Jane Austen on Novels & Novelists

The first novel by an English writer is reckoned to be Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1719) though some argue for Oroonoko by Aphra Benn, published in 1688. In Jane Austen's day over 3,500 novels were in circulation and available to the reading public through circulating libraries. Many were published in a 3 volume format to allow three different people to read the novel at the same time.

The Dangers of The Novel

However, just as today the addiction to social media and internet gaming by the younger generations are a concern to parents and educators, the novel in Jane Austen's day was seen by some as a great evil, particularly as young women were some of the main readers. Objections were made on religious, moral and intellectual grounds - female minds were being corrupted; false expectations of romance and marriage were being raised; and serious, improving literature was being ignored.

Gothic, horror romances came in for particular criticism. James Fordyce was a Scottish Presbyterian minister, preacher, and moral writer whose eloquent preaching attracted large crowds. His Sermons to Young Women, offering advice on female conduct, religion, modesty, and morality was enormously influential and became standard reading in many respectable households.

What shall we say of certain books, which we are assured (for we have not read them) are in their nature so shameful, in their tendency so pestiferous, and contain such rank treason against the royalty of Virtue, such horrible violation of all decorum, that she who can bear to peruse them must in her soul be a prostitute, let her reputation in life be what it will be. Can it be true . . . that any young woman, pretending to decency, should endure for a moment to look on this infernal brood of futility and lewdness?

Satire of Fordyce in Pride and Prejudice (1796-97)

By tea-time, however, the dose (of Mr Collin’s conversation) had been enough, and Mr. Bennet was glad to take his guest into the drawing-room again, and when tea was over, glad to invite him to read aloud to the ladies. Mr. Collins readily assented, and a book was produced; but on beholding it (for everything announced it to be from a circulating library), he started back, and begging pardon, protested that he never read novels. Kitty stared at him, and Lydia exclaimed. Other books were produced, and after some deliberation he chose “Fordyce’s Sermons.” Lydia gaped as he opened the volume; and before he had, with very monotonous solemnity, read three pages, she interrupted him with,

“Do you know, mamma, that my uncle Philips talks of turning away Richard? and if he does, Colonel Forster will hire him. My aunt told me so herself on Saturday. I shall walk to Meryton tomorrow to hear more about it, and to ask when Mr. Denny comes back from town.”

Lydia was bid by her two eldest sisters to hold her tongue; but Mr. Collins, much offended, laid aside his book, and said,

“I have often observed how little young ladies are interested by books of a serious stamp, though written solely for their benefit. It amazes me, I confess; for certainly there can be nothing so advantageous to them as instruction. But I will no longer importune my young cousin.”

Northanger Abbey - a witty parody and a defence of the novel

In Northanger Abbey (1778-9), Jane Austen writes a witty parody of the gothic novel, in much the same way that Stella Gibbons wrote Cold Comfort Farm to take a swipe at the bucolic countryside novels of Mary Webb and D H Lawrence.

The “heroine” is Catherine Morland who is obsessed with The Mysteries Of Udolpho, a popular gothic horror novel by Mrs Radcliffe. It takes over Catherine's imagination to such an extent she loses her grip on real life and almost loses the love of her hero.

But Jane Austen also uses the novel to make a defence of herself as a writer of these "pestiferous" novels:

“The rainy morning deprived them (Catherine and Isabella) of other enjoyments, they were still resolute in meeting in defiance of wet and dirt, and shut themselves up, to read novels together.

Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding—joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust.

Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans.

Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers.

… there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them.

“I am no novel reader. I seldom look into novels. Do not imagine that I often read novels. It is really very well for a novel.”

Such is the common cant.

“And what are you reading, Miss——?” “Oh! It is only a novel!” replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. “It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda”; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.


Now, had the same young lady been engaged with a volume of the Spectator, instead of such a work, how proudly would she have produced the book, and told its name; though the chances must be against her being occupied by any part of that voluminous publication, of which either the matter or manner would not disgust a young person of taste:

She also uses the hero of Northanger Abbey, Henry Tilney to speak in defence of novels:

They determined on walking round Beechen Cliff, that noble hill whose beautiful verdure and hanging coppice render it so striking an object from almost every opening in Bath.

“I never look at it,” said Catherine, as they walked along the side of the river, “without thinking of the south of France.”

“You have been abroad then?” said Henry, a little surprised.

“Oh! No, I only mean what I have read about. It always puts me in mind of the country that Emily and her father travelled through, in The Mysteries of Udolpho. But you never read novels, I dare say?”

“Why not?”

“Because they are not clever enough for you—gentlemen read better books.”

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. I have read all Mrs. Radcliffe’s works, and most of them with great pleasure. The Mysteries of Udolpho, when I had once begun it, I could not lay down again; I remember finishing it in two days—my hair standing on end the whole time.”

… “I am very glad to hear it indeed, and now I shall never be ashamed of liking Udolpho myself. But I really thought before, young men despised novels amazingly.”

