- 5 months ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:001803. 27-year-old Jane Austen dreams of being a published writer. She has broken with convention,
00:17turning down a marriage offer in order to pursue her passion.
00:21Jane has gambled. She's gambled everything on writing. She's turned down the final,
00:27the most plausible offer to marry into wealth.
00:35At this point, she has to commit herself to the life of a writer.
00:41And the only question now is, how ambitious is she going to be?
00:46She says herself that she's greedy. She wants profits. She wants to make as much money as she
00:51possibly can. Jane Austen wants to be published, but with all her ambition, her ferocious intelligence,
01:01even she might not have foreseen that this would come at a cost, and what that cost would be.
01:10Today, few records of Jane Austen's life survive. But now, with the help of writers,
01:16experts, and actors, we can piece her story back together.
01:33Jane Austen was a writer teeming with new ideas, who revealed profound truths about the world she
01:40lived in. There is writing before Austen, and there is writing after Austen. That achievement is
01:46enormous. Jane Austen is the greatest comic novelist we have ever produced.
01:55At a time when women were supposed to know their place, Jane ripped up the rulebook.
02:02She's not just writing about romance. We should see her as a political novelist.
02:06She's telling young women, I see you and I hear you, which I think is such a modern thing.
02:14Austen's life is a tale of ambition, struggle, and tragedy. A genius cut down in her prime.
02:23She's really good at the light, the ironic, the beautifully observed, and then life drives
02:28a truck into that.
02:28This is the story of how a self-taught country girl from a Hampshire village defied the conventions
02:35of her day to become one of the greatest novelists who ever lived.
02:42Her voice is so strong, and funny, and perceptive, and her work's still being copied and stolen by people
02:49like me.
02:50She did what she wanted to do, and it makes me feel like I can always do what I want to do.
02:54Jane Austen has already written Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Northanger Abbey,
03:19but nobody outside her family has ever read them. If she's going to survive in her new life,
03:26she needs to get them published.
03:29Jane Austen wants to be famous, be known as a writer, and she's starting to feel impatient.
03:35She's been writing brilliantly since her teenage years. That's a decade of good writing in the bank.
03:40She wants the next thing to happen. She's ready for the next phase.
03:43In Northanger Abbey, Jane believes she's written a brilliant novel. Determined to find a publisher,
03:50she enlists the help of her older brother, Henry.
03:53One of the Austen brothers' star has been rising. Henry has set up a bank in London,
04:00now living with the incredibly hot wife, cousin Eliza.
04:06Back from the moment when she walks through the door, having lost her last husband.
04:10She gains Henry Austen.
04:17Henry and Eliza are living in London, so they're right in the heart of society.
04:22They have contacts in the publishing industry.
04:26Austen obviously has eyes on this as a route to a publishing deal.
04:31Henry and Eliza, they're just a force. They're like a power couple.
04:35I can imagine him saying to Jane, I'll get you this deal. Don't worry, leave it with me.
04:42Henry and Eliza's London is a city awash with the profits from empire and trade.
04:49It is an age of glittering fashion, conspicuous consumption, and the relentless pursuit of profit.
04:56At the heart of this new world, Henry uses his contacts to approach famous publisher Benjamin Crosby.
05:05Crosby agrees to buy the rights to Northanger Abbey and announces his plan to publish it in the press.
05:12To get your first publishing deal is a rush like no other.
05:20You just want to go out and scream in the streets that someone wants to publish you.
05:24She's thinking, this is just all going so well for me.
05:27This is just a whole new chapter in her life as a female author.
05:33But the celebrations are premature.
05:43Before her novel can go to print, Austen returns to Bath.
05:48Her father is ailing, and it falls to the women of the family to look after him.
05:57George Austen is in his 70s. He's an old man.
06:00He's had a long life of very hard work, indeed, and he is not in good health.
06:09George has always been Jane's biggest supporter, encouraging her to follow her passion at a time when many fathers would not.
06:18He is himself a scholar, he's a moralist, and he's someone who believes in her capacity.
06:24He's prepared to go out and advocate for her writing, encouraging the expansion of his daughter's mind.
06:34It shapes her world, it shapes her writing.
06:37While Austen cares for her elderly father, the idea for a new novel starts taking shape.
06:56The Watsons
06:57Mirroring her own life, the Watsons features an ageing clergyman whose daughters fear being left penniless when he dies.
07:10She's playing around with the idea of autofiction, of using her own biographical background to work its way into her writing.
07:20This is a work where the family in it are as close to her family as it gets in any of her writing.
07:32The father isn't well, just as Jane's father wasn't well.
07:36And if he dies, that's trouble, because there are too many daughters and not enough money.
07:39As fact and fiction collide, Jane's fears pour out onto the page.
07:49There's a particularly striking passage where an elder sister in the story delivers a stinging verdict on the fate of unmarried women later on in their lives.
08:02It's bad enough to be old.
08:26It's bad enough to be poor.
08:27Jane and Cassandra at this point are conscious of the fact that they don't have dowries.
08:39When their father dies, they will have nothing.
08:48But before Jane can finish her story, events overtake her.
08:57Her father becomes very ill.
09:01She doesn't have enough distance.
