Jane Austen in Context of Early Eighteenth Century Literature

In his book Jane Austen’s Novels: The Art of Clarity, Roger Gard says, “Intense admiration of Jane Austen usually co-exists with a quite explicit acknowledgement on the part of readers, and rarely a regretful one, that the revolutions of her age (French and Industrial), its wars and empires, and indeed much of its everyday life and people (e.g. servants) are simply not present, or present only by implication, in her novels” (Gard, pp. 11). In a reading of Austen’s novels, stories of love and culminating matrimony, it becomes apparent that readers are rarely distracted by larger issues that tend to complicate daily life. Some may argue this is a flaw, but many have come to appreciate Austen’s narrow range. It may even be said that it is likely the reason why her novels are considered fresh and even revolutionary.
Born in Hampshire, England in 1775, Jane Austen’s writing career took place over a period of tremendous upheaval and profound social change. This was the time of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, an event which Karl Marx claimed was “the greatest revolution in the history of the world.” By the time of her writing, Great Britain was well involved in the war, and yet Austen never mentions it in her novels. Nor do we see her characters impacted in any great way by the events surrounding them outside of their small neighborhoods. Austen is frequently quoted as saying she “writes only of what she knows.” But she was certainly no stranger to the aspects of war. Two of her brothers were in the navy and a third was a lieutenant in the Oxfordshire Militia (Austen-Leigh). As the Austen’s were a very tight-knit family, we can be sure that Jane heard plenty concerning the war in letters and news from her brothers. And yet the only way we see the militia represented in her novels are as handsome, young men who are eligible bachelors for the young ladies residing in the town they are staying in. Some readers consider a lack of ordinary circumstances as a reflection upon the characters themselves. As Margaret Drabble points out in her introduction to Pride and Prejudice:The novel has been highly praised for its accurate portrayal of social customs, but it is here that we come to one of its more controversial aspects.
Some readers deeply dislike the society in which Austen’s works are so firmly grounded: "much ado about nothing indeed is the accusation, and what about the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars? Have soldiers nothing better to do than to flirt with the young women, play whist and lottery, and seduce the daughters of tradesmen?" (pp. ix). But can we really say that all of Austen’s characters do nothing? Granted Mr. Bennet is known to spend hours locked up in his library, Mrs. Bennet appears to do nothing but gossip and complain, and we never receive a hint of Wickham’s militia duties other than moving in and out of town. Just because Austen fails to mention the usual, and often mundane, facts surrounding her characters does not mean they do not participate in them. I prefer to regard Austen’s narrow scope as more of an art of focusing than an error of disregard. By not allowing her characters, and in turn her readers, to become distracted by occurrences which really have nothing to do with her central theme (i.e. love and marriage), they are allowed the freedom of achieving a deeper, more focused knowledge of that theme.
Gard also claims, “Jane Austen is obviously one of the most challenging moralists in European fiction and one of its most brilliantly accomplished creative practitioners” (pp. 2). What makes Austen so challenging and creative is her ability to step out of the box and choose to be different from all other writers of her time. Deborah Kaplan suggests that Pride and Prejudice in particular, “evinces her continuing efforts to revise the implausible conventions, including female characterizations and relationships, that generally purveyed domestic femininity in the eighteenth-century courtship novel” (pp. 182-183). In the novel, Elizabeth Bennet is an autonomous, female individual. She enjoys her family and social relations, but we see her as apart from them. In a time where women were considered property, and “marriage was the only option that enabled women of the lesser gentry to secure their social status economically” (Kaplan, pp. 21), Austen was able to create a young woman had a good opinion of marriage, but would have been content on her own. Emma and Anne Elliot are also examples of this. Emma continuously claims that she never wants to marry, while Anne appears content to become an old maid until Captain Wentworth shows up in her life again. Therefore, Austen’s novels took a different take on courtship and marriage than others of her day. We see that: "During the second half of the eighteenth-century, there was the ideology that: Men and women married for love and esteem. They experienced passion within their conjugal relations, and, when that faded, they sustained an affectionate friendship. They spent much of their time in one another’s company and in the company of their children to whom they were lovingly attentive. And the setting for these relationships was always the home, over which women reigned." (Kaplan, pp. 17-18) Although Austen’s novels may achieve a degree of this, it is glaringly obvious, specifically in Pride and Prejudice, that women (such as Charlotte Lucas) do not always marry for love or esteem. One may hope there may be passion within a marriage, but when it fades couples like Mr. and Mrs. Bennet do not always sustain an affectionate friendship, nor do parents, and especially fathers, spend much time in the company of their children. Mrs. Bennet is only attentive to her daughters when it appears that it could be to her own advantage (i.e. an eligible marriage) and Mr. Bennet only realizes the results of his inattentiveness once his youngest daughter runs off with Mr. Wickham. As for women running the home, it is evident that Mrs. Bennet suffers too much from ill-health and ignorance to be of much use. As readers we can only hope the fate of Jane and Elizabeth differs from that of their parents.