“It is amazingly; it may well suggest amazement if they do—for they read nearly as many as women. I myself have read hundreds and hundreds. Do not imagine that you can cope with me in a knowledge of Julias and Louisas. If we proceed to particulars, and engage in the never-ceasing inquiry of ‘Have you read this?’ and ‘Have you read that?’ …

Austen's Verdict on The Gothic Novel

Later in the novel after Catherine has been brought down to earth from her fantasy, gothic dream world, Jane Austen gives her verdict on the genre:

Her thoughts being still chiefly fixed on what she had with such causeless terror felt and done, nothing could shortly be clearer than that it had been all a voluntary, self-created delusion, each trifling circumstance receiving importance from an imagination resolved on alarm, and everything forced to bend to one purpose by a mind which, before she entered the abbey, had been craving to be frightened. …

Charming as were all Mrs. Radcliffe’s works, and charming even as were the works of all her imitators, it was not in them perhaps that human nature, at least in the Midland counties of England, was to be looked for.

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The Road to Wigan Pier - George Orwell

I’d only read Animal Farm and 1984 of Orwell’s writing until a few year’s ago when I read Homage to Catalonia and Down and Out in Paris and London, so I was looking forward to reading our book group choice, The Road to Wigan Pier. In honour of Orwell as a writer, I bought a new Penguin Classic copy thinking it would be a nice addition to my classic collection.

It started well, though very grimly, in the Booker’s tripe shop cum boarding house in Wigan – probably a zero-star review on Trust Pilot!

Orwell’s conversational style perfectly sets a scene and brings people to life:

Mr Booker was a dark small-boned, sour Irish-looking man, and astonishingly dirty.

Mrs Booker was too ill to do anything except eat stupendous meals – a soft mound of fat and self-pity.

This chapter was very reminiscent of Down & Out in Paris and London which Orwell mentions later in the book.

Then onto Chapter 2 – the life of a miner and mining families. Orwell visits a mine and being a tall man has an immense struggle, bent low, walking to the coal face. He describes the 7-hour shifts of the miner in great detail, the stiffling heat, the naked bodies swinging picks, loading trucks, placing pit props hour after hour with only short breaks for cold tea and a bread & drpping sandwich. You are left with huge admiration for those super-tough men and their wives and families, and great anger that the labour fuelling the homes and factories of the country was so little valued, with most miners living in poverty.

And what a contrast between Orwell’s no holds barred realism to the romanticism of How Green Was My Valley.

But when I reached Chapter 3 and the minute examination of Wigan housing, I began to lose interest, simply because this was Wigan of the 1930’s and not the Wigan of today, and not the “working class” of today. True, our society faces similar issues, but the context is very different. The first part of The Road To Wigan Pier is so out-of-date that it is simply social history and no longer a rallying cry.

I only dipped into the second part which seems to far too verbose - I resorted to an AI summary of his main points and arguments - see below.

Note: I was completely out of step with the members of my book group who thought the book had lost none of its force for being written 90 years ago. The underlying themes were still relevant today.

Years ago, I read one of the seminal texts of the socialist movement – The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. This, together with my Methodist upbringing set my political home left of centre - “We are all in it together” and not “Everyman for himself”, and that is where I’ve stayed.

This little verse comes to mind:

It's the same the whole world over,

It's the poor what gets the blame,

It's the rich what gets the pleasure,

Isn't it a bloomin shame?

I’ve recently read “Careless People” by Sarah Wynn-Williams which is an insider’s view of Facebook, showing how its founder and those in charge are almost totally devoid of any morality.

And I have just started “Vulture Capitalism” – how to survive in an age of cooperate greed, by Grace Blakely.

These are the kind of books we need to be reading if we are going to follow in the footsteps of George Orwell. But reading is one thing, and fewer and fewer people are reading, activism is another. Not many people are willing to get their hands dirty.

AI Overview of Part Two

Orwell  asks a central question:

Why do so many ordinary people fail to support socialism, even when socialism would seem to be in their economic interests? 

His answer is that the problem is not only economic. Socialism has often been made unattractive by the behaviour, language and attitudes of many of its advocates.

The Reality and Injustice of Class

Orwell argues that the English class system is deeply ingrained and emotionally powerful. People do not think only in terms of money or reason; they are shaped by habits, prejudices, accents, education and social status.

He is particularly interested in the instinctive barriers that separate the middle class from the working class.

Economic reform will not succeed unless people recognise how deeply class prejudice affects everyday life.

A Defence of Socialism

Despite his criticisms, Orwell clearly supports socialism. He believes that capitalism has produced unnecessary poverty and inequality, and that society needs a more just economic system.

The evidence of industrial poverty described in Part One makes some form of socialism morally necessary.

Criticism of Socialists

Orwell argues that many potential supporters are driven away by the image of socialism presented by some middle-class intellectuals and activists. He caricatures the "crank" socialist: the sandal-wearer, vegetarian, health enthusiast, or doctrinaire theorist who seems disconnected from ordinary people.

His point is not that these people are bad, but that they make socialism appear eccentric and unattractive.

Socialism loses support when it becomes associated with fashionable intellectual causes rather than the everyday needs of workers.

The Dangers of Ideology

Orwell is sceptical of rigid political doctrine, particularly versions of Marxism that claim to explain everything.

