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| Author Sophia Alexander with Jane Austen's 'Sanditon' |
“Charlotte could perceive no symptoms of illness which she, in the boldness of her own good health, would not have undertaken to cure by putting out the fire, opening the window and disposing of the drops and the salts by means of one or the other.”
Oh, one shudders in sympathy for the impatience Jane must have felt with herself.
In reflection, this may have contributed to her condition. It could be that Jane’s snarky pen, like her immune system, was more
generally self-directed than is apparent or optimal. No doubt she meant to keep herself in line
by chiding herself for her weaknesses. Given her intense romantic bent ('You pierce my heart', Jane!), she clearly had more than a touch of Marianne’s overwhelming emotions (in Sense & Sensibility). Perhaps
she was afraid of acting as superior as Emma, of her pen hurting her loved ones
(in Emma). Perhaps she was mocking her own contrivances for her
characters as she depicted Mrs. Bennett’s ridiculousness about landing her
daughters in good situations (in Pride and Prejudice). Oh, Jane… perhaps
my blogs defending her characters were actually defending her from attacks upon herself! I once stated that she could have stood to be a bit kinder... but apparently I should add 'to herself'! Well, lest I follow her example in being too harsh on myself, I'll give myself credit for acknowledging all
the while that her pen was witty and brilliant, nonetheless.
Beyond that, regarding Sanditon’s unique qualities, the English seaside is more prominently displayed than ever, perhaps due
to her ailments and its frequent medical recommendation for those in ill health. As Mr. Parker believes,
“no person…could be really in a state of secure and permanent health without spending at least six weeks by the sea every year.”
His ongoing excitement about developing a beach resort town garners empathy for this
sort of optimistic entrepreneurship in a way novel-readers don’t often get to experience.
“…it was his mine, his lottery, his speculation and his hobby horse; his occupation, his hope and his futurity.”
Readers find themselves hoping right along with him that tourists actually will arrive to fill some of those vacant vacation homes he’s had built. It
all matters so much to him!
His guest, Charlotte Heywood, is the protagonist. She's the sensible, bright
young woman. The reader benefits from being in her shoes, observing the
few families of this small Sanditon community in all their intrigues and ridiculousness. Charlotte has landed herself in this
lovely beach town, right along with this colorful cast of characters, and one
might guess at where some of it is going.
For instance, Sidney Parker seems the only viable love
interest for Charlotte, and it took a while to get to him. Frankly, though,
he’s a bit of a disappointment at our brief introduction. This may be key to
why Jane stopped writing just here, particularly, needing to figure him out. He’s been described as witty,
snarky, even mercurial, but then when the author at last presents him, just at
the end of this unfinished manuscript, he seems merely a polite gentleman. It
falls quite flat. And then her pen falls flat, literally.
Jane’s written herself into a corner, of sorts. As a writer,
I sympathize. This man needs to both live up to the hype and
still be tolerable, a worthy love interest. Not only is his presentation
problematic from this craft perspective—as it can be a challenge to
convincingly depict an amusing, savvy, clever fellow who also somehow manages
to simultaneously surprise and delight the author (necessary to make it convincing)—but there’s another basic
logistics issue: it’s even harder to swallow that he’s swoon-worthy after focusing
for so long on how laughable each and every one of his four siblings is. It'd be a fine line now to make him banter playfully at all. He's hardly supposed to be a Mr. Knightley, though (from Emma).
Yes, I know the light-hearted Frank Churchill was not actually Emma’s real love
interest, but Jane must have realized here that she’d been describing Frank, to
a degree…. when she actually reverted to a Mr. Knightley-sort again upon
presenting him as fairly staid. Indeed, Jane might well have
been flummoxed, as that's where the story ends.
In Sanditon, Jane Austen has produced distinctive new characters in a memorable location. A sensible young woman tries to navigate the hypochondriacs around her, which might be perceived as Jane's contempt for her ailments. The manuscript even begins with an upset carriage which is damaged beyond immediate repair... which could represent Jane's physical body. Though I'd read Jane Austen's full set of six main novels when young, I've only now read this partial manuscript, and it will evermore color my reflections on her novels with notions of invalids at the foam-flecked grey shores of the English seaside.
Points of interest:
The Heywoods, ‘had their family been of reasonable limits’,
could have afforded ‘better roads’. In fact, it’s their broken-up road that
causes the Parkers’ carriage to overturn. Not so long ago, road maintenance was
expected of the locals. I’ve seen in my own genealogical research where my 19th-century
ancestor was tasked by the local government, along with other young male residents,
to repair their own nearby roads. (On a
more amusing note, Jane concludes that the Haywoods also could have afforded ‘symptoms
of the gout and a winter at Bath’.)
Sanditon has a circulating library, for which residents must
purchase a subscription. Of particular interest is that this same
library sells parasols, gloves, and brooches, among other trifles, apparently to
raise funds to support itself.
Mr. Parker runs ‘bathing machines’ at the waterside—little huts
for modesty, where women, especially, could enter and change into their swimwear,
then either step down into the water or be lowered into it in relative privacy.
Arthur Parker, the hypochondriac brother, declares, “What?... Do you venture upon two dishes of strong green tea in one evening?” This use of the term ‘dish’ stood out to me, recalling to mind that I recently heard the tea saucer is for pouring too-hot tea onto, to rapidly cool the beverage and then sip directly from it! I have tried it since, and it works surprisingly well, though I'm still dubious about the etiquette that way. However, I presume the ‘dish’ referred to here is a teapot.
The ‘half mulatto’ young lady, Miss Lambe, was ‘beyond
comparison the most important and precious, as she paid in proportion to her
fortune’. Miss Lambe was of West Indian ancestry, and it’s rather nice to know
that even before slavery was outlawed in the British Empire, that a young woman
of mixed race might be treated quite well, if only due to her consequence from wealth.
Mr. Sidney Parker is driving his servant in the
carriage, which caught me up for a moment! Perhaps this was meant to show
his lack of conformity, but I swiftly concluded that it only made sense,
for any servants who weren’t coachmen would likely be unable to drive the
coaches at all. Another eye-opener into Jane Austen’s time!
I'll conclude with Jane Austen shattering the fourth wall again, as I admired her doing in my blog of Northanger Abbey, though there it goes on for quite a while. Here, it’s just a couple of pert and glorious sentences:
“I make no apologies for my heroine’s vanity. If there are young ladies in the world at her time of life more dull of fancy and more careless of pleasing, I know them not and never wish to know them.”
Read more of my Jane Austen-focused blogs at the links below:
*Northanger Abbey (1818, posthumous)
*Persuasion (1818, posthumous)
*Lady Susan (1871, posthumous)
*Juvenilia (written 1787-1793)
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