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Classic British Fiction: Jane Austen's complete works,
all 8 of her novels plus 3 books about her in a single file
by Jane Austen.
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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3729979896
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SENSE AND SENSIBILITY
This one gives the clash of values characteristic of the writer, with wealth and temptation and opportunity versus rectitude and character and propriety as well as prudence playing the major part.
How love itself must give way to rectitude and character is the chief theme, with the obvious lesson that giving way to temptation for now might close the door to happiness, love and future in fact.
How love itself must give way to rectitude and character is the chief theme, with the obvious lesson that giving way to temptation for now might close the door to happiness, love and future in fact.
October 17, 2008.
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PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." So the writer states right in the beginning.
That is because while this is assumed to be a romance it is really a very astute picture of society that transcends time and geography and social boundaries and cultures, and applies universally to any place where there are young women at an age ripe to marry without dowries to bring out grooms out of the woods swarming. This is all the more so when the young women in question are not about to while away time with pretense of careers and attempts at education while the men they school and party with are getting ready, or any other subterfuges of societies they belong to.
Marriage is the beginning of the life they are going to lead with homemaking and child rearing and building of social fabric and of future as their occupation, since time immemorial. It can be said to be the most important occupation in the world, and yet few societies make a provision of how the young women can go about securing their life in it, with few structures and storngholds and little if any security.
Jane Austen writes extensively about this in various settings in her works, and offers much light to guide people - not only young women but men and women of all ages - with good counsel. This is her most popular work and most famous one, and with good reason.
It seems like a romance and at some level it is but only after normal intelligent and prudent women - young and old - use decorum and wise counsel added to commonsense. This like other books by the author is about how to live well and safe and be good and decent, sensible and honourable, prudent and not blinded by illusions, and find love and romance and marriage as well.
Often people of a bit less comprehension are likely to make the mistake of a common sort, where they conclude "Elizabeth married Darcy not out of love, but for his money". She - the writer - herself makes a joke of the sort, somewhere along towards the end, but it is clearly a joke for all that. Elizabeth might not have been sighing and fainting with passionate abandon at first sight, but that is because unlike figures of trashy pulp she is a person with a mind and other concerns as well, and for a normal young woman passion does not necessarily come as the blinding flash at first sight any more than it does for - say - a writer or a poet or an artist or a scientist. Which does not reduce the final outcome of a certainty when it does come. Elizabeth married for her conviction of love, respect and rectitude, not for money.
If that were to be true she would not have refused him, or indeed even been off hand, and not fawning or manipulative, even before with all his standoffish behaviour.
But she behaved normally, and refused him with a growing wrath when he proposed - it was not his money, but to begin with the truth of his letter, and then the regard his household had for him, the people who knew him the most, and subsequently his more than civil behaviour towards her relatives who were only middle class, and his obvious attempts to have his sister know her and have her for a friend - these wer the successive steps that changed her more and more.
The final clinching one was of course his taking all the trouble to make amends to the grievous injury caused to her family by his silence, about someone he should have and did not warn people about, and keeping not only silent about it - the efforts he made to make sure about making amends to the injury caused by his reticence - but making sure her uncle would not tell anyone either.
In between was his aunt arriving haughtily to obtain a reassurance from her to the effect that she would not marry him - which not only made her stubborn but made the three concerned (the two and the aunt) realise that she might be considering it seriously, although his offer had not been left on the table indefinitely.
So if anyone out there still thinks Elizabeth married him for his money - I suppose you did not read the story, really.
October 15, 2008.
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MANSFIELD PARK
The writer of the universally popular Pride And Prejudice explores another angle of the conflicts of dealing with life as it is dealt out - wealth and relative status, temptation and opportunities, family and relationships, extended family and relatives, and love that never might be attained.Above all are rectitude and character and values, to be never lost whatever the temptation.
October 17, 2008.
