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- [00:00]
Narrator/Advertiser
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- [00:15]
Lauren Good
Close your eyes.
- [00:17]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
Exhale. Feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today.
- [00:23]
Lauren Good
Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts.
- [00:26]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
In time for this class.
- [00:27]
Lauren Good
I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts.
- [00:30]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
Oh my gosh, they're so fast. And breathe. Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw.
- [00:35]
Lauren Good
The discount they gave me on my first order.
- [00:37]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
Oh, sorry. Namaste.
- [00:40]
Narrator/Advertiser
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- [00:43]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
1-800-Contacts.
- [00:46]
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- [01:16]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
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- [01:31]
Lauren Good
Way to shake things up this sipping.
- [01:33]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
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- [01:44]
History Extra Podcast Host
Today on the History Extra podcast, we're going to return to Lauren Good with our latest Sunday series exploring the life and works of Jane Austen.
- [01:53]
Lauren Good
We might assume that Jane Austen led a quiet life writing dramatic plots instead of experiencing them herself. But. But this is far from the truth. I'm Lauren Good and in this second episode of a four part series exploring Jane's life and writing, Dr. Lizzie Rogers and I will be covering a more dramatic period of the writer's life, her 20s, where she experienced romance, major life changes and sudden loss. Lizzie Last episode we explored Jane's upbringing and her earlier influences. And now we find ourselves in December 1795. Jane is 20. Neighbour's nephew Tom Lefroy makes a visit to Steventon. What do we know about the relationship that developed between the two of them?
- [02:41]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
Tom Lefroy is a really interesting episode in Jane's life because he's actually mentioned in that very first letter, that's preserved. So automatically. That's exciting. And as you mentioned, he's a nephew of a neighbour. And the Lefroy family were big friends with the Austens. Madame Lefroy, as she was known, was a really close friend of Jane's, and she was actually would she had literary ambition as well. So they were pretty close, which I think also kind of helps magnify the situation a little bit. But Tom Lefroy grew up in Ireland. He come to London to study law and he comes to stay for that Christmas winter period. I mean, Jane's 20 years old, he's new to the parish. It must have been incredibly exciting for this kind of. What I presume is a handsome young gentleman, based off the miniatures we've seen of him, you know, that he turns up and he's related to one of her very closest friends and mentors.
- [03:32]
Lauren Good
Now, I have to mention at this point, one of my absolute favourite films about Jane is Becoming Jane, which does play on the truth.
- [03:39]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
Yes.
- [03:40]
Lauren Good
But James McAvoy playing a very brooding Tom Lefroy is incredible.
- [03:45]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
I mean, if I remember rightly, doesn't he, like, burst into the drawing room at Steventon and he's kind of presented as a Mr. Darcy character? I also really enjoy this film. I know it really bends the truth, but I think it's so fun to kind of imagine what these things were, as long as we don't get carried away with them. Something that I really believe is that, you know, Jane Austen didn't need to have a great romance in her life to write a great romance. But when you read the things that she wrote, when you read her letters, she clearly loved to flirt, she loved to have a good time. She's 20 years old, she's poised to kind of have a great crush and have this kind of time flirting at a ball and really enjoy herself. And I think the movie really captures that really nicely. And it's just to imagine it, you know, as long as. As long as you're not taking it as a documentary. I don't really. You know, it's fun. I think James McAvoy plays a great kind of imagined Tom Lefroy.
- [04:37]
Lauren Good
It is such a fun film. You talked about the letters there. I do have some snippets here. And it does seem from a letter Jane writes to Cassandra, that Jane did expect a proposal from Tom. This was more than a crush. It was quite a serious romance we've got here that she writes, I look forward with great impatience to it, as I rather to receive an offer from my friend in the course of the evening. I shall refuse him, however, unless he promises to give away his white coat. There is a bit of humour there, but she is. It seems, she's expecting an offer of marriage here.
