Reading Group Guide
INTRODUCTION
It
is now almost exactly two centuries since the first two
of Jane Austen's six completed novels - Sense and
Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice - were
published, and for much of that time writers and critics
have passionately disagreed about the true caliber of her
work. Austen's books received a few respectful reviews
and lively attention from the reading public during her
lifetime, but it wasn't until nearly thirty years after
her death that some critics began to recognize her
enduring artistic accomplishment - and others to debate
it.
In 1843, the historian Thomas Macaulay called Austen
the writer to "have approached nearest to the manner
of the great master" Shakespeare; Charlotte Brontë
felt, on the contrary, that "the Passions are
perfectly unknown to her.... Jane Austen was a complete
and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete, and rather
insensible (not senseless) woman." Anthony Trollope
made up his mind as a young man that "Pride and
Prejudice was the best novel in the language,"
while Mark Twain claimed to feel an "animal
repugnance" for Austen's writing.
Austen herself would probably not have disagreed with
many of her detractors' objections. She acknowledged that
her themes and concerns were limited; she described them
as "human nature in the midland counties."
"Three or four families in a country village is the
very thing to work on," she wrote in a letter to her
niece; and in another, now famous letter to her brother
Edward, she described her art as "the little bit
(two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a
brush, as to produce little effect, after much
labour."
It is true that great historical events and political
concerns appear only obliquely, if at all, in the
background of Austen's stories; that she deals with the
spiritual condition of the human soul only insofar as it
manifests itself in her characters' manners and taste in
spouses; that the intellectual issues of her day appear
in her novels primarily as a vehicle for revealing
character and spoofing fashion. Even Austen's great early
champion, the critic G. H. Lewes, had to admit the truth
of Charlotte Brontë's objection that Austen's style
lacked poetry, and that her "exquisite" work
would appeal only to readers who didn't require
"strong lights and shadows." But in spite of
these limitations, the particular genius and lasting
appeal of Austen's writing has only become clearer and
more certain as the decades pass and literary fashions
come and go.
What is Austen's particular genius? And what might
account for the renaissance of popular interest in her
work today - one reflected in the recently acclaimed
television and feature film productions of Sense and
Sensibility (with an Oscar-winning screenplay by
Emma Thompson), Pride and Prejudice (an A&E
miniseries), the art house hit Persuasion, and
the upcoming release of Emma, as well as the Emma-inspired
Clueless, now atop video rental charts?
"Of all great writers," Virginia Woolf said,
"she is the most difficult to catch in the act of
greatness." But perhaps Austen herself gave us a
clue to the standards for greatness she set herself, and
a way to judge her achievement, when in Northanger
Abbey she has a character say: "'Oh! it is only
a novel!' or, in short, only some work in which the most
thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest
delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusion of
wit and humour are to be conveyed to the world in the
best chosen language."
Austen's delightful wit is certainly one of the great
pleasures of her work. As to "the best chosen
language," while her writing conveys none of the
lyricism of the Romantics (like Brontë) who would
succeed her, it is full of intelligence and precisely
crafted to convey its often subtle meaning. But Austen's
strongest suit is her thorough knowledge and happy
delineation of human nature. We can still, despite the
vast differences between her society and our own,
recognize ourselves in the ways her characters think and
behave. We all know people as cleverly manipulative and
outwardly affectionate as Lucy Steele or Miss Bingley; as
self-involved as Fanny Dashwood or Lady Catherine de
Bourgh; and as charming but as lacking in scruples as
John Willoughby or Colonel Wickham. We are in turns
impulsive and hyper-responsible like Marianne and Elinor
Dashwood; conceal ourselves with arrogance like Mr.
Darcy; assume we understand more than we do like
Elizabeth Bennet; and revel in gossip, like Mrs.
Jennings. And while the great events and philosophical
movements of history play themselves out around us, it is
our own nature and actions, and the nature and actions of
the people around us, that most influence our lives.
In her own day, Austen's work signified a break with
the Gothic and sentimental novels that had long been
fashionable, in which heroines were always virtuous,
romance was always sentimentalized, and unlikely but
convenient coincidences and acts of God always occurred
to bring about the dramatic climax. Instead Austen
represented the ordinary world of men and women as it -
sometimes mundanely - was, a place where love and romance
were constrained by economics and human imperfection;
where women had distinct and often sparkling
personalities; where characters were never simply good or
evil but more complicated amalgams, reflecting both their
own moral nature and the virtues and failings of the
families and society that shaped them.
