather than

2
scorn for Mrs Radcliffe's methods of creating her settings. In

her own representations of time and place Jane Austen adopted many

of the devices used in the eighteenth-century novel, developing and

refining them for her purposes; she also made innovations, some of

which have become common techniques in modern fiction.

1
Chapman, Facts and Problems, p.39.
2
See p.144 below.
 31

CHAPTER II

PLACE

In his excellent Some Words of Jane Austen (1973) Tave

summarises the nature and significance of place, spatial detail and

time in Jane Austen's novels .

Time and space in Jane Austen are not what a r e ader

raised on twentieth-century literature is likely to
assume they must be by nature. They are not problem-
atic or oppressive. They are not puzzling mysteries
and they are not impositions upon the human spirit to
be rebelled against or transcended. On the contrary,
they have coherence and help to give shape to human
life; they are there to be used or abused. If the y
seem to simplify life they do not make it easier,
because they allow no cosmic excuses. They are
limited and must be understood, but the limits set
the conditions within wh i ch action must be taken,
here and now or not at all, and it is the ability to
act with rectitude and grace under these inescapable
conditions that distinguishes among human beings. 1

This chapter on place in five of the novels shows how J ane Austen

creates and suggests the physical surroundings in her f ictional

worlds, and stresses the remarkable care which she took to make the

settings true to life. The major part of the chapter examines the

ways in which she uses place to r eveal character .

In her aim to avoid "improbable circumstances, unnatural

characters , and topics of conversation, wh ich no longer concern any

one living" (NA, p.38), and to present an imitation of life, we see

Jane Austen as the successor of novelists like Defoe, Richardson,

Fielding and Maria Edgeworth. Her methods and manner of achieving

1
Stuart M. Tave, Some Words of Jane Austen (Chi cago:
University of Chicago Press, 1973), p.6.
 32

verisimilitude i n her settings differ from theirs in many respects,

but like them she makes use of the names of actual places, works to

a consistent time sch eme, and gives an impression of day-to~ay

living. She is unlike most of them, however, in her care to be

scrupulous ly accurate and consistent in the factual aspects of her

fiction such as time and place . We know a little of what Jane Austen

thought of the novels of other writers from the burlesques in the

1
juvenilia and from the few brief comments in her correspondence;

we can read her half-ser ious, half - playful account of the novel in

chapter five of Northanger Abbey; but, although she must have thought

about novel-writing a great deal , Jane Austen did not formulate and

write down in a connected fashion her ideas and theories on fiction.

There are many brief and casual references to her novels in her

correspondence , but the only comments on her own methods and

techniques occur in a few letters to her niece Anna and nephew

2
Edward, both of whom--to use Jane Austen's colloquial expression--

took up the Novel Line,3 and presumably asked their aunt for advic e.

Extracts from a letter to Anna expre ss the same demand for realistic

fidelity that Jane Austen herself practises:

. . . I have scratched ou.t Sir Tho: from walking with the

other Men to the Stables &c the very day after his breaking
his arm--for though I find your Papa did walk out immediately
after his arm was set , I think it can be so little usual
as to appear unnatural in a book--& it does not seem to be
material that Sir Tho: should go with them.--Lyme wi ll not
do . Lyme is towards 40 miles distance from Dawlish & would
not be talked of there ....

1
See, for example , Letters , pp.173, 180, 344, 422.
2
See Letters, pp.393-96, 400-2, 468 - 69.

3 Ibid ., p.462.
 33

Yes--Russel Square is a very proper distance from

Berkeley St.-- ... They must be two days going from Dawlish
to Bath; They are nearly 100 miles apart .
... And we think you had better not leave England. Let
the Portmans go to Ireland, but as you know nothing of the
Manners there, you had better not go with them. You will
be in danger of giving false representations.

(.1::, pp.394-95)

A letter to Cassandra, written in February 1813 when Jane Austen was

probably revising Mansfield Park, shows the same painstaking care to

have facts correct: "I learn from Sir J. Car.r [ that is, from his
1
book Descriptive Travels in the Southern and Eastern Parts of spain ]

that there is no Government House at Gibraltar. I must alter it to

the Commissioner'sll (.,!:, p.292).

In addition to feeling the effect of this kind of precision

in the strong impression of actuality, and in the smooth, polished

surfaces of the novels as well as in their profundities, the reader

is aware of Jane Austen's consistent and. punctilious use of apparent

minutiae. We know that she knew more about her characters than she

put into the novels,2 but she seems also to have been able to

imagine and keep in her mind details of their surroundings. There

are many instances of this kind of thoroughness, and of Jane

Austen's sure memory for detail. In Emma, for example, while sitting

in Mrs weston's drawing-room before dinner, Emma is disturbed to

find herself unable to forget Mr Elton and his odd behaviour. He

obtrudes his happy countenance on her notice, and after many solicitous

attentions he "at last would begin admiring her drawings with so much

zeal and so little knowledge as seemed terribly like a would-be

1
See Chapman's note in Mansfield Park, p.546 .

2Memoir, pp.157-58.
 34

lover" (!, p.llS). It is not necessary to say here what drawings

these are because seventy-five pages back, when the project of

Harriet's portrait was proposed, Mr Elton had rapturously praised

Flruna's talent: "I know what your drawings are. How could you

suppose me ignorant? Is not this room rich in specimens of your

landscapes and f lowers; and has not Mrs. Weston some inimitable

figure-pieces in her drawing-room, at Randalls?" (~, p.43). Jane

Austen's working in this way is more than an artist I s inability to "do

anything slovenly" (!:' p.30), more than a means of giving the wor ld of
Emma its sense of solid reality, and critics have found varying

reasons for such meticulous attention to the facts of her characters'

surroundings. Chapman was the first to suggest that there is more in

Jane Austen' 5 singular "r egard for accuracy in those parts of her

fiction which were grounded on fact--such as dates and places ....

It should seem that her creative imagination worked most freely within

a framework fixed for her by small points of contact with reality.

Once she felt hersel f at home, her fancy would soon be busy fitt ing

and arranging every detail". 1 Alistair M. Duckworth states that he

finds in the "ligature between fiction and reality a philosophic

indication". He maintains that Jane Austen, realizing that the

strength of a novel "depends upon frequent contact with the ground",

recognized that the "ungrounded imagination is as dangerous for an

author as it is for a character within the novel, and imaginative

limitation is welcome, for it is proof that there is a center to

reality other than the individual mind". He continues: "In her

close attention to physical fact Jane Austen dec lares her belief, not

1
Chapman, Facts and Problems, pp.121 - 22.
 35

in man as the creator of order but in man's freedom to create within

a prior order. Thus her individualism as author, like the

individualism of her heroines, respects finally the given structure

1
of her world." Other suggested reasons for Jane Austen's working

in this way are given on page 121.

Jane Austen adopted fran Fielding a simple and convenient

method of representing reality convincingly; she based the time

2
schemes of same of her novels on actual a~anacs, and she also seems
3
to have used road-books for journeys and distances. Mary Lascell es

guesses that, because when suggesting improvements to her niece's

novel, Jane Austen does not recommend that Anna use a road~book, and

because her nephew and nieces do not mention it, this practice may
4
have been her private game, or known only to Cassandra. In the

novels the distances between places correspond with the time taken

to cover them. Catherine Morland and the Tilneys, for example,

travelling at the "sober pace in which the handsome, highly-fed

four horses of a gentleman usually perform a journey of thirty miles"

(NA, p.155), leave Bath after ten o'clock, spend a tedious two hours'

bait at Petty France (which is exactly fifteen miles from Bath), and

arrive at Northanger at half past four. Again, Hunsford is fifty

miles from Longbourn; Sir William Lucas, with Elizabeth Bennet and

his daughter, having covered the twenty-four miles to Gracechurch

1Alistair M. Duckworth, The Improvement of the Estate: A

Study of Jane Austen's Novels (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1971), p.34.
2
See p.28 above.
3
Mary Lascelles, Art, p.172.
4 Ibid .
 36

Street by noon, breaks the journey before going on to Kent, another

four hours' trave l, but Mr Darcy, thinking no doubt of riding a

good horse, considers the distance an easy one and "little more than

half a day's journey" (PP, p.178). In Sense and Sensibility, in

which novel there is the most moving of characters from p l ace to

place, distances are vague: Barton lies in "a county so far distant

from Sussex as Devonshire" (55, p.24), and Willoughby travels the

unstated distance from London to Cleveland in twelve hours, stopping

only once for ten minutes. But when exactitude is significant Jane

Austen gives the information ; Mrs Dashwood's news that she and her

daughters are moving to Devonshire provokes a pointed response from

Edward: u[ He] turned hastily towards her, on hearing this, and , in a

voice of surprise and concern, which required no explanation to her,

repeated, 'Devonshire! Are you, indeed, going there? So far from

hence! And t o what part of it?' She exp lained the situation. It

was within four mi les northward of Exeter" (55, p.25).

The same precision and cons id eration for fact operate. in

the choice of locale. The action of all the novels, except

Mansfield Park and the Pember ley scenes in Pride and Prejudice,

t akes place in the southern counties of England, which Jane Austen

herself knew. She sets Pember ley in Derbyshire because the county

i s on the way to the Lake District--the first destination of the

Gardiners' tour--and near the celebrated beauties of Matlock,

Chatsworth, Dovedale, the Peak, which she had read about in GilPin,l

and these attractions serve as a pretext for getting Elizabeth to

1
Frank W. Bradbrook, Jane Austen and her Predecessors
(London: Cambridge University Press, 1966) , p.57.
 37

Pemberley. A reason for choosing Northam)?tonshire for Mansfield Park

was perhaps that she wanted a hunting county, and had already used

Devonshire and Somersetshire in Sense and Sensibility. (Chapman

suggests that it is good hunting country that attracts Henry

i
crawford to Mansfield. ) The settings of the great houses and

country villages for the other novels all seem to be carefully

chosen so that they are located in a suitable area, and distances

between certain places and people are appropriate to the demands of

t he plot. Fullerton in Wiltshire is one long day's journey from

Northanger Abbey in Gloucestershire; it would be unrealistic for

Catherine to have to travel more than seventy miles alone. In Pride

and Prejudice Longbourn , Meryton and Netherfield are within walking

distance of each other. Mr Bennet has only one carriage and the

horses also work on the farm. Jane has l therefore, to ride the

three miles to Netherfield, gets wet and catches cold; and Elizabeth's

walk through muddy fields both heightens the brilliancy of her

complexion, which attracts the admiration of Mr Darcy, and shows

"a most country-town indifference to decorum" (PP I p.36), which draws

scorn from Miss Bingley. The plot of Emma requires that Frank

Churchill should never have visited Highbury before his father's

remarriage; Enscombe is, therefore, a hundred and ninety miles away

in Yorkshire. This distance, together with Mrs Churchill's ill-

health and temperament and the young man's character, makes us

accept the fact that he has never yet visited Highbury. It is the

cold of Yorkshire that brings the Churchills south, first to London,

which is understandably too noisy for Mrs Churchill, and then to

1
Chapman , Facts and Problems, p.84.
 38

Richmond, which is an hour's ride fran Highbury. Mansfield Park is

half a mile away from the p~sonage, and not in sight of it. Fanny's

expressly walking the fifty yards fran the hall door to a point from

which she can see the parsonage and its grounds, when Edmund is

giving Mary Crawford a riding lesson, emphasises her anxiety and

subconscious jealousy. Mansfield is two days'travel from Portsmouth

in order that there may be no easy intercourse between the two

families. The journey is a difficult one to make, especially for a

young woman, and Fanny has to curb her impatience at the delay that

prevents Sir Thomas's fetching her from Portsmouth when Tom is ill

at Mansfield. Jane Austen frequently mentions the difficulties of

1
arranging a journey in her letters. It was not at that time

desirable for a young middle-class woman to make a journey in a

public vehicle: Edmund Bertram travels from London to Portsmouth on

the mail, but Miss Steele is quick to assure Mrs Jennings that she

and her sister had not cane to London from Exeter in the stage.

(Her exultation over their type of conveyance, however, is mainly

due to their having shared a post-chaise with a very smart beau who

paid most of the cost.)

There may be difficulties in arranging a journey, but once on

the road Jane Austen's heroines suffer no hardships or dangers, they

experience no incidents or adventures, as do Harriet Byron, Pamela

Andrews and Fanny Burney's Madame Duval. They travel in order to

move to a new hame, to pay visits to friends and relations, to spend

the season in London, or to go on pleasure tours to places of

interest and beauty. And Jane Austen spends little narrative time

1
See Letters, pp. 16, 121, for example.
 39

in describing particulars of the journey; she generally gets her

travellers to their destinations as quickly as possible without

jerking the narrative thread or being guilty of absurdities such as

those which she mocks in the juvenilia,l and dwells only on the

aspects of a journey which the heroine registers. A few lines take

the Dashwoods from Norland to Barton, but when Elinor and Marianne

go to London, we are given one paragraph on Elinor's wonder at their

being Mrs Jennings's guests and her speculations about Marianne and

Willoughby, and another on Marianne's unsociable behaviour, Elinor 's

consideration for Mrs Jennings, and a brief reference to the inn and

dinners. By the end of the passage the long journey is over: "They

r eached town by three o'clock the third day, glad to be released,

after such a journey, from the confinement of a carriage, and ready

to enjoy all the luxury of a good fire" (SS, p.160). The same

pattern occurs in Pride and Pre judice. When the Gardiners and

Elizabeth, returning hurriedly from Derbyshire, are in the carriage,

they discuss the likely situation between Lydia and Wickham at some

l ength , and only one short sentence deals with the actual j ourney .

The conversation during the second part of Catherine Morland's

journey to Northanger Abbey, when she sits next to Henry Tilney in

his curricle, relates to important action: it gives the opportunity

for some information about Henry's life in Gloucestershire, a

reminder of Catherine's expectations of the Abbey, and Henry's

Gothic imaginings of her welcome and first night there, which unin~

tentionally help. to s timulate her already aver-active imagination.

We are not told whether Fanny Price, happy to be with William and

1
See pp .• 17-18 above .
 40

her mind full of ten hundred thoughts, sees anything of the road to

Portsmouth besides the "hasty glimpse of Edmund's College" (MP, p.376)

as they pass through Oxford. When she is at last on her way back to

Mansfield, Fanny is not so entirely concerned for Edmund's silent

suffering that she does not notice her surroundings, but it is not

until they enter the park that we are given any description of the

scenery--and this is becaus.e of the symbolic suggestion of the beauty

which Fanny sees.!

Short excursions in carriages, as opposed to journeys from

one place to another, are a form of amusement for Jane Austen's

leisured people, and she uses such outings to reveal character . That

Catherine Morland rides in his gig to Claverton Down with John Thorpe

is a consequence of Mrs Allen I s "vacancy of mind and incapacity for

thinking" (NA, p. 60) which might have harmed Catherine, but the

episode mainly serves to reveal the character of John Thorpei four

pages of talk which "began and ended with himself and his own con-

cerns" (NA, p.66) expose his vanity, boorish manners and inferior

mind. Fanny Price, on the road to Sotherton and ignored by the

others inside Henry Crawford I s barouche, "was very happy in observing

all that was new, and admiring all that was pretty" (MP, p. 80) .

The interested observation of inanimate nature indicated here is

only one way in which Fanny differs from Mar.y Crawford I whose attention

is all for men and women, and who has "none of Fanny's delicacy of

taste, of mind, of feelingll. As they approach Sather ton Maria

Bertram's "Rushworth-feelings" (MP, p.81) prompt her to point out

the woods and property, and landmarks in the village and park, in

1
See p.145 below.
 41

terms which reveal her materialistic values and desire for position

and wealth. Emma Woodhouse makes no long journeys out of Highbury;

we learn that after her marriage she and Mr Knightley will go on a

tour to the sea-side, but this does not take place in the course of

the novel. The only time Emma leaves Highbury is on the short

excursion to Box Hill, and on this occasion, because the emphasis is

exclusively on the discord amongst groups and individuals, the out-

ward circumstances of the episode are not significant. A few words

refer to the journey there, and on the r.eturn all that matters are

Emma's agitated feelings and mortifying self-examination; in the

carriage there is only Harriet, and "Emma felt the tears running down

her cheeks almost all the way home, without being at any trouble to

check them, extraordinary as they were" (1;;_, p.376). It is the second

time that Emma experiences self-revelatory feelings of mortification

and unhappiness while travelling. This is partly because a carriage

offers a kind of privacy not easily found in Jane Austen's time.

Mr Elton excitedly seizes the unexpected opportunity to propose to

Emma, and returning from Box Hill with only Harriet, who is dispirited

and silent, Emma does not need to speak or restrain her thoughts and

emotions. However, there may also be some significance in the fact

that on both these occasions, when Emma is literally suspended above

the ground and bumping along in a carriage, she suffers a metaphorical

jolt out of her usual complacency. In the second episode especially,

Emma I s world, seemingly firm, solid, down-to-earth, is so shaken

that it is not the same again. Separated from Hartfield, Randalls

and the places in Highbury where she has been allowed to think too

well of herself, exercise her own judgement, and indulge her fancy,

Einma is now in a kind of limbo, imprisoned with the new knowledge

 42

of herself and her faults_ and, as Tave notes, on this carriage ride,

"unlike the ride with Mr Elton, the anger and concern are properly

directed 11.1

The names of the places where her characters live and which

they visit contribute to our sense of reality in the novels, and in

her choice of these Jane Austen has two methods. Aiming at

verisimilitude, she follows the practice of novelists since Defoe and

uses the names of actual countries, towns and streets, and these are,

as has already been mentioned, mainly in the south of England. None

of the novels is set in Jane Austen's own county of Hampshire

(a stratagem, perhaps, to help preserve her anonymity as a novelist) ,

but from Wiltshire, Devonshire, Hertfordshire, Surrey, Northampton-

shire and Somersetshire, characters travel to Bath, London, Portsmouth

and Lyme, where they may live in Pulteney Street or Harley Street,

shop in Milsom Street or Bond Street, walk to the naval dockyards or

on the Cobb. Her characters may be familiar with resorts such as

Dawlish, Brighton, Weymouth and Tunbridge, and the snobbish amongst

them may be superior about Birmingham and Gracechurch Street. The

names of the small towns and country villages where the heroines live,

however, are fictitious and the places unidentifiable; Jane Austen

made up names such as Fullerton, Barton, Meryton and Highbury, and

yet, even in her fictitious names of places and people there is some-

times a hidden link with reality. She places Highbury near Leather-

head in Surrey, and Chapman notes that it was in Leatherhead that she

found the names IIRandalls ll and "Knightley ll.2 Her inventions are

1
Tave, Same Words, p.246.
2
Chapman, Facts and Problems, p.122.
 43

well-sounding English names, and same perhaps suggest the kinds of

places that they are. Certainly, Mrs Philips and her younger nieces

have a merry time with the officers in Meryton. Names of houses and

estates--Northanger Abbey, Longbourn, Mansfield Park--are, of course,

inventions. Chapman considers that lithe resemblance of Pember ley

and Everingham to Miss Burney's Pemberton and Everington can hardly

be accident 11.1 Mention of places further afield in England and

abroad reminds the reader of a wider world; characters go to

Newcastle, Ireland or Antigua, and there are references to Barbados

and Avignon; but the action of the novels never moves further north

than Derbyshire or out of England.

Jane Austen places her characters' houses or lodgings in

areas of London or Bath with the same precision that is evident in

her presentation of other aspects of setting. Nikolaus Pevsner, in a

detailed account illustrated with maps , shows her careful choice of

2
addresses. In London the wealthiest characters and those with the

greatest social pretensions live in Mayfair and north of OXford Street:

Admiral Crawford's house is off Berkeley Square, the Hursts live in

Grosvenor Street, the Palmers in Hanover Square not far fram Sir

John Middleton in Conduit Street and Mrs Jennings in Berkeley Street.

North of Mayfair are the new squares and streets built in the late

eighteenth century,3 and here in Manchester, Wimpole and Harley

Streets live the Churchills, Rushworths and John Dashwoods. The

2Nikolaus Pevsner, "The Architectural Setting of J ane

Austen I 5 Novels II I Journal of the Warburg & Courtauld Institutes 31
(1968): 412-16.

3 Ibid., 41 2 .
 44

bachelors generally have lodgings south of Piccadilly in St James's

Street and Pall Mall, the area which became after 1827 the centre
1
of the men's clubs . The superior shopping district is also in

Mayfair. Several families live further away from this smart and

rich area. Sensible and wealthy Mr John Knightley lives closer to

the law courts in newly-built and elegant Brunswick Square; the poor

and ill-bred Steele girls stay with a cousin near Holborn Circus, and

a mile still further east, in the heart of the city and "within view

of his own warehouses" (pp, p.139), gentlemanly Mr Gardiner has his

house in Gracechurch Street. In Bath, too, the wealthy live at the

best addresses in the fashionable area, built in the eighteenth

century north of the city on the slope rising away from the River

Avon. General Tilney takes a house in M.ilsom Street, Admiral Croft

in Gay Street, Lady Russell has lodgings in Rivers Street, and Sir

Walter Elliot's house is high up in Camden Place. East of the river

in New Town, built in 1788,2 lives the Dowager Viscountess Dalrymple,

socially the most exalted of Jane Austen's characters, and the Aliens

with Catherine Morland. (The situation of ~ lodgings in Bath may

have contributed to John Thorpe's and General Tilney's misconception

about Mr Allen's financial position.) Fr.om 1801 to 1804 the

Austens themselves lived in Sidney Terrace at the far end of New Town.

After the death of the Reverend Mr Aus.t en in January 1805, Mrs

Austen, Cassandra and Jane moved to 25 Gay Street, but for about a

year before this they had lived in Green Park Buildings to be near

the Pump Room. Here they were not far from Anne Elliot's friend

l Ibid ., 414.

2 Ibid ., 416.
 4S

Mrs Smith, who has lodgings. in westgate Buildings, which when Anne

visited there "must have been rath.er surprised by the appearance of

a carriage drawn up near its pavement" (!:, p.1S7). The Thorpes,

lower down the social scale than the Allens, are in Queen Square.

This, the first of the squares to be built by John Wood the Elder
1
during the years 1728 to 1735, had. already declined in fashionability

by the end of the century. Henrietta and Louisa Musgrove know this,

demanding a good situation, they say to their father: " . . . none of

your Queen-squares for us !" (!:' p.42).

This kind of reference to place, handled in such a way that,

as well as suggesting the ureal" world, it reveals a character's

disposition, constitutes the most important function of setting in

Jane Austen's novels. Not all the characters show a response to their

physical environment I and that some d.D not has no special signif icance;

others are sensitive or insenitive to it in various ways that Jane

Austen uses to develop or confirm their qualities. The small amount

of descriptive detail that she gives and her. references to places

and spatial material suggest the world that her contemporary readers

knew, recognised, and could take for granted--a world that we,

living nearly two hundred years later, can also recognise. Because

Jane Austen assumed that her readers were her social and intellectual

equals, a historical perspective and the kind of background to

the navels supplied by Chapman increase our understanding and

appreciation of her writing; but, because what is central to the

novels is human nature and human relationships, it is not the land~

scapes of England at the end of the eighteenth century, the towns,

1
R.A.L. Smith, Bath (London: Batsford, 1944), p.70.
 46

houses, furnishings, fashions and modes of transport that s i gnify,

but the characters' attitudes and responses to them, and the human

values which these features of the environment r ef l ect.

In spite of this secondary function of setting, however, and,

although, as Barbara Hardy says, "Jane Austen 1 s creation of environ-

ment depends very much less t han any later novelist on description", 1

each of the novels communicates a firm impression of place. Mary

Lasce lles finds a "far greater power over atmosphere of place in the

Chawton novels" (that is, in Mansfie l d Park , Emma and Persuasion) than
2
in the rest, and it is Mansfield Park in which a sense of l ocality

and atmosphere is most powerfully evoked. The titl e suggests the

important role of the house in the novel, and the Portsmouth scenes

contain same of Jane Austen's most detailed , realistic and evocative

descriptions. The symbolic meaning of SOfie of the action in the

grounds of Sotherton also sets this novel apart from the others in

the treatment of setting. Fanny Price and Anne Elliot are the two

heroines most conscious of their surroundings, and Emma , though less

conscious, is as much influenced by her environment as they are.

There is little variety of place in Emma--Highbury has made Emma what

she is , and in Highbury she has to change. In the three earlier

novels, too , characte r, action and background are integrated, but to

a lesser extent. Place, except in the Pember ley scenes , is least

functional in Pride and Pr ejudice. In mu.ch of the novel--the opening

3
chapter, for example-- space is "a place f.or argument" . In such

1
Barbara Hardy , A Reading, p.34.
2
Mary Lascelles, Art, p.179.

3Dorothy Van Ghent, The English Novel: Form and Function

(New York: Rinehart, 1953; Perennial Library, New York: Harper & Row,
1967), P .124.
 47

scenes Jane Austen d.oes not specify the background because there is

no need to do so. Sense and Sensibility has most changes of scene,

and the different settings generally relate to character in some

way. The beauties of Barton Valley and the winding shrubberies of

Cleveland allow Marianne to indulge her individualism, but they do

not excite her sensibility as Northanger Abbey f .eeds and stimulates

Catherine Morland's imagination. In Northanger Abbey Jane Austen's

burlesque intention requires her to create settings, both in Bath and

at the Abbey, that contrast with the unrealistic backgrounds of the

sentimental and Gothic novels.

Northanger Abbey and its grounds, both of which are described

in some detail, inspire two false responses to place: Catherine,

who supposes that life is like that which she reads about in Gothic

romances, does not see what is before her eyes; and greedy,

materialistic General Tilney is as blind. in his way as she is in hers.

Thinking that he is impressing an heiress, he boastfully displays his

house and garden, and his pride prevents him from realizing the

significance of Catherine's honest replies about the modesty of

Mr Allen's property. A rare use of metaphor, which yet has a strong

touch of the literal, suggests the extent and range of the kitchen

garden: liThe number of acres contained in this garden was such as

Catherine could not listen to without dismay, being more than double

the extent of all Mr Allen's, as well as her father's, including

church-yard and orchard. The walls seemed. countless in number,

endless in length; a village of hot-houses seemed to arise among them,

and a whole parish to be at work within the inclosure" (NA, p.178).

If Catherine had visited Blaise Castle with the Thorpes and her

brother, her illusions would probably have been dispelled before she
 48

came to Northanger. As it is, her expectations of the Abbey are

high; she ilI1agines that it is "a fine old place, just like what one

reads about" (NA, p.1S7) with long, damp passages, narrow cells and a

ruined chapel, and the very name of the place winds up her feelings

"to the highest point of exstasy" (NA, p.140). The few brief

references to the Gothic world in the Bath section, together with

Henry Tilney's tale of Gothic horrors in the carriage, prepare us for

Catherine's experiences at the Abbey. So deluded is she that the

modernity and comforts of the house make no appeal to her reason.

Comparatively long descriptions convey the daylight world of

Cather ine I s surroundings: in the common drawing-room lIthe furniture

was in all the profusion and elegance of modern taste. The fire-

place, where she had expected the ample width and ponderous carving

of former times, was contracted to a Rumford, with slabs of plain

though handsome marble, and ornaments over it of the prettiest

English china" (NA, p.162), and her bedroom "was very unlike the one

which Henry had endeavoured to alarm her by the description of.--It

was by no means unreasonably large, and contained neither tapestry

nor velvet . --The walls were papered, the floor was carpeted; the

windows were neither less perfect, nor more dim than those of the

drawing-room below; the furniture, though not of the latest fashion,

was handsome and comfortable, and the air of the room altogether far

fran uncheerful" (NAt p.1631. It is Cather.ine I s imaginative mind

that creates the Gothic setting, whereas in The Mysteries of Udolpho

it is the setting and atmosphere of the gloomy castle in the

Apennines and the events which take place there that build up the

"horror I I . (The atmospheres of both Jane Austen's parody and Mrs

Radcliffe's romance contrast greatly with the more authentic Gothic--

 49

the sombre background, for example, that i s in tune with Antonio's

tragic sorrows in The Duchess. of Malfi: 1

Delio. Yond's the Cardinal's window. This fortification

Grew from the ruins of an ancient abbey:
And to yond g,id.e o· th I river lies a wall (
Piece of a cloister, which in my opinion
Gives the best echo that you ever heard.;
So hollow , and so dismal, and withal
So plain in the distinction of our words,
That many have suppos'd it is a spirit
That answers.

Antonio. I do love these ancient ruins:

We never tread upon them, but we set
CUr foot upon some reverend history,
And, questionless, here in this open court,
Which now lies naked. to the injuries
Of stormy weather, some men lie interr I d
Lov'd the church so well, and. gave so largely to 't,
They thought it should have canopi 'd their bones
Till doomsday. But all things have their end:
Churches and cities, which have diseases like to men
Must have like death that we have.

Echo . Like death that we have.

Delio. Now the echo hath caught you.

Antonio. It groan'd, methought, and gave

A very deadly accent!
2
Echo. Deadly accent. )

Catherine, though over-suscepti ble is not presented as compl etely

foolish at Northanger; the cedar chest with its tarnished lock, the

storm outsid.e, the black cabinet, the sudden extinction of her candle

suggest enough of the genuine Gothic tr.appings to justify her fears

to a certain extent. It is later, when she entertains fancies about

the General and Mrs Tilney that have no basis in the reality around

1peter Quennell, in Romantic England.: Writing and Painting

1717-1851 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson , 1970), pp.10-11, points
cut this rare use of Gothic background. in seventeenth-century
writing.

2The Duchess of Malfi 5.3.1-21.

 50

her, that Catherine is guilty of a graver err.or . In the Bath scenes,

too, the setting points the contrast between illusion and reality.

The realistic descriptions of the unpleasantly crowded ball~room on

the tlimportant evening .. . which was to usher. [catherine] into the

Upper Rooms" (NA, p.20) and of the busy crossing in Cheap Street are

full of commonplace discomforts and difficulties that should not be

the lot of a "heroine" .

Marianne Dashwood is also guilty of a f.alse r esponse to place;

her extreme sensibility shows itself in her. excessively emotiona l

reaction to outdoor scenes. In her f .arewell speech to Nor l and I for

example, the conventional l anguage and r.hetoLical devices expose her

exaggerated and affected feelings (SS, p.27). Mar.ianne does not look

at and describe the woods; her attention is on herself and on the

repetitions, rhetorical questions and studied. instances of apostrophe

that she uses to express what she thinks she fee l s. The elevated style

of the narrator's introductory sentence underlines the parody of the

sentimental novel, and deludoo. Marianne is here no more an individual

than is Amanda Fitzallen in Regina Maria Roche's The Children of the

Abbey (1798). Instead of giving a general description of Barton

Cottage Jane Austen uses a few detai l s to describe the comfortable

house and the valley, downs and woods that surround it in order to

prepare us for Marianne's behaviour. It is these rural beauties

which attract her, especially when she is happily in lave with

Willoughby. After his departure she courts misery by frequenting

scenes of past enjoyment in solitary rambles. (SUch indulg ence

might have been less easy for Marianne to enjoy in a town setting.

