Jane Austen

Understanding the society in which Jane Austen sets Pride and Prejudice
Pamela Whalan

Pamela Whalan has been a member of the Study Day Committee of JASA since 1999 and has been involved in the successful presentation of study days on Emma, Mansfield Park, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice andNorthanger Abbey. She has directed successful seasons of I Have Five Daughters (an adaptationof Pride and Prejudice) and an adaptation for the stage of Emma. She has written a stage adaptation of Mansfield Park and directed this play for the Genesian Theatre Company Inc. in Sydney.

This paper has been adapted from a talk given to students at Reddam House in June 2002.
The purpose of this paper is to give some idea of the manners, habits and expectations of the English gentry of thelate 18th and early 19th century. Having a working knowledge of the world in which Jane Austen lived gives a 21st century reader some of the clues that Austen contemporaries would pick up immediately. Armed with this knowledge you will know why certain actions were performed or why something that might seem slightly irregular to you was considered the height of vulgarity or quite scandalous tosomeone who lived two hundred years ago. We have to be careful not to judge a character’s actions by 21st century standards when the expectations and the opportunities of 18th century England were so different.
Let us take an excerpt from Pride and Prejudice that shows how different the world was and to give you some idea of approaching a reading of Austen’s works without too much 21st centuryjudgemental baggage intruding on an understanding of what she was doing.
Sir William and Lady Lucas were speedily applied to for their consent; and it was bestowed with a most joyful alacrity. Mr Collins’s present circumstances made it a most eligible match for their daughter, to whom they could give little fortune; and his prospects of future wealth were exceedingly fair. Lady Lucas began directly tocalculate with more interest than the matter had ever excited before, how many years longer Mr Bennet was likely to live; and Sir William gave it as his decided opinion, that whenever Mr Collins should be in possession of the Longbourn estate, it would be highly expedient that both he and his wife should make their appearance at St James’s. The whole family in short were properly overjoyed on theoccasion. The younger girls formed hopes of coming out a year or two sooner than they might otherwise have done; and the boys were relieved from their apprehension of Charlotte’s dying an old maid. Charlotte herself was tolerably composed. She had gained her point, and had time to consider of it. Her reflections were in general satisfactory. Mr Collins to be sure was neither sensible noragreeable; his society was irksome, and his attachment to her must be imaginary. But still he would be her husband. Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want. (Pride and Prejudice,I, 22, p.106)
If we judge this novel by 21st century standards it seems that it wouldn’t hurt the girls to find a job and Mrs Bennet could get rid of the butler, the cook, the two housemaids and the housekeeper if she was worried about having no money. But look at that last sentence in the above passage. Marriage was the only honourable provision for women in the class of society to which theBennet and the Lucas families belonged.
The number and kind of jobs available, especially for women, were far more limited then than they are today. Remember this was in the days before Information Technology. It was in the days before radio, television, telephone, electricity. Almost any job that a person leaving school today is likely to be thinking about as a career probably didn’t exist...