Dear Everyone,

I am a Masters student researching my thesis, which is based on a number of women writers. Jane Austen is a necessary part of my thesis, but I am unfamiliar with a lot of her work and criticism relating to it.  I have found your site a wonderfully entertaining and useful educational learning centre and look forward to joining in on the discussion.  However, I doubt I could be much use in terms of contributing on the same level as all of you.

My research has come to a standpoint as I need to find out more about Jane Austen. So far my plans are based on compiling a thesis built on researching from a (hopefully, as I am still learning from which point of view I am taking) feminist perspective the following women authors: Catherine Macaulay, Mary Wollstonecraft, Hannah More, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen.

My problem is that I want to compare Shelley and Austen as two women writers who succeeded in making their points known through the use of a novel, rather than an instructional tract, periodical, or philosophical piece of writing.  My stance is that these two form a part of a new standard of women who wrote critically without losing much of their character as women.  My argument is very rough and definitely not complete (possibly not even well constructed as yet), but I would appreciate any notes regarding Shelley and Austen and Frankenstein and Northanger Abbey (as these are the two novels I am using to support my position) I would love to hear from anyone, but please don't be too harsh on me, as this is the first time I have done anything so open in relation to my ideas about my thesis.
Kind regards,
Ros.

Dear Ros,

Welcome to the community. Since you are a Masters student, you may not want to contribute on the same level as the rest of us--unless you are willing to stoop. Actually, we may prove to be very useful to you; if you can help us understand your thesis, then surely you will be able to explain yourself to an academic audience. Please post your thoughts and plans periodically, you will receive some feedback, and that might help you strengthen your background and logic for the real test.

There are some community members who can help you right away. I will only provide links to some things that are available at this site. The references page contains a number of references to biographies etc. for both Jane Austen and Mary Wollstonecraft. I have posted a long essay dealing with Mary Wollstonecraft and her husband--it is hardly academic. I have also posted an essay on the seminal events in Jane Austen's times--ditto. A better reference for that sort of thing is the biography by Park Honan who, by the bye, is an academic. A neighbor of yours is Julie Grassi and my impression is that she shares many of your interests. Find her name in the index to link to her postings on this Bulletin Board.

There are, of course, a zillion other web sites devoted to your interests. A good starting point for Jane-Austen studies is the Republic of Pemberley and one for the study of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter, Mary Shelley, is this link.

I share your interest in Mary Shelly but I am hardly a source for a Masters student. I would, however, like very much to discuss her with you. I think a lot about Frankenstein as well. I am not a feminist, so perhaps I can offer you a diverse point of view.
Best of luck,
Ashton

Dear Ashton,

Yes, dear Meister, I have made the pilgrimage to Chawton--twice. I have also sat in the pump-room at Bath (only last weekend) and walked in Dovedale on many an occasion. Lyme Regis has had a visit as have Chatsworth and Blenheim. Winchester Cathedral is never missed when I am passing through. My family knows better than to expect any sense out of me on these occasions, and I assure you that Jane is always one of the party. Next time I see her I will certainly pass on your best wishes
Regards,
Kate M.I.M.M.V. (OCT)

Our Dearest Kate,

I am going to be very brief because I don't trust myself to say very much without appearing silly--sillier. Please post anything further that you have to say on this matter. Treat the Bulletin Board as a diary and record you own impressions. Block the rest of us out of your mind so that you can keep your postings introspective. Don't hurry and don't do too much at once. Perhaps one posting on Chawton, the next on the Pump Room, etc. Does the Rectory still stand at Steventon? Do you have some travel tips? Don't shield us from anything; if there were some things that upset you, then tell us of those as well. Perhaps the Most-Valuable Male Voice of the Southern Hemisphere will have a more composed response to your posting--I hope so.
Love,
Ashton
P.S. I almost have "MIMMV" worked out--not quite. Too damn many "M"s--Most-Important-Madam-Male Voice?

