“Jane Austen’s books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn’t a book in it” (Twain, 615). So said Mark Twain, a lifelong hater of Austen’s novels. Ralph Waldo Emerson agreed, writing, “I am at a loss to understand why people hold Miss Austen’s novels at so high a rate, which seem to me vulgar in tone . . . imprisoned in their wretched conventions of English society . . . Never was life so pinched and narrow . . . Suicide is more respectable” (336-337). Yet other notable authors, such as Rudyard Kipling, Sir Walter Scott, Virginia Woolf, and Anthony Trollope, were enamored with Austen’s craft. Describing Austen’s novels in his “Letter to Lord Byron,” W.H. Auden writes, “She wrote them for posterity, she said; / 'Twas rash, but by posterity she’s read” (21). The question as to whether Austen’s books are relevant to “posterity,” over two hundred years after she penned her first novel, remains pressing today. If Austen’s novels are no longer relevant, we can set them aside in Granny’s attic along with our moth-eaten quilts and our fond reminiscences of a bygone age and begin to keep pace with the 21st century.
Modern readers often complain that Austen’s novels lack excitement or variety. After all, nothing much seems to happen in Persuasion. Other than Louisa Musgrove’s ill-fated leap off the steps in Lyme, the book merely seems to tell a quiet story about a few respectable families visiting each other’s houses. These critics are not alone in condemning Austen’s novels. In fact, Austen collected opinions of her novels, recording them in her papers. Some of the contemporary reviews that Austen so carefully preserved can be read in Jane Austen’s Minor Works. According to Austen, a certain Mrs. Guiton thought Emma “too natural to be interesting” (437), and a Mr. Fowle read only Emma’s “first & last chapters, because he heard it was not interesting” (439). To add insult to injury, Austen’s own brother, Charles John, complained that Mansfield Park “wanted Incident” (434). Instead of reading Austen, perhaps we should read “horrid” books with more action, such as “Castle of Wolfenbach, Clermont, Mysterious Warnings, Necromancer of the Black Forest, Midnight Bell, Orphan of the Rhine, and Horrid Mysteries”—all books Isabella Thorpe recommends to the impressionable Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey (39). Such books are, as Isabella points out, supremely “readable” (40).
Some might argue that not only are Austen’s works dull, but they are also out of touch. Readers come to Austen’s books to experience the microcosm of provincial English society or the bustling city of Bath because they enjoy dipping into a nostalgic world different from their own – instead of believing Austen speaks to their lives today. Austen may seem particularly out of touch because of the focus in many of her works on pursuing and attaining marriage. Emerson lamented, “The one problem in the mind of the writer in both the stories I have read, Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice, is marriageableness. All that interests in any character introduced is still this one, Has he or [she] the money to marry with, and conditions conforming?” (337). In the real world, not everyone ends up achieving, as does the title character in the closing chapter of Emma, “perfect happiness in . . . union” (453). This sentiment is sweet, but life is not always so easy; in reality, families are often broken, and marriages often crumble. Critics could conclude that readers should step out of the drowsy garden of the country vicarage and into the bracing sea air of bleak, realistic authors such as Thomas Hardy or Matthew Arnold.
Charlotte Brontë would have agreed with these critics: upon reading Pride and Prejudice for the first time, she wrote, “what did I find? . . . a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of . . . open country, no fresh air, no blue hill . . . I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses” (10). Brontë’s passionate novels that take place on the sweeping moors may seem truer to life than Austen’s; perhaps Austen’s works are like a pastoral scene of a shepherdess on a china plate—blissfully naïve when compared to reality.
This view of the works of the Austenian corpus as dull and out of touch could not be further from the truth; Austen’s heroines face real danger and challenges. In Northanger Abbey, Catherine faces physical danger when Mr. Tilney abruptly sends the young teenager on a lonely, several day carriage ride without a servant or chaperone to watch over her. A horrified Eleanor Tilney cries out, “I hope, I earnestly hope that to your real safety it will be of [little consequence] . . . but a journey of seventy miles, to be taken post by you, at your age, alone, unattended!” (211). Those who criticize Austen’s work for its absence of drama do not understand that such a journey by a single, unaccompanied woman in Regency England could have meant robbery or even death. And as compelling and tempting as Midnight Bell or Orphan of the Rhine might be, Austen proves through Catherine’s midnight foray into the linen chest that these thrillers do readers no favors—steeping their imaginations in wild fantasies but doing little to prepare them for the true hardships of daily life.
