Reading Group Guide
INTRODUCTION
It is now almost exactly two centuries since the
first two of Jane Austen's six completed novels - Sense
and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice -
were published, and for much of that time writers and
critics have passionately disagreed about the true
caliber of her work. Austen's books received a few
respectful reviews and lively attention from the reading
public during her lifetime, but it wasn't until nearly
thirty years after her death that some critics began to
recognize her enduring artistic accomplishment--and
others to debate it.
In 1843, the historian Thomas Macaulay
called Austen the writer to "have approached nearest
to the manner of the great master" Shakespeare;
Charlotte Brontë felt, on the contrary, that "the
Passions are perfectly unknown to her.... Jane Austen was
a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete,
and rather insensible (not senseless) woman."
Anthony Trollope made up his mind as a young man that
"Pride and Prejudice was the best novel in
the language," while Mark Twain claimed to feel an
"animal repugnance" for Austen's writing.
Austen herself would probably not have
disagreed with many of her detractors' objections. She
acknowledged that her themes and concerns were limited;
she described them as "human nature in the midland
counties." "Three or four families in a country
village is the very thing to work on," she wrote in
a letter to her niece; and in another, now famous letter
to her brother Edward, she described her art as "the
little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work
with so fine a brush, as to produce little effect, after
much labour."
It is true that great historical events
and political concerns appear only obliquely, if at all,
in the background of Austen's stories; that she deals
with the spiritual condition of the human soul only
insofar as it manifests itself in her characters' manners
and taste in spouses; that the intellectual issues of her
day appear in her novels primarily as a vehicle for
revealing character and spoofing fashion. Even Austen's
great early champion, the critic G. H. Lewes, had to
admit the truth of Charlotte Brontë's objection that
Austen's style lacked poetry, and that her
"exquisite" work would appeal only to readers
who didn't require "strong lights and shadows."
But in spite of these limitations, the particular genius
and lasting appeal of Austen's writing has only become
clearer and more certain as the decades pass and literary
fashions come and go.
What is Austen's particular genius? And
what might account for the renaissance of popular
interest in her work today--one reflected in the recently
acclaimed television and feature film productions of Sense
and Sensibility (with an Oscar-winning screenplay by
Emma Thompson), Pride and Prejudice (an A&E
miniseries), the art house hit Persuasion, and
the upcoming release of Emma, as well as the Emma-inspired
Clueless, now atop video rental charts?
"Of all great writers,"
Virginia Woolf said, "she is the most difficult to
catch in the act of greatness." But perhaps Austen
herself gave us a clue to the standards for greatness she
set herself, and a way to judge her achievement, when in
Northanger Abbey she has a character say: "'Oh! it
is only a novel!' or, in short, only some work in which
the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest
delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusion of
wit and humour are to be conveyed to the world in the
best chosen language."
Austen's delightful wit is certainly
one of the great pleasures of her work. As to "the
best chosen language," while her writing conveys
none of the lyricism of the Romantics (like Brontë) who
would succeed her, it is full of intelligence and
precisely crafted to convey its often subtle meaning. But
Austen's strongest suit is her thorough knowledge and
happy delineation of human nature. We can still, despite
the vast differences between her society and our own,
recognize ourselves in the ways her characters think and
behave. We all know people as cleverly manipulative and
outwardly affectionate as Lucy Steele or Miss Bingley; as
self-involved as Fanny Dashwood or Lady Catherine de
Bourgh; and as charming but as lacking in scruples as
John Willoughby or Colonel Wickham. We are in turns
impulsive and hyper-responsible like Marianne and Elinor
Dashwood; conceal ourselves with arrogance like Mr.
Darcy; assume we understand more than we do like
Elizabeth Bennet; and revel in gossip, like Mrs.
Jennings. And while the great events and philosophical
movements of history play themselves out around us, it is
our own nature and actions, and the nature and actions of
the people around us, that most influence our lives.
