The Oxford Illustrated Jane Austen

Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice
New York: Book-of-the-Month Club, 1996
476 pp. Part of a Six-Book Set
978-2-7441-0614-9

People think, even in this technologically advanced day and age, that is impossible for anyone, especially the average person, to travel back in time to a previous point in history. However, if a reader picks up a copy of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, they will be immediately transferred to early 19th century England by the end of the first chapter. Of course, no matter how much they want to, the person will be completely unable to transfer their physical bodies back to this charming era; it will be their minds which are immersed in a world of intriguing society and vivid descriptions of fantastic scenery. Pride and Prejudice is an extraordinary novel filled with exquisite depictions of the scenery of 1800’s England and wonderful portrayals of all the quirks of the community in which the main characters spend most of their time.
Austen’s book is made all the more impressive when she puts in magnificent descriptions of the places her characters visit throughout the course of the novel. When Elizabeth Bennet, the main character, goes to visit the estate of Mr. Darcy, who she has perceived as a prideful and disagreeable man, she is quite surprised by the beauty of his grounds. She describes, “It was a large, handsome stone building, standing well on rising ground, and backed by a ridge of high woody hills." Elizabeth goes on to describe the surrounding woods by saying, “and the valley, here contracted into a glen, allowed room only for the stream, and narrow walk amidst the rough coppice-wood which bordered it." Austen cleverly makes sure to describe every piece of the picture so readers 200 years later know exactly what she is talking about and can visualize themselves exactly in the same piece of land.
Another strong point of Austen’s classic which makes an extremely entertaining read is its ability to poke fun at the capricious society of the 20th century British genteel class. When Elizabeth tells her mother that she has been engaged to Mr. Darcy, who has a gigantic sum of ten thousand pounds coming to him each year, Mrs. Bennet, who had also always considered him to be an extremely disagreeable man, undergoes a complete change of heart and says, “Oh, my dear Lizzy! Pray apologize for my having disliked him so much before. I hope he will overlook it.” She even states, “But, my dearest love, tell me what dish Mr. Darcy is particularly fond of, that I may have it tomorrow." Austen portrays how people of that time will force themselves to like a person and change their opinions of him/her simply because he/she would be an important connection.
Pride and Prejudice is extremely enjoyable because it is able to take anyone back into the magical time of the early 1800’s and give them a beautiful story helped along by rich portraits of the marvelous countryside and humorous portrayals of the customs of the fickle high social class. It is well worth a read by readers who wish to experience a wonderful tale in their minds without having to move anything more than his/her fingers and eyes. Take that, physics.

I enjoyed all of the novels. My favorites are Emma and Persuasion.

I only listened to Persuasion, but I'd go back and listen to more. The narrator is fabulous.

Being familiar with most of Austin's novels, I was not covering new ground here except for the last novel, Northanger Abbey, which I read rather quickly in order to read the end. My favourite novel, Pride and Prejudice I read quickly as well. For those who like Jane Austin, enjoy the history of the 18th century and can navigate the dialogue, these are some of the greatest novels in the English language.

This one took me a while since it was six novels in a single volume and I was reading other things at the same time, but I enjoyed the experience. I had read all of them before except for "Mansfield Park", which turned out to be my least favorite (my most favorite was "Emma"); however, all of them had Austen's trademark wit and piercing observations weaved throughout.

These books are just beautiful.

Pride And Prejudice

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." So the writer states right in the beginning.

That is because while this is assumed to be a romance it is really a very astute picture of society that transcends time and geography and social boundaries and cultures, and applies universally to any place where there are young women at an age ripe to marry without dowries to bring out grooms out of the woods swarming. This is all the more so when the young women in question are not about to while away time with pretense of careers and attempts at education while the men they school and party with are getting ready, or any other subterfuges of societies they belong to.

Marriage is the beginning of the life they are going to lead with homemaking and child rearing and building of social fabric and of future as their occupation, since time immemorial. It can be said to be the most important occupation in the world, and yet few societies make a provision of how the young women can go about securing their life in it, with few structures and storngholds and little if any security.

Jane Austen writes extensively about this in various settings in her works, and offers much light to guide people - not only young women but men and women of all ages - with good counsel. This is her most popular work and most famous one, and with good reason.

It seems like a romance and at some level it is but only after normal intelligent and prudent women - young and old - use decorum and wise counsel added to commonsense. This like other books by the author is about how to live well and safe and be good and decent, sensible and honourable, prudent and not blinded by illusions, and find love and romance and marriage as well.