Dear Austen lovers,

I'm a student at Rollins College and am currently undertaking a year-long look at Austen's works and how (well) they have been adapted to film. With a particular focus on setting, plot, characterization, and themes, I was wondering if anyone out there could give me their opinions, their advice on where to look, or any other help they can think of. I'd really appreciate it.
Thanks,
Ashlee

Dear Ashlee,

I can give you a number of links to this web site and to others. An excellent web site is the Republic of Pemberley. There are a number of forums devoted to filmed versions at that site and you should find those very useful. Also, there is a very nice site devoted to the filmed versions of Jane Austen novels. You will find the data for all of the filmed versions at that place. You will find a number of interesting links there as well. At this place, the emphasis tends to be on the novels themselves and on the biographical, social, and intellectual context for the novels. However, the filmed versions are not neglected. If you will peruse the Bulletin Board or the index, you will find that a number of community members have posted in this regard. I, myself, have posted extensively on the films and here are the links to those: Pride and Prejudice (1995), Pride and Prejudice (1979), Pride and Prejudice (1940), Emma (1972, 1996-Beckinsale, 1996-Paltrow), Mansfield Park (1983), Persuasion (1971, 1995), and Sense and Sensibility (1995).

I hope you will return periodically to the Bulletin Board and update us on the progress of your study. I believe that you will find that the community will provide you with some useful feedback on your ideas.

Dear David,

May I add my agreement to your appraisal of Patrick O'Brien as a writer worthy to be thought of as a male alter ego of Jane Austen. The elegance of his prose, precision of his dialogue and depth of characterization are indeed reminiscent of her and the recent BBC documentary on him left no doubt of his admiration. The image of O'Brien turning over, stroking and even smelling his copy of "Emma" with such obvious reverence and pleasure will long stay with me. How right you are that Jack Aubrey would have loved Frederick Wentworth although I fear he would have been a little disappointed at Frederick's tendency to walk out in the middle of musical concerts! Given Jack's somewhat checkered love life, he could be said to resemble Wentworth's description of himself "----a few smiles and a few compliments to the Navy and I am a lost man". I am halfway through "The Hundred Days" and am told that this is the penultimate novel in the series. I suspect I shall be almost as desolated when I finish the last O'Brien as I was when I finished the last Austen

Dear Sir,

Mansfield Park is written in a different spirit to the other novels, and I was interested to read a comment recently that put forward the view that in it, Jane Austen was, as she approached middle life, championing the case for solid family values in a changing world.  The love interest in Mansfield Park is almost incidental - the disintegration of the superficial, mannered Bertram family, and its subsequent reclaiming of strength under the influence of real, solid feeling, forms the substance of the novel, and is analogous with Jane Austen's intense dislike of the manners of Regency society.

Mansfield Park and Emma are my two favourite Jane Austen novels. To me, the author speaks from them as a mature intellect of great scope.  Are they relatively unpopular with modern students of Jane Austen because they are not 'easy reads'?  They do reveal more of the author's mature thought than her early works, delightful though those works are.
Julie

Dear Julie,

I notice that most refer to Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion as Jane Austen's "mature" novels. Does that mean that the other three are immature? I have also noticed that the very literate point to Emma, so I am not surprised to see you do that. Finally, I would observe that you do not mention Persuasion as one of your favorites--how is that?

My favorites are Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion because these are the novels in which the most intense feelings are expressed. I want to talk to you about that. In your posting of 9/19/98, you wrote "I simply do not understand why anyone would feel that it is lessening the merits of the love story that is Pride and Prejudice to look at, and think about, the intricate social weave of the novel". I, on the other hand, do understand that and I will try to explain my understanding to you.

First of all, as I have stated many times before, I believe that Jane Austen is very much interested in presenting an ethical view--this may well be the reason-for-being of her novels. However, this is not the ethics of the individual's relationship to society as you seem to think. She was not a Charles Dickens, a George Eliot, or a Thomas Hardy. She was working out the ethics of one individual's relationship with another. Often, this was a relationship between sister's and more often the relationship between a man and a woman--what I call a love story. Incidentally, I do not think of bodice rippers as "love stories". Her grand-nephew, Lord Brabourne, said this about her "... she describes men and women exactly as men and women really are, and tells her tale of ordinary, everyday life ... with such purity of style and language, as have rarely been equaled, and perhaps never surpassed. ...". My point exactly (I sometimes think that the most sensible things you can read about Jane Austen are those things that the men in her own family said about her). C.S. Lewis said this "'Principles' or 'seriousness' are essential to Jane Austen's art. Where there is no norm, nothing can be ridiculous. ... If charity is the poetry of conduct and honor the rhetoric of conduct, then Jane Austen's 'principles' might be described as the grammar of conduct. Now grammar is something that anyone can learn; it is also something that everyone must learn. ... ". Amen.

