Jane Austen’s World:
Regency, Revolution and
Reaction
Jane Austen1775-1817
The House of Hanover
George III r. 1760-1820
1st Hanoverian king born in England
American colonies lost in his reign
Good family man: 15 children Highly cultured
1768: founded Royal Academy of Arts
65,000 of his books went to British Museum
Mental derangement, perhaps caused by porphyria, led to Regency under his son (later George IV) in 1811.
George III, portrait by Johann Zoffany (1733/4-1810)© Royal Collection
Regency England1811-1820
George IVb. 1762, r. 1820-30 Prince Regent 1811-1820
Final victory in Napoleonic Wars at Battle of Waterloo – June 1815
Known for extravagant lifestyle
Illegally married a Catholic widow, Maria Fitzherbert, 1785
Married Caroline of Brunswick, 1795 – disastrous
England in 1819 An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king, --
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow Through public scorn, -- mud from a muddy spring, -- Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know, But leech-like to their fainting country cling, Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow, -- A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field, -- An army, which liberticide and prey Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield, -- Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay; Religion Christless, Godless -- a book sealed; A Senate, -- Time's worst statute unrepealed, -- Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may Burst, to illumine our tempestous day.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley
A TIME OF REVOLUTIONS
A Time of Revolutions
Industrial Revolution American Revolution:
1775-1783 French Revolution: 1789-
94 Napoleonic Wars: 1804-
15
Industrial Revolution
Power-driven machinery replaced hand labor 1765: James Watt – the steam
engine Industry moved from homes and
workshops to factories Population moved from
agricultural countryside to industrial cities
Enclosure of “commons” into privately owned estates
Laissez faire economic policy – free operation of economic laws –governmental non-interference 1776: Adam Smith, The Wealth
of Nations
Jean-Pierre Louis Laurent Houel (1735-1813), Prise de la Bastille ("The storm of the Bastille").
The French Revolution
Official British Reaction to the French Revolution
Curtailment of civil liberties and harsh repression suspension of the writ of habeus
corpus advocates of political change
charged with treason 1791: Rejection of a bill to abolish
the slave trade 1793: Declaration of war against
France
Women in the Public Sphere
Restoration and 18th C. Theatre
Theatres had reopened with restoration of Charles II in 1660
French influence: Actresses Heroic
couplets Neoclassical
modes: Social
comedies Heroic
tragedies
Comedy of Manners Witty--
language driven
Satirical of social mores
Risque Marriage
and money
18th C. Comedy of Sentiment
Ladies at the opera from Gallery of Fashion (1796).
England’s first professional female
author:Aphra Behn1640?-1689
Novelist Venice Preserv'd The History of
the Nun Love Letters
between a Nobleman and his sister (1684)
The Fair Jilt (1688)
Oroonoko (c.1688)
The Unfortunate Happy Lady: A True History
Playwright The Forced
Marriage (1670) The Amorous
Prince (1671) Abdelazar
(1676) The Rover
(1677-81) The Feign'd
Curtezans (1679)
The City Heiress (1682)
The Lucky Chance (1686)
The Lover's Watch (1686)
The Emperor of the Moon (1687)
Lycidus (1688)
“All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.” Virginia Woolf
Painting of the interior of the Drury Lane Theater List of Women Dramatists.
