I am beavering away writing about Lucy M Boston’s Green Knowe series so just a short post from me this week. Another quotation from literature on setting up home, this time from Jane Austen.
For those who have not read the first of Jane Austen’s novels to be published, Sense and Sensibility (1811) is the story of a widowed mother and her three daughters, who are forced to leave their home on a large estate, Norland Park, after the death of the girls’ father. Almost all of Henry Dashwood’s wealth is tied up and will be passed to his son from his first marriage, and his plans to provide for his second wife and his daughters are scuppered by his sudden, unexpected death. Mrs Dashwood is therefore reliant on her step-son to provide for her beyond her own limited means. John Dashwood, after a promise to his father on that man’s deathbed, resolves to provide for his relations, but the amount he decides upon is gradually whittled away to nothing by his wife, who ends up suggesting Mrs Dashwood should give them her breakfast china which ‘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.’1
And so Mrs Dashwood and her daughters leave the house and settle far away in a small cottage in Devon. It is tempting to not have sympathy for a family going to live in a four bedroom cottage (six bedrooms if you count the two attic rooms, where their three servants will live!) in the Devon countryside, until you consider it has only two ‘sitting rooms’, each no more than sixteen foot square, with no other living area. Small indeed, even if you haven’t just been thrown out of your mansion!
In the mean time, till all these alterations could be made from the savings of an income of five hundred a-year by a woman who never saved in her life, they were wise enough to be contented with the house as it was; and each of them was busy in arranging their particular concerns, and endeavouring, by placing around them their books and other possessions, to form themselves a home. Marianne’s piano-forte was unpacked and properly disposed of; and Elinor’s drawings were affixed to the walls of their sitting room.2
I’m not entirely sure how the piano was supposed to fit! Still, I like the description of them setting out their books and Elinor’s paintings in order to create a sense of ‘home’ despite their newly impoverished state.
I think it is also tempting to see this in a romantic light, but challenging this idea is part of the theme of the book. Retiring from the ‘cut and thrust’ of life in society to a country idyll as been seen as a blessing in literature since Hesiod’s Works and Days (I’ve never read it – I’m pretty sure I was meant to at 6th form…). However, a life of isolation, poverty and simplicity are all things that are much less appealing when they are forced upon you.
Jane Austen was well aware of this. In her tongue-in-cheek description of Barton Cottage as ‘defective’, due to its being ‘regular’ and having a tiled roof, not a thatched roof,3 Austen is poking fun at anyone who would prefer a crooked and damp home, with a leaking roof, over this boxy, ‘new build’ cottage. Romantic ideas are better when they are backed up by enough cash to have comfort too. As Elinor says, without ‘competence’ (enough money to meet essential needs), ‘every kind of external comfort must be wanting.’4 And comfort helps us stay strong in this tumultuous world.
Questions for my readers
What is bringing you comfort in these dark and difficult times? For me right now it is books, coffee, and plenty of fairy lights and lamps…
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Bye for now! Emma
Austen, Sense and Sensibility. (NewYork: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002), p.12.
Austen, p.24.
Austen, p.23.
Austen, p.67.
I re-watched over Christmas as many Jane Austen films and series as I could find, and I’m now re-reading her books in the company of slow readers, enjoying that sense of connection to others around the world, while I sit in my small, quiet, warm home with my little dog cuddled up snoozing next to me and rain gently tapping on the window
My comfort these days is like yours... books, coffee, candles, and wine. Lots and lots of wine...! Maybe it's time to reread Austen.