point out to Fanny, want of money, and sheets turned sides to middle were not inviting prospects. She comforted Fanny, who was in her mid-twenties and still single, by telling her not to be in a hurry; the right man would come at last.
The choice of the right marriage partner was crucial, for marriage was all but indissoluble. Divorce was possible only for the very rich, as it needed an Act of Parliament. Husbands could divorce unfaithful wives, as Mr Rushworth in
Mansfield Park
does after Maria runs away with Henry Crawford, but it was difficult for a wife, however ill treated, to be legally freed from a violent or dissolute husband. Once married, wives who had chosen unwisely had to put up with it.
Unless a separate ‘settlement’ was made upon her, as soon as she married all a woman’s property and money became her husband’s. Yet risky as marriage was, it was considered better than single life. A man could not honourably break an engagement: only the lady herself could ‘release’ him from it. A man who broke his engagement was inviting legal action by the lady for breach of promise. Loss of marriage prospects was taken seriously, as lifelong maintenance and enhanced social status were at stake.
Jane Austen was acutely aware of these problems long before they impinged on her personally. In her teens she began a novel called
Catharine, or the Bower
which starkly depicts the plight of women in her day. The heroine is an orphan living with a repressive aunt. Her only friends are the daughters of a neighbouring clergyman, reduced after his death to dependence on rich and stingy relatives. The elder has been shipped off, like Jane’s aunt Philadelphia Hancock, to India with the ‘fishing fleet’ and is ‘splendidly but unhappily married’. The younger has been taken by a titled relative as ‘companion’ to her daughters, an uncongenial and dependent position. The new parson and his wife are haughty and quarrelsome, well-born and ill-mannered. They had hoped for better things than a country living. The monotony of Catharine’s existence is broken by a visit from a fashionable family with a snobbish, brainless daughter whose shallow accomplishments ‘were now to be displayed and in a few years entirely neglected’. This girl, who prefigures Isabella Thorpe in Northanger Abbey imagines vaguely that it must be delightful to voyage to Bengal or Barbadoes or wherever it is’, and be ‘married soon after one’s arrival to a very charming Man immensely rich’. Catharine’s bower is the only place where she can think and pull herself together when she is depressed. Its symbolism is obvious. Jane did not finish this early story but it shows the teenage writer able to see social situations with clarity. Another early work,
The Three Sisters
, written when she was about sixteen, deals with mercenary marriages.
Despite her youthful popularity all Jane’s relationships with men came to nothing. Her obstinate heart forbade her to marry except for love. The flippant, flirtatious teenager faded into a middle-aged maiden aunt, dowdy not because she chose to be - indeed she loved clothes - but because she was poor. In a society where dowries were looked for, her poverty may well have been one of the reasons she never married. The plots of Jane’s novels and her refusal to marry for convenience make it plain that she believed in marrying for love, but she knew that in the real world most men had a way of falling in love with girls who brought money with them.
We have reason to be selfishly grateful that Jane Austen never did attach a husband. With a growing family she would have found it hard to concentrate, even if she had married a rich man. If she had married a younger son or a clergyman she would have been equally poor and rather more harassed. Instead of direct descendants, she left us the inimitable novels.
7
Brothers and Their Wives
J AMES, JANE’S ELDEST brother, followed his father to St John’s College,
The choice of the right marriage partner was crucial, for marriage was all but indissoluble. Divorce was possible only for the very rich, as it needed an Act of Parliament. Husbands could divorce unfaithful wives, as Mr Rushworth in
Mansfield Park
does after Maria runs away with Henry Crawford, but it was difficult for a wife, however ill treated, to be legally freed from a violent or dissolute husband. Once married, wives who had chosen unwisely had to put up with it.
Unless a separate ‘settlement’ was made upon her, as soon as she married all a woman’s property and money became her husband’s. Yet risky as marriage was, it was considered better than single life. A man could not honourably break an engagement: only the lady herself could ‘release’ him from it. A man who broke his engagement was inviting legal action by the lady for breach of promise. Loss of marriage prospects was taken seriously, as lifelong maintenance and enhanced social status were at stake.
Jane Austen was acutely aware of these problems long before they impinged on her personally. In her teens she began a novel called
Catharine, or the Bower
which starkly depicts the plight of women in her day. The heroine is an orphan living with a repressive aunt. Her only friends are the daughters of a neighbouring clergyman, reduced after his death to dependence on rich and stingy relatives. The elder has been shipped off, like Jane’s aunt Philadelphia Hancock, to India with the ‘fishing fleet’ and is ‘splendidly but unhappily married’. The younger has been taken by a titled relative as ‘companion’ to her daughters, an uncongenial and dependent position. The new parson and his wife are haughty and quarrelsome, well-born and ill-mannered. They had hoped for better things than a country living. The monotony of Catharine’s existence is broken by a visit from a fashionable family with a snobbish, brainless daughter whose shallow accomplishments ‘were now to be displayed and in a few years entirely neglected’. This girl, who prefigures Isabella Thorpe in Northanger Abbey imagines vaguely that it must be delightful to voyage to Bengal or Barbadoes or wherever it is’, and be ‘married soon after one’s arrival to a very charming Man immensely rich’. Catharine’s bower is the only place where she can think and pull herself together when she is depressed. Its symbolism is obvious. Jane did not finish this early story but it shows the teenage writer able to see social situations with clarity. Another early work,
The Three Sisters
, written when she was about sixteen, deals with mercenary marriages.
Despite her youthful popularity all Jane’s relationships with men came to nothing. Her obstinate heart forbade her to marry except for love. The flippant, flirtatious teenager faded into a middle-aged maiden aunt, dowdy not because she chose to be - indeed she loved clothes - but because she was poor. In a society where dowries were looked for, her poverty may well have been one of the reasons she never married. The plots of Jane’s novels and her refusal to marry for convenience make it plain that she believed in marrying for love, but she knew that in the real world most men had a way of falling in love with girls who brought money with them.
We have reason to be selfishly grateful that Jane Austen never did attach a husband. With a growing family she would have found it hard to concentrate, even if she had married a rich man. If she had married a younger son or a clergyman she would have been equally poor and rather more harassed. Instead of direct descendants, she left us the inimitable novels.
7
Brothers and Their Wives
J AMES, JANE’S ELDEST brother, followed his father to St John’s College,
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