Brit Lit Book Club

Jane Austen - The Quiet Revolutionary

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The Brit Lit Book Club - Episode 3: Jane Austen - The Quiet Revolutionary

Discover the real Jane Austen in this deep dive into British literature's most beloved author. Join host Vanessa as she explores the life, works, and revolutionary impact of Jane Austen beyond the costume dramas and romantic comedies.

What You'll Learn:

  • Jane Austen's life in Regency England and Georgian society
  • Why Austen was one of the most subversive writers in English literature
  • The historical context of the Napoleonic Wars and women's rights in the 1800s
  • How Jane Austen revolutionized the novel and changed literature forever
  • Expert book recommendations for Austen fans and British lit lovers

Perfect for fans of Pride and Prejudice, classic literature, literary history, and anyone who loves literary analysis and book discussions. Whether you're a longtime Austen devotee or discovering her work for the first time, this episode reveals the sharp social critic behind the romance.

Featuring: Personal stories from The Book Club Tour's recent visit to Jane Austen's Bath, Chawton House, and Winchester Cathedral, plus expert recommendations for understanding Austen's world.

Ideal for: Book club members, classic literature enthusiasts, British history buffs, women's literature fans, literary travelers, and anyone interested in 19th century England, Regency romance, feminist literature, and the greatest English authors of all time.

Visit thebookclubtour.com to join literary tours to England and Scotland, and use code BRITLIT for $300 off your booking.

Love this podcast? Imagine walking the Yorkshire moors where the Brontës found inspiration, visiting Jane Austen's writing desk at Chawton, and exploring Shakespeare's birthplace with fellow book lovers. We do all this and more on The Book Club Tour!

Follow along with our adventures, or join us!

🌐 Explore our tours: thebookclubtour.com
📸 Instagram: @thebookclubtour
👥 Facebook: @thebookclubtour

Vanessa:

Welcome back to the Brit Lit Book Club. I'm your host Vanessa, and I'm absolutely delighted you've joined me for another literary adventure. Before we dive in, grab yourself a cup of tea. I'm enjoying some hot peppermint tea this afternoon, and there's something wonderfully fitting about sipping a proper cup of tea while we discuss perhaps the most quintessentially English author of all time: Jane Austen.

Vanessa:

I just got home from running the book club tour in England where our group spent a week in Bath learning about Jane's life through talks, workshops, and tours. We did a Regency dance workshop, visited her last home in Chawton, and saw her writing desk. We visited her final resting place in Winchester. And the city of Winchester actually just installed a beautiful Jane Austen sculpture near the cathedral to commemorate her 250th birthday. It was a really special time to be in England, seeing everyone celebrating this incredible female writer who is still making such a big impact today. If you want to see pictures and videos from our tour, you can find us on Facebook or Instagram at @TheBookClubTour We've got our British Book Club Tour coming up in July and in June, we're going to Scotland for the first time.

Vanessa:

So far in this podcast, we've journeyed through Shakespeare's mysterious life and explored the tragic world of Romeo and Juliet, where young love crashed against rigid social expectations. Today we're moving forward a few hundred years to meet a woman who looked at those same social constraints and decided to do something revolutionary: she laughed at them.

Vanessa:

Jane Austen, you think you know her, don't you? The author of Proper Drawing Room Romances where well-bred young ladies worry about marriage and manners. The writer of stories where the biggest drama is whether Mr. Darcy will propose or if Elizabeth will accept him.

Vanessa:

But here's what I want you to consider today: Jane Austen was one of the most subversive writers in English literature. She was a woman who never married, writing about marriage, a person with no money, writing about money, someone with no political power, writing some of the sharpest satire of her era.

Vanessa:

She lived through some of the most turbulent times in British history: the Napoleonic Wars, the American Revolution, massive social and economic upheaval.

Vanessa:

And she wrote novels that on the surface seemed to ignore all of that chaos, but dig deeper and you'll find that she was quietly revolutionizing, not just the novel as an art form, but our entire understanding of women money, class, and power. So let's step into Georgian and England and meet the real Jane Austen, not the twee romantic we sometimes imagine, but a razor sharpp social critic, who changed literature forever, one witty observation at a time.

Vanessa:

Jane Austen was born on December 1775 in the Hampshire Village of Steventon. Now before you start picturing rolling Green Hills in peaceful country life, let me set the scene properly.