09:05And it's all a bit too real.
09:08It's all a bit too close for comfort.
09:12And she suddenly stops, writing the Watsons' manuscript.
09:16The final page of the Watsons ends almost in mid-sentence,
09:20with a scene where the others are playing cards downstairs and Emma goes upstairs and reads to her father.
09:25Who's ill, just as Jane's father is upstairs, ill.
09:34There's no distance between fact and fiction, which would allow you to escape into make-believe.
09:41It's all too real.
09:42We know that actually she was going to kill off the father in this work.
09:50One wonders if there is a sort of horrible sense for Jane Austen that, you know, art is somehow bringing on life.
09:58Austen spends this quiet, enclosed and very intense time with her dying father,
10:11sitting and reading to him as George gradually dies.
10:15She loves her father deeply.
10:31That moment of grief, I think, affected her profoundly.
10:36George Austen dies, aged 73.
10:40Bereft, Jane must break the news of her father's death to her brothers.
10:48He was seized on Saturday, with a return to the feverish complaint which he had been subject to for the last three years.
10:56To have seen him languishing long, struggling for hours, would have been dreadful.
10:59And, thank God, we were all spared from it.
11:02He did not suffer.
11:13He was mercifully spared from knowing that he was about to quit objects so beloved.
11:17And so fondly cherished as his wife and children ever were.
11:21Gosh, that writing is just so emotional.
11:35She's able to articulate something so universal in that moment.
11:41It's so thoughtfully written as to try and soften the blow for somebody else who wasn't there.
11:51She is losing the man who, up until this point, has been her great supporter as a writer, and now he is gone.
12:05A shadow of what is about to come is cast very, very darkly over that moment.
12:12The death of her father not only takes a devastating emotional toll on Jane Austen, it also leaves her financially vulnerable.
12:28Losing the father, who is still very traditionally the head of the family, has implications for the Austen women.
12:42It's now that the economic realities are really laid bare, that he hasn't prepared at all for their welfare.
13:00George Austen leaves his family with nothing.
13:05The women are now completely reliant on their brothers for support.
13:09The women are at the behest of the men in their lives who control the purse strings.
13:17They have no power to extricate themselves from the financial place that they find themselves.
13:23The Austen women are at the complete mercy of the brothers.
13:29Henry and Frank must decide how much help they can afford to give.
13:33So you see, my dear Frank, she will be in the receipt of a clear £450 per annum.
13:42She will be very comfortable.
13:45And as a smaller establishment will be as agreeable to them, they will not only suffer no personal deprivation,
13:52but will be able to pay occasional visits of health and pleasure to their friends.
13:58Very condescending, very patronising.
14:00How little empathy they have for what their sisters are living through.
14:05And I think that just says everything about the power imbalance between the brothers and sisters of his family.
14:17Jane Austen is expected to wear mourning dress for up to a year.
14:22For women who can't afford a new set of clothes, this means dyeing your current wardrobe black.
14:30For Jane, poverty might be bad, but to be laughed at is far worse.
14:36She writes to her sister.
14:38As I find on looking into my affairs, that instead of being very rich, I am likely to be very poor, I cannot afford more than ten shillings.
14:49It is as well, however, to prepare you for the sight of a sister sunk in poverty, but it may not overcome your spirits.
14:56As I find this really compelling, Jane and her sister Cassandra are forced into kind of a poverty, they're still doing better than the lower classes, they are in the gentry class, but comparatively they're in a really, really difficult situation.
15:17Without enough money to rent their own home, the Austen women have no choice but to lodge with their brother Frank, who serves in the Navy.
15:44Still mourning her father and forced to live in a dirty, crowded city, Jane has completely lost her moorings.
15:57The death of her father seems to make her writing dry up.
16:01She knows what she's really good at, the light, the ironic, the beautifully observed, the detailed, the fine, and then life drives a truck into that, and she can't write.
16:14With the Watsons still unfinished, Jane finds herself in the grip of every novelist's nightmare, writer's block.
16:22She probably thought her life was over.
16:24I can imagine that she would have sunk into a very deep depression.
16:29I can't write, what's my worth? Who am I when I can't do that?
16:33You're just like, well, there's nothing really to live for.
16:37She's got besieged with doubts and fears about, you know, how long can this go on.
16:42It must have really worn her down.
16:45It's as if she's as far away now from being a writer as she's ever been.
16:51She just feels adrift.
16:55That's really hard.
16:57These are probably the hardest years.
16:59She must now be thinking, what can I do?
17:13What are my options?
17:18And she knows her writing gives her the way to do this.
17:21I mean, otherwise she's going under.
17:23Jane's not only struggling to produce new work, she's also frustrated by her publisher, Benjamin Crosby.
17:34It's been six years since he bought the rights to Northanger Abbey, and it's still not in print.
17:41So Jane Austen sits down to pen a letter to Mr Crosby.
17:45There's no father to stand up for her now.
17:49There's no brother that is doing that.
17:51I'm almost feeling if I don't do it, nobody else will.
17:55In the spring of the year 1803, a manuscript novel in two volumes was sold to you and the purchase money, £10, received at the same time.
18:05Six years have since passed, and this work has never, to the best of my knowledge, appeared in print.