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EMMA
Perhaps arguably the second most popular of the writer's works vying with Mansfield Park for the title, this one again explores values and conflicts from another angle, with growth of character and perception, and temptation to meddle in social affairs, as the chief theme. It is more serious than it looks, as is usual with a good deal of her work, where the seemingly most superficial and romantic turns out to be most serious and worthy of note. More people than would care to acknowledge or admit even to themselves do meddle in affairs of others, especially those of heart, with a fond illusion that they can do good to others and provide their happiness for them. But lacking in perception and maturity and judgement and discrimination they often spoil more than they would like to admit, often ruining lives. Couples that might change the world with their love are torn asunder by a disapproving bunch of relatives or even religious heads with their "concern" for the "soul" of the one who might bring wonderious gifts but is not one of them (hence the gifts of course), and the miracle that would have been the families and souls generated with such love are nipped in the bud. Of course, it is only the couple that knows the tremendous love and the pain and suffering of being torn asunder, while others merely go about congratulating one another for having averted an unsuitable match with an outsider. Of course, meddling is not limited to that - couples that could have changed the course of the universe with their love and their gifts combined often get torn apart by meddling others who delude themselves that they were acting in good faith for the betterment of society, and if it is clear they were tormenting a woman or a daughter, well that is what they are for - so they can learn to do the same to others in turn, if so lucky, and so goes the chain. Meanwhile gifts of heaven go squandered into dust because the couples are either too weak to hold on to each other and to their heavenly gift of creation of a new world, or even worse, because one gets turned against another and hurts until the one hurt is no more, which is when the survivor might realise if lucky of what has been lost, even though it might be too late. Often such realisation awaits death of the one who hurt the other one into death. None of this happened in Emma - she was lucky, to have good counsel and love guarding her, and her weakness of character of meddling with others nipped in bud and her mistakes of perception corrected by someone wiser and stern about serious faults. She was lucky indeed.
October 17, 2008.
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NORTHANGER ABBEY
The not so well to do young woman is taken to a resort by comparatively well to do relatives and is invited by the master of the Northanger Abbey, the father of the young and eligible gentleman who has a mutual attracted to her and courting her, to stay with him and his family, under the impression the she is going to inherit the relatives' money. The character of this father, the rich owner of the home that is the title, unfolds, and there are confusion, test of virtue and character, and separations and misunderstandings. The young man however has excellent character and fortunately realises what is what, and love triumphs even without money.
October 21, 2008.
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PERSUASION
The most gentle love story from Austen repertoire, with the usual cache of gentle women and men following a normal course of life for their day while falling into easy traps of faults or follies and realising their mistakes and generally rising above, with their counterpart of men and women of small follies or serious faults of character providing examples of how not to be or behave. Someone (name escapes me, having read this long ago, two decades or more) had once pointed out that in Austen nothing happens page after page and yet one reads it with great interest, and to that one might only add, time after time again and again with the interest not diminished at all. And the most interesting are those of her tales that have the gentlest of stories, characters, et al.
July 4, 2010.
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LADY SUSAN
If one never knew anyone of this sort, one would think the character is entirely invented. At that it is not that uncommon to come across men who deal with their own children, especially daughters, this cruelly or worse, but they are excused or even pressured to be this cruel and admired for it in various cultures (not excepting west or US for that matter) while women are usually this cruel with children of other women, say a lover's wife or a sister in law. But the character therefore is entirely possible, especially in an era when a woman could only obtain wealth and consequence by marriages her own and her relatives'; and the only area she could use her mind however sharp was in fields related to intrigues of social sort, marriages, love affaires, and so on, especially gossip and vile gossip about other women. This unfortunately is what far too many women and even men use their minds for, even now, for sport and not for want of subjects that could use the sharp minds. Sometimes it is the heart of such a gossiper and mud thrower that is at fault seriously in that destroying another person is the pleasure, and use of mind and other facilities is merely a means. Lady Susan comes as a surprise therefore not because of the subject but the author who chose to write it, since Jane Austen usually is as clear as a sunny day in desert about virtues and vices, and condemning not only the latter but even faults of character that might seem only human today but do lead to follies or tragedies even today often enough unquestionably. Here Austen chooses the letter form prevalent in her time, and avoids commentary, except in letters of another character, giving equal voice to two opposite characters as it were. The story ends well as all Austen tales do to reward virtue, protect innocent and punish vice or folly only in measure. A window as always to her time, and informative in that as well.