In her own day, Austen's work signified
a break with the Gothic and sentimental novels that had
long been fashionable, in which heroines were always
virtuous, romance was always sentimentalized, and
unlikely but convenient coincidences and acts of God
always occurred to bring about the dramatic climax.
Instead Austen represented the ordinary world of men and
women as it--sometimes mundanely--was, a place where love
and romance were constrained by economics and human
imperfection; where women had distinct and often
sparkling personalities; where characters were never
simply good or evil but more complicated amalgams,
reflecting both their own moral nature and the virtues
and failings of the families and society that shaped
them.
In these ways, Austen seems very much
in tune with today's sensibilities. We love her strong,
unpretentious heroines ("Pictures of perfection as
you know make me sick & wicked," Austen said of
them), who think for themselves and say what they mean
when appropriate and don't take themselves too seriously.
They are not, in today's parlance, victims. We are as
interested as ever in Austen's favorite subjects of love
and marriage, while also identifying with her steadfast
refusal to romanticize romance; with her acknowledgment
that money, class, and what other people think matter in
the real world; that marriage does not result in a happy
ending for everyone; and that it is dangerous to let
passion blind us to reality. Living amidst the cultural
fallout from the self-absorbed, sensibility-prone 1960s,
we appreciate Austen's emphasis on reason, moderation,
fidelity, and consideration for others.
Austen wrote her books at the dawn of
the nineteenth century, when vast social changes were
already encroaching on the way of life she so loved and
rendered with such exquisite artistry. We read her books
today on the cusp of a new century, with an unfathomable
world creeping up on us, too--one globally
interconnected, technologically complex, economically
uncertain. Perhaps we find on Austen's rural estates and
in her charming, insular society the same peace and
pleasure she found there; and an analogue for the
simpler, more circumscribed world of our own childhoods,
itself passing quickly away into history.
The time in which Jane Austen wrote her
novels was a period of great stability just about to give
way to a time of unimagined changes. At that time most of
England's population (some thirteen million) were
involved in rural and agricultural work: yet within
another twenty years, the majority of Englishmen became
urban dwellers involved with industry, and the great
railway age had begun. Throughout the early years of the
century the cities were growing at a great rate; the
network of canals was completed, the main roads were
being remade. Regency London, in particular, boomed and
became, among other things, a great centre of fashion. On
the other hand, England in the first decade of the
nineteenth century was still predominantly a land of
country towns and villages, a land of rural routines
which were scarcely touched by the seven campaigns of the
Peninsular War against Napoleon.
But if Austen's age was still
predominantly one of rural quiet, it was also the age of
the French Revolution, the War of American Independence,
the start of the Industrial Revolution, and the first
generation of the Romantic poets; and Jane Austen was
certainly not unaware of what was going on in the world
around her. She had two brothers in the Royal Navy and a
cousin whose husband was guillotined in the Terror. And
although her favourite prose writer was Dr. Samuel
Johnson, she clearly knew the works of writers like
Goethe, Worsdworth, Scott, Byron, Southey, Godwin and
other, very definitely nineteenth-century, authors.
If Jane Austen seems to have lived a
life of placid rural seclusion in north Hampshire, she
was at the same time very aware of a whole range of new
energies and impulses, new ideas and powers, which were
changing or about to change England--and indeed the whole
western world--with a violence, a suddenness, and a
heedlessness, which would soon make Jane Austen's world
seem as remote as the Elizabethan Age. It is well to
remember that in the early years of the century, when
Thomas Arnold saw his first train tearing through the
Rugby countryside he said: "Feudality is gone
forever." So close was it possible then to feel to
the immemorial, static feudal way of life; so quickly was
that way of life to vanish as the modern world laboured
to be born.
Adapted from the Introduction to
the Penguin Classics edition of Mansfield
Park.