18:11It's a wonderfully passive-aggressive letter.
18:14This is a moment where we see Jane Austen really standing up for herself.
18:18Like, she's really had enough.
18:20I can only account for such an extraordinary circumstance by supposing the manuscript, by some carelessness, to have been lost.
18:28And if that was the case, I'm willing to supply you with another copy.
18:33She's almost incandescent with rage.
18:35I feel the rage in that letter.
18:36I feel it.
18:37What has happened to this novel?
18:38It was meant to come out years ago.
18:39I've been sitting here waiting.
18:40Should no notice be taken of this address, I shall feel myself at liberty to secure the publication of my work by applying elsewhere.
18:50Mrs Ashton Dennis, M-A-D.
18:55Silently seething.
18:57Signs herself with a pseudonym.
18:59Mrs Ashton Dennis, M-A-D.
19:02Mad.
19:02There's not much to laugh about in this period of Austen's life, but the fact that she signs what becomes known as the mad letter, because she's really mad about what's been happening, that can't be a coincidence.
19:21And what she gets back in return is inelegant, condescending, and lazy.
19:38Jane's publisher refuses to budge.
19:40Madam, it is true we purchased a manuscript and paid £10, but there was not any time stipulated for its publication.
19:54Neither are we bound to publish it.
19:56When Crosby bought Northanger Abbey, gothic fiction was all the rage.
20:03But nobody is interested in that anymore.
20:06If Jane wants the book back, she'll have to pay £10 for the rights.
20:12The reality is she doesn't have £10 to buy back her own manuscript, because they've had to live on it.
20:19It's been part of their income and what has sustained them.
20:22This is just the most crushing blow.
20:27Let down again.
20:28She's feeling humiliated.
20:29You could very easily just pack it in.
20:31You could really just go, what was I thinking, thinking I could be a writer.
20:36It must feel demeaning of her own situation and of her own lack of agency.
20:45But there is one ray of hope.
20:47As a boy, Jane Austen's brother Edward was adopted by wealthy relatives with no children of their own.
20:56He's now called Edward Knight.
21:01For the Austens, this was a chance to secure a better future for one of their sons.
21:12Edward still has a strong sense of loyalty to the Austen family.
21:17And in 1809, he's given the opportunity to help them, when a house on his estate falls vacant.
21:26Chawton Cottage.
21:27Edward, after years of not really supporting his sisters and his mother in the way that he perhaps ought to have done,
21:35finally steps up to the mark and reserves Chawton Cottage for them.
21:39Finally, with Chawton Cottage, they have a point of safety, they have a point of stability, they have somewhere where they can settle.
21:48The cottage is just 12 miles from Steventon, Jane's beloved childhood home.
21:57She hopes a return to her roots will re-energise her writing.
22:01It's a household which is constituted entirely of women,
22:06a republic in which the women can order their domestic space as they wish.
22:10That's very significant indeed.
22:15Chawton brings her stability, allows her a kind of rhythm to the day that works for her.
22:26And so they divvy up the chores so that the household works around her writing.
22:31They came up with a system whereby Jane would make the breakfast.
22:40But then she would be left to write for the morning and maybe some of the afternoon.
22:46I think it provides a space for her to think, a kind of rhythm that probably all novelists need actually,
22:53to just be able to sit down each day and produce something.
22:57Back in the countryside she loves so much, the words start to flow.
23:01She has this incredible creative surge.
23:05She gets her mojo back.
23:06She's writing again.
23:14Jane sets out to rework an old manuscript she first began 10 years earlier.
23:20A tale of two very different sisters.
23:23Sense and sensibility.
23:28All the experiences in her own life.
23:31are getting reworked into this manuscript.
23:36Eleanor and Marianne Dashwood are left nothing following the death of their father
23:41and must now find security through marriage.
23:44The story opens with a dying father being reassured by his son that he will look after the women in the family.
24:01A promise he will later break.
24:03Help them?
24:03Help them?
24:04What do you mean, help them?
24:06Dearest, I mean to give them £3,000.
24:08The interest will provide them with a little extra income.
24:12Such a gift will suddenly discharge my promise of my father.
24:16I have a question more than amply.
24:17One had rather, on such occasions, do too much than too little.
24:24Of course, he did not stipulate a particular sum.
24:27What's glorious is Austen uses the bad behaviour of her brothers.
24:32She takes it almost verbatim and plonks it down in the stark of sense and sensibility.
24:40It is better than passing with the £1,500 all at once.
24:43But if she should live longer than 15 years, she'll be completely taken in.
24:48People always live forever when there is an annuity to be paid them.
24:53It's some of her best writing.
24:55It's subtle but it's pointed.
24:56And I think she's really good at those kinds of, those interactions with people
25:00where you see viewpoints being changed very cleverly.
25:05Although to say the truth, I'm convinced within myself
25:07that your father had no idea if you're giving them money.
25:10They will have £500 a year amongst them as it needs.
25:13And what on earth could four women want for more than that?
25:16Their housekeeping will be nothing at all.
25:17They'll have no carriage, no horses, hardly any servants and will keep no company.
25:21Only conceive how comfortable they will be.
25:23The money has chipped away.