- [05:14]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
So she definitely. It's funny, these letters have been read both ways, that she really expected an offer of marriage or that she's really playing on the fact that they have this playful relationship, this flirting. And the white coat, I think, is such a great line, and it's a reference to. She thinks his coat is too pale and he wears a pale coat because he really likes Henry Fielding's character, Tom Jones, which I think is a great kind of literary reference made by our own literary great. And I think it's really fascinating that she kind of says this. She also makes, I think, an earlier comment saying that they've behaved frightfully to Cassandra. You know, we've been sitting down together, we've been dancing too much together. So whether that means she's been making a spectacle of herself or whether she's just kind of carried away by the enjoyment of it, and whether that translates to the letters too, there definitely seems to be some kind of. She was more interested in him than any of the other young men that she's kind of briefly mentioned and peppered through her letters. So whether she did truly expect a proposal, or whether she knew that nothing would really come of it, or whether he's the one that got away, I don't know. I love this period. I think it's so interesting in her life, but I'm always reticent to be like, he's her great love, because she's young and, you know, we've all been there. You know, we've all met somebody and kind of had our head turned and have, like, a short, sharp burst of fun with someone. And I think that's Jane having her moment here.
- [06:39]
Lauren Good
I do love the idea of Jane, though, at 20, being a bit scandalous, dancing too much with Tom Lefroy.
- [06:45]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
I agree. Yeah. I mean, and that's why her letters are so great, is because she puts these references in. There's a later one where she mentions, basically, that she's hungover. This isn't after being with Tom Lefroy, but it is after another ball. And she says something like, I'm paraphrasing, but please forgive the shaking of my hand, I drank too much wine last night. I just love that, you know, she knew how to have a good time. You know, she really enjoyed company, like socialising and, you know, interacting with other people and new people again, that must have been incredibly exciting in this kind of close knit parish of people.
- [07:19]
Lauren Good
You know, it's such a lovely insight into Jane beyond the writer.
- [07:23]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
It really, really is. And I think it's sometimes hard when you read like her letters and you know, about all this biographical information to then ascribe it to situations in her novel, well, in her novels and kind of think, oh, that must be the inspiration for this. Like, this must be the inspiration for that. And part of the enjoy. I actually enjoy the mystery of that. Whether, you know, sometimes you think, oh, this person must be them. From being small, I've always wondered, like, are Lizzie Bennet and Jane Bennet like Cassandra and Jane? You know, and so whether Tom Lefroy is inspiration for Mr. Darcy. Some people have suggested that actually Jane's the inspiration for Mr. Darcy, Tom Lefroy's inspiration for Elizabeth. He comes certainly at an interesting point about kind of seven, eight months before she begins writing a very early version of Pride and Prejudice. So it's, you know, it's interesting timing, but also she's just kind of having her world opened up a little. She's learning what it is to be a young woman out in the world.
- [08:18]
Lauren Good
Now, unlike Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, we know that this romance did come to an end. She writes in another letter that at length the day has come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy. My tea as I write at the melancholy idea. I mean, she seems pretty heartbroken at this stage.
- [08:36]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
Yeah. And again, like you read that and you just, you kind of, your heart breaks for her a little bit. And then other people say, oh, that's her being classically witty and kind of a little bit of hyperbole. But even so, it's hard not to think there's something behind that. It seems very likely that his family got a little frightened. Not necessarily the Lefroys in the neighborhood, but his wider family. His law education was financed by a rich great uncle. So he gets kind of pulled back into that. He later does marry 1799, a lady called Mary Paul, who by all accounts did have some money, Jane did not. The couple would have been penniless. And I think that's what they really focus on in becoming Jane is this idea of potentially them running away together because they have no money. And that was a real worry for couples. Aside of whether that happened and whether that was her expectation, she would have known really well that that's a very difficult start for any kind of couple at this level of society to not have any money and not have family support. There's also an link in that Tom Lefroy and his wife did have a daughter called Jane. So a lot of people say, oh, was that after Jane Austen? But Mary Paul's mother was also called Jane. So potentially probably that's where that came from. But it's a lovely little coincidence. And I think it's fascinating as well, because Tom Lefroy goes on to be Lord Chief justice of Ireland, which is a pretty big deal. And what we really remember him for is a couple of weeks romance with Jane Austen, which, you know, just shows how important her kind of fame is. And the fact that we can actually pin him down in her biography is just absolutely fascinating, I suppose.