He argues that many socialists pay too much attention to theory and too little to how real people think and feel.

Political movements fail when they ignore human psychology and culture.

Industrialism and Modernity

Orwell worries about the implications of an increasingly mechanised society. Even while supporting social reform, he questions whether endless industrial development automatically means progress.

He fears a future in which efficiency and machinery dominate human life.

Theme: Material progress alone does not guarantee a better society.

The heart of Part Two is a paradox:

Orwell believes socialism is necessary, but he believes many socialists have made it harder for people to embrace socialism.

He wants a socialism that is:democratic, humane, patriotic rather than doctrinaire,
rooted in ordinary experience, concerned with decency and justice rather than abstract theory.

In many ways, Part Two is the bridge between the social observer of The Road to Wigan Pier and the political writer who would later produce Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. 

In one sentence

Part Two argues that socialism is necessary to address poverty and inequality, but that the British left often alienates the very people it hopes to help because it fails to understand class, culture and ordinary human attitudes.

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Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen

Young women in Jane Austen's England read a wide range of fiction. Novels were enormously popular, especially through circulating libraries, which made expensive books affordable to middle-class readers.

Jane herself was an avid reader, among her favourites were the novels of Fanny Burney, Samuel Richardson and Maria Edgeworth. But the books that got young women’s blood racing were the wildly popular Gothic Horror novels in which evil men abduct innocent young women and carry them away to haunted castles. Will the handsome hero ride to their rescue before they succumb to a fate worse than death?

This is the setting for Northanger Abbey which is a light-hearted satire on gothic novels and the young women who read them. The first lines set the scene:

No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be a heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition, were all equally against her.

Catherine is 17 and immersed in “The Mysteries of Udolpho” by Mrs Ratcliffe. She escapes her humdrum village life in the pages of the novel, Gothic horror and heroic deeds fill her mind.

When the beautiful Emily St Aubert is orphaned, she goes to live with her aunt and her villainous Italian uncle, Signor Montoni. She must unravel the seemingly supernatural mysteries of his mediaeval castle of Udolfo in order to escape with her fortune and her honour intact.

Catherine is taken to Bath as a companion for Mrs Allen, whose husband needs a cure for his gout. Austen’s acerbic wit comes into play:

Mrs. Allen was one of that numerous class of females, whose society can raise no other emotion than surprise at there being any men in the world who could like them well enough to marry them

Catherine is transported into the world of fashion, balls, theatre, and high society. It is not long before our heroine meets her hero.

.. his name was Tilney. He seemed to be about four or five and twenty, was rather tall, had a pleasing countenance, a very intelligent and lively eye, and, if not quite handsome, was very near it.

Having introduced hero and heroine, Austen now brings on the shallow, flirtatious Isabella Thorpe and her brother John, a conceited rogue, liar and cheat. The ingredients of Gothic Horror are coming together.

Isabella asks Catherine about her reading.

Have you gone on with Udolpho?”
Yes, I have been reading it ever since I woke; and I am got to the black veil.
Are you, indeed? How delightful! Oh! I would not tell you what is behind the black veil for the world! Are not you wild to know?
Oh! Yes, quite; what can it be? But do not tell me—I would not be told upon any account. I know it must be a skeleton, ...
Dear creature! How much I am obliged to you; and when you have finished Udolpho, we will read The Italian together; and I have made out a list of ten or twelve more of the same kind for you.
Have you, indeed! How glad I am! What are they all?”
I will read you their names directly; here they are, in my pocketbook. Castle of Wolfenbach, Clermont, Mysterious Warnings, Necromancer of the Black Forest, Midnight Bell, Orphan of the Rhine, and Horrid Mysteries. Those will last us some time.
Yes, pretty well; but are they all horrid, are you sure they are all horrid?

But when Catherine asks John Thorpe if he’s read Udolpho she gets a very different response

Have you ever read Udolpho, Mr. Thorpe?
Udolpho! Oh, Lord! Not I; I never read novels; I have something else to do....

I think you must like Udolpho, if you were to read it; it is so very interesting.
Not I, faith! No, if I read any, it shall be Mrs. Radcliffe’s; her novels are amusing enough; they are worth reading; some fun and nature in them.
Udolpho was written by Mrs. Radcliffe,” said Catherine, with some hesitation, from the fear of mortifying him.
No, sure; was it? Aye, I remember, so it was;

As with all Austen’s novels, marriage and money go hand in hand. Isabella falls in love with Catherine’s brother James but then discovers they cannot marry for two years, and the income will be small.

It is not on my own account I wish for more; but I cannot bear to be the means of injuring my dear Morland, making him sit down upon an income hardly enough to find one in the common necessaries of life. For myself, it is nothing; I never think of myself.

Her mother tries to mollify her but Isabella suggests Mr Morland is being mean:

Catherine was hurt by these insinuations. "I am very sure,” said she, “that my father has promised to do as much as he can afford.”

Isabella tries to claim her coldness is not about the money but the two year wait. Catherine is not taken in and it’s not long before Isabella is hunting for better prospects than James Morland. Henry's brother, Captain Tilney perhaps?