25:25And at the end of a couple of pages,
25:27they've literally got a packet of Smarties
25:29and an Aldi voucher.
25:33About to be made homeless,
25:34the two sisters respond very differently to their predicament.
25:41Eleanor is sense, Marianne, sensibility.
25:44Marianne, can you play something else?
25:47Mama has been weeping since breakfast.
25:49I meant something less mournful, dearest.
26:02What I love is the fullness of the female experience.
26:06Marianne is not at all girdled by responsibility.
26:11Eleanor shoulders everything.
26:12And so with these two characters,
26:15she's really placed two sides of her own personality in opposition.
26:20Who's going to rule?
26:21Is it the head or the heart?
26:23Mirroring Jane's own experiences,
26:26the Dashwood sisters are offered a cottage on the estate of a relative.
26:30These women, pressed together with no money,
26:34no space, no hope,
26:36and suddenly this thing appears.
26:39You must find a thing to do this way!
26:41In this sweeping adaptation,
26:44Marianne is saved by a heroic figure on horseback,
26:47John Willoughby.
26:49Pouring with rain, there's thick mists,
26:52and you hear a...
26:53His appearance on the scene is so highly charged.
27:01Don't be afraid.
27:02He's quite safe.
27:07Are you hurt?
27:09Only my ankle.
27:12May I have your permission to ascertain if there are any breaks?
27:18Oh!
27:23Jane Austen is not afraid to write a little bit of saucy steaminess.
27:30Hearts would have been at flutter.
27:33It is not broken.
27:35It's so sensual,
27:36and would have driven young girls absolutely wild.
27:39Can you put your arm about my neck?
27:44Allow me to escort you home!
27:47The first moment they have of connection
27:50is the ultimate physical connection
27:53of her body weight
27:55in his hands.
27:58That's pretty sexy.
28:00Did you see him?
28:02He expressed himself well, did he not?
28:04With great decorum and honour.
28:05And spirit and wit and feeling.
28:07And economy.
28:07Ten words at noon.
28:09And he is to come tomorrow.
28:11Marianne, you must change.
28:12You will catch a cold.
28:13What care I for cold when there is such a man?
28:15You will care very much when your nose swells up.
28:17You are right.
28:17Help me, Eleanor.
28:18In this scene,
28:20I think Jane's really interesting
28:22in the way that she flips that situation
28:25and she invites you to fall in love with this character.
28:28And then later we discover
28:29that he's really not so good as a person.
28:34Willoughby abandons Marianne.
28:40In this dramatic scene,
28:42she's left alone and heartbroken.
28:45Willoughby.
28:46Willoughby.
28:50Willoughby.
28:51You feel it so vividly.
28:53Austin's gift is to take us right inside
28:56their human dramas and their lived experience.
29:00This wedding scene may look like a happy ending,
29:10but both Marianne and Willoughby
29:13have had to give up on love
29:14and marry for money.
29:19This is not a fairytale ending.
29:21We see Austin at her most subtle
29:25because we're not entirely sure
29:27that she thinks this is a delightful ending either.
29:30It's something that Austin looks at all the time
29:32is what does it mean to settle?
29:33What does it mean to sort of be okay?
29:35Those compromises between money and love.
29:37To make her readers feel vividly what her characters are going through,
29:45Austin pioneers a groundbreaking technique.
29:48The first draft of Sense and Sensibility
29:51had been written in a simple style,
29:53typical of the period,
29:54taking the form of a series of letters
29:56written between the protagonists.
29:58It's a first-person exchange.
30:00So one person's saying,
30:01oh, I did this,
30:02and the other person's saying, I did this.
30:03What she does is merge this into a novel with a narrator,
30:06so a voice above
30:09that's describing the action and the characters within it.
30:13By fusing these two styles,
30:15Austin keeps the individual perspective of the characters
30:18but puts them in the voice of the narrator.
30:22In this passage,
30:23Austin begins by describing the action
30:25as though observing it.
30:28Eleanor and her mother rose up in amazement at their entrance.
30:31He apologised for his intrusion.
30:34But then she slips into the perspective of Eleanor's mother
30:37and her emotional response to the action.
30:41Had he been even old, ugly, and vulgar,
30:45the gratitude and kindness of Mrs. Dashwood
30:49would have been secured by any act of attention to her child.
30:54But the influence of youth
30:56beauty and elegance
30:58gave an interest to the action
31:01which came home to her feelings.
31:05I suppose we could call a third-person intimate.
31:10She can give you as the reader a sense
31:12that you're actually in the room.
31:15So that there is a fourth or fifth person in that room
31:19who is the reader,
31:20who's able to see each moment unfolding
31:23in a way the characters themselves don't quite.
31:26But the scene then is established,
31:28not as a drama between the characters,
31:30but as a drama between the reader and the page.
31:34This is what she's refining.
31:37Austen's technique will become known as free indirect speech
31:41and it will change how novels are written to this day.
31:44Like all the great advances,
31:46it's a huge change that it's so obvious
31:50that now we can't imagine not having this.
31:53This is the way that literature is now written
31:55and, of course, Austen pioneered that technique.
31:58Sense and Sensibility is Austen's third novel,
32:14but as yet, none have been published.