- [10:13]
Lauren Good
Yeah, we wouldn't be talking about Tom Lefroy today as much if it wasn't for that.
- [10:18]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
Only in the history context.
- [10:22]
Lauren Good
So her courtship with Tom ends in the January of 1796, and by the August of that year. You did touch on it. She's writing first impressions by this point, which would become Pride and Prejudice later on in her life. Do you think there were influences there from her romance with Tom?
- [10:38]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
I mean, it'd be hard not to be, but wouldn't it? I mean, it's that classic line, you write what you know. But she's also watched quite a few of her siblings get married at this point. She's, you know, has wider friends and family that have got married. She has also read a lot of novels, as I mentioned earlier. I'm very much of the opinion she didn't have to have experienced everything that's in her work to be able to write about it. Because as we've seen, she has such a great imagination. She really kind of knew how to pin stories together and how to really touch on personality types. So whether it did inspire her, I mean, it could well have done, but it's interesting timing that it comes at the same time, I like to think that the fact she had this, like, romantic interest, not necessarily that it was Tom Lefroy, but she had this happen, was really great timing for her to start these kind of more mature novels, because it gives her an insight into what that world could be like.
- [11:29]
Lauren Good
And she is known for writing romance.
- [11:32]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
She is. This is the thing. And no matter kind of how you pin down her novels. Cause there's so. There's kind of the friendship, there's the family dynamics, kind of social class, gender, but at the crux of it, they are. They are romances. You know, and I think sometimes people say that in like, in a dismissive way, but I actually think that's a really great way to describe them because, I mean, romance is a. It's a brilliant genre of writing and she brought so much to it.
- [11:58]
Lauren Good
We do see, we talked in the first episode about her family being very encouraging of her writing career and we see her father actually taking first impressions to a publisher, but it is rejected at this point. Do we know if Jane was aware of this happening?
- [12:13]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
So we're pretty sure that she did know that that was happening and it also seems like it didn't discourage her too much. So this is happening towards the end of 1797. At this point. She then turns back to an early version that she wrote of Sense of Sensibility at that point called Eleanor and Marianne. It was written as a novel in letters, like some of her juvenilia. And she turns back to that and kind of starts to edit it and put it into prose. So whether she actually used it as fuel rather than as something as a setback, I think is really interesting.
- [12:42]
Lauren Good
So she's working on Eleanor and Marianne as well. Do we know at this point of her life, is she working on any other writing?
- [12:48]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
So it's not long before she starts working on Susan, which is an early version of Northanger Abbey as well. So actually these novels that we know as being published in the Regency period, you know, all post 1811, they actually, their seeds are sown very, very early on.
- [13:04]
Lauren Good
Now we're skipping ahead slightly, this is to 1801, and we see Jane is 20 and at this point of her life she experiences a huge change because her father announces his retirement from the ministry and has uprooted the family to Bath. Can we try and settle an age old question, Lizzie? Do you think Jane liked Bath or not?