She wishes to be alone, and, as Chapman observes in hi s notes on ~'The

Manner s of the Age It, a young woman I s walking alone was "imprudent if
 51

not actually indecorous" (~, p.512). It is difficult to imagine Jane

Austen's allowing even unconventional MaIianne to wander by herself

in Kensington Gardens, for instance, or. up Beechen Cliff. Jane

Fairfax, who has her reasons, walks alone to the village post office,

and is desperate when she walks home from Donwell Abbey and later

wander s abou t the meadows at some distance from Highbury, bu t Emma,

having once ventured by . her.self to Randalls, finds the walk alone

unpleasant, and is glad of Harriet as "a walking companion" (~, p.26).

Jane Austen seems to have felt that she had to give Harriet a friend

to walk with when she is frightened by the gipsies half a mile out

of Highbury--Miss Bickerton serves no other purpose in the novel.)

Contrasting humorously with Marianne's violent and. romantic response

to outdoor scenes are Elinor's common sense and Edward's practical

outlook; "It is not everyone .. . who has your. passion for dead

leaves" am "It is a beautiful country, ... but these bottoms must be

dirty in winter" (SS, p.SS) are their respective comments. Cleve-

land is also bad for Marianne. C>..lr knowledge of its proximity to

Combe Magna and a short descriptive passage again prepare us for her

once again "wandering from place to place in free and luxurious

solitude" I experiencing IImoments of precious, of. invaluable misery",

and rejoicing "in tears of agony" (SS, p.303).

Other characters , most of them stupid., some of them misguided,

also view their surroundings wrongly or see them in their own terms.

Isabella Thorpe, who changes facts to suit her.self, sits on a bench

between the two doors leading into the Pump Room because "it is so

out of the way" (NA, p.143). Sophisticated. Mary CrawfOled good-

naturedly mocks country ways when she finds that she cannot have her

harp fetched from Northampton during hay-time, she had thought "that
 52

every thing is to be got with money" (MP, p. 58). And Mrs Elton dis-

plays "all her airs of pert pretension and under - bred finery" (~, p.279)

when she compares Hartfield to Maple Grove. A few characters do not

know where places are, and this ignorance of geography is an

irrlication of their mindlessness: to Mrs Bennet Newcastle is "a place

quite northward, it seems" (Pp, p.336), and silly little Harriet

Smith wonders whether Mr Frank Churchill, travelling from Yorkshire

1
to Surrey, will "pass through Bath as well as Oxford" (~, p.189).

Catherine Morland and Marianne Dashwood respond to certain

kinds of surroundings in a way so positive and so misguided that the

folly and dangers of their feelings, thoughts or actions are clear to

the right-thinking peopl e who love them. But the influence of

Highbury upon Emma, while being just as strong and harmful as scenes

of rural beauty are to Marianne and Gothic ruins to Catherine l is

subtler and more insidious, and goes unperceived by all but one of

the people close to her. The danger for Emma, IIhandsome, clever, and

rich" (~, p.5), is that her situation offers her considerable freedom

of action; the people around her and the setting in which Jane Austen

places her all ow her to assert her individualism almost unchecked.

She has no mother, her invalid father has no parental function, her

older sister is married and lives out of Highbury, and Miss Taylor

has gone. Emma's liveliness, intelligence, strong personality and

good looks have always drawn admiration and flattery from her family

and governess. The small town of Highbury affords her no equals and,

1
Tave discusses this "simple geography joke" and the
propensity of some characters "with varying degrees of foolishness
and awareness ... who .. . reshape the space and time they inhabit to
make it a creation of their own wishes".. See Some Words, pp.3-6 ..
 53

because the Woodhouses are "first in consequence there" (~, p. 7) I

friends and neighbours also flatter and look up to her. Only Mr

Knightley finds fau l t with Emma, and at the beginning of the novel

she does not take him seriously. In her small world Emma's powers

are paradoxically almost unlimited. It is the restricted setting that

made the creation of Emma Woodhouse possible; if Jane Austen had sent

her heroine to Bath or London--places that other characters visit--

she could , not have shown her thinking too well of herself and too

frequently having her own way without turning her into a kind of

Mrs Elton and making her folly and snobbishness ingrained. Emma is

surely too intelligent, has too much elegance of mind, to behave badly

when away from the people and surroundings that permit her to be as
1
she is. It is only on her home ground that she can "play God", and

retain the reader's sympathy. Another outcome of her situation is

that Emma, having no satisfactory occupation for her lively mind,

allows her reason to be dominated by her imagination, that faculty

which, as Johnson and Jane Austen knew, if not controlled, clouds the

judgement so that the mind loses the power to distinguish the real and

the fanciful. Emma, until the end of the novel, does not see reality

or know herself because she does not control "that very dear part of

[her] , her fancy" (!, p. 214). However, that she has sense and can

use her judgement and reason, Jane Austen frequently makes clear.

In the opening chapter, for instance, before Mr Knightley arrives at

Hartfield, Emma's words to her father about Miss Taylor's marrying

spring from sound reason and good sense, and are very similar to

what Mr Knightley himself later says to Mr woodhouse . Two other

lMarvin Mudrick, Jane Austen: Irony as Defense and Discovery

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952), p . 194 .
 54

important epi sodes show Emma responding sensibly and naturally to

her surroundings.

Emma's mind is not often idle, but when she stands a l one out-

side Ford's shop and views the street scene , for a few moments she

forgets about Harriet, the Martins and Frank . Churchill, and clearly

sees what is in front of her: " ... the butcher with his tray, a tidy

old woman travelling homewards from shop with her full basket, two

curs quarrelling over a dirty bone, and a string of dawdling children

round the baker's little bow-window eyeing the gingerbread •.• "

(~, p . 233). She is here profitably entertained, even if momentarily,

1
by external fact , not internal fancy . Similarly at Donwell Abbey

her apprec iation of the house and grounds shows a healthy and right-

minded attitude. Wal king in the "delicious shage of a broad short

avenue of limes", from which there is a "sweet vie w" (!, p.360), is

for Emma the "pleasantest part of the day" (~. p . 361 ) . The des-

cri ption, as well as giving a background for Mr Knightley, conveys

Emma ' s feelings which, being "a nice mixture of almost proprietary
2
pleasure and a proper estimate of Mr Knightley ' s social worth" ,

are not wholly deceived by vain imagination.

Similarly, it is seeing Pember ley that makes Elizabeth recog-

nise Darcy's valuable qualities and her own deficiencies. The beauty

1
Barbara Hardy interprets this passage d ifferently. She
sees Emma as illustrating Jane Austen ' s professional interest in
the strengths and weaknesses of the human imagination, and finds the
few accounts of Emma's mind almost more str iking than the major events
of the novel . liOn this occasion it is revealed when idling, and
off-duty . She expects little , and sees little. Both expectation and
actuality show the characteristic working of her mind .. . ~I See
A Reading, pp. 85 - 86.
2
W.A. craik, Jane Austen: the Six Novels (London: Methuen
& Co., 1965), p .158 .
 55

of the grounds and house delights her i IIshe had never seen a place

for which nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been

so little counteracted by an awkward taste" (PP, p. 245) . Before she

hears the housekeeper's commendation of Darcy as master, landlord and

brother; sees his portrait in the gallery; experiences his surpris-

ingly changed manner towards herself and the Ga~diners, she rejoices

in the place, and feels "that to be mistress of Pember ley might be

something!" (PP, p. 245). She has the good taste to admire his taste,

and her newly-acquired knowledge of his worth turns her criticisms

1
away from him and on to herself.

A few passages from Mansfield Park may serve to show how Jane

Austen uses Fanny Price's consciousness of her surroundings. When

Fanny arrives at Mansfield Park as a timid, shy little girl of ten

years, the size and grandeur of the house contribute to her

unhappiness: "the rooms were t oo large for her to move in with ease;

whatever she touched she expected to injure, and she crept about in

constant terror of something or other" (MP, pp.14-15) . When she

leaves Mansfield about eight years later on her first visit to

Portsmouth, although happy to be going to what she thinks is her

home, she has IItears for every room in the house, much more for

every beloved inhabitant" (MP, p.374). Sir Thomas is relying on

Fanny's sensitivity to setting to "bring her mind into a sober state"

(MP, p.369) and make her appreCiate Henry Crawford's offer of

marriage. In an unusually sensuous description Jane Austen shows

us the effect of a beautiful outdoor scene on Fanny. Henry Crawford

1
In "Setting and Character in Pride and Prejudice", Nineteenth
Century Fiction 19 (June 1964): 65-75, Charles J. McCann discusses
the ironic manner in which Jane Austen creates an impression of
Pember ley , and the subtle correspondence between the house and its owner.
 56

comes to Portsmouth, and on an "uncorrunonly lovely" March morning, he

accompanies the Prices on their Sunday walk on the ramparts.

"Somehow or other--there was no saying how", Fanny finds herself

walking with her arm under Henry Crawford's, and, succumbing to the

combined charms of the warm sun, gay sights and fine sounds , she

becomes "gradually almost careless of the circumstances" (MP, p. 409)

in which she is enjoying them. The view of the sea seems to impart

something of its joy and vigour to Fanny, and she is again conscious

of find ing Henry Crawford nearly agreeable. The lov e liness of the

day and of the view also affects him. "They often stopt with the

same sentiment and taste, leaning against the wall, some minutes, to

look and admire; and considering he was not Edmund, Fanny could not

but allow that he was sufficiently open to the charms of nature,

and very well able to express his admiration" (MP, p.409). His

response raises Fanny 's estimation of him, and by the time they part

she is "quite persuaded of his being astonishingly more gentle, and

regardful of others, than formerly" (MP, p.413) , and hopes that his

kindness to her will lead to the ultimate consideration of his

ceasing to distress her by his suit.

Much of the description of Pember ley and Donwell Abbey is

g iven by the omniscient narrator, or comes to us in free indirect

style from the consciousness of the heroine. There are other des-

criptions of houses and estates in the novels which are given by a

character, generally in direct speech, and which tell us about the

speaker himself. In Sense and Sensibility Mrs Jennings's short but

full description of Delaford (SS, p.196) reveals just as much about

her as it does about Colonel Brandon and his property. Her

indelicate style of speaking and her emphasis on the comforts,

 57

good food and proximity to the road are typical of kindhearted,

vulgar, gregarious Mrs Jennings. And that the house is old-fashioned

and close to the church, that the estate is well-cared for and

productive assures us of Colonel Brandon's good stewardship and

sense of social responsibi l ity . In the same novel Jane Austen uses

a descriptive passage to show how ill-judged Marianne is to go over

Allenham House with Willoughby. The more detail Marianne gives about

"one remarkably pretty sitting-room upstairs" (88, p.69) with its

beautiful views and "forlorn" furniture, the greater her impropriety

in going there appears. In Emma there are many short speeches about

places which reveal character or indicate a situation. When he

first comes to Highbury, Frank Churchill, walking with Mrs weston

and Emma, does not join his companions in finding fault with Mr

Elton's house--"No, he could not believe it a bad house; not such a

house as a man was to be pitied for having. If it were to be shared

with the woman he loved, he could not think any man to be pitied for

having that house. There must be ample room in it for every real

comfort. The man must be a blockhead who wanted more" (~, p.204).

Of course, neither Mrs weston nor Emma can understand this reaction:

Mrs Weston thinks that, accustomed to a large house himself, Frank

can be no judge of the privations of a small one; and Emma deduces

that he shows an inclination to give up the wealth of a place like

Enscombe, marry and settle early. She is nearer the mark; on a

second reading we realize that Frank Churchill's warm feelings

express his discontent with his own circumstances and his envy of

Mr Elton's being able to marry so soon after becoming engaged.

His remarks about the house simultaneously obscure and reveal the

truth. Again, the carefully selected details of Harriet 8mith's

 58

account of Abbey Mill Farm (~, p.27) give an impression of a world

in which Harriet is happy among people who genuinely like her; her

words convey her pleasure, and the na~ve reiterations suggest her

wish to shape the report to gain Miss Woodhouse's approbation.

The accounts of Abbey Mill Farm also create a picture of a

successful farm well run by kind, hard-working, affectionate people.

They are just the sort of tenants that Mr Knightley would desire and

ensure that he has. Robert Martin, "a respectable, intelligent

gentleman-farmer" (~, p.62), and the farm "with all its appendages

of prosperity and beauty, its rich pastures, spreading flocks,

orchard in blossom" (~, p.360) reflect the fine qualities of the

land-owner who "with his farm, and his sheep, and his library, and

all the parish to manage" (~, p.225) is always busy and fully aware

of his social responsibilities. Jane Austen reaffirms Mr Knightley's

character and values, evident in all his words and actions, in the

description of Donwell Abbey at the beginning of Volume III. Barbara

Hardy observes: "Ever since Fielding designed an appropriate

dwelling for Mr Allworthy in Tom Jones, the houses in fiction have

been carefully planned and furnished." She continues: "Jane

Austen's comic imagination founded her sympathetic habitats more

firmly, more craftily, and yet more naturally in her fictions, by

using her characters as architects and builders. It is their insight

and projection which make the houses so sympathetic ...• She s aw

environment as a case both forming and formed by people." 1 Together,

Mr Knightly and the Donwell Abbey that we see though Emma's eyes

represent the moral worth that grows out of long-established

lBarbara Hardy, A Reading, pp.136-37.

 59

cultural and religious tradition:

She felt all the honest pride and compl acency which her
alliance with the present and future proprietor could fairly
warrant, as she viewed the respectable size and style of
the building, its suitable, becoming, characteristic
situation, low and sheltered--its ample gardens stretching
down to meadows washed by a stream, of which the Abbey, with
all the old neglect of prospect, had scarcely a sight--and
its abundance of timber in rows and avenues, which neither
fashion nor extravagance had rooted up.--The house was
larger than Hartfield, and totally unlike it, covering a
good deal of ground, rambling and irregular, with many
comfortable and one or two handsome rooms.--It was just what
it ought to be, and it looked what it was--and Emma felt an
increasing respect for it, as the residence of a family of
such true gentility, untainted in blood and understanding.

(~, p.358)

This description and the view from the avenue of limes--"sweet to the

eye and the mind. English verdure, English culture, English comfort,

seen under a sun bright, without being oppressive" (~, p.360) --comprehend

the values that Jane Austen believed were typified by what is best in

country life.

Pember ley is also a model estate and a similar reflection of

Darcy. The different settings of the action in Pride and Prejudice

contrast greatly with one another, and, until he becomes engaged to

Elizabeth, we see Darcy at ease and truly himself only at Pemberley.

That he is sensitive to his surroundings and conscious of the effect

of env~ronment we learn from his behaviour at Longbourn, Netherfield,

Rosings and Pemberley. This awareness becomes explicit in a remark

he makes to Elizabeth at Rosings: they have been talking about the

distance that separates Charlotte Collins from Hertfordshire, when

Darcy with unwonted feeling in his voice draws his chair a little

towards Elizabeth and says, nyou cannot have been always at Longbourn"

(PP, p.179). At Pember ley everything that Elizabeth looks at

contrasts with the grandeur and ostentation of Rosings, and is

evidence of Darcy's taste and intelligence:

 60

Every disposition of the ground was good; and she looked on

the whole scene, the river, the trees scattered on its banks,
and the winding of the valley, as far as she could trace it,
with delight. As they passed into other rooms, these objects
were taking different positions; but from every window there
were beauties to be seen. The rooms were lofty and handsome,
and their furniture suitable to the fortune of their
proprietor; but Elizabeth saw, with admiration of his taste,
that it was neither gaudy nor uselessly fine; with less of
splendor, and more real elegance, than the furniture of
Rosings.
(PP, p.246)

What Elizabeth infers about Darcy from the natural beauty and cul-

tivated taste of his estate is confirmed by Mrs Reynold's account of

him and by his subsequent behaviour towards her. Although Jane

Austen describes Pember ley in general rather than particular terms,

Nirad C. Chaudhuri, the "Bengali Hindu who never learnt English

from Englishmen, did not meet them socially until he was fifty-five,

and did not see England till the age of fifty-seven", received such

a vivid impression of Pemberley, when he first read Pride and Prejudice

in 1914 at the age of sixteen, that in 1976 he writes: "Since then

Pember ley has remained the archetypal country house for me, as real
1
as any I have seen with my eyes."

In his review of Barbara Hardy's A Reading of Jane Austen

Chaudhuri also comments on Jane Austen's "full commitment to the

assumption of her age that one of the outward signs of an inward grace
2
was rna ter ial splendour I I . The beautiful park of Pemberley, the

"large, handsome stone building" (pp, p.245), the lofty well-

proportioned rooms, the picture-gallery with "many good paintingsll

(PP, p.250), in addition to reflecting Darcy's good taste and

1Nirad C. Chaudhuri, "Woman of the World", Times Literary

Supplement (16 January 1976): 55.

2 Ibid •
 61

intelligence, wealth and social status, convey the suggestion of an

inward grace. However, there is less of this resonance of moral

worth in the description of Pember ley than there is in the des-

criptions of locality in the later novels; what L. P . Smith cal ls

1
the moral atmosphere of places is richer and stronger in Mansfield

Park, Emma and Persuasion. The diversity of moral climates that he

describes is most evident in Mansfield Park with the strongly

contrasted settings of Mansfield Park, the Prices' house in Portsmouth,

and the destructive influence of London. In Emma he finds the air of

the busy, full world of Highbury "so dense that Jane Austen seems to

have felt that no contrast of climate was needed to enhance its rich
2
effect" .

Mansfield Park is the only novel which Jane Austen herself

called by the name of a place. Although she told Cassandra that,

having finished Pride and Prejudice, she was going to try to write of

something else which was to be "a complete change of subject--

ordination" (.!:' p.29S), the title of the new work indicates the
central theme, that of the importance of environment in a person's

moral education. Unperceived by Sir Thomas, the effect of the moral

atmosphere of Mansfield Park upon his daughters is harmful. In

c hapter two there is much emphasis on education, l earning and memory_

Maria and Julia Bertram find little Fanny "prodigiously stupid" and

ignor ant; she "cannot put the map of Europe together", does not know

nthe Kings of England, with the dates of their accession, and most of

the principal events of their reigns" (MP, p.1S), nor those "of the

1
See p.16 above.

2 L. P . .Smi t h , Reperus a ls, p. 3 69 .

 62

Roman emperors as low as Severusi besides a great deal of the

Heathen Mythology, and all the Metals, Semi-Metals, Planets and

distinguished philosophers" (MF, p.19); nor does she want to learn

either music or drawing. Although they know much, they realize that

there is still a great deal more for them to learn--until they are

seventeen. An authorial comment confirms the reader's estimation

of Maria's and Julia's characters from their attitudes and behaviour:

they are "entirely deficient in the less common acquirements of self-

knowledge, generosity, and humility" (MF, p.19); like the two Miss

Beauforts in Sandi ton they are "very accomplished & very Ignorant"

(MW, p.421). Sir Thomas is content to leave his daughters' education

to a governess and to their aunt, who spoils and flatters them, and

because "he was not outwardly affectionate, and the reserve of his

manner repressed all the flow of their spirits before him" (MF, pd9),

they, and Fanny, are afraid of him. Lady Bertram's interests do not

extend as far as the education of her children, and she indulges

them when this involves no inconvenience to herself. This blend of

neglect, severe discipline and indulgence forms a moral climate that,

according to D.D. Devlin, "is not an admirable bulwark against the

corruptions of the great city, but is itself corrupt, and must change,
1
must be cleansed as the novel progresses". The influence of

London, represented by Henry and Mary Crawford, nearly destroys

Mansfield Park; the guilt and misery involved in the visit to

Sotherton, in the episode of the theatricals, in Maria's marriage and

subsequent elopement, in Edmund's infatuation with Mary Crawford, are

largely the result of this taint. Sir Thomas, head of the house,

1
D.D. Devlin, Jane Austen and Education (London: Macmillan
Press, 1975), p.125.
 63

realizes this, but too late:

Here had been grievous mi smanagement; but, bad as it was, he

gradually grew to feel that it had not been the most
direful mistake in his plan of education. Something must
have been wanting within, or time would have worn away much
of its ill effect. He feared that principle , active
principl e, had been wanting, that they had never been
properly taught to govern their inclinations and tempers,
by that sense of duty which can alone suffice. They had
been instructed theoretically in their religion , but never
required to bring it into daily practice. To be distin-
guished for elegance and accomplishments--the authorised
object of their youth--could have had no useful influence
that way, no moral effect on the mind. He had meant them
to be good, but his cares had been directed to the under-
s tanding and manners, not the disposition; and of the
necessity of self-denial and humility, he feared they had
never heard from any lips that could profit them.

(MP, p.463)

The Mansfield Park for which Fanny longs after a week or so

at her parents' house in Portsmouth i s the Mansfield which Sir Thomas

mistakenly thought nurtured his family. To Fanny, schooled by

"self-denial and humility", it represents all that is good, all that

is l acking in Portsmouth. Tranquillity and noise character ize the

two places respectively, and for Fanny, who like Sir Thomas values

quiet, the ceaseless tumult of the Prices ' house is the greatest

misery. Sir Thomas's "medicinal project" (MP, p.369) works, but not

in the way for which he hopes . Fanny knew that she loved Mansfield,

Sir Thomas and her Aunt Bertram before she left Northamptonshire,

and she now realizes that Mansfield is home to her; she has t o admit

that Portsmouth is, "in almost every respect, the very reverse of

what she could have wished. It was the abode of noise, disorder,

and impropriety" (MP, p.388). She cannot respect her parents: her

father cares for nothing much beyond his rum and newspaper and the

navy list , and her mother is "a partial , i l l-judging parent, a dawdle,

a s lattern, who neither taught nor restrained her children, whose

house was the scene of mismanagement and discomfort from beginning

 64

to end, and who had no talent, no conversation, no affection towards

herself; no curios ity to know her better, no desire of her friendship,

and no inclination for her company that could lessen her sense of

such feelings" (MP , p.390). By means of realistic and evocative

details of setting, described always from Fanny's point of view, Jane

Austen makes the reader share with Fanny the experiences that sharpen

her awareness of place, and heighten her appreciation of Mansfield

Park.

So forcibly does Fanny feel the difference between the two

places that even a l etter from Mary Crawford bringing news of the

"set where [ Fanny'S ] heart lived" is "thoroughly acceptable II (MP, p.393)

to Fanny in her exi l e; even a visit from Henry Crawford is Hnot so

very bad as she wou ld have expected, the pleasure of talking of

Mansfield was so ver y great!" (MP, p.406). Devlin, in his full dis-

cussion of Jane Austen and education, compares the three worlds of

Mansfield Park, Portsmouth and London, all of which Jane Austen

shows to be responsible to some extent for the moral deficiencies of

1
the people brought up in them. The Crawfords have lived with their

uncle in London, which in Mansfield Park , writes Devlin, "typifies

rootl essnes s, triviality and a licence which is mistaken for freedom". 2

They are so charming, intelligent and agreeable at Mansfield that

only observant Fanny perceives their insidious power. It is not

until there is proof at the end that Sir Thomas, formerly always

concerned with appearances, understands the selfish vanity of Henry

Crawford, and that Edmund, blinded till then by his emotional

lIbid., p.112.

2 Ibid ., p.SO.
 65

involvement, recognises Mary's IIfaults of principle, ... of blunted

delicacy and a corrupted, vitiated mi nd" (MP, p.456). When she

leaves Mansfie l d,Mary Crawford half unwittingly reveals to Fanny the

moral atmosphere of her environment in London: her friends who

gossip about others' private affairs, for whom the norm is

unhappiness in marriage , who are without self-respect, judgement or

principle contrast pointedly with Fanny. Mary herself is aware of

the result of "bad domestic example" (MP, p.467) , and she thinks that

her brother still has time to escape the effects of Admiral Crawford's

influence, but she i s less concerned with principle and virtue than

with etiquette and courtesy. Edmund Bertram, too, influenced more by

his heart than his head, believes that Fanny I "firm as a rock in her

own principles" (MP , p.351) , will change Henry Crawford. But Henry

cannot shed the effects of habit and of his upbringing. Some critics

think that Jane Austen is too hard in her judgement on Henry and
1
Mary Crawford. But the Crawfords' tribulations at the end of

Mansfield Park are the logical outcome of the morality postulated

throughout the novel; Mary , who has always shown "a mind led astray

and bewildered, and without any suspicion of being so; darkened, yet

fancying itself light" (MP, p.367), is trapped in a web of tragic

irony woven by herself and her circumstances; and Henry is betrayed,

not by his author, but by the powerful force of his environment and

faulty education, which, he finds, he cannot escape.

1see Lionel Trilling, "Mansfie l d Park", in The Opposing Self:

Nine Essays in Criticism (London: Secker & Warburg, 1955), pp.206-30;
Kingsley Amis, "What became of Jane Austen? [ Mansfield ParkJ"I
Spectator 6745 (4 October 1957): 339-340; Howard S. Babb, Jane
Austen's Novels: The Fabric of Dialogue (Columbus: Ohio State
University Press, 1962), p.163, among others.
 66

The Crawfords are not the only characters in Mansfield Park

who are corrupted by the moral climate of London. That Maria and

Julia do not leave London to go to the support and comfort of their

mother when Tom is ill, disposes Fanny to think "the influence of

London very much at war with all respectable att achments" (MP, p.433).

The culmination of Maria ' s guilt and Julia's fol l y occurs in London; in

all the novels eloping couples either start out from or conceal them-

se lves in London, and irregular liaisons are set up there. If events

of this kind are not set in London, they take place in r esorts, places

where, to quote Henry Tilney, people are "in pursuit onl y of amuse-

ment all day long " (NA, p.79). Jane Austen knew Bath well , and both

her comments and Anne Elliot's attitude convey her--and Cassandra's--

dis like of that city. In 1808 she writes to her s i ster : "It will be

two years tomorrow since we l eft Bath for Clifton, with what happy

feelings of Escape!" (!;, p.208), and again in 1814: "Instead of

Bath the Deans Dundases have taken a house at Clifton ... and [ Martha

Lloyd J is as glad of the change as even you and I shou l d be , or a l most"

(!;, p.391). But a l though Jane Austen did not l ike Bath , she realized

its usefulness to her as a novelist, and made good use of her know-

ledge of it. Because people attend resorts like Bath for their

h e alth as well as for i ts society, these places are a convinc ing

setting for t he meeting of unlikely or incompatible characters. Good,

sens i ble people like the Crofts go there , as well as husband-hunting

mothers and determi ned flirts like the Thorpes. All the novels give

an impression of the mora l atmosphere prevailing at these places

where the fashionab l e worl d meets and where the "advantages ... to the

young are pretty generally understood" (~, p.275). The meeting of

heroine and hero in Bath , such as happens in Northanger Abbey, is

 67

unusual in the novels; most of the characters who frequent resorts

are empty, concei ted creatures, and most of the marriages that

resu l t from acquaintances made in public places are unhappy. As a

child Jane Austen was aware of the notoriety of Brighton: it and

London were Lady Lesley's "favourite haunts of dissipation" (MW,

p.120). The description of Brighton (pp, p.232) at the time of the

1
famous military camps stationed there in 1793-95 was possibly the

dream of all Lydia Bennets. In Emma there i s an explicit criticism

of relationships formed in fashionable resorts: distressed by his

quarrel with Jane Fairfax , Frank Churchill bitterly gives vent to

f rustration and his envy of the Eltons. His ironic outburst suggests

that he has mis judged Jane, and that he and she are not suited; but

thi s is an emotional reaction, and he is forgetting that it is

possible to meet the right person at a resort, and that, as Jane

Fairfax, controlled and reasonable , tells him, an unfortunate

acquaintance need not be an inconvenience or an oppression for ever.

Jane Austen predictably sets seductions and betrayals in resorts and

London: Georgiana Darcy is a t Ramsgate when Wickham plans to take her

thirty thousand pounds and his revenge on her brother, and Willoughby

seduced Colonel Brandon's ward in Bath and marries Miss Grey in London.

It is a commonplace of all time that "In cities vice is

2
hidden with ease, / Or seen with least reproachll, and Jane Austen's

associating unpleasantness and positive ills with the city is by no

means unusual; the idea appears in the literature of most ages.

Charles Peake, discussing the popularity of landscape and night poetry

1
See Chapman, Facts and Problems, p.80.
2
Cowper, The Task, 1. 689-90.
 68

in the eighteenth century , suggests possible causes for the growing

interest in the countryside:

There can be no adequate explanation of this (or any

other) development in taste--too many things are involved--
but there are some factors of obvious relevance. In the
l ate seventeenth century , memories of the Civil War and
subsequent uncertainties encouraged a dream of escape from
the dangerous involvements of power, and many poets and
essay i sts praised the charms of rural retirement. Some -
times they ce l ebrated a Stoic withdrawal from the
corruptions of the court and city , sometimes an Epicurean
withdrawal to the comfortable and carefree delights of
life on one's country estate, sometimes a Christian or neo-
Platonic withdrawal to examine one's soul and commune with
one's Maker--but, whatever the reason offered, a return to
Nature was frequently advocated , in language and literary
forms particularly indebted to Horace and Virgil, as the
way to true peace of mind. 1

Peake lists other interests, discoveri es and changes which helped to

determine the preference for rural scenes: landscape pain~ing,

landscape gardening, scientific advances , imprOVed communications ,

2
increased urbanization, the Agrarian Revolution. The Augustan age ,

however , was also the age of the city: "The happiness of London

[ said Johnson] is not to be conceived but by those who have been in

it. I wi ll venture to say , there is mor e learning and science within

the circumference of ten mi l es from where we now sit, than in al l the

rest of the kingdom. ,, 3 The change in sensibility that came in the

second half of the eighteenth century encour aged the country bias,

and Jane Austen shared with many contemporary writers a preference

for the country to the city. She may have read with appreciation

1
Char l es Peake, ed., Poetry of the Landscape and the Night:
Two Eighteenth- century Traditions (London: Edward Arnold, 1967),
pp.9-10.

