Jane Austen For Dummies (71 page)

Jane Austen is buried in the nave, in the north aisle of Winchester Cathedral. While there, visit the catacombs, see the Roman ruins, browse the gift shop, and eat at the refectory. Before leaving for England, go the Cathedral's Web site at
http://www.winchester-cathedral.org.uk/
for all kinds of information, including services.

To get there from London:

But if you're already at the Jane Austen House Museum, you can call for a taxi to drive you the 20 minutes to Winchester, visit the Cathedral and No. 8 College Street (the next site on this list), and then take a train from Winchester back to Waterloo Station in London. What a great Austen day that would be! And think of the time you'll save doing all this in one day!

Jane Austen spent the last weeks of her life at No. 8 College Street, Winchester. The yellowish house has the official blue oval plaque on it, saying Jane Austen died there. No. 8 College Street is now a private residence. But you can look up and see the bay window, which was in Jane Austen's room. The folks who own the house are used to tourists taking photos of the exterior of their house. So snap away!

Jane Austen lived in Bath between 1801 and 1806, visited Bath several times, and set sections of
Northanger Abbey
and
Persuasion
here. You can visit several different Austen-related places while you're in Bath. Must-see sites include

To get to Bath, take a taxi or the Tube (District, Circle, or Hammersmith and City Lines) to London's Paddington Station, and buy a ticket to Bath Spa. Travel time one way is about 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Although Portsmouth was largely rebuilt after World War II because of bombing damage, visit here to take the Royal Navy's tour of the Lord Nelson's ship “HMS
Victory
”. This excellent tour around the ship focuses, of course, on Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar. But taking this tour gives you an idea of the ship life lived by Austen's two navy brothers, Frank and Charles.
Mansfield Park
's Price family also lived in Portsmouth. Go to the waterfront and look across to see the Isle of Wight or as little Fanny Price calls it “the Island.”

To get to this destination:

Not only did Jane Austen visit Lyme Regis twice, in 1803 and 1804, but she set a major section of
Persuasion
there. In the novel, Louisa Musgrove jumps down the old steps (known as “Granny's Teeth”) a second time from the Cobb to the beach, misses Captain Wentworth's arms, and hurts her head. But have no fear: Today there are roomy, modern steps down to the beach. If you walk along the nearby street called Marine Parade, you will see a small stone bust of Jane Austen and Bay Cottage, now a café but thought to be originally the little house used as Captain Harville's residence in the same novel.

Travel to Lyme Regis by the following means of transportation:

Looking into Austen's words of wisdom

Using her characters to send messages

In
Emma,
John Knightley, the family-loving lawyer-brother of the book's hero, Mr. Knightley, has “reserved manners which prevented his being generally pleasing; and capable of being sometimes out of humour” (E 1:11). He straightforwardly tells Emma, his sister-in-law, how he feels about being compelled to leave the warm fireside at home on a cold night to attend a dinner party at Mr. and Mrs. Weston's house on Christmas Eve:

Haven't you felt this way at one time or another? John Knightley speaks for the homebody in everyone. And no, he's not Scrooge from Dickens's
A Christmas Carol
. Keep in mind that the celebration of Christmas is really a Victorian invention, helped along by Dickens. In Austen's time, Christmas was more a
holy
day than a
holi
day.

“‘One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other'”
(E 1:9). In
Emma,
Emma's nervous father, Mr. Woodhouse, worries about Mr. Knightley's tossing his nephews in the air and then catching them — a game they love, so Emma explains that the same pleasures aren't enjoyed by everyone.

Each person likes his own tastes best. But Emma is right, of course, when she makes this observation to her father, who barely leaves his chair and can't understand a child's pleasure in being gently tossed and caught by a loving (and very tall!) uncle. In the novel, another scene demonstrates Mr. Woodhouse's egocentric nature that prevents him from understanding others' preferences that differ from his own: Just because wedding cake disagrees with his stomach, he feels nobody should eat it. Likewise, just because he loves a bowl of nice thin gruel in the evening, he expects everyone to want one, too! This characteristic of Mr. Woodhouse connects him to his daughter, Emma, who though totally opposite to her father in her youth, liveliness, good health, and cleverness, is also egocentric and expects others to feel as she does, particularly regarding their romantic attraction to others.

“‘It is very unfair to judge of anybody's conduct, without an intimate knowledge of their situation. Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be'”
(E 1:18). From
Emma,
Emma says this quote to Mr. Knightley when he complains about Frank Churchill's not coming to Highbury to meet his new stepmother. Emma defends Frank's conduct, noting that his aunt, Mrs. Churchill, is known to be a difficult personality.