- [13:26]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
It is the age old question. You know, it's along with, did Jane ever fall in love? You know, did Jane like Bath? I think Bath is a really interesting period in her life. It's a, as you perfectly mentioned, big time of upheaval. It was a surprise that he decided to retire and uproot them. She'd spent time in Bath before, you know, relatively liked it. And so it's an interesting one because so much happens. I mean, her father passes away while they live in Bath and actually they kind of gradually move down in terms of addresses that they have in kind of how nice they are. They're not on the breadline, but they do suddenly their circumstances really change, not only from the move to the city. But then at the beginning of 1805, her father passes away and suddenly the Austen women realize they have very little income of their own. They have to rely on the brothers. So it's a very kind of. It's quite a turbulent time and it's often labeled as not very creatively fruitful because she doesn't write much while she's there. She potentially penned the Watsons while she was there, but of course we know that's unfinished. But I always think it's really interesting because big chunks of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion happen in Bath, and Northanger Abbey, I think, gives a really good insight into how busy it would have been in Bath. Catherine Morland's taken there. She's really young. She's really kind of excited again. She's a young girl who's come from a small village. She's kind of taken off for big adventures. I think she says something to that effect in the novel and it's like a crush in the ballroom and it's. I think it really gives a great sense of what Bath was like. And then, of course, she gets a lot of anxiety about doing things right and kind of all the, like, social etiquette and things like that. So you get a real insight into what Bath society was like and kind of the anxiety it pushed on people. So that, I think is a little kind of ambiguous about how she felt about it. But she did also meet Henry Tilney in Bath, which I think is a good sign. But then Persuasion, to me, she couldn't have disliked Bath if she didn't give such a romantic ending that happens there. I mean, the Elliot family are there because they're in straightened circumstances. They remove themselves to Bath for the society to be in town. And as we know, Anne Elliot's family are. They're awful, really. You know, she's the best of kind of a difficult bunch. And she runs back into Captain Wentworth and then when they're all in Bath, she sees him again and she thinks, you know, he's fallen out of love with me, he doesn't want me anymore. You know, he's a long lost love that she wants rejected because she was told to. And then he sends her that gorgeous letter that I think is my favorite bit of any of Jane Austen's writing. And they have this amazing romantic reunion in Bath. And I just. I don't see how she could have written such a beautiful ending and not liked the place where it took place, because she very rarely included real places. So to actually put that in a real Place, I think, says something, it's just my reading of it, but I just think Bath was the time of kind of real ups and downs. But I think it was somewhere that she probably hated at times, probably loved at times, but it did leave a lasting impression on her.
- [16:32]
Lauren Good
Perhaps it was the circumstances she was in there rather than Bath itself.
- [16:37]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
Rather than the city itself. Yeah. And by the time the Austens were there, Bath had been a thriving, thriving spa town throughout the 18th century. I mean, we know spa towns were the place to go. Towards the end of the 18th century, it actually becomes slightly less fashionable. People were focusing more on seaside resorts, as we know Jane knew about and spent time at. So it was kind of over the hill of its heyday, but it was still an exciting place to be. And it also would have been a place she could have gone to the theatre, she could have gone to public assemblies, she could have met up with friends, all things that we know she really liked. But I think the circumstances, which she didn't have any control over would have been really, really difficult.
- [17:15]
Lauren Good
Was it this point of her life that she was visiting, is it Devon that she used to visit quite often?
- [17:20]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
Yes. So she spent time in Sidmouth. She spent time in Dawlish as well, in 1801, 1802. And actually, what's really interesting about that is Austen family law suggests that that's when she met the supposed great love of her life. We don't have a name, but the story is that she met somebody and he died before it could become anything more significant. And actually, Paula Byrne, Jane Austen expert, has written a great novel, kind thinking about that, called Six Weeks by the Sea. And it's again, a really great question that we don't know much about, but that is the story that is passed down.
- [17:54]
Lauren Good
There's so many mysteries, isn't there?
- [17:56]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
There are. I find. I think maybe this is why I find her so interesting, is because she leaves enough that you think you know her and then actually the more you get into it, the more you realize, actually, we. We don't know. She's quite tantal.
- [18:13]
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- [19:35]
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- [20:50]
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- [21:26]
Lauren Good
There is another event that happens in 1802.
- [21:29]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
Yes.
- [21:29]
Lauren Good
And it's a proposal of marriage from a man called Harris Big Withers, which is a bit of an unfortunate surname. What do we know about this man?