2Ibi d ., pp.10-11.
3
Boswell's Life, Saturday, 30 September 1769.
 69

Gilpin's account of the approaches to London in his Observations on

the Mountains and Lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland, written in

1772 and published in 1786. In vigorous terms he describes the smoke

from the brick kilns, the filth from the sewers and ditches, the

dusty roads crowded with waggons, the lack of green, and the "stinks

of every denominationll. 1 But, although she seems in her letters

and novels to be in sympathy with Cowper's opinion that "God made

2
the country I and man made the town" I Jane Austen was too balanced a

person and too sensible of the city's place in civilization to condemn

it utterly . The note of exaggeration and the tone of Fanny's view of

the immoral effects of London convey a gently humorous, if sympathetic,

- 3
criticism by Jane Austen of her na1ve heroine's attitude.

In all the novels the heroines and heroes live on country

estates or in country villages, and belong to the landed gentry, the

class of people whose qualities, at their best, Jane Austen most

admired, and to which she herself belonged. But i t is only in

Mansfield Park that the values of town and country are set clearly

in opposition to each other. The Crawfords represent a destructive

force that comes from London to harm and subvert the Bertrams and

Fanny, and the potential qualities of Mansfield, latent or perverted

in the Bertrams until the end of the novel but always embodied in

Fanny, are the virtues of Christian moral ity. The third world in

Mansfield Park, Portsmouth with its moral climate that is very different

from that of either London or Mansfield, is not necessarily typical of

1
See Bradbrook, Predecessors, pp.60-61.
2
Cowper, The Task, 1. 749.
3
See p.66 above.
 70

a city. Houses in towns are not a l ways as squalid and unpleas ant as

the Prices '; the Harvilles' small but sh.ipshape and comfortab l e

lodgings in the admittedly much smaller Lyme show what the house of
1
a naval officer who is not wealthy can be like. Jane Austen

places Fanny in the Portsmouth surroundings for a special purpose,2

and in a passage in which she may be expressing her own dislike of

the heat and glare of a town , she makes the unusually realistic and

sensuous description of the Prices' parlour aggravate Fanny's

distress, horror and shame, when she learns of Maria Rushworth's

elopement with Henry Crawford.

The remembrance of her first evening in that room, of her

fathe r and his newspaper came across her. No candle was now
wanted. The sun was yet an hour and half above the horizon.
She felt that she had, indeed, been three months there; and
the sun's rays fal ling strongly into the parlour, instead of
cheering, made her still more melancholy ; for sun- shine
_appeared to her a totally different thing in a town and in
the country. Here, its power was only a glare, a stifling ,
sickly glare, serving but to bring forward stains and dirt
that might otherwise have slept. There was neither health
nor gaiety in sun- shine in a town. She sat in a blaze of
oppressive heat, in a cloud of moving dust; and her eyes
could only wander from the walls marked by her father's head ,
to the table cut and knotched by her brothers, where stood
the tea-board never thoroughly cleaned , the cups and saucers
wiped in .streaks, the milk a mixture of motes floating in
thin blue, and the bread and butter growing every minute
more greasy than even Rebecca's hands had first produced it.

(MP, p.439)

There is, however, another passage in the Portsmouth section which

shows how Jane Austen uses Fanny's sensitivity to her surroundings to

point a less disputable contrast between town and country . When she

is in Portsmouth, Fanny feels her loneliness and prolonged absence

1
See Persuasion, p.98.

2
See p.55 above.
 71

from Mansfield all the more keenly because she is not in the country:

It was sad to Fanny to lose all the pleasures of spring.

She had not known before what pleasures she had to lose in
passing March and April in a town. She had not known before,
how much the beginnings and progress of vegetation had
delighted her.--What animation both of body and mind, she
had derived from watching the advance of that season which
cannot, in spite of its capriciousness, be unlovely, and
seeing its increasing beauties, from the earliest flowers,
in the warmest divisions of her aunt's garden, to the opening
of leaves of her uncle's plantation, and the glory of his
WQods.--To be losing such pleasures was no trifle; to be
losing them, because she was in the midst of closeness and
noise, to have confinement, bad air, bad smells, substituted
for liberty, freshness, fragrance, and verdure, was infinitely
worse ....
(MP, pp.431-32)

The isolation that Fanny experiences at Portsmouth is an

instance of an aspect of a young woman's situation that Jane Austen

deals with in all the novels. None of the heroines lives alone, and

each has a family or set of relatives on whom she depends for a home

and companionship. Neighbours also provide company. But for all the

heroines except Catherine Morland the society of the immediate family

is mostly uncongenial, and their ·spiritual growth involves adjusting

themselves in some way to this deprivation. Anne Elliot and Fanny

Price are the most isolated in the places where they live; Anne has

to leave Kellynch in order to fulfil herself, and Fanny is as lonely

and ignored at Mansfield in the first two volumes of the novel as she

is at her parents' house in Portsmouth. In the early episodes--the

1
visit to Sotherton, the theatricals--she is always, as Devlin notes,

the detached observer, outside the group and looking in on it. She

sleeps in the little white attic near the governess and housemaids;

she uses the east room, unwanted by anyone else; she is included in

1Devlin, Education, p.89.

 72

the party to Sotherton only by Edmund's efforts; in the wilderness

there she is by herself for nearly an hour; and in the Parsonage

drawing-room she sits alone by the window when Edmund joins the glee

singers at the piano. This physical separation from the people

amongst whom she lives reflects (among other things) the difference

from theirs in Fanny's moral outlook. Mansfield, unlike Kellynch ,

improves; the moral atmosphere after a generation of mismanagement

changes, and Fanny returning from Portsmouth can at last be "comfort-

able" there.

Other heroines, too, feel the restriction of their environ-

ment and limitations of their society_ Emmals reflections and the

narration in the opening chapter reveal her feelings of isolation and

her consciousness of "intellectual solitude" (!, p.6); intelligent,

well-informed Miss Taylor has left Hartfield, and Mr woodhouse is no

companion for his daughter. At the end of the novel it is a measure

of Emma's maturity and self-knowledge that, when she knows she l oves

Mr Knightley and thinks she has lost him, she is prepared to face her

ruined happiness and the loneliness ahead of her with rationality and

composure. Elizabeth Bennet also suffers from the intellectual

poverty of her surroundings. Her father's intelligence and wit

have shrivelled to ironic cynicism, and she has little in common

with her mother and younger sisters. But Elizabeth is not isolated

and alone at Longbourn; although Jane cannot equal her in quality of

mind, sparkling wit and vivacious spirits, Elizabeth has a companion

and confidante in her cheerful e lder sister. She also has a

congenial and sympathetic frie nd in her aunt Mrs Gardiner. J ane

Austen (whose brothers had thirty-two children in all) seems to

have been more than ordinarily conscious of the relationship between

 73

aunts and nephews and nieces~ The references to aunts in the letters

are lighthearted,l but in them the reader senses the unmarried

woman's delight in her connection with the children of her family.

The novels reflect this pleasure, and also that of having a ~ ~~~

brother or sister as companion. In addition to the instances in

Pride and Prejudice already given, there are the close relationships

between Henry and Eleanor Tilney, George and John Knightley, Fanny

and William Price . One is fortunate to have such a relative as a

friend; but Fanny seldom sees her sailor brother, the Knightleys lead

their own separate lives, and Henry Tilney's duties take him away from

Northanger. Jane Austen's idea of the best company goes beyond Mr

Elliot's conception of its being "the company of clever, wel l -informed

people, who have a great deal of conversation" (~, p.150); it is the

profitable, improving relationship which develops between hero and

heroine, who learn from each other. Only after her marriage does

the heroine live in an entirely congenial social setting. The word

"friends" occurs in the last paragraphs of Mansfield Park, Emma and

Persuasion, and the final chapters of all the novels suggest Jane

Austen's ideal community: the happy home of married lovers with

sympathetic relatives and friends accessible or living in the

neighbourhood.

This kind of society is the best. According to Jane Austen

it is not easily attained; it is the prize for moral integrity, and

is sometimes the virtuous character's reward only by a measure of

1
See Letters, p . 421, for example. Another remark, made to
her niece Caroline in 1815, is characteristic: "Now that you are
become an Aunt, you are a person of some consequence & must excite
great Interest whatever you do. I have always maintained the
importance of Aunts as much as possible, & I am sure of your doing
the same now" (!:' p. 428) .
 74

good luck. Another, though less important, condition of living

difficult for the Jane Austen heroine to achieve is privacy , and the

novels show the necessity and desirabili ty of being abl e sometimes to

be a l one . For the dependent woman of moderate means of this per i od,

physical privacy was not easily found. Jane Austen herself shared

a bedroom with her s i ster al l her life. In 1799 she attended the

christening of her brother James's son, and unexpectedly pro l onged

her visit ; she descr i bes her accommodation to Cassandra, but not, it

seems , on account of the novelty of the situation: " ... 1 did not

return home that night or the next , as Martha kind l y made room for

me in her bed, which was the shut- up one. in the new nursiry. Nurse

and the child slept upon the floor , and there we all were in some

confusion and great comfort " (.!!' p.50). Catherine Morland (at Bath

and Northanger Abbey), Elizabeth Bennet, Fanny Price and Emma Wood-

house are fortunate in having rooms of their own , and they seek the

privacy of these rooms at times of emotional stress. Catherine

after Henry Tilney's admoni shment runs off to her own room in tears

of shame; after Darcy's untimely proposal Elizabeth avoids Charlotte

and hurr i es to her room, and later, sick of her mother's folly on

hearing that Lydia is to be married , we are told that she "took

refuge in her own room , that she might think with freedom" (PP, p.307);

Fanny goes to her "nest of comfortsll in the east room lito try its

influence on an agitated , doubting spi:rit" (MP , p.152) when Tom

importunately demands that she take part in Lovers' Vows; and Erwna,

perturbed as never before by Mr Elton's proposal, has to make "a very

strong effort to appear attentive and cheerful till the usual hour

of separating allowed her the relief of quiet ref le ction" (~, p.133).

It is, of course, bad manners to lose control of one's feelings in

 75

public, and Marianne Dashwood' s emotional breakdown, which embarrasses,

enrages or distresses the company at Mrs John Dashwood's evening

party in Harley Street,is understandable but not justifiable.

Whereas Jane Austen also disapproves of Marianne's ultra-Romantic

seeking out of solitude to indulge her feelings after Willoughby's

sudden departure from Devonshire, the kind of solitude that Fanny

Price, for example, sometimes enjoys is desirable. Conscious of her

surroundings, interested in ideas, books, plants, Fanny is not always

distressed at being ignored by her cousins at Mansfield and family at

Portsmouth. She, like Anne Elliot, is able to survive the isolatiqn

that she suffers from having uncongenial company and from being alone.

When Edmund and William leave Mansfield after the ball, Fanny at

first feels lonely and depressed, but in explicit contrast to Mary

Crawford, she endures her loss, even finds Edmund's absence a relief,

and is consoled by the stillness of the house, for "what was tran-

quillity and comfort to Fanny was tediousness and vexation to Maryll

(MF, p.285). Although virtuous characters like Mr Knightley and

Captain wentworth are outgoing and active, Jane Austen sometimes

associates tranquillity and stillness with virtue, especially in her

heroines. Those who are strongest and most active morally throughout

the course of their stories are Fanny Price and Anne Elliot, both

quiet and reserved young women. It is a mark of some of the un-

pleasant characters that they cannot enjoy repose; the play Lovers'

Vows provides Mrs Norris with "the comforts of hurry, bustle and

importance" (MF, p.129) that delight her, and Mrs Elton, too, having

no resources, busies herself uselessly and is unfit for solitude.

An alternative to the privacy of one's own room is the out-

door walk. Marianne Dashwood escapes from small Barton Cottage to be

 76

alone, and Jane Fairfax, distressed almost beyond endurance by Frank

Churchill's delay in arriving at Donwell Abbey, and by Mrs Elton's

officious offers of the desirable situation, insists on walking

back to Highbury; Emma recognises that "her parting words, 'Oh! Miss

Woodhouse, the comfort of being sometimes alone! '--seemed to burst

from an overcharged heart" (~, p.363). Walks both in the country and

town are one of the few occasions when lovers can talk privately, and

at the end of all the novels except Sense and Sensibility the hero and

heroine walk together. In a comic scene Emma tries to give Mr Elton

and Harriet the opportunity of being together; she thinks that their

meeting on such an errand as a charitable scheme "will bring on a

great increase of love on each side" (~, p.87) --even the declaration

of it, and tries to separate herself from the couple by choosing

lIa narrow footpath, a little raised on one side of the lane, leaving

them together in the main road" (~, p. 88). Large country gardens

also provide privacy and solitude: Emma walks in the shrubbery at

Hartfield to refresh her spirits and relieve her thoughts, and Mr

Knightley proposes to her there; Edmund and Fanny wander about and

sit under trees on summer evenings in Mansfield park; and even Mr

Bennet, having read in his brother-in-law's letter of the financial

arrangements made for Lydia's marriage to Wickham, is moved to walk

towards a little copse where his elder daughters find him in an

uncharacteristic state of distraction.

As Devlin reminds us, we do not think of Jane Austen as a

symbolic writer,1 but, whereas she very seldom uses metaphor, she does

occasionally in the Chawton novels suggest that the importance of

lDevlin, Education, p.91.

 77

certain episodes and objects lies in their figurative rather than

literal significance. Her use of symbol is most evident in Mansfield

Park. Douglas Bush views Sir Thomas I s house and estate as "a symbol

of a traditional, desirable stabilityll, even though Jane Austen "lays

bare the excesses and defects of the persons who live there II • 1

Charles Murrah similarly sees Mansfield Park as "a symbol for all

the elegance, refinement, order, and decorum" which Fanny and Edmund
2
prize. There is obvious symbolic significance in Sotherton church's

being placed at a distance from the Great House, and in the unused

chapel: Sather ton Court is lifeless and dull because i t lacks the

religious belief that would give meaning to it and to the Rushworths'

existence. Objects in Mansfield Park with a symbolic function are

3
discussed later, but the explicitly symbolic setting of the grounds

of Sotherton is relevant here. Their earlier discussion of irnprove-

ments and of Mr Rushworth I s country house defines various characters I

attitudes towards the place, and prepares the reader for t he

emotional and moral significance of the events that occur there.

By the time the party arrives, we have learned t hat Mr Rushworth

thinks the house is "a dismal old prison" (MP, p.53), that he himself

is in need of improving as much as his estate, that Maria Bertram is

aware of his deficiencies and is attracted to Henry Crawford, and

that Henry Crawford fancies himself as an improver. It is clear at

the outset that for the Bertram sisters, the Crawfords and Mrs Norr is

1
Douglas Bush, Jane Austen (London: Macmillan Press, 1975),
p.110.

2Charles Murrah, "The Background of Mansfield Park", in

From Jane Austen to Joseph Conrad, p.25.
3
See pp.11 5-16 below .
 78

the purpose of the visit is not to assess the "capabilities" of the

grounds. After the guests have looked over the house, they drift

outside and divide into three groups. A brief description is given

of the lawn surrounded by a high wall, the bowling-green, the terrace

walk and iron palisades, and of the "wilderness" as a planted wood

"laid out with too much regularity" (MP, p.91). The idea of contrivance

and hidden meaning that the enclosed grounds and cultivated wildness

suggest prepares us for the importance of the setting in the symbolic

drama that follows. Fanny, Edmund and Mary Crawford walk in the

shade and coolness of the wood, and because Fanny is tired they sit

on a bench looking over a ha-ha into the park. But resting fatigues

Mary, and Edmund--yielding to temptation in this wilderness--walks

away with her, leaving Fanny alone. They do not return, but after

some time Maria Bertram, Mr Rushworth and Henry Crawford approach and

join her on the bench, Maria and Henry Crawford animatedly discussing

improvements. Then Maria sees the iron gate and wishes to enter the

park, Henry Crawford sees a knoll "which would give them exactly the

requisite command of the house", and Mr Rushworth is obliged to fetch

the key for the gate from the house. The other two rationalise their

going to the knoll, and Henry Crawford, skilfully manipulating Maria's

feelings, changes the tone of their talk:

"It is undoubtedly the best thing we can do now, as

we are so far from the house already," said Mr. Crawford,
when he was gone.
"Yes, there is nothing else to be done. But now,
sincerely, do not you find the place altogether worse than
you expected.?"
"No, indee:i, far otherwise. I find it better, grander,
more complete in its style, though that style may not be the
best. And to tell you the truth," speaking rather lower,
"I do not think that! shall ever see Sotherton again with
so much pleasure as I do now. Another summer will hardly
improve it to me. II
(MP, p.98)
 79

Further innuendos and double-entendres follow, and Maria expresses

her jealousy of Julia, whom Henry Crawford had seemed very happy to

have next to him on the barouche-box. Adept, he flatters her with

apparent frankness, and the flirtation continues. crawford remarks

on Maria's prospects and the "smiling scene" before her t and her

response makes explicit the method Jane Austen is using here: liDo

you mean literally or figuratively? Literally I conclude. Yes,

certainly, the sun shines and the park looks very cheerful. But

unluckily that iron gate, that ha-ha, give me a feeling of restraint

and hardship. I cannot get out, as the starling said" (MF, p.99).

In Henry Crawford's wily persuasion, in Maria's obstinacy and wilful

disregard of what is taboo, and in his assisting her to pass round

the edge of the gate without hurting herself against the spikes or

slipping into the ha-ha, dialogue and action are comple tely integrated

with the setting in order to r eveal character and foreshadow future

events. Jane Austen rarely relies on figurative meaning in this

su stained. way.

The subject of improving the grounds of country estates

according to principles governed by contemporary taste is an important

theme in Mansfield Park, and also occurs, but less obviously, in

1
some of the other novels. As has been shown, the appearance of

estates and the changes made reflect their owners' characters. The

kind of use that Jane Austen made of the topic suggests that she, like

Cowper, disapproved of such improvements. (In liThe Gardenll, Book 3

of The Task, the poet condemns this destructive and extravagant

1
See pp.54-60 above.
 80

fashion of his time. 1) In Mansfield Park Mr Rushworth, enthusiastic

about the fine new approach to a friend's house and prepared to

cut down old trees, reveals his concern with outward appearances

and his lack of responsibility as well as of judgement and taste.

The metaphorical undertones of his words suggest his inability to

understand what is wrong with his life and how it can be improved.

Mrs Grant, perhaps flattering Mrs Norris, predicts that Mr

Rushworth's marriage to Maria will bring "every improvement in time

which his heart can desire" (MP, p.53), and Mrs NorriS, expressing

her usual pleasure at the thought of someone else's spending money

and her own "prodigious delight in improving and planting" (MP, p.54),

shows a similar love of display. The most significant revel ations,

however, come from Fanny, Edmund and Henry Crawford. When she hears

that an avenue of oak trees is to be cut down, Fanny's mind turns at

once to Cowper, with whom she shares a love of the countryside and

sensitivity to the beauty of ordinary things, and she quotes his

. 2
lines, IIYe f allen avenues! Once more I mourn / Your fate unmer~ted •.. ".

She expresses a wish to see Sotherton before any changes are made,

but, unlike Mary Crawford, she also says that she would take pleasure

in seeing the progress of improvements as they are made. Edmund

states that, had he "a place to new fashion", he would not put him-

self into the hands of an improver 1 but "would rather have an inferior

degree of beauty, of [ his] own choice, and acquired progressively "

(MP, p.56). Henry Crawford admits to being excessively fond of

improving and says that he envies the happiness which Mr Rushworth

1
Cowper, The Task 3. 764-83.

2 Ibid ., 1. 338-39.
 81

has before him.. But, whereas his pleasure in "improving " other

people's situations to suit his desires is real enough, this professed

enjoyment in improving grounds is suspect: Everingham, before he

executed his plan, had seemed perfect to Mrs Grant, and in his brief

account of his alterations, although he does refer to "the natural

advantages of the ground ll (MP, p.61), he does not mention its beauty,

but only the insignif icance and inappreciable extent of his estate.

His suggestions for Thornton Lacey are grandiose and costly, aiming

at an ostentatious beauty which would give the house "such an air as

to make its owner be set down as the great landholder of the parish"

(MP, p.244). Duckworth notes that Crawford's proposals for Thornton

Lacey closely resemble Humphrey Repton's plans for Harlestone Hall in

1
Northamptonshire. Repton succeeded Capability Brown in his

reputation as a landscape gardner, and was a controversial figure of

his time. Jane Austen was familiar with his work: she mentions his

name and his fee in Mansfield Park, and Chapman conjectures that she
2
must have seen his Red Books.

Whereas Jane Austen uses improvements and Repton chiefly as

a satirical device for exposing character, the influence on her work of

William Gilpin, the exponent of the principles of the picturesque, was

profound. The picturesque was an aspect of thought and aesthetics

which interested. Jane Austen, and she introduced it into her novels

as a topic of conversation for intelligent and well-educated

characters; but more important than the various uses that she made of
ih..-t
Gilpin in the novels is the formative influence4his ideas had on her

1
Duckworth, Estate, p.51.

2Mansfield Park, p.558.

 82

art 0 f ""
nove 1 wrltlng. 1 Gilpin was first a critic of prints, and,

later in the 17 80s and 90s , published his many books, essays and

poems on the picturesque beauties of the New Forest, the Peak dis-
2
trict, Wales, the Lakes and the Scottish Highlands. He defined

the picturesque as "that kind of beauty which would look we ll in a

p i cture. Neither grounds laid out by art, nor improved by agri-

culture are of this kind".3 Henry Austen writes of his sister in

the II Biographical Notice": "At a very early age she was enamoured of

Gilpin on the Picturesque; and she seldom changed her opinions either

on books or men" (NA, p.7). Bradbrook d iscusses fully how Gilpin' s

wr itings "provided Jane Austen with ideas which were related to the

problems which she had to solve as a novelist", 4 and shows how Gilpin I s

comments on "the true philosophic stile ll partly determined Jane

5
Austen's plain , lucid expreSSion. There is evidence of her early

interest in Gilpin in "Love and Freindshipll (MW, p.l0S) and again in

the account of Henry VIII' s reign in "The History of England" (MW,

p.142) .

It was in Gilpin's guidebooks that J ane Austen found inform-

ation on parts of the country about which she wrot e , many of which she

herself did not know. He has descriptions of the country around

Matlock , of hedgerows in Northamptonshire, of the beauties of Surrey

1Gillie, Preface, p.85.

2 Iid.,p
b" .86.

3Quoted from Observations on the Western Parts of England,

relative chiefly to Picturesque Beauty by Bradbrook in Predecessors,
p.53.
4
Bradbrook, Predecessors, p. 52.

5 Ibid . , p.54.
 83

with the celebrated Box Hill, and of the view of Portsmouth and the

Isle of Wight from ~ortsdown Hill.l Jane Austen makes use of her

knowledge of Gilpin in all the novels, but there are direct referenc es

to the picturesque only in the three earlier works. It is one of

the subjects talked about by Eleanor and Henry Tilney on the walk with

Catherine up Beechen Cliff; when Catherine confesse s and laments to

Henry Tilney her want of knowledge, "a lecture on the picturesque

immediately followed, in which his instructions were so clear that

she soon began to see beauty in every thing admired by him, and her

attention was so earnest, that he became perfectly satisfied of her

having a great deal of natural taste. He talked of fore-grounds,

distances, and second distances--side-screens and perspectives--

lights and shades;--and Catherine was so hopeful a scholar, that when

they gained the top of Beechen Cliff, she voluntarily rejected the

whole city of Bath, as unworthy to make part of a landscape " (NA,

p.ll1). There may be an acknowledgement here, or a joke against

another writer on the picturesque: Duckworth gives the information

that in 1798 UVedale Price had first argued that Bath was not
2
picturesque. If there is any criticism of the picturesque implied

in Northanger Abbey, it is obscure to modern readers; in Sense and

Sensibility, however, the satire, though more complex, is clear.

Marianne's emotional response to the beauties of nature is, as has

3
been shown, exaggerated, but her farewell to the trees at Norland,

for example, indicates a fundamentally sound sense of values, lacking

1 Ibid ., pp. 59 - 66 .
2
Duckworth, Estate, p.98.
3
See pp.50- 51 above.
 84

in the John Dashwoods, who cut down' old walnut and thorn trees to

make room for a greenhouse. Duckworth points out "how often the

presence of trees betokens value"! in Jane Austen's novels; the trees

that Mar ianne sentimentally addresses are not going to "continue the

same" (88 , p. 27) , are not going to be enjoyed by the new owners of

Norland. Similarly, although Jane Austen criticises Marianne's over -

enthusiasm for the picturesque , she at the same time shows Marianne's

underlying sense i n realizing "that admiration of landscape scenery

is become a mere jargon. Every body pretends to feel and tries to

descr ibe with the taste and elegance of him who first defined what

picturesque beauty was". Edward, when Marianne is about to question

him closely on the scenes of Barton that had particular l y struck him,

disclaims any knowledge of the picturesque, but in doing so exhibits

an understanding of the prinCiples which he cannot accept as criteria

for a fine prospect . Edward does not affect "greater indifference

and less discrimination" (88, p. 97) than he possesses, as Elinor tells

Marianne he does--in saying this she is only trying to conciliate her

vulnerable sister. His attitude coincides with Jane Austen ' s; we

can imagine the creator of Pember ley and Donwell Abbey also saying :

"I do not like crooked, twisted, blas t ed trees. I admire them much

more i f they are tall, straight and flour ishing. I do not like ruined,

tattered cottages. I am not fond of nettles, or thistles, or heath

blossoms. I have more pleasure in a snug farm-house than a watch-tower

--and a troop of tidy, happy villagers please me better than the

finest banditti in the world " (~, p.98). Intelligent Elizabeth Bennet

also shows that she is familiar with the subject, when she gaily uses

1
Duckworth, Estate , p.54.
 85

the word "groupll in its technical sense. Jane Austen employs the

setting of the shrubbery at Netherfield to point to the rudeness of

Miss Bingley and Mrs Hurst towards Elizabeth, and to introduce in

passing a reference to the picturesque. A narrow path allows only

three people to walk together, and when Darcy, aware of their rudeness,

suggests that they go into the avenue so that they may include

Elizabeth, she, glad to escape, responds: "No, no; stay where you

are.--You are charmingly group'd, and appear to uncommon advantage.

The picturesque would be spoilt by admitting a fourth. Good bye"

(PP, p.53). Jane Austen seems to have thought--at least when she

wrote and revised her first three novels--that a knowledge of the

principles of the picturesque, a subject of interest and importance

to her, would be part of an intelligent woman's education.

There are, of course, many outdoor scenes that have nothing to

do with the picturesque. In all the novels major episodes are set

out of doors, and in Emma there seems to be an especial use of such

a setting. In the first two volumes most of the events take place

indoors: the conversations at Hartfield, the dinner-parties, Emma's

painting Harriet's portrait, the charades, visits to Miss Bates; and

for most of these incidents the setting has no or little significance

and is not specified. In Volume III, however, Emma's world starts to

extend beyond Hartfield and Highbury, an expansion that seems to

correspond to her increasing understanding of herself, and two

extremely important scenes are set out of doors: the visit to Donwell

Abbey, and the expedition to Box Hill. The idea that the enlargement

of Emma's physical world mirrors her greater self-knowledge culminates

in the otherwise uncharacteristically gratuitous piece of information

that their wedding journey takes Emma and Mr Knightley to the sea,
 86

which she had never seen before. This half-figurative use of outdoor

scenes occurs only in the three later novels , but that Mr Knightley

proposes to and is accepted by Emma in the garden at Hartfield is

typical of most of them. Possibly because it was difficult to find

the necessary privacy inside, all the heroines except Elinor

Dashwood accept their husbands while walking out of doors. Edward

Ferrar's proposal to Elinor is reported and we do not hear where it

takes place. In Persuasion Captain Wentworth writes a letter to Anne

indoors, but she gives him her answer whil e they walk slowly up Union

Street in Bath.

The Jane Austen heroine does more than marry the right man--

her marriage takes her into the right world, and each novel clearly

establishes what the setting for the heroine's married life will be.

Catherine Morland visits Woodston only when all illusions about

Northanger Abbey have quite gone, when the Abbey is "no more to her

now than any other house" (NA, p.212). Although her excited expect-

ations and reaction to the Parsonage are coloured by her emotions,

she does see it as it is; her response to the house that will be hers

exhibits an honest simplicity and pleasure that promise well for her

happiness there. About Delaford Parsonage, Elinor's home at the end

of Sense and Sensibility, we are told little; the brief and general

references to it must suffice to suggest that it will in time under

Edward's stewardship come to reflect his "good principles and good

sense" (SS, p.370), as Delaford House does Colonel Brandon's. As

well as Mrs Jennings's description of Delaford (SS, p.196), there is

Mr John Dashwood's account of it (SS, p.375) which, even though it

comes from him, reminds us that the owner has values which Marianne

eventually finds herself able to appreciate. The fullest descriptions

 87

of the heroine's home after she is married are those of Pemberley

and Donwell Abbey--the estates where Darcy and Mr Knightley have

always lived. In Mansfield Park one of the functions of Henry

Crawford's long account of Thornton Lacey and Edmund's rejection of

his elaborate improvements is to convey to the reader something about

the place where Fanny and Edmund will live after their marriage.

In addition to this description of the house and its surroundings we

are told that Fanny and Edmund are "equally formed for domestic life,

and attached to country pleasures II I and that "their home was the home

of affection and. comfort". When they move to Mansfield, we suppose

that the Parsonage l which "under each of its two former owners,

Fanny had never been able to approach but with some painful sensation

of restraint or alarm" (MP, p . 473), becomes, like the Park, a place of

excellence reflecting lithe sterling gocxi of principle and temper"

(MP, p.471) of its owners. The kind of world in which Anne Elliot

will live is also fully described. The moral atmosphere of most of

these settings contrasts with that of another home in each novel: the

naval world of Captain Wentworth with Kellynch Hall, Mansfield

Parsonage with the Park as it was, Pember ley with Rosings and Long-

bourn, woodston with Northanger Abbey.

In these domestic novels, houses, of course, form the most

usual interior setting for the action. Jane Austen's method of con-

veying a sense of place through her characters has already been

discussed and illustrated,l but the particular uses that she makes of

interiors of houses and of positioning people in rooms has not yet

been emphasised. Generally speaking, there is very little description

1
See pp.7-8, 54-60 above.
 88

of the insides of houses, but where such details are given they

serve to reveal character, as well as to create a background for the

action. In Sense and Sensibility, for example, Jane Austen describes

the exact arrangement of the rooms in Barton Cottage so that the

reader may assess the characters' various attitudes towards the

small but "comfortable and compact" house (55, p. 28). Mrs Dashwood' s

ideas for enlarging it (55, p.29) remind us of her optimistic but

unrealistic outlook and her l ack of sense--qualities which prepare us

for her attitude towards Marianne ' s relationship with Willoughby.