32:19Determined to finally get into print,
32:21she returns to London and seeks out her brother Henry.
32:25Henry, he needs someone he can trust.
32:28He has to use people
32:30with whom he has a certain amount of leverage.
32:32And the person he turns to is Thomas Edgerton.
32:35Henry knows Thomas Edgerton from his time in the militia.
32:42Thomas Edgerton publishes books
32:44about military manoeuvres and guns and strategies.
32:47It's highly improbable that he'll take on a book
32:51about two teenage girls and their love travails.
32:55And yet, there it lands.
32:56The question is, will they be able to strike a deal?
33:01This is a crucial moment for Jane.
33:03She's been planning this moment all her life.
33:10Ultimately, it was Henry's connection with Edgerton.
33:13But Eliza, just behind the scenes,
33:17played just quite a silent but encouraging part in,
33:20this is really important.
33:21We really need this to happen.
33:23We really need to get her published.
33:24Thomas Edgerton drives a hard bargain.
33:29There's evidence that Henry and Eliza
33:32advanced money to Thomas Edgerton
33:35to persuade Edgerton to publish Sense and Sensibility.
33:41Finally, a deal is struck.
33:43But Jane knows from experience
33:52that getting a contract is only the first step.
33:56She needs to make sure the book gets into print.
34:00Austin is not going to leave anything to chance this time.
34:03She upsticks and moves in with Henry and Eliza in London
34:08and bases herself with the manuscript.
34:22She takes charge of the edits
34:25and the final proofs of the manuscript.
34:27So she's actually there kind of almost guarding it
34:29to make sure that nothing goes wrong.
34:31Austin has been waiting for this moment
34:55for over 17 years.
34:58Finally, at the age of 35,
35:00she is a published author.
35:03To actually be given the first copy
35:06of your first printed book
35:08felt quite euphoric.
35:11Now she knows she's a successful writer.
35:13She's a successful published writer.
35:15Not in her mind anymore.
35:16Not on someone else's desk.
35:18In her hands, a real object in this world.
35:21All of the delays, the rejections, the obstacles,
35:24all of it, she's finally here.
35:25Well, that feels amazing.
35:32That feels really good.
35:33And now that her book is out in the world,
35:47Jane is about to discover she has readers in high places.
35:52No less than a prince.
35:53The prince regent now sits on the throne
35:59in place of his ailing father, George III.
36:02He is the unlikely fashion icon of this indulgent age.
36:05He celebrates the start of his regency
36:09with a banquet so extravagant
36:11the guests eat off a gold dinner service
36:14costing the equivalent of five and a half million pounds today.
36:19The prince regent reigns over a culture
36:21of carnal and culinary excess,
36:24where waistlines expand and necklines plummet.
36:27For those with the wealth to enjoy it,
36:31it is an exciting and glittering time,
36:34where art, music and literature all flourish.
36:38For Jane, this just absolutely blows things out of the water
36:42because if you've got the prince regent,
36:44yes, a notoriously messy character,
36:46but nevertheless, the most trendy gentleman around,
36:49if he is endorsing your book,
36:51then you officially have made it.
36:54The ultimate celebrity reader, Prince Regent,
36:57absolutely adores it, falls in love with it,
36:59and the public fall in love with it as well.
37:03Boosted by the royal endorsement,
37:05Sense and Sensibility wins plaudits from the critics.
37:09The characters are naturally drawn
37:12and judiciously supported.
37:14It reflects honour on the writer,
37:17who displays much knowledge of character
37:19and very happily blends a great deal of good sense
37:23with the lighter matter of the piece.
37:25Jane sells nearly 1,000 copies of the first edition,
37:36double the usual print run.
37:39She makes £140,
37:42four times what an average worker earns in a year.
37:45Now, Jane Austen has been propelled to the very heart,
37:53indeed, the very pinnacle of London society.
37:58I mean, this is so exciting.
38:01Come on!
38:01My dear Cassandra,
38:05I have so many little matters to tell you of
38:08that I cannot wait any longer
38:10before I begin to put them down.
38:12I am getting very extravagant
38:14and spending all my money.
38:21Naturally, her publisher, Edgerton,
38:23is very, very keen to see what else she's got.
38:26Here you go.
38:29Bosh, Pride and Prejudice.
38:31And this time round, it's Austen who's calling the shots.
38:35She demands payment up front
38:37and pockets over ten times more than her first book.
38:41The first edition soon sells out
38:43and a second print run is ordered.
38:45It is the novel everybody's talking about.
38:47It is the novel of the day.
38:49Now, she has two incredibly successful books behind her.
38:55She's basking in the glory.
38:59We see this whole new side of her.
39:03We drank tea again yesterday with the Tilsons
39:07and met the Smiths.
39:09I find all these little parties very pleasant.
39:12Jane Austen discovers a whole new side of herself.
39:15She loves going to the plays.
39:17She's going to parties.
39:20She's a city girl.
39:23I feel like she's living for the first time.
39:26Above 80 people are invited for next Tuesday evening
39:28and there is to be some very good music.
39:32She's having so much fun.
