Jane Austen did NOT write 'romance novels'! Her writing is deliberately unsentimental and realistic and she explored many controversial themes. She is a genius of satire, humour and thorough intellect. | By Leysa Flores

Jane Austen’s work is predominantly anti-romantic and anti-sentimental. To be romantic is to have an idealised view of reality¹, and to be sentimental is to move away from rational thought or to be or prompted by feelings of tenderness, sadness, or nostalgia². Austen’s writing is deliberately unsentimental and realistic. Satire and realism are hallmarks of her writing style and she explored many themes in her works.

Indeed, one might argue that Austen presented what many readers would initially see as ‘romance novels’, mere vehicles that allowed her to sagaciously explore many real, intellectual and theoretical issues and, still succeed in having her works published (in light of the obstacles to female writers of the time).

The cultural implications of the time presented female authors with limitations that Austen would have been required to work around. As Jan Fergus explains, “Publishing her own writing could threaten a woman’s reputation as well as her social position.”³ Margaret Anne Doody also brings our attention to Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote, a “clever novel that Jane Austen knew very well⁴” (because she used it as a model for Northanger Abbey⁵): “As Lennox shows us in that book, the Novel can be allowed to continue to exist … only if the terms are agreed to. Nothing outlandish or dangerous must be shown.”⁶

However, when read closely, we perceive many “dangerous” (controversial) themes in Austen’s novels. Firstly, we see many controversial themes when exploring one of her novels alone, and secondly, we can identify one theme explored in many different controversial ways across each of her novels.

Mansfield Park is an example of where we see many controversial themes explored within the one novel. Firstly, we can identify the theme of the slave trade and the abolitionist cause. Fanny Price’s uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram, proprietor of a sugar plantation in Antigua, owned slaves. Austen highlights the issue by comparing Fanny being “shipped” between Mansfield Park and Portsmouth as a commodity, against the slaves being shipped between Antigua and England. Also, this theme serves to highlight a second issue: Fanny Price, as a female, having knowledge of the topic:

“Did you not hear me ask him about the slave trade last night?”⁷

As Jane Stabler explains, “…the common cultural assumption of many male writers (was) that women were not mentally equipped to cope with abstract concepts”⁸. Austen clearly disagrees with this as she uses Fanny’s knowledge to show that women certainly had the capacity to comprehend intellectual and theoretical issues in a rational manner.

Another example is that of the narrative voice in Northanger Abbey: “A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing any thing, should conceal it as well as she can.”⁹ This is a comment that also shows Austen’s use of satire.

Lastly, the theme of improving English houses is explored as a group travel to Sotherton, Mr Rushworth’s estate, with the view of securing the opinion of the fashionable Mr Henry Crawford. Jane Stabler clarifies, “…the issue of improvement was deeply politicized. Conservative critics disapproved of change for fashion's sake.”¹⁰

In contrast, an example of one controversial theme explored in many different ways throughout all of her novels is marriage. Austen explores the theme across each of her novels, but did not portray her characters in the “common novel style”¹¹ (as she wrote in a letter to her niece Anna Austen, 28 September 1814) – predictable plotlines full of romance, ending in a climactic declaration of love, a proposal and marriage – that she clearly disapproved of.

Rather, we see many different controversial examples of marriage: for securing one’s comfort (Charlotte Lucas and Mr Collins, Pride and Prejudice), to counteract scandal (Lydia Bennett and Mr Wickham, Pride and Prejudice), unequally-matched and, in time, unhappy (Mr and Mrs Bennett, Pride and Prejudice), for love in the face of poverty (Mr and Mrs Price, Mansfield Park), on the rebound (Mr and Mrs Elton, Emma), for money (Mr Willoughby and Miss Grey, Sense and Sensibility), and even unexpected matches, admittedly, ending in happiness (Louisa Musgrove and Captain James Benwick, Persuasion).