- [21:40]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
So can you imagine her being Jane Big with her? So he, at this point, is quite a lot younger than her. I mean, she's 27 years old almost. He's 21, and he's the younger brother of her friends Catherine and Alethea Bigg. He's the heir to Manydown park in Hampshire. So, actually, you know, it would have presented quite a good opportunity for marriage. By all accounts, he was quite an awkward young man, but Jane had been staying there a little while with her friends, with Cassandra, and he proposed to her. Whether she expected or not is another question. But he proposed to her and she accepted initially.
- [22:17]
Lauren Good
Yeah. So she accepts initially. Why do you think she did?
- [22:22]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
I think there's probably a combination of factors. I mean, he's the brother of her two good friends. I mean, that surely, you know, that persuaded her to think, oh, actually, this is a great idea, you know, marrying to a family that I'm friends with, if Austen family law is correct, that, you know, she had lost the kind of the guy who was the great love of her life, that would have either been in the summer of 1801 or summer of 1802. So that would have been quite recent. So this would have been an opportunity to kind of get maybe a marriage that she was hoping for, but it wouldn't have been the same as, you know, he wasn't somebody that she was really attracted to. But he did offer great prospects. And, you know, although Jane was witty and clever and, you know, had this great imagination, she also had a sense of what was real. And both she and her sister are married. Cassandra had lost her own fiance and never remarried. You know, and she was aware that actually this could have been a very stable opportunity for her marriage was really the only way to get that.
- [23:23]
Lauren Good
Do you think she would have felt there must have been pressure on her, as a woman in the Georgian period to marry?
- [23:31]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
I think so. I mean, look at her novels. It's mentioned so many times, and we see it as, well, dramatized in period drama. You know, it's like to be a spinster is the worst thing ever, which. Which isn't necessarily true if you have the means to not marry. And Jane certainly didn't have great means independently.
- [23:52]
Lauren Good
Now, Lizzie, we know that Jane is Jane Austen, not Jane Big withers.
- [23:55]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
Yes.
- [23:56]
Lauren Good
So she does reject the proposal the day after.
- [23:59]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
The day after, yes. So I again, don't want to kind of write her story with my own opinions, but I presume spent quite a sleepless night thinking about it and woke up the next morning and. And retracted her acceptance and kind of beat a hasty retreat from manydown park, which must have been quite awkward with the friendship with the two sisters. But, yeah, she decided that it wasn't the right thing for her and left.
- [24:26]
Lauren Good
Did she continue spending time with the family?
- [24:28]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
As far as I'm aware, she did still remain friends with them, but I think it must have been very, very different afterwards. That's kind of a momentous thing to do. And he did end up marrying later on, but, you know, he was 21. He was still very young, but it must have been particularly to be. I mean, wouldn't even have been 24 hours for that to happen. It's a lot to kind of come back from.
- [24:51]
Lauren Good
And we know that Jane never married. For anyone listening or watching, and you'd like to explore some of the theories about why that might be the case, you can read expert David Lasman's thoughts on this in an article on historyextra.com you can find a link to that in my beyond the Podcast picks, which you can find in the description of this epis. But, Lizzie, reasons aside, I can't help but wonder if we would know who Jane Austen was today if she had followed the more usual route of the.
- [25:18]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
Period and married potentially, that is one of the reasons why she retracted her acceptance is the fact that she loved writing, you know, and at this point had early drafts of three of the novels that we now know of the six complete ones today. So that potentially could have pulled her back from that, you know, that ambition to potentially think of being a writer. But then there were married women writing at that time, Ann Radcliffe, who she was a really big fan of, Gothic writer who she mentions in Northanger Abbey. She was married. Frances Burney married as well. So there were many others, too. It's just those are two that Jane really admired, but it really depended on the husband and the situation and whether she knew that that wouldn't be kind of an option to her. There's also a school of thought that Suggests that Jane had, of course, she was a big family. She had many sisters in law, had many nieces and nephews. By the end of her lifetime and kind of past Jane's death, three of her brothers lose wives in childbirth and she'd seen kind of many difficult births because Jane and Cassandra, being kind of the maiden aunt, so to speak, were kind of called upon to help when it was time to give birth. And perhaps that also put her off, so to speak. Surely it couldn't have been a grand advertisement for marriage, but it also could have been a real reckoning of, actually, that's what you've got to look forward to, or that's what you're expected to do at this level of society, rather than produce these, like, wonderfully witty stories that actually have something really special about them.