ABOUT THE
TITLE
Pride and Prejudice has always
been, since its publication in 1813, Austen's most
popular novel. The story of a sparkling, irrepressible
heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, the behavior of whose family
leaves much to be desired, and Mr. Darcy, a very rich and
seemingly rude young man who initially finds Elizabeth
"tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt
me," is, in the words of the Penguin Classics
edition editor Tony Tanner, a novel about how a man
changes his manners and a woman changes her mind. Through
the ages, its chief delights for readers have been its
flawed but charming heroine ("I think [Elizabeth] as
delightful a creature as ever appeared in print,"
Austen herself wrote to her sister, Cassandra); its
humorous treatment of a serious subject; brilliant and
witty dialogue laced with irony; a cast of humorous minor
characters; and Austen's nearly magical development of a
complex but believable love relationship between two
complex people.
Critics have pointed to many ways in
which Pride and Prejudice represents Austen's
development and greater mastery of technique and artistry
over Sense and Sensibility; perhaps the chief
being that the conflict of the story is of the central
characters' own making; and that a lively narrator more
often appears to present material and to offer comment.
ABOUT THE
AUTHOR
Jane Austen, seventh of the eight
children of Reverend George and Cassandra Leigh Austen,
was born on December 16, 1775, in the small village of
Steventon in Hampshire, England. Her childhood was happy:
her home was full of books and many friends and her
parents encouraged both their children's intellectual
interests and their passion for producing and performing
in amateur theatricals. Austen's closest relationship,
one that would endure throughout her life, was with her
beloved only sister, Cassandra.
From about the time she was twelve
years old, Austen began writing spirited parodies of the
popular Gothic and sentimental fiction of the day for the
amusement of her family. Chock-full of stock characters,
vapid and virtuous heroines, and improbable coincidences,
these early works reveal in nascent form many of her
literary gifts: particularly her ironic sensibility, wit,
and gift for comedy. Attempts at more sustained, serious
works began around 1794 with a novel in letters - a
popular form at the time - called Lady Susan,
and in the years immediately following with two more
epistolary novels - one called Elinor and Marianne,
the other First Impressions - that would evolve
into Sense and Sensibility and Pride and
Prejudice. Lady Susan, later revised and
entitled Northanger Abbey, also was begun in
that period.
From 1799 to 1809, little is known of
Austen's life or literary endeavors, other than that upon
her father's retirement she moved unhappily from her
beloved home in Steventon to Bath; that he died a few
years thereafter and she moved to Southampton; and that
she began, but did not complete, a novel called The
Watsons. A move back to the country in 1808 - to a
cottage on one of her brother's properties in Chawton -
seems to have revived her interest in writing.
Her revised version of Elinor and
Marianne - Sense and Sensibility - was
published, like all the work which appeared in print in
her lifetime, anonymously, in 1811; and between the time Pride
and Prejudice was accepted for publication and the
time it actually appeared, she wrote Mansfield Park.
Emma appeared in 1816 and was reviewed favorably
by the most popular novelist of the day, Sir Walter
Scott, who said:
The author's knowledge of the
world, and the peculiar tact with which she presents
characters that the reader cannot fail to recognize,
reminds us something of the merits of the Flemish
school of painting. The subjects are not often
elegant, and certainly never grand; but they are
finished up to nature, and with a precision which
delights the reader.
Scott also insightfully pointed out Emma's
significance in representing the emergence of a new kind
of novel, one concerned with the texture of ordinary
life.
Though all her novels were concerned
with courtship, love, and marriage, Austen never married.
There is some evidence that she had several flirtations
with eligible men in her early twenties, and speculation
that in 1802 she agreed to marry the heir of a Hampshire
family but then changed her mind. Austen rigorously
guarded her privacy, and after her death, her family
censored and destroyed many of her letters. Little is
known of her personal experience or her favorite
subjects. However, Austen's reputation as a "dowdy
bluestocking," as literary critic Ronald Blythe
points out, is far from accurate: "she loved balls,
cards, wine, music, country walks, conversation,
children, and bad as well as excellent novels."
In 1816, as she worked to complete her
novel Persuasion, Austen's health began to fail.
