 Hello everyone and thank you very much for coming and for those of you who've already been here this morning Thank you very much for coming back My name's Dr. Sandy Byrne, and I'm a university lecturer in English Okay, in that case can we have the mic on please. Oh that case I shall speak up It's probably all that banging from the building that's going on. Let's make it difficult to hear I Will indeed Do you want to come forward to the front There is indeed So I'm the university lecturer in English and director of studies in English and creative writing at the department and this afternoon I'm going to try to give you some good reasons for reading Jane Austen. I gave the title of the lecture as Jane Austen not being all about bonnets and balls And that's not to say there's anything wrong with being interested in the dress or the dance of the period But I'm hoping to say that there are some other good reasons for reading Jane Austen as well So a clue this is not the reason for reading Jane Austen Though he may be and I'm devastated to tell you that there is no wet shirt scene in Jane Austen's novels But we can do very well without it Not everybody liked Jane Austen as you can see Mark Twain was not a Janeite Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dick her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin bone. Then he's just jealous These are the novels that I'm talking about the six major novels Sense and sensibility Pride and Prejudice Mansfield Park Emma Persuasion and Northanger Abbey The unfinished novel the Watsons Unfinished novel Sanditon and the early novel Lady Susan which wasn't published in Austen's lifetime Let's talk a bit about the themes of Jane Austen's novels and again. I'm very sorry to say no zombies But what we do get is of course love and romance But all bound up with money and property and that doesn't mean that the girls are gold diggers But it does mean that they are very concerned with the important theme of security the individual and society the relationship between personal desire and Civic and other kinds of duty and responsibility very important in Jane Austen Morality broadly she doesn't preach Austen's novels don't hit you on the head with morality, but they do offer moral lessons Seeming and being a very important theme in Austen one of the great crimes in Austen is being hypocritical Pretending to be something you're not and Austen is very good at showing up hypocrites, but no zombies. Sorry So property This is the kind of property that Jane Austen is allegedly talking about some people say but Chatsworth house was the model for Pemberley in fact most of the houses are a bit further down the social scale than Chatsworth, but I Wouldn't say no Look at the famous opening of pride and prejudice It is a truth Conversely acknowledged that a young man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife However, little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighborhood Truth this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families But he is considered the rightful property of someone or other of their daughters Now look at the word choice is here Possession of a good fortune not just any old fortune a good fortune It reminds me of that Marilyn Monroe film where she says she wants to marry a rich millionaire and not any old millionaire Good fortune And yet he is the rightful property the man who is in possession of a good fortune is Going to become the possession the rightful property of one or other of the local Daughters one of the great things about Jane Austen's work is you can predict some of the themes from the very first Opening pages and this is telling you yeah pride and prejudice is going to be about pride and about prejudice And it's going to be about love and it's going to be about romance But it's also going to be about property about who owns what Who wants what? Who has the right to what? And the whole concept of value And when we think of the fate of women in those days who did not marry property We can begin to understand why this is so very important What would happen to you if you were well educated? Not an intelligent But brought up as a middle-class young lady with very few marketable skills and you don't marry What are your options? Well, they're not huge look at the sums in this This is the opening of Mansfield Park About 30 years ago Miss Mariah Ward of Huntington with only seven thousand pounds That's her fixed Had the good luck to captivate Which is not too far off capture So Thomas Bertram of Mansfield Park in the County of Northampton and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronettes lady 7,000 pounds plus a bit of beauty and good reputation Doesn't quite equal a baronettes lady doesn't quite equal a baronette. We've got an unequal sum there So luck came into that equation with all the comforts and consequences of Enhance some house and large income all Huntington exclaimed on the greatness of the match and her uncle the lawyer himself Allowed her to be at least three thousand pounds short of any equitable claim to it So a baronette with a nice house and a good income equals a woman of beauty and Reputation and ten thousand pounds. We've got here a marital sum a marital equation All about property and what's your worth and this whole question of worth versus value Comes into the novels a lot not for nothing is Fanny Price called Fanny Price Seeming of being let's look at the beginning of