This blog explores social attitudes in Jane Austen's time, discusses her novels, reviews forgotten 18th century novels, and throws some occasional shade at the modern academy. The introductory post is here. My "six simple questions for academics" post is here. “[D]o not impose on yourself false hopes, which may never be realized. You well know I allude to your genius for writing… let the chief part of the day be dedicated to the humble, but truly respectable employments of the needle.” --well-meant advice in What Has Been which was probably given to the actual authoress. |
“Emily! Emily!” replied the almost exhausted Matilda, “forbear to embitter the last hours of my existence by useless regrets, or vain ebullitions of passion. Alas! My sister, let not your affection for me prompt you to execrate the unhappy Herbert, for unhappy he must be, since he has… forgotten the solemn vows he once made me, and in the hour of pain and misery, left me to reflect on his broken faith. But mine, Emily, is a death of triumph, for I die innocent.”
Raised in genteel circumstances, Emily is left alone and practically destitute.
But once I learned the real-life circumstances of Eliza Kirkham Mathews, I harbored a soft spot for her. She actually lived through the harrowing family loss and fall from gentility to poverty that she depicts in What Has Been. After losing her father, mother, and brother, she watched her sister Mary sink into a consumptive's grave, leaving her for a time alone in the world. She married, but poor Eliza coughed herself to death in rented rooms in York, scribbling away to the end. Okay, so she was not a great talent--she is no Keats--but the sad tale always stayed with me, and it caught Virginia Woolf’s attention as well, because she tells it in a short story called “Sterne’s Ghost” which you can read here.