Jane Austen and the Real Regency Society

[jordan179]

Inspired by a comment I made to the blog of Sherwood Smith (sartorius).

He had written:

There is an entire subgenre, called Regency romance, that is largely built on Georgette Heyer's own alternate London.

and I replied:

Which is in turn largely built on Jane Austen's impression of Regency England. Here we have a different problem: Austen, who wrote

Comments

[marycatelli]

Well, there's a definite difference between Heyer's and Austen's.

In all Austen's works, the word "ton" appears once. When Sir Thomas in Mansfield Park says it's not a clergyman's place to set fashion in it. Austen does not have her eye on highest society.

[jordan179]

Sherwood made that point too, and he's quite right. Jane Austen's work is an unabashed celebration of middle-class decency over aristocratic folly. This is clearly shown in Mansfield Park.

Jane Austen also avoided the "title inflation" too common in most current Regency Romances. Higher nobility were actually quite rare in c. 1800 Great Britain: note that Jane Austen's characters generally marry men at most related to actual noblemen (and thus higher gentry rather than nobility).

[rowyn]

Yes, Austen's characters' were generally genteel, but not nobility. Some of them even had jobs! :)

I think most modern readers of Regency romances understand entailment, at least roughly -- it's a very common plot point, so it comes up a lot. Understanding why all of the matters of honor and reputation were so important is another matter entirely. :/

I do think it's telling that modern remakes of many classics -- Clueless for Emma, Ten Things I Hate About You for Taming of the Shrew, and so forth -- set the stories in high school. Because modern high school is the closest analogue to the kinds of things that these stories obsessed over: if you make modern adults concerned about these plot points, people will think your characters very shallow indeed.

I am very glad I do not live in any prior point in history.

[baron_waste]

set the stories in high school… because

I continue to be impressed by the shrewdness of this observation. People of centuries past were immature in ways that grandiloquent Shakespearian dialogue only conceals but does not improve. True, they didn't live as long on average, but even people we would consider grown adults often behaved childishly or for childish reasons.

[Part of the appeal of the original Star Trek was its conceit that humanity would continue to mature, such that even the conflicts of the 20th century would be seen as no better than the wars of medieval times, which were little more than playground bickering with deadly weapons. “Armed conflicts should be no more than a matter for the police,” as Arthur Clarke put it.]

[juliet_winters]

Excellent essay.

Also, living cheek by jowl with death tended to change their outlook. Death was near always, and it wasn't pretty. We have fluffy, sparkly vampires. Theirs, particularly the one based on Lord Byron, were an encapsulation of societal ills. They might be seductive but make no mistake, they were doom.

And there was the rather serious matter of religion to the middle class, especially. It was at a bit of an ebb in the Regency but was soon to rebound. Can't discount it entirely, particularly in the years post-Regency and modern critics do. Jane Eyre without the religious aspects is not the same book. O, she was a touch critical of the hyper religious but it's clear that faith was very important to her. Indeed, it's a plot point.

[jordan179]

Also, living cheek by jowl with death tended to change their outlook. Death was near always, and it wasn't pretty. We have fluffy, sparkly vampires. Theirs, particularly the one based on Lord Byron, were an encapsulation of societal ills. They might be seductive but make no mistake, they were doom.

Indeed. Death is less seductive when one runs a serious risk of dying in agony before 60-70 years old, even if one lives into adulthood. A lot of the assumption, common throughout all preindustrial civilizations, that women cannot combine motherhood and professional careers, is comprehensible when one considers the likelihood of dying in childbirth, coupled with the burden of tending for sick children. That Jane Austen was able to be a great writer was not unconnected with her old-maid status, and despite the lack of stress from chilbearing and the fact that she was never actually poor in adulthood, she died in considerable pain at age 41, from a disease that we could now treat easily.

And there was the rather serious matter of

[juliet_winters]

Meant to clarify... Jane Eyre was Bronte and later, but again how can they teach these books w/o teaching the underpinnings of the society first? To try to examine both Austen and Bronte as if they were 20th century feminist writers... balderdash!

[marycatelli]

I did find it ironic that she can get through a novel where the hero is a clergyman and another where he's going to be one, without once using the word God or any synonyms for it.

(Used two synonyms in Persuasion to be sure.)

[wombat_socho]

For another perspective on Regency England, the Sharpe novels by Bernard Cornwell are probably a better resource than either Austen or Heyer; Cornwell is our contemporary, and not averse to showing us how the other half lived outside the glittery round of the aristocrats. One may, in fact, view the Sharpe series as one man's climb out of the gutter and into, if not the aristocracy, at least the landed middle class.

[jordan179]

Yes. Bernard Cornwell covers areas of which Jane Austen knew little directly and would have been embarassed to openly discuss if she had.

Not that Jane Austen was really as naive as some people, particularly her brothers, probably imagined her. There's no way she could have grown up around a naval family and not at least heard of, not to mention occasionally witnessed, the seamier sides of life in port towns.

Polite people just didn't talk openly in mixed company about that sort of thing, that was all. It didn't mean that they didn't know about it.

[wombat_socho]

Also, if she was part of a naval family, she probably knew more than one poor sod like the young Captain Hornblower, trying desperately to scrape by and provide for a small family on his income while trying to keep up appearances as "an officer and a gentleman". At least Sharpe didn't have to screw around with that sort of nonsense...much.

[jordan179]

Oh yes -- Sharpe had the advantage of starting out dirt poor nobody :) But yes, being shabby-genteel could be a disadvantage.

Hmm, I wonder if anyone ever wrote a Hornblower crossover where he meets Jane Austen? They'd be about the right ages to interact, amusingly, given the fact that both were (one in real life and one in fiction) classic Deadpan Snarkers :D

[sekhmetsat]

They CAN read, just not understand WHAT it is they are reading. Context is EVERYTHING!

[fpb]

It is part of the Obama culture, using the term in a sociological meaning and Obama as a marker rather than as a cause. I saw it come in from about 2006, when a man who claimed to be a Buddhist informed me that, whatever my tone, whatever my argument, if I opposed "gay marriage" I was using hate speech and he was under no obligation to do anything but suppress me. It is the institutionalization of indignation as a replacement for understanding, where the world is reduced to a few fashionable categories that must always be applicable, and to a crude distinction between US and THE HATERS. It is a sad degeneration of the old hard left. One may even complain about the "New Left" of the sixties and seventies, but if there is one thing they were greedy for, it was argument. Their favourite means of expression was the mimeographed pamphlet with several pages denouncing this or that imperialist-capitalist entity, always full of sources and quotations - and never mind that the sources were doubtful and the quotations wrong! These people, on

[jordan179]

The silver lining is that this almost certainly means the beginning of the decline of the influence of the Left in the Western world. They've given up making arguments for their cause, and therefore they're reduced to simple propaganda, and naked displays of power, and in liberal democracies, that's difficult even if one controls the government.

[baron_waste]

I do believe this to be the best entry of yours that I've yet seen.

[prester_scott]

It is at least high on the list.