Jane Austen’s Enduring Hope

This week marks the 210th anniversary of the publication of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Although she never achieved massive celebrity in her own life, the book’s 1813 publication marked a period of literary success for Austen. The notoriety she gained bloomed over the subsequent two centuries into extraordinary devotion from readers across six continents. Her works have been remade countless times for film and television, and she remains perhaps the most revered female British writer in history.

Yet her literary success did not always come with personal happiness, nor did it come with universal approbation. Austen’s books earned the ire of several American authors, most notably Mark Twain.

In an unpublished and unfinished work simply entitled “Jane Austen,” Twain said that whenever he read Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility, he pictured himself feeling distinctly out of place in the gentrified and proper world of Austen’s fictional parlors. “I complained that like a barkeeper entering the Kingdom of Heaven. I mean, I feel as he would probably feel…” Twain’s sense of alienation from Austen was not, he argued, because he considered himself better than the characters of the novels. Instead, Twain stated quite bluntly that Austen “makes me detest all her people, without reserve.” His dislike for Austen’s novels was so strong that he told a friend “I have to stop every time I begin…Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shinbone.”

Twain, according to his friend William Dean Howell, abhorred Austen, which prompted one of the two men’s primary literary disagreements. “He once said to me, I suppose after [Twain] had been reading some of my unsparing praise of her — I am always praising her, ‘You seem to think that woman could write.”’

Austen was not as well-known in the United States or beloved in the first half of the 19th century as other British writers such as Sir Walter Scott. In 1853, Boston’s North American Review reminded its readers that “in this country” Austen’s “writings have not acquired popularity.” Not only was she not popular, her books were also considered inferior to those of William Makepeace Thackeray or Henry Fielding, authors that by the beginning of the 21st century were less well known than Austen, particularly in the United States.

Yet, at least one American recognized Austen’s talents. Sarah Josepha Hale, one of the United States’ first influential woman magazine editors, said Austen’s novels had great charm and that Sir Walter Scott had noted their quality. Hale reprinted a selection from Northanger Abby, which she called “simple in plot” while nonetheless noting that the heroine, Catherine Morland, was an excellent protagonist because she was natural and relatable.

Varying academic and scholarly opinions on Austen have not detracted from her popularity among the reading public. The background and settings that made her so annoying to Mark Twain captured the imaginations of other readers. Perhaps most importantly, they captured the imagination of Austen herself.

Austen biographer Carol Shields notes that Pride and Prejudice was written years before its 1813 publication, most likely in 1797. Family drama, the death of a close friend, and the mysterious and probable loss of a passionate romance made the end of 1796 and much of 1797 one of the most difficult seasons in Austen’s life.

Nearing 22 years old, Austen realized that her own window for marriage in Georgian Britain was closing. Despite this, Shields notes Austen “had not given up her own delight in balls and flirtations” even though her romantic dreams were growing dimmer. In 1795, Austen had fallen in love with an Irish émigré, Tom Lefroy (later the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland). The romance — the basis of the film Becoming Jane starring Anne Hathaway and James McAvoy — was for a long time based on circumstantial evidence and speculation. In 2021, however, Colleen Sheehan noted in “The Wall Street Journal” that Austen playfully (and secretly) placed Lefroy’s name in Emma while Lefroy named his eldest daughter Jane. Ultimately, the romance appears to have ended in disappointment for Jane, and perhaps also for Lefroy.

Pride and Prejudice wasn’t written merely as a novel of manners to bore Mark Twain. It also wasn’t based on romantic frivolity (who could read about Lydia and Kitty Bennet and find anything redeeming about frivolity?). It was written as a tribute to what might be. Austen’s novel was her offering to those who would come after her. Although she did not experience the romantic fulfillment that Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy did in her novel, she gave her story to future generations of men and women who believed that love might still be real and attainable. Two hundred years later, people in all seasons of life still read Pride and Prejudice not merely because it’s about love, but because it’s about hope.

Miles Smith IV is an associate professor of history at Hillsdale College.