Emma Emma woodhouse Handsome clever and rich with a comfortable home and happy disposition Seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence and had lived nearly 21 years in the world with very little To distress or vex her The real evils indeed of Emma's situation with the power of having rather too much her own way and a Disposition to think a little too well of herself These were the disadvantage which threatened alloy to her many enjoyments the danger However was at present so unperceived they did not by any means rank as misfortune with her Now here Austin giveth and Austin take it away The narrative voice tells us things and then it modifies them It says well it seemed like this, but it was actually like that. There's a lot of this But there was a little of that there was a little of this and a lot of that so Poor Emma loses her mother But she gets miss Taylor Well miss Taylor is almost like a mother, but she's not quite a mother And this sets up an important theme of Emma what things seem like and what they really are because Emma is in part a kind of detective story Whom will Emma marry? Which of her suitors is really a kind of symbolic brother and which one is going to be the suitor? What's going on with Frank Churchill? What's going on with Jane Fairfax and Emma who thinks herself the kind of seer Kind of great predictor and manipulator puppet mistress if you like and matchmaker He's actually blind to most of that and gets the answers wrong And of course we have the wonderful mrs. Elton who tries to seem Much higher in the social ranking than she really is I'm going to go through this at a gallop. You realize there is much much more to Austin than this But I hope this will give you a taster Style is what we read Austin for and I think the narrative voice is the thing that we most miss in the adaptations because that deadly lightness of touch that wonderful irony that the narrative voice can use is What is most likely to be lost in a filmed all-staged? Adaptation because the director has the choice will there be a voice over which might seem a bit clunky Will he or she put the words into the mouth of a character? Well, the problem there is as with the BBC adaptation you get characters saying things they never would say even if they thought them The narrative voice is very flexible and it uses a number of different techniques the mock formal the ironic the comedic produces wonderfully Lifelike dialogue where the kinds of words used and the kind of style used Tells us about the personalities of the characters just as much as what they say tells us about their personalities Austin makes great use of free indirect discourse a technique that we usually associate with modernism But which Austin used much earlier than that and it's sometimes meta-textual It refers to its own textuality its own fictionality It has a bit of a laugh at us for getting so involved in the story so much Empathising with the characters and behaving as though this were really happening that it draws us out and has a little laugh at us the narrative voice that's the story teller Has an omniscient perspective that means they can see anything that's going on. They know it all They could go into the mind of mr. Elton and mrs. Elton and Harriet Smith on the whole those narrative voices don't They're usually limited to one focalizer one character through whose eyes we see and that is usually the heroine They're very occasionally we get someone else's perspective And that has great possibilities that combination means we the readers See the inner Motivations of the heroines we feel with them. We can be close to them But the fact that it's not a first-person narration. It's not the heroine tells telling us the story Means that there's enough distance For the narrative voice to be ironic to be judgmental to look from the outside So it's the best of both worlds and that narrative voice isn't Indifferent isn't Dispassionate it's opinionated and I think that's one of the greatnesses of Austin It's even judgmental Even of lovely sweet charming and Elliot sometimes the narrative voice just a little dig at her expense So here is the narrative voice being parodic this is from North Hanger Abbey Her mother was a woman of useful plain sense with a good temper and what is more remarkable with a good constitution She had three sons before Catherine was born Instead of dying and bringing the latter into the world as anybody might expect she still lived on Live to have six children more to see them growing up around her and to enjoy excellent health herself This is parodying the sentimental novel of the 18th century Where the heroine must be orphaned or at least bereft of her mother at an early stage that she can be launched into the world and Have adventures and be vulnerable and have some kind of terrible sadness in her background This is the narrative voice being satirical This is all about the odious Walter Elliot Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot's character vanity of person and of situation He had been remarkably handsome in his youth and at 54 was still a very fine man Few women could think more of their personal appearance than he did Nor could the valet of any new made Lord be more delighted with the place he held in society He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to the blessing of a baronet scene and the Sir Walter Elliot Who united these gifts was the constant object of his warless respect