Austen's sympathetic understanding of personal problems caused by family members, both loved and at the same time sometimes trying, is clear. And Austen demonstrates this understanding when she writes
Mansfield Park.
Fanny Price's passivity is better understood when seen against the way she's treated at Mansfield Park, especially by her Aunt Norris. Likewise, in
Sense and Sensibility,
Marianne Dashwood's excessive emotionalism reflects what she has learned from her mother. Throughout her novels, Austen shows us that we understand many characters more fully when seen in light of their families and upbringings.

“Their straightforward emotions left no room for the little zigzags of embarrassment”
(E 1:15). In another example from
Emma,
Elton shocks Emma by proposing to her in the coach, and Emma silences him, rejecting the notion that she was ever interested in him, just as he rejected her plan that he marry Harriet Smith. Both Elton and Emma are embarrassed by what they've said and what they've done. In a closed coach going along the snowy road, there's no physical room for one to be separated from the other. At the same time, there's no psychological room to separate Emma and Elton, either. Each is embarrassed!

“‘I do not pretend to set people right, but I do see that they are often wrong'”
(MP 1:5). Mary Crawford, from
Mansfield Park,
has one-liners to spare. This one happens to also apply to her creator, Jane Austen, as much as it does to her. In the scene in the novel where Mary utters this snappy line, she and Tom Bertram are discussing the varied behaviors of young ladies, depending on whether they are “in” or “out.” Mary has very decided opinions to offer Tom, who reports facing embarrassing situations where he treated a young lady who was not “out” as if she was “out”: In another words, he actually spoke to her! (Young ladies who were not yet “out” were supposed to remain quiet when around adults.) Mary blames the mothers of girls who aren't “out,” but who act like they are. But she would never tell those mothers how she feels. (See Chapter 6 for info on young ladies coming “out.”)

As a novelist, Jane Austen, like her creation, Mary Crawford, doesn't “pretend to set people right,” but she does see “that they are often wrong.” So instead of telling readers that certain societal practices are wrong, thus overtly instructing her readers, she simply lets the characters who exemplify the practices call those practices into question. In
Persuasion,
Sir Walter Elliot, a baronet and the owner of a great estate, is so careless about his money and property that he has to lease the estate out because he's in debt. His tenants, Admiral and Mrs. Croft, are a navy officer and his wife; the admiral has money that he has earned (
not
inherited, as Sir Walter has), and he and his wife are far better occupiers of the Elliot mansion than Sir Walter was. Even doing little things around the house to improve its livability shows that they are superior stewards of the house than Sir Walter was. Austen never preaches a word about the unfairness of the inheritance system, which gives wealth and property to the vain and silly Sir Walter. But she sees the occasional problems with the inheritance system, and she slips them into her novel.

“Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery” (MP 3:17).
Austen begins the final chapter of
Mansfield Park
with this quote. While what follows is a rather heavy and unusual dispensing of poetic justice all around, the quotation reminds readers that Austen's novels are
comedies
in the purest sense of the word: works with happy endings. So you can deduce that reading an Austen novel leaves you happy. So go read one!

“‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife'”
(PP 1:1). The first line of
Pride and Prejudice
is Austen's most famous line. Its proverbial sound has taken the first seven words of this quotation into advertising (for computers), college catalogues (for meal plans), and various other places. Here are some samples:

In the novel, however, Austen uses the line ironically. For as the reader discovers moving beyond the first sentence, the real truth is that young women are seeking men of good fortune.

“‘Do anything rather than marry without affection'”
(PP 3:17). In
Pride and Prejudice,
Jane says this quote to Elizabeth, who has just told her of her engagement to Darcy. Austen said the same thing to her niece, Fanny Knight, and Austen, herself, withdrew her acceptance of a proposal from an old family friend whose wealth would have given her widowed mother and unmarried sister a life of ease (Letter to Fanny, November 18–20, 1814; for Austen's turning down an advantageous proposal, see Chapter 3 of this book). Austen was like her heroines: They never married without some money, but they never married
for
money. They
must
love their husbands.

“‘Run mad as often as you choose; but do not faint'”
(source
Love and Freindship
[sic], Letter 14). Austen's youthful work,
Love and Freindship
(purposely misspelled) ridicules the sentimental novels that flooded the market of her youth. In the middle of Letter the 14th, Laura recounts how her dear friend Sophia died after catching an infection caused by constantly fainting on wet grass. Sophia's final words to her friend Laura were the words from the quote above. Laura sensibly accepts this advice, saving herself from the danger of wet grass by running back and forth in a frenzy.

Austen, of course, is poking fun at the ever-present fainting habits of the heroines in sentimental novels. She was about 14 or 15 when she wrote this, showing her early skills at humor and mockery.