Jane Austen and the Art of Letter Writing
This Celebrated Author Was a Master of Meaningful Correspondence
Jun 30, 2009
In her letters, especially to her older sister Cassandra, her wit shines and her razor-sharp depictions of simple provincial life and values take on a life of their own. Readers of the letters get a sense of Jane Austen as a woman and also as a friend, able to commiserate with her economic state or the excitement of a lettuce being delivered or take delight in the moonlight shining on those leaving a ball.
The Writing Periods of Jane Austen’s Life
Jane Austen’s writing life can roughly be divided into three periods:
- Her young, contented years at Steventon when she wrote the first drafts of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility;
- The period of living in Bath, when her father died, and in Southhampton, when she wrote nothing, save for letters, but was apparently storing up ideas;
- And the final productive and happy years at Chawton where she saw the publication of four of her six finished novels, and where she finished manuscripts of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both of which were published posthumously in 1818.
Money
In a letter to Cassandra dated 24 August 1805, Jane Austen wrote: “I find, on looking into my affairs, that instead of being very rich I am likely to be very poor…as we are to meet in Canterbury I need not have mentioned this. It is as well, however, to prepare you for the sight of a sister sunk in poverty, that it may not overcome your spirits.”
Women in Jane Austen’s class were not expected to have to work, and so it was to Jane Austen’s advantage that she earned just more than six hundred and eighty pounds in her lifetime on her writing. She and Cassandra also depended on the generosity of their brothers and of other kind acquaintances for funds. For women in Jane Austen’s day, the only means of income was to work, to marry money, or to inherit funds.
- “People get so horridly poor and economical in this part of the world that I have no patience with them. Kent is the only place for happiness; everybody is rich there.” – Letter to Cassandra, 18-19 December 1798
- “We found only Mrs. Lance at home, and whether she boasts any offspring besides a grand pianoforte did not appear … They will not come often, I dare say. They live in a handsome style and are rich, and she seemed to like to be rich, and we gave her to understand that we were far from being so; she will soon feel therefore that we are not worth her acquaintance.” – Letter to Cassandra, 7-8 January 1807
Marriage
Jane Austen has been criticised, sometimes harshly, including by Ralph Waldo Emerson, for writing so much about marriage. But she recognised the plight of women and was writing the truth: women had but few choices in that day. They either had family money, married into money, or had to work for money to keep themselves in a respectable but threadbare state.
Jane Austen firmly believed that affection should be present in marriage, something that often did not happen.
Whilst recognising the seriousness of the need for marriage for many women, she also could laugh at the lengths women went to in order to be married.
- “Lady Sondes’ match surprises, but does not offend me; had her first marriage been of affection, or had there been a grown-up single daughter, I should not have forgiven her, but I consider everybody as having a right to marry once in their lives for love, if they can, and provided she will now leave off having bad headaches and being pathetic, I can allow her, I can wish her, to be happy. – Letter to Cassandra, 27-28 December 1808
- “Anything is to be preferred or endured rather than marrying without affection.” – Letter to relative Fanny Knight, 18 November 1814
- “Nothing can be compared to the misery of being bound without love, bound to one, and preferring another.” – Letter to Fanny Knight, 30 November 1814
Meetings
Formal visits, parties, and balls were important events in Jane Austen’s day – there was no television, email, telephone or other means of communicating. People got together to visit, show off their finery (sometimes an interest, other times an annoyance to Jane Austen), and basically shop for husbands and wives.
- “There were very few beauties, and such as there were not very handsome … Mrs. Blount was the only one much admired. She appeared exactly as she did in September, with the same broad face, diamond bandeau, white shoes, pink husband, and fat neck. – Letter to Cassandra, 20-21 November 1800
- “There were only twelve dances, of which I danced nine, and was merely prevented from dancing the rest by want of a partner …” – Letter to Cassandra, 20-21 November 1800
- “Another stupid party last night; perhaps if larger they might be less intolerable…” – Letter to Cassandra, 12-13 May 1801
Writing an enjoyable, evocative letter is indeed a labour of love. Jane Austen wrote to Cassandra: “I have now attained the true art of letter-writing, which we are always told, is to express on paper exactly what one would say to the same person by word of mouth; I have been talking to you almost as fast as I could the whole of this letter.”
Whilst Jane Austen possessed an extraordinary genius for making everyday life seem glamorous and exciting, whether in novels or in letters, that need not put off modern would-be letter writers.
Just pick up a pen and paper and see what happens. The result might be a pleasant surprise, and will surely please the recipient.
Sources:
- My Dear Cassandra: The Illustrated Letters, by Jane Austen, selected and introduced by Penelope Hughes-Hallett, Collins & Brown Limited, 1990.
- The Wicked Wit of Jane Austen, compiled by Dominique Enright, Michael O'Mara Books Limited, 2002, 2007.
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