January 13 Persuasion
January 20 Northanger Abbey
January 27 Mansfield Park
February 3 Miss Austen Regrets
February 10 Pride and Prejudice
to 24
March 23 Emma
March 30 to Sense and Sensibility
April 6
In preparation for watching the film adaptations I’ve started re-rereading the Austen novels. I’m reading Persuasion now. Miss Anne Elliott is pining away for her lost love when he suddenly reappears in her life. Anne had fallen in love with a young naval officer, Frederick Wentworth, eight years earlier. She was persuaded to break it off by well-meaning friends and relatives on the grounds that he was not a suitable match for her in station or fortune. Now that he is a naval captain and has made his fortune and she a spinster the chances of them being reconciled seem slim. You’ll have to read the book and/or watch the movie for the rest of the story.
I came across something interesting pertaining to the possibility that Jane Austen had a romance with a real naval officer who perhaps became the model for Captain Wentworth. This is from Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters, by her nephews, William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh:
A story is given in the Reminiscences of Sir Francis H. Doyle, to the effect that Mr. Austen, accompanied by Cassandra and Jane, took advantage of the Peace of Amiens, in 1802, to undertake a foreign tour. Whilst in Switzerland, they fell in with a young naval officer, who speedily became attached to Jane. His love was returned, and all seemed to be going smoothly. The party were making for Chamonix; but while the Austens kept to such high road as there was, their friend was to make his way thither over the mountains. The Austens reached Chamonix safely, but their friend never arrived, and at last news came that he had over-tired himself and died of brain fever on the way. The Austens returned to England, and Jane resumed her ordinary life, never referring to her adventures abroad.
Here's an excerpt from a poem by W.H. Auden about Jane Austen:
A Letter To Lord Byron, W. H. Auden
"...
There is one other author in my pack
For some time I debated which to write to.
Which would least likely send my letter back?
But I decided I'd give a fright to
Jane Austen if I wrote when I'd no right to,
And share in her contempt the dreadful fates
Of Crawford, Musgrove, and of Mr. Yates.
Then she's a novelist. I don't know whether
You will agree, but novel writing is
A higher art than poetry altogether
In my opinion, and success implies
Both finer character and faculties
Perhaps that's why real novels are as rare
As winter thunder or a polar bear.
...
I must remember, though, that you were dead
Before the four great Russians lived, who brought
The art of novel writing to a head;
The help of Boots had not been sought.
But now the art for which Jane Austen fought,
Under the right persuasion bravely warms
And is the most prodigious of the forms.
She was not an unshockable blue-stocking;
If shades remain the characters they were,
No doubt she still considers you as shocking.
But tell Jane Austen, that is if you dare,
How much her novels are beloved down here.
She wrote them for posterity, she said;
'Twas rash, but by posterity she's read.
You could not shock her more than she shocks me;
Beside her Joyce seems innocent as grass.
It makes me most uncomfortable to see
An English spinster of the middle-class
Describe the amorous effects of 'brass',
Reveal so frankly and with such sobriety
The economic basis of society.
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