Some would counter that a "love story" must also be romantic--must also contain something of the passionate feelings of the love between a man and a woman. I would agree with that most wholeheartedly. She wrote love stories, Julie.

Now, the present-day generation want something else--they would say, mistakenly, that they want something more. It is as if they want her to have fought in the Spanish Civil War (don't laugh--such a thing was available to her). Or perhaps they wish she had died of malaria while fighting for the independence of Greece from Turkey. And, to them, the suggestion that she wrote love stories seems to diminish the reputation of her art. Well, I am not that kind of person and, if I were, it never would have occurred to me to put together this web site. I think it serves no purpose to search her novels for social commentary. On the contrary, this sort of thing sets up a dissonance that drowns out the truly profound aspects of her novels.

Dear Ashton,

I have just been watching a t.v. documentary which may go some way towards helping us to understand the relative values of the pound, then and now. (I daresay a quick phonecall to the Bank of England museum would help even more, but that seems like cheating.) Apparently, the park at Blenheim Palace was landscaped at a total cost of £30,000 which, at today's value, would be approximately £2,000,000. That makes one pound then equal to about £70 now. What's that in dollars--about $120? Admittedly, we're talking 1775 or so, and the wars undoubtedly caused some currency fluctuations, but I'm inclined to think this might be a reasonably accurate rule of thumb Applied to Lady Catherine's chimney-piece, however, it does make the cost of that seem a little excessive, although there were designers and builders of high repute in that field.

It makes Darcy's income about £300,000 p.a. and gives the Dashwoods the sum of £35,000 p.a. between the four of them from their lowdown stepbrother. It also gives Georgiana Darcy and Emma Woodhouse ample fortunes--about £2,000,000 or $3,400,000, if my sums are correct.

On another note, I am still depressed after reading your 11th letter posting. How sad. For the present at least, the thought that Tom Lefroy's loss was probably our gain seems scant consolation. I can only wonder at how such disappointment was so sublimely sublimated in the later works. Could a happy, fulfilled woman have produced "Persuasion"? So many of her heroines--Anne Elliot, Jane Bennet, Elinor Dashwood--suffer the pangs of lost love with this same wryness and resignation, appearing to be "indifferent" but not really fooling us for a moment.

Poor, poor Jane.

Regards,
Kate2

10/3/98 Ashton Dennis - current values

Dear Kate,

Thank you so much. I believe that your posting is an extremely important exercise for us. I say that because Jane Austen carefully told us the various incomes and my guess is that she wanted to convey something important about a character's situation in that way. I have expressed this view in another place.

The current exchange rate is a few pennies more than $1.60(1998)/£(1998) so your estimate is close to $110(1998)/£(1775). That is within the range I have been finding which is from $80 per Jane-Austen £ to $600 per Jane-Austen £. You are quite right in suggesting that there might have been some inflation due to the wars. (There always is because governments always engage in deficit spending.) Both Jane's cousin Eliza and her brother Charles received an unpleasant surprise when they returned to England in the 1790s to discover they couldn't afford things as well as they once could. Jane Austen began to write her novels only at the end of that decade so that your estimate might be a bit low for that reason alone. It is probably low for an even more fundamental reason. If we were to landscape Blenheim Palace today, we would do most of the work with heavy equipment and the raw materials would be produced with modern efficiencies and brought to the site over modern infrastructures. What is you opinion? If we were constrained to do everything in the same ways used by Capability Brown, would you guess that the estimate of £2,000,000 is far too low? I certainly would guess that.