She continued to work, preparing Northanger Abbey
for publication, and began a light-hearted, satirical
work called Sanditon which she never finished.
She died at the age of forty-two on July 18, 1817, in the
arms of her beloved sister, Cassandra, of what historians
now believe to have been Addison's disease.
The identity of "A Lady" who
wrote the popular novels was known in her lifetime only
to her family and a few elite readers, among them the
Prince Regent, who invited Austen to visit his library
and "permitted" her to dedicate Emma
to him (unaware, no doubt, that she loathed him). But
Austen deliberately avoided literary circles; in Ronald
Blythe's words, "literature, not the literary life,
was always her intention." It was not until the
December following her death, when Northanger Abbey
and Persuasion were published, that "a
biographical notice of the author" by Austen's
brother Henry appeared in the books, revealing to the
reading public for the first time the name of Jane
Austen.
DISCUSSION
QUESTIONS
- Charlotte Brontë did not
appreciate Pride and Prejudice. She felt
that Jane Austen didn't write about her
characters' hearts. Do you think Brontë's
criticism is accurate? Is Austen's treatment of
her characters' feelings superficial? Do they
feel and/or express deep emotion?
- An earlier version of Pride
and Prejudice was entitled First
Impressions. What role do first impressions
play in the story? In which cases do first
impressions turn out to be inaccurate, in which
cases correct?
- After Jane becomes engaged to
Bingley, she says she wishes Elizabeth could be
as happy as she is. Elizabeth replies, "If
you were to give me forty such men, I never could
be so happy as you. Till I have your disposition,
your goodness, I never can have your
happiness." Do you think Elizabeth's
statement is true? Is it better to be good, to
think the best of people, and be happy? Or is it
better to see the world accurately, and feel less
happiness?
- Mr. Bennet's honesty and wry humor
make him one of the most appealing characters in
the book. Yet, as the story unfolds, it becomes
clear that he has failed as a father. In what
ways does Mr. Bennet let his children down? How
does his action, or inaction, affect the behavior
of his daughters? His wife? The course of the
story?
- Charlotte doesn't marry Mr.
Collins for love. Why does she marry him? Are her
reasons valid? Are they fair to Mr. Collins? Do
you think marrying for similar reasons is
appropriate today?
- Both Elizabeth and Darcy undergo
transformations over the course of the book. How
does each change and how is the transformation
brought about? Could Elizabeth's transformation
have happened without Darcy's? Or vice versa?
- Mrs. Bennet, Mr. Collins, and Lady
Catherine de Bourgh are famously comic
characters. What makes them so funny? How does
Elizabeth's perception of them affect your trust
in Elizabeth's views of other people in the book,
particularly of Wickham and Darcy?
- For most of the book, pride
prevents Darcy from having what he most desires.
Why is he so proud? How is his pride displayed?
Is Elizabeth proud? Which characters are not
proud? Are they better off?
- Editor Tony Tanner points out in
the Notes to the Penguin Classics edition that
Austen did not mention topical events nor use
precise descriptions of actual places in Pride
and Prejudice, so that the larger historical
events of the time did not detract attention from
the private drama of her characters. "This
perhaps contributes to the element of
timelessness in the novel," he concludes,
"even though it unmistakably reflects a
certain kind of society at a certain historical
moment." In what ways are the themes and
concerns of Pride and Prejudice timeless?
In what ways are they particular to the times in
which Austen wrote the book?
RELATED
TITLES
Northanger Abbey
Edited with an Introduction by Marilyn
Butler
This lighthearted romance, generally
agreed to be Austen's earliest major novel, though it was
not published until after her death, is also a
high-spirited burlesque of the sentimental and Gothic
novels of her day. When the charmingly imperfect heroine,
Catherine Morland, visits Northanger Abbey, she meets all
the trappings of Gothic horror, and imagines the worst.
Fortunately, she has at hand her own fundamental good
sense and irresistible but unsentimental hero, Henry
Tilney. Real disaster does eventually strike, but doesn't
spoil for too long the happy atmosphere of this
delightful novel.
