OFF THE RECORD
Austen’s keen observations can tell us much about our well-to-do kin, Alan Crosby writes
Alan Crosby finds valuable insights in the works of Jane Austen
Good looks, an optional extra; large bank balance and steady income, absolutely essential
Almost forgotten in the mid-Victorian period when her books were hardly read, Jane Austen is now a global phenomenon and a multi-billion pound business. People love her novels for all sorts of reasons – the romance, the wit, the sparkling observation, the interaction of the characters. But as family and local historians we can also read them as a historical source; a way of understanding the world at least some of our ancestors lived in two hundred or more years ago.
That’s because Jane was such an acute observer of society: we think of her work as ‘period drama’, but it was actually bang up-to-date social commentary. It’s a window on some layers of English society in the years around 1800. Jane is sometimes criticised because there are so few ordinary people in her novels and because she hardly touches on the global crisis of the day (all the books appeared during the Napoleonic Wars). But she wrote about what she knew well (which was not international politics) and devised her plots to suit. There are no downtrodden peasants or starving children in the gutter. “Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can,” she said, neatly pre-empting her critics.
But many of us have forebears who in Jane Austen’s lifetime were the daughters of prosperous farmers, the younger sons of minor landowners, flashy nouveaux riches visitors to Bath, or successful tradesmen who bought small country estates. A good many people have ancestors who were clergy in country parishes, impoverished genteel widows fallen on hard times, or even, of course, dashing but dissolute army officers, glamorous in an eye-catching red coat. These and many other characters in her novels not only step from the pages to give us a picture of late Georgian and Regency England, but also portray the people who just might be on our family tree.
Think of those brilliant descriptions of balls and assemblies in country towns. They remind us of the social framework of our real-life forebears – the young ladies in their best muslin could be those sisters on our own family tree... the one who married well, the one who made a bad choice, the one whose husband was a solid pillar of the parish, the one who was never chosen at all. Imagine them and their ambitious mother, exchanging gossip with other ambitious mothers as they eye up the local male talent for their daughters ( good looks, an optional extra; large bank balance and steady income, absolutely essential).
That’s how it was and the wonderful ritual of formal dances, sitting out, watching the new entrants and chatting over the ices was the mechanism by which it worked. So in Basingstoke and Bakewell, Dorking and Dereham, up and down the country the social intercourse went on. And the formality was not just on public occasions. One of the other powerful messages from the novels – again, one which was the framework for the lives of many of our forebears – is that this was a world of hierarchies. Social rank was crucial even within the family. Remember how flighty Lydia Bennett, aged 15, has to marry Captain Wickham, the handsome scoundrel, because they have run away together? She eventually comes home to see the family and the whole tribe are about to go into dinner – just family dinner, nothing special. Jane, the virtuous eldest sister, is about to follow their parents into the dining room, the accustomed order of precedence. But Lydia pushes in: “Ah! Jane, I take your place now, and you must go lower, because I am a married woman.” And that’s a family meal for goodness’ sake! These niceties really mattered 200 years ago. Jane Austen as social commentator – a truth which is now universally acknowledged!