Given all that, your calculations might well be consistent with the higher estimate of the current value of a Jane Austen pound, $600. That would place the estimate of the Dashwood's income at $300,000 p.a. And that is not so bad and sounds about right to me. Remember, they kept three servants. Or course, the estimate of the Dashwood's income is a beautiful example of the reason that we are doing all this, isn't it? We want to know exactly what Jane Austen intended us to understand about their situation. You estimate the current value of Darcy's income at about £300,000 p.a. ($480,000). I simply don't think he could have maintained his situation with so little. Essentially the man was a small corporation with something like 100 employees including skilled managers ("stewards" like Wickham's dad). The higher estimate of the current value of Darcy's income would be about $6,000,000 p.a. and that sounds about right to me even low if anything. What do you think? Incidentally, an hilarious Jane-Austen passage describes Catherine Moreland wandering about Northanger Abbey when it dawns on her just what it takes to run an estate like that (one entire wing of the Abbey was given over to administrative offices), and how misrepresented that fact was in the gothic novels she was reading.

Even your estimate makes the cost of Lady Catherine's fireplace seem excessive, but maybe we are to understand that Mr. Collins was prone to exaggeration.

This is not to the point and not something you need, but some American readers might be like myself and not know a shilling from a platypus. For those individuals, I strongly recommend Julie Grassi's useful posting of 5/6/98.

Dear Kate and Ashton,

With  regard to the relative values of money then and now, you have commented on, for instance, Darcy's running a 'small corporation', which is what large landed estates virtually were.  It is difficult to estimate relative wages of employees, however. In his excellent book, Not in Front of the Servants (Century, 1989), Frank Dawes gives the results of much research into the wages of servants in England, and what was expected in return. To be brief: It would be impossible for anyone to purchase today the pound of flesh that the leisured classes expected from their employees. Dawes concentrates more on the nineteenth century, unfortunately. This excerpt is interesting:

"Service" was a means by which poor families saw their (usually female) children clothed and fed.  Young girls of eleven or twelve began as "tweenies", and though they were paid (just), and were free to leave, in other respects their conditions were almost those of slavery, inasmuch as they had no free time, no holidays, and could not so much as post a letter without permission.  Nevertheless, they were likely to be better clothed and fed than would be the case at home.  Employers were not required to make provision for sick leave, holiday pay or long service leave. Female employees had to provide their own uniforms (often a joint family effort at the beginning of employment, that a girl spent years repaying).

All this makes it very difficult to estimate what an income "then" would be worth "now".

So much depended, too, on the goodwill of the estate holder.  Do you remember Dorothea's cottages in Middlemarch?  We are told, however, that Darcy is a good landlord, who takes his responsibilities seriously. Contrast that again with Mr Crawford, an absentee landlord who was not meeting his moral obligations.

But I digress. Another short quote from Dawes: "'If you are in a great family, and my lady's woman, my lord may probably like you, although you are not half so handsome as his own lady.'" Jonathan Swift wrote those words in his Directions to Servants in 1745, when sexual attitudes were a great deal more explicit than in the period covered by this book.  He goes on to advise the lady's maid to get as much out of her master as she possibly can - 'never allow him the smallest liberty, not the squeezing of your hand, unless he puts a guinea into it' - and he advises an ascending scale of payments up to a hundred guineas, or a settlement of £20 a year for life, for granting what eighteenth-century bucks called the 'last favour'." (Ch. 3, p.42).

Now, I'm no expert, but I think this is one area in which wages have gone down with time!
Julie

From the Meister: Yet another excellent posting!
Thank you. You have further increased my admiration
for Jonathan Swift's humor; I didn't think that possible.

Dear Sir,

One thing puzzles me about the whole Tom Lefroy thing, and that is Cassandra.  Jane Austen's letters are always a frustrating, tantalising read, because one knows that 'the scissors' have been ruthlessly applied.  Very well.  Why, then, did Cassandra allow the references to Tom Lefroy to remain in the extant letters?  I feel that this could only be for one of two reasons: either Jane Austen was not deeply involved with Tom, or she managed to conceal her real feelings from her sister. It is very difficult to reach a conclusion, because all extant letters are heavily edited, and we just don't know what has been left out.