Vanessa:

(A quick note on terminology: you'll hear me use Georgian and Regency somewhat interchangeably when discussing Jane Austen's world. The Georgian era spans from 1714 to 1830, the reigns of the various King Georges The Regency is a specific slice inside of that. From 1811 to 1820, when the Prince of Wales ruled as regent because George II had gone mad. Austen wrote her major novels during the Regency, but Regency has become shorthand for the entire cultural moment of roughly 1795 to 1820. That world of empire waisted dresses, country house parties, and elaborate social rules we associate with her novels. So I'll use both terms somewhat interchangeably, and if you encounter a pedantic historian who insists on the distinction, now you know why.)

Vanessa:

Anyway, it was a time of incredible contradiction, and on one hand you had elegant architecture, sophisticated literature, and refined social customs. On the other hand, you had brutal social inequality, constant warfare and rapid economic change that was destroying traditional ways of life.

Vanessa:

Jane was born into what we'd call the pseudo-gentry families that had the education and manners of the upper class, but not the money. Her father, George Austen, was the rector of Steventon Parish. Respectable position, modest income. Her mother, Cassandra Leigh Austin came from a slightly more elevated background. The Leighs had aristocratic connections, but again, limited money. This position, educated but not wealthy, genteel, but not secure, shaped everything about Jade's perspective. She understood intimately how precarious life could be for women who depended entirely on male relatives for their financial survival.

Vanessa:

The Austen household was lively and intellectual. George Austen was a scholar who encouraged all his children, including his daughters, to read widely and think critically. Jane had access to his extensive library and the family staged plays, wrote stories, and engaged in the kind of witty conversation that would later fill her novels.

Vanessa:

But here's something crucial: Jane never married. In a world where marriage was essentially the only acceptable career for a woman of her class, she remained single her entire life. During Jane's time, it was actually fairly common to be unmarried. Around 40% of women did not marry. There was a war on and single eligible men were in short supply, but being unmarried was still seen as a misfortune.

Vanessa:

We know Jane had at least one serious romantic attachment to Tom La Froy, a young Irishman she met when she was 20. Unfortunately, his family disapproved because neither had money and the relationship ended. Later. She briefly accepted a proposal from Harris Bigwither, what a name, right? A wealthy neighbor, but changed her mind overnight and withdrew her acceptance. Think about how extraordinary that was turning down financial security for the rest of her life because she couldn't bring herself to marry without love. I think she also knew that if she did get married, she would need to give up writing and dedicate her life to her husband and children. This decision meant Jane would possibly always be financially dependent on her father and brothers.

Vanessa:

When her father died in 1805, Jane, her mother and her sister Cassandra, faced real poverty. They had to move several times, sometimes living in rented rooms, always at the mercy of male relatives who provided their small allowances, and yet this precarious position gave Jane something invaluable: the freedom to observe and critique the very system that marginalized her. She wasn't trying to charm a husband or please in-laws. She could write exactly what she saw.

Vanessa:

She began writing seriously in her teens, her first novel, first Impressions, which would later become Pride and Prejudice was written when she was just 21. When sense and sensibility finally appeared in 1811, it was published "by a lady." Jane wouldn't see her name on a title page during her lifetime.

Vanessa:

There were actually more female novelists than a male novelist published the year that Jane was born, but it would still have been inappropriate for her to put her name to any of her books. She wrote in the family sitting room, often with people coming and going around her. There's a famous story that she wrote on small pieces of paper that she could quickly hide under a blotter when visitors arrived because writing novels was considered somewhat unseemly for a respectable woman. Jane died in 1817 at the age of 41, probably from Addison's disease or lymphoma. She was still relatively unknown. Her novels were modestly successful, but not best sellers. It wasn't until decades after her death that she became the literary icon we know today.

Vanessa:

But during those 41 years, she had quietly revolutionized English literature. Let me show you how. To understand why Jane Austen was so revolutionary, we need to understand the world she was writing about and writing in. The Regency era, roughly 1811 to 1820, though we often use the term more broadly, was a time of enormous upheaval beneath a veneer of elegant stability. Let's start with the politics. Britain was almost constantly at war during Jane's lifetime. The American Revolution happened when she was a baby. The French Revolution began when she was 14 and terrified the British ruling class. The idea that common people might overthrow their social superiors was deeply threatening. Then came the Napoleonic Wars, which lasted from 1803 to 1815, and affected every aspect of British life. These wars meant high taxes, food shortages, and constant anxiety about invasion. They also meant that many young men from Jane's Social Circle were away fighting, which is why so many of her male characters are military officers. Captain Wentworth in Persuasion, Wickham in Pride and Prejudice, Captain Bewick in Persuasion. These aren't just romantic figures, they're reflections of a society where war was a constant reality.