July 05, 2010.
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Sanditon (1817)
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Austen is delightful as ever, in her way of quite succinctly judging characters she writes about.
"Upon the whole, Mr. Parker was evidently an amiable family man, fond of wife, children, brothers and sisters, and generally kind-hearted; liberal, gentlemanlike, easy to please; of a sanguine turn of mind, with more imagination than judgement. And Mrs. Parker was as evidently a gentle, amiable, sweet-tempered woman, the properest wife in the world for a man of strong understanding but not of a capacity to supply the cooler reflection which her own husband sometimes needed; and so entirely waiting to be guided on every occasion that whether he was risking his fortune or spraining his ankle, she remained equally useless."
What with Mr. Parker promoting Sandition with a faith in sea air and bathing as remedy for every ailment, and necessary to health, on one hand - and his siblings swearing their ill heath is too far gone for them to visit, the latter being quite hilarious, this is already promising entertainment and more, right at the beginning.
Later, it's the young Sir Edward Denham, handsome, and flattering in his attentions to the visitor Miss Charlotte Haywood, who is subject of the author's scrutiny.
"Charlotte’s first glance told her that Sir Edward’s air was that of a lover. There could be no doubt of his devotion to Clara. How Clara received it was less obvious, but she was inclined to think not very favourably; for though sitting thus apart with him (which probably she might not have been able to prevent, her air was calm and grave."
Austen is clear about her contempt for a modicum of behaviour slightly reminiscent of Mary Bennett from her most famous work, Pride And Prejudice.
"He surprised her by quitting Clara immediately on their all joining and agreeing to walk, and by addressing his attentions entirely to herself. Stationing himself close by her, he seemed to mean to detach her as much as possible from the rest of the party and to give her the whole of his conversation. He began, in a tone of great taste and feeling, to talk of the sea and the sea shore; and ran with energy through all the usual phrases employed in praise of their sublimity and descriptive of the undescribable emotions they excite in the mind of sensibility. The terrific grandeur of the ocean in a storm, its glass surface in a calm, its gulls and its samphire and the deep fathoms of its abysses, its quick vicissitudes, its direful deceptions, its mariners tempting it in sunshine and overwhelmed by the sudden tempest—all were eagerly and fluently touched; rather commonplace perhaps, but doing very well from the lips of a handsome Sir Edward, and she could not but think him a man of feeling, till he began to stagger her by the number of his quotations and the bewilderment of some of his sentences.
And she has Charlotte bequeathed with intelligence and common sense of Elizabeth Bennett, rather than the self absorption of Emma.
"His choosing to walk with her, she had learnt to understand. It was done to pique Miss Brereton. She had read it, in an anxious glance or two on his side; but why he should talk so much nonsense, unless he could do no better, was unintelligible. He seemed very sentimental, very full of some feeling or other, and very much addicted to all the newest-fashioned hard words, had not a very clear brain, she presumed, and talked a good deal by rote. ... "
Charlotte chooses to stay with Lady Denham on the Terrace, as asked by her, instead of going with others to library.
"Nobody could live happier together than us—and he was a very honourable man, quite the gentleman of ancient family. And when he died, I gave Sir Edward his gold watch.” She said this with a look at her companion which implied its right to produce a great impression; and seeing no rapturous astonishment in Charlotte’s countenance, added quickly, “He did not bequeath it to his nephew, my dear. It was no bequest. It was not in the will. He only told me, and that but once, that he should wish his nephew to have his watch; but it need not have been binding if l had not chose it.”
"“Very kind indeed! Very handsome!” said Charlotte, absolutely forced to affect admiration.
"“Yes, my dear, and it is not the only kind thing I have done by him. I have been a very liberal friend to Sir Edward. And poor young man, he needs it bad enough. For though I am only the dowager, my dear, and he is the heir, things do not stand between us in the way they commonly do between those two parties. Not a shilling do I receive from the Denham estate. Sir Edward has no payments to make me. He doesn’t stand uppermost, believe me. It is I that help him.”