Often people of a bit less comprehension are likely to make the mistake of a common sort, where they conclude "Elizabeth married Darcy not out of love, but for his money". She - the writer - herself makes a joke of the sort, somewhere along towards the end, but it is clearly a joke for all that. Elizabeth might not have been sighing and fainting with passionate abandon at first sight, but that is because unlike figures of trashy pulp she is a person with a mind and other concerns as well, and for a normal young woman passion does not necessarily come as the blinding flash at first sight any more than it does for - say - a writer or a poet or an artist or a scientist. Which does not reduce the final outcome of a certainty when it does come. Elizabeth married for her conviction of love, respect and rectitude, not for money.

If that were to be true she would not have refused him, or indeed even been off hand, and not fawning or manipulative, even before with all his standoffish behaviour.

But she behaved normally, and refused him with a growing wrath when he proposed - it was not his money, but to begin with the truth of his letter, and then the regard his household had for him, the people who knew him the most, and subsequently his more than civil behaviour towards her relatives who were only middle class, and his obvious attempts to have his sister know her and have her for a friend - these wer the successive steps that changed her more and more.

The final clinching one was of course his taking all the trouble to make amends to the grievous injury caused to her family by his silence, about someone he should have and did not warn people about, and keeping not only silent about it - the efforts he made to make sure about making amends to the injury caused by his reticence - but making sure her uncle would not tell anyone either.

In between was his aunt arriving haughtily to obtain a reassuarance from her to the effect that she would not marry him - which not only made her stubborn but made the three concerned (the two and the aunt) realise that she might be considering it seriously, although his offer had not been left on the table indefinitely.

So if anyone out there still thinks Elizabeth married him for his money - I suppose you did not read the story, really.
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Sense and Sensibility

This one gives the clash of values characteristic of the writer, with wealth and temptation and opportunity versus rectitude and character and propriety as well as prudence playing the major part. How love itself must give way to rectitude and character is the chief theme, with the obvious lesson that giving way to temptation for now might close the door to happiness, love and future in fact.
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Mansfield Park

The writer of the universally popular Pride And Prejudice explores another angle of the conflicts of dealing with life as it is dealt out - wealth and relative status, temptation and opportunities, family and relationships, extended family and relatives, and love that never might be attained. Above all are rectitude and character and values, to be never lost whatever the temptation.
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Emma

Perhaps arguably the second most popular of the writer's works vying with Mansfield Park for the title, this one again explores values and conflicts from another angle, with growth of character and perception, and temptation to meddle in social affairs, as the chief theme.

It is more serious than it looks, as is usual with a good deal of her work, where the seemingly most superficial and romantic turns out to be most serious and worthy of note.

More people than would care to acknowledge or admit even to themselves do meddle in affairs of others, especially those of heart, with a fond illusion that they can do good to others and provide their happiness for them. But lacking in perception and maturity and judgement and discrimination they often spoil more than they would like to admit, often ruining lives.

Couples that might change the world with their love are torn asunder by a disapproving bunch of relatives or even religious heads with their "concern" for the "soul" of the one who might bring wonderious gifts but is not one of them (hence the gifts of course), and the miracle that would have been the families and souls generated with such love are nipped in the bud. Of course, it is only the couple that knows the tremendous love and the pain and suffering of being torn asunder, while others merely go about congratulating one another for having averted an unsuitable match with an outsider.

Of course, meddling is not limited to that - couples that could have changed the course of the universe with their love and their gifts combined often get torn apart by meddling others who delude themselves that they were acting in good faith for the betterment of society, and if it is clear they were tormenting a woman or a daughter, well that is what they are for - so they can learn to do the same to others in turn, if so lucky, and so goes the chain. Jackals manage to devour the marriage and the love and even the children on all but physical level.

Meanwhile gifts of heaven go squandered into dust because the couples are either too weak to hold on to each other and to their heavenly gift of creation of a new world, or even worse, because one gets turned against another and hurts until the one hurt is no more, which is when the survivor might realise if lucky of what has been lost, even though it might be too late. Often such realisation awaits death of the one who hurt the other one into death.