We discover that when we do encounter the theme of marriage presented in a happier light in Austen’s work – the required “coming together of the hero and heroine” of the traditional romantic novel – Austen deliberately applies an unsentimental approach to “adapt(ing) the courtship plot”¹².

One example is the way she avoids dialogue in what we would expect to be climactic moments in the declaration of love and proposal scenes. Instead, she summarises them with a frustrating lack of detail in a teasing way before turning back to her story (the emphasis being on her as the author, and therefore in control).

As E. J. Clery explains, “She plays with the novel-reader’s addiction to the age-old conventions of closure, and punishes it by withholding some of the scenes that would most gratify … The intrusive, bustling narrator typically sweeps aside opportunities for pathos and lyricism as we hasten ‘together to perfect felicity’, in the teasing words of Northanger Abbey.”¹³

Additionally, we are not allowed to hear Edward’s proposal to Elinor (Sense and Sensibility) or Emma’s reply to Mr Knightley’s declaration (Emma). Even Edmund and Fanny’s union in Mansfield Park is referred to as “two young friends finding their mutual consolation in each other”¹⁴ – hardly the gratifying, romantic and affected climax readers expect.

Another example of Austen’s unsentimental approach is how she parodies unlikeable characters with affected language. By mocking characters we are led to dislike, it shows her distaste for “such thorough novel slang”¹⁵ (as she wrote in a letter to her niece Anna Austen 28 September 1814). Of course, she does not intend to disapprove of love and romance in itself, but to disapprove of sentimental and affected language.

Mrs Elton (Emma) is an example of an unlikeable character who uses affected language. As Fiona Stafford notes, Mrs Elton uses the Italian phrase cara sposo “three times and … each is in a different form … to emphasize her ignorance of Italian”¹⁶. This exposes her to be a “little upstart, vulgar being, with her Mr E., and her cara sposo, and her resources, and all her airs of pert pretension and underbred finery,”¹⁷ says Emma herself.

Austen further shows her distaste for sentimental behaviour by applying effusive language to the speech of comical characters. This reveals her respect for rational thought and often does this using free indirect discourse. For example, in Emma, a ball is held. A ball would usually be expected to be a very romantic event as couples meet, dance and flirt, surrounded by wonderful decorations, music and food. However, in Emma, as Miss Bates enters the ballroom, the reader is presented with almost two full pages of her tattle, including some quite sentimental comments:

“So well lighted up … Oh! Mr Weston, you must really have had Aladdin’s lamp … this is meeting quite in fairy-land!”¹⁸

While the discourse itself is too long to quote here, we are told, “every body’s words … were soon lost under the incessant flow of Miss Bates, who came in talking, and had not finished her speech under many minutes after her being admitted into the circle at the fire”¹⁹. She is not a character we are meant to dislike, rather, she is a character Austen wants us to find comical. An important distinction to make here is that we must not misunderstand Austen’s snarky send-ups as malicious. As Constance Hill explains, “Elizabeth Bennet is speaking in the author's own person when she says to Darcy: "I hope I never ridicule what is wise or good. Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can."²⁰

Another important point to make is that when Austen does use romantic language – metaphors and common literary turns of phrase – it is suddenly, to reveal something about the scene or a character. It is not sentimental. For example, as Adela Pinch points out in the ‘Introduction’ to Emma, “the striking way Austen describes Emma's moment of revelation in which she comes to know simultaneously her love for Mr Knightley and her error about everyone else's feelings … has the 'speed of an arrow'.²¹

“It darted through her, with the speed of an arrow, that Mr. Knightley must marry no one but herself!”²²

Austen’s work is also revealed to be anti-romantic in the way she shows her approval of rational thought in Northanger Abbey. This novel portrays a girlish, impressionable character, Catherine, who is influenced by romantic novels – in particular, Ann Radcliffe’s gothic romance, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), which is referenced throughout the work. As Thomas Keymer explains, Catherine “sets up her exotic fantasies about Northanger, beguiling her mind … But finally her mind is brought back from the ‘alarms of romance’²³ to encounter and recognize, free of distraction from bad literature, the sober and salutary ‘anxieties of common life²⁴’.²⁵

In conclusion, we are able to illustrate from all of these supporting examples that Jane Austen’s work is indeed predominantly anti-romantic and anti-sentimental. By exploring real themes, applying an unsentimental approach to the traditional courtship plot and by exposing her approval of rational thought, we are left to enjoy the genius of satire, humour and thorough intellect in her work.