"“Indeed! He is a very fine young man, particularly elegant in his address.” This was said chiefly for the sake of saying something, but Charlotte directly saw that it was laying her open to suspicion by Lady Denham’s giving a shrewd glance at her and replying,
"“Yes, yes, he is very well to look at. And it is to be hoped that some lady of large fortune will think so, for Sir Edward must marry for money. He and I often talk that matter over. A handsome young fellow like him will go smirking and smiling about and paying girls compliments, but he knows he must marry for money. And Sir Edward is a very steady young man in the main and has got very good notions.”"
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Austen writes candidly about - whether consciously aware, and deliberately writing, or simply taking them as facts of life - arranged marriage and caste systems of England in particular, Europe in general; things that since have been, falsely, identified exclusively with India, in line with Macaulay policy to break spirit of India.
"“Sir Edward Denham,” said Charlotte, “with such personal advantages may be almost sure of getting a woman of fortune, if he chooses it.”
"This glorious sentiment seemed quite to remove suspicion. “Aye my dear, that’s very sensibly said,” cried Lady Denham. “And if we could but get a young heiress to Sanditon! But heiresses are monstrous scarce! I do not think we have had an heiress here—or even a Co. since Sanditon has been a public place. Families come after families but, as far as I can learn, it is not one in a hundred of them that have any real property, landed or funded. An income perhaps, but no property. Clergymen maybe, or lawyers from town, or half-pay officers, or widows with only a jointure. And what good can such people do anybody? Except just as they take our empty houses and, between ourselves, I think they are great fools for not staying at home. Now if we could get a young heiress to be sent here for her health—and if she was ordered to drink asses’ milk I could supply her—and, as soon as she got well, have her fall in love with Sir Edward!”"
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And again, as the two parties unite -
"Sir Edward, approaching Charlotte, said, “You may perceive what has been our occupation. My sister wanted my counsel in the selection of some books. We have many leisure hours and read a great deal. I am no indiscriminate novel reader. The mere trash of the common circulating library I hold in the highest contempt. You will never hear me advocating those puerile emanations which detail nothing but discordant principles incapable of amalgamation, or those vapid tissues of ordinary occurrences from which no useful deductions can be drawn. In vain may we put them into a literary alembic; we distil nothing which can add to science. You understand me, I am sure?”
"“I am not quite certain that I do. But if you will describe the sort of novels which you do approve, l dare say it will give me a clearer idea.”
"“Most willingly, fair questioner. The novels which I approve are such as display human nature with grandeur; such as show her in the sublimities of intense feeling; such as exhibit the progress of strong passion from the first germ of incipient susceptibility to the utmost energies of reason half-dethroned; where we see the strong spark of woman’s captivations elicit such fire in the soul of man as leads him—though at the risk of some aberration from the strict line of primitive obligations—to hazard all, dare all, achieve all to obtain her. Such are the works which I peruse with delight and, I hope I may say, with amelioration. They hold forth the most splendid portraitures of high conceptions, unbounded views, illimitable ardour, indomitable decision. And even when the event is mainly anti-prosperous to the high-toned machinations of the prime character—the potent, pervading hero of the story—it leaves us full of generous emotions for him; our hearts are paralysed. It would be pseudo-philosophy to assert that we do not feel more enwrapped by the brilliancy of his career than by the tranquil and morbid virtues of any opposing character. Our approbation of the latter is but eleemosynary. These are the novels which enlarge the primitive capabilities to the heart; and it cannot impugn the sense or be any dereliction of the character of the most anti-puerile man, to be conversant with them.”"