Vanessa:

But here's what's interesting: Jane rarely mentions these wars directly in her novels. Some critics have accused her of ignoring the major events of her time, but that's missing the point. She was writing about how these massive political and economic changes affected daily life, particularly for women who had no direct political power, but whose lives were completely shaped by political decisions made by men.

Vanessa:

Now, let's talk about society and class, because this is where Jane's observations get really sharp. Georgian society was obsessed with hierarchy, but it was also a time that hierarchy was shifting rapidly. At the top, you had the aristocracy, Dukes Earls Vi Counts, who owned vast estates and wielded political power. Then came the landed gentry, people who owned estates but weren't titled nobility. Below them were what Jane called the pseudo gentry, clergy, lawyers, military officers, and other professionals who had education and manners, but little money. Then came the emerging merchant class, people who were making fortunes and trade manufacturing and colonial enterprises, but were looked down upon by the established gentry. And at the bottom were the working poor who barely appear in Jane's novels because they moved in completely different worlds.

Vanessa:

But here's what's happening during Jane's lifetime, money was becoming more important than birth. The industrial revolution and expanding trade were creating new fortunes while some old aristocratic families were going broke. This created enormous social anxiety about who belonged where in the hierarchy. Jane understood this anxiety intimately. Her characters are constantly worried about money, status, and social position, not because their shallow, but because their survival depends on maintaining their place in society.

Vanessa:

Now let's talk about women's roles, because that's where Jane's revolutionary spirit really shows. In Regency England, women had almost no legal rights. When a woman married her property became her husband's. She couldn't sign contracts, couldn't vote, couldn't even have legal custody of her own children if her husband died. For unmarried women like Jane, the situation was even more precarious. They couldn't inherit family estates. Those went to the nearest male relatives, even if he was a distant cousin. This is the entailment that threatens the Bennett family in Pride and Prejudice. When Mr. Bennett dies, his estate will go to the ridiculous Mr. Collins, leaving his wife and daughters with almost nothing.

Vanessa:

Unmarried women could become governesses or companions to wealthy ladies, but these were difficult, lonely positions with little security, or they could live as dependents in relatives homes, which is essentially what Jane did for most of her adult life. The only real escape from this system was marriage.

Vanessa:

But marriage to the wrong man could be worse than no marriage at all. A woman who married badly might find herself trapped with a cruel or irresponsible husband with no legal recourse and no way to leave. This is a world Jane was writing about a world where women's intelligence, wit and moral strength counted for nothing legally, where their survival depended entirely on the goodwill of men, and where making the wrong romantic choice could destroy their lives.

Vanessa:

And yet Jane created heroines who refuse to accept these limitations passively. Elizabeth Bennett walks three miles through muddy fields to care for her sick sister, shocking the snobbish Bly sisters. Emma Woodhouse meddles in everyone's business and makes terrible mistakes, but she never stops thinking for herself. Ann Elliot, in Persuasion, chooses love over social advancement and is rewarded for her constancy. These women aren't perfect. Jane was too honest a writer to create perfect characters, but they're intelligent, morally serious, and determined to shape their own destinies within the constraints of their society. That was revolutionary for its time.

Vanessa:

Let's talk about how she challenged social norms through her wit. Here's where Jane Austen's genius really shows. She didn't challenge social norms by writing angry manifestos or creating obviously rebellious characters. Instead, she used wit, irony and devastating social observation to expose the absurdities and injustices of her world. Let me give you some examples of how this works.

Vanessa:

Take the famous opening of Pride and Prejudice. It is a truth, universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. On the surface, this sounds like a conventional statement about marriage and society, but look closer. Jane is deeply ironic here. The real universal truth of her world was that single women in possession of no fortune must be in want of husbands. She flipped the conventional wisdom to expose how society actually works. Women are commodities in the marriage market, valued primarily for their ability to attract wealthy men.

