Austen 2

Session 2: 02/12 Austen in history: what

was happening in her times? Strife, war,
social class. Dissertation: 1. Class
struggle 2. Struggle
 Sense and Sensibility (1811)
Pride and Prejudice (1813)
Mansfield Park (1814)
Emma (1815)
Northanger Abbey (1818, posthumous)
Persuasion (1818, posthumous)
Short fiction
Lady Susan (1794, 1805)
Unfinished fiction
The Watsons (1804)
Sanditon (1817)
 Tanner, Tony, Jane Austen, preface to the
reissued edition by Marilyn Gaull, Basingstoke
and New York, 2007 [first published 1986].
Butler, Marilyn, Jane Austen and the War of
Ideas, Oxford/ Clarendon, 1975.
Piketty, Thomas, Capital in the Twenty-First
Century, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 2014.
 Austens choosing to exclude such overt
historical references such as Walter Scotts, for
example, to present herself, as Tanner claimed
she did as a provincial spinster enjoying (or
suffering) a very limited horizon of
contemporary experience was an occlusion
as the neo-historicists who followed Butler
called it, not an exclusion (Gaull)
 militarism, and capitalism, sublimated, [were]
turned into a dark subterranean energy
encoded in her simplest and most innocent
work (Gaull)
 Austen reveals:

so frankly and with such sobriety/The

economic basis of society [See Audens poem A
Letter to Lord Byron].

See article by Mary Poovey: Ideological

contradictions and the consolations of form
 she lived tangentially, on the margins, in the
shadows of the clashing armies and imminent
doom, powerless to influence them () Born
in 1775 living through decades of political
unrest and war, she experienced the
uncertainty, disruption, social confusion..
(Gaull)
 reluctance to state opinions, she participates
in a conservative reaction against more
permissive, individualistic, and personally
expressive novel types of earlier years
(Butler, xv)
Barbara Hardy and Angus Wilson took issue
with her readings of Austen because they said
Austen was naturally free of politics (Butler,
xv).
 She lived through: French revolution, rise and
fall of Napolean Bonaparte, American war of
Independence, died between Waterloo and
Peterloo.
NB: Lived through the making of the English
working class 1780-1832 as set out by E.P.
Thompson.
 Jacobin and anti-Jacobin struggle in England
around the revolution. See Edmund Burkes
Reflections on the French Revolution (1790)
and Thomas Paines Rights of Man (1790).
Jacques Louis David Le Serment du jeu de paume (1791), muse national du
chteau de Versailles et de Trianon
 Also strife at home in industry:
1. The combination acts of 1799 and 1800 to suppress Trade
Unions forming among textile workers of Yorkshire and
Lancashire.
2. Scarcity Riots of 1800.
3. Luddite riots of 1811 in which Frames were broken in
Nottingham, Derbyshire and Leicestershire, disturbance in
West Riding in 1815.
4. The enclosure acts: The Inclosure Act 1773, n 1801, the
Inclosure (Consolidation) Act was passed to tidy up
previous acts.
5. The Inclosure Acts (or "Enclosure Acts" in modern spelling
were a series of Acts of Parliament taking common land -
creating legal property rights to land that was previously
considered common. Between 1604 and 1914, over 5,200
individual Enclosure Acts were put into place, enclosing
6.8 million acres of land (almost 11,000 square miles).
 The Mores by John Clare written 1812 - 1831
Far spread the moorey ground a level scene
Bespread with rush and one eternal green
That never felt the rage of blundering plough
Though centurys wreathed springs blossoms on its brow
Still meeting plains that stretched them far away
In uncheckt shadows of green brown, and grey
Unbounded freedom ruled the wandering scene
Nor fence of ownership crept in between
To hide the prospect of the following eye
Its only bondage was the circling sky
One mighty flat undwarfed by bush and tree
Spread its faint shadow of immensity
And lost itself, which seemed to eke its bounds
In the blue mist the horizons edge surrounds
Now this sweet vision of my boyish hours
Free as spring clouds and wild as summer flowers
Is faded all a hope that blossomed free,
And hath been once, no more shall be
Inclosure came and trampled on the grave
Of labours rights and left the poor a slave
And memorys pride ere want to wealth did bow
Is both the shadow and the substance now
A young "drawer" pulling a coal tub along a mine gallery from