and devotion a lot of satire in Persuasion at the beginning is devoted to Sir Walter and in fact when we read the novel we might start to think goodness Is this all about Sir Walter and it's very clever that the heroine doesn't even arrive and tell you or some pages in And arrives with the words she was only and which tells you a lot about her position in the family And of course gets you on her side I'm a mock formality this fabulous memorable sentence Beautifully balanced beautifully symmetrical might come from dr. Johnson and It falls us into thinking that it's making some kind of Pronouncements something didactic. I'm telling you like it is or some kind of nomic wisdom something like 30 days have September Whereas in fact, it's a bit of a joke it's Reversing the Petrarchan trope the idea that woman is the hunted the deer that flees before The hunter who's chasing her and showing itself against the the the leaves will be eventually shot by saying actually Women here are the predators and men are the prey and it is mock formal This is a definition of irony a subtly humorous perception of Inconsistency in which an apparently straightforward statement or event is undermined by its context so as to give it a very different significance and Here is an example Happy for all her maternal feelings was the day on which mrs. Bennett got rid of her two most deserving daughters love that and So Walter prepared with condescending bowels for all the afflicted tenetry and cottagers who might have a hint to show themselves so this is the the Vane and arrogant Sir Walter Elliot having to leave Kellynch having to leave his estate because he's so feckless and such a spendthrift that he's got to let it He's been a very bad landlord and yet so blind as he's so lacking in self-knowledge But he thinks all his tenants are going to be lining the route as he leaves weeping And he's ready to with his condescending bowels So it's a beautiful bit of irony that shows him up for what he is And it's not only the narrative voice that produces irony, but the characters also where appropriate can be ironic This is mr. Bennett talking about Mr. Collins No, sorry talking about Wickham He is a finer fellow said mr. Bennett as soon as they were out of the house as ever I saw he simpers and smirks and makes love to us all I am prodigiously proud of him. I defy even Sir William Lucas himself to produce a more valuable son-in-law Always rely on mr. Bennett for a bonnet This is the definition of comedy a play or other literary composition Written chiefly to amuse its audience by appealing to a sense of superiority over the characters depicted Comedy will normally be closer to the representation of every life than a tragedy And we'll explore common human failings rather than the tragedies disastrous crimes. Oh, she's very good at revealing common human failings I'm dread to have met her just think what she'd say afterwards One of the sources of comedy is comic monsters in Jane Austen but sometimes They walk a very thin line between the comic and the monstrous I sometimes think that mrs. Norris for example is just too appalling to be funny a General Tilney is a comic monster. He's overbearing. He's tyrannous. He thinks he's cunning, but he's transparent Lady Catherine de Burg she's bullying. She's proud and pompous Invited to laugh at her and feel superior to her mr. Collins. He's pompous. He's silly. He's self-important Mrs. Norris. She's encroaching. She's toadieing to her superiors But unkind to her inferiorism. We are very much invited to dislike that her hypocrisy Mrs. Elton social climbing self-important. So Walter Elliot vane snobbish Doesn't care a jot about his most deserving daughter and these are comic characters who are not monstrous And there are many of them as you see so John Middleton of you call it scarred from sense and sensibility Mrs. Jennings a lovely burlesque Lower-life character. She's what we would might call an Ari Vist. She's she's wealthy new govish And she's straight out of an 18th century comedy as is Lydia Bennett the thoughtless romp of pride and prejudice Who has quite a lot in common with the 18th century character Lydia languish mrs. Musgrove? Silly character, but well-intentioned a lovely phrase in association with her She's talking to mrs. Croft about being well-travelled and of course mrs. Croft Wife of the Admiral has been all over the world mrs. Croft has pretty well mom in the 15 years of my marriage I have crossed the Atlantic four times and have been more than once to the East Indies and back again But I never went beyond the Straits and never was in the West Indies We did not call Bermuda or Bahama, you know the West Indies Mrs. Musgrove had not a word to say in dissent She could not accuse herself of having ever called them anything in the whole course of her life And mr. Bennett of course dryly witty in pride and prejudice although I do think that although many readers like mr. Bennett They enjoy his wit He is on the cusp of being a comic monster Because he fails in responsibility He fails in the responsibilities of a father and Austin is very good at this on shades of gray That's only to do with 50 shades of gray Hey, isn't you out on making characters believable because they're not wholly good or wholly bad I said that one of the great things about Austin's dialogue is that you can often Tell what a character is like not just from what they say, but how they say it on their choice of Words