Vanessa:

This kind of subtle subversion runs throughout her work. She'll describe a character as sensible and well-informed. And then show them saying something completely foolish. She'll praise someone's great civility while making it clear they're being coldly rude. Consider how she handles class snobbery. Instead of writing angry diatribes about social inequality, she creates characters like Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Pride and Prejudice, or Sir Walter Elliott and Persuasion Aristocrats who are so pompous, vain and ridiculous. They become objects of laughter rather than respect. She tries to forbid Elizabeth Bennett from marrying Darcy because Elizabeth's family isn't grand enough. But Jane makes lady Catherine so absurd, so petty and presumptuous that she becomes a figure of comedy. The very social authority she represents is undermined by her ridiculous behavior. Or take Sir Walter Elliot, who's so obsessed with his appearance and social rank that he can't see how deeply in debt he is or how little respect his tenants actually have for him. Jane doesn't need to argue against aristocratic privilege. She just shows us, sir Walter, and we see how hollow and meaningless that privilege can be.

Vanessa:

But Jane's wit isn't just about mocking the powerful, she's equally sharp about the follies of her heroines and their families. Elizabeth Bennett's prejudice against Darcy is just as foolish as his initial pride. Emma Woodhouse's matchmaking schemes cause real pain to other people. Jane never lets anyone off the hook completely. This moral complexity is part of what made her revolutionary. Instead of creating perfect heroines who always do the right thing, she's created realistic women who make mistakes, learn from them and grow. This was a new kind of female character in literature. Flawed, but admirable, intelligent, but not infallible.

Vanessa:

Let's talk about money, because Jane was revolutionary in how, honestly, she wrote about financial realities. Most novels of her era either ignored money, completely treating it as somehow beneath their literary notice or depicted it in unrealistic ways. But Jane understood that money shapes everything in her character's lives. Elizabeth Bennett can afford to reject Mr. Collins proposal because she has a comfortable home with her parents. Her friend Charlotte Lucas, who has no money and fewer prospects, makes a practical decision to accept him because she needs financial security. Jane doesn't condemn Charlotte for this choice, but she doesn't romanticize it either. She shows us exactly what Charlotte is trading: independence and potentially love for security and social respectability. It's a brutal transaction, but Jane presents it as a rational response to an unjust system rather than a moral failing. This kind of economic realism was shocking in its time. Novels were supposed to be about elevated emotions and noble sentiments. Not about mortgage payments and inheritance law, but Jane understood that you can't write honestly about human relationships without acknowledging the material conditions that shape them.

Vanessa:

She was also revolutionary in her treatment of marriage. The conventional novel of her era typically ended with the heroin getting married, as if marriage were the solution to all problems. Jane's novels end with marriages too, but she's always aware that marriage is the beginning of a new set of challenges, not the end of all difficulties. Look at how she handles the relationship between Elizabeth and Darcy. Their initial attraction is partly physical. Elizabeth admits that she began to fall in love with Darcy when she saw his beautiful estate at Pemberley. Jane doesn't pretend that money and social position don't matter in romantic relationships, but she also shows that a successful marriage requires mutual respect, and intellectual compatibility, and genuine affection. And here's something really subversive: Jane's heroines consistently choose love over purely mercenary considerations. But they never choose love that would condemn them to poverty. Elizabeth marries Darcy, who happens to be both lovable and rich, Ann Elliot marries Captain Wentworth, who has made his fortune through naval service. Jane understood that romantic love without financial security was a luxury her heroines couldn't afford.

Vanessa:

Alright, let's talk about the revolutionary nature of Jane Austen's writing style. Beyond her social observations, Jane revolutionized the novel as an art form. She's often credited with developing what we now call "free incirect discourse:, a narrative technique where the narrator moves seamlessly between their own voice and the thoughts and feelings of characters. Here's how this works. Instead of writing, "Elizabeth thought, Mr. Darcy was proud", Jane writes something like "Mr. Darcy's behavior at the ball was decidedly proud and disagreeable." The narrator seems to be stating a fact, but we're actually getting Elizabeth's subjective impressions filtered through the narrator's voice. This technique allows Jane to show us how her characters think and feel without constantly saying "she thought" or "he felt." More importantly, it lets her be ironic about her character's perceptions. When the narrator tells us that Mr. Darcy appears proud, we gradually realize that Elizabeth's initial judgment was incomplete. Darcy isn't proud so much as shy and socially awkward. This narrative innovation influenced every novelist who came after Jane. Writers like George Elliott, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf, all built on techniques that Jane pioneered.