39:35You feel this great sense of achievement
39:36when you're young
39:38and when you are good at something
39:40and you feel passion
39:41and you feel excitement
39:42and you know that you have captured the world around you.
39:45You think that you can do anything.
39:48But as Jane revels in her new life
39:50at the heart of London society
39:52she also turns her writer's eye
39:56on some of the bleaker aspects of the capital.
40:00Austen continues to scan her surroundings
40:04and she witnesses up close
40:09some of the seedier aspects of London life
40:12and some of the people
40:14who are definitely not benefiting
40:15from all this wealth.
40:18While the rich indulge themselves
40:20the poor are crowded into urban slums
40:23to feed the demands of the new factories.
40:27Children as young as four work at the machines.
40:30disease and malnutrition run rife.
40:40She's looking at the world now as a whole
40:42and she's like
40:43oh these things aren't right.
40:45In London
41:00Jane is confronted
41:01by extreme social inequality.
41:04One injustice in particular
41:06stands out.
41:09Britain's booming economy
41:10is powered by the products of slavery.
41:15Cotton, sugar and tobacco
41:16all rely on slave labour
41:18and this demand has fuelled
41:20an international trade
41:21in human life.
41:25Guns and alcohol go to Africa.
41:27Enslaved people are transported
41:29to the Americas
41:30and the raw materials they produce
41:32are brought back to Europe.
41:34The country is benefiting
41:37from a massive influx of wealth.
41:40Money is flooding in
41:41from the slave plantations
41:42as well as from trade networks in Asia.
41:45It's transformed British society
41:47from the bottom up.
41:51This inhumanity has sparked
41:53a growing campaign
41:54to abolish slavery
41:55and stand up to the vested interests
41:58protecting it.
41:59We have to remember
42:01at this point
42:02that Jane Austen
42:03is no stranger
42:04to stories
42:05stories quite close to hand
42:07of slavery.
42:09Her father George Austen
42:10had been a trustee
42:12of a fund
42:13based on
42:14a sugar plantation
42:15in Antigua.
42:16So there was
42:17family involvement
42:18with the sugar plantations
42:20of the Caribbean
42:21and with chattel slavery.
42:25But we also know
42:27that Austen is inspired
42:29by the abolitionist movement.
42:32She's a particularly keen fan
42:34of the greatest
42:35of the abolitionist organizers,
42:38Thomas Clarkson.
42:39She says that he is
42:40a sort of hero to her
42:42at this point.
42:43There are other sources as well.
42:44Her brother Frank
42:45is writing to her
42:47with tales of his disgust
42:50at witnessing chattel slavery
42:51when he was sailing
42:53around the Atlantic.
42:54It's there in her family.
42:56It's there in her reading.
42:57This is a live issue
42:58for her.
43:02It feels like now
43:03is the time
43:04to talk about
43:05not just
43:06the small world
43:07around her
43:08but the politics
43:08of the world
43:09that she sees.
43:10She understands
43:10that she has a voice
43:12and she's going
43:13to use it.
43:14She's pushing herself.
43:15She's testing
43:16the boundaries.
43:18What can she do?
43:21She thinks,
43:22I'll do something
43:22really different.
43:23It's going to be
43:23quite serious.
43:24There aren't going to be
43:25quite so many jokes.
43:26And there's going to be shadows.
43:28This will be a book
43:29of shadows.
43:30And the shadow
43:30is the slave trade.
43:33The shadow is
43:33women's oppression,
43:35women being silenced.
43:37Austen sets about writing
43:47her most challenging work
43:49to date.
43:50A novel about an impoverished girl
43:52who comes face to face
43:54with prejudice
43:54when she is sent to live
43:55with wealthy relations
43:57on an estate called
43:58Mansfield Park.
44:00Mansfield Park has been built
44:02on the spoils
44:02of the slave trade.
44:03The head of the house
44:04has plantations
44:06and Antigua.
44:07This is a novel
44:08of a whole different magnitude
44:10to the bright and sparkling
44:12Pride and Prejudice.
44:14Calling the house
44:15Mansfield Park
44:16is deliberately ironic.
44:18Mansfield,
44:19to the people of that time,
44:22means Lord Mansfield,
44:24one of the foremost judges
44:26of his time.
44:28Two of his judgments
44:29played a large part
44:30in the movement
44:32that was beginning
44:33to recognize
44:35that slavery
44:36was not acceptable.
44:38And he says
44:39that in England
44:40we do not have slaves.
44:43So while the house
44:44has been built on slavery,
44:46the name Mansfield
44:47is associated
44:48with the abolition movement
44:49that opposes it.
44:55Jane Austen's being
44:57very politically overt
44:58by invoking Mansfield.
45:00That's a huge klaxon.
45:01That's a ginormous
45:02flashing red light
45:04going slavery,
45:05slavery, slavery.
45:06That's what it says
45:07to a contemporary audience
45:09right there
45:10in the title.
45:12There's something
45:13very, very dark
45:14and unsettling
45:15about this novel
45:16at the heart of it.
45:18It's the only one
45:20of her novels
45:20where she gives us
45:22the background
45:22to the heroine.
45:23Annie, he's here.
45:26Austen explores inequality
45:28through the eyes
45:28of an outsider
45:29thrust into a world
45:31of wealth.
