Will the real Jane Austen please stand up?
Was she a modest Christian lady or master of insults? You decide!
Ah… Jane Austen, inventor of the dead baby joke…
As I mentioned on instagram, I took a few liberties here, though the verbiage is taken closely from an actual letter between Jane Austen and her sister Cassandra in 1798. More than a decade before her first book was published, Jane Austen wrote this to Cassandra:
“Mrs. Hall, of Sherborne, was brought to bed yesterday of a dead child, some weeks before she expected, owing to a fright. I suppose she happened unawares to look at her husband.”
Yikes.
I think, though, if anything is historically inaccurate in this comic, it’s the reaction of Cassandra, who actually shared Austen’s zesty sense of humor. The two of them were known to take over the spare bedroom in the Austen home with a small gaggle of female friends and family members to laugh and talk and listen to Jane’s latest witty writings. In fact, the whole Austen family was said to have plenty of inside jokes between them, often written personally by Jane, at the expense of their neighbors.
It’s likely that Jane—and perhaps all the Austens—had their share of irreverent insults for whoever had the misfortune of behaving foolishly in their vicinity. I wish we had record of the more hilarious ones, but sadly, most of Austen’s letters were burned upon her death, as was the custom of the time.
Really, it wasn’t until after her death that Austen began to experience the type of household notoriety that she enjoys today. By then, Jane and Cassandra were long gone, and the only family left to write her memoirs was a saintly little nephew named James Edward Austen-Leigh. While he did preserve many biographical details about his famous aunt, he also… finessed her image a bit.
Instead of writing about Jane’s acerbic wit, he chose to describe her as a wholesome, virtuous, and unassuming member of the countryside aristocracy. This made Jane a bit more palatable to the easily shocked Victorians, and was perhaps just the thing that saved her from utter obscurity.
Although James Edward’s biography revitalized the public’s interest in Austen’s works, it was also responsible for a lot of the mythology surrounding her as a public figure. Basically, he put a bit of a softening spin on his aunt, and it paid off. People weren’t terribly interested in Jane Austen, inventor of the dead baby joke. But Jane Austen the modest, Christian lady in a country village? They ate that shit right up.
He wrote: “It has been said that the happiest individuals, like nations during their happiest periods, have no history. In the case of my aunt, it was not only that her course of life was unvaried, but that her own disposition was remarkably calm and even.”
But—compare this to the peppery insults that appear in her surviving letters, the tangy mockery of the aristocracy in her novels, and the private descriptions of her in her youth—descriptions which called her “whimsical and affected,” and, “an odd fish”—and you’ll see that the James Edward version of Jane is a lot flatter than who she probably was.
(If only they hadn’t burned all those letters.)
Of course, Jane Austen wasn’t just a witty writer. There were plenty of folks writing wit and satire far before Austen’s novels hit the shops. To me, what makes Austen truly a revolutionary writer was how she wrote about unimportant people—namely women and folks who lived on the fringes of the upper classes.
This is not to say that Austen’s works are “chick lit,” or written solely for and about women. She wrote about them in such a real and humanizing way, almost as a kind of slap in the face to authors whose subjects were more grand. From the very beginning, she positioned herself so cleverly: Oh, you’re writing about the untouchable, epic heroes of antiquity? What if I told you it’s just as interesting to read a story about three or four families in a country village? With DAUGHTERS instead of sons?
(And also there are better jokes).
So, the next time you hear someone call a book like Pride and Prejudice “chick lit,” or “just romance,” remember that they’re just falling for Victorian era propaganda (written by her goober of a nephew) about who Austen was.
You know her better. You know her as the genius she was (and as the inventor of the dead baby joke.)
I hope you enjoyed these little Austen tidbits. I did write an entire masters thesis on Austen, so I have to put all that latent knowledge to use! This is probably not the last time you’ll see Jane on the Haunted Librarian.
(I hope that’s ok.)
As always, thank you for being here.
Until next time,
🖤Becca Lee, the Haunted Librarian🖤
Such a great summary on what makes Austen so great! Her novels still appeal now even more than modern takes on Regency romance- which tend to be very pretty and incredibly dry/boring- because she observed what made normal people so funny and was so good at satirical comedy.
On a side note I also personally think 'romance' and 'chic lit' are also great, also something to be respected. I think we live in a culture so entrenched in misogyny that we automatically associate these genres that are aimed at being femme-centered as being 'lesser' than other genres, and we should question why we do that. Austen novels are clever and satirical, theyre also romantic and carry lots of 'chic lit' tropes- I personally think we should move away from framing that as a bad thing or something to be embarrassed about.