In these ways, Austen seems very much in tune with
today's sensibilities. We love her strong, unpretentious
heroines ("Pictures of perfection as you know make
me sick & wicked," Austen said of them), who
think for themselves and say what they mean when
appropriate and don't take themselves too seriously. They
are not, in today's parlance, victims. We are as
interested as ever in Austen's favorite subjects of love
and marriage, while also identifying with her steadfast
refusal to romanticize romance; with her acknowledgment
that money, class, and what other people think matter in
the real world; that marriage does not result in a happy
ending for everyone; and that it is dangerous to let
passion blind us to reality. Living amidst the cultural
fallout from the self-absorbed, sensibility-prone 1960s,
we appreciate Austen's emphasis on reason, moderation,
fidelity, and consideration for others.
Austen wrote her books at the dawn of the nineteenth
century, when vast social changes were already
encroaching on the way of life she so loved and rendered
with such exquisite artistry. We read her books today on
the cusp of a new century, with an unfathomable world
creeping up on us, too - one globally interconnected,
technologically complex, economically uncertain. Perhaps
we find on Austen's rural estates and in her charming,
insular society the same peace and pleasure she found
there; and an analogue for the simpler, more
circumscribed world of our own childhoods, itself passing
quickly away into history.
ABOUT THE
TITLE
Marianne Dashwood, trusting the evidence of her
senses, falls passionately in love with a man who in
truth is less good than he seems. Elinor Dashwood quite
sensibly "thinks very highly of, greatly esteems,
and likes" a man whose worthiness in her eyes only
increases when she learns why he cannot marry her.
Through the sisters' stories, and the moral dilemmas they
raise, Jane Austen explores in the form of a delightful
and dramatically satisfying romance the limitations and
pitfalls of the Romantic aesthetic in a world where money
matters.
Though Northanger Abbey (originally called Lady
Susan) was Austen's first novel to be accepted for
publication, the publisher never issued it, and by the
time Austen bought back the rights in 1816, she didn't
think it was good enough to publish. Sense and
Sensibility, published in 1811, is considerably more
ambitious than Northanger Abbey, both
thematically and technically, and is generally considered
Austen's first major novel.
ABOUT THE
AUTHOR
Jane Austen, seventh of the eight children of Reverend
George and Cassandra Leigh Austen, was born on December
16, 1775, in the small village of Steventon in Hampshire,
England. Her childhood was happy: her home was full of
books and many friends and her parents encouraged both
their children's intellectual interests and their passion
for producing and performing in amateur theatricals.
Austen's closest relationship, one that would endure
throughout her life, was with her beloved only sister,
Cassandra.
From about the time she was twelve years old, Austen
began writing spirited parodies of the popular Gothic and
sentimental fiction of the day for the amusement of her
family. Chock-full of stock characters, vapid and
virtuous heroines, and improbable coincidences, these
early works reveal in nascent form many of her literary
gifts: particularly her ironic sensibility, wit, and gift
for comedy. Attempts at more sustained, serious works
began around 1794 with a novel in letters - a popular
form at the time - called Lady Susan, and in the
years immediately following with two more epistolary
novels - one called Elinor and Marianne, the
other First Impressions - that would evolve into
Sense and Sensibility and Pride and
Prejudice. Lady Susan, later revised and
entitled Northanger Abbey, also was begun in
that period.
From 1799 to 1809, little is known of Austen's life or
literary endeavors, other than that upon her father's
retirement she moved unhappily from her beloved home in
Steventon to Bath; that he died a few years thereafter
and she moved to Southampton; and that she began, but did
not complete, a novel called The Watsons. A move
back to the country in 1808 - to a cottage on one of her
brother's properties in Chawton - seems to have revived
her interest in writing.
Her revised version of Elinor and Marianne - Sense
and Sensibility - was published, like all the work
which appeared in print in her lifetime, anonymously, in
1811; and between the time Pride and Prejudice was
accepted for publication and the time it actually
appeared, she wrote Mansfield Park. Emma
appeared in 1816 and was reviewed favorably by the most
popular novelist of the day, Sir Walter Scott, who said:
The author's knowledge of the world, and the
peculiar tact with which she presents characters that
the reader cannot fail to recognize, reminds us
something of the merits of the Flemish school of
painting. The subjects are not often elegant, and
certainly never grand; but they are finished up to
nature, and with a precision which delights the
reader.