The cold, severe General Tilney enters the story and invites our heroine to Northanger Abbey, ostensibly as a companion for his daughter Eleanor but really to encourage her attachment to Henry as he thinks Catherine is an heiress to a large fortune. 

Northanger Abbey! These were thrilling words and wound up Catherine's feelings to the highest point of ecstasy. ..Every present enjoyment and every future hope was contained in it. ..
The circumstances of the morning had led Catherine's feelings through the varieties of suspense, security and disappointment. But they were now safely lodged in perfect bliss, and with spirits elated to rapture. With Henry at her heart and Northanger Abbey on her lips, she hurried home …

As they draw near Northanger Abbey, Henry begins to play on Catherine's imagination:

He smiled, and said, “You have formed a very favourable idea of the abbey.”
To be sure, I have. Is not it a fine old place, just like what one reads about?
And are you prepared to encounter all the horrors that a building such as ‘what one reads about’ may produce? Have you a stout heart? Nerves fit for sliding panels and tapestry?
Oh! yes—I do not think I should be easily frightened, because there would be so many people in the house…

Henry continues his tale by telling Catherine she will be lodged along gloomy passages, in a remote chamber with a funereal appearance in which a cousin died

Will not your heart sink within you?
Oh! But this will not happen to me, I am sure....

And what will you discern? Not tables, toilettes, wardrobes, or drawers, but on one side perhaps the remains of a broken lute, on the other a ponderous chest which no efforts can open, and over the fireplace the portrait of some handsome warrior, whose features will so incomprehensibly strike you, that you will not be able to withdraw your eyes from it.

Dorothy.... gives you reason to suppose that the part of the abbey you inhabit is undoubtedly haunted, and informs you that you will not have a single domestic within call…. with fainting spirits, you attempt to fasten your door, you discover, with increased alarm, that it has no lock.

Oh! Mr. Tilney, how frightful! This is just like a book! But it cannot really happen to me. I am sure your housekeeper is not really Dorothy. Well, what then?

Henry adds more horror – a violent storm – a shaking tapestry – a hidden door – a small, vaulted room. Will Catherine dare enter?

No, indeed; I should be too much frightened to do any such thing.

But you will enter, says Henry, perhaps find a dagger dripping with blood, an old cabinet, a secret drawer, an old manuscript, on ominous warning – your lamp goes out!

Oh, no, no; do not say so. Well, go on.

But Henry has played on her fantasies enough and Catherine is rather ashamed of her eagerness. Despite its name, Northanger Abbey does not live up to Catherine’s expectations. The house has hints of an ancient past but the interior is modern, her room has wallpaper not tapestries and when she examines on old chest there are no hidden manuscripts, only scraps of laundry lists.

Her only hope of playing the heroine comes when she learns of the sudden death of General Tilney’s wife. Did her stern cold husband hasten her end? Is there an awful mystery to be solved? Alas no, and when she hints at this possibility to Henry, she is sternly rebuffed

“If I understand you rightly, you had formed a surmise of such horror as I have hardly words to—Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? ... Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. … Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting?”

They had reached the end of the gallery, and with tears of shame she ran off to her own room.

Jane Austen uses the hero to release the heroine from her immature, novel-inspired fantasies.

The visions of romance were over. Catherine was completely awakened. Henry’s address, short as it had been, had more thoroughly opened her eyes to the extravagance of her late fancies than all their several disappointments had done. Most grievously was she humbled. Most bitterly did she cry.

She fears she has lost Henry forever – how could he forgive her? But she underestimates his noble character. When they meet later he treats her tenderly; the dream world of fantasy novels had been shattered for the heroine but as Austen writes “It was not in them that human nature was to be looked for.”

When the General discovers, through a conversation with John Thorpe, Catherine is no heiress, he is angry, believing he has been duped. He abruptly sends her back to her parents with no explanation and she has no idea what has provoked him against her.

But our hero will not be denied his heroine. He defies his Father, rides to Catherine’s home and declares his love.

Henry and Catherine were married, the bells rang, and everybody smiled; and, as this took place within a twelvemonth from the first day of their meeting, it will not appear, after all the dreadful delays occasioned by the General’s cruelty, that they were essentially hurt by it.

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Sense & Sensibility by Jane Austen

This was the only Jane Austen novel I hadn't read so it was time to fill the gap. Of course I knew the story; living with a wife who's staple diet is re-watching Jane Austen adaptations I must have watched Sense & Sensibility more times than is good for my sense or sensibility. The 1998 Ang Lee/Emma Thompson film is the go-to version but there is also the excellent 2008, BBC, 3-part TV series by that master of adaptations Andrew Davis.

But what of the book itself? I have to say the first chapter is dire. In four pages we are told of an inheritance of the Norland Estate so convoluted I didn't know who'd got what or why they'd got it. I read of an old man, a nephew, a niece, a second marriage, a son, a grand-son, two step-sisters, a Henry, a John and two Mrs Dashwoods and was lost.  I ploughed on until at last I came to the death-bed scene where the film adaptations begin and the familar story started to unfold.