Mansfield Park
Edited with an Introduction by Tony
Tanner
More varied in scene and conceived on a
bigger scale than Austen's earlier books, Mansfield
Park (1814) can be seen as an image of quiet
resistance at the start of what was to be the most
convulsive century of change in English history. In
telling the story of Fanny Price, the quiet and sensitive
daughter of a lower-middle-class Portsmouth family who is
brought up in - and after much suffering eventually
becomes mistress of - elegant Mansfield Park, Austen
draws on her usual cool irony and psychological insight
while also portraying a less immediately winning heroine
in a more complex light.
Emma
Edited with an Introduction by Ronald
Blythe
Many writers and critics consider Emma
(1816), the last of Austen's novels published in her
lifetime, the climax of her genius. Dominating the novel
is the character of Emma Woodhouse - vital, interesting,
complex, and predisposed to playing power games with
other people's emotions. Austen called her a heroine
"no one but myself would like," but she endures
as one of Austen's immortal creations. Charting how
Emma's disastrous foray as a matchmaker precipitates a
crisis in the small provincial world of Highbury, and in
her own heart, this novel of self-deceit and
self-discovery sparkles with intelligence, wit, and
irony.
Persuasion
Edited with an Introduction by D.W.
Harding
Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth had
met and separated years before. Their reunion forces a
recognition of the false values that drove them apart.
The characters who embody those values are the subjects
of some of the most withering satire that Austen ever
wrote. Like its predecessors, Persuasion
(published after her death in 1818) is a tale of love and
marriage, told with Austen's distinctive irony and
insight. But the heroine - like the author - is more
mature; the tone of the writing more somber.
Also included in this edition is the
pioneering biography of Austen written fifty years after
her death by her nephew, J. E. Austen-Leigh, which
outlines the essential facts of Austen's life while also
reflecting the Victorian era's limited comprehension of
her achievements.
Lady Susan/The Watsons/Sanditon
Edited with an Introduction by Margaret
Drabble
These three works - one novel
unpublished in her lifetime and two unfinished fragments
- reveal Austen's development as a great artist. Lady
Susan is a sparkling melodrama, written in
epistolary form, featuring a beautiful, intelligent, and
wicked heroine. The Watsons, probably written
when Austen resided unhappily in Bath and abandoned after
her father's death, is a tantalizing fragment centering
on the marital prospects of the Watson sisters in a small
provincial town. Sanditon, Austen's last
fiction, reflects her growing concern with the new
speculative consumer society and foreshadows the great
social upheavals of the Industrial Revolution.
Also available from Penguin Classics:
The Juvenilia of Jane Austen and
Charlotte Brontë
Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë
Edited by Frances Beer
This collection provides the
opportunity to discover the first examples of Austen's
neoclassical elegance and Brontë's mastery of the
romantic spirit.
Available on audiocassette from Penguin
Audiobooks:
Emma
Persuasion
Pride and Prejudice
Sense and Sensibility
Boxed Set: Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, and
Pride and Prejudice
Penguin Classics wishes to thank and
credit the following writers and books for information
used in creating this Penguin Classics Guide:
Joseph Duffy, "Criticism
1814-70"; Brian Southam, "Criticism
1870-1940" and "Janeites and
Anti-Janeites"; A. Walton Litz, "Criticism
1939-83"; J. David Grey, "Life of Jane
Austen"; all in The Jane Austen Companion, J. David
Grey, Managing Editor; Macmillan Publishing Company, New
York, 1986.
Lloyd W. Brown, "The Business of
Marrying and Mothering," and Norman Page, "The
Great Tradition Revisited," in Jane Austen's
Achievement, edited by Juliet McMaster, Harper & Row
Publishers, Inc., Barnes & Noble Import Division, New
York, 1976.
W. A. Craik, Jane Austen: The Six
Novels, Barnes & Noble, Inc., New York, 1965.