the lengths of the sentences they make whether they've got lots of exclamation marks whether they use slang All sorts of things like that. So for example, this is characteristic. Mr. Bennett. You mistake me my dear I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends I have heard you mention them with consideration these 20 years at least he tends to use the style which is fairly formal and Fairly ponderous, but actually has a bit of a bite underneath it And Lydia uses lots of exclamation marks often lots of short sentences and phrases and expressions such as la No, you are so strange But I must tell you how it went off and that was my aunt all the time I was dressing preaching and talking away just as if she was reading a sermon However, I did not hear above one word in 10 where I was thinking you may suppose of my dad and so on Mr. Collins long sentences Ponderous Doesn't use one word when 10 will do she is unfortunately of a sickly Constitution which has prevented her from making that progress in many Accomplishments, which she could not have otherwise failed off as I am informed by the lady who superintended her education And who still resides with them, but she's perfectly amiable and often condescends That's a word he uses a lot to drive by my humble That's another Mr. Collins word abode in her little Phaeton and ponies. He can't say house. He has to say humble abode so Thomas Bertram similarly speaks in long very Formal sentences if you count a number of words in that sentence You'll see there's a lot of them and he tends to use inverted sentences lots of double negatives All sorts of more complicated words like sanguine and provision He's old-fashioned. He's ponderous He's formal and if you contrast that with his son young Tom, you'll see the difference I see what you're at. You're quizzing me and miss Anderson I sat there an hour one morning waiting for Anderson with only her and a little girl or two in the room Yeah, girl or two who knows the government's being sick or run away And the mother in and out every moment with letters of business and I could hardly get a word or look from the young lady Nothing like a civil answer. She screwed up her mouth and turned from me with such an air so different from his father Notice the slang word quizzing, which you would never get from his father And then of course John Thorpe who swears Now that is definitely a no-no in Austin. It's represented of course with a dash But we know what he's saying and that really places him for Austin as does His recommending to a young lady a very shocking novel the monk So Not only what he says, but how he says it and he's showing off and this again is a crime in Austin He's boasting of his possessions He's boasting of how much he's spent on them He boasts about how quickly his horse can get from a to be completely forced to as we discover And he tells anecdotes designed to show him in a good light All these are wrecking up points against him Curricle hung you see seat trunk sword case splashing board The equivalent would be somebody saying you want to see my Ferrari. Look at these bucket seats lovely burnt orange color Is it costly you know and here he's talking about books and he despises novel. So he's completely down Catherine says I think you must like Udolfo if you want to read it. It is so very interesting not I faith No, if I read any it should be mrs. Radcliffe's her novels are amusing enough They are worth reading some fun and nature in them Udolfo was written by mrs. Radcliffe said Catherine with some hesitation from the fear of mortifying him No, sure was it? I remember so it was I was thinking of that other stupid book written by that woman They make such a fuss about she who married the French immigrant. I suppose you mean Camilla Yes, that's the book such unnatural stuff an old man playing at seesaw I took up the first volume once and looked it over but I soon found it would not do Indeed, I guessed what sort of stuff it must be before I saw it as soon as I heard she'd married an immigrant I was sure I should never be able to get through it So he's prejudiced. He makes gut assumptions He doesn't know what he's read and he's unable to value novels So he's definitely damned reading direct discourse sometimes free indirect style Is where the narrative remains in the third person. So he said or she said But that takes on the characteristics of the person who is speaking or thinking And what this does is to get the reader closer to the character If I were to say to you John said that it was time to go. There's very clearly someone between you and John. I'm telling you What John said or if I said It was time to go said John I'm marking that I'm telling you what John said, but free indirect discourse gets you just that little bit closer It's not the same as stream of consciousness where there's a representation of characters thought Using the first person using I It's getting that way Her astonishment as she reflected on what had passed was increased by every review of it That she should receive an offer of marriage from mr. Darcy Now look at the difference between those two sentences Her astonishment as she reflected someone someone's telling you that but then seamlessly That she should receive an offer of marriage from mr. Darcy There's no storyteller there But it isn't that I should receive an offer It's that she so it's keeping this third person pronoun But if facing The narrator the storyteller