- [26:50]
Lauren Good
I suppose she would have seen the realities of being a woman in that period.
- [26:54]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
Very up close. Yeah. Incredibly. Incredibly up close, yeah.
- [26:58]
Lauren Good
Now, Jane doesn't let the proposal get her down. We see her working on her novel Susan, which you mentioned, Is that Northanger Abbey?
- [27:06]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
That is an early version of Northanger Abbey, yes. She kind of carries on working with that and it's a parody of the Gothic novel. She loved Gothic novels. They were really popular kind of damsels in distress, like really kind of dramatic language, kind of forbidden castles and corners and kind of shadowy heroes or anti heroes. She was really, really interested in that. And actually, it's always a funny one because the early version is called Susan and there are no characters, as far as I'm aware, none of the main characters are called Susan. And the reason for that is by the time it eventually gets published, there's been another novel called Susan published, so she changes the name of her heroine to Catherine. But, yeah, early version, Northanger Abbey, which was this kind of really different work, really, her playing with Gothic novels.
- [27:53]
Lauren Good
She knows a lot about what's going on in the wider publishing world. She seems very tuned into it.
- [27:59]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
Yes, well, she's a great reader, really great reader. She is a subscriber to novels. She subscribed to one of Frances Burney's novels. You can kind of see her name, Ms. J Austen of Steventon, at the beginning, which I think is really lovely. In the list of subscribers, she reads Ann Radcliffe, she reads all sorts and she quite frequently defends novels and, you know, is members of like, lending library circles and she's, you know, we're proud readers of novels. You know, we're not dismissive of them in both her letters and in her work. So, yeah, she's very switched on about what's going on, what's being published, what's circulating, and reading it all as well.
- [28:37]
Lauren Good
In 1803, her brother Henry, you mentioned in the first episode, they do have a really close relationship. Submit Susan, to a publisher, Benjamin Crosby of Crosby & Co. In London, and they do buy the copyright of her work for the sum of £10. Now, this seems like the tipping point to her success. She's so close to publication. But it doesn't go quite to plan, does.
- [29:01]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
It? No, it must have been the rejection of Pride and Prejudice. The early Pride and Prejudice must have been, you know, quite hard. But this in particular must have been difficult, I think, because this is being told, oh, yeah, you're making it. And it never quite comes to fruition. They advertise the novel as forthcoming, but it never gets published. And then she ends up spending between 1809, 1911. She sends lots of letters that are not written as from Ms. Jane Austen. They're written as from Mrs. Ashton Dennis as a pseudonym, which the acronym is MAD, which I think is so clever, trying to get it back. And it's, you know, she can't afford the £10 purchase price that they demand back. I mean, £10 was roughly about the yearly wages for kind of a housemaid. Just to put that in perspective, she didn't have her own income, although she wasn't kind of having to go into service. Ten pounds was not something she could give up lightly, you know, and that's what they demanded back of her if she wanted it. And it had been kind of sat in publishing limbo for so long, and she wanted it back to update it and to actually get it.
- [30:02]
Lauren Good
Somewhere. I love that pseudonym of mad. That seems incredible, isn't.
- [30:06]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
It? So.
- [30:06]
Lauren Good
Good. Did they ever manage to make the novel a.
- [30:10]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
Success? They did. So eventually it's brought back in 1816 and she immediately begins working on it, kind of updating it, updating the names. Things have changed a little bit from when it's first submitted for publication, that initial one with Benjamin Crosby. Gothic novels aren't as kind of in that sort of vein of like, that kind of dramatic vein, aren't as popular, but she sticks with it. And then it gets published after her death, along with Persuasion. So eventually it does find its way into the.