None of this happened in Emma - she was lucky, to have good counsel and love guarding her, and her weakness of character of meddling with others nipped in bud and her mistakes of perception corrected by someone wiser and stern about serious faults. She was lucky indeed.
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Northanger Abbey

The not so well to do young woman is taken to a resort by comparatively well to do relatives and is invited by the master of the Northanger Abbey, the father of the young and eligible gentleman who has a mutual attracted to her and courting her, to stay with him and his family, under the impression the she is going to inherit the relatives' money.

The character of this father, the rich owner of the home that is the title, unfolds, and there are confusion, test of virtue and character, and separations and misunderstandings.

The young man however has excellent character and fortunately realises what is what, and love triumphs even without money.
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Persuasion

The most gentle love story from Austen repertoire, with the usual cache of gentle women and men following a normal course of life for their day while falling into easy traps of faults or follies and realising their mistakes and generally rising above, with their counterpart of men and women of small follies or serious faults of character providing examples of how not to be or behave.

Someone (name escapes me, having read this long ago, two decades or more) had once pointed out that in Austen nothing happens page after page and yet one reads it with great interest, and to that one might only add, time after time again and again with the interest not diminished at all. And the most interesting are those of her tales that have the gentlest of stories, characters, et al.
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Lady Susan

If one never knew anyone of this sort, one would think the character is entirely invented. At that it is not that uncommon to come across men who deal with their own children, especially daughters, this cruelly or worse, but they are excused or even pressured to be this cruel and admired for it in various cultures (not excepting west or US for that matter) while women are usually this cruel with children of other women, say a lover's wife or a sister in law. But the character therefore is entirely possible, especially in an era when a woman could only obtain wealth and consequence by marriages her own and her relatives'; and the only area she could use her mind however sharp was in fields related to intrigues of social sort, marriages, love affaires, and so on, especially gossip and vile gossip about other women. This unfortunately is what far too many women and even men use their minds for, even now, for sport and not for want of subjects that could use the sharp minds. Sometimes it is the heart of such a gossiper and mud thrower that is at fault seriously in that destroying another person is the pleasure, and use of mind and other facilities is merely a means.

Lady Susan comes as a surprise therefore not because of the subject but the author who chose to write it, since Jane Austen usually is as clear as a sunny day in desert about virtues and vices, and condemning not only the latter but even faults of character that might seem only human today but do lead to follies or tragedies even today often enough unquestionably.

Here Austen chooses the letter form prevalent in her time, and avoids commentary, except in letters of another character, giving equal voice to two opposite characters as it were. The story ends well as all Austen tales do to reward virtue, protect innocent and punish vice or folly only in measure.

A window as always to her time, and informative in that as well.

Feb 05, 2016.
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December 31, 2020.
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Watsons

One wishes she had had time to write it up as she did others; here is an outline written in her green years.
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Sanditon (1817)
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Austen is delightful as ever, in her way of quite succinctly judging characters she writes about.

"Upon the whole, Mr. Parker was evidently an amiable family man, fond of wife, children, brothers and sisters, and generally kind-hearted; liberal, gentlemanlike, easy to please; of a sanguine turn of mind, with more imagination than judgement. And Mrs. Parker was as evidently a gentle, amiable, sweet-tempered woman, the properest wife in the world for a man of strong understanding but not of a capacity to supply the cooler reflection which her own husband sometimes needed; and so entirely waiting to be guided on every occasion that whether he was risking his fortune or spraining his ankle, she remained equally useless."

What with Mr. Parker promoting Sandition with a faith in sea air and bathing as remedy for every ailment, and necessary to health, on one hand - and his siblings swearing their ill heath is too far gone for them to visit, the latter being quite hilarious, this is already promising entertainment and more, right at the beginning.

Later, it's the young Sir Edward Denham, handsome, and flattering in his attentions to the visitor Miss Charlotte Haywood, who is subject of the author's scrutiny.

"Charlotte’s first glance told her that Sir Edward’s air was that of a lover. There could be no doubt of his devotion to Clara. How Clara received it was less obvious, but she was inclined to think not very favourably; for though sitting thus apart with him (which probably she might not have been able to prevent, her air was calm and grave."

Austen is clear about her contempt for a modicum of behaviour slightly reminiscent of Mary Bennett from her most famous work, Pride And Prejudice.