But there was a problem. How could I get to know Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, letting their personalities slowly develop in my imagination when Emma Thompson and Kate Winslett were already in residence, personalities fully formed? Robert Hardy, Alan Rickman, Hugh Grant and the rest of the cast were also in residence. But as you read the book you realise the actors don't quite fit, there is a disconnect between the words on the page and the characters on screen. Jane Austen's prose is sliced up and simplified for the viewer; the screen shows us the characters, the houses, the streets and landscapes, no imagination required - there is no time to pause or reflect. But the reader faced with the richness of Austen's prose, her language, her style, and her keen commentary on Georgian society has to slow down. We re-read a sentence or a paragraph, adapt to her prose, begin to appreciate her wit, and her subtle attacks on greed, convention and corrupted values.

Wealth & Status

I was struck by how forceful those attacks were. Right at the off we have the new Lord of the Manor and newly rich John Dashwood discussing with his wife how he should fulfil the promise he made to his dying Father of assisting his three half-sisters.

When he gave his promise to his father, he meditated within himself to increase the fortunes of his sisters by the present of a thousand pounds a-piece....Three thousand pounds! he could spare so considerable a sum with little inconvenience.”

Mrs. John Dashwood did not at all approve of what her husband intended to do for his sisters...She begged him to think again on the subject. How could he answer it to himself to rob his child, and his only child too, of so large a sum?
“It was my father’s last request to me,” replied her husband, “that I should assist his widow and daughters.....
“Well, then, let something be done for them; but that something need not be three thousand pounds."

....
“Perhaps, then, it would be better for all parties, if the sum were diminished one half.—Five hundred pounds would be a prodigious increase to their fortunes!”
“Oh! beyond anything great! What brother on earth would do half so much for his sisters, even if really his sisters! And as it is—only half blood!"

.....
"A present of fifty pounds, now and then, will prevent their ever being distressed for money, and will, I think, be amply discharging my promise to my father,"

Later in the book, Edward Ferrars has been disinherited by his mother because he is engaged to Lucy Steele. He is offered a clergyman's Living by Colonel Brandon but John Dashwood can hardly believe this and asks Elinor if it is true:

“It is perfectly true.—Colonel Brandon has given the living of Delaford to Edward.”
“Really!—Well, this is very astonishing!—no relationship!—no connection between them!—and now that livings fetch such a price!—what was the value of this?”
“About two hundred a year.”
"He might have got I dare say—fourteen hundred pounds. .... I suppose, however, on recollection, that the case may probably be this. Edward is only to hold the living till the person to whom the Colonel has really sold the presentation, is old enough to take it. Aye, aye, that is the fact, depend upon it.”
Elinor contradicted it, however, very positively; ....
“It is truly astonishing!”—he cried, after hearing what she said—“what could be the Colonel’s motive?”
“A very simple one—to be of use to Mr. Ferrars.”

Men & Women

The differences in social and legal standing between men and and women are also ammunition for Austen's sharp pen, particularly when it comes to marriage.

Mrs Ferrar's intended bride for Edward was Miss Morton, with a fortune of £30,000, certainly not the penniless Lucy Steele. John Dashwood tells Elinor that Robert Ferrars is not only to take Edwards inheritence but also his place as suitor to Miss Morton:

“We think now,”—said Mr. Dashwood, after a short pause, “of Robert’s marrying Miss Morton.”
Elinor, smiling at the grave and decisive importance of her brother’s tone, calmly replied,—
“The lady, I suppose, has no choice in the affair.”
“Choice!—how do you mean?”
“I only mean that I suppose, from your manner of speaking, it must be the same to Miss Morton whether she marry Edward or Robert.”
“Certainly, there can be no difference; for Robert will now to all intents and purposes be considered as the eldest son;—and as to any thing else, they are both very agreeable young men: I do not know that one is superior to the other.”

Towards the end of the novel Willoughby who has married Miss Grey for her fortune, hears of Marianne's illness and Elinor has to listen to his wining attempt to justify his actions:

You had made your own choice. It was not forced on you. Your wife has a claim to your politeness, to your respect, at least. She must be attached to you, or she would not have married you. To treat her with unkindness, to speak of her slightingly is no atonement to Marianne—nor can I suppose it a relief to your own conscience.”

“Do not talk to me of my wife,” said he with a heavy sigh; “she does not deserve your compassion. She knew I had no regard for her when we married. Well, married we were, and came down to Combe Magna to be happy, and afterwards returned to town to be gay.

Passion & Patience

Elinor is the heroine of the story; the rock of her enduring patience is the calm centre for her family and a refuge for the turnbulant passions of Marianne. Here's how Austen introduces Marianne:

Marianne’s abilities were, in many respects, quite equal to Elinor’s. She was sensible and clever; but eager in everything: her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation. She was generous, amiable, interesting: she was everything but prudent. The resemblance between her and her mother was strikingly great. 

Marianne in conversation with her mother cannot understand what Elinor sees in Edward Ferrars:

Edward is very amiable, and I love him tenderly. But yet—he is not the kind of young man—there is something wanting—his figure is not striking; it has none of that grace which I should expect in the man who could seriously attach my sister. ...

