Happy Birthday, Dear Jane

Today is the 250th Anniversary of Dear Jane’s birth in 1775, I ask what is it about Jane Austen that stirs so much devotion in her millions of followers? Even if you think you’re not a fan, read on – you might find a new perspective.

Dear Jane

Everyone will have their theories about the enduring appeal of Jane Austen and they’re often about plot structure, character, the high-stakes emotion but for me, that’s not where it begins. Despite being a writer, I’m not very clever at all that literary stuff. For me, story always starts with setting, people and need – I just start imagining a place or a scenario, who finds themselves there and what they’re looking for. And that’s what’s so wonderful about Austen – the way she paints the (mostly rural) Georgian world makes it sound so gentile and delightful. Anyone who’s studied the social history of this period will know that it was anything but – with terrific poverty in both rural and urban areas as the industrial revolution drove people from the countryside to the cities, but the proper sewers, schools and hospitals which were to be built later by the Victorians had not yet been installed. By the time Pride and Prejudice was published, the country had been at war almost continuously for over twenty years and, with an ailing ‘mad’ King handing over power to his profligate son, the public coffers were emptying and the country was in a mess.

We only get brief pictures of life in London or Bath and those restricted entirely to the private homes of the elite. Jane doesn’t show us the ale houses, the poor houses, the brothels of which there were a great many. Prostitution was accepted as useful (in fact, there were guide books to the best ones) and to keep mistresses who would sometimes (but not always) be discarded once a ‘proper’ wife came along. You have only to look at the political cartoons about Nelson releasing a broadside at Emma Hamilton to realise that sex in Georgian England was rude, crude and frequently talked about. We think of the Victorians as prissy and prudish, but in my view part of this sea-change in the public attitude to sex was a reaction to the extremes of the Georgian period.

So, I would venture to suggest that Jane’s books are pure fantasy, where nothing too ghastly happens to anyone.

True, there are some elopements such as Lydia Bennetts which ends satisfactorily (thanks to the intervention of Mr Darcy) with Mr Wickham being forced to marry her but poor Isabella Thorpe is left by Captain Wickham and goodness knows what happens to her (Jane glosses over this and it’s debated whether she was implying that Isabella was actually seduced rather than simply led along, so we don’t need to worry about her ending her syphilitic days in a poor house and being buried in a pauper’s grave miles from the coffins of her three dead babies).

True, there are hints of scandals. But, apart from the odd kiss of a hand and the birth of children from which we can presume congress of some kind has taken place, no man ever touches a woman in our sight in Jane Austen’s books and our girls feel safe. What a wonderful fantasy. What a pretty little world.

And it is pretty – those Hampshire vicarages, those cottages with roses round the door. Men in breeches, tailored jackets and cravats, girls with empire line dresses and their hair in curly up-dos. Carriages. We can’t smell the permanent stink of sewers, shit and sickness that certainly would have prevailed in the cities, and probably much of the countryside too. And isn’t that a nice thing?

And then there are the characters, the conversation. The girls are quietly feisty; the mothers and aunts delightfully annoying; the friends and sisters pathetic and in need of help. And so we relate to them – we see our world in them and we can relate to them, they become our friends.

And then there’s the tug. I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this deep, delightful frustration that our girls can’t just run up and give the bloke they fancy a snog or just tell him how they feel! That they can’t even own property or make their own way in the world. That there are things that must remain undone, unsaid and that they must just wait for fate to unfold itself. Like being unable to scratch your nose when you’re making pastry. Which makes it so much more satisfying when finally he speaks and things are as they should be.

And it’s also the way Jane writes, the archaic word, the overly complex syntax that make everyone seem so polite. It seems extraordinary to think that in two hundred years’ time the (relatively) colloquial way I’m writing now will seem odd to the readers of that time, and Jane Austen will feel like Shakespeare does to us today.

And that’s my last point. There were many romantic novelists in Jane’s time (many of whom she mentions herself, particularly in Northanger Abbey) but Jane is the only one we remember today. She is the one who has stood the test of time. And she stands out in literary history because she is one of the earliest British novelists that most educated people have heard of (there are plenty in the eighteenth century but let’s be honest, Burney, Sterne, Thackeray and their ilk are probably known only to keen students of literature these days) and a woman. And thank God for it. Women can write just as compelling stories as men and women write so much better than men about the experience of womanhood and that, my dear romance fans, is what I like to read about best and why I love Jane.

Happy birthday, dear Jane!

To celebrate Jane’s birthday I’ve created these lovely bone china mugs, exactly replicating the mug that Alice describes in Summer at Tillingford Hall. They’re available for the very reasonable price of £12.99 INCLUDING POSTAGE. Order before 17th December and I'll put it straight in the post - it should be with you or your beloved Jane Austen fan in time for Christmas (I can't make promises on behalf of Royal Mail... )