Vanessa:

Jane also revolutionized the scope of the novel. Earlier novels tended to be sprawling adventures with multiple plots and exotic settings. Jane compressed her focus to small communities and domestic concerns, and showed that these apparently limited subjects could contain the entire human experience. "Three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on." She once wrote to her niece, this sounds modest, but it was actually radical. Jane was arguing that ordinary middle class life was worthy of serious literary attention. This was revolutionary because most literature of her era was about kings, nobles, or extraordinary adventures. The idea that daily lives of country, gentle women. Could be the subject of great art was genuinely new, and Jane proved it worked. Her novels about small social circles are packed with psychological insight, moral complexity, and social observations. She showed that you don't need sword fights and exotic locations to explore the deepest questions about human nature.

Vanessa:

Let's talk about Jane's lasting influence. Jane Austen's influence on literature and culture extend far beyond what she could have imagined. She essentially invented the Modern Romance novel, but she also created the template for social realism that would dominate the 19th century fiction. Writers like Charles Dickens, George Elliot and Anthony Trollope, all learned from Jane's example about how to combine social criticism with entertaining storytelling. But Jane's influence goes beyond literature. She's become a cultural icon who represents a certain vision of English identity: witty, civilized, emotionally restrained, but deeply feeling.

Vanessa:

The popularity of the film adaptations from BBC's Pride and Prejudice, to the recent Emma, shows her vision of human relationships continue to resonate. What I find most remarkable is that Jane achieved all of this while appearing to work within conventional forms. Her novels look like traditional romances, but they're actually sophisticated critiques on the social and economic systems that shaped women's lives.

Vanessa:

She proved that you could be revolutionary without being loud about it. Sometimes the most effective way to challenge a system is to show its absurdities with such wit and precision that people can't help but see them differently.

Vanessa:

If today's episode has sparked your curiosity about Jane Austen and the world she lived in, I've got some wonderful book recommendations for you.

Vanessa:

For understanding Jane's life: Claire Tomalin's, "Jane Austen: A Life" is the gold standard biography. Tomalin is a brilliant scholar who brings Jane's world to vivid life without romanticizing it. She's particularly good at the economic realities that shaped Jane's choices.

Vanessa:

Lucy Worsley's, Jane Austen at Home is a great and easily digestible biography. There's also a great Lucy Worsley documentary about Jane on YouTube that I'll link in the show notes.

Vanessa:

Paula Burns "The real Jane Austen: a Life in Small Things", takes a different approach, building Jane's biography around objects from her world: a dance card, a topaz cross, a writing desk. It's a fascinating way to understand how she lived day to day.

Vanessa:

For modern perspectives, "The Jane Austen Society" by Natalie Jenner is a lovely novel about people in Jane's hometown of Chawton after World War II, who came together to preserve her legacy. It shows how her work continues to bring people together across class and generational lines.

Vanessa:

If you want to understand the genius behind Austen's Craft, why the weather matters, how she uses money, and when character switch from formal address to first names, pick up John Mullan's "What matters in Jane Austen?" And prepare to read all her novels with completely new eyes. I got to go to a talk from John Mullan during our last book club tour and, he's so knowledgeable about Jane Austen and I learned so much.

Vanessa:

And just for fun, if you want a just for fun Jane Austen adjacent story, "Jane and Love" is a fun time travel novel.

Vanessa:

Thank you so much for joining me on this exploration of Jane Austen's quietly revolutionary world. I hope I've convinced you that there's so much more to her than the costume drama version we sometimes see on screen.

Vanessa:

And if you've been inspired by our journey through Jane Austen's world, remember that you can walk in her footsteps, visit her home in Chawton, see her writing desk, and explore landscapes that shaped her imagination, you can find out more about experiencing Jane's world firsthand at TheBookClubTour.com, or on Instagram or Facebook @TheBookClubTour

Vanessa:

And if you want to join us next year, use code BRIT LIT For $300 off just for being a podcast listener. Next week we're diving deep into Jane Austen's most beloved novel, "Pride and Prejudice." We'll explore why Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy have captivated readers for over 200 years, and how Austen crafted one of literature's most satisfying love stories ever and what the sparkling Comedy of Manners reveals about class, money, and marriage in Regency England. It's the novel that made Austen famous, the one that's been adapted more than any other, and quite possibly the most re readable book in English literature. Trust me, you'll want to join me for this one. Well, my tea's getting cold, so until next time, keep reading and stay curious.