5he and Marianne are gratified by Willoughby's effusive praise for

the cottage , but Elinor's ir onic remarks to him show that she feels

his insincerity and affected sensibili ty (55, p.72). 5illy Mrs

Palmer's comments on the sweet place made so charming and her wish to

have such a house for herself ring hollow, coming from the mistress

of Cleve l and and a house in Hanover 5quare . Characteristical ly ,

Lady Middleton has nothing to say about the little house. Many of

the remarks made about rooms and furnishings in the novels come from

the ill-bred or naive characters . One of the few comments on the

interior of Netherfield Park i s made by Mrs Bennet whose obvi ous

comp liments (PP, p.42) are i ntended to l ead to questions about Mr

Bingley's plans. Mr Collins and Mrs Elton both make vulgar and

revealing remarks about the size of rooms in houses they vis i t ,

condescendingly comparing them to other- - and in their eyes superior

--establishments. Elizabeth Bennet is at first silently surprised that

Charlotte Collins should be content to have her drawing-room at the

back of the house, but when she realizes that, had Charlotte chosen

the better-sized room and pleasanter aspect for herself, "Mr Collins

woul d undoubted ly have been much less in his own apartment" (pp, p. 168) ,
 89

she gives her friend credit for making the best of her situation.

Many of the short descr i ptions of or references to interiors

of houses are made by the narrator in order to convey characters'

emotions. When Jane and Elizabeth Bennet hear that their father has

received a letter from Mr Gardiner, their anxiety is expressed by

authorial references to various rooms: "Away ran the girls , too

eager to get in to have time for speech. They ran through the

vestibule into the breakfast-room; from thence to the library;--their

father was in neither; and they were on the point of seeking him up-

stairs with their mother .•. " (PP, p.301). A similar exampl e in

Mansfield Park suggests Fanny ' s agitated antiCipation of her dear

Wi lliam ' s arrival: when his carriage is expected, she is "watching

in the hall, in the lobby, on the stairs" (MP, p.233) for the sound

of it. Every item of the description of the house in Portsmouth makes

us understand the change in Fanny's feelings for her parents' home

and Mansfield Park. While she sits in the small hot par lour, Fanny's

melancholy makes her more than usuall y sensitive to her surr oundings,
1
and we have the detai led account of the squalid room. There is

another more compl ex use of an interior in Mansfield Park. When the

idea of acting first comes to Tom Bertram and Mr Yates, Tom sees the

potential of the billiard room: "It is the very room for a theatre,

precisely the shape and length for it, and the doors at the farther

end, communicating with each other as they may be made to do in five

minutes, by merely moving the book-case in my father's room, is the very

thing we could have desired, if we had set down to wish for it. And

my father's room will be an excel l ent green- room. It seems to join

1
See p.70 above.
 90

the billiard-room on purpose " (MP, p.125). Having this information,

the reader fully appreciates Sir Thomas's astonishment when he looks

into !lhis own dear room ll (MP, p.18l); he finds candles burning,

"other symptoms of recent habitation", and "a general air of confusion

in the furniture", the most striking being "the removal of the book-

case from before the billiard [-J room door" (MP, p.182). Because we

have ear lier learned of the connecting doors, we share the suspense

of his family and anticipate Sir Thomas's walking through onto the

stage. His embarrassment, bewilderment and anger arise from his

sensing that changes more serious than rearrangements of furniture and

the misappropriation of his room have occurred. The confusion that

confronts him represent s the changed values that have directed his

children's lives i n his absence; their choosing Lovers' Vows, the

influence of the Crawfords, the behaviour of all the Bertrams, even

Edmund, strike at the heart of the morality which Sir Thomas thought
~
he was inculcating;~their using his special room as a green-room,

making the billiard room into a theatre, and removing the billiard

table signi fy their turning away from what he stands for in their

lives. The use of symbol in Mansfield Park has already been mentioned,l

and this instance of changes made i nside Mansfield Park is part of the

general figurative significance of the house . (Duckworth is surely

mistaken in thinking that the room next to the billiard room is Sir
2
Thomas's bedroom. When Sir Thomas tells Fanny that Mr Crawford

"is in my room, and hoping to see you there ll (MP, p.314), and Fanny

says that she cannot go down to him , they must be referring to this

1
See pp.76-79 above.
2
Duckworth, Estate, p.55.
 91

room. Although neither word is used in Mansfield Park, it must be

a book-room or study.)

Jane Austen does not often need to describe the interior of

a room, but she frequently states exactly where people are placed in

relation..., to each other or to furnishings in order to convey the

emotions and attitudes of groups or individuals, to clarify a

situation, or to make an event probable. A small incident in Pride

and Prejudice illustrates how the positioning of people indicates

their feelings. When Elizabeth arrives at the Gardiners' house in

Gracechurch Street, Jane is at the drawing-room window, and then in

the passage to welcome Lizzie; a troop of little boys and girls is

half-way down the stairs--too eager to wait above, too shy to advance

lower. Jane Austen's dwelling for a moment on these groupings and

movements highlights Jane's eagerness to see her sister, and

Elizabeth's popularity with her young cousins; it shows that, in

truth, "all was joy and kindness" (PP, p.152). A more significant

disposition of groups occurs in Mansfield Park. After dinner on the

day on which Lovers' Vows is decided upon/ two groups form in the

drawing-room: Lady Bertram, Fanny, Edmund and the silent Julia round

the fire, near which, too, sits Mrs Norris at the tea-table, and Tom,

Mr Yates, Maria and Mr Rushworth at a separate table. When the

Crawfords arrive, Henry joins the latter party, but Mary is unsettled,

and, crossing the room three times in all, she reveals both her

willingness to play the part of Amelia and her desire that disapproving

Edmund should be her Anhalt. Tension arises between Tom and his

brother, between the actors and Fanny, between Aunt Norris and Fanny,

and "everybody is cross and teasing". The significant placing of

people emphasises the principle of separation and the discord that

 92

GW..
. . going to increase as the scheme progresses . When Mary Crawford

moves her chair away from the scolding Mrs Norris, saying pointedly,

" ... this place is too hot for me" (MP, p.147), and kindly tries to

comfort Fanny, Jane Austen has got her into a position where her

considered aside to Fanny (about her distress following Torn's

suggestion that a stranger will have to take the part of Anhalt)

can be heard by Edmund. The following day he admits to Fanny that

he had heard what she said, and Mary's manoeuvres to bring Edmund

into the play are thus successfully concluded. In Emma a brief des-

cription tells us exactly where three people are placed, and in

doing so, points to the truth of the situation: liThe appearance of

the little sitting-room as they entered, was tranquillity itself;

Mrs. Bates, deprived of her usual employment, slumbering on one

side of the fire, Frank Churchill, at a table near her, most deedily

occupied about her spectacles, and Jane Fairfax, standing with her

back to them, intent on her pianoforte" (§.' p.240). The carefully

chosen words-- lI appearance ll , "slumberingll, IIdeedilY",l "intent"--

create a scene. that is dramatically ironic, and we realize that the

seemingly tranquil tableau had arranged itself only ..as Miss Bates' s

voice was heard on the stairs.

Jane Austen makes overheard conversations and private con-

versations between two people in a crowded room convincing by placing

groups of people strategically. One evening after dinner at Barton

1James Kinsley in Emma, ed. David Lodge (London: Oxford

University Press, 1971; Oxford Paperbacks, 1975), p.444, quotes an
explanation of this Hampshire word given by Mary Russell Mitford in
OUr Village: Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery, 1 (1824),
p.244. "It means (and it is no small merit that it has no exact
synonym) any thing done with a profound and plodding attention, an
action which engrosses all the powers of mind and body . "
 93

Park, circumstances, the employments of the company, and the seating

arrangements enable Elinor at last to talk privately to Lucy Steele

about Lucy's engagement to Edward Ferrars. Sir J ohn Middleton, who

on such occasions generally unites his guests Ifin one noisy purpose"

(SS, p.143), is away; Lucy has to finish a filigree basket for a

Middleton child; Marianne, who detests cards, is at the piano; and

Elinor, instead of playing casino with Lady Middleton, Mrs Jennings,

Miss Steele and Margaret , offers to help Lucy with her work. "Lucy

made room for her with ready attention, and the two fair rivals were

thus seated side by side at the same table, and with the u tmost

harmony engaged in forwarding the same work. The piano-forte, at

which Marianne, wrapt up in her own music and her own thoughts, had by

this time forgotten that any body was in the room besides herself, was

luckily so near them that Miss Dashwood now judged, she might safely,

under the shelter of its noise, introduce the interesting subject,

without any risk of being heard at the card-table" (SS, p.145). Later

in Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen again, but in humorous vein,

makes use of the protection of the piano to allow Colonel Brandon to

talk privately to Elinor about the Delaford living for Edward. Mrs

Jennings, thinking that the Colonel i s proposing marriage to Elinor,

honourably moves her seat to one nearer the piano so that she may not

overhear them, but in the opportune pauses in Marianne's performance

she catches at sentences which confirm her suspicions.

The purpose of most of the description of the interior of

Northanger Abbey is to contrast the bright modernity of the house

wi th Catherine' s expectations, and to characterize General Tilney by

emphasising the grandeur and costliness. One room mentioned, how-

ever, is important for neither of these reasons , but because of its

 94

position. On her tour of the magnificent house Catherine passes

through "a dark little room, owning Henry's authority, and strewed

with his litter of books, guns, and great coats" (NA, p.183). It is

through this room, near the stable-yard, that Henry enters when

Catherine, alone and terror-struck in Mrs Tilneyts bedroom, hears

someone ascending the stairs. In this way the setting makes Henry's

chance meeting with Catherine probable. There is in Mansfield Park

another instance when a clear reference to characters' positions in a

house determines important action. Fanny has been visiting Mary Craw-

ford at the Parsonage, and on Edmund's joining them, they talk with

Mrs Grant in the garden. Fanny, distressed by the conversation bet-

ween Edmund and Mary Crawford, wishes to leave but is too embarrassed

to speak out. The striking of a clock strengthens her resolution, and

Edmund recollects that he had come to fetch her. Fanny, thinking that

Edmund is staying behind, hurries on, but the others follow. We

learn that "they all accompanied her into the house, through which it

was necessary to pass ll I and that "Dr Grant was in the vestibule"

(MP, p.2l5). Dr Grant greets Edmund and asks him to dine there the

following day, and Mrs Grant immediately invites Fanny too. Again, it

is by means of the setting of the little episode that Jane Austen

brings about the novel event of dining out for Fanny, and initiates

the span of action that ends only with Maria Rushworth's elopement

with Henry Crawford.

Barbara Hardy writes that it is not surprising that Jane Austen,

having developed the sympathetic habitat most fully in Mansfield Park ,

should in her next novel turn away from houses to the "significance of
2
smaller and more shifting things".l As has been shown, the short

1
Barbara Hardy, A Reading, p.159.
2
See pp . 58- 59 above.
 95

but relatively full description of Mr Knightley's house and grounds

serves a particular purpose, but there is very little description of

the Woodhouses' home, Hartfie l d , which is a suitable rather than a

sympathetic dwelling for Emma. A few references give an impression

of the house: the narrator mentions the separate l awn and shrubberies

in the opening chapter , Mr woodhouse remarks that the house i s three

times as large as Randalls, and Mrs Elton compares features of the

property to Maple Grove. This i nformation , together with the reader~s

knowledge of the sort of house in which people like the Woodhouses

would live, is sufficient for J ane Austen's purpose. The sense of

place in Emma is so strong , however, that loan Williams, in a study of

the development of realistic f iction, cons iders that the book has "the

authority of natural history"; it was the first time that individual

and social experience had been presented "within a sharply r ealized

social and geographical context". i Many readers have noted this

quality of realism in Emma . Chapman comments that the topography of

Highbury is so detailed that it is almost possible to construct a

map of it, and so realistic that it has been identified with various

villages in Surrey. He suggests that Jane Austen precludes the possi-

bility of false identification by stating exact distances from High-

bury; no actual place could possibly be sixteen miles from London,

nine from Richmond, and seven from Box Hill.2 The powerful sense of

milieu in the novel derives partly from the concentration of the

action in ODe place, and the consequent cumulative effect. Unlike

the other heroines, who move away from their homes , Emma does not

i roan Willi ams, The Realist Novel in England: A Study in

Development (London: Macmillan Press, 1974), p .l 0.
2
Emma, p.521.
 96

leave Highbury; there is no visit to another setting with a different

set of people which would provide "a total change of conversation,

opinion, and idea" <.~-' p.42). It is necessary for theme and plot

that Emma should not leave her surroundings, and to compensate for the

lack of variety and contrast, Jane Austen creates a little world

crowded with people, their activities and the objects that come into

their daily lives. The society of "the large and populous village

almost amounting to a town" (.~-' p.7) is not confined to the three or

four families of Emma's immediate acquaintance; in addition to the

fourteen or sixteen characters who play a part in the action of the

novel, Chapman lists about seventy others who are mentioned. The main

characters meet at various social gatherings, and their talk casually

suggests a busy background of magistrates' decisions, parish business,

doctors' advice; of farming matters such as drains, fences, crops; of

errands to Ford's and to the post office, journeys to London, and

purchases made there. One of the loquacious Miss Bates's functions

is that she peoples Highbury. Mrs Stoke's room at the Crown Inn

becomes a rich scene of brilliant lights, elegant people, and good

food in profusion as Miss Bates's words flow. As well as by means of

the many people and their day-to-day activities, Jane Austen creates

what Ioan Williams calls the "concrete social environment" of Emma!

by including, naturally and seemingly casually, an abundance of

objects--the "smaller and more shifting thingsll referred to by

2
Barbara Hardy.

1 Ioan Wl, II'lams, Rea I'lS t Nove,

1 p. 13 .
2
See p.94 above.
 97

CHAPTER III

SPATIAL DETAIL AND TIME

1. Spatial Detail

So far in this study only the larger and fixed features of

the physical environment surrounding the heroines have been discussed

--the gardens, parks, streets, buildings and rooms. Like real life,

Jane Austen's fictional worlds contain numerous small, movable

objects, both man-made and natural, that impinge to a lesser or

greater extent on her characters' daily activities. These objects

are quietly and unobtrusively introduced, and seldom described, and

their chief function, like that of other aspects of setting, is to

define character. After the reader has become acquainted with a

character's disposition by means of authorial comment and his own

words and actions, Jane Austen sometimes reminds us of that character's

qualities by showing his response to the things around him. The

spatial material ' in the novels is, of course, chiefly of a domestic

nature, and at the same time as Jane Austen reveals a character's

quality of mind or emotional attitudes by means of references to

pot-plants, food, furnishings, musical instruments, books, games,

letters, clothes, ornaments and possessions of various kinds, she

economically and skilfully uses these objects to advance the plot,

animate the action, and give a solid sense of her fictional world.

Whatever the functions of such objects, Jane Austen, as

Mary Lascelles observes, uses them sparingly and significantl y . l

1
Mary Lascelles, Art, p . 136 .
 99

in action, in a world naturally filled with things. ,,1 Such spa tial

detail sometimes serves a special purpose and requires description,

but generally objects are only named . Fanny Price has books, work-

boxes, geraniums in the east room, and any particulars of these would

not add to what Jane Austen wants to convey through them; only when

the fact tells us something about a character or situation are we

told that a footstool is faded or a sofa shabby. It is partly the

lack of qualifying description that, while helping to keep them

subdued and subordinate to character, at the same time endows Jane

Austen's objects with their power . Their conrete quality, clear out-

lines and personal associations give them a precision and clarity

which contribute to an important general effect, well accounted for

by Virginia Woolf in a comment on the evening scene at Netherfield

Park when Darcy writes a letter to his sister and the characters

pre sent join in the conversation which Miss Bingley tries to initiate

with him.

The talk is not mere talk; it has an emo t ional intensity

which gives it more than brilliance . Light, landscape--
everything that lies outside the drawing-room is arranged
to illumine it. Distances are made exact; arrangements
accurate. It is one mile from Meryton; it is Sunday and
not Monday_ We want all suspicions and questions laid at
rest . It is necessary that the characters should lie
before us in as clear and quiet a light as possible since
every flicker and tremor is to be observed . .. . For, in
order to develop personal relations to the utmost, it is
important to keep out of the range of the abstract, the
impersonal; and to suggest that there is anything that
lies outside men and women would be to cast the shadow of
doubt upon the comedy of their relationships and its
sufficiency. 2

1
Barbara Hardy, Bicentenary Essays, p . 195 .

2virginia Woolf, Granite and Rainbow : Essays (London :

Hogarth Press, 1958), p.115.
 98

The assumption that things surround the characters is so much taken

for granted that on occasion--for example, in the first two chapters

of Pride and Prejudice--there is very little indication given by

narrator or characters of the physical setting. As with other

aspects of the ex t ernal world in the nove ls, spatial detail is

presented both by the narrator and the characters, and references

and description are g i ven in narrative comment, free indirect style

or direct speech. Generally speaking, only when a character registers

an object i s it significant, and only when it i s signif i cant is it

introduced. Jane Austen's objects have little life of their own;

their presence is subdued ; t hey have virtually none of the sensuous

appeal that things i n Henry James's novels have; and man-made

artefacts are never valued purel y for their i ntrinsic or aesthetic

qualities. There is little in the novels of what Barbara Hardy calls

ll1
the "mild com i c animism which characterizes Jane Austen's attitude

towards objects in her l etters , such as the two tables which , covered
2
with green baize, "send their best Lovell to Cassandra (.!:, p . 82) ..

Barbara Hardy sums up her findings on the presentation of objects in

Jane Austen ' s novels thus: "[Her] method is not to set objects in a

carefully prepared social scene, like many of Thackeray's, in which

the details of pictures, ornaments , carpet, furniture and food are

sociologically exact. Nor is it to make the objects total l y

resonant, like the cruel, small, jealous windows of Osmond's house

in The Portrait of a Lady .... Nor does she combine the two methods ,

as George Eliot does in Middlemarch. Jane Austen sets her characters

lBarbara Hardy , A Reading , p.140.

2
For other exampl es see Letters, pp.256, 297 , 473.
 100

Objects in the novels, in keeping with the scale of the fictional

worlds, are usually small and seemingly trivial, but Jane Austen,

like Wordsworth, builds up "greatest things / From least suggestions,,;l

these domestic articles and personal possessions can carry weighty

import: a single gold chain rouses a strong and true emotional res-

ponse, and the dropping of a pen has momentous significance. But

they do not do this in isolation; their connotative power derives

from the immediate context and from the accumulative effect of the

way objects have been used throughout the novel.

Some of the uses of spatial detail mentioned above predominate

in certain of the novels. In the Northanger chapters of Northanger

Abbey Jane Austen describes household furnishings and objects in

order to suggest the mock Gothic world of Catherine's imagination,

and to indicate the modern stylishness of the house, to the

significance of which Catherine is at first blind. In Sense and

Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice there is relatively little spatial

detail, and its chief use is to develop character. Just as there

2
is a stronger sense of place in the three later novels, so objects

in Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion are more numerous and more
3
assertive. Acquisitiveness and a certain kind of liking for

material things are generally the mark of an inferior mind, but in

Mansfield Park Fanny's possessions have a special significance, and

a few Objects like the cross and gold chain take on an almost symbolic

meaning. Emma is crowded with objects, though Emma herself is not

1
The Prelude 14. 101-2.
2
See p.46 above.
3
Barbara Hardy makes this point in Bicentenary Essays, p.181.
 101

often associated with them. One result of this abundance of domestic

detail is that, combining with the references to everyday activities

and the many names of characters, it makes Highbury the most realistic

and substantial community of all places in the novels.

One of the aims of this dissertation is to show how Jane Austen

uses the setting of her novels to create an impression of actuality--

to suggest a likeness to the material world, in order to intensify

the realism and credibility of her characters and their actions.

The sense of verisimilitude, of a solid background to the action, is

most pronounced, as has been said already, in Emma, and it is partly

because of the number and range of objects, some described briefly

and others merely named by a character or the narrator, that the

world of Highbury becomes real in our imagination. Ford's shop, a

suitable place for chance meetings, assumes a third dimension when we

read of lithe sleek, well-tied parcels of 'Men's Beavers' and 'York

Tan'" (!, p.200), which are displayed when Frank Churchill patriot-

ically buys gloves there. Miss Bates's breathless references to

garters, caps, workbags, bread and butter, slices of mutton, baked

apples, thick shoes and spectacles suggest much busy-ness behind

the scenes. The minutiae of their daily lives conf~rm what we learn

of characters through their speech and actions: Mr Knightley's

apples and family collections of engravings, medals, cameos, corals

and shells express his kind consideration for people very different

from himself; Mr woodhouse's concern with gruel and a boiled egg or

leg of pork is indicative of his limited imagination and his

valetudinarian habits; Mrs Elton's preference for trimmings, wax-

candles, routcakes and . ice signifies her vulgarity and shallowness.

Food, frequently mentioned, is not always something banal.

 102

Commonplace gastronomic detail shows the reader clearly the nature of

the relationship between Mr Elton and Harriet Smith: his account of

the "Stilton cheese, the north Wiltshire, the butter, the cellery,

the beet-root and all the dessert" (~, p.89) makes a humorous

contrast to the romantic exchange which Emma imagines is taking place.

But when Emma liberally helps her father's guests to minced chicken

and scalloped oysters, to large slices of cake and full glasses of

wine, we sense the potential of the warm heart and vital, generous

spirit that will flourish when she loves and gives herself to Mr

Knightley. Many gifts, mostly food, pass between people--walnuts, a

goose, apples, pork, a dish of arrowroot, a shawl, a piano; and

Barbara Hardy sees hospitality and donation as one of the prominent

1
themes in Emma. The novel leaves us with the impression of an

abundance of good things, not hoarded or begrudged, that is in

harmony with the rich and pleasant amplitude of such a place as

Donwell Abbey .

Some of the objects in Emma have a more particular function

than those already mentioned . Emma's portfolio of drawings is an

economical means of exposition as well as of characterization.

Through it we hear more of Emma's lack of perseverance, and some

details about Isabella, her husband and four children. Emma's

portrait of Harriet is the perfect vehicle for the confusion and

misunderstanding involving Mr Elton's admiration for the painter, not

the painted. The letters of the alphabet game by which Frank

Churchill communicates his apclogy to Jane Fairfax are part of the

larger double game that, always "manoeuvring and finessing" (.!' p.146),

1Barbara Hardy, A Reading, p.159.

 103

he plays with the people of Highbury, especially Emma; and, like the

piano, broken spectacles and borrowed scissors, they serve as a clue

to the truth about his relationship with Jane. Jane Austen's corres-

pondence shows that she herself enjoyed games of all sorts--

"bilbocatch, .. . spillikins, paper ships, riddles, conundrums, and

cards" (.!:, p .. 225)--as a form of recreation and means of entertaining

nephews and nieces, but in the novels a liking for such games almost

always indicates irresponsibility or a moral or social deficiency.

Like the things connected with Frank Churchill's intrigue,

objects in the other novels occasionally determine the action. In

the parody of the Gothic novel, spatial material is important to the

plot. We need to know how the large, heavy chest and old cabinet in

Catherine's room at Northanger look: "[The chest] was of cedar,

curiously inlaid with some darker wood, and raised, about a foot f rom

the ground, on a carved stand of the same. The lock was silver,

though tarnished from age; at each end were the imperfect remains

of handles also of silver, broken perhaps prematurely by some strange

violence; and, on the centre of the lid, was a mysterious cypher, in

the same metal" (MA, pp.163-64). The black cabinet "was not

absolutely ebony and gold; but it was Japan, black and yellow Japan

of the handsomest kind" (NA, p.168). The point of view shows us how

Catherine's mind partially creates what she sees, and we understand

with amusement how the descriptive detail gives these Objects a

presence and mystery that combine dramatically with the storm and

darkness to rouse Catherine's fearful curiosity, and lead to her

confusing literature with life. Despite signs that clearly indicate

otherwise, the atmosphere created and her experiences with the lock

of the cabinet and her candle make Catherine imagine past scenes of
 104

horror and entertain suspicions of a dreadful nature. The bright

and opulent modernity of Northanger is suggested by references to many

objects: the eighteenth-century furniture, the ornaments of the

"prettiest English china" (NA, p.162), the general's Staffordshire

breakfast set. But these things, like the magnificent, lofty rooms

and Rumford fireplace, instead of proclaiming to Catherine the true

nature of the house and its owner, only distress her by their being

less than her imagination hoped for, and she consequently discounts

them. In Sense and Sensibility the pair of screens painted by Elinor

have a thematic use in that the conversation about them reveals the

cold, mercenary Ilsense" of John DashwQod, Mrs Ferrars and Fanny

Dashwood, and, in contrast, Marianne's II s trong impulse of affectionate

sensibility" (55, p.236) . Some objects in this novel also further

the plot: Lucy Steele's filig ree basket makes it possible, as we

1
have s een, for Elinor to hear more about Lucy's engagement to

Edward , and her mother 's old-fashioned jewellery which Elinor takes

to the jeweller's determines that she see Robert Ferrars and without

prejudice recognise his IIstrong, natural, sterling insignificance"

(55, pp. 220.- 21) and self-centred dandyism before she knows who he is.

Towards the end of Pride and Prejudice, when Elizabeth, sure of her

feeli ngs for Darcy but uncertain about his for her, is puzzled by

his silence, gravity and apparent indifference towards her, an empty

coffee-cup serves to bring them together for a brief and constrained

conversation, and to convey to the reader more than it does to

Elizabeth.

1
See p. 93 above.
 105

The coffee-cup used in this way has a function similar to

that of properties on the stage. Jane Austen's experience in family

1
theatricals, her youthful efforts at writing plays, and her life-

long interest in stage productions,2 are evident in the way she frames

her scenes and in the use she occasionally makes of objects. There

are several instances in the novels, like that of Darcy and the

coffee-cup, when a character conveys a response, not through words,

but by means of an action involving an object . For example, in

Mansfield Park there is a scene in which characters talk about acting,

Shakespeare and reading aloud. Fanny has been reading to her aunt

and stops as soon as she hears Edmund and Mr Crawford enter. When

Henry Crawford continues reading from the volume which she has put

down, she takes up her needlework and is determined not to be interested.

But she is greatly moved by his dramatic reading from the scene of

Henry VIII, and Edmund, eager that Fanny should accept Henry Crawford's

offer of marriage, is gratified to see her gradua lly stop s ewing and

become totally absorbed in listening to the words and watching the

reader. Fanny's responding in this way allows Edmund to misinterpret

her feelings and see in her actions encouragement for his friend

that Fanny does not intend. Another exampl e of this stage device

1
See Minor Works, pp.49 - 57. The recently discovered Sir
Charles Grandison, or The Happy Man, a Comedy was probably written
between 1796 and 1800; see Times (London), 1 December 1977. According
to the information given in this review, it is a very free adaptation
of Richardson's novel--the only known adaptation by Jane Austen of
another work--in manuscript form and possibly written for the family
theatricals. The review is by Philip Howard.

2Whenever she was in London, Jane Austen visited the theatre.

In 1811 she wrote to Cassandra: "Our first object to day was
Henrietta St. to consult with Henry, in consequence of a very unlucky
change of The play for this very night--Hamlet instead of King John--
& we are to go on Monday to Macbeth, instead, but it is a disappoint-
ment to us both" (~, p.271). See also Letters, pp.275, 321, 386.
 106

occurs later in Mansfield Park when Edmund, sitting in a corner,

takes up a newspaper that it may indicate to Fanny and Henry Crawford

that he is occupied and not taking part in their conversation.

Again, Fanny is rescued from this tete-a-tete with Henry Crawford by

the entrance of the tea-tray and urn behind which she is busy and

protected. There are instances in the other novels of characters

using objects in a similar way--Emma, for example, leans down to her

workbasket to conceal her exquisite feelings of delight when

Mr Knightley tells her that Harriet has accepted Robert Martin--but

this dramatic technique is particularly suited to the novel in which

theatricals and acting are dominant ideas.

There are two main groups of characters which Jane Austen

creates largely through their attention to things: the greedy,

selfish, mercenary people who in varying degrees are harmful and

unpleasant, and the silly, harmless ones who have more heart than

head. Mrs Allen is one of the latter; her positive qualities, "the

air of a gentlewoman, a great deal of quiet, inactive good temper,

and a trifling turn of mind" (NA, p.20), are exhibited by her

frequent and comic references to clothes. Dress is her passion, and

she sees nearly everything in life in terms of muslins, gowns, muffs

and tippets~ Harriet Smith, too, comes alive for us through her

talk of the things that pleased her at Abbey-Mill Farm, her collection

of riddles, her admiration for the yellow curtains of Mr Elton's

house, her parcel of muslin and ribbon at Ford's, and her box of

"Most precious treasures" (~, p~338). Mrs Price, less of a type

than Mrs Allen and Harriet Smith, and presented with less humour, is

so hemmed in and worn out by the objects in her disorganised domestic

li£e that, kind-hearted as she is, her mind cannot range beyond the
 107

ragged parlour carpet to dwell for more than a moment upon her distant

sister's suffering. Mrs Price's enforced and habitual preoccupation

with domestic affairs is not as harmless as Mrs Allen's passion for

clothes--perhaps because Mrs Price is not protected by wealth and

comfort--but it cannot be compared with the cold-hearted materialism

of the second group of characters whose desire for money and

possessions has destroyed their love and concern for people.

In each of the novels there are some of these characters.

In Northanger Abbey General Tilney 's acquisitiveness and inordinate

pride in his possess ions are important because it is his greed and

his desire that Henry marry an heiress that prompt him to invite

Catherine to Northanger, and so place her in the setti ng of the Gothic

burlesque. We have seen how the descripti ons of the house and its

furnishings suggest both the reality of the Abbey and Catherine 's
1
fantasies about it; they also reveal the general ' s disposition.

Fashionable taste in the late eighteenth century preferred modern

household objects to "antiques", and General Tilney's china and

2
furniture are the latest, newest sorts; the names "Rumford II and

"Staffordshir e,,3 are enough to convey the reason for his feelings of

superi ority and contempt for rich men with inferior or fewer or

smaller possessions. Food i s prominent i n the General's life--that

he is "very particular in his eating ll (NA, p.211) becomes clear even

1
See pp.47-48, 103 - 4 above.

2Benjamin Thompson , Count Rumford (175 3-1814), invented a

fireplace which conserved heat and d i d not smoke.

30wing to technical improvements and the prime influence of

Josiah Wedgewood (1730-95), the name of the Staffords hire potteries
had become one of national importance in the industry by the last
decades of the eighteenth century. See W. B. Honey, English Pottery
and Porcelain, 5th ed. (London: A. & C. Black, 1964), pp.68-89.
 108

to catherine. He himself had built and stocked the excellent kitchen

garden at Woodston; his own, he boasts, is "unrivalled in the

kingdom"; and he cultivates the "most valuable fruits" (NA, p.178) ..

