Jane Austen’s Possessions and Dispossessions: The Significance of Objects

301 Pages·2014·1.123 MB·English

by  Sandie Byrne (auth.)

Jane Austen’s Possessions and Dispossessions
Also by Sandie Byrne:
THE UNBEARABLE SAKI: H.H. Munro
JANE AUSTEN, MANSFIELD PARK
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW: Plays
THE POETRY OF TED HUGHES
H. V. & O: The Poetry of Tony Harrison
TONY HARRISON: Loiner
Jane Austen’s Possessions
and Dispossessions
The Significance of Objects
Sandie Byrne
Lecturer and Director of Studies, Oxford University, UK
© Sandie Byrne 2014
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-40630-9
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this
work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2014 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries
ISBN 978-1-349-48792-9 ISBN 978-1-137-40631-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137406316
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the
country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India.
Contents
Note on the Texts vi
List of Abbreviations vii
Introduction 1
1 Austen Possessions and Di spossessions 18
2 Sense and Sensibility: Giving and Taking 29
3 Pride and Prejudice: General Impressions 57
4 Mansfield Park: Everything has its Price 80
5 Emma: The Obliged and the Obligated 113
6 Persuasion: Loss and Retrieval 148
7 Northanger Abbey: Signs Taken for Wonders 173
8 The Early Writing and Fragments 197
Juvenilia 197
Lady Susan 202
The Watsons 204
Sanditon 205
9 The Land and the Big House 213
Conclusion 233
Notes 249
Bibliography 275
Index 286
v
Note on the Texts
All references to the published novels of Jane Austen are to the first or
second editions.
Emma, 3 vols. London: John Murray, 1816.
Mansfield Park, 3 vols. London: Thomas Egerton, 1814.
Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, 4 vols. London: John Murray 1818.
Pride and Prejudice, 3 vols. London: Thomas Egerton, 1813.
Sense and Sensibility, 3 vols. London: Thomas Egerton, 1811.
References to Jane Austen’s juvenilia and the unfinished works are
taken from Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts Digital Edition, ed. Kathryn
Sutherland (2010). www.janeausten.ac.uk
vi
List of Abbreviations
Letters Deirdre Le Faye, ed., Jane Austen’s Letters. Oxford University
Press, 1997.
Life Claire Tomalin, Jane Austen: A Life. London: Viking, 1997.
Memoir James Edward Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen and
Other Family Recollections, ed. Kathryn Sutherland. Oxford
World’s Classics, Oxford University Press, 2008.
‘Notice’ Henry Austen, ‘A Biographical Notice of the Author’, in
James Edward Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen and
Other Family Recollections, ed. Kathryn Sutherland. Oxford
World’s Classics, Oxford University Press, 2008.
vii
Introduction
This study examines the social and symbolic significance of ownership,
exchange and loss of objects in the novels of Jane Austen. It uses defini-
tions from the Oxford English Dictionary in order to distinguish between
an object and a thing, though in some of the sources cited these terms
are used interchangeably. The OED defines an object as, originally,
‘something placed before or presented to the eyes or other senses’ and
now more generally, ‘a material thing that can be seen and touched’,
whereas a thing is that which ‘exists individually (in the most general
sense, in fact or in idea); that which is or may be in any way an object
of perception, knowledge, or thought; an entity, a being. (Including
persons, in contexts where personality is not significant.)’
The aim of the study is to show that Austen’s employment of tangible
objects and her descriptions of those objects, though economical, are
rarely inconsequential. Henry James asserts that the supreme virtue of
the novel is ‘the air of reality’ achieved through ‘solidity of specifica-
tion’.1 The novelist recognises that he satisfies ‘man’s constant demand’
and ‘general appetite for a picture’.2 For James, the novelist must be some-
one on whom nothing is lost, who constantly takes notes. He empha-
sises, however, that many notes must be taken in order for a few to be
selected, and that no part of the novel, whether description, narrative or
dialogue, is separable from the other; in any novel worth discussing, a
passage of description is ‘in its intent narrative’.3 Austen’s letters to her
niece Anna suggest that whilst detailed descriptions may be desirable
and enjoyable, there is a limit to the number that a reader will tolerate:
You describe a sweet place, but your descriptions are often more min-
ute than will be liked. You give too many particulars of right hand &
left. – ( Jane Austen to Anna Austen)4
1
2 Jane Austen’s Possessions and Dispossessions
You know I enjoy particulars. ( Jane Austen to Anna Lefroy)5
Austen does not draw many pictures in the sense of providing minute
visual particulars of scenes, characters or objects, but when she does,
those pictures function as more than incidental detail.
Objects in Austen’s fiction can signify socially, denoting, for example,
rank, and which characters do or do not observe or comment on objects,
and how characters observe or comment, are similarly significant. The
relationship of characters to objects, whether through ownership, dona-
tion, exchange, receipt, loss, use, reference or perception is an impor-
tant vehicle of characterisation and, in particular in relation to female
characters, a theme in itself. Objects can also signify symbolically; they
may, for example, connote undercurrents of unexpressed feeling, or act
as vehicles for projection and displacement. In representing objects,
Austen distinguishes between several systems of value, including mon-
etary, practical, emotional and moral.
The extent, variety and quality of objects available to the consumer in
the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has been well established.
More and more consumer and luxury items were invented, designed,
manufactured and marketed in Britain and Europe during the period of
living memory encountered by Austen, and as mechanisation processes
developed, more and more were mass-produced. Maxine Berg states that
eighteenth-century consumers enjoyed shopping, taking pleasure in the
‘beauty, ingenuity, or convenience’ of the new products appearing in
shops.6 She goes on to say that
sophisticated mixed-media advertising seduced customers and cre-
ated new wants. This unparalleled ‘product revolution’ provoked
philosophers and pundits to proclaim a ‘new luxury’, one that
reached out to the middling and trading classes, unlike the old elite
and corrupt luxury. Statesmen and economists debated the impact of
a dramatically intensified world commerce in such luxuries on their
economies, national identities, and the behaviour and expectations
of their common people.
Before the wars between Great Britain and France and Great Britain
and America, Britain enjoyed a relatively peaceful period; religious zeal-
otry and persecution had moderated to (relative) tolerance; there was
(selective) prosperity; the House of Hanover was well established,7 and
some of its members were dedicated followers of fashion. The factors