"He surprised her by quitting Clara immediately on their all joining and agreeing to walk, and by addressing his attentions entirely to herself. Stationing himself close by her, he seemed to mean to detach her as much as possible from the rest of the party and to give her the whole of his conversation. He began, in a tone of great taste and feeling, to talk of the sea and the sea shore; and ran with energy through all the usual phrases employed in praise of their sublimity and descriptive of the undescribable emotions they excite in the mind of sensibility. The terrific grandeur of the ocean in a storm, its glass surface in a calm, its gulls and its samphire and the deep fathoms of its abysses, its quick vicissitudes, its direful deceptions, its mariners tempting it in sunshine and overwhelmed by the sudden tempest—all were eagerly and fluently touched; rather commonplace perhaps, but doing very well from the lips of a handsome Sir Edward, and she could not but think him a man of feeling, till he began to stagger her by the number of his quotations and the bewilderment of some of his sentences.

And she has Charlotte bequeathed with intelligence and common sense of Elizabeth Bennett, rather than the self absorption of Emma.

"His choosing to walk with her, she had learnt to understand. It was done to pique Miss Brereton. She had read it, in an anxious glance or two on his side; but why he should talk so much nonsense, unless he could do no better, was unintelligible. He seemed very sentimental, very full of some feeling or other, and very much addicted to all the newest-fashioned hard words, had not a very clear brain, she presumed, and talked a good deal by rote. ... "

Charlotte chooses to stay with Lady Denham on the Terrace, as asked by her, instead of going with others to library.

"Nobody could live happier together than us—and he was a very honourable man, quite the gentleman of ancient family. And when he died, I gave Sir Edward his gold watch.” She said this with a look at her companion which implied its right to produce a great impression; and seeing no rapturous astonishment in Charlotte’s countenance, added quickly, “He did not bequeath it to his nephew, my dear. It was no bequest. It was not in the will. He only told me, and that but once, that he should wish his nephew to have his watch; but it need not have been binding if l had not chose it.”

"“Very kind indeed! Very handsome!” said Charlotte, absolutely forced to affect admiration.

"“Yes, my dear, and it is not the only kind thing I have done by him. I have been a very liberal friend to Sir Edward. And poor young man, he needs it bad enough. For though I am only the dowager, my dear, and he is the heir, things do not stand between us in the way they commonly do between those two parties. Not a shilling do I receive from the Denham estate. Sir Edward has no payments to make me. He doesn’t stand uppermost, believe me. It is I that help him.”

"“Indeed! He is a very fine young man, particularly elegant in his address.” This was said chiefly for the sake of saying something, but Charlotte directly saw that it was laying her open to suspicion by Lady Denham’s giving a shrewd glance at her and replying,

"“Yes, yes, he is very well to look at. And it is to be hoped that some lady of large fortune will think so, for Sir Edward must marry for money. He and I often talk that matter over. A handsome young fellow like him will go smirking and smiling about and paying girls compliments, but he knows he must marry for money. And Sir Edward is a very steady young man in the main and has got very good notions.”"
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Austen writes candidly about - whether consciously aware, and deliberately writing, or simply taking them as facts of life - arranged marriage and caste systems of England in particular, Europe in general; things that since have been, falsely, identified exclusively with India, in line with Macaulay policy to break spirit of India.

"“Sir Edward Denham,” said Charlotte, “with such personal advantages may be almost sure of getting a woman of fortune, if he chooses it.”

"This glorious sentiment seemed quite to remove suspicion. “Aye my dear, that’s very sensibly said,” cried Lady Denham. “And if we could but get a young heiress to Sanditon! But heiresses are monstrous scarce! I do not think we have had an heiress here—or even a Co. since Sanditon has been a public place. Families come after families but, as far as I can learn, it is not one in a hundred of them that have any real property, landed or funded. An income perhaps, but no property. Clergymen maybe, or lawyers from town, or half-pay officers, or widows with only a jointure. And what good can such people do anybody? Except just as they take our empty houses and, between ourselves, I think they are great fools for not staying at home. Now if we could get a young heiress to be sent here for her health—and if she was ordered to drink asses’ milk I could supply her—and, as soon as she got well, have her fall in love with Sir Edward!”"
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And again, as the two parties unite -

"Sir Edward, approaching Charlotte, said, “You may perceive what has been our occupation. My sister wanted my counsel in the selection of some books. We have many leisure hours and read a great deal. I am no indiscriminate novel reader. The mere trash of the common circulating library I hold in the highest contempt. You will never hear me advocating those puerile emanations which detail nothing but discordant principles incapable of amalgamation, ....

This is a lovely hard cover edition, great for collectors and Jane Austen fans. She writes brilliantly, funny and her stories take you to places you've never imagined, in my top favorites forever.