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"He read all the essays, letters, tours and criticisms of the day; and with the same ill-luck which made him derive only false principles from lessons of morality, and incentives to vice from the history of its overthrow, he gathered only hard words and involved sentences from the style of our most approved writers. Sir Edward’s great object in life was to be seductive. With such personal advantages as he knew himself to possess, and such talents as he did also give himself credit for, he regarded it as his duty. He felt that he was formed to be a dangerous man, quite in the line of the Lovelaces. The very name of Sir Edward, he thought, carried some degree of fascination with it. To be generally gallant and assiduous about the fair, to make fine speeches to every pretty girl, was but the inferior part of the character he had to play. Miss Heywood, or any other young woman with any pretensions to beauty, he was entitled (according to his own views of society) to approach with high compliment and rhapsody on the slightest acquaintance. But it was Clara alone on whom he had serious designs; it was Clara whom he meant to seduce—her seduction was quite determined on. Her situation in every way called for it. She was his rival in Lady Denham’s favour; she was young, lovely and dependent. He had very early seen the necessity of the case, and had now been long trying with cautious assiduity to make an impression on her heart and to undermine her principles.
"Clara saw through him and had not the least intention of being seduced; but she bore with him patiently enough to confirm the sort of attachment which her personal charms had raised. A greater degree of discouragement indeed would not have affected Sir Edward. He was armed against the highest pitch of disdain or aversion. If she could not be won by affection, he must carry her off. He knew his business. Already had he had many musings on the subject. If he were constrained so to act, he must naturally wish to strike out something new, to exceed those who had gone before him; and he felt a strong curiosity to ascertain whether the neighbourhood of Timbuctu might not afford some solitary house adapted for Clara’s reception. But the expense, alas! of measures in that masterly style was ill-suited to his purse; and prudence obliged him to prefer the quietest sort of ruin and disgrace for the object of his affections to the more renowned."
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Miss Diana Parker had written to describe inability of Parker siblings to travel, but they arrived.
" ... You see how it was all managed. I had the pleasure of hearing soon afterwards by the same simple link of connection that Sanditon had been recommended by Mrs. Darling, and that the West Indians were very much disposed to go thither. This was the state of the case when I wrote to you. But two days ago—yes, the day before yesterday—I heard again from Fanny Noyce, saying that she had heard from Miss Capper, who by a letter from Mrs. Darling understood that Mrs. Griffiths had expressed herself in a letter to Mrs. Darling more doubtingly on the subject of Sanditon. Am I clear? I would be anything rather than not clear.”
"“Oh, perfectly, perfectly. Well? “
"“The reason of this hesitation was her having no connections in the place, and no means of ascertaining that she should have good accommodations on arriving there; and she was particularly careful and scrupulous on all those matters more on account of a certain Miss Lambe, a young lady—probably a niece—under her care than on her own account or her daughters’. Miss Lambe has an immense fortune—richer than all the rest—and very delicate health. One sees clearly enough by all this the sort of woman Mrs. Griffiths must be: as helpless and indolent as wealth and a hot climate are apt to make us. But we are not born to equal energy. What was to be done? I had a few moments’ indecision, whether to offer to write to you or to Mrs. Whitby to secure them a house; but neither pleased me. I hate to employ others when I am equal to act myself; and my conscience told me that this was an occasion which called for me. Here was a family of helpless invalids whom I might essentially serve. I sounded Susan. The same thought had occurred to her. Arthur made no difficulties. Our plan was arranged immediately, we were off yesterday morning at six, left Chichester at the same hour today—and here we are.”"
" ... I am very sure that the largest house at Sanditon cannot be too large. They are more likely to want a second. I shall take only one, however, and that but for a week certain. Miss Heywood, I astonish you. You hardly know what to make of me. I see by your looks that you are not used to such quick measures.”
"The words “unaccountable officiousness!” “activity run mad!” had just passed through Charlotte’s mind, but a civil answer was easy. “I dare say I do look surprised,” said she, “because these are very great exertions, and I know what invalids both you and your sister are.”