My own feeling is that Jane Austen was attracted to Tom Lefroy, and liked him very much indeed, just as Elizabeth Bennett liked Wickham and Colonel Fitzwilliam - perhaps her feelings were deeper, but, if so, she must have kept them strictly to herself (which does seem uncharacteristic of the sisters' relationship), because there would be no way that Cassandra would have permitted the surviving references to exist, had she thought that they pertained to real, deep feelings of her sister's.

On this note, it is worth remarking that Jane Austen did meet another young man, of whom Cassandra subsequently said that she thought it likely that the two might marry. He is said to have died but no surviving letter of Jane Austen's mentions him at all.
Julie

Dear Seth,

The first thing to do, of course, is read the novel. The second thing to do is read it again. By that time, you should have acquired a feel of the work. THEN, you might benefit from some background.  Of this, there is a plethora for useful critiques, I would suggest the Introductions to the Penguin editions of Jane Austen's works. If you want a bigger picture, look to some of the better biographies, which are mentioned elsewhere on the Board.

I'm glad that you write well, and hope that you continue to do so, but don't dismiss the works of others. The world that Jane Austen inhabited is becoming remote to most of today's students, and they usually benefit from a 'translation', if you like, of Jane Austen's contemporary social scene.
Julie

Dear Ashton and Julie,

This business of converting Jane Austen pounds to their present day values is proving an elusive and possibly misguided exercise as we are coming to see that without a lot of information on labour costs, property values, "real" wages and the like, we are unlikely to get a true feel about what being worth £30,000 actually meant. I suppose it's enough that we understand the relative wealth of the individuals and families in the novels so that we can see the order of importance and consequence.

However, that doesn't stop the question from being an interesting one and I thought I may as well put an end to speculation and find out the facts. So, having spoken to the delightful lady at the Bank of England I can reveal the following. Records do not exist before 1800, but in 1810 the value of the £, based on index price indices, was----brace yourself----£27.10. Our estimates were a shade wide of the mark, even if yours were shadier than mine. There was some fluctuation in value over the 1800-1815 period, but not as much as we might have assumed. The 1807 value, for example, was £32.10, and by 1815 the pound had rallied to about its 1810 worth.

The nice lady did warn against the pitfalls of trying to compare like with like for the reasons already given. It's interesting to think that someday someone may alight on the fact that in 1998 English farmers were selling lambs to the supermarkets for 5p---8cents! --- each and deduce, quite wrongly of course, that the £ must have gone a long, long way.

I leave to you the fun of working out who had what in dollars. At least these figures make Lady Catherine's fireplace a little less of an extravagance, although at $40,000 or so, still quite a monument to her vanity.
Regards, Kate.

Dear Kate,

Thank you for such an intelligent and important effort. I have just been notified that you have been selected as the "most valuable Male Voice in the northern-hemisphere" for the month of October. Congratulations!

The problem boils down to determining the "value" of goods and services because it is only in that way that we can determine the current "value" of an income in a Jane Austen novel. The question of "value" is a problem that has bedeviled economists and societies. As you know, the argument over this question has cost literally millions of lives in yours and my lifetime. (Much as the argument over the true material of Christ's body cost so many lives in the first century.) You may be incredulous, but I believe that "value" is measured by the amount of labor invested in it. I know! I know! I have read Paul Samuelson and studied his explanation of why my inclination is misguided. I have read him, but I do not believe him. And, for the same reason, I certainly do not believe price indices. Price indices are used by labor to negotiate new contracts and are used by governments to illustrate how well they are governing. And, they are produced by governments. Price indices are political tools. The relevance of my outburst on the labor theory of value is this: The Dashwood women kept three servants, a small labor force. The nice lady at the Bank of England would have us believe that their annual income translates to about £12,500. Would an income of £12,500 allow a family of today to keep three servants? You tell me.

Here is a more important question: Have you been to Chawton? If not and if you have no plans to go, then I regret to inform that you must relinquish your recent Most-Valuable award--I am very sorry about that. Remember that if you do go, you will carry the rest of with you in a very important sense.

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