- [30:38]
Lauren Good
World. So she's writing away and she might be taking some influence from Bathroom. We're not quite sure how much she's enjoying being there, but we know she's taken inspiration. But sadly, in 1805, when Jane is 29. You mentioned that her father does die when they're in Bath. Do we know what he died.
- [30:58]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
From? So it seems he died quite suddenly after two days illness. Now, he wasn't particularly young, but he'd been pretty fit up until this point. So it was a big shock to them all, actually, when he passed away. He hadn't been suffering from a long illness that we know of, so it must have been. Not. Then there's the struggle of moving to Bath. There's then the loss of her father, who took them there.
- [31:20]
Lauren Good
Too. How did the death affect Jane? Do we know much about what she was thinking and feeling at this point of her.
- [31:27]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
Life? So she writes in some of her letters to her siblings kind of about how awful it is, and she mentions that, you know, it's a comfort that he didn't suffer too long. But we know that she was very, very close to her father. I mean, he bought her a writing desk. He was kind of a big encourager of her work, allowed access to all the library, you know, things like that. So it must have been a real. Not only an emotional kind of uprooting to lose that really significant person in your life, but also he was their financial security. You know, for the Austen women, there's two unmarried daughters. There's Mrs. Austen as well, and they're now having to rely on kind of. I don't wanna use the word charity, but the support of her brothers, who most of them have their own wives and families, and they end up kind of spending a little bit more time in Bath. They also spend some time with the Leigh family. This is when she travels up to Warwickshire in Staffordshire. But there's kind of this period from when her father dies to when she moves to Chawton. That's a real. She doesn't really have a home base as such. She does spend three years living on and off with her brother Frank in Southampton and his wife Mary. And that kind of gives her a little bit more security, but it's not kind of a tenable permanent situation. So it kind of signals this kind of chapter in her life when she doesn't have really any.
- [32:44]
Lauren Good
Stability. I suppose it shows that no matter how ambitious or talented you are as a woman in the Georgian period, when it boils down to it, you are reliant on the men around you.
- [32:55]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
Unfortunately. So. Yeah, unfortunately. So when you're in this situation where you don't have any independent.
- [33:00]
Lauren Good
Wealth. Now, as you said, we see the Austen women forced into a new situation depending on this benevolence of their male relatives, which we'll delve into fully in the next episode. But first, reflecting on what we've discussed today, Lizzie, how would you summarize this point of Jane's.
- [33:17]
Dr. Lizzie Rogers
Life? Her 20s, her 20s in any kind of woman's life in this period were really significant, particularly because of marriage prospects and kind of seeking that form of stability. But it's a time when she really refined her writing. She completed some novels. She'd had a book accepted for publishing. So even though that never comes to fruition, she knows she's good enough. And that's something I think is a real good glimmer of hope. Even though she probably also came to terms with the fact she wasn't going to marry. She'd experienced this significant loss. And she's kind of going into her 30s with a lot of things have changed and you know, but she also has a lot of exciting things happening too with her writing. She's very close to a lot of her family members and kind of her friends too, and has that kind of bolstering her up, even though financially she's not that independent. She has this really interesting kind of social independence about her, I think. And what I mean by that is, you know, she's really kind of a powerful presence amongst her family, amongst her friends, and she really kind of cultivates that and leans into it. And like her family again, almost the next generation, like her nieces and nephews are really starting to recognize her for it.
- [34:22]
Lauren Good
Too. That was Dr. Lizzie Rogers speaking to me. Lauren Good Lizzie is an historian of the 18th and early 19th centuries. If you want to go beyond the podcast and find out more about Jane Austen, her works and the Regency period she wrote in. I've compiled some essential reading, listening and viewing from the History Extra and BBC History Magazine archive to deepen your understanding. You can find a link to that in the description of this.
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Dr. Lizzie Rogers
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