45:31Give my regards
45:32to my sisters.
45:33Yes, Mama.
45:33And you will write
45:34to tell me when I'm
45:35to return.
45:35Austen shows us
45:36the childhood
45:37and Fanny Price
45:39being uprooted
45:40from the home
45:41that she's known
45:42going into Mansfield Park.
45:44Now, let us have
45:44a look at you.
45:48Well, I'm sure
45:49you have other qualities.
45:50and these terrible,
45:52really affecting scenes
45:54are really powerful.
45:57Dear Susie,
45:58it seems that Mother
46:00has given me away.
46:01This child,
46:02completely bereft,
46:04crying and sobbing.
46:06Fanny Price grows up
46:07with her extended family
46:09but is never treated
46:10as an equal.
46:11So serious.
46:13We see her constantly
46:14belittled
46:15and kept firmly
46:16in her place.
46:17What do you think,
46:18Miss Price?
46:20I'm sorry to disappoint,
46:21Mr. Crawford,
46:22but I do not have
46:23a ready opinion.
46:24I suspect you're almost
46:25entirely composed
46:26of ready opinions
46:27not shared.
46:28Fanny?
46:30Yes, Aunt Norris?
46:31What are you doing here?
46:34I beg your pardon?
46:35You are aware, surely,
46:36that the sewing wasn't
46:36cleared away
46:37from yesterday afternoon.
46:38Oh.
46:39Yes, you're quite right.
46:40It wasn't, I'll learn.
46:42She's humiliated.
46:44I'll see you too immediately.
46:45The fact that Fanny
46:49doesn't say a great deal
46:51leaves the reader
46:53with the anger.
46:54The frustration
46:55the reader feels
46:56is angered
46:58on her behalf
46:59and that's a much,
47:01a much more powerful
47:02way of, um,
47:04of communicating
47:05what Jane Austen
47:06wanted the reader
47:07to feel.
47:09Part of Austen's genius
47:10is structuring a novel
47:12so the reader knows
47:13that something is going on
47:15as undercurrent
47:16as something barely mentioned
47:17is actually dominant
47:19but you as the reader
47:21are the only one
47:21to realise this.
47:23At the heart
47:24of Mansfield Park
47:26there's a really
47:27important moment
47:28when the very oppressed
47:30and silenced heroine
47:32makes this sort of shocking
47:34observation.
47:36Do you tell us more
47:37about the Negroes, dear?
47:39Yes, the mulattoes
47:40are in general
47:41well-shaped
47:41and the women
47:42especially well-featured.
47:44I have one
47:44so easy and graceful
47:46in her movements.
47:48In this adaptation,
47:49Fanny Price
47:50confronts her uncle
47:50in a highly charged scene.
47:52Fanny, the person
47:54who's always been quiet
47:55who's overlooked
47:56who's talked over
47:57who's pushed in the corner
47:58she has the temerity
47:59to ask Sir Thomas
48:01about the slave trade.
48:03Anyway, I've got a mind
48:03to bring one of them
48:04back with me next trip
48:05to work here
48:05as a domestic.
48:06Correct me if I am an error,
48:08Sir Thomas
48:08but I've read, sir,
48:09that if you were to bring
48:10one of the slaves
48:10back to England
48:11there would be some argument
48:12as to whether or not
48:13they should be freed here.
48:18If I'm not mistaken.
48:19That silence
48:22is very deafening
48:23in the novel.
48:24It almost mirrors
48:25conversations
48:25that we have now
48:27or I have now
48:28around slavery.
48:31No one really wants
48:32to listen,
48:33no one really wants
48:33to engage in it
48:35and I think it's
48:38kind of devastating
48:40because it's easier
48:41to turn a blind eye
48:42because you are
48:43I guess complicit in it
48:45or you benefit from it
48:48in some way.
48:49I think there's one way
48:50we can read her
48:50you see
48:51as a political novelist
48:52as someone who's
48:53constantly alert
48:54not merely
48:55to the day-to-day things
48:56but to the large questions
48:58of class
48:59and movement in England
49:00where money comes from
49:01and that she can find
49:03ways of describing this
49:05or dramatising it
49:06which are not obvious.
49:08That we can read this novel
49:09as being a private novel
49:11about private life
49:12if we want
49:12but I think at our peril
49:14because large questions
49:15are coming into it.
49:16it's about a really
49:18really broad spectrum
49:19of what slavery means
49:21and about people
49:22as commodities
49:23and treating people
49:26badly.
49:29Austin ultimately
49:30shows us the consequences
49:32when those without power
49:33try to stand up
49:34for themselves.
49:37Fanny is banished
49:38from Mansfield Park
49:39back to poverty.
49:40It's one of the
49:42great set pieces
49:43in her novel.
49:45We see Fanny Price's
49:46awful home
49:47in Fort Smith
49:48just awful
49:49and she realises
49:49that her idea
49:51of home
49:51that had been so potent
49:52is again overturned.
49:54She's re-traumatised.
49:59Mother!
50:01Fanny!
50:01Come, come in.
50:05I must be exhausted
50:07from your journey.
50:09It's surprisingly short, really.
50:12Look at you.