Oh! mama, how spiritless, how tame was Edward’s manner in reading to us last night! .... I could hardly keep my seat. To hear those beautiful lines which have frequently almost driven me wild, pronounced with such impenetrable calmness, such dreadful indifference!”

“He would certainly have done more justice to simple and elegant prose. I thought so at the time; but you would give him Cowper.”

In the Ang Lee film Edward reads The Castaway by William Cowper - Austen's favourite poet:

"No voice divine the storm allay'd,

No light propitious shone;

When, snatch'd from all effectual aid,

We perish'd, each alone:

But I beneath a rougher sea,

And whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he."

“Nay, Mama, if he is not to be animated by Cowper! .... it would have broke my heart, had I loved him, to hear him read with so little sensibility. 

Later Marianne probes Elinor to see if she and Edward are engaged

...

“I do not attempt to deny,” said she, “that I think very highly of him—that I greatly esteem, that I like him.”

Marianne here burst forth with indignation—

“Esteem him! Like him! Cold-hearted Elinor! Oh! worse than cold-hearted! Ashamed of being otherwise. Use those words again, and I will leave the room this moment.”

Following Marianne's despair at losing her soul-mate Willoughby she discovers that Elinor has known of Edward's engagement to Lucy Steele for months and is mortified that she has been so insensitive to Elinor's suffering:

“How long has this been known to you, Elinor? has he written to you?”

“I have known it these four months. When Lucy first came to Barton Park last November, she told me in confidence of her engagement.”

At these words, Marianne’s eyes expressed the astonishment which her lips could not utter. After a pause of wonder, she exclaimed—

“Four months!—Have you known of this four months?”

Elinor confirmed it.

“What! while attending me in all my misery, has this been on your heart? And I have reproached you for being happy!”

“It was not fit that you should then know how much I was the reverse!”

“Four months!” cried Marianne again. “So calm! so cheerful! How have you been supported?”

“By feeling that I was doing my duty.—My promise to Lucy, obliged me to be secret. I owed it to her, therefore, to avoid giving any hint of the truth; and I owed it to my family and friends, not to create in them a solicitude about me, which it could not be in my power to satisfy.”

Marianne seemed much struck.

“I have very often wished to undeceive yourself and my mother,” added Elinor; “and once or twice I have attempted it;—but without betraying my trust, I never could have convinced you.”

“Four months! and yet you loved him!”

“Yes. But I did not love only him; and while the comfort of others was dear to me, I was glad to spare them from knowing how much I felt. 

Marianne was quite subdued.

“Oh! Elinor,” she cried, “you have made me hate myself for ever.—How barbarous have I been to you!—you, who have been my only comfort, who have borne with me in all my misery, who have seemed to be only suffering for me!—Is this my gratitude?—Is this the only return I can make you?—Because your merit cries out upon myself, I have been trying to do it away.”

Duty & Integrity

The guiding virtues that stand out in Sense and Sensibility are duty and integrity. Austen contrasts those who fulfil their obligations and stay true to high moral standards with those who put self before self-sacrifice and profit before principle. Apart from Elinor's unwavering moral compass, Edward Ferrars stays true to his promise to Lucy Steele despite falling in love with Elinor and falling out of favour with his mother. And Colonel Branden seeks out his first love Eliza despite her affair and adopts her daughter as his ward. He remains true to his love for Marianne while she, in the midst of her infatution for Willoughby, treats him with indifference.

Reading Sense and Sensibility to fill the Austen novels gap was a reminder of why she is rated so highly as a novelist. Yes, the modern reader has to adapt to the density of her prose - you have to read carefully and can't skim. But if you love language, her sharp observations and her descriptive power there's a feast to be had, a rich four course meal with vintage wines, an elegant, candle-lit table, sparkling conversation and an evening of pure pleasure stretching before you.

Image from Folio Society Edition

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Parallels between The Odyssey and Joyce's Ulysses

James Joyce’s Ulysses is a modern, mock-heroic reimagining of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey. Set entirely in Dublin on a single day (16 June 1904), the novel shifts the external, multi-year physical battles of ancient Greece into internal, psychological journeys.

The structural blueprint relies on a strict schema where three main characters anchor the epic roles:

• Leopold Bloom is Odysseus (Ulysses), the wandering everyman.
• Stephen Dedalus is Telemachus, the searching son.
• Molly Bloom is Penelope, the wife waiting at home (though, unlike Penelope, she is unfaithful).

The table below outlines the sequential parallel connections across the 18 chapters (episodes) of both works.

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Part I: The Telemachia (The Search for the Father)

Like The Odyssey, the first three chapters entirely bypass the main hero to focus on his symbolic son.