late 18th to mid-19th century. In Britain laws passed in 1842
and 1844 improved mine working conditions.
Capital and Labour, Punch, 29 July 1843
 Reviews Piketty
Piketty () does more than document the growing
concentration of income in the hands of a small
economic elite. He also makes a powerful case that
were on the way back to patrimonial capitalism, in
which the commanding heights of the economy are
dominated not just by wealth, but also by inherited
wealth, in which birth matters more than effort and
talent. (Paul Krugman, New York Times)
Thomas Piketty () argues that the great equalizing
decades following World War II, which brought on the
rise of the middle class in the United States [and
Europe], were but a historical anomaly.
 Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014)
The Nature of Wealth: From Literature to Reality
When Honor de Balzac and Jane Austen wrote their novels
at the beginning of the nineteenth-century, the nature of
wealth was relatively clear to all readers. Wealth seemed to
exist to produce rents, that is , dependable, regular payments
to the owners of certain assets, which usually took the form of
land or government bons. Pre Goriot owned the latter, while
the small estate of the Rastignacs consisted of the former. The
vast Norland estate that John Dashwood inherits in Sense and
Sensibility is also agricultural land, from which he is quick to
expel his half-sisters Elinor and Marianne, who must make do
with the interest on a small capital in government bonds left
to them by their father. In the classic novels of the nineteenth-
century, wealth is everywhere, and no matter how large or
small the capital, or who owns it, it generally takes one of two
forms: land or government bonds. (113)
 Piketty cont/
Csar Birotteau, another Balzac character, made his money in perfumes
() After rejecting the sage advice of his wife, who urged him to invest in
good farmland near Chinon and government bonds, he ended in ruin [by
speculating]. () Jane Austens heroes were more rural than Balzacs ()
In Mansfield Park, Fannys uncle, Sir Thomas, has to travel to the West
Indies for a year with his eldest son for the purpose of managing his
affairs and investments () In the early 1800s it was by no means simple
to manage plantations several thousand miles away (). So which was it:
quiet capital or risky investments? () Pre Goriots pasta may have
become Steve Jobss tablet, and investments in the west Indies in 1800
may have become investments in China and South Afriica in 2010 but has
the deep structure of capital really changed? Capital is never quiet: it is
always risk-oriented and entrepreneurial, at least in its inception, yet it
always tends to transform itself into rents as it accumulates in large
enough amounts that is its vocation, its logical destination. What, then,
gives us the vague sense that social inequality today is very different from
social inequality in the age of Balzac and Austen? ()why [do] some
people think that modern capital has become more dynamic and less
rent-seeking (115-116)
 Piketty cont/
To put it simply, we can see that over the
very long run, agricultural land has gradually
been replaced by buildings, business capital,
and financial capital and invested in firms and
government organizations. Yet the overall
value of capital, measuerd in years of national
income, has not really changed (118) .
 Volume II, end of chapter 2 and start
of chapter 3, p. 113
How do these pages reflect Capital and
Labour?
Capital in Britain 1700-2010
Capital in France 1700-2010
 Dissertation: Class struggle
Introduction:
What are the connotations of the expression? Unfold
its different meanings (historically and in contemporary
usage).
Where can we position Austen in terms of the notion
of class struggle (brief explanation)?
What will the dissertation demonstrate about class
struggle in Sense and Sensibility? (problmatique). I
wish to show that
Main body of the essay: Parts 1, 2, 3
Conclusion
 Class struggle in S&S
Introduction in 3 steps:
Preamble (explore title looking at the
connotations of words, 2 quotes from critics
or from novel which help to explore the
question, interrogate the subject/question it)
Problmatique or argument (I wish to
demonstrate that..)
Announce your plan: Firstly, secondly, my last
part will..
 A first plan on class struggle