50:13So...
50:15Betsy, get farther up.
50:19Come in.
50:20Fanny's homecoming
50:21is both deeply moving
50:22and deliberately
50:24unsentimental.
50:26So, did you have
50:27a tiring journey?
50:27You must be exhausted.
50:28Betsy!
50:30I got him up yesterday.
50:32I...
50:32This scene
50:36is a really
50:37very realist
50:39sense of poverty.
50:41Not with disgust,
50:42just really
50:42straight up reported.
50:46Her eyes could only
50:47wander to the table
50:48cut and notched
50:49by her brothers.
50:50The cups and saucers
50:51wiped with streaks.
50:53The milk,
50:53a mixture of motes
50:54floating in thin blue
50:56and the bread and butter
50:57growing every minute
50:58more green.
50:58greasy than even
51:00Rebecca's hands
51:00had first produced it.
51:03It's quite striking
51:05in this description
51:06of a small,
51:06humble family space.
51:08It's just a straight-up
51:09telling of
51:10this is how
51:11this family lives,
51:13almost moving
51:13in the direction
51:14of Hardy or Dickens.
51:15We see an author
51:17growing, I think.
51:19This depiction
51:19of chaotic,
51:20working-class life
51:22is a departure
51:22from the genteel
51:23poverty of Austin's
51:25previous stories.
51:26It is social realism.
51:28and there's this
51:29abrasion that she's
51:30writing about
51:30that doesn't exist
51:32in the other novels.
51:36There's nobody else
51:37writing this kind
51:37of prose at this time
51:39and writing these
51:39kinds of scenes.
51:43It feels very contemporary.
51:44You know,
51:44she's already
51:45a great novelist.
51:45She's on the cusp
51:46of becoming
51:47an absolute genius novelist,
51:49I think,
51:49of pushing all the boundaries.
51:51Jane is about to push
51:53even further
51:54into uncharted
51:55creative territory.
51:59But she will have
52:00to do it alone.
52:04Her sister-in-law,
52:06Eliza,
52:06is dying.
52:09Eliza has been
52:10this force of nature
52:12in Jane's world,
52:14different from all
52:15the other women
52:16she knows,
52:17more independent,
52:17more exotic,
52:20more glamorous.
52:21But she has cancer.
52:25The person that Eliza
52:27wants to nurse her
52:28in this final,
52:29agonisingly painful
52:30battle with breast cancer
52:32is Jane Austen.
52:35Her calming,
52:36soothing presence
52:38is required
52:39in her final hours.
52:40Once more,
52:45here she is
52:46at the deathbed
52:46of someone
52:47that's inspired
52:48and trusted her
52:50and encouraged her.
52:51An early figure
52:53of inspiration
52:54and of female solidarity.
53:01It's another
53:02body blow for Austen.
53:07Eliza dies
53:08on the 25th of April,
53:091813,
53:11with Jane
53:12at her bedside.
53:17Jane has lost
53:18a close friend
53:19and her loudest
53:20literary cheerleader
53:21just at the moment
53:23in her career
53:23when she needs her most.
53:28In 1814,
53:30Mansfield Park,
53:31Austen's most political work,
53:33is published.
53:34It's obviously a novel
53:35that she feels
53:36immensely proud of.
53:38she feels its weight,
53:40she feels its gravity
53:41as a fiction.
53:43The thought of what
53:43her readers are going
53:44to feel and think
53:46when they respond
53:47to Mansfield Park.
53:48And there's so much
53:49to respond to
53:50in that novel.
53:52Thanks to the popularity
53:53of her previous books,
53:55the first print run
53:56sells out.
53:57But her readers
53:58are left unimpressed.
53:59and worse still,
54:01there's a deafening silence
54:03from the critics.
54:04Even all these years later,
54:06there are still only some of us
54:07who love Mansfield Park
54:09and critics just ignore the book.
54:13Jane gets no critical feedback,
54:17no reviews,
54:18no critical acclaim,
54:19nothing at all.
54:20A wonderful, terrible silence.
54:21And in an echo of what,
54:25you know,
54:25Fanny Price not having a voice,
54:28the book doesn't have a voice,
54:30no one hears it.
54:31You create something,
54:33a piece of art,
54:35a work of art,
54:36and if nobody comments on it
54:37or if there's no feedback about it,
54:39it is as though
54:40you are invisible,
54:42you don't exist.
54:43Aged 39,
54:49Austen has published
54:50three novels
54:51and earned enough
54:52to live independently
54:53as an author.
54:55But as she's attempted
54:56to tackle bigger themes
54:58and gain respect
54:59as an artist of substance,
55:01the critics have ignored her.
55:06Jane realises that
55:07if she wants to pose
55:08big questions
55:09and challenge social convention,
55:12she must do it
55:12through a more engaging
55:13and entertaining character.
55:16She will create
55:17a new heroine
55:18and she will call her
55:19Emma.
55:27Jane is facing homelessness.
55:32She needs profits.
55:34She needs to make
55:35as much money
55:36as she possibly can.
55:38And then she is cut down
55:41at the very peak
55:43of her powers.
55:44She needs to be
55:44at the very peak
55:46of her powers.
Be the first to comment