Jane Austen does not stop with this generalization; she economically

brings his snobbery and his greed together by giving him a pinery

which, if we are to understand his way of speaking, had done

exceedingly well the previous year, yielding one hundred pineapples.

The pineapple, first cultivated in England in the late seventeenth

century, was rare and highly prized, and must have held Augustan

literary associations for Jane Austen. Cowper published the light-

hearted fable, "The Pine-apple and the Bee", in 1782,1 and much earlier

Thomson (1700-1748) had included the pineapple in his list of exotic

and delicious fruits in Summer, first published in 1727:

Witness, thou best anana, thou the pride

Of vegetable life, beyond whate'er
The poets imaged in the golden age:
Quick let me strip thee of thy tufty coat,
2
Spread thy ambrosial stores, and feast with Jove!

Jane Austen had surely read The Seasons: she quotes from Spring in

Northanger Abbey (NA, p.15), and in Sense and Sensibility makes

Edward Ferrars mention Thomson as being one of !4arianne' s favourite

poets.

General Tilney's love of possessions and food reveal his

excessive concern for rank and social status, but he is not suffic-

iently convincing as a character for the reader or his creator to

take him seriously. Jane Austen makes a more earnest criticism of

cold-hearted and mercenary John and Fanny Dashwood, who exemplify

1
The companion poem, "The Bee and the Pine-apple II , was not
published until 1890.
2
The Seasons, Summer 685-89.
 109

the abuse of sense in one of its most extreme forms. Their narrow-

minded selfishness is evident in their attitude to things as well as

to money; Fanny Dashwood regrets the loss of the Stanhill china,

plate and linen almost as much as she and her husband mind the idea

of giving away any sum of money, whether it be three thousand pounds

to his sisters or a hundred a year to their mother. The John

DashwQods, however, like many of Jane Austen's unpleasant characters,

do not succeed in doing permanent harm to anyone except themselves.

Mrs Norris is the only character in the six novels whose evil

influence has a lasting effect, and in order to exhibit her mean and

selfish spirit in the daily life of Mansfield, Jane Austen shows her

cadging, purloining and accepting any thing that she can get for

nothing: eggs, cheese and a plant from Sotherton, the green baize

curtain, roses to dry for pot-pourri. liOn [Jane Austen IS ] scales

1
little things weigh heavy", writes Barbara Hardy, and these seemingly

venial acts of selfish greed, in conjunction with Mrs Norris's lack

of moral sense, her begrudging meanness, and her bullying, irritable

temper, denote a darkness of the soul, a littleness of spirit, that is

at the furthest extreme from the magnani mity and sunny generosity of

Emma Woodhouse. The Miss Steeles, who always have an eye to the main

chance , are also portrayed by their attention to material things and

to appearances. As Elinor recognises, they exhibit "some kind of

sense" (S8, p.120) in their understanding of the power of objects to

charm; they please and flatter Lady Middleton by bringing with them

a whole coachful of playthings for her children. Lucy is also fully

aware of the power that objects have to hurt, when she slyly shows

1
Barbara Hardy, A Reading, p.21 .
 110

Elinor the miniature of Edward Ferrars and the letter addressed to

her in his hand. The sight of these and the painful memory of

Edward's ring with Lucy's hair almost overcome Elinor as she r ealizes

that Lucy's claim to be engaged to Edward is true.

Jane Austen generally reserves this method of portraying

character through a response to objects for her people who are types,
1
or in E.M. Forste r' s terms, flat rather than round. She depicts as

two~dimensional the characters who, being either unpleasant or stupid

or both, tend to become, as Barbara Hardy describes them, "restricted

and even reified by living too much in the company of Objects".2

The deep, intricate characters like most of the protagonists as a

rule show little conce rn for things. This reticence about the

objects in their lives, which is not the same as an undervaluing of

them, is related to a sense of proportion which, Barbara Hardy

comments, "does not force itself upon us as an imperative, but simply

3
seems to resemble the implicit attitude of the author". The hero~

ines and o ther characters with wisdom and moral excellence reflect

Jane Austen's own concern for human values; like h ers , their prefer-
4
ence is for men and women, rather than for things. For Elizabeth

Bennet, for example, it is people not things that are interesting

and important; she appreciates what is wise and good, a nd laughs at

the "follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies II (pp, p.5 7) of

1
E.M. Forste r, Aspects of the Novel (London: Edward Arnold
& Co., 1927; Pocket edi tion, 1949 ), pp . 65~75.
2
Barbara Hardy, A Reading, p.149.
3
Barbara Hardy, Bicentenary Essays, p . 195.
4
See Letter s , p . 267.
 111

her fellow-beings. Although she is associated with the piano in

one memorable scene (Pp, pp.174-76) , the only object in which Eliza-

beth is shown to take a deep interest is the painting of Darcy in

the picture-gallery at Pemberley, and her emotional response to it

is implied, not described. Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, on the

other hand, are shown to some extent in Volume I of Sense and

Sensibility in relation to their possessions. The books, drawings

and piano that they take to Barton suggest their intelligence and

tastes, and are frequently mentioned. The point is stressed when

Edward Ferrars humorously imagines their enthusiastic buying of

prints and books, had they fortunes to spend (88, p.92) . Willoughby's

shooting-jacket and the mare that he wishes to give her are used to

indicate the beginning and the degree of Marianne's passion for him.

Fanny Price and Anne Elliot are the two heroines who are most con-

scious of their surroundings, and Fanny is the only heroine whose

possessions Jane Austen lists and dwells on, and whose character is

developed through her response to the objects around her.

The novels suggest that Jane Austen considered that possessions

are misused and abused when an interest in them leads the owner away

from a concern for people, and that they are rightly used when they

direct the owner's or donor's thoughts towards people. Objects which

are mere ornaments and accessories that feed a character's vanity,

like Mr Rushworth' s pink satin cloak and r.1rs Elton's "apparatus of

happiness" (~, p.358), are suspect . Presents given quietly out of

kindness or love, such as those which Edmund Bertram and Mr Knightley

give, bring pleasure and strengthen bonds between people; but giving

a present like Jane Fairfax's piano is "the act of a very, very

young man, one too young to consider whether the inconvenience of

 112

it [ may] not very much exceed the pleasure" (~, p.446).

Fanny Price is different in many respects from the other

heroines. She is quietly intellectual, but without the lively

intelligence of Emma Woodhouse or the intelligent wit of Elizabeth

Bennet; strongly principled, but without the mature confidence in

her own judgement of Elinor Dashwood or Anne Elliot. Her character

and circumstances until the end of the novel set her apart not only

from the other heroines, but also from the Bertrams and Crawfords.

We see her first as an undersized child, afraid, tearful and isolated,

and later as a young woman, still isolated, fearful, delicate and

reticent. When she is with people, she cannot easily communicate her

feelings and thoughts, and she is not active physically. Jane Austen,

however, by endowing her s ilent and outwardly passive heroine with,

amongst other qualities, an extremely loving heart, keen sensibi lities,

and the powers of memory and imagination, is able to use Fanny's res-

ponse to her surroundings as a method of characterization. Fanny,

frequently alone or distressed, seeks the solace and solitude of the

east room, and it is here, where the grown-up Fanny keeps her

possessions, that the reader of ten learns from the authorial comment

or free indirect style the state of Fanny's heart and mind. Fanny

also finds pleasure and comfort in the beauty of nature , which

evokes from her a strong emotional reaction. But it is almost always

her feelings for people that colour he r response to her surround-

ings: objects, natural or otherwise , do not appeal to her purely

for themselves; they claim her care, appreciation or admiration

because of the associations that they hold for her with the people

in her life.

The description of the contents of the east room and other

 113

occasional references to objects in Mansfield Park make up the longest

account by Jane Austen of any character's possessions. The things

are unobtrusive and hardly differentiated or made visual by any

specific detail. Occasionally some particulars of the books, furn-

iture, ornaments, plants and presents are given, casually, naturally

and significantly. When he goes to Fanny for advice on whether to

play the part of Anhalt, Edmund comments on some books in the room,

and the titles--the Idler, Crabbe's Tales, and one of Macartney's

volumes on China--indicate Fanny's taste and range of interests .

The "small sketch of a ship sent four years ago from the Mediterranean

by William, with H.M.S. Antwerp at the bottom, in letters as tall as

the main- mast" is a token of the brother's and sister's loving

relationship, executed with a ll the pride of the boy in his profession.

The three transparencies, of a cave in Italy, Tintern Abbey, and a

moonlight lake in Cumberland, recall Fanny's romantic strain , which

she has already shown in her mistaken expectations of Sotherton chapel

(MP, pp.85-86). The geraniums, which Jane Austen humorously makes

Fanny air that she may "inhale a breeze of mental strength herself"

to resolve her doubts, are part of Fanny's love of natural things,

expressed in her regret that an oak avenue should be cut down, her

admiration for the beauty of a lovely night, her rhapsody on the

evergreen, and her sorrow at missing the pleasures of spring in the

country when she is in Portsmouth. Fanny finds in the objects that

she has gathered in her "nest of comforts" (MP, p.152) two general

uses: they he lp to take her mind off anything unpleasant that has

happened, and they serve as mementos of the people associated with

them. Jane Austen also makes them serve the reader: these ordinary

things that comfort Fanny in distress, take her out of herself,

 114

extend her knowledge and experience, and stir her imagination and

memory, contribute to the novel's structural unitYi all the objects

mentioned above send the reader's mind back and forwards, recalling

and connecting episodes. We see Fanny's possessions in the context

of the whole novel: the objects in the east room bring to mind

the fragile ornaments that frightened the child in the grand drawing-

rooms; the presents that she accumulates take us forward to the silver

knife that she buys for Betsey; and her books, to those she borrows

from a circulating library in Portsmouth. Her different responses to

the things around her indicate her progress to maturity, and for the

reader, as well as for Fanny, they bring past and present together .

Some of Fanny's possessions, like the room itself and the

shabby furniture, are cast-offs, which no one at Mansfield Park wants

or needs; and some are presents given to her over the years by her

cousins: II s he could scarcely see an object in that room which had

not an interesting remembra nce connected with it" (MP, pp.151-52).

Even if an object had been associated with an incident that had

brought sorrow and pain, Fanny feels that the past suffering had

never been without some consolatory kindness, nand the whole [ is J

now so blended together" (MP, p.152) in her memory, imagination and

loving heart that every thing in the room is a friend or bears her

thoughts to a friend. These personal associations are important to

her; she regardS presents and the giving and receiving of them with

a seriousness and intensity little understood by, for example, Mary

Crawford or even Edmund. Because she remembers all that she

observed in Henry Crawford's past behaviour, and has noticed the

change in his manners towards herself, Mary's gift of the gold neck-

lace which Henry had once given to her fills Fanny with doubts, and
 115

adds to her worries about the ball instead of decreasing them.

Throughout the novel little things carry deep meanings, but it is

through a combination of e lements, not only by use of the small scale,

that Jane Austen achieves the remarkable effect of the episode of

the cross, necklace and chain. We know that the "very pretty amber

cross" (MP, p.254) that William brought Fanny from Sicily, and per-

haps, too, the simple gold chain that Edmund gives her, have their

origin in Jane Austen's own experience. Eleven years before she

wrote Mansfield Park Jane Austen, after reading a letter from her

brother Charles, had written to Cassandra: "He has received 30E for

his share of the privateer & expects 10E more--but of what avail is it

to take prizes if he lays out the produce in presents to his sisters.

He has been buying gold chains & Topaze crosses for us;--he must be

well scolded" (~, p.137). The qualifying phrase (in the novel) "very

pretty" does not surprise the reader for the words express Fanny's

thought, but the use of the adjective "amber" with its connotations

of colour, beauty and value, its visual, even tactile, impression is

rare in Jane Austen's writing, and suggests that she was intentionally

commemorating her own brother's gift. Changed though the fictitious

cross is, this unusual treatment gives it a sensuous quality that

makes it unique among the objects in the novels. A third element

that intensifies this episode is Jane Austen's giving to the whole

issue of the provenance of the ornaments and Fanny's anguished

decision which to wear an almost symbolic significance. As in the

Sotherton episode,l the near-symbolism is explicit but subdued.

Fanny, after much uncomfortable deliberation, finds that Mary Crawford's

1
See pp.77-79 above.
 116

necklace will not go through the ring of the cross, and is obliged

to wear Edmund's chain: uHis therefore must be worn; and having,

with delightful feelings, joined the chain and the cross, those

memorials of the two most beloved of her heart, those dearest tokens

so formed for each other by every thing real and imaginary--and put

them round her neck, and seen and felt how full of William and

Edmund they were, she was able, without an effort, to resolve on

wearing Miss Crawford's necklace too" (MP , p.271). (In his commentary

on this incident Tony Tanner misunderstands Jane Austen's subtle

touch. He sees in Fanny's wearing Edmund's chain with William's cross

a foreshadowing of the final emotional situation, but he does not take

1
into account that she also wears t he Crawfords' necklace . )

It is as memorials of the people she holds dear that Fanny

treasures her possessions. Her memory, and her capacity and need for

love invest everything with a preciousness that is her chief source

of happiness. When Mr Norris dies, it is not only that she will live

with her Aunt Norris that distresses the fifteen-year-old Fanny;

"I love this house and every thing in it" (MP, p. 26), she says

vehemently to Edmund. Fanny's strong sense both of the past and of

the value of time, which binds people, places and things together in

her heart, and partly forms her moral strength, is discussed further
2
in the next section of this chapter.

1See Mansfield Park, with an introduction by Tony Tanner

(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1966), p.24.
2
See pp.136-38 below.
 117

2. Time

The year which the main action of each of these five novels

spans is a crucial one for the protagonists. In this relatively

short period of time the heroines have to go through an educative

process: they have to learn to know themselves, face problems and

make decisions which will determine their moral characters and

therefore their future happiness. Tave develops this point:

The heroine is usually in a year in which her character is

indeterminate, in the sense that if she makes the wrong
decisions, in this place, in these months, the girl who,
for all her faults, seemed to have such potential at the
start will be a defective woman by the end. The dangers
of her faults, often the accompaniment of her strength,
will have become real evils that fix what she is hence-
forth. Even those heroines who are in need of little
development must prove themselves by facing the tests of
a year that requires either the proof or the end of all
their strength. The marriage is important not for
itself • .• but because the ability to be worthy of or to
make the right marriage is dependent on the growth that
the time of decision has required. 1

In Northanger Abbey the eleven weeks of Catherine's story, the shortest

time span of the six novels, does not, and perhaps cannot, effect a

great moral change in the heroine; but a profound change of feeling or

attitude is not necessary . Catherine has always been honest, unselfish,

affectionate. Her gravest error is her equating life with literature as

represented by the Gothic romances. Her naivety and immaturity are

due to a lack of experience, which the visits to Bath and Northanger

Abbey, and her relationships with the people whom she meets there,

to some extent remedy. After six weeks in Bath Catherine shows that

she can learn; she begins to suspect Isabella Thorpe's sincerity,

and a few more weeks reveal to her the truth about her friend. She

1
Tave, Some Words, pp.l0-ll.
 118

stays about a month at Northanger, but it is only after three days

there that Henry Tilney's admonition, and her own mortification and

good sense, awaken her from her absurd visions of romance. She now

understands clearly that her folly sprang from " a voluntary, self-

created delusion, each trifling circumstance receiving importance

from an imagination resolved on alarm" and that "the whole might be

traced to the influence of that sort of reading" in which she had

indulged while in Bath (NA, pp . 199-200). In the remaining four weeks

Catherine understands the strength of her love for Henry Tilney, and

experiences some genuine fear and distress , anxiety and suffering.

Mrs Morland hints at an improvement in Catherine when she acknowledges

that her daughter, o nce "a sad little shatter- brained creature"

(NA, p.234), must have had her wits about her to manage the journey

from Northanger alone. A more significant sign of maturity is

catherine's wise decision to make the difficult letter to Ele a nor

Tilney very brief. Her illusions about life , resulting from her mis-

guided response to Gothic fiction, are temporary and not deep-seated.

She learns to respond to The Mysteries of Udolpho and other "horrid"

novels in the right way, as Henry and Eleanor Tilney do; and that her

schoolroom reading included works by Pope, Gray, Thomson and

Shakespeare (NA, pp.15-16) , and that her mother frequently reads

Sir Charles Grandison, are perhaps indications that Catherine's

judgement and disposition are fundamentally sound. Mary Lascelles

comments: "[ catherine ] is never deceived about those people in her

little world who are true to themselves ..• nor is she deceived about
1
herself. " Her cure therefore is quickly and happily effected.

1
Mary Lascelles, Art, p.63.
 119

Marianne Dashwood, on the other hand, having resolved at

an early age never to be taught how to govern her strong feelings,

has a harder lesson to learn. She takes about a year lito discover

the falsehood of her own opinions" (SS, p.378), and to exchange for

reality the illusionary world that her imagination has created from

her reading. Elinor's happiness depends on the complicated set of

circumstances from which Edward Ferrars has honourably to extricate

himself, and the testing time during which Elinor proves herself

worthy of marriage by her patient exertion of will and reason

coincides roughly with the period of Marianne's love, suffering and

recovery.

Sense and Sensibility is the only one of the six novels for

which Chapman did not work out a time scheme in his Oxford editions

of 1923. It seems that Jane Austen had not yet adopted her method of
1
using an almanac, and for most of the story no dates are give n and

the length of intervals between events is unspecified. As Chapman

realized, it is not possible to fit all the events into a coherent

time scheme, but from the few references to months and seasons one

can chart an outline of the year which the essential action covers.

We know that the Middletons entertain the Dashwoods and Willoughby at

Barton Park during October (SS, p.53), that Mrs Jennings, Elinor and

Marianne journey to London in the first week of January (SS, p.158),

that they leave for Cleveland early in April (SS, p.301), and that

Elinor marries Edward early in the autumn (SS, p.374). With this

framework and other references, specific or indeterminate, almost

every we ek--except at the beginning and end of the novel--can be

1
See p. 35 above.
 120

accounted for. And in two short sections, when time is of the

greatest importance to either Elinor or Marianne, we are given a

1
day-by-day, sometimes hourly, account of events.

This rough timetable for Sense and Sensibility is one

indication that, even though she does not refer to specific dates,

Jane Austen always knew where she was with regard to possible weather

conditions, activities determined by seasons, like hunting, and events

which occur on certain days of the week. Thi s awareness is partic-

ularly evident in Pride and Prejudice in which the references to time

are so frequent, consistent and accurate that it is possible, accord-

ing to Chapman, lito date almost every event with precision and with

virtual certainty" (PP, p. 400). Chapman maintains that the calendars

which he and Frank MacKinnon made for the events in Pride and Prejudice

and Mansfield Park show that Jane Austen used an actual almanac when

writing or revising these two novels--that of 1811-12 for Pride and

Prejudice (PP, p.401), and that of 1808-9 for Mansfield Park (MP, p.554).

And after working out a day-by-day time scheme for Northanger Abbey

Chapman finds that lithe dates are consistent not only with each other,

but also with the facts of Bath" (~, p.299). (Balls, concerts,
2
theatres took place only on certain days of the week. ) On these

facts he bases his assumption that Jane Austen used an almanac,

3
probably that of 1798, the year in which Susan was originally written.

Such studies of the chronology of the novels have provided

evidence for the possible dating of Jane Austen's revisions and

1see Sense and Sensibility, pp.161-65, 310-16.

2see Persuasion, pp.299-300.

3
See p. 23 above.
 121

'
r ewor k l.ng s ;1 they also reveal the degree of care and trouble that

she took to be accurate in particulars of time and place. This kind

of punctilious precision, while not being essential, contributes to

the impression we have of the solid, "real" war Id of the novels I

and, together with similar consideration for other aspects of her

work, it makes possible what Mary Lascelles calls the "subtle

2
integrity" of the Chawton novels. It has already been shown that

the same scrupulous observance in matters of local detail is a means

of achieving verisimilitude and of creating the impression of an

3
authentic and realistic setting for the novels. In a discussion of

time and the novel Jonathan Raban reminds the reader of the "inherently

fact-based nature of fiction" in general, and states that: "Language,

manners, architecture and the like must be consonant with the 'real'
4
place and time of the novel a " This consonance Jane Austen understood,

but we may also assume that she worked in this way for her own con-

venience and the kind of satisfaction to which Mary Lascelles refers:

"Surely a satisfying sense, as of a challenge fairly met, must come

from making the facts of your imaginary world rhyme (as it were) both

with those of the actual world and with one another--correspond with

those by simple resemblance, with these by ironic likeness in

difference. ,,5 (One wonders what was Jane Austen I s response when her

brother Edward painted out to her the mistake in Emma of having apple
6
trees blossom in June. )

1 2
See pp.23-24 above. Mary Lascelles, Art, p.173.
3 4
See pp.31-45 above . Raban, Modern Fiction, p.59.

5
Mary Lascelles, Art, p.172.
6
See Emma, ed. David Lodge (London: Oxford University Press,
1971; Oxford Paperbacks, 1975), p.445.
 122

Generally speaking, time in Pride and Prejudice is restricted

to one year, and, unlike Anne Elliot, for example, Elizabeth Bennet

lives with no heavy burd en of the past . Nevertheles s , her life a nd

future are to a certain extent affected by past actions of people

close to her: her father's mistaken choice of a wife whom he cannot

respect and her parents' foolish upbringing of the younger sisters

with Lydia's consequent marriage are errors of the past that threate n

Eliz abeth's future. Furthermore, Elizabeth cannot unde rstand the

truth about Darcy and Wickham until she has explored the past in

connection with each of them. Thus the time scheme is extended a

little. But the chief function of time in this novel is to show how

the twelve months of the story convincingly bring about a reversal of

feeling and attitude in the heroine and hero. In Elizabeth we see

the gradual change which her estimation of Darcy undergoes; and Darcy

acquire s a new understanding of hims elf and a new attitude toward s

Elizabeth; it is not his f e elings f o r her that change. A f ew weeks

after the initial insult he wishes to know more of her and soon feels

that he is in some danger of being too much attracted to her . Six

months after their first meeting, having struggled in vain to

repress his admiration and love for her, he proposes to Elizabeth,

and then spends a painful three months attending to the r eproofs

which she so angr i l y adm i n i s t ered . His s elf-conquest , evident a t

Pemberley in his strikingly altered behaviour, is atteste d by his

kindness to Lydia and all the attendant pain and embarrassment

involved.. Elizabeth, on the other hand, feels a "deeply-roo ted dislike"

for Darcy (PP, p . 189), and some months later, on hearing tha t he is

expected at Rosings, she thinks that "there were not many of her

acquaintance whom she did not prefer" (pp, p. 170). Her feelings for
 123

him, until she reads his letter, are coloured to a certain extent

by his insulting remark about her and very much by his supposed

treatment of Wickham and the knowledge that he is responsible for

Jane's unhappiness. Their conversations at Netherfield and Rosings

reveal the moral superiority and intelligence of both, and lithe rich

ambiguity of ironic dialogue"l prepares us for Elizabeth's reassess-

ment of Darcy in the second half of the novel. All Jane Austen's

novels demonstrate that the deep, intricate characters are difficult

to know; discussing the meanings of lI amiable" and "agreeable" I Tave

notes that lithe perception of a real amiability requires time" 2

Only after another four months of confusion and agitation does

Elizabeth truly know her heart: just when she thinks that the dis-

grace brought upon her family by Lydia must sink her power with Darcy

for ever, she admits to herself that she loves him. As soon as she

realizes this truth, she feels, like the other heroines, that time

has run out for her, and she prepares to face the fact that she has

lost the man she loves. All the novels, except Northanger Abbey, .

show that the foundations of true affection are laid by time and

moral growth. In Pride and Prejudice we also see an example of a

"courtship" and marriage that are based on neither of these require-

ments: the day after Elizabeth refuses Mr Collins's proposal of

marriage Charlotte Lucas determines to have him herself, and on the

following day accepts the offer of a man whom she can neither love nor

1
Reuben Arthur Brower, "Light and Bright and Sparkling:
Irony and Fiction in 'Fride and Prejudice I I I , in Fields of Light:
An Experiment in Critical Reading (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1951; Galaxy Paperback, 1962), p.167.

2
Tave, Some Words, p.122.
 124

esteem. Where there is no affection between partners, no time is

needed to bring them together.

Jane Austen's realistic treatment of time and human relation-

ships led to an innovation in English fiction. It seems that she

was the first novelist to make a woman's love for a man and a man 's

for a woman originate in "nothing better than gratitude ll • Esteem

and gratitude are the foundations of Elizabeth's love for Darcy, and

in Northanger Abbey the origin of Henry Tilney's love for Catherine

is the "persuasion of her partiality for him" (NA, p.243). Edmund

Bertram's first act of kindness towards his homesick little cousin

evokes "gratitude and delight" (MP, p.16), and in return for his

continuing attentions, Fanny, aged ten, "loved him better than any

body in the world except William" (MP, p.22). Although Jane Austen

ironically acknowledges in Northanger Abbey that this mode of attach-

ment is "a new circumstance in romance .. . and dreadfully derogatory of

an heroine's dignity" (NA, p.243), she is lightheartedly making the

serious point that the idea, seldom realized or admitted, was new in

fiction. Pamela certainl y loves Mr B. before she has anything to be

grateful for; Harriet Byron loves Sir Charles Grandison almost as

soon as she sees him; while Evelina adores Lord Orville from their

first meeting.

The element of time in Mansfield Park is more complex than in

Pride and Prejudice. Thematic demands, the disposition of the

heroine, the many explicit references to the power of time, and its

different uses make the reader conscious of this dimension in a way

that is not so much part of the response in the other novels. The

calendar that MacKinnon worked out from the one full date given--

that of the ball at Mansfield on Thursday, 22 December--covers only

 125

five months of Fanny Price's critical year, which begins in July of

the year Fanny is eighteen. Chapman states that "the earlier

chronology [ of the action] is clear and consistent, but the nature

of the narrative did not require precision" (MP, p.554). The first

chapter rapidly covers the eleven years or so that intervene between

the marriages of the three Ward sisters and the Bertrams' adoption of

the ten-year-old Fanny. The second chapter races through five more

years, pausing to give particulars of Edmund's early acts of kindness

to the unhappy, timid little girl, of the kind of moral and formal

education Maria and Julia Bertram receive, and of Fanny's love for

her brother William. The next two chapters complete the exposition:

the Grants come to Mansfield Parsonage, Sir Thomas goes to Antigua,

and the Crawfords arrive. This wider sweep of time allows Jane Austen

to show the environment in which Fanny, Maria and Julia grow up and

the sort of education they receive. In unsympathetic surroundings

Fanny, physically delicate and dependent, develops a moral strength

and freedom which she preserves under increasing pressures of time,

1
place and circurnstance. She shows a sensitivity to time and is

peculiarly susceptible to the power of habit. (Edmund, not knowing the

true reason for many of her actions, over-emphasizes this quality in

Fanny.) She firmly believes that true affection between man and

woman is a deep, long-growing, long-lasting emotion. Throughout the

novel she is, in some respects, timid, naive and immature, but at

the beginning of the crucial year Fanny's understanding, values and

principles are sound and practically unassailable; only once does she

act against her conscience, and then under considerable constraint.

1see Devlin, Education, p.126 .

 126

Her lave for Edmund and jealousy of Mary Crawford may at times

temporarily cloud her judgement, but this faculty, too, is sound on

important moral issues. We see Fanny's sterling qualities of character

exhibited in the visit to Sotherton and the episode of the theatricals.

Henry Crawford's proposal, the pressure put upon her by people she

laves, and the possibility of losing Edmund constitute the ordeal that

establishes her as worthy of marriage. It is this period of Fanny's

life that Jane Auste n examines closely in the almost daily account

of her actions, thoughts and feelings. The author's presentation of

five months of considerable suffering before her final vindication and

happiness clearly shows "the advantages of early hardship and discipline,

and the consciousness of being born to struggle and e ndure" (MP, p.473).

Edmund Bertram normally possesses active principle and a

sense of duty, but his moral judgement is so swayed by his infatuation

with Mary Crawford that, as well as acting wrongly himself, he tries

to persuade Fanny to do so too. Knowing her strong disapproval of

their choice of play and her disinclination to act, he joins in the

supplications entreating her to take the part when Mrs Grant cannot

rehearse her role. Fanny yields unwillingly, but i s prevented from

keeping her word by Sir Thomas's unexpected homecoming. The revelation

of Mary Crawford's real character brings pain and misery to Edmund,

and he and Fanny agree that the impression made on his mind by such a

disappointment is indelible. The delicate irony directed at both

Edmund and Fanny in this passage suggests that ine xperienced Edmund

and tactful, tender, comforting, loving Fanny are mistaken in thinking

that "time would undoubtedly abate somewhat of his sufferings, but

still it was a sort of thing which he never could get entirely the

better of; and as to his ever meeting with any other woman who could--
 127

it was too impossible to be named but with indignation" (MP, p.460).

In the concluding chapter the narrator purposely and rather archly

abstains from dates, and time becomes general and once more passes

rapidly; some weeks later Edmund becomes "very tolerably cheerful

again" (MP, p.462), and "exactly at the time when it was quite natural

that it should be so, and not a week earlier" (MP, p.470), he finds

that he wishes to marry Fanny.

There are many such references to time and its power in Mansfield

Park. For example, Edmund tells Fanny that her loving Crawford "must

be a work of time" (MP, p.347), and tactlessly reveals that Mary

Crawford has made a joke about Henry's "having his addresses most kindly

received at the end of about ten years' happy marriage" (MP, p.354).

Henry Crawford assures Fanny that "absence, distance, time" (MP, p.343)

will make her see that his affections are steady. Sir Thomas suffers

the guilt and misery caused by his daughter's elopement the longest,

but "time will do almost every thing" (MP, p.462) and his sufferings

are eventually alleviated. Other uses of time in Mansfield Park are

1
discussed later.

At their final parting Edmund sorrowfully realizes that Mary

Crawford does not possess "the most valuable knowledge we could any

of us acquire--the knowledge of ourselves and of our duty" (MP, p. 459) .