Scott also insightfully pointed out Emma's
significance in representing the emergence of a new kind
of novel, one concerned with the texture of ordinary
life.
Though all her novels were concerned with courtship,
love, and marriage, Austen never married. There is some
evidence that she had several flirtations with eligible
men in her early twenties, and speculation that in 1802
she agreed to marry the heir of a Hampshire family but
then changed her mind. Austen rigorously guarded her
privacy, and after her death, her family censored and
destroyed many of her letters. Little is known of her
personal experience or her favorite subjects. However,
Austen's reputation as a "dowdy bluestocking,"
as literary critic Ronald Blythe points out, is far from
accurate: "she loved balls, cards, wine, music,
country walks, conversation, children, and bad as well as
excellent novels."
In 1816, as she worked to complete her novel Persuasion,
Austen's health began to fail. She continued to work,
preparing Northanger Abbey for publication, and
began a light-hearted, satirical work called Sanditon
which she never finished. She died at the age of
forty-two on July 18, 1817, in the arms of her beloved
sister, Cassandra, of what historians now believe to have
been Addison's disease.
The identity of "A Lady" who wrote the
popular novels was known in her lifetime only to her
family and a few elite readers, among them the Prince
Regent, who invited Austen to visit his library and
"permitted" her to dedicate Emma to
him (unaware, no doubt, that she loathed him). But Austen
deliberately avoided literary circles; in Ronald Blythe's
words, "literature, not the literary life, was
always her intention." It was not until the December
following her death, when Northanger Abbey and Persuasion
were published, that "a biographical notice of
the author" by Austen's brother Henry appeared in
the books, revealing to the reading public for the first
time the name of Jane Austen.
The time in which Jane Austen wrote her novels was a
period of great stability just about to give way to a
time of unimagined changes. At that time most of
England's population (some thirteen million) were
involved in rural and agricultural work: yet within
another twenty years, the majority of Englishmen became
urban dwellers involved with industry, and the great
railway age had begun. Throughout the early years of the
century the cities were growing at a great rate; the
network of canals was completed, the main roads were
being remade. Regency London, in particular, boomed and
became, among other things, a great centre of fashion. On
the other hand, England in the first decade of the
nineteenth century was still predominantly a land of
country towns and villages, a land of rural routines
which were scarcely touched by the seven campaigns of the
Peninsular War against Napoleon.
But if Austen's age was still predominantly one of
rural quiet, it was also the age of the French
Revolution, the War of American Independence, the start
of the Industrial Revolution, and the first generation of
the Romantic poets; and Jane Austen was certainly not
unaware of what was going on in the world around her. She
had two brothers in the Royal Navy and a cousin whose
husband was guillotined in the Terror. And although her
favourite prose writer was Dr. Samuel Johnson, she
clearly knew the works of writers like Goethe,
Worsdworth, Scott, Byron, Southey, Godwin and other, very
definitely nineteenth-century, authors.
If Jane Austen seems to have lived a life of placid
rural seclusion in north Hampshire, she was at the same
time very aware of a whole range of new energies and
impulses, new ideas and powers, which were changing or
about to change England - and indeed the whole western
world - with a violence, a suddenness, and a
heedlessness, which would soon make Jane Austen's world
seem as remote as the Elizabethan Age. It is well to
remember that in the early years of the century, when
Thomas Arnold saw his first train tearing through the
Rugby countryside he said: "Feudality is gone
forever." So close was it possible then to feel to
the immemorial, static feudal way of life; so quickly was
that way of life to vanish as the modern world laboured
to be born.
Adapted from the Introduction to
the Penguin Classics edition of Mansfield
Park.
RELATED
TITLES
Northanger Abbey
Edited with an Introduction by Marilyn
Butler
This lighthearted romance, generally
agreed to be Austen's earliest major novel, though it was
not published until after her death, is also a
high-spirited burlesque of the sentimental and Gothic
novels of her day. When the charmingly imperfect heroine,
Catherine Morland, visits Northanger Abbey, she meets all
the trappings of Gothic horror, and imagines the worst.
