Sexuality and Poverty in Austen Novels

My critique of three essays about Jane Austen's work

For the Jane Austen seminar I was part of at the Louisiana Scholars’ College, I wrote this essay critiquing three essays on the topic of sexuality, female poverty, and sexual politics in the novels of Jane Austen. These three essays were written respectively by Jan S. Fergus, Maaja Stewart, and Claudia Johnson.

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood: https://www.pexels.com/photo/closeup-photo-of-pride-and-prejudice-book-page-1480335/

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Jan Fergus makes excellent points about sexuality in Austen’s novels.¹ Sexuality, it is true, is very much in the text—or rather, subtext. It is not always as explicit as Willoughby’s seduction of young Eliza, in Sense & Sensibility; or Wickham’s seduction (possible rape, let’s face it) of the women in Meryton, in Pride & Prejudice. Mary Crawford’s talk of “rears and vices” is very explicit in Mansfield Park; and there are obvious references to sexual intercourse in numerous Austen passages about female “condition” and “lying in.” But most of Austen’s works are more sexy than sexual, as they imply sexual chemistry rather than explicit sexual behavior. Mr. Knightley “loves to look” at Emma, calling her “face and figure” very “pleasing.” He receives pleasures of a certain kind from looking at her.

Maaja Stewart addresses the particular issues common in female poverty.² Poverty is a huge factor in all of Austen’s works, but in Emma it is addressed in novel ways. We observe the ease by which the eponymous protagonist romanticizes poverty. She sees the romantic possibilities between Harriet and Elton in their charitable visits to cottagers. She also romanticizes the gypsy episode for the sake of Harriet and Frank Churchill. She and her father both romanticize “poor Miss Taylor” even though marriage gives her a “house of her own” to keep. But Emma is very realist about poverty as it relates to the Bateses and Jane Fairfax. She even calls the situation of Miss Bates “contemptible” because that lady is both spinster and poor. Although she dislikes Jane Fairfax, she pities her ambitions as a governess throughout the novel and finally asserts that no salary is too high if the charge is worth half the trouble that Emma was to Miss Taylor. Austen presents marriage as the solution to these women’s problems. Jane Fairfax’s marriage to Frank secured a comfortable (indeed, quite a luxurious) living to herself as well as to her aunt and grandmother. Marriage saved Miss Taylor from growing old at Mr. Woodhouse’s fireside. Marriage gave Harriet a cover for the “stain of illegitimacy.” Marriage finally absolved Emma from the willful independence, which some find so disgusting in females even in modern times. It is true that Emma’s tendency to “think too well of herself” was only considered as a fault because she was a woman. Self-pride is allowable in a man of consequence. “He has a right to be proud,” said Charlotte Lucas of Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. Emma, on the other hand, had to be taught to be more properly female—humble and submissive to the patriarchy.

Claudia Johnson³ takes the gloves off in her criticism of misogynistic views of Emma Woodhouse. She challenges the idea that Emma is in error for being strong, powerful, and independent. I agree with the entire article by Johnson and will go even further to say that a powerful and independent single woman is today regarded with suspicion if not outright disgust. Such a woman must have something wrong with her, and a woman can further be problematic, even if married, for being childless. Married women are pressured, and often pressure themselves, to procreate; they often feel “empty” if unable to get pregnant or sustain a pregnancy. But this is not as bad as a woman who never marries, for such a woman as that must be defective: she is often said to be “incapable” of “getting a man,” and she is held responsible for being unattractive to men in general. The only entirely blameless woman is the married mother.

Emma Woodhouse is portrayed from the beginning of the novel as very attractive to men—beautiful, rich, and certainly capable of “getting” herself a husband. She had an offer from Mr. Elton, and even Frank Churchill was far from disgusted by his parents’ desire for him to marry Miss Woodhouse. Emma’s determination through most of the novel to remain single is regarded by some critics as willful arrogance; again, she assumes quality forgivable in men, but unforgivably contemptible in women. No one would have been suspicious of Frank Churchill if he had remained single throughout his life; it would have been merely an interesting and quaint characteristic, and it quite possibly would have made him more attractive to society in general. But, say so many, a woman like…the author herself…!

[That was more or less the end of the essay as it was written and graded in 2015. I have some additional thoughts, however.]

Why did Jane Austen never marry, is a question so often asked. The sad spinster, the old witch who lives alone and is frightening to the neighborhood children, is held up as a warning to young women—beware of J.D. Vance’s childless cat lady! It never seems to occur to those who ask the question that a woman might prefer the risk of remaining single over even the material comforts and societal validation that marriage can bring. Jane Austen wanted to write, and writing requires a writer to have space. Virginia Woolf called it “a room of her own”—a space where a woman can breathe, care, and think for herself. For all the problems that marriage might ameliorate, it creates other ones, and in Jane Austen’s time, marriage almost always guaranteed multiple pregnancies, and the thing about pregnancies is that they produce children who must be nursed, nurtured, and cared for. There is only so much time in a day for kissing injured knees, cooking, and clean—let alone writing novels! Instead of questioning why she did not marry, we might be try gratitude, for if Jane Austen had become somebody’s wife, there is no telling what novels might never have been begun, or finished, or conceived at all!

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NOTES

1. The Jan Fergus essay is titled, “Sex and Social Life in Jane Austen’s Novels.” It is published in Jane Austen in a Social Context, edited by David Monaghan. (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 1981), 66-85. https://archive.org/details/janeausteninsoci0000unse.

2. Maaja A. Stewart: Domestic Realities and Imperial Fictions: Jane Austen’s Novels in Eighteenth-Century Contexts. University of Georgia Press, 1993.

3. Claudia Johnson wrote Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel. University of Chicago Press, 1988. This essay mostly addresses chapter six: Emma: “Woman, Lovely Woman Reigns Alone”.