and austin does this a lot and she moves seamlessly in and out of this Look at this And which must appear at least with equal force in his own case was almost incredible It's elizabeth emphasizing something to herself And the famous episode In which they're all strawberry picking at donwell abbey Is another fabulous example of this because what we get here Is not mrs. Elton said this and mrs. Elton said that but a kind of condensed version of mrs. Elton's continual stream of comments Broken up as you might hear it Loating across the hot air of the summer's day at donwell abbey And as you're desperately trying to screen it out and have your own conversation or thoughts And just as mrs. Elton's conversation Skips from one thing to another and contradicts itself in doing so starting off by saying that strawberries Are absolutely the best fruit and this kind the finest in all england and ending up saying that Currents are much more refreshing So this skips about oh, I won't read it because it would take too long, but I do recommend you have a look at this for the technique austin is sometimes criticized For not showing things outside a fairly narrow world Some critics have said well look there was a war going on there were earth shaking events going on Europe was being broken up and put together again Why does she concentrate just on which bonnet someone's wearing whether they can get their shoe roses by proxy and falling in love To that I would first say why not she manages very nicely to make interesting internal earthquakes Secondly, I would say that although the settings may be mostly domestic Although this mostly is from a woman's perspective Outside events do impinge So for a start Don't believe people when they tell you that there is never a scene in austin where no woman is present because it's not true There is a scene in mansfield park between Sir thomas burtrum and young tom when sir thomas is taking young tom to task for his debts In emma we sometimes see mr. Knightley's perspective and we sometimes see his emotions particularly through involuntary body language particularly when he's feeling A bit off when he's losing his usual energy and forcefulness Because he's jealous of frank Churchill and in doubt of emma. So we don't always get just a woman's perspective And this is one of the points this is a bit unfair to tony tanner because he does go on to say other things But just taking this quotation for a minute during a decade in which napoleon was effectively engaging if not transforming europe Jane austin composed a novel in which the most important events are the fact that a young man changes his manners And a young lady changes her mind Yes, those are the most important events, but the outside world is impinging We see the militia on the move. Why are the militia on the move? Because there are fears of an invasion Why are women in competition with each other? Because there's a war on And many young eligible men have been killed and there aren't enough to go around And many eligible young men are off fighting And people are hard up Times are hard In persuasion in mansfield park the navy Is terribly important austin's narrative voice and her characters praise the navy They talk about how naval men are risking their lives for their country People are going away and they are coming back damaged as we see in persuasion or they're not coming back at all Future marriages are ruined because people don't live long enough for their beloved to come back as in persuasion Look at the ending of persuasion He's talking about ann elliott She might have been absolutely rich and perfectly healthy and yet to be happy Her spring of felicity was in the glow of her spirits as her friend Sorry, this is mrs smith first of all as her friend ann's was in the warmth of her heart ann was tenderness itself and she had the full worth of it and captain went worth's affection His profession was all that could ever make her friends wish that tenderness less The dread of a future war all that could dim her sunshine She gloried in being a sailor's wife But she must pay the tax of quick alarm for belonging to that profession Which is if possible more distinguished in its domestic virtues than in its national importance Very interesting phrasing here She must pay the tax of quick alarm People who have property men Have to pay a war tax in coin But austin's narrative voice is here saying women pay a tax too Women pay the tax of anxiety of concern for their brothers Their fathers their husbands their sweethearts Who might come back without a leg or without an arm or not at all And notice the phrasing here For belonging to that profession not just for being a sailor's wife She's in the navy austin is saying Ann went worth He's a naval woman. She belongs to that profession It's subtly done, but I think beautifully done It's pointing out As austin's endings so often do Yeah, I've given you a happy ending Boy got girl But it's not all roses. It's not all sunshine I mentioned better textuality and text which draws attention to its own textuality and meta fiction Draws attention to the devices of fiction Sometimes austin's narrative voice breaks frame. It reminds us That we're reading and holding a book which doesn't work awfully well when you're reading it online or on a kindle sadly And then she hadn't heard of kindle Famously at the end of north hangar abbey The anxiety which in this state of their attachment must be the portion