Fortunately, she has at hand her own fundamental good
sense and irresistible but unsentimental hero, Henry
Tilney. Real disaster does eventually strike, but doesn't
spoil for too long the happy atmosphere of this
delightful novel.
Mansfield Park
Edited with an Introduction by Tony
Tanner
More varied in scene and conceived on a
bigger scale than Austen's earlier books, Mansfield
Park (1814) can be seen as an image of quiet
resistance at the start of what was to be the most
convulsive century of change in English history. In
telling the story of Fanny Price, the quiet and sensitive
daughter of a lower-middle-class Portsmouth family who is
brought up in - and after much suffering eventually
becomes mistress of - elegant Mansfield Park, Austen
draws on her usual cool irony and psychological insight
while also portraying a less immediately winning heroine
in a more complex light.
Emma
Edited with an Introduction by Ronald
Blythe
Many writers and critics consider Emma
(1816), the last of Austen's novels published in her
lifetime, the climax of her genius. Dominating the novel
is the character of Emma Woodhouse - vital, interesting,
complex, and predisposed to playing power games with
other people's emotions. Austen called her a heroine
"no one but myself would like," but she endures
as one of Austen's immortal creations. Charting how
Emma's disastrous foray as a matchmaker precipitates a
crisis in the small provincial world of Highbury, and in
her own heart, this novel of self-deceit and
self-discovery sparkles with intelligence, wit, and
irony.
Persuasion
Edited with an Introduction by D.W.
Harding
Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth had
met and separated years before. Their reunion forces a
recognition of the false values that drove them apart.
The characters who embody those values are the subjects
of some of the most withering satire that Austen ever
wrote. Like its predecessors, Persuasion
(published after her death in 1818) is a tale of love and
marriage, told with Austen's distinctive irony and
insight. But the heroine - like the author - is more
mature; the tone of the writing more somber.
Also included in this edition is the
pioneering biography of Austen written fifty years after
her death by her nephew, J. E. Austen-Leigh, which
outlines the essential facts of Austen's life while also
reflecting the Victorian era's limited comprehension of
her achievements.
Lady Susan/The Watsons/Sanditon
Edited with an Introduction by Margaret
Drabble
These three works - one novel
unpublished in her lifetime and two unfinished fragments
- reveal Austen's development as a great artist. Lady
Susan is a sparkling melodrama, written in
epistolary form, featuring a beautiful, intelligent, and
wicked heroine. The Watsons, probably written
when Austen resided unhappily in Bath and abandoned after
her father's death, is a tantalizing fragment centering
on the marital prospects of the Watson sisters in a small
provincial town. Sanditon, Austen's last
fiction, reflects her growing concern with the new
speculative consumer society and foreshadows the great
social upheavals of the Industrial Revolution.
Also available from Penguin Classics:
The Juvenilia of Jane Austen and
Charlotte Brontë
Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë
Edited by Frances Beer
This collection provides the
opportunity to discover the first examples of Austen's
neoclassical elegance and Brontë's mastery of the
romantic spirit.
Available on audiocassette from Penguin
Audiobooks:
Emma 0-14-086106-8
Persuasion 0-14-086058-4
Pride and Prejudice 0-14-086060-6
Sense and Sensibility 0-14-086245-5
Boxed Set: Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, and
Pride and Prejudice
Penguin Classics wishes to thank and
credit the following writers and books for information
used in creating this Penguin Classics Guide:
Joseph Duffy, "Criticism
1814-70"; Brian Southam, "Criticism
1870-1940" and "Janeites and
Anti-Janeites"; A. Walton Litz, "Criticism
1939-83"; J. David Grey, "Life of Jane
Austen"; all in The Jane Austen Companion, J. David
Grey, Managing Editor; Macmillan Publishing Company, New
York, 1986.
Lloyd W. Brown, "The Business of
Marrying and Mothering," and Norman Page, "The
Great Tradition Revisited," in Jane Austen's
Achievement, edited by Juliet McMaster, Harper & Row
Publishers, Inc., Barnes & Noble Import Division, New
York, 1976.
W. A. Craik, Jane Austen: The Six
Novels, Barnes & Noble, Inc., New York, 1965.