#	Ulysses Episode	Odyssey Section	Brief Parallel & Summary
1	Telemachus	Telemachus at home	Stephen is usurped in his home. Just as Telemachus is crowded out of his palace by parasitic suitors, Stephen Dedalus faces the mockery of his roommate, Buck Mulligan, in a rented Martello tower.
2	Nestor	Telemachus visits King Nestor	Seeking council from an elder. Telemachus travels to wise old King Nestor for news of his father. Stephen, working as a schoolteacher, receives narrow-minded, anti-Semitic advice from his headmaster, Mr Deasy.
3	Proteus	Telemachus meets Proteus	Wrestling with shifting shapes. Telemachus learns how to capture Proteus, the shape-shifting Old Man of the Sea. Stephen walks along Sandymount Strand, wrestling with the fluid, changing nature of reality, language, and his own identity.

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Part II: The Odyssey (The Wanderings of Bloom)

The focus shifts to the epic hero as he navigates the obstacles of the external world.

#	Ulysses Episode	Odyssey Section	Brief Parallel & Summary
4	Calypso	Odysseus captive on Calypso's island	Imprisoned by a nymph/domesticity. Odysseus spends years trapped on Calypso’s island, yearning for home. Leopold Bloom is introduced trapped in his routine, making breakfast for his wife Molly, who remains in bed like a reclining goddess.
5	Lotus-Eaters	The narcotic Lotus-Eaters	The escape into numbness and bliss. Odysseus’s crew eats the lotus flower and forgets their home. Bloom wanders through Dublin, picking up a love letter under a pseudonym, visiting a church, and indulging in the sensory bliss of a warm bath.
6	Hades	Odysseus visits the Underworld	A journey into the realm of the dead. Odysseus travels to Hades to speak with fallen comrades. Bloom attends the funeral of his acquaintance Paddy Dignam at Glasnevin Cemetery, reflecting heavily on mortality and his own deceased father and infant son.
7	Aeolus	The God of Winds	An onslaught of empty words and hot air. King Aeolus gives Odysseus a bag of winds that blows his ship off course. Bloom visits a chaotic newspaper office where the air is thick with the metaphorical "winds" of rhetoric and journalism.
8	Lestrygonians	The cannibal giants	The visceral, consuming trap of appetite. Odysseus loses most of his fleet to savage cannibals. Bloom walks through Dublin at lunchtime, disgusted by the animalistic way men gorge themselves on food in a local restaurant.
9	Scylla & Charybdis	The rock and the whirlpool	Navigating deadly philosophical extremes. Odysseus must steer between a six-headed monster and a deadly whirlpool. At the National Library, Stephen navigates a treacherous intellectual debate about Shakespeare, balancing rigid dogma against fluid theory.
10	Wandering Rocks	The dangerous floating rocks	A montage of a fractured city. This minor Homeric danger is bypassed by Odysseus, but Joyce uses it to showcase 19 short vignettes of various Dubliners wandering the streets, blindly passing one another like drifting stones.
11	Sirens	The seductive Sirens	The intoxicating snare of music. Odysseus ties himself to the ship's mast to hear the Sirens' seductive songs safely. Bloom sits in a hotel bar, deeply moved by the tragic singing of traditional Irish ballads while trying to ignore his wife's infidelity happening across town.
12	Cyclops	The one-eyed giant	Blinded by narrow-minded rage. Odysseus blinds the one-eyed giant Polyphemus, who flings a boulder at his escaping ship. In a pub, Bloom faces down "The Citizen," a bigoted, one-eyed Irish nationalist who aggressively hurls a biscuit tin at Bloom's head.
13	Nausicaa	Princess Nausicaa	A fleeting moment of youth and desire. The young princess Nausicaa rescues a shipwrecked, naked Odysseus on the beach. At Sandymount Strand, a limping teenage girl named Gerty MacDowell silently flirts with Bloom, providing a moment of voyeuristic escape.
14	Oxen of the Sun	The slaughter of the sacred cattle	The defilement of life and creation. Odysseus's starving crew destroys the sacred cattle of Hyperion, bringing down divine wrath. Bloom visits a maternity hospital where carousing medical students disrespect the sacred nature of childbirth with crass jokes.
15	Circe	The sorceress who turns men into pigs	The hallucinatory grip of base desires. The enchantress Circe transforms Odysseus’s men into swine. Bloom follows a drunken Stephen into Dublin’s red-light district, entering a surreal, nightmare-like brothel where internal anxieties and repressed fantasies take physical shape.

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Part III: The Nostos (The Homecoming)

The final section brings the father and son together to reclaim the home.

#	Ulysses Episode	Odyssey Section	Brief Parallel & Summary
16	Eumaeus	The loyal swineherd's hut	The father and son finally unite. Odysseus meets Telemachus in disguise at the shelter of his loyal swineherd. Bloom rescues a severely intoxicated Stephen from a street brawl and takes him to a cabman’s shelter to sober up, establishing a quiet bond.
17	Ithaca	The return to the kingdom	A cold, mathematical reclamation of home. Odysseus returns home to slaughter the suitors occupying his palace. Bloom brings Stephen back to his house. Written entirely in a cold, catechism-like question-and-answer format, Bloom accepts the reality of his unfaithful home.
18	Penelope	Penelope's loyalty and sleep	The final, sensual affirmation of love. While Homer's Penelope tests Odysseus to prove his identity, Joyce finishes with an unpunctuated, shifting stream-of-consciousness monologue from Molly Bloom. As she lies in bed, she reviews her lovers but ultimately concludes with her ecstatic, life-affirming memory of accepting Bloom's marriage proposal.