This acquisition of self-knowledge is the theme of Emma, and in order

to show how Emma learns to know herself Jane Austen returns to a

simple and straightforward chronology of one year. The opening scene

introduces Emma at twenty facing a change in her life. Miss Taylor

marries at the end of September or the beginning of October, and

1
See pp.130-31, 134-38 below.
 128

thereafter, with clear and frequent references to months, days and

passing intervals, the steady progress of Emma's moral education

unfolds. The culmination of what time brings about--Emma's

realization that she loves Mr Knightley, and his proposal--occurs in

July, and the three months before their marriage in October are

compressed into the final two chapters. Precise and accurate

references to time are necessary in this novel in a way they are no·t

in the others . Dates and the timing of events form part of the trail

of clues laid to lead us to the truth about Jane Fairfax's and Frank

Churchill's relationship. In December there is a pointed reminder,

hidden in Mr Woodhouse's rather absurd talk with his elder daughter,

that Frank Churchill wrote to Miss Taylor from Weymouth at the end of

September; then he cancels his January visit, but writes that he

still anticipates visiting Randalls "at no distant period" (~, p.144);

when he eventually comes, although he has never before visited his

father in Highbury, he arrives unexpectedly early that he may "gain

half a day" (~, p.190); and after Jane Fairfax makes it clear to him

that sensible and resolute characters can terminate a hasty and

imprudent engagement, and is anxiously waiting to hear from or see

him that evening, Miss Bates tells Emma in a torrent of apparent

irrelevancies that Jane has surprised her by accepting the situation

with Mrs Smallridge; " ... and then it came out about the chaise having

been sent to Randall's [ sic ] to take Mr. Frank Churchill to Richmond .

That was what happened before tea . It was after tea that Jane spoke

to Mrs. Elton" (~, p.383) .

Mary Lascelles, in a discussion of chronology and pace in

Jane Austen's novels, abstracts the most important point: "The

constant characteristic, at all events, of Jane Austen's representation

 129

of time is this: that it is rooted in her (gradually mastered)

technique for using the consciousness of her characters as a means of

communication with the reader. lll Emma Woodhouse is adult and

intelligent, and the reader is made aware of the passage of time

through her mediation. There is no need for the period of action to

extend beyond the limits of the critical year--as in the beginning of

Mansfield Park--because most of the action is seen from Emma's point

of view, and she can reflect on past, present and future. Mary

Lascelles thinks that Jane Austen became increasingly aware of the

need for variety of pace, both for itself and for emphasis,2 and

certainly Emma exhibits a frequent variation of pace and texture.

After a few initial chapters given mostly to narrative and exposition,

nearly all the others comprise a combination of dialogue, reflection

and narrative. It is often difficult to distinguish the transition to

Emma's thoughts from the commentary of the relatively impersonal,

omniscient narrator, but the pOints of observation are also at times

clearly separate. The success of presenting "a heroine whom no one ...

will much like,,3 depends on the merging and diverging viewpoints: we

sympathise with Emma because we see much of the story through her eyes,

and we also see her faults and follies and the "real evils" of her

situation (~, p.5) from the point of view of the narrator. It is this

flexible style of narration that allows Jane Austen to control the

pace and direct the reader's attention to significant events. In

Volume I the steady advance of time is marked by references to months

1
Mary Lascelles, Art, p.194.

2 Ibid ., p.192.

3Austen-Leigh, Memoir, p.157.

 130

and seasonal weather. The dialogue at Mr weston's dinner party

slows down the pace, and Emma's suspicions of Mr Elton increase the

tension, which Mr Woodhouse's consternation and Isabella's alarm at

the falling snow sustain. Then, expertly contrived by the fuss over

the snow, the crisis of the first volume occurs, and Emma finds

herself alone in the carriage listening to the rapid hopings,

fearings, adorings of Mr Elton. The crisis that leads to the climax

of the whole action is the culmination of suspense which has built up

during a slow, intense passage of dialogue in which Emma gradually

begins to suspect that it is Mr Knightley for whom Harriet has formed

an affection which she thinks he returns. Emma waits in great terror,

has to collect herself resolutely, cannot speak, looks at Harriet in

consternation as the revelation proceeds. Then comes the sudden

realization "that Mr Knightley must marry no one but herself!lI

(!, p.408), and in the same few moments the terrible understanding of

her own self-deceit. From now time cannot move too slowly for Emma--

"the rest of the day, the following night, were hardly enough for

her thoughts" (!, p.411), and in some long passages of agonised

reflection the pace of the action coincides with Emma's personal time.

The general impression of the tempo of Emma is that it is

smooth and steady. This is not so in Mansfield Park because, as

Mary Lascelles pOints out, we need to see Fanny as a child and woman,

and there is of necessity a sharp change of pace when the narrative

begins the account of the critical year. In Volume I events are

marked according to calendar time, the spans of time becoming

gradually shorter and the pace slower until the climax at the end of

the volume. Two chapters of narrative rapidly cover periods of ten

and five years respectively, two more summarize the events of three
 131

years, and then, after the major change in tempo and the beginning of

the essential action, we become aware through the consciousness of

various characters of the months, weeks, days, hours before the return

of Sir Thomas. After the visit to Sotherton, we learn that Sir Thomas

will come home in three months; the characters concerned either look

forward to or dread this event--"Much might happen in thirteen weeks"

(MP, p.107), thinks Maria Bertram. As the theatricals proceed and

Fanny's wretchedness becomes more acute, the pace decreases , the

texture becomes denser, and we hear that "there will be three acts

rehearsed to-morrow evening" (MP, p.167). During the next day Fanny

escapes from her Aunt Norris to the east room and manages . to have a

quarter of an hour 's undisturbed but anxious reflection before she

has to endure the additional and unexpected pain of seeing Edmund and

Mary Crawford rehearse privately together. At last their scene is

over. Then "every body [is] in the theatre at an early hour" (MP, p.171),

and to her horror Fanny finds herself consenting to read Mrs Grant's

part. In this way, by giving us an impression of every move, every

detail beforehand, and forcing Fanny to her limit, Jane Austen builds

up to the moment of Sir Thomas's unexpected homecoming. In the next

two volumes the action settles to a more regular pace, with the necessary

variations, both as Fanny anticipates certain events--William's visit

to Mansfield, the letter received from Edmund when she is at Portsmouth,

her return to Mansfield--and as they occur.

Pride and Prejudice shows this device of anticipation control 1-

. a slmp
ing the pace ~n . 1 er way. 1 The reader gains a sense of the passage

of time as the narrative moves rapidly towards a significant event--

1
Mary Lascelles makes this point in Art, p.189.
 132

Elizabeth's going to Hunsford, o r to Derbyshire. In the early part

of the novel, however, the almanac which Jane Austen worked on helped

her to regulate the pace: she used what Mary Lascelles calls

I'a Longbourn calendar":

The first six chapters present occasions evidently related

in direct succession , but not d ated. Then a carefully
planned passage in the opening of Chapter VII suggests
the pace at which events usually follow one another in
the Longbourn world: the Miss Bennets are "usually
tempted 11 to visit Meryton IIthree or four times a week,
to pay their duty to their aunt and to a milliner's
shop just over the way " . A seemingly casual indication
of the time of year follows: "At present, indeed, they
were well supplied both with news and happiness by the
recent arrival of a militia regiment in the neighbourhood;
it was to remain the whole winter . . .. II And to this
succeeds an unobtrusive suggestion that the narrative is
settling down to a convenient gait: "Every day added
something to their knowledge of the officers' names and
connections. 111

In Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen suggests the passage of

time by frequent use of phrases such as lithe next morning", II within

a few days II , "about a week after his leaving", and the intervals

between events do not greatly vary. Changes from narrative to

dial ogue, of course, alter the tempo, but generally the pace is

extremely regular. The course of Marianne's acquaintance with

Willoughby seems to move at the same rate as events before and after

it. Mary Lascelles sees a timid attempt "to give some impression of

double time by contrasting the beat (as it were) of Elinor's normal

with Marianne's feverish pulse, by making us realize the senselessness

for Marianne of Elinor's sensible plea: ' Wait only till tomorrow'

Another instance of Marianne ' s different sense of

time occurs after the Dashwoods have been at Barton Cottage a fort-

night, when Marianne comments privately to her mother on the strange-

2 Ibid ., p.188
 133

ness of Edward's not yet coming into Devonshir e and wonders what

could occasion the "extraordinary delayll (8S, p.39).

The method of controlling pace in Northanger Abbey is quite

different from that in the other novels, and is possible because of

the literary burlesque and the role of the narrator. Jane Austen

cannot use immature catherine to record the passage of time, and it

is in accordance with the burlesque convention to have the narrator ' s

voice intruding with comments like: liThe anxiety, which in this stage

of their attachment must be the portion of Henry and Catherine, and of

all who loved either, as to its final event, can hardly extend, I fear,

to the bosom of my readers, who will see in the tell-tale compression

of the pages before them, that we are all hastening together to

perfect felicity" (NA, p.250). W.A. Craik observes that the intervals
1
between events become longer as the novel proceeds. The six weeks

at Bath pass fairly rapidly and regularly with short intervals between

events. These increase at Northanger Abbey, and the longer passages

of description and catherine's reactions and thoughts slow down the

pace. In this section the narrator does not intrude. After the

visions of romance are over, the tempo increases again and there are

wider intervals between the visit to Woodston, catherine's sudden

departure, and Henry Tilney's arrival at Fullerton.

In all the novels Jane Austen shows her skill in carrying

forward the action and giving the impression of an advance in time.

An easy and economical transition links two chapters: "All this

[the matter of Fanny's farewells] passed over night, for the journey

was to begin very early in the morning; and when the small, diminished

l W. A. Craik, Six Novels, p.25.

 134

party met at breakfast, William and Fanny were talked of as already

advance:i one stage" (MF, p.374); another chapter begins: "In this

state of schemes, and hopes, and connivance, June opened upon Hartfield"

(~, p.343). Another skilful but slightly different example is Mrs

Elton's impressionistic monologue in the strawberry beds at Donwell

Abbey. Phrases and partial sentences strung together with no

conjunctions convey in a wonderfully comic passage how Mrs Elton's

happiness and enthusiasm evaporate and she becomes bored and fatigued

in half an hour (~, pp.358- 59).

A character's attitude to time is often indicative of his

1
values and disposition. John Thorpe tries to change time and distances

in order to assert his authority over James Morland (NA, pp.45-46).

Isabella Thorpe also reveals her foolishness, insincerity and vanity

by ignoring clocks and watches (NA, p.39). Another of these

manipulators of facts is Mary Crawford; her personal reckoning of time

is more than feminine lawlessness: she does not like exactitude and

precision--to her, "never" in conversation means "not very often"

(~, p.92) --and she does not live by truths; she will not have watches

and furlongs prove her wrong (MP , pp.94-95). Tave writes of her that

she tries to "obliterate lines of distinction, or being more deeply

corrupt, as we know by the end of the novel, she really doesn't know
2
where they are". Maria Bertram, shutting her eyes while she looks,

confounding her understanding while she reasons, hopes weakly and

vainly that time will somehow wipe away the return of her father and

her marriage with Mr Rushworth. A fuller, more complex use of this

l Tave discusses this topic in Some Words, pp.4-6.

2 Ibid ., p.6.
 135

metaphorical significance of time is one means by which Jane Austen

delineates Henry Crawford. We are informed early on that " thought-

less and selfish from prosperity and bad example, he would not look

beyond the present moment" (MP, p.llS). He devours time: he put

his estate in order in three months, he has no memory for the past,

no thought for the future, and he allows himself two weeks in which

to conquer Fanny's heart. When he finds that he is in love with her

and that she i s not to be easily won, he realizes that "a fortnight

[is] not enough" (MP , p.236). While walking in the dockyard with

Fanny and Susan, he cannot talk to Fanny as he would in private, but

he makes his thoughts and feelings--and his improvement--clear to her

by referring to the previous happy summer and autumn at Mansfield,

and by saying that he anticipates an even superior one the following

year. However, Henry Crawford's love for Fanny comes too late: the

power of environment and a faulty moral education, the pleasure of

the present moment , and his own cold-blooded vanity are "too strong

for a mind unused to make any sacrificetoright" (MP, p.467), and he

brings about his own downfall.

In her characters' attitudes to time Jane Austen implies her

own view of morality--that it is a process of continuity grounded

in religion and tradition. It has already been shown that Donwell

1
Abbey represents values established and proved by time. Pember ley ,

too, with its good library, which is "the work of many generations"

(PP, p.38), and beautiful park unspoilt by "improvements" , is

redolent of a long tradition of the best in the Engli sh character.

The owners of these estates exemplify "that upright integrity, that

1
See pp.S8-S9 above.
 136

strict adherence to truth and principle, that disdain of trick and

littleness, which a man should display in every transaction of his

life" (~, p.397). The novels clearly show that the moral values

that Jane Austen admired are connected with a concept of time. In

contrast to Mr Knightley is the parvenu , Mrs Elton, who displays

her ill-bred ignorance and vulgarity in every word she utters and

every ornamental trimming she wears. Fanny Price's notion of time

coincides frequently with her creator's. The narrator gently l aughs

at Fanny's romantic expec tations of sotherton chape l which has nothing

of the awful or melancholy or grand. But more important to our

estimation of Fanny than this disappointment , whi ch she herse l f acknow-

ledges to be foolish, is her disapproval of one "improvement", namely

that the custom of family prayers at Sotherton, "a valuable part of

former times" (MP, p.86), should be discontinued. Fanny appreciates

the growth and beauty wrought by the operations of time in Mrs Grant's

shrubbery, and she is dismayed at the thought of a fine avenue's

being cut down at Sotherton, and expresses a wish to see the house and

park before any changes are made . Her quoting Cowper on the topic

shows how close are her and Jane Austen's viewpoints. Fanny expresses

her understanding of the value of time in her fine speech, arising

from an equal blend of emotion and reason, self-es teem and modesty,

on the slow growth of a woman's affection for a man. Even Sir Thomas,

who yet does not fully understand Fanny's delicacy of mind and

disinterestedness , when he sees her i n a new light after Henry

Crawford's advantageous proposal of marriage, talks to her of possible

misplaced distinctions that she may have encountered at Mansf i eld , and

acknowledges that l when assessing the situation, she "will take in

the whole of the past" (MP, p.313) and judge impartially. Most of
 137

the heroines become acutely aware of time when they are unhappy: for

Fanny, always sensitive to time and now tortured by Sir Thomas's

charge of being selfish and ungrateful, "the past, present, future,

every thing was terrible ll

(MP, p.321); Enuna, too, in a moment of

anguish and regret reviews her past and contemplates her futur e ; and

the wretched present of Catherine Morland's journey back to Fullerton

is aggravated by memories evoked by seeing again the road to woodston.

This ability to recall the past, this human attribute of

remembrance, is the faculty, according to Johnson, which "may be said

to place us in the class of moral agents": it gives us the power to

prefer one thing to another, and it enables us to regulate our con-

1
clusions from experience. Jane Austen's views on time and memory

are conve ntionally Augustan, and she frequently links the capacity to

r e member with virtue, sense and sensitivity. The advantages of

memory are most evident in Fanny Price and Anne Elliot, and Jane

Austen gives to immature and rather "boo kish 11 Fanny a speech on the

mystery and wonders of memory: "If anyone faculty of Our nature may

be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory.

There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers,

the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our

intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable,

so obedient--at others, so bewildered and so weak--and at others

again, so tyrannic, so beyond controul!--We are to be sure a miracle

in every way--but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting, do

seem peculiarly past finding out" (MP, pp.208-9). This speech,

1
Johnson, Rambler No. 41.
 138

1
studied and sententious though it may be, reveals Fanny's thoughtful

turn of mind and perceptive understanding, and points to the

difference in quality of mind in herself and Mary Crawford, to whom

she addresses the words and who derives no enjoyment from abstract

thinking. Fanny owes to her memory her store of knowledge and the

many intellectual pleasures with which she sweetens her life. She

can memorize words easily--she knows most of the parts in Lovers'

Vows by heart--and, on a higher level, her faculty for recollection

and her intelligent use of memory are some of the qualities that go

to make her moral strength, and keep her firmly anchored to her

prinCiples. When Henry Crawford turns his attention and charm to

Fanny, she finds that she very soon dislikes him less than formerly,

but "she had by no means forgotten the past, and she thought as ill

of him as ever" (MP, p.232). Fanny knows that the present is formed

by the past. Present experience may cause her to revaluate the past

--as the visit to Portsmouth does--but she does not try to change or

obliterate it. She uses memory to support her reason, and reason to

control her memory.

Other heroines do this, too. Elizabeth Bennet searches her

memory so that she may refute Darcy's charges against Wickham, and

her recollections and reason canbine to make her realize how "blind,

partial, prejudiced, absurd" (pp, p.208) she has been. Emma, after

the revelation of Mr Elton's proposal, "looked back as well as she

could; but it was all confusion" (~, p.134). Gradually, however, as

1
Moler, in Art of Allusion, pp.123-25, 147-48, finds in
Fanny's speeches--on memory, the evergreen, the beauty of an unclouded
night--and in her conversation and reading the kind of "thinking"
mind that educators like Hannah More and others praised as a sign of
a cultivated intellect.
 139

she recalls incidents, her memory brings her to a true understanding

of Mr Elton. Memory also recalls poignant moments for Emma when,

having realized her vanity and arrogance, she unhappily faces a

forlorn future without Mr Knightley, and remembers how he came to

cheer her father and herself on the melancholy evening of Miss

Taylor's wedding. 8uch recollections and forebodings serve to make

Emma resolve to be a better person, more rational, more acquainted

with herself, and in so doing she shows that she is already a better

person. Marianne Dashwood, however, who loves lito be reminded of

the past • .• --whether it be melancholy or gay" (85, p.92), indulges

in a sentimental nostalgia which at best makes her appear foolish and

at worst brings to mind the "moments of precious, of invaluable

misery" (88, p.303) at Cleveland which precipitate her severe illness.

Memory also makes Mary Crawford sentimental: when she goes

with Fanny to the east room intending to scold, recollections of the

"delightful rehearsal" banish all thoughts of Fanny and Henry, and

IIher mind was entirely self-engrossed. She was in a reverie of sweet

remembrances II (MP, p.358). This "fit" leaves her so softened and

affectionate towards Fanny, and momentarily so conscious of other

people that she really seems sincerely aware of Fanny's goodness; her

words "Good, gentle Fanny!" (MP, p.359) are without affectation.

Mr Knightley is a character who makes a profitable use of memory;

Tave comments on the combination of memory, observation and imagin-

ation that lead him to the truth about Frank Churchill and Jane
. f ax. 1
Fa~r Characters either villainous or stupid abuse or fail to

use the power of recollection in various ways: Mr Rushworth

1
Tave, Some Words, p.234.
 140

significantly and predictably cannot learn his forty-two speeches

in Lovers' Vows; Wickham tries to change the past by, for example,

asking for the living in Darcy's gift after previously resigning all

claim to assistance in the church; Lucy Steele keeps past pledges in

her memory, and remembers, uses, forgets them as it suits her;

Frank Churchill's lapse of memory over Mr Perry's carriage causes

Jane Fairfax painful confusion and embarrassment.

Jane Austen also uses a character's memory to advance the

action and serve the plot. In Pride and Prejudice Mrs Gardiner's

recol lections of Lambton in Derbyshire and desire to revisit the

county are a convincing reason for the contracted tour and consequent

visit to Pemberley. Bingley's remembering the exact date of the dance

at Netherfield reveals to Elizabeth ' s satisfaction "a recollection of

Jane not untinctured by tenderness" (PP, p.262). The same device

reminds Harriet Smith-- and the reader- -of her feelings for Robert

Martin. When Emma allows Harriet to pay the Martins a short visit,

lithe pencilled marks and memorandums on the wainscot" recall for

them all, that is, Harriet, Mrs Martin and the two girls, their

former friendship: "He had done it . They all seemed to remember the

day, the hour, the party, the occasion--to feel the same consciousness,

the same regrets--to be ready to return to the same good understanding"

(~, p.18?). By such means a brief episode contributes to the plot,

structure, characterization and formal comedy of the novel.

For the character with a particular awareness time can invest

places or possessions with special associations . Anne Ell iot is one

1
of these characters, Fanny Price another. As we have seen, par t of

1
See pp . 112 -1 5 above.
 141

the comfort which Fanny enjoys in the east room is derived from

possessions which, whether they are mementos of past happiness or

sorrow, bring pleasure to the present moment. Fanny's forgiving,

unrepining nature finds solace even in former affliction, so

harmoniously do time and distance blend the joys and sufferings of

the past for her. A similar but humorous instance of possessions used

to stir the memories and move the owner to happiness is t hat of Harriet

Srni th I s "precious treasures 11 • Even as she prepares to burn them , the

piece of court plaister and the pencil stub evoke for Harriet all

that had happened on the memorable occasions when chance had

blessed her with these keepsakes. Time endears p l aces, too: Eleanor

Tilney had not liked a damp and g loomy path where she often walked

with her mother, but she tells Catherine: "I am particularly fond

of this spot .... It was my mother's favourite walk" (NA, p.179).

Jane Austen introduces the weather and seasons in her novels

only when they affect characters and what happens to them. Many

brief references to weather give an impression of ver isimilitude--

drives in the country take place in mild February weather, the day

is very fine for the expedition to Box Hill, a lovely March morning

gives Henry Crawford the opportunity for suggesting a walk . But

generally weather, as well as lending probability to the action,

has an additional significance or function. It can initiate action,

contribute to characterization, reflect a character's emotions, or

create atmosphere.

The rain and dirty streets help Catherine Morland decide to

drive with John Thorpe rather than walk with the Tilneys; fine

weather draws everyone out on a Sunday to Kensington Gardens and so

Elinor Dashwood meets and tal ks to Miss Steele; riding in hard rain
 142

gives Jane Bennet a chill which keeps her at Netherfield; a heavy

shower forces Fanny to accept Dr Grant's offer of shelter, and as

a result a sort of intimacy forms between her and Nary Crawford;

and Marianne DashwQod, running home in driving rain, twists her

ankle and meets Willoughby. In Emma extremes of weather aggravate

a character's ill-humour: snow and severe cold send Mr John Knightley

to the Westons' dinner party with very bad grace, and the heat of

mid-June gives Frank Churchill a plaus i ble reason for openly express-

ing his irritability after he has quarrelled with Jane Fairfax. The

heat, when Fanny cuts roses and then walks twice to her Aunt Norris's

house, gives her a headache, which makes Edmund realize that he has

neglected his cousin and consequently insist on her being included

in the party to Sotherton.

In addition to these usual and recurrent functions of weather

and seasons, there occasionally occurs an almost symbolic use of natural

surroundings. In the three later novels Jane Austen sometimes shapes

"reality" to make the setting reflect a character's feelings. In

doing this in the novels written after 1811 Jane Austen was not turn-

ing her back on Augustan influences; although a sympathy between man

and nature is more characteristic of Romantic attitudes, it is

present in nea-classic writers. Cowper, for example, in "The Shrubbery"

(1773) acknowledges the power of nature to soothe the hurt soul, and

bitterly grieves that on the occasion contemplated "the season and

the scene" exacerbate and nourish his affliction. Jane Austen ' s use

of this device is rare and always on the same small scale as the

other features of her settings. There is perhaps a hint of a

figurative use of weather in the early Sense and Sensibility--the

an imating gales of an high south-westerly wind" which give Marianne

'1
 143

such "delightful sensations" (SS, p.41) correspond to her strong

emotions and extreme sensibility, and the January morning on which

she rises early to write to the faithless Willoughby is cold and

cheerless--but most of the other instances are to be found in the

three later novels. In Mansfield Park "the gloom and dirt of a

November day" and "dismal rain" reflect Mary Crawford's "very des-

ponding state of mind" (MP, p.20S), and later a wet Sunday evening is

an appropriately melancholy setting for the sorrowing Edmund's

opening of his heart to Fanny. The most notable example occurs in

Emma when Emma realizes that she loves Mr Knightley and thinks that

she has lost him: "The evening of this day was very long, and

melancholy, at Hartfield. The weather added what it could of gloom.

A cold stormy rain set in, and nothing of July appeared but in the

trees and shrubs, which the wind was despoiling, and the length of

the day, which only made such cruel sights the longer visible"

(~, p.421). "The weather continued much the same all the following

morning; and the same loneliness, and the same melancholy, seemed to

reign at Hartfield--but in the afternoon it cleared; the wind changed

into a softer quarter; the clouds were carried off; the sun appeared;

it was summer again" (~, p.424). Emma goes to walk in the shrubbery

where Mr Knightley later joins her, and the change in the weather

heralds her happiness.

In Northanger Abbey the device of using the weather to create

a suitable background for the mood of an event has a special purpose.

The storm which rages on Catherine's first night at the Abbey is not

entirely unexpected or improbable. The month is March, a "sudden

scud of rain driving full in her face" (NA, p.161) had greeted her

arrival, and "the wind had been rising at intervals the whole
 144

afternoon" (NA, p.166). By the time Catherine goes to her bedroom

the tempest fills her with sensations of awe, and she hears the

characteristic sounds of the dreadful situations and horrid scenes

of a Gothic tale. The account of the storm which stimulates her

imagination is an excellent parody of Mrs Radcliffe's style:

"The wind roared down the chimney I the rain beat in torrents against

the windows, and every thing s eemed to speak the awfulness of her

situation" (NA, p.168); "Darkness impenetrable and immoveable filled

the room. A violent gust of wind, rising with sudden fury, added

fresh horror to the moment. catherine trembled from head to foot"

(NA, p.170) . It is a more concentrated and only slightly exaggerated

version of: "Her melancholy was assisted by the hollow sighings of

the wind along the corridor and round the castle. The cheerful blaze

of the wood had long bee n extinguished, and she sat with her eyes

fixed on the dying embers, till a loud gust, that swept through the

corridor, and shook the doors and casements, alarmed her; for its

violence had moved the chair she had placed as a fastening, and the

door leading to the private staircase stood half open . Her curiosity
. 1
and her fears were agal.D awakened. II

Generally speaking, the seasons, as opposed to weather, make

little contribution to the background of the action. There are

references to seasonal changes, as has been noted, to mark the passing

of time, and these seasons bring and remove characters: Willoughby

is in Devonshire for the hunting months, and the winter season draws

all the main characters to London; July takes Tom Bertram away from

Mansfie ld Park for hors e -racing. Jane Austen sometimes observes

1Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho, chap. 18.

 145

traditional literary associations with spring and summer: the day

after Darcy's premature proposal Elizabeth Bennet notices "the verdure

of the early trees" (pp, p.195)--perhaps she is subconsciously in

love; Mr Knightley becomes aware of his feelings for Emma in early

spring and proposes to her on a "tranquil, warm, and brilliant" summer

afternoon (~, p.424); Fanny returns to Mansfield in early summer and

the description of the changes which three months have brought to the

park possibly contains a symbolic promise of Fanny's love and happiness:

"Her eye fell every where on lawns and plantations of the freshest

green; and the trees, though not fully clothed, were in that delightful

state, when farther beauty is known to be at hand, and when, while

much is actually given to the sight, more yet remains for the imagination 11

(MP, pp.446-47) . Although associations of the English countryside

in mid-June do not match the mood of all the characters at the Donwell

Abbey strawberry-picking party, there is a celebratory note in the

description of the house and grounds that accords both with Emma's

pleasant feelings and appreciation as she walks about, and with Mr

Knightley's character. It is wholly appropriate that the man whose

"true gentility" (~, p.358) takes our minds back to Chaucer's Knight

should live in surroundings made beautiful by time and tradition,

and that they should be described as they are "at almost Midsummer"

(~, p.357). Of these five novels Mansfield Park and Emma contain the

most interesting and significant uses of the seasons; and it is in

her last complete novel, Persuasion, that Jane Austen gives to one

of the seasons a thematic importance that was a new development in

her work.
 146

CHAPTER IV

SETTING IN PERSUASION

There is much that is new in Persuasion. Although Jane

Austen completed this work only eleven months before she died of a

severe illness, her creative powers were undiminished. The weak-

nesses which critics find in this novel, and which are possibly due

to Jane Austen's not having revised it in the way that had been her

habit,l do not affect the central concerns; the usual qualities are

present, as well as some new excellences.

Persuasion exhibits the same delighted interest in the follies

and foibles, the virtues and strengths of human nature, the same

convincing picture of ordinary domestic life as Jane Austen knew it,

and the same elegant and skilful use of language as the other novels.

Again we see the central character resolving personal and social

problems; but the attention is so steadily concentrated on Anne

Elliot's feelings and thoughts that other elements are subordinated

to a greater extent than previously to the heroine's experience,

and are interesting mainly in so far as they bear a relation t o her.

Education through love is one of the themes; it is not the heroine,

however, but the hero who has to learn to know himself. Jane Austen

set herself the extremely difficult task of creating an almost

perfect heroine who draws and keeps the reader's interest and

sympathy. For the first time the heroine is fully the moral ideal

1
See pp. 13, 25 above.
 147

of the novel,l and for this reason her point of view coincides most

closely with the narrator's. In addition to this innovation a

completely new type of person appears in Persuasion: the naval

character with strong feelings and sound judgement who, because of

his life at sea, owns no Pember ley nor Donwell Abbey, and thus intro-

duces a new conception of the kind of world in which the heroine will

live after her marriage. There is humour in Persuasion, and irony,

but there is none of the wit and brilliance that characterize. Pride

and Prejudice, nor the kind of sympathetic laughter provoked by comic

characters like Miss Bates and Mr Woodhouse. A.C. Bradley observes

that for the first time in Jane Austen's novels the love-story is a

romance: whereas Elizabeth Bennet's love for Darcy grows out of

esteem and gratitude, Enuna Woodhouse's for Mr Knightley is "more or

less proprietary", and Fanny Price's is a development of childhood

affection, Anne Elliot at nineteen fell "rapidly and deeply in love"

and experienced "a short period of exquisite felicity" (.!:' p.26).2

Jane Austen treats Anne Elliot with sympathy and tenderness, and

moments of poignant sadness are frequent in Persuasion. The pervading

mood is a moving melancholy, and even the final joy is tempered, but
~
not lessened, by the pain and sorrow that . . . gone before. Strong

feeling is not separated from reliable judgement; for the first time

it is, Howard Babb notes, lithe trustworthy agent of moral

perception",3 and such feeling is particularly exemplified in the

character of Anne Elliot. Her fine emotional sensibility enables

1
Fanny Price is the moral ideal of Mansfield Park to a
considerable extent, but less so than Anne Elliot in Persuasion.
2
A.C. Bradley, "Jane Austen", Essays and Studies 2 (1911) :34.
3
Babb, Dialogue, p.238.
 14B

her to respond not only to the people around her but also to her

surroundings . Of all the heroines Anne is most aware of and sensitive

to her environment, and because of this quality in the heroine, Jane

Austen makes greater use of settings in Persuasion than in the

earlier novels.