"“Invalids indeed. I trust there are not three people in England who have so sad a right to that appellation! But my dear Miss Heywood, we are sent into this world to be as extensively useful as possible, and where some degree of strength of mind is given, it is not a feeble body which will excuse us—or incline us to excuse ourselves. ... "
" ... Lady Denham had other motives for calling on Mrs. Griffiths besides attention to the Parkers. In Miss Lambe, here was the very young lady, sickly and rich, whom she had been asking for; and she made the acquaintance for Sir Edward’s sake and the sake of her milch asses. ... "
"The corner house of the Terrace was the one in which Miss Diana Parker had the pleasure of settling her new friends; and considering that it commanded in front the favourite lounge of all the visitors at Sanditon, and on one side whatever might be going on at the hotel, there could not have been a more favourable spot for the seclusion of the Miss Beauforts. And accordingly, long before they had suited themselves with an instrument or with drawing paper, they had, by the frequency of their appearance at the low windows upstairs in order to close the blinds, or open the blinds, to arrange a flower pot on the balcony, or look at nothing through a telescope, attracted many an eye upwards and made many a gazer gaze again. A little novelty has a great effect in so small a place. The Miss Beauforts, who would have been nothing at Brighton, could not move here without notice. And even Mr. Arthur Parker, though little disposed for supernumerary exertion, always quitted the Terrace in his way to his brother’s by this corner house for the sake of a glimpse of the Miss Beauforts—though it was half a quarter of a mile round about and added two steps to the ascent of the hill."
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" ... Charlotte, as soon as they entered the enclosure, caught a glimpse over the pales of something white and womanish in the field on the other side. It was something which immediately brought Miss Brereton into her head; and stepping to the pales, she saw indeed—and very decidedly, in spite of the mist—Miss Brereton seated not far before her at the foot of the bank which sloped down from the outside of the paling and which a narrow path seemed to skirt along—Miss Brereton seated, apparently very composedly, and Sir Edward Denham by her side.
"They were sitting so near each other and appeared so closely engaged in gentle conversation that Charlotte instantly felt she had nothing to do but to step back again and say not a word; privacy was certainly their object. ... Yet here she had seen them. They were really ill-used."
"The house was large and handsome. Two servants appeared to admit them and everything had a suitable air of property and order, Lady Denham valued herself upon her liberal establishment and had great enjoyment in the order and importance of her style of living. They were shown into the usual sitting room, well proportioned and well furnished, though it was furniture rather originally good and extremely well kept than new or showy. And as Lady Denham was not there, Charlotte had leisure to look about her and to be told by Mrs. Parker that the whole-length portrait of a stately gentleman which, placed over the mantelpiece, caught the eye immediately, was the picture of Sir Henry Denham; and that one among many miniatures in another part of the room, little conspicuous, represented Mr. Hollis, poor Mr. Hollis! lt was impossible not to feel him hardly used: to be obliged to stand back in his own house and see the best place by the fire constantly occupied by Sir Henry Denham."
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" ... Hodges has it from Mrs. Whitby that Mrs. Griffiths has actually been enquiring about a chamber-horse. The wonder of it is she mentioned no such thing when I called on her the day before yesterday. And if Miss Lambe is not to be benefited by asses’ milk, how am I to guess that daily indoor exercise on a chamber-horse is exactly what this physician of hers recommends? I have no patience with invalids who spurn one aid to health and clutch at another. ... "
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"The truth lay more in a failure of mental resilience, an unfortunate but inevitable result of Lady Denham’s declining years; she preferred everything and everybody about her to remain comfortably settled in their proper places. Charlotte could only think her very impolite. But Mrs. Parker, restraining Mary from further movement, could recognise the selfishness but still excuse it from the circumstances of Lady Denham’s having had rather too much her own way all her life, and being too old to change those ways now. So she set herself out to be as pleasant as possible; and having decided in advance how long their call was to last, refused to be provoked into curtailing it."
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The book ends abruptly here, just as the plot begins to show slight sign of thickening, to dismay of reader. Wish she'd had time to finish it!
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August 08, 2021 - August 11, 2021.
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Watsons
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One wishes she had had time to write it up as she did others; here is an outline written in her green years.
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Kindle Edition
Published 2011
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December 31, 2020.
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Jane Austen
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December 31, 2020.
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January 01, 2021, 12.
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