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A Christmas Carol - published 1843

Dickens began A Christmas Carol in October 1843 at the age of 31.  It was completed in six weeks; the final pages being written in early December. He built much of the work in his head while taking night-time walks of 15 to 20 miles around London. Dickens's sister-in-law wrote how he "wept, and laughed, and wept again, and excited himself in a most extraordinary manner, in composition".

Dickens arranged to pay for the publishing himself, in exchange for a percentage of the profits. The final product was bound in red cloth with gilt-edged pages, completed only two days before the publication date of 19 December 1843. Priced at five shillings (equivalent to £31 in 2023), the first run of 6,000 copies sold out by Christmas Eve. 

The novella was adapted for the stage almost immediately. Three productions opened on 5 February 1844, By the close of February 1844 eight rival A Christmas Carol theatrical productions were playing in London. 

The author of Vanity Fair, William Thackeray wrote: 

Who can listen to objections regarding such a book as this? It seems to me a national benefit, and to every man or woman who reads it, a personal kindness. The last two people I heard speak of it were women. Neither knew the other our the author and both said by way of criticism, “God bless him”. A Scotch philosopher who nationally does not keep Christmas Day, on reading the book sent out for a Turkey and asked two friends to dine. This is a fact. Many men were known to sit down after perusing it and write off letters to their friends, not about business but out of the fullness of heart, and to wish old acquaintances a happy Christmas. Had the book appeared a fortnight earlier, all the prize cattle would have been gobbled up in pure love and friendship. Epping denuded of sausages and not a Turkey left in Norfolk. His Royal Highness’s fatstock would have fetched unheard of prices and Alderman Bannister would have been tired of slaying.

As for Tiny Tim, there is a certain passage in the book regarding that young gentleman, about which a man could hardly venture to speak in print or in public, any more than he would of any other affectations of his private heart. There is not a reader in England, but that little creature will be a bond of union between the author and him, and he will say of Charles Dickens, as the women said just now. “God bless him”. What a feeling is this for a writer to be able to inspire, and what a reward to reap.

In 1874, Robert Louis Stevenson, after reading Dickens's Christmas books, vowed to give generously to those in need. One American businessman was so moved by attending a reading that he closed his factory on Christmas Day and sent every employee a turkey. The Queen of Norway—sent gifts to London's crippled children signed "With Tiny Tim's Love"

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Snippets from Dickens

From Little Dorrit

The debtors in the Marshalsea prison had come to regard insolvency as the normal state of mankind, and the payment of debts as a disease that occasionally broke out

Time will show us, the post of honour and the post of shame. The general’s station and the drummer's. The peer’s statue in Westminster Abbey and the seaman’s hammock at the bottom of the deep. The mitre and the workhouse, the woolsack and the gallows, the throne and the guillotine. The travellers to all are on the Great High Road. But it has wonderful divergences and only time will show us whither each traveller is bound.

His brother Frederick of the dim eye, palsied hand, bent form, and groping mind, submissively shuffled at his side, accepting his patronage as he accepted every incident of the labyrinthian world in which he had got lost. 

Bishop, mentally perambulating among paths of peace, was altogether swallowed up in absence of mind.

Mrs General had no opinions. Her way of forming a mind was to prevent it from forming opinions. She had a little circular set of mental grooves or rails on which she started little trains of other people’s opinions, which never overtook one another, and never got anywhere. Even her propriety could not dispute that there was impropriety in the world; but Mrs General’s way of getting rid of it was to put it out of sight, and make believe that there was no such thing. This was another of her ways of forming a mind—to cram all articles of difficulty into cupboards, lock them up, and say they had no existence. It was the easiest way, and, beyond all comparison, the properest.

Mrs General was not to be told of anything shocking. Accidents, miseries, and offences, were never to be mentioned before her. Passion was to go to sleep in the presence of Mrs General, and blood was to change to milk and water. The little that was left in the world, when all these deductions were made, it was Mrs General’s province to varnish. In that formation process of hers, she dipped the smallest of brushes into the largest of pots, and varnished the surface of every object that came under consideration. The more cracked it was, the more Mrs General varnished it.

From Dombey & Son

(Mrs Dombey has died. giving birth to a son.)

That small world of Mr Dombey’s household subsided into their several places in the domestic system. That small world, like the great one outdoors, had the capacity for easily forgetting its dead; and when the cook said, “She was a quiet, tempered lady”. and the housekeeper said, “It was the common lot”, and the Butler said, “Who'd have thought it?”, and the housemaid said, “She could hardly believe it”, and the footman said, “It seemed exactly like a dream”, they had quite worn the subject out and began to think their mourning was wearing rusty too.

Domby sat in the corner of the darkened room in the great armchair by the bedside, and Son lay tucked up warm in a little basket bedstead, carefully disposed on a low settee immediately in front of the fire and close to it, as if his constitution were analogous to that of a muffin, and it was essential to toast him brown while he was very new.

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