The function of place, spatial detail and time is generally

much the same as in the other novels. References to the physical

environment, to small objects--both man-made and natural, and to

aspects of time define and illuminate character and contribute to

the impression of verisimilitude. As before, places reflect

characters' disposition, status, feelings and values, but the responses

and attitudes which Jane Austen uses to reveal personality are more

markedly coloured by characters' emotional experiences in and

associations with certain places. The different moral atmospheres

are significant, and the heroine's sense of isolation in the con-

trastive settings is stronger and more important thematically than

in the other novels . Because in all the episodes, whether they take

place in or out of doors, Jane Austen directs the reader's attention

to people and significant spatial detail, her scenes tend to have

the same sense of confined space as a stage scene. Within these

framed settings she again uses the careful positioning of characters

for various narrative purposes. The most striking new features in

the treatment of setting in Persuasion are the near-symbolic function

of landscape, and the use made of associations with the season of

autumn. With regard to the handling of time the most important new

aspect is the weight of the past which burdens the present. Of all

the heroines Anne Elliot is most acutely aware of the connection

between past action and present happiness. The e vents of the novel
 149

span not much more than half a year, but the reader, like the heroine,

is always conscious of what took place eight years previously, and

of the long intervening period. This use of the past consequently

increases the importance of memory to the action and characterization.

The deliberately restricted time scale and settings of persuasion

help shape the structure of the novel, and the sequence of different

settings corresponds to the opening-out of Anne's life and the gradual

return of her hope and chance of happiness.

Persuasion, like Northanger Abbey, is about half the length

of Emma, and the story is organised into two volumes, each with twelve

chapters. It is difficult to estimate how much of the novel is

devoted to setting--five per cent, perhaps, and this small proportion

is sufficient for Jane Austen's purposes. The economical use of

setting emphasizes the significance of its nature and function.

In Volume I the action takes place at Kellynch Hall, the village of

Uppercross and Lyme Regis, and the different moral atmospheres of

these places reflect the expansion and change of Anne Elliot's world.

After she leaves the confining and loveless atmosphere of Kellynch,

each setting that Anne moves into becomes more congenial, and by the

time she arrives in Bath the reader has an impression, gained partly

from the Crofts' few alterations to Kellynch and from the description

of the Harvilles' lodgings at Lyme, of the naval community to which

Anne will eventually belong. Captain Wentworth is in the background

for much of the novel, but his II frank , . . . open-hearted, ... eager

character" (~, p.161) is kept alive by the presence of the Crofts

and the Harvilles, and the places with which they are associated.

The most significant episodes in Volume I are the walk to Winthrop

and the events at Lyme, and Jane Austen's handling of the outdoor
 150

settings and the emotional responses which they evoke constitutes one

of the most important developments of her art in Persuasion. Most of

the action in Volume I I takes place in Bath, and except for Anne

Elliot's and Captain Wentworth's walk up Union Str eet and the gravel

path at the end of the novel, the major scenes are set indoors.

Jane Austen uses the town setting to reflect Anne ' s emotions , but not

to the same extent as in Volume I. We are reminded of the characters

of Sir Walter and Elizabeth Elliot through their attitude to their

house in Bath, but on the whol e there is less of a sense of p l ace in

the second volume. Corresponding to the general move from country to

town, from outdoor to indoor scenes, is the greater prominence of

man-made objects in the Bath episodes. The small scale of Jane

Austen's coherent and manageable worlds, i n which spatial detail is

se l ected carefully and used sparingly, enables her to make apparent

trivia extraordinarily suggesti ve and significant, and in Persuasion

such actions and objects convey and evoke feelings of powerful

intensity.

There is li ttle description of the Elliot estate, Kel lynch

Hall. The few references made to the place by the characte r s suggest

that it i s extensive, elegant and beautiful, and readers have to

imagine for themselves the kind of property it is. These references

also serve to p l ace the opening scenes in a solid world of IIrealityll.

The way a character refers to Ke llynch generally tells one more about

the disposition of the speaker than about the house and grounds .

Sir Walter Elliot's values are made clear in his rejection of Lady

Russel l' s suggestions for retrenchment: "What! Every comfort of life

knocked off ! J ourneys, LondoD , servants , horses, table .... To live no

longer with the decencies even of a p rivate gentleman:" (!:' p.13).

 151

In the conversation about the letting of Kellynch ,. his grand reference

to "the pleasure grounds" (.1::, p.1S) and the emphasis that the
shrubberies are his and the flower garden Elizabeth's reveal his

conceit and his preoccupation with himself and his rank. Sir Walter,

Elizabeth and Mrs Clay leave Kellynch "in very good spirits" (.1::, p.36);
the Baronet feels neither shame at his financial mismanagement nor

regret at leavi.n g his family seat. His concerns are purely for the

outward appearance of social rank, and neither he nor his eldest

daughter has any love for Kellynch on account of its natural beauties

or associations with the past. In contrast to them Anne walks away

from the home, where she has been "nobody" (~, p.5) since her mother's

death thirteen years before, "in a sort of desolate tranquillity"

(.1::, p.36). She believes that "one does not love a place the less for

having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but

suffering" (.1::, p.1S4), and her attachment to Kellynch, despite the

partialities and injustice which she has had to submit to there, is

strong. She dislikes Bath, prefers the country to the town, and

enjoys the natural beauties of the countryside and Kellynch. When

the Elliott~ink of moving, Anne hopes that they will take a small

house in their own neighbourhood so that they may remain near Lady

Russell and Mary and "still have the pleasure of sometimes seeing the

lawns and groves of Kellynch" (.1::, p.14). When it has been settled

that Admiral Croft will rent Kellynch, Anne cools her flushed cheeks

and soothes her agitated feelings by walking in a favourite grove

(possibly made dear to her by its associations with Captain Wentworth

many years before), and says "with a gentle sigh, 'a few months more,

and he, perhaps I may be walking here I" (~, p. 25) .

 152

Anne is glad to go to Uppercross; she will avoid "t he possible

heats of September in all the white glare of Bath", and she will not

forgo "the influence so sweet and so sad of the autumnal months in

the country" (~, p.33). Past experience has taught her that

"a removal from one set of people to another, though at a distance of

only three mil~s, will often include a total change of conversation,

opinion, and ideal!, but she realizes that on this visit she has still

to learn another lesson--"the art of knowing our own nothingness

beyond our own circle" (~, p . 42). Mary and the Musgroves neither feel

any curiosity nor show a sympathetic understanding of what Anne feels

about the family move. In a sense Anne is just as solitary at

Uppercross as she was at Kellynch--perhaps she is more isolated, for

at Uppercross she has no friend like Lady Russell, and, when Captain

Wentworth arrives, circumstances and her own wishes make her withdraw

from company whenever she can. At the same time, however, she is a

sympathetic but reluctant listener to the complaints and confidences

of both families.
N\.t.v.)~ )
The brief authorial description of the . . . houses at Upper cross

indicates the character of the owners. "The mansion of the 'squire,

with its high walls, great gates, and old trees, substantial and

unmodernized" <'~.' p.36) suggests the superior social standing of

the Musgroves in the village, and shows that, like their house,

"the father and mother were in the old English style ll • We learn

further that "Mr . and Mrs. Musgrove were a very good sort of people;

friendly and hospitable, not much educated, and not at all elegant".

As David Cecil notes, Jane Austen's subj e ct is the present-day

Musgroves, and she says just so much about the past as is needed to
 153

1
make us understand the present. She tells us that the Musgroves are

in lIa state of alteration", and shows the difference between the

parents and the "more modern minds and manners II of their children in

a description of an interior of the Great House in which she gives

more particulars than usual and comments ironically and explicitly

on the visible signs of social change. Anne and Mary go to the Great

House "to sit the full half hour in the old-fashioned square parlour,

with a small carpet and shining f l oor, to which the present daughters

of the house were gradually giving the proper air of confusion by a

grand piano forte and a harp , flower-stands and little tables placed

in every direction. Oh ! could the originals of the portraits against

the wainscot, cou ld the gentlemen in brown velvet and the ladies in

blue satin have seen what was going on, have been consclous of such an

overthrow of all order and neatness! The portraits themse lves seemed

to be staring in astonishment" (~, p.40). Uppercross Cottage _

but upon his marriage

Charles Musgrove improved it, and now "with its viranda, French

windows, and other prettinesses" (~, p.36) the house displays a

~
modern and eye-catching exterior suited

to the rank of his wife. Inside, "the faded sofa", li the pretty

l ittle drawing- room" , li the once elegant furniture ... which had been

gradua lly growing shabby, under the influence of four summers and

two children" (~, p.37) suggest the young wife's pride, her con-

ventional taste, the state of her marriage, and her inability to

lDavid Cecil, "A Note on Jane Austen ' s Scenery ", in The
yine Art of Reading and other ·Literary Studies (London: Constab l e
& Co., 1957), p.128.
 154

cope with her children. Although the Musgroves' interests and

feelings do not extend much beyond their own family concerns, they are

warm-hearted, kind people; the atmosphere of the Great House has none

of the chill formality and uncomfortable elegance of Kellynch, and

Annels spirits benefit from the change of place. She realizes "that

every little social commonwealth should dictate its own matters of

discourse", and, understanding what is right, wise and considerate,

she determines lito clothe her imagination, her memory, and all her

ideas in as much of Uppercross as possible" (~, p.43).

Anne's memory and imagination, however, cannot help directing

her heart to Kellynch again when the day comes for the Crofts to take

possession. She alone thinks of the "beloved home made over to others;

all the precious rooms and furniture, groves, and prospects,

beginning to own other eyes and other limbs!" '!:, pp.47 - 48). Mary,

when she by chance remembers the date, predictably affects to be

depressed by the event, and later, on returning from a visit to the

Crofts, is lIin a very animated, comfortable state of imaginary

agitation" (~, p.48). This contrast between the sisters' attitudes

to Kellynch points the difference between Anne's warm and tender

heart and Mary's unfeeling, selfish pride, and, more generally, is an

instance of Jane Austen's frequent juxtaposition in Persuasion of

true and false emotions.

The changes that the Crofts make at Kellynch reveal as much

about the Elliots as they do about these kind, straightf orward, open-

hearted naval people. Admiral Croft's few improvements--moving the

place f or umbrellas, altering the laundry door--and his comment on

the smoking breakfast-room chimney indicate that Sir Walter and

Elizabeth set more store by the appearance and grandeur of Kellynch

 155

than by its convenience and comfort, as well as showing the Admiral's

sensible, tolerant and practical nature. His removing some of the

large mirrors from the dressing-room humorously recalls for us Sir

Walter's vanity. It is clear to the reader as well as to Anne that

Kellynch has passed into better hands than its owners '. With the

Crofts there come into Anne's life , as Mary Lascelles notes,l

fresher airs that blow from a much wider world than that of the

trivial domestic concerns of Uppercross. Mrs Croft has crossed the

Atlantic four times and been once to the East Indies, and there

seems to be a connection between the spaciousness of her world and

her generosity of heart and breadth of mind. No climate disagrees

with her, and as long as she is with her husband, she is happy. Her

pleasure in her travels and in life derives chiefly from her love

for her husband, and the only time that she ever really suffered in

body and mind was when she was separated from him. The main f unction

of her talk to Mrs Musgrove about her life i s the bearing that it

has on Anne's experience . Jane Austen contrives to win the reader's

sympathy and admiration for her good and gentle heroine by telling

Anne ' s story and describ ing her feelings indirectly. When Mrs Croft

talks about the "perpetual fright" (~, p.71) that she suffered on

the one occasion when the Admiral was at sea and she on shore, our

minds turn to Anne's long and unhappy separation from Captain

Wentworth. His own partly flippant account of the possibility of

his old sloop's being lost at sea has the same function; the narrator,

not Anne, calls attention to her unnoticed shudderings. Such naval

talk also serves to depi ct the life of a sailor's wife and present

some of the values of the world in which Anne will live.

1
Mary Lascelles, Art, p.182.
 156

This is the function, too, of the description of the Harvilles'

lodgings in Lyme. We see Captain Harville's small house with Anne's

eyes, and her emotional response to its ingenious furnishings and

homely atmosphere evinces the special significance that the place

has for her . Like other houses in the novels, it is an extension of

the occupant's personality, and before giving an impression of the

interior, Jane Austen describes Captain Harville's genial, hospitable

and friendly character. He shows "so much attachment to Captain

wentworth" in his invitation to the whole party, and such lIa bewitching

charm" in his uncommon degree of hospitality that Anne thinks with

deep regret that IItbese would have been all my friends", and has lito

struggle against a great tendency to lowness". The brief description

of the house, relatively full, but as usual in this author consisting

of generalities rather than particulars, substantiates Anne's

impression of the Harvilles' happiness.

On quitting the Cobb, they all went indoors with their new
friends, and found rooms so small as none but those who invite
from the heart could think capable of accommodating so many.
Anne had a moment's astonishment on the subject herself; but it
was soon lost in the pleasanter feelings which sprang from
the sight of all the ingenious contrivances and nice arrange-
ments of Captain Harville, to turn the actual space to the best
possible account, to supply the deficiencies of lodging-
house furniture, and defend the windows and doors against the
winter storms to be expected. The varieties in the fitting-up
of the rooms, where the common necessaries provided by the
owner, in the common indifferent plight, were contrasted with
some few articles of a rare species of wood, excellently
worked up, and with something curious and valuable from all
the distant countries Captain Harville had visited, were more
than amusing to Anne: connected as it all was with his
profession, the fruit of its labours, the effect of its
influence on his habits, the picture of repose and domestic
happiness it presented, made it to her a something more, or
less, than gratification.
(~, p.9B)

The passage confirms the idea, already shown negatively in "the

sameness and the elegance, the prosperity and the nothingness" of

 157

the Elliots' life (~, p.9), that virtue and happiness may flourish in

this new rootless naval world of uncertainty, danger and mobility.l

Another setting that confirms qualities of character and

values is the Elliots' house in Bath. The presence of Mary Musgrove

in the Upper cross and Lyme episodes has kept the Elliot pride in our

minds, but when Sir Walter and Elizabeth re-enter the novel after nine

chapters, the reader needs to be reminded of their vanity and social

snobbery, and Jane Austen does this by briefly showing their attitude

to their house. " [It ] was undoubtedly the best in Camden- place;

their drawing-rooms had many decided advantages over all the others

which they had either seen or heard of; and the superiority was not

less in the style of the fitting-up, or the taste of the furniture"

(~, p.l37). (Contemporary readers would have known that the terrace
2
houses in Bath were elegant but cramped. ) Anne cannot wonder but

she does sigh over the knowledge that "her father should feel no

degradation in his change; should see nothing to regret in the duties

and dignity of the resident land-holder; should find so much to be

vain of in the littlenesses of a town; and she must sigh, and smile,

and wonder too, as Elizabeth threw open the folding-doors, and

walked with exultation from one drawing-room to the other, boasting

1
Chapman, in a footnote to page 125 of Facts and Problems,
quotes a remark made in a letter by Sir Francis Austen: "I rather
think parts of Captain Harville's character were drawn from myself;
at least the description of his domestic habits, tastes and occupations
have a considerable resemblance to mine." We read of some of these
domestic interests in the Letter"s : in 1796 Frank Austen was delighted
to learn how to use a lathe (!;, p . 8) and "turned a very nice little
butter-churn for Fanny" (!;, p .10); and eleven years later he was
"making very nice fringe for the Drawingroom-Curtains" (!:., p . 184) of
the Southampton house that he and his wife shared with his mother and
sisters.
2
W.A. Craik, Jane Austen in Her Time (London: Nelson, 1969).
p . 151.
 158

of their space, at the possibility of that woman, who had been mistress

of Kellynch Hall, finding extent to be proud of between two walls,

perhaps thirty feet asunder" (!:' p.138).

Anne's love of Kellynch and preference for the country,

especially "her own dear country" (!:., p.33), are clear here as she

ponders over her sister's and father's satisfaction with the ir empty

life. Like her creator, she prizes the values and virtue s e stablished

by time and tradition, and associated with the country rather than the
1
town. Anne's dislike of Bath, however, is more than a general

distaste for the "1ittlenes ses of a town"; she had been sent to

school in Bath after her mother's death and had spent a winter there

with Lady Russell after her break with Captain Wentworth, and her

memories of the place are painful. As she and Lady Russell ente r the

city on a wet January afternoon, Anne, catching "the first dim view of

the extensive buildings, smoking in rain", looks back "with fond regret,

to the bustles of Uppercross and the seclusion of Ke llynch". Jane

Austen gives no description of Bath--readers can imagine the well-known

buildings and streets--but in an unusually sensuously d e scriptive

sentence she gives particulars of the noises and movements that distress

Anne. She and Lady Russell drive through "the long course of streets

from the Old Bridge to Camden-place, amidst the dash of other carriages,

the heavy rumble of carts and drays, the bawling of newsmen, muffin-men

and milk-men, and the ceaseles s cl i nk of pattens ... " (!:' p. 135) . In

contrast to Anne Lady Russell likes Bath, and the narrator makes a

point of being fair to Lady Russell in her difference of tas te. The

tone of the passage telling us that, so far from being disturbed by

1
See p.7 above.
 159

these noises of the town, Lady Russell regards them as part of the

quiet cheerfulness of her winter pleasures i s good-humoured and

tolerant. Lady Russell is a good woman, of sound ability and strict

integrity, and extremely fond of Anne. But she has limitations, and

her attitude to Bath to some extent reveals her "prejudices on the

side of ancestryll, her "value for rank and consequence II (~, p.l 1),

and her emotional insensitivity. She has not Anne's quality of mind

or intuitive insight into character, and she shows this lack of under-

standing in thinking that Anne's dislike of Bath is "a prejudice and

a mistake" (!:' p.14), and that the enlargement of society will impr ove

her health and spirits. In Volume I, as has been shown, each of

Anne's moves takes her into a setting that is more sympathetic than

the previous one and reflects the nature of the group of people who

live there. In Volume II most of the characters converge on Bath,

and this neutral ground, as it were, where all kinds of people may
1
plausibly meet, becomes what each character makes of it. As we

have seen, Jane Austen carefully places the characters in appropriate

2
areas of the town, and shows their adaptation to their settings.

Sir Walter and Elizabeth, for example, turn their house, in its

"lofty , dignified situation" (!:' p.137), into another Kellynch. The

Crofts continue their habit of making a happy home for themselves

quite independent of their surroundings; Admiral Croft tells Anne

that Bath suits him and his wife very well:

We are always meeting with some old friend or other; the

streets ful l of them every morning; sure to have plenty of
chat; and then we get away from them all, and shut ourselves
into our lodgings, and draw in our chairs , and are as snug as

1
See p.66 above.
2
See pp.44-45 above.
 160

if we were at Kellynch, ay, or as we used to be even at

North Yarmouth and Deal. We do not like our lodgings here
the worse, I can tell you, for putting us in mind of those
we first had at North Yarmouth. The wind blows· through
one of the cupboards just in the same way.
(~, p.170)

And Anne is able to separate herself from her family's social act-

ivities and interests; while they assiduously push their good fortune

in Laura Place, she calls on a former governess and renews her

acquaintance with Mrs Smith.

In telling us that Anne dreads the heat and glare of Bath and

grieves at the thought of missing autumn in the country, Jane Austen

explicitly contrasts the unpleasantness of a town and the sweetness

of the countryside,l and Anne's thoughts here remind the reader of

Fanny Price's similar reflections and regrets at missing spring at

2
Mansfield. The symbolic suggestion of the trees in new leaf in

Mansfield Park, and the sympathy between Emma's melancholy feelings

3
and the cold, stormy July weather have already been discussed. In

Persuasion Jane Austen makes a similar but more sustained use of the

seasons and landscape to express an emotional state, and she uses

this near-metaphor to elucidate one of the central themes of the

novel. On several occasions in Persuasion youth and beauty--and,

by implication, love--are conventionally linked with spring, and,

more particularly, Anne's melancholy and loss of hope with autumn.

Anne's pleasure in the sweet sadness of autumn in the country has

already been mentioned. On being complimented on her improved

1For a d·1SCUSS10n
. 0f Jane Austen's attitude towards town
and country see pp.67-69 above.
2
See pp.70-7l above.
3
See pp.14 3 , 145 above.
 161

looks when she returns from Upper cross and Lyme, Anne silently hopes

that she is "to be blessed with a second spring of youth and beauty"

(~, p.124). But the most striking instance of this figurative use

of the seasons is the episode of the walk from Uppercross to Winthrop.

Though November, it is "glorious weather", but Anne cannot share

Captain Wentworth's energetic kind of enjoyment. She is acutely

conscious of his walking with Louisa and Henrietta, and tries to

keep out of his way and remain with Charles and Mary. The sense of

isolation, the resignation and sadness that she feels and does not

show or outwardly express, are rendered through the references to

the autumnal landscape in free indirect style and authorial comment in

such a way that, although the setting highlights Anne's isolation and

mood, there is no suggestion of self-pity or excessive sentiment:

"Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day,

from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves

and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the

thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn, that season of

peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tender-

ness, that season which has drawn from every poet, worthy of being

read, some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling. She

occupied her mind as much as possible in such like musings and

quotations ..• " (~, p. 84). Anne hears Captain Wentworth enthusiast-

ically commend Louisa for expressing a total and romantic devotion to

a hypothetical lover, and understanding the application to herself,

she cannot immediately fall into a quotation again. TIThe sweet

scenes of autumn were for a while put by--unless some tender sonnet,

fraught with the apt analogy of the declining year, with declining

happiness, and the images of youth and hope, and spring, all gone
 162

together, blessed her memory" (£.' p. 85). As Anne's mind understandably

dwells on the sadness rather than on the sweetness of autumn, the

irony in the use of "tender", IIfraught", Itall gone together", gently

reproves her self-indulgence, and reminds the reader of Jane Austen's

earlier and cruder mockery of heroines who read poetry "to supply

their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable and so

soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful lives" (NA, p.1S).

The brisk tone of the narrator in the passage describing the "large

enclosures, where the ploughs at work, and the fresh-made path spoke

the farmer, counteracting the sweets of poetical despondence, and

meaning to have spring againll (!:' p.85) also mildy criticises Anne,

and at the same time there is a hint of her second spring. It is

significant that in this passage, when Anne is walking despondently

and virtually alone, when her spirits and hopes are at their lowest

ebb, and yet, unknown to her, her fortunes have taken a turn for the

better with Captain wentworth's learning of her refusing Charles

Musgrove,l the phrasing to describe part of the setting--the "gradual

ascent,,2_- is the same as in the scene of Anne's reunion with Captain

Wentworth, when she walks with him up Union Street, and both are

even "more exquisitely happy" (£.' p.240) than they had been eight and

a half years previously.

Barbara Hardy analyses Jane Austen's treatment of Anne's

feelings in these passages to show how, in her opinion, they resemble

a romantic ode; how Jane Austen, being a novelist not a poet, places

in her rhapsodies "the inner and outer experience typical of the ode

1Moler makes this point in Artof ·Allusion, p.213.

2see Persuasion, pp.8S, 241 .

 163

in character, marking the confines of personal experience and the

larger world that lies outside that experience". Barbara Hardy con-

eludes her discussion: "This nearly lyric episode is important not

just as a statement of theme, but as a reflection of feeling and a

moral expansion of the emotional state. It places Anne in relation

to her as-yet-unanticipated happy ending, but goes beyond this to

bring in the world beyond poetry, and beyond passion. It involves

the larger world in which we live and feel, not in apartness. It

uses Anne's passions, then expands to leave those passions behind.

But its enlargement is responsive to the sense of sympathy and

community which Anne consistently shows, generous, benevolent, and

responsible as she is.

n1

This poetic use of nature to convey mood is an important

feature and means of narration in Persuasion. A. Walton Litz

suggests that Jane Austen devised this new method of expressing the

heroine's consciousness as a solution to the problem that she set

2
herself in isolating Anne. Of its origins he writes:

The sources of this new quality in Jane Austen's fiction

must have been complex, but one point seems obvious. More
than has been generally realized or acknowledged, she was
influenced by the Romantic poetry of the early nineteenth
century. Persuasion and Sanditon contain a number of
references to contemporary poets, to Byron, Wordsworth, and
especially Scott. And although Jane Austen's explicit use of
these authors may be for the purposes of satire, her late
prose reflects their influence. Nature has ceased to be a
mere backdrop; landscape is a structure of feeling which
can express, and also modify, the minds of those who view it .
In their quiet and restrained fashion, Jane Austen's last
works are part of the new movement in English literature.

1
See Barbara Hardy, A Reading, pp.56-58.
2
Karl Kroeber make s the same point. See Styles in Fictional
Structure : The Art of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), p.83.
 164

She has learned that the natural setting can convey, more
surely than any abstract vocabulary, the movements of an
individual imagination. 1

The well-known paragraph describing Lyme and its environs also illus-

trates this new attitude towards landscape--and many critics find it '

an uncharacteristically unsatisfactory piece of writing, an

attitude with which I disagree. Yasmine Gooneratne, for example,

considers that "the passage resembles nothing more than the des-

criptive prose of travel-guides to well known beauty spots", and she

cannot see "what functional role is played by this particular passage

in Persuasion, with its superfluity of irrelevant detail ll ;2 Mudrick

finds the descriptions of Lyme lithe more revealing in their awkward

and breathless, their almost travel-book style,,;3 and, while Mary

Lascelles does not find the passage unsatisfactory, she doubts

whether Jane Austen intended to show us more of Lyme than the visitors

from Upper cross could have seen, or whether she knew she had done
o 4
th 1.s.

Certainly Jane Austen generally presents setting through a

character's consciousness. But the authorial account of Lyme and the

surrounding country describes the kind of natural beauty and refers

to the kind of reflection on such scenery that we have already seen

Anne Elliot enjoying, and the reader feels that Anne's views on

these scenes would be similar. Because of the closeness of the

1
A. Walton Litz, Jane Austen : A Study of her Artistic
Development (London: Chatto & Windus, 1965), p.153.
2 Yasm~ne
°
Goonera t ne, Jane Austen (London: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1970), p.188.

3 Mudrick, Irony, p.224.

4
Mary Lascelles, Art, p.183, n.2.
 165

narrator's and heroine's viewpoints throughout Persuasion, Jane

Austen, while introducing an unusually personal element into the

description of Lyme, manages at the same time to suggest through the

account the character and state of mind of her heroine. Thus,

although Anne does not visit all the places described, the passage is

not irrelevant to Jane Austen's concerns.

The first part of the description is what the Uppercross party

see as they drive down the long hill and walk to the sea: " ... the

remarkable situation of the town, the principal street almost hurrying

into the water, the walk to the Cobb, skirting round the pleasant

little bay, which in the season is animated with bathing machines and

company, the Cobb itself, its old wonders and new improvements, with

the very beautiful line of cliffs stretching out to the east of the

town .... " The second part of the passage describes the immediate

environs of Lyme:

The scenes in its neighbourhood, Charmouth . with its high

grounds and extensive sweeps of country, and still more
its sweet retired bay, backed by dark cliffs, where frag-
ments of low rock among the sands make it the happiest
spot for watching the flow of the tide, for sitting in
unwearied conternplation;--the woody varieties of the
cheerful village of Up Lyme , and, above all, Pinny, with
its green chasms between romantic rocks; where the
scattered forest trees and orchards of luxuriant growth
declare that many a generation must have passed away
since the first partial falling of the cliff prepared the
ground for such a state, where a scene so wonderful and
so lovely is exhibited, as may more than equal any of the
resembling scenes of the far - famed Isle of Wight: these
places must be visited, and visited again, to make the
worth of Lyme understood.
Ci:'-, pp. 95-96)

It was these attractions which Captain Wentworth told his friends of

at Uppercross, and which prompted in them an earnest desire to see

the place for themselves. This is one minor function of the passage.
 166

Purposeless travelling about in Jane Austen i s suspect;1 it is a

symptom of the unsound values of a Mrs Elton: "You would be amazed

to hear how my brother, Mr Suckling, someti mes fl i es about. You wi ll

hardly believe me--but twice in one week he and Mr Bragge went to

London and back agai n with four horses" (.1': , p. 306). More important

is the special atmosphere that thi s unusual description by Jane Austen

gives to Lyme; its qualities heighten the effect of what happens there.

For both Anne and Captain wentworth Lyme is a place of discovery.

There is something about the sea--Henrietta quotes Dr Shirley as

sayi ng- - t hat makes one fee l young again, and the fine sea breeze

restores the b l oom and freshness of Anne's youth. She , havi ng thought

of herself as. faded and altered in l ooks , becomes conscious of her

personal attraction--even for Captain Wentworth. She also discovers

that i t is to her that he turns for help and advice in the crisis of

Louisa's accident. It is here, too, that Captain Wentworth learns

several lessons, and begins to understand himself: Mr Elliot's

passi ng admiration for Anne rouses him to noti ce her looks, and her

behaviour after Louisa ' s fa ll makes hi m appreciat e the "perfect

excell ence 11 of her mind. It was at Lyme, he later expl a ins to Anne,

that "he had learnt to distinguish between the steadiness of princip l e

and the obstinacy of self-wil l, between the darings of heedlessness

and the resolution of a coll ected mind . There, he had seen, every

thing to exalt in his estimat i on the woman he had l ost, and there

begun to deplore the pride , the folly, the madness of resentment,

which had kept him from trying to regain her when thrown in his way"

(~ , p.242). The intensity of the emotions that both characters

1page makes this general point in respect of characters in

Mansfield Park in Jane Aus ten' s Achi evement, p.60.
 167

experience in Lyme is increased by the unique treatment of their

surroundings. Nowhere else does Jane Austen suggest to this extent

her own pleasure and delight in l andscape as in this description of

the countryside round Lyme: here , words like "sweet" -

, 1 "happiest" ,
"c heerful ", "wonderfu l" I II lovely" are reserved for moments of

deep feeling and are unusual in her writing; so also is the use of as

many adjectives as there are in the paragraph; and so is the use of

the word "romantic", to which Jane Austen generally gives the

eighteenth-century meaning of "extravagan t ll

or IIfoolishly unrealistic".2

Di scuss ing some misconceptions about Jane Austen and about her style

--one of which is that she is traditionally regarded as an anti-

Romantic, Page cites the description of Lyme as an example of her

"sensitive response to the beauty of landscape and [ her] skill in

conveying such feelings in language", and concludes:

Some of the ideas of this passage are remarkably similar

to those of the ear lie r Romantic poe ts: the sense of the
passing of time, the taste for seclusion and for 'sitting
in unwearied contemp lation', the stress on first-hand
experience and on the va lue of r evisiting a scene, are
essentially Wordsworthian. Furthermore, the language is
in p l aces c lose to that of Romantic poetry: not only the
phrase 'unweari ed contemplation ', wh i ch might have come
straight from the Lyrical Ballads, but the epithets
sweet, wonderful, lovely , and the description of 'gree n
chasms between romantic rocks ' with its striking echo of
Coleridge's Kubla Khan. 3
The effect of the description of t he landscape which excited Jane

Austen in this way is that, at the beginning of the episode set in

1
J ane Austen also uses "sweet" in this traditional way in Ermna,
p. 360 : "It was a sweet view--sweet to the eye and the mind."
2
Page, Language, p. ll .

