Jane Austen For Dummies (41 page)

With manufacturing beginning to move from home or cottage industry to early factories, businessmen who owned the new factories or merchants in trade became wealthy. Labor was cheap. Cotton, coming from the New World as the result of slave labor, combined with the development of new machinery and the discovery of steam to run engines, meant that the spinning wheel in the house was replaced by machine spinning and mass fabric production. Factories sprung up sporadically, especially in the north. And their owners got rich, as did the merchants in trade! But what about the factory workers and the men who loaded and unloaded trading ships and moved products around the warehouse? They would appear two to three decades after Austen's death in novels by Charles Dickens
(Hard Times),
Elizabeth Gaskell
(Mary Barton),
Charles Kingsley
(Alton Locke),
and other social reform writers as the wretched working class!

The rise of the new businessman is illustrated by the Bingley family in
Pride and Prejudice.
Austen writes that the Bingleys “were of a respectable family in the north of England,” and that the family's “fortune . . . had been acquired by trade,” suggesting that the Senior Bingley had grown rich in textile manufacturing (PP 1:4). Because of his wealth, he could provide his daughters with “a fortune of 20,000 pounds” and his son with 100,000 pounds. In addition to the money, he gave his daughters an elite female education in London — enabling them to lose their northern accents and replace them with the fashionable accent of southern England — and possibly sent his son to the university, though Austen does not mention that outright. As a result, his three children — Charles Bingley and his two sisters — are able to associate “with people of rank,” and Charles is the wealthy and genteel friend of Darcy, a member of the gentry.

After a gentleman earned enough money, he could purchase property. Everyone in Austen's day knew that owning land (hundreds of acres, and usually more like 1,000+) is what made you part of the gentry. The Senior Bingley “had intended to purchase an estate, but did not live to do it” (PP 1:4). Buying an estate would've raised the Bingleys into the gentry. Now Charles intends to buy a country estate, but his easy temperament suggests that he may continue to rent a country house like Netherfield Park and “leave the next generation to purchase” (PP 1:4). His social-climbing sisters, however, were anxious for their brother to have an estate of his own because they wanted to solidify their position as part of the gentry population.

Without the estate, the rich Bingley sisters can act like gentry and associate with gentry, but they only become gentry by owning extensive property, or having a brother who owns property and in whose country house they can now hang out and become gentry by osmosis. Being a member of the gentry, they are of the right class to marry Darcy.

A man could be considered a gentleman even if he didn't own property, assuming he had an acceptable profession and behaved well. The meaning of the word “gentleman” was slowly changing to mean what we, today, think when we use the word “gentleman”: a well-educated, courteous, man.

Nowhere in Austen's fiction is this new concept of the gentleman more fully represented than in
Persuasion
through the characters of Admiral Croft and Captain Wentworth. In the novel, the phrase “gentlemen of the navy” is used (P 1:3). Keep in mind that neither Croft nor Wentworth is the younger son of the gentry who sought an acceptable career as a naval officer. Both earned their rank and wealth by capturing enemy vessels. Sir Walter Elliot — one of Austen's great voices of snobbery — scorns the navy for “‘being the means of bringing persons of obscure birth into undue distinction, and raising men to honours which their fathers and grandfathers never dreamt of'” (P 1:3). Likewise, Sir Walter says he was misled by hearing a clergyman called a “gentleman”: as a Baronet, he is too snobby to accept clergymen as gentlemen, though society did, and says, “‘You misled me by the term
gentleman
. I thought you were speaking of some man of property'” (P 1:3). Times were changing and so the status of a gentleman could now be earned as well as inherited.

While Austen's parents were at the lower end of the gentry, she knew about country house life intimately because she had close friends and a brother, Edward, who lived at the higher, richer end of the gentry. Jane Austen was a good friend of Catherine and Alethea Bigg, whose father owned the beautiful Manydown Park, a country house and surrounding estate (pictured in Figure 11-1).

Figure 11-1: Manydown Park was the home of the wealthy Bigg Wither family. Jane Austen spent many a day here as an overnight guest. Unfortunately, the house is no longer standing.

Photo by Isabel Snowden, courtesy of the Jane Austen Memorial Trust

Discovering how life in a country house played out in Austen's time can give you some insight to the behavior (some of which may seem odd to you) of her characters.

Getting an idea of the lay of the land

Country house estates were worlds of their own, with the owner and master at the top. Austen's readers get a good sense of what a country house and the estate on which it sat were like by mentally visiting Pemberley, the grand estate of
Pride and Prejudice
's hero, Fitzwilliam Darcy, as Elizabeth and the Gardiners approach it (3:1):

Woods:
As Elizabeth Bennet and her Aunt and Uncle Gardiner drive up to Pemberley, they first approach Pemberley Woods, “stretching over a wide extent” (PP 3:1).

