Love,lifeand housingin JaneAusten
When Elizabeth Bennet walks down the aisle in the last chapter of Pride And Prejudice we assume her big prize is Mr Darcy. Wrong, says Lucy Worsley. Or, rather, only half right. As far as Jane Austen’s contemporary readers were concerned, Lizzy’s real achievement is not bagging a handsome hero husband but taking possession of Pemberley, the Derbyshire mansion that she will call home for the rest of her life.
In this sprightly new take on Austen’s life, Worsley’s thesis is that home – having one, losing one, being obliged to share one with people you don’t like – was the fuel that powered the novelist’s life and those of her beloved heroines, too.
Just like Lizzy Bennet, Austen grew up knowing that if she failed to marry before her father died, then she would face a life spent under other people’s roofs.
Unlike Lizzy, though, Austen never met her Mr Darcy, with the result that, from the age of 30, she endured a decade as a lodger in accommodation provided by her better-off relatives.
Wherever an extra pair of hands were needed to babysit children, nurse an invalid or comfort a widow, then ‘Aunt Jane’ was on hand to pitch in. Along with her unmarried sister Cassandra, Austen became a sort of semi-permanent house guest, one who was expected to pay for her keep by providing free labour. None of this is new, and Worsley does not pretend to have uncovered any fresh facts about Austen, who has been the subject of many fine biographies, including one by Claire Tomalin. Instead, the perky TV historian argues that it is only by understanding the domestic circumstances of Jane’s life – how she lived and with whom – that we can come close to understanding the inspiration for her six immortal tales of love, life and housing in Georgian England.
There are Marianne and Elinor Dashwood in Sense And Sensibility, who have to leave their childhood home when their father dies, evicted by their brother who promptly makes the place his own.
And then there is Anne Elliot in Persuasion, obliged to watch as her beloved family home is rented out to strangers by her spendthrift father while she has to make do with rented rooms in
IT’S A FACT Jane Austen’s portrait will be printed on the new British £10 banknote – ironic, perhaps, since Austen never became rich from her writing.
Bath. Fanny Price, meanwhile, is made to leave her humble home and become a dogsbody to her rich relatives who live in the imposing Mansfield Park.
Did Austen resent the fact that she was obliged to act out all these scenarios in her own life? Worsley thinks that would be too simple. Austen, after all, had about half a dozen opportunities to get married and acquire a home of her own. Why didn’t she? Well, suggests Worsley, a life of caring for a husband and a growing family would have left no time over for writing. And writing was what mattered to Miss Austen more than anything, not just the act of creating imaginary worlds, but also the financial benefits – or ‘pewter’ – that it brought.
It is surely no coincidence, suggests Worsley, that it was not until 33-year-old Jane Austen got a permanent roof over her head in Chawton Cottage, provided by her brother, that she was finally able to sit down and finish the novels that have made her name live for ever.