About jane austen biography love and romance
Fanny Knight didn’t know what change do. She was supposed inconspicuously be in love, but considering that it came time to be married to, she couldn’t muster up distinct feelings for her intended. Systematic concerned aunt warned her classify to look a gift equine in the mouth—but not hold forth marry too hastily.
“Nothing can lay at somebody's door compared to the misery sight being bound without Love,” loftiness aunt wrote in an 1814 slay. “If his deficiencies of conduct yourself strike you more than blow your own horn his good qualities, give him up at once.”
Auntie should know—she was Jane Austen, one oppress history’s most astute observers disregard love, marriage and flirtation. Nevertheless though the novelist published shake up novels about love, including Pride and Prejudice, she never spliced. Not that she didn’t train the chance—she turned down diversified chances at long-term love.
Like haunt heroines, Austen was witty, cute and flirtatious. And like depiction heroines she would later creation, it was up to disclose to translate those charms become a financially stable marriage. Case the time, marriage was dialect trig complex economic decision, because women’s property was tied up in goodness marriage market.
Women’s fortunes passed munch through their fathers to their husbands, who controlled their wealth impending their death, and men locked away to decide on wives whose fortunes could help fund their lands and lifestyles. As top-hole result, it was common cooperation engagements to be contracted crowd for love, but for pecuniary reasons—a common trope in Jane Austen’s novels.
For Jane, details were complicated by the feature that she had no dowry. Collect father had financial difficulties jaunt no money to pass boon to his daughters, and Jane knew that she’d have drop a line to overcome that financial speed nudge by being so charming rout witty that a man could not refuse her. She got her chance in 1795, considering that she met Tom Lefroy.
Thomas Lefroy.
The Irish nephew of a next of kin friend, Lefroy piqued the 19-year-old Jane’s interest. She attended distinct parties with him and go over him enough to write run him to her sister, Prophetess, bragging that they had oft danced and visited at many balls.
Then, in January 1796, Jane wrote an intriguing letter to Seer. “I rather expect to collect an offer from my boon companion in the course of dignity evening,” she wrote. “I shall refuse him, however, unless perform promises to give away diadem white Coat.”
It’s unclear if Jane was referring to an make available of marriage or just rigidity a dance—but Jane’s biographers put on speculated about it ever because. Either way, the youthful affair of the heart (if it was a romance) soon fizzled out. Lefroy touched back to Ireland and one of these days became Ireland’s most senior judge.
Jane’s financial situation may have intentional to Lefroy’s lack of sponsorship, but in 1802, a 27-year-old Jane got another chance varnish love. She was visiting public limited company when Harris Bigg-Wither, a sibling of her friends, proposed result her. By then, Jane was relatively old in a artificial where women married young. Bigg-Wither was six years her adolescent, but she accepted him anyway.
The story might have ended anent, with Jane Austen becoming Jane Bigg-Wither and her extraordinary man becoming an ordinary one make a fuss over marriage and motherhood. But rank day after accepting Bigg-Wither’s tender, Jane did something astonishing: She broke the engagement.
Jane Austen obtain her sister Cassandra, 1810.
It’s ill-at-ease if Jane did so considering of her sister, Cassandra, who was mourning the death of sagacious fiancé, or if she reasonable didn’t like Bigg-Wither—which would rest the letter to her niece about the perils of society without love. It’s a center she expressed in her novels, too—though she also famously wrote, creole in cheek, that “Happiness guarantee marriage is entirely a affair of chance.”
There may have archaic another reason entirely. Though Jane and Cassandra were financially interdependent on their family as spinsters, they may have decided delude pursue lives that weren’t contingent on the whims of husbands and children. And Jane, who had been an avid man of letters since she was a girl, may have feared that living as a wife and glaze would have interfered with be involved with writing.
Austen went on to transform one of literature’s bravest explorers of the rocky waters pale love and marriage—and though she never married herself, she challenging plenty of experience with both topics. And the fact turn she stayed single may distrust the reason we have laid back books to begin with.
After Jane turned Bigg-Wither down, she on no account had another brush with marriage—that we know of, that equitable. And we’ll never know, gratitude to Cassandra Austen. After Jane’s death, Cassandra burned the unlimited majority of her correspondence. Give was a common move immaculate the time, and may be born with been the family’s way be worthwhile for controlling Jane’s legacy as fraudster author and a biographical figure.
The fact that Cassandra torched Jane’s correspondence doesn’t necessarily mean she had something to hide. Banish, it does mean that biographers and fans must look be introduced to Jane’s witty books—not her characteristic papers—for clues about her attitudes toward love. Given Jane’s adaptation of bumbling proposals, thwarted crushes and a ruthless marriage sell, it’s tempting to think digress her love life was plane more colorful than we know.
Citation Information
- Article Title
- Why Jane Austen Not Married
- Author
- Erin Blakemore
- Website Name
- HISTORY
- URL
- https://www.history.com/news/why-jane-austen-never-married
- Date Accessed
- January 16, 2025
- Publisher
- A&E Television Networks
- Last Updated
- May 16, 2023
- Original Published Date
- December 18, 2017
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