of henry and kathryn and of all who loved either As a final event can hardly extend i fear to the bosom of my readers Who will see in the telltale compression of the pages before them that we are all hastening together to perfect felicity Tell them to laugh at us. You knew there was going to be a happy ending You knew that they were going to get married and because there aren't many pages left it's obviously coming To begin perfect happiness at the respective ages of 26 and 18 is to do pretty well And professing myself it is this Something reference to this person who's arrived in front of us Moreover convinced that the general's unjust interference so far from being really injurious to their felicity Was perhaps rather conducive to it by improving their knowledge of each other and adding strength to their attachment I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny or reward filial disobedience a lovely joke at the expense of the kind of generic happy ending and the conventions of the novel And a lovely pre-empting of the kind of criticism she might have got at the time Where the novel was expected to give a good moral lesson She's saying oh, I don't do that Maybe i'm recommending parental tyranny as a way of getting people together Earlier in north hangar abbey. She's already had a bit of a joke at the expense of the kind of novel convention at the time Which was that the girl does not admit her love until the man has you don't fall in love Because nice girls don't until he's fallen in love with you and made his intentions clear Austin's narrative voice is having none of that. She says you look that's the ideal That's what we're all supposed to do. Let's let's face it girls in real life. We don't do that. She says that that kathryn Fancyed henry She fell in love with him and he fell in love with her Partly because he knew of her partiality for him. It was partly gratitude And that's what happens in real life In mansfield park She had enough of this pretense. Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can Impatient to restore everybody not greatly in fault themselves to tolerable comfort and to have done with all the rest Austin's endings Are intelligent endings for intelligent readers The novels might seem to be romances. They might seem to focus primarily on getting married On the right person getting the right spouse But they emphasize at the end Nothing is perfect and nothing is that neat And that's why you don't get the hollywood big scene The hollywood adaptations tend to end on the proposal The big kiss the big clinch or the wedding scene Austin's novels go past it quickly Or they go sideways so that Emma ends Not with Emma's marriage But with a second hand account of that marriage Through mr. Elton by mrs. Elton And not only do we not see the marriage and not only is that wedding described by someone who wasn't there But they also disparage it in terms of very little lace Very little white satin selena will be quite shocked when she heard Mansfield park gallops Past we don't even get the proposal scene. We're just told her well when the time was right, you know They'd been sitting around under trees all summer so You know edmund decided that these kind of mild eyes would do as well as sparkling dark ones. I think i'll know Because that isn't entirely what austin is about Underlying the romance is the desperate fear of insecurity of what happened to women If they didn't get the house because remember this is long before the married woman's property acts And long before there were many respectable and possible professions for women So you were kind of damned if you did and damned if you didn't if you got married You didn't own anything unless you had a good lawyer So that your marriage settlements gave you a decent jointer If you didn't get married and you didn't have money left you in your own right You were in trouble as well So it's not surprising that the girls want a good fortune and a good husband who will look after them Not only during the lifetime of the marriage, but during their anticipated widowhood And austin as you know had reason to understand Insecurity she had reason to understand what it was like To lose a long loved home And reason to know what it was like to be poor so the girls aren't gold diggers They are sensible they have both sense and sensibility Now over to you for questions you've got some questions because i've left four and a half minutes If you want to learn more about jane austin Please do take one of our brochures Or go on to the www.conted.ox.uk website where you can read about day schools weekly classes summer schools foundation certificate Masters all sorts of different ways Different flexible ways of learning and studying Jane austin among a myriad of other things, and please do feel free to email me. I'm samdi.byrneatcontedox.uk And i'm always happy to talk behind legs of a donkey about jane austin Any questions Yes Emma's release, was there a lot of public criticism as well? Austin got a very good rave review from Sir Walter Scott About partly about Emma in which this most famous and wealthy novelist of the day Said that she could do some things better than he could So that was sadly she she didn't live to see him writing about her in his journal when he was talking about how sad it was That such a talented young woman had died and how wonderful she was. I'm sure she would have loved that Okay, well, thank you very much for your attention