Lodge:
After passing by the woods, they see the lodge — a smaller house built at a distance from the main house that was customarily used for shooting (hunting) parties who hunted deer, rabbits, and various birds in the estate's park. Some estate owners rented their lodges to tenants. In
Persuasion,
Lady Russell lives at Kellynch Lodge on the estate owned by an old family friend, Sir Walter Elliot, who resides at Kellynch Hall (P 1:2).

Stream:
As the Gardiners' coach continues, they see that Pemberley also has a well-stocked stream on the property, where Darcy later invites Mr. Gardiner to fish.

Country house:
About “half a mile” into the Pemberley property, the occupants observe where “the wood ceased, and they were instantly caught by Pemberley House. . . . It is a “large, handsome, stone building, standing well on high ground” (PP 3:1).

Although Pemberley is Austen's grandest and most famous fictional country house, she includes others in her fiction:

Norland Park:
The home of the Dashwood sisters until they're displaced by their half-brother and his family in
Sense and Sensibility

Sotherton:
A country house that dates back to the Elizabethan period (16th century) owned by the Rushworth family in
Mansfield Park

Northanger Abbey:
The Tilneys' house, not as large as Pemberley but also a country house

While Mansfield Park is also a country house, it doesn't have the history of grand old Pemberley, Sotherton, the Abbey, or Norland. Mansfield Park and other newer country houses are discussed later in this chapter under “Picking up Austen's hints about a modern-built house.” For Austen, a modern-built house frequently carried a certain significance. While she certainly was not adverse to people making their way up to the rank of gentry by earning the money to buy an estate, she scorned those who let their new riches go to their heads and forgot where they came from, especially when such folks turned into snobs. Think: Mrs. Elton and her in-laws, the Sucklings, in
Emma.

Getting a glimpse of the inside of a country house

When Elizabeth and her companions visit Pemberley, they ask to see the interior of the house (PP 3:1). This inquiry may seem odd to you because Pemberley is a private home, but in Austen's day when owners weren't home, they often set aside a few rooms for public display.

Nowadays, many great English country houses charge admission for tourists, and many houses have been turned over to the National Trust because the owners can't afford the high taxes owed on the mansion and surrounding estate.

As Elizabeth and her companions proceed from the entrance hall of Pemberley to the interior, readers get a good idea of how vast country houses could be:

The dining room:
This space is where the family and their guests ate dinner. In
Sense and Sensibility,
much chatter goes on in the Middletons' dining room (1:20), and when Bingley chooses to sit next to Jane in the Bennets' dining room, Elizabeth is pleased (PP 3:12). In each case, there is no squeeze at the dining-room table, and no one is sitting on kitchen chairs dragged into the dining room at the last minute! The Bennets can sit eight with ease in the scene mentioned, and undoubtedly can sit more easily — and they live in a smaller country house than Sotherton, Pemberley, or Mansfield Park.

The breakfast room or breakfast parlor:
Large homes, like Pemberley, likely had separate breakfast rooms just as Mansfield Park and Netherfield Park had (MP 2:11, PP 1:9).

The drawing room:
The drawing room was the usual location for after-dinner gathering. This large room hosted after-dinner music and informal dancing. (For more on dancing, see Chapter 5.)

The picture gallery:
The space is hung with portraits of family members, past and present.

The sitting room or study:
A sitting room was used for morning activities (reading, letter writing, cards, painting, drawing, or sewing). Sometimes the husband had the study, while the wife used the sitting room.

The library:
The library was open to all, though at Longbourn, a more modest country house, the library is Mr. Bennet's personal retreat. Pemberley's library boasts a book collection that is the result of generations of the Darcy family's reading.

The billiard room:
Jane's brother, Edward, had a billiard room installed at Godmersham, which proved popular with his gentlemen visitors. Austen gives Mansfield Park a billiard room, too (MP 1:13).

The music room:
Some country house owners used an additional drawing room as a music room. Darcy has just purchased a “‘new instrument'” for his sister Georgiana, who plays the pianoforte, the predecessor of the modern piano (PP 3:1). He has had it placed in a separate room, likely the music room, at Pemberley. In fact, every country house was likely to have a pianoforte and a daughter or mother in residence who could play it. In
Emma,
we see the desirability of having a pianoforte: The newly-rich Coles have a fine house in the village, and they have a new pianoforte — though none of the Coles know how to play (E 2:8)! The harp was also becoming a fashionable instrument for young ladies: Louisa Musgrove has a harp in
Persuasion.
And the stylish Mary Crawford from London plays the harp in
Mansfield Park.

The saloon or salon:
This room at some houses doubled as a picture gallery. But Pemberley is so large that it has both a gallery and a saloon.

The conservatory:
Let's detour from Pemberley for a moment. While we don't read of a conservatory at Pemberley, it likely had one as many country houses did. Manydown, home of Austen's good friends, the Bigg (Wither) sisters, had a conservatory with tall, large glass windows. (See Figure 11-1, where Manydown's conservatory is visible.) The conservatory served as a greenhouse without the dampness of a horticultural greenhouse: This sunny room was a place to grow indoor plants at a time when there was no central heating.

The bedrooms:
The many bedrooms of a country home were located upstairs.