Susanna Centlivre1669-1723
Mary Pix1666-1709 Eliza Haywood
1693-1756
Charlotte Charke1713-1760
Hannah More1745-1833 Elizabeth Inchbald
1753-1821
Early Feminists
A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, for the Advancement of Their True and Greatest Interest (1694)
Some Reflections on Marriage (1700)
Advocated equal education for women
Questioned the value of marriage for women in a patriarchal society
Poet, prodigious letter writer, world traveller
Advocate for smallpox vaccination
Carried on poetic debate with Alexander Pope
Court Poems, 1716
Letters from Turkey, 1763
Shared Astell’s opinions on education and marriage
Mary Astell1666-1731
Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu1689-1762
The Nine Living Muses of Great Britain: portraits in the characters of the Muses in the Temple of Apollo by Richard Samuel, 1778National Portrait Gallery
Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806), Scholar, writer; Anna Letitia Barbauld (née Aikin) (1743-1825), Poet and writer; Angelica Kauffmann (1741-1807), Painter; Elizabeth Ann Sheridan (1754-1792), Singer; first wife of Richard Brinsley Sheridan.. Catharine Macaulay (1731-1791), Historian; Elizabeth Montagu (1720-1800), Writer and leader of society; Hannah More (1745-1833), Educator, dramatist, moralist, poet Elizabeth Griffith (1720?-1793), Playwright and novelist;
Charlotte Lennox (1720-1804), Novelist, woman of letters
Sitters:
Popular 18th Century
AuthorsCharlotte Smith
Anna Letitia Barbauld
Mary Robinsonportrait by Gainsborough
Maria Edgeworth
Joanna Baillie
Mary Wollstonecra
ft1759-97
Professional writer, philosopher and feminist
Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787)
1788: Mary: A Fiction 1792: A Vindication of
the Rights of Women 1796: Letters Written
During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark
1797: married William Godwin
Died of childbirth fever – gave birth to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Shelley)
1798: posthumous publication of unfinished novel, Maria or The Wrongs of Woman
Ann Radcliffe, 1764-1823
Fanny Burney, 1752-1840Madame d’Arblay
Popular Contemporary
Novelists
Jane Austen and the Novel of
Manners Novels dominated by the customs, manners, conventional behavior and habits of a particular social class
Often concerned with courtship and marriage
Realistic and sometimes satiric
Focus on domestic society rather than the larger world
Other novelists of manners: Anthony Trollope, Edith Wharton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Margaret Drabble
“Improved” by Mr. Andrews, 1869 Jane Austen by Cassandra Austen, c. 1810
The Auste
n Famil
y
Rev. George AUSTEN = Cassandra LEIGH(1731-1805) (1739-1827)
Rector of Steventon .
Rev.James m. George Edward m. Rev.Henry m. Cassandra Sir Francis m. Jane Charles m.(1765-1819) (1766-1838) (1767-1852) (1771-1850) (1773-1845) (1774-1865) (1775-1817) (1779-1852)
KNIGHT Banker Admiral Novelist Admiral 1)Anne 2)Mary Elizabeth Eliza 1)Mary 2) Martha FannyMatthew Lloyd Bridges de Feuillide Gibson Lloyd Palmer
Anna James Caroline Fanny + 11sibs Catherine +10sibs Cassandra Harriet Fanny m. Ben Edward AUSTEN m. Sir m. John “Cassie”LEFROY AUSTEN- Edward HUBBACK LEIGH KNATCHBULL
Jane Austen Born December 16, 1775 Juvenilia
“The Three Sisters” “Love and Freindship”
[sic]“The History of
England” “Catharine, or the
Bower” “The Beautifull
Cassandra” [sic] Shorter works
Lady Susan (novella) The Watsons (inc.
novel) Sanditon (inc. novel)
NovelsSense and Sensibility
(pub. 1811) Pride and Prejudice
(1813) Mansfield Park (1814) Emma (1816) Persuasion (1818)
posthumous pub.Northanger Abbey
(1818) posthumous pub.
Died July 18, 1817
Jane Austen at 14?
The Rice Portrait of Jane Austen by English society artist Ozias Humphry in an image released by Christie's on March 23, 2007.
Failed to sell at auction on April 19, 2007 (minimum price $400,000)
The Naval Brothers
Francis “Frank” or “Fly” AustenSir Francis Austen
Admiral of the Fleet
Charles AustenRear Admiral
Cassandra Austen“If Cassandra were going to have her head cut off,
Jane would insist on sharing her fate.”
Mrs. Austen
Possible portrait of Cassandra Silhouette of Cassandra
Great Britain in
the Regency Era
AustenCountry
Austen Rectory at Steventon1775-1801
Steventon Church
Bath 1801-1806
Setting forNorthanger
Abbey (1803) and Persuasion
(1817)
Chawton Cottage1809-1817
London
Shopping: Harding, Howell & Co., a draper’s shop in Pall Mall, 1796-1820
Covent Garden Theatre
TO
HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCE REGENT,
THIS WORK IS, BY HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS'S
PERMISSION, MOST REPECTFULLY DEDICATED,
BY HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS'S DUTIFUL
AND OBEDIENT HUMBLE SERVANT,
THE AUTHOR
The Amiable Janeby James Stanier Clarke, 1815
Winchester, 1817
Austen’s Will
from the UK
National Archives:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/museum/item.asp?item_id=33
Gentlemen's Quarterly, August 1817.
Jane Austen’s grave in Winchester Cathedral