This underlying tension and drama can also be found in the opening scene of Sense and Sensibility. In these pages, Austen portrays a scheming Fanny Dashwood who convinces her husband not to give his half-sisters Marianne and Elinor “a thousand pounds a-piece” (4)—instead whittling the amount down, complaining “people always live forever when there is an annuity to be paid” (8). Mrs. Dashwood is of course quick to lay claim to the china for herself, protesting, “the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for any place they can ever afford to live in” (10). The fate of Marianne and Elinor hangs on what might seem to be a mildly humorous, commonplace conversation between a calculating wife and her easily manipulated husband. Yet the girls have already lost their father, their house, and their former life and are now plunged into poverty, all while Elinor tries desperately to maintain the appearance of respectability. Readers must view Sense and Sensibility through the lens of 1811 England—when the novel was published—to appreciate the full scope and magnitude of the drama in this scene. The Dashwood sisters are not dragged through the forest by disreputable highwaymen, such as is common practice in the gothic romances that Catherine Morland so prizes, but the danger they face after their brother’s conversation with the conniving Fanny is just as devastating.
Austen’s books are not only dramatic but also paint an accurate portrait of real life with all its triumphs and sufferings. Austen is criticized for painting too rosy a picture of marriage, but in actuality, her characters do not always end up in ideal marriages. For instance, in Pride and Prejudice, Mary Bennet remains single throughout the book, even though she would have welcomed the chance to marry Mr. Collins. In the same novel, Charlotte Lucas does marry Mr. Collins not because of her deep love for him, but because he will provide her with a respectable home, saying, “I am not romantic, you know; I never was. I ask only a comfortable home . . . my chance of happiness with him is as fair as most people can boast on entering the marriage state” (125). Charlotte knows what she is doing and copes with her marriage by resorting to sending her husband out into the garden as much as possible. A random sampling of other Austenian characters faced with similar challenges include the overwhelmed Prices in Mansfield Park, penniless Miss Bates in Emma, foolish Lydia and her ill-suited husband Mr. Wickham in Pride and Prejudice, and rakish Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility. Willoughby’s marriage, in particular, is devastating: his wife, who is “jealous as the devil” (240) ensures that for him, “Domestic happiness is out of the question” (244). Those criticizing Austen’s work as unrealistic can hardly uphold their argument when faced with such a long enumeration of passages and characters who do not attain the idealistic happy ending. The questions of how to live without a spouse or within a loveless marriage are still pertinent questions—proving that Austen’s novels retain their relevance.
The criticism that Austen’s works lack deep passion is another common complaint—yet Austen does not neglect sensibility for the sake of sense. In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet answers her sister’s question, “Will you tell me how long you have loved [Mr. Darcy]?” (361) by replying frankly, “It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began; but I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley” (361). Critics cite this passage as a means of arguing that the kind of love Austen describes is conventional and dispassionate. Yet true love does not always mean love at first sight. For example, Marianne Dashwood is initially convinced she is destined to marry the dashing Willoughby. When she ends up marrying Colonel Brandon, she ends up sublimely happy, even though she had previously scorned her future husband. Those readers who remain resolute in believing Austen is lacking in vitality may look no further than Emma. When proposing, Mr. Knightley says, “If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more . . . you see, you understand my feelings—and will return them if you can. At present, I ask only to hear, once to hear your voice” (403). In this scene, Mr. Knightley is making the point that his lack of profuseness is evidence of more emotion on his part—not less. If possible, Persuasion is even more romantic. In a letter to his beloved Anne Elliot, Captain Wentworth confides, “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope . . . I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice, when they would be lost to others” (223-224). While Austen paints a realistic portrait of love, she also plumbs the depths of human emotion. Both Mr. Knightley and Captain Wentworth love profoundly and deeply, longing to hear their beloved’s voice, even as they make their own voices and feelings heard. Austen is capable of passionate writing; yet she is not dependent upon excessive scenes of passion to convey her characters’ feelings. Her romance is subtle, often elegantly draped by the folds of curtains in the proper interior of a Regency parlor—but present, nonetheless.
In conclusion, Jane Austen’s novels are still relevant, despite what critics may proclaim. Her novels describe the human condition in all its dignity and imperfection. The challenges Austen’s characters face—how to find fulfillment in singleness, how to live when not respected by others, how first impressions can lead to misjudgment—are the same challenges we face in the modern world. The choices her characters must make—if it is acceptable to marry for convenience and security and whether it is right to interfere with the lives of our neighbors—are the same choices readers make today. Austen wrote in Mansfield Park, “Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore every body, not greatly at fault in themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with them all” (420). And while her novels are unflinchingly realistic, what makes Austen so delightful is the way she offers hope to her readers. Austen’s novels show how goodness can triumph in a broken world. No one would read Mansfield Park if the novel were a melodramatic story, solely made up of “guilt and misery” (420). The joy of reading Austen is not escaping to an evocative, fairytale word, but facing the real world with hope. Jane Austen deserves to take her rightful throne upon the library shelf—right along with the bestseller published two weeks ago. And as for that latest release? It may be “tolerable,” but compared to Pride and Prejudice, “not handsome enough to tempt me” (13).