— By Leysa Flores

Notes

¹ “Romantic”, n.d. YourDictionary. http://www.yourdictionary.com/romantic.

² “Sentimental”, n.d. YourDictionary. http://www.yourdictionary.com/sentimental.

³ Jan Fergus, The Professional Woman Writer, The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, Second Edition, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 2.

^{4, 6, 12} Margaret Anne Doody, The early short fiction, The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, Second Edition, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 83.

⁵ Margaret Anne Doody, Introduction, The Female Quixote: or The Adventures of Arabella (Oxford World's Classics), New York, Oxford University Press, 1988, pp. xi-xxxii.

⁷ Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, London, Penguin Books, 2003, p 184.

⁸ Jane Stabler, ‘Introduction’, in Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, ed Jane Stabler. Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, pp. xviii.

⁹ Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, London, Penguin Books, 2003, p. 106.

¹⁰ Jane Stabler, ‘Introduction’, in Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, ed Jane Stabler. Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, pp. xxix.

¹¹ Letters of Jane Austen – Brabourne Edition, LXXXVIII, Letters to her niece Anna Austen Lefroy, 1814-1816. http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/brablt16.html.

¹³ E. J. Clery, Gender, The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, Second Edition, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 163.

¹⁴ Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, London, Penguin Books, 2003, p. 437.

¹⁵ Letters of Jane Austen – Brabourne Edition, LXXXVIII, Letters to her niece Anna Austen Lefroy, 1814-1816. http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/brablt16.html.

¹⁶ Fiona Stafford, Notes, Jane Austen, Emma, London, Penguin Books, 2003, p. 468.

¹⁷ Jane Austen, Emma, London, Penguin Books, 2003, p. 259.

^{18, 19} Jane Austen, Emma, London, Penguin Books, 2003, pp 302-303.

²⁰ Constance Hill, Jane Austen, Her Homes & Her Friends, Bungay, Richard Clay & Sons, Ltd., 1923. http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/hill/austen/homes.html.

²¹ Adela Pinch, ‘Introduction’, in Jane Austen, Emma, ed Adela Pinch, Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 2003, pp. xx.

²² Jane Austen, Emma, London, Penguin Books, 2003, p. 320.

^{23, 24} Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, London, Penguin Books, 2003, p.189.

²⁵ Thomas Keymer, Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility, The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, Second Edition, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 29.

References

The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, Second Edition, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ed Edward Copeland and Juliet McMaster, 2011.

Charlotte Lennox, The Female Quixote: or The Adventures of Arabella (Oxford World's Classics), New York, Oxford University Press, 1998.

Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, London, Penguin Books, 2003.

Jane Stabler, ‘Introduction’, in Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, ed Jane Stabler. Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, pp. vii–xxxvi.

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, London, Penguin Books, 2003.

Letters of Jane Austen – Brabourne Edition, Letters to her niece Anna Austen Lefroy, 1814-1816. http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/brablt16.html.

Jane Austen, Emma, London, Penguin Books, 2003.

Constance Hill, Jane Austen, Her Homes & Her Friends, Bungay, Richard Clay & Sons, Ltd., 1923. http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/hill/austen/homes.html.

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Penguin Books, 2003.

Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, London, Penguin Books, 2003.

Jane Austen, Persuasion, London, Penguin Books, 2003.

Ann Radcliff, The Mysteries of Udolpho, Penguin Books, 2001.