By mocking marriage and epitomizing it at the same time, Austen creates a paradox for her readers. We are given the option to compare marriage based simply on security and situation (Mr. Collins and Charlotte) or founded solely on appearances and emotions (Mr. and Mrs. Bennet) with that of marriage based on genuine affection and agreement. When Mr. Bennet consents to Elizabeth marrying Darcy, he warns, “I know you could be neither happy nor respectable, unless you truly esteemed your husband, unless you looked up to him as a superior. Your lively talents would place you in the greatest danger in an unequal marriage… My child, let me not have the grief of seeing you unable to respect your partner in life” (pp. 314). But we see that Elizabeth does see Darcy as her superior and, uncommonly, Darcy respects and esteems Elizabeth. Once redeclaring his love, Darcy says to Elizabeth, “What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you I was properly humbled ... You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased” (pp. 308). As readers, we see that there is much more to marriage than simply finding a suitable partner with whom one can spend the rest of one’s life, such as a man who can provide financial security and a stable residence and a woman who can care for a home and family, but that both must have similar minds, a mutual esteem and a lifelong respect for each other’s opinions. And this was a new and happy thought for Jane Austen’s time!
Although we do not note any direct references to the French Revolution in Austen’s novels, we are able to observe some indirect implications of it. Austen’s novels often show an awareness of the enlightenment that was prevalent at that time. Catherine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft say, “Jane Austen’s heroines are not self-conscious feminists, yet they are all exemplary of the first claims of Enlightenment feminism: that women share the same moral nature as men, ought to share the same moral status, and exercise the same responsibility for their conduct” (Butler, pp. xxii). Indeed, Pride and Prejudice is likely Austen’s most anti-orthodox novel. It shows signs of “the familiar eighteenth-century antithesis between art and nature” (Butler, pp 198). In Elizabeth’s tendency to enjoy the freedom of the outdoors, her inclination to go with her natural feelings, Pemberly’s most natural state, the distaste of Miss Bingley’s artificial manner, etc. By the end of the novel we have two central characters, who after much introspection and self-enlightenment, choose to marry because of mutual respect based on natural feelings, rather than fortune or situation alone (although those do come in handy.)
The fact that Austen wrote of love and marriage in and of themselves was nothing new for her day, but it was how she portrayed these all-to-familiar themes that she is best known for. Nearly two hundred years later, it is difficult for current readers of Austen to understand how truly novel her ideas were, without understanding the rules of conduct and propriety in the early eighteenth century. For example, in 1988 Claudia Johnson posited that: "Austen’s conviction that Elizabeth was ‘as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print’ was well-founded, for, as she could not have failed to realize, no heroine quite like Elizabeth Bennet had ‘ever appeared in print’ before … Standing where we do we tend to overlook or to underestimate Elizabeth’s outrageous unconventionality which, judged by the standards set in conduct books and in conservative fiction, constantly verges not merely on impertinence but on impropriety" (Kaplan, pp. 185). Today, most readers and certainly most feminist would not consider Elizabeth’s behavior improper. In fact, many view the fact that despite her quick mind and ready wit, Elizabeth has very little power over her situation, she must either marry well or stoop to being someone else’s governess. Even Caroline Bingley points out that Elizabeth seems “to show an abominable sort of conceited independence, a most country town indifference to decorum” (pp. 32) and later suggests that Darcy might “endeavour to check that little something, bordering on conceit and impertinence, which your lady possesses” (pp. 46). Although those of us living in the twenty-first century may see little in Elizabeth’s behavior to recommend her as a product of feminism, those who lived in her time might have been willing to claim her as a prominent founder of such a movement.
In Elizabeth Bennet we see a reflection of the author herself. Why do so many enjoy Jane Austen’s novels? Possibly for the same reasons that Darcy fell in love with Elizabeth: “Now be sincere; did you admire me for my impertinence?” “For the liveliness of your mind, I did.”“You may as well call it impertinence at once. It was very little less. The fact is, that you were sick of civility, of deference, of officious attention. You were disgusted with women who were always speaking and looking, and thinking your approbation alone. I roused, and interested you, because I was so unlike them.” (pp. 317) Just as Elizabeth was able to stand out from all other women, Austen seeks to stand out from all other novelists. Perhaps one of the reasons Jane Austen is so well loved is for her willingness to diverge from the path of authors before her and boldly forge her own way in the literary world.

Austen-Leigh, W., Austen-Leigh, R.A., & LeFaye, Deirdre. Jane Austen: A Family Record. The British Library: London. 1989.
Butler, Marilyn. Jane Austen and the War of Ideas. Clarendon Press: Oxford. 1975.
Gard, Roger. Jane Austen’s Novels: The Art of Clarity. Yale University Press: New Haven and London. 1992.
Kaplan, Deborah. Jane Austen Among Women. The Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore. 1992.