3 Ibid ., pp.ll-12.
 168

Lyme, it suggests that the effect of natural beauty on the spirit is

creative and restorative.

The setting of some indoor scenes in Persuasion is not des-

cribed at all. Any detail, for example, of the room in which Sir

Walter and Mr Shepherd discuss the letting of Kellynch, of the

drawing-room in which Anne first sees Captain Wentworth again, of

the confectioner's shop where they first meet in Bath, would be

unnecessary for Jane Austen's purposes. In the first of these episodes

the chief function of the dialogue is to launch the plot, a few

references to Kellynch confirm characteristics of the speakers, and

the interior action which takes place in Anne Elliot's mind has not

yet started. When Anne and Captain Wentworth meet again after eight

years, we are told that they are in the drawing-room of Uppercross

Cottage, but Anne is so overwhelmed by her feelings that she is hardly

conscious of wh at is going on around her and registers only that the

room is "full of persons and voices" (!:.' p. 59) ; all that matters is

Anne's awareness of one presence in the room. For the same reason,

when she sees Captain Wentworth in Bath, we need to know only that

rain has sent her party into Molland's, and that she is sitting by

the window, because, again, after she sees him in the street "for a

few minutes she saw nothing before her. It was all confusion. She

was lost..... (E., p. 175). When Captain Wentworth enters the shop, the

restricted space places him at close quarters to Elizabeth Elliot,

and Anne sees that they recognize each other, that Elizabeth will

not acknowledge him, and that he seems to expect her acknowledgement.

An exact explanation of where people are in a room in relation

to each other and to furniture is a means of narration that Jane

Austen probably learned from her efforts at writing plays and from
 169

other theatrical experiences. She u ses this dramatic technique in

Persuasion to make action convincing and to build up to climaxes.

In the scene when the younger Musgrove boy, "a remarkable stout,

forward child, of two years old" (~, p.79), climbs on to Anne's back,

Jane Austen carefully places the characters at certain points in the

room in order to prepare for the small climax of Captain Wentworth's

"kindness in stepping forward to [ Anne's ] relief" (~, p.80): the

little invalid is on the sofa, Charles Hayter is seated near the table,

Captain Wentworth is at the window, and Anne is kneeling at the sofa

with her back to the two men. Jane Austen makes Captain Wentworth's

action natural and convincing by keeping him standing and walking

about, and putting Charles Hayter firmly in a chair with a newspaper;

in fact, she mentions Captain Wentworth and the window four times.

The incident is a "trifle" I but it takes Anne Ita long application of

solitude and reflection" (~, p.81) to recover from her disordered

feelings and painful agitation. It is Jane Austen's careful writing

to scale that makes such detail so powerfully suggestive. At this

early stage in the renewal of Captain Wentworth's love for Anne,

when she deduces that "her conversation [ is] the last of his wants"

(~, p.80), Jane Austen, by emphasizing the characters' positions in

the room, contrives to obscure Captain wentworth's motives from Anne,

and therefore from the reader.

The reader, however, has a wider viewpoint than Anne and

understands more than she does in the later scene whe~ sitting near

a hedgerow on the hill above Winthrop, she overhears the conversation

between Captain Wentworth and Louisa. Anne's isolation, her emotions

and experiences--incidents such as when, after she has been playing

the piano for dancing at the Musgroves ' , Captain Wentworth addresses
 170

her with cold formality and restraint--all these limit her field of

vision, and less of what Mary Lascelles calls the "subterranean

pattern" 1 indicating the gradual change of Captain Wentworth's feelings

for her is apparent to Anne than it is to the reader. We also have

an advantage over her because, in one of the two short episodes

which are exceptions to the consistent point of view in the novel,

both the narrator and Captain Wentworth tell us something about his
2
feelings. In the hedgerow scene the setting makes the action probable:

the precise placing of Anne on the "nice seat ... on a dry sunny bank,

under the hedge-row, in which she had no doubt of their still being",

and of Captain Wentworth and Louisa "in the hedge - row, behind her,

as if making their way back, along the rough, wild sort of channel,
3
down the centre" (.!:' p.87), makes it natural that Anne should be

able to hear them talking and should observe the pause and questions

that follow Louisa's information that her brother Charles had wanted

to marry Anne, but without the benefit of the reader's greater

understanding of Wentworth's state of mind.

1
Mary Lascelles, Art, p.20S .
2
Mary Lascelles, Art, p.204, believes that these two passages
are an oversight on Jane Austen ' s part. But the reader, who share s
Anne's anxiety to know what Frederick Wentworth's f e elings are,
welcomes the first passage (.!:' pp.61-62) which ends a chapter and is
not a jarring transition. Had she revised Persuasion Jane Austen
might have eliminated the second, the fifteen lines of chatter among
the ladies in Molland's (.!:' pp.177-78) , which serve only to reinforce
Captain Wentworth's false impression of the relationship between
Anne and Mr Elliot.
3
James Edward Austen-Leigh in the Memoir, p.286, gives a
description of a Hampshire hedgerow. It is "an irregular border of
copse-wood and timber, often wide enough to contain within it a
winding footpath, or a rough cart track".
 171

Anne's lIinteresting, almost too interesting!' conversation

with Captain Wentworth before the concert is also made possible by

the position in which she finds herself in the rOOID. Sir Walter's

party arrive early and, waiting for Lady Dalrymple, "they took their

station by one of the fires" . When Captain Wentworth unexpectedly

enters, Anne ~'was the nearest to him, and making yet a little advance,

she instantly spoke" , and "her gentle 'How do you do?' brought him

out of the straight line to stand near her, and make enquiries in

return, in spite of the formidable father and sister in the back-

ground" (!'.' p.181). This placing allows Anne and Captain Wentworth

to talk freely and the Elliots coolly to acknowledge his presence.

The disturbing background to the i r conversation--"all the various

noises of the room, the almost ceasless slam of the door, and cease-

less buzz of persons walking through" (!'.' p.183) --serves by contrast

to heighten Anne's inner silence and private joy. When Lady

Dalrymple arrives, Anne finds herself necessarily separated from

Captain Wentworth. Fully preoccupied with "exquisite, though agitated

sensations" (!'.' p.184) after hearing his opinion of Louisa Musgrove

and his feelings as to a first strong attachment, Anne sees nothing

of the brilliancy around her in the concert room. Seated on the

foremost bench of the t wo taken by her party, and between Mr Elliot

and Colonel Wallis, she now has her attention occupied by the music

and her cousin. On hearing Sir Walter and Lady Dalrymple talking

about Captain Wentworth: she sees him "standing among a cluster of

men at a little distance". When she looks again, he has moved away,

but "he could not have come nearer to her if he would; she was so

surrounded and shut in" (~, p.188). The unproductive interval over,

"benches [ are] reclaimed and repossessed", and Anne's anxiety

 172

increases. When her party resettle themselves on the benches, the

changes are favourab l e to her, and scheming a little like "the

inimitable Miss Larolles", 1 Anne finds herself "at the very end of the

bench before the concert closed " with I'a vacant space at hand"

(~, p.189). But Mr Elliot is near enough to demand her attention

just when Captain Wentworth is about to sit next to her. By this

careful arrangement of people Jane Austen shows us where the characters

concerned are set by chance or strategy, and this positioning makes

Anne realize that Captain Wentworth loves her and is jealous of

Mr Elliot.

In the climactic episode at the White Hart Inn a s i mi lar

emphasis on the positions of the five people in the lar ge room makes

probable the two overheard conversations and Captain Wentworth's

writing and gi ving the letter to Anne. When, having been delayed by

rain, she arrives at the inn, Anne finds Mrs Croft talking to Mrs

Musgrove and Captain Harville to Captain Wentworth. She has to wait

the return of Mary and Henrietta, Captain Wentworth writes a letter

for Captain Harville , and the two women continue talking. Jane Austen

makes it clear that Anne, a lone as usual in a group and feeling that

she does not belong to their conversation, is seated near enough to

Mrs Croft and Mrs Musgrove to hear their opinions on uncertain and long

engagements, and that Captain Wentworth, "nearly turning his back

lMiss Larolles, a character in Fanny Burney's Cecilia,

explains to Cecilia in the interval of a concert how she "sat at the
outside on purpose to speak to a person or two ... ; for if one sits
on the inside there I s no speaking to a creature ... " (Book IV,
Chapter 6). Chapman (Persuasion, p.295) and Kinsley (Persuasion,
p.479) erroneously cite Book IV, Chapter 2 for this reference.
 173

on them all" (!:, p.230), hears the conversation, too. When Anne,

beckoned to by Captain Harville, moves across to a window, she thinks

that Captain wentworth cannot hear her and his friend discussing the

comparative constancy of men and women, but that he is able to hear

her low-spoken words is made plain by his position in the room and

by her being able to hear his pen drop. Such brief explanations as:

"the window at which [captain Harville ] stood was at the other end of

the room from where the two ladies were sitting, and though nearer to

Captain Wentworth's table, not very near" (!'.' pp.231-32), "it was

nothing more than his pen had fallen down" (!'.' p.233), "she had only

time, however, to move closer to the table where he had been writing"

(!'.' p.236), and "Mrs. Musgrove had little arrangements of her own at
her own table" (~, p.237) make the incidents of this moving scene

completely convincing. Jane Austen was not satisfied with her first

attempt at the dramatic and emotional climax which precipitates the

resolution of Persuasion--nor, having the second version with which

to compare it, are we. There are many weaknesses which show it to

be inferior to the final version, described by Southam in his study

of the literary manuscripts as "a passage of extraordinary beauty,

1
unequalled in her other works". As regards the different settings

southam comments on the atmosphere of outward calm and spaciousness

of the White Hart Inn, which contrasts with the confusion and excite-

ment of events which threw Anne and Captain Wentworth together in

the Admiral's house. He then makes a general comment on Jane Austen's

technique, which is relevant here:

The cancelled chapters are our only direct evidence for

Jane Austen's method of composition in the completed novels.

1
Southam, Manuscripts, p.92.
 174

In chapter 10 her structural technique is at an important

moment of development as she experiments, at first to fail ,
with the crucial scene, a climax and resolution, which
must raise the dramatic and emotional intensity, and then l e ad
on to the moments of re lief and peace. Making her mistakes in
the first version Jane Austen went on to recast the chapter,
visualizing the scene with great clarity. To place people
within the enclosed setting of a room, at rest or in movement,
to record their conversation, and to concentrate above all on
a delicate sense of relationship, their awareness of one
another, spoken and unspoken, these are the feats of her art,
here and in the other works. 1

The world of Persuasion is filled with a number of small objects,

some natural, most man-made; they "seem to be present in greater and

freer abandon in this novel, lying around, as objects do, in a casual

clutter as part of the ordinary scenes and surfaces of life". 2 The

general nature and function of such spatial detail is discussed in

3
Chapter III, but, although the principal uses of small objects are the

same--to create a realistic fictional wor ld, to animate the action and

advance the plot, and to define character, there are some differences

and innovations in Jane Austen's treatment of this aspect of setting

in Persuasion. For instance, there is no giving and receiving of

presents as in ~--the one reference to a present is Elizabeth

Elliot's "happy thought" (~ , p.10) of taking nothing to Anne from

London as one of her two economies--and there i s no emphasis on the

association of presents with people as in Mansfield Park. A positive

development is the greater use of symbolism, or near-symbolism, that

Jane Austen makes, still very delicately and sparingly, of a few

objects that are striking and memorable because of their significance

in this respect. One reason for this development lies in the nature

lIbid . , p.98.
2
Barbara Hardy, A Reading, p .164.
3
See pp.97-100 above.
 175

of the hero and heroine; Captain wentworth's turn of mind and kind

of wit find express.ion in analogYi and Anne Elliot's sensitivity to

her surroundings is conveyed through her response to natural scenery_

Most of the miscellaneous domestic objects mentioned in

Persuasion reveal or confirm character in some way. The method and

effects are never laboured; casually introduced, only named and

seldom described, possessions remind us of the qualities of their

owners. Sir Walter's favourite volume, his carriage horses, his large

looking-glasses suggestively convey that "vanity of person and of

situation" (!'.' p.4) is the beginning and end of his character; that he

and Elizabeth have no spiritual or intellectual life and no love for

Kellynch is made clear by their leaving Anne to make a duplicate

catalogue of Sir Walter's books and pictures and to organise Elizabeth's

plants; the mirrors and china that Elizabeth is proud to show Mary

and Charles in Camden Place reflect the brittle, fragile glitter of

their shallow lives. Like her father and Elizabeth, Mary is also

materialistic; things matter to these Elliots for what they indicate

about status and rank, and it is for this reason that, when he is in

financial difficulties, Sir Walter is unable to retrench and change

to a simpler style of living at Kellynch. Mr Elliot is mercenary

rather than acquisitive; his unequal marriage brought him a fortune,

and, once rich, he schemes for rank and consequence. Anne is not

often associated with her possessions, but a single, brief reference

(!,r 36)
to her books and musicAcontrasts the quality of her mind and taste

wi th her father I s and sister IS. Anne I s having "no knowledge of the

harp" (!'.' p.47) makes the same sort of distinction between her and

the Musgroves. The harp, linked as it is with Mary Crawford and

Mrs Elton, is certainly, as Tave states, "the instrument of false

 176

1
elegance" in Mansfield Park and Emma, but whether Jane Austen intends

to attribute the values of a Mary Crawford or Mrs Elton to Louisa and

Henrietta seems doubtful . In Persuasion the harp, like the grand

piano, serves to indicate that the elder Musgroves are "not at all

elegant " (~, p.40) I and that, while being "very amiabl e , sweet-

tempered [girls] " (!:' p.182), Louisa and Henrietta have not Anne's

"more elegant and cultivated mind " (!:' p.41). 2 The fullest account

of a character ' s possessions is that given of the wooden articles,

valuable curios, bookshelves, tops, netting-needles and pins, and

fishing-net made by Captain Harville. These items do more than tell

us of the Captain's habits of industry and usefulness; they indicate

the peace of mind and happiness, the values and the way of life that

belong to IIthat profession which is, if possible, more disti nguished

in its domestic virtues than in its national importance II (~, p.252).

Jane Austen does not generally associate her heroines with

ob j ects. Fanny Pr~ce

. .18 exceptlona
. 1.3 Like Fanny, Anne Elliot is

isolated, lonely, and endowed with a warm heart, keen sensibilities

and the powers of memory and imagination, and, as she did with

Fanny, Jane Austen uses Anne's sensitive response to her surroundings

as a method of characterization and narration. But Anne is not

presented through her attitude to her possessions, as Fanny is; in

1
Tave, Some Words, p.258.

2page explains that the quality of elegance "entails for

Jane Austen far more than smartness, sophistication, and social
assurance: -if we may come to know the word through the company it
keeps, its yoke-fellows suggest that it is to be taken altogether
more seriously, as an attribute of deeper value and more difficult
attainment". He cites Kettle's definition of elegan ce of mind as
"genuine sensibi lity to human values as well as the more superficial
refinements of polished mannerJl. See Language, p.65.

3
See p.112 above.
 177

respect of setting, on l y the beauty and solitude of outdoor scenes

evoke an emotional response in Anne l and the difference in sensibility

disti nguishes Anne's finer mind and greater maturity. Captain

wentworth's values and way of life are partly revealed, as we have

seen, through the crofts and Harvilles and spatial material connected

with them, but the most memorable objects in Persuasion are assoc i ated

with him: the hazel-nut that he se l ects as a symbol of firmness ,

and the pen that falls during Anne's conversation with Captain

Harville.

The hazel-nut is remarkable for several reasons . I t stands

out because, although, like the tawny l eaves and withered hedges,

the hedgerow and the holly bush, it i s part of the autumnal scene

in which Anne finds solace on the walk to Winthrop, it is one of the

few natural and specific objects (distinct from features of landscape)

in the novel. We also remember it because we are given a few

particulars about it in Captain Wentworth 's imaginative analogy, and

most importantl y because the use that he makes of i t is significant

with regard to his character and to the theme of persuasion in the

novel. The nut is not the only object Captain Wentworth uses as an

image to make a point; when talking to the Musgroves about his naval

experiences, he compares his ship, a well-used, still- reliab l e o l d

sloop, to a well-worn pelisse that one mi ght be pleased to borrow

and wear on a very wet day. Barbara Hardy observes that his "not tao

serious manipulations of simile and emblem" are one of the ways in

which Jane Austen conveys Captain Wentworth's wit--a quality for

1
which Anne loves him. As, talking to Louisa and commending her

lBarbara Hardy , A Reading, p.161.

 178

firmness, but thinking of Anne and her weak-minded deference to Lady

Russell, he half-playfully, half-seriously catches down the beautiful

glossy nut, Anne, hidden from their sight, understands the signif-

icance of the words spoken with such feeling, and can only submit to

the pain of knowing how her character is considered by her former

lover. The irony of his speech i s that, as time is to make clear to

him, the qualities that he attributes to Louisa have always been

Anne's. That this is so is the lesson he learns in the course of the

n ove l. The events at Lyme teach him to d istinguish between Louisa's

obstinate self-will and Anne's gentle fortitude, and by the end he has

l earned to accept that Anne was right in submitting to Lady Russe ll,

that it was her duty to yield to such persuasion, even though, as

events decided, it was bad advice. The word "persuasion" in the

present-day meaning of the word is used frequently by Jane Austen in

connection with many characters in the novel, but it was also employed

in a more restricted way in the eighteenth century, and it is this

specific sense that lies at the heart of the action of this novel; the
1
title, whether Jane Austen chose it or not, emphasises the significance

of the concept. Mo l er explains the particular meaning: "a parental

attempt to influence a child's choice of a matrimonial partner was

1
As has been stated on p.23 above, Northanger Abbey and
Persuasion were published posthumou sly in December, 1817. Jane
Austen refers to the manuscript previously titled ~usan as "Miss
Catherine in a letter written in March 1817, and we must suppose
II

that the title ~orthanger Abbey was Henry Austen's decision. Ther e
seems to be no reference to the title persuasion in Jane Austen's
correspondence; Mary Lascelles (Art, p.38, n.S) conjectures that
Henry Austen chose Persuasion, knowing that it would have had his
sister ' s approval as " ... that i s a title of the kind that Jane
Austen evidently liked--she had praised Anna's 'Enthus iasm' (Letters,
p.393) ".
 179

l
frequently described as 'persuasion," i and he cites many instances

of the use in early n ineteenth-ce ntury literature. He shows how some

of the new philosophical ideas of the period are dramatised in Jane

Austen's novels, and finds in her treatment of Captain Wentworth a

response to Godwin 1 s ideas on the "energetic" character and the

advocacy of lIfortitude", the word used in the restricted contemporary

sense to refer to a child's challenge of parental authority with

2
regard to choice of a marriage partner. He concludes his discussion:

" ... I think that Jane Austen sees 1 and intends her readers to see, a

resemblance between Captain Wentworth and the character type of the

modern philosopher, and that this resemblance suggests a habit of

mind, that, in her opinion, required modification. Jane Austen holds

that Wentworth, like the romantic-revolutionary novelists, tends too

hastily to assume that an ability to control one's feelings is a sign

of shallowness, and that a determination to act without regard to

anything but the dictates of one's own will is an indication of

strength. ,,3 This characteristically moderate outlook is to be found

in all Jane Austen's novels. Despite the correction to his attitude

(which he himself makes) Captain Wentworth's ardent spirit remains

undimmed. It is one of Jane Austen's triumphs of characterization

that he does not sacrifice individuality while yet improving.

Jane Austen manages to write of mundane details in such a way

that she gives them an interest that is peculiarly satisfying. The

reader is actually pleased to notice, for example, each reference to

lMoler, Art of Allusion, p.193.

2Ibid ., pp.194-208.

3 Ibid ., p.208.
 180

Sir Walter's carriage horses, and enjoysthe cumulative effect and

significance of such apparent trifles. Because of the necessary

travelling between the different settings, carriages feature promin-

ently in Persuasion. The way that Jane Austen tells us that "the

last office of the four carri.age-horses was to draw Sir Walter, Miss

Elliot, and Mrs. Clay to Bath" (~.! p.35) makes us realize that what

matters to the Baronet and his daughter is not that the horses are

probably going to be sold but that their owners leave Kellynch and

arrive in Bath with eclat. Mary Musgrove is disgruntled because

Charles keeps no carriage, but she enjoys the consequence that the

journey to Bath in her mother-in-law's carriage with four horses gives

her. The "very pretty landaulette" (E., p.250) that Anne owns after
her marriage, as well as suggesting the style and elegance of her

married life, is an object of envy to her younger sister, whose prime

concern in life continues to be social position and the things that

indicate one's superior or inferior rank. The Crofts' driving out

in their new gig is further evidence of their enjoyment of each

other's company, and their happy and successful partnership in life

is amusingly represented by Mrs Croft's occasional judicious guidance

of the reins. Jane Austen frequently uses something as mundane as

the fixed number of seats in a vehicle for determining the action.

The Crofts' kindness in making room for Anne reminds the reader that
.4w..
there was no room for ~ in Charles's currie Ie when he drove Mary

to Kellynch. And the fact that Lady Dalrymple's barouche holds only

four allows Jane Auste n to hint at Mr s Clay' s d esi gns on Ijr Elli ot, and

also shows how Captain wentworth comes to think that he has reason

to be jealous of Anne's cousin .

 181

Several objects in Persuasion serve the plot in this way~

Because the action depends on events of the past, the expositi on is

relatively complex and long, and the entry in the Baronetage at the

opening of the novel is an economical and skilful means of conveying

necessary information. The harp is needed to help cheer Mrs Musgrove

at Uppercross Cottage and, because of its size, has to be taken in

the carriage. This allows the author to have Louisa walk on ahead

and tell Mary, Charles and Anne about Mrs Musgrove's sentimental

regrets over IIpoor Richard", and this conversation provides the

necessary preface to the narrator's accoun t of the boy's connection

with Captain wentworth, a connection which gives the Musgroves reason

for seeking his acquaintance and thus brings him to Uppercross. And

the handsome curtains in the window in Pulteney Street give occasion

for some gently ironic criticism of Anne for thinking that Lady

Russe ll is fascinated by the sight of Captain Wentworth and his

unchanged personal attractions. There are several other such

incidents that depend on some seemingly trivial object. A concert

programme with the words of a song in Italian serves to separate Anne

and Captain Wentworth, and a pair of gloves, a gun and a fine display

of greenhouse plants bring them together. The miniature of Captain

Benwick, drawn for Fanny Harville by a German artist at the Cape and

now to be framed for Louisa , indirectly precipitates the denouement.

One of the most memorab le and dramatic events in Persuasion is

Captain Wentworth ' s dropping his pen when he overhears Anne's speech

on the constancy of women, a speech in which she unconsciously tells

him that she has never stopped loving him. And on the letter which

he consequently writes and contrives to give to Anne depends "all

which this world could do for her!" (~, p.237). Captain Wentworth's
 182

ardent proposal, given freely in the letter, is appropriate to Jane

Austen's most romantic love-story. The letter also enables Jane

Austen to switch momentarily to Captain Wentworth's viewpoint, and yet

at the same time let the reader experience the scene primarily

through Anne's mind.

Anne has waited nearly nine years for this moment of happiness.

All the other heroines experience at some point in the cr ucial year

of their story a short time--it i s a matter of days, weeks or months--

d uring which they think that they have lost the man they love. The

necessity of submitting to this possibility seems to be part of the

test that proves the heroine to be worthy of marriage or able to

rna k e th e . ht
r~g
.
marr~age.
1 For Anne this span of time is eight years

-- "It is a period, indeed.! Eight years and a half is a period! II

(~, p.225) --and the struggle to achieve a state of equilibrium has

been long and hard. The omnisc ient narrator, assuming a reticence

that i s appropriate both to Anne's stoical resolve to submit to her

loss and to the control exercised by Anne over her strong, retentive

feelings , tells us that, when the second part of Anne's love-story

begins, "time had softened down much, perhaps nearly all of peculiar

attachment to [captain Wentworth] " (~, p.28). During these eight

years Anne has been dependent on time alone to ease her suffering and

help her cure, and, when chance brings Captain Wentworth back into

her life, she again has to depend on time to make him understand his

heart. Without her being aware of it, her "elegance of mind and

sweetness of character" (~, p.S) win him back, but conscious l y she

can do nothing except wait.

I
See p.l17 above.
 183

Captain wentworth spends about two months in Anne's company

before he begins to deplore "the pride, the folly, the madness of

resentment, which had kept him from trying to regain her when thrown

in his way" c~.' p.242), and the action of the novel covers seven

months. The emphasis and interest in Persuasion lies not so much in

the moral development of the protagonists as in the analysis and

communication of moments of intense feeling, and the short time span

allows for some lengthy and slow-moving passages of reflection and

dialogue which convey such emotional experience. It is the only

novel in which the action is dated--it begins in the summer of 1814

(~, p.8) and ends in February 1815 (~, p.162)--but indications of

time are less frequent and exact than is usual in Jane Austen, and it
1
seems that she did not use a calendar for the chronology of events.

From the few definite dates given--the Crofts take possession of

Kellynch on 29 September and Mary writes to Anne in Bath on

1 February--and the allusions to seasons, months and days, it is

possible to work out a time scheme for the action, as Chapman has
2
done. Unobtrusive references to "a very fine November day" (!:, p.83),

the Christmas holidays, "the beginning of February" (~, p.162), and

mention of specific periods of time such as "so passed the first three

weeks" (~, p.47) and "they had now been acquainted a month" (!'.' p.160)

also suggest the passage of time. The inclusion of past events gives

the treatment of time a complexity that is not present in the other

novels. The short chapter relating the events of the summer of 1806

fits into the narrative smoothly, told as it is from Anne's point

lsee Chapman's comments in Persuasion, pp.302-4.

2 Ibid .
 184

of view, but one of the weaknesses--a fault which Jane Austen would

probably have elimi nated if she had revised Persuasion--is that the

chapter giving Mrs Smith ' s revelations of Mr Elliot's real character

is not closely knit into the action. The tempo of the narration of

events fo llows a pattern that i s the opposite from Jane Austen's

practice in the other novels: the narrative of the first three quarters

moves forward in periods of weeks or months , but after Captain Went-

worth's arrival in Bath five chapters (of the total twenty-four) give

an almost day-to-day account of the one and a half weeks before the

final reunion, and of the day of the proposal almost every hour is

accounted for. Thus the pace of the novel is extremely varied, but

the consistent point of view, the s imilarity of styles used by

characters and narrator, and the design of the novel help to blend

the parts--with the one exception mentioned--into a unified whol e ,

and to ease transitions of all kinds including that from present to

past and back again.

Characters' attitudes to time and the past have a thematic

significance in Persuasion, and are indic ative of values and moral

disposition. Those characters who are selfish and have no true

affection for people, who cannot make a right use of reason, imagin-

ation and memory are portrayed as having a diminished sense of the

past. Sir Walter and Elizabeth have little memory of people or

loyalty to places; when Anne arrives in Bath, they make only a few

fai nt enquir ies about the people and places that she has recently

left: "Uppercross excited no interest, Kellynch very little, it was

all Bath" (~, p.137). Mr Elliot avoids the responsibilities and

claims laid on him by past actions and friendships, and ignores

such memor ies. Barbara Hardy points out that in all her novels Jane
 185

Austen shows an interest "in the controls which we exercise over our

nostalgia and regret". 1 Mrs Musgrove is an example of a person who

has not sufficient reason to help her use her memory rightly; her

selective and sentimental nostalgia forgets the fact that "poor

Richard" "had been very little cared for at any time by his family"

(~, p.50). That Lady Russell is fundamentally a woman of integrity,

sound reason and true feelings is indicated partly by the emphasis on

her loyalty to the memory of Anne's mother. Captain Wentworth's

resentment and angry pride at being, as he thought, ill-used by Anne

blinded him to the validity of her action and to the strength of his

feelings. But, as he is obliged to acknowledge, he had been uncon-

sciously and unintentionally constant, and his reason and memory had

never during the eight years allowed him to forget Anne.

That Captain Wentworth remembers the past which he tries to

obliterate is clear to Anne on many occasions as she watches him,

listens to him talking, or speaks to him herself. At Lyme there is

a moment when she feels that his words and manner seem not only to

recall the past, but to bring it and his love for her back: IIlyou

will stay, I am sure; you will stay and nurse her;' cried he, turning

to her and speaking with a glow, and yet a gentleness, which seemed

almost restoring the past.-- She coloured deeply; and he recollected

himself, and moved away" (~, p.114). Such moments--moments of either

painful or exquisite fe"e ling--make up Anne f s experience during the

seven months of her story, and, because we see events through her

eyes, we share the ebb and flow of her confidence. As she listens to

1 .
Barbara Hardy, A Readlng, p.98.
 186

Captain Wentworth and compares her feelings ~ to her feelings then, 1

the pain of the contrast is not made worse by a suffering conscience.

Jane Austen seems to have agreed with Johnson that "one of the

principal topicks of moral instruction is the art of bearing

2
calamities". Her heroine in Persuasion does not smile at grief, nor

has she found patience easy, but because she feels that she was right

in submitting to Lady Russell, she has not "the bitterness of remorse

to add to the asperity of misfortune". 3 By her right use of memory

Anne has liberated herself from the future as well as the past; she

has solved the problem of conflicting duties to herself and to her

ideals , to her family and society, and she lives a useful, positive

life. We see in her that the virtuous spirit is the active spirit.

Anne is generous, outgoing and selfless, and in the most moving scene

that Jane Austen ever wrote Anne's tenderness and magnanimity win her

her reward. The deep compassion for the hardships and dangers of a

sailor's life that she expresses in her speeches to Captain Harville

rises from her own imaginative participation in Captain Wentworth's

life at sea; her words on the e n dur ing power of woman's love--

spoken in a scene that without the aid of verse and music achieves a

poignancy, beauty and pathos which recall the scene in Twelfth Night

when Viola, too, speaks movingly about such love--the force of these

words springs from her own "warm and fa ithful feelings", her own

"true attachment and constancy" (~, p. 235). In all her novels, but

lKroeber, in Styles in Fictional Structure, p.83, discusses

Jane Austen I s "representation of reiterated experience".
2
Johnson, Rambler, No.32.
 187

in Persuasion most of all, Jane Austen shows how young women, living

"at home, quiet, confined II (!:' p. 232) 1 can in their narrow and

restricted setting avoid becoming a passive prey to their feelings and

triumphantly fi nd freedom and happiness.

 188

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