Protecting capital and stagnation of the class

system (examples)
The struggle of those who have little against
those who have much (Marianne, Elinor, the
two Elizas but also?)
Social change and mobility changing social
landscape (examples)
 Avoid these common mistakes
Each time is correct. Every time is incorrect
Mariannes marriage TO Brandon (not with)
Say rural rather than rustic (rustic is rough, countrified and is negative).
Bucolic is idealistic (dream of Marianne), country as in country existence
is neutral.
Dont write posh (too casual). [Port Out Starboard Home: printed on
tickets of passengers on P&O (Peninsula and Orient) passenger vessels
that travelled between UK and India in the days of the Raj. PO and SH
were scrawled on the steamer trunks used on the voyages, by seamen
when allocating cabins: the port (left-hand side) berths were mostly in the
shade when travelling out (easterly) and the starboard ones when coming
back. So the best and most expensive berths were POSH.
Instead of posh write affluent, wealthy or upper class
Do not write As a matter of fact Just put in fact
Do not write We can notice. Write We can see..It is clear that
 Session 3: 09/12 What Austen knew
and read.. Dissertation: Strategy

Felt she could never rival Scott and Richardson

she has eclipsed them both says Tony
Tanner.
Sense and Sensibility is conservative yet
enlightened and critical of her times
 Anti-Jacobin and conservative
Anti-Jacobin and conservative novels of the late
1790s when England seemed to be losing war
against revolutionary France (village-bound
novels appearing when Austen writing SS, PP and
NA).
Mary Brunton and Jane West had heroines who
were controlled, dutiful etc these acquiescent
heroines challenge the heroines of reformists and
Jacobins such as Godwin, Wollstonecraft, Hays..
 Anti-Jacobin Novel
Novels by Mrs. Jane West an anti-sentimentalist and anti-
Jacobin novelist The Advantages of Education (1793), A
Gossips Story (1796)
Elinor and Marianne (first version of S&S) similar to Mrs.
Wests Gossips Story (1796) (conservative, anti-Jacobin and
preferring disciplined Louisa to wayward Marianne) and also
to a lesser extent Maria Edgeworths Letters of Julia and
Caroline (1795). Conservative and ideological counterparts
of Wollstonecraft.
See also Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton very anti-Jacobin. She
also wrote the satirical novel Memoirs of Modern
Philosophers (1800), and the anti-Jacobin Letters of a
Hindoo Rajah in 1796
Maria Edgeworth is in some ways Jacobin but also anti-
excess of feeling so bi-partisan.
 From Romantic to revolutionary
Popular fiction expressed ideologies at the time: see the
sentimental novels of Rousseau (Julie, ou la Nouvelle Eloise,
1761). Excessive emotion often linked with extreme politics
and desire for change.
Jacobin Novel: In 1790s in aftermath of the French
Revolution a group of radicals made use of the novel to
circulate their ideas. Explicitly revolutionary novels were: by
Thomas Holcroft a stable boy and shoe-maker and author of
Anna St.Ives (1792) and The Adventures of Hugh Trevor (1794-
7). His friend William Godwin brought out Caleb Williams
(1794). Godwin was father of Mary Shelley and wife of Mary
Wollstonecraft who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of
Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects
(1792). See also Bages Hermsprong (1796).
 The Anti-Jacobin, or, Weekly Examiner was an
English newspaper founded by George
Canning in 1797 and devoted to opposing the
radicalism of the French Revolution. The
Revolution polarized British political opinion in
the 1790s, with conservatives outraged at
killing of the king, the expulsion of the nobles,
and the Reign of Terror.
 James Gillray, The Tree of Liberty Must Be Planted
Immediately (Feb. 1797). The Trustees of the British
Museum [Museum
 1798 illustration accompanying poem The New
Morality in The Anti-Jacobin, or, Weekly Examiner .
 Strategy in Sense and Sensibility
Introduction:
What are the connotations of the word? Unfold its
different meanings (historically and in contemporary
usage).
Where can we position Austen in terms of the notion
of strategy (brief explanation)?
What will the dissertation demonstrate about strategy
in Sense and Sensibility? (problmatique). I wish to
show that
Main body of the essay: Parts 1, 2, 3
Conclusion
 Part 1: Class difference and strategy to
survive/the war of unequal rank and means
Part 2: Decorum as strategy: manoeuvring
with words in a treacherous
environment/sense and sensibility as
strategies
Part 3: The strategies of the text: how do
readers succumb to the novels strategies?
What means does Austen deploy?
 Problmatique
The word strategy is traditionally associated
with a so-called masculine universe of war or
gaming manuvres. I wish to demonstrate
that Austen deploys the notion in a feminine
domestic universe as part of finely tuned
tactics. She shows that clever women know
that strategy is necessary to survive the social
war that women wage everyday in Sense and
Sensibility.
 Part 1: Strategies of social survival
Fall from grace and need to battle in society

Economics and the struggle for life/a husband

Sense and sensibility as strategies/tools for

social survival
 Part 2: Decorum as strategy
Anti-Jacobin manners: new pressing need for manners and perfect
morals so as to keep deference and obedience in place. Says Roy Porter:
Restraint, control and propriety were vital if society was not to blow up in
their faces (Porter, England in the 18th c) and John Bowlders Reform or
Ruin (1798) captures this.
Anti-Libertinsim: Good behaviour became Englands answer to the
French Revolution. Before upper classes in first part of century =
libertinism, moral laxity and varying degrees of coarseness and
boorishness (Tanner 27) now felt vital to clean up their act, stop the
servants taking liberties when their betters drunk and disorderly
Defence of property: tea drinking over a minefield : Decorum and
propriety were political necessities! At the time repressive laws to defend
properties passed by Pitts government in response to the French Rev..
- The treason and sedition Act of 1795
- the suspension of Habeas Corpus in 1794 and 1798 and creation of a
widespread network of informers (see the spies in Dickenss A Tale of Two
Cities set during the French Revolution).
 Part 3: The strategies of Austens
writing
Picaresque qualities of the novel. Adventure and
survival. See picaro of Spanish fiction - the poor
but clever child (Lazarillo de Tormes, Guzmn
dAlfarache, Ruy Blas but also Don Quixote,
Cervantes)
Suspense and the triple decker novel. The
strategies of new print culture and how writers
responded (shape of Austens novel)
Seduction and schooling of the reader through
irony, through elegance, trickery, surprise
Second possible plan for Strategy
Part 1: Successful strategies and failed
strategies (Social, legal, Elinor, Mrs. John
Dashwood, Mrs. Ferrars etc)
Part 2: Lack of strategy (Marianne and
Edward.. Others? )
Part 3: Austens strategy as a writer. Her
textual and narrative strategies