Bath, pure 'austenian' spirit
This is a journey through the south of England where Jane Austen lived, immersing us in her life, her times and her work.
STEVENTON
Jane Austen was born in this little town in 1775, she lived until she was 25 years old (stays in boarding schools and visits to London or Kent aside) and began to write novels such as Lady Susan . The Austen family house disappeared many years ago, but we want to think that the environment that accompanied it has not completely disappeared, although her world, Georgian society, would be crushed by the triumph of romanticism first and the victorian era later (This is still very much in force in England).
The world of the rural petty bourgeoisie to which Jane belonged was rigidly regulated: women, although they did not dirty their hands except for sewing, often had no money of their own and were left at the expense of getting married "well" or having a relative take care of them. also implied rigid social control , irregular education, outdoor picnics , visits to friends and relatives in different parts of the country and a multitude of letters in which everything was told.
Of the Austen brothers, two entered the Church (like their father), two entered the army, Edward was adopted by some wealthy distant relatives without children who would end up leaving him their fortune (in a very romantic turn but not unusual at the time ), and Jane, like her sister Cassandra, despite some flirtations and even a marriage proposal first accepted and the next day rejected, would not marry, soon assuming their role as spinsters without apparent distaste.
At Steventon she wrote northanger abbey , pride and prejudice Y Sense and Sensibility , novels full of wise and crazy women, hypocritical and affectionate mothers, soldiers in search of a good position, silly priests, financial worries, ramblings about love and acute observations about the world around her.
Jane Austen
BATH
When her father told her that he had decided to move the family to bathroom , Jane passed out. Bad cover letter for spa town that she, even so, she does not hold any grudge against him; Rather, she celebrates the five years she lived there with the enthusiasm with which the English make a profit on her icons.
In the 40 Gay Street is the **Jane Austen Centre,** with her collection of furniture from her era, costumes from some of the successful television adaptations of her works, and a shop in which to indulge in kitsch and buy souvenirs that swear eternal love to Darcy (preferably in her Colin Flirth incarnation for the television version of pride and prejudice that paralyzed Britain and inspired one of the most successful contemporary versions of the novel, The diaryof Bridget Jones ) .
The kitsch-fanatical side of Bath
The house in which the family lived was actually on that same street but in another building, and they did not live in it for long because the father's progressive impoverishment forced them to move successively to worse-off areas and in more humble houses.
Jane did not like living in Bath, despite knowing the city already from visits to her in her youth and having placed passages from her novels in it, and she hardly wrote during the years that she resided here. With everything, it is one of the best places to soak up the Austenian spirit : the urban center does not differ much from the Georgian one that the family knew - and that the author mentions in the Northanger Abbey either Persuasion -, and the waters with the smell of rotten eggs that made the city famous in Roman times are still there to cure real or imagined ailments.
Despite everything, Jane hated living in Bath.
CHAWTON
After a three-year stay in Southampton on the death of her father, the Austens settled in this nearby town. The cornerstone of Austenismo is a red brick house ceded by her brother Edward in which Jane, her sister Cassandra, her mother and family friend Martha Lloyd lived, composing a picture of characters -generosity of a relative included- typical of her works . The house is simple but has that dignity and elegance of the Regency style and exhibits furniture, letters and objects that belonged to the writer; among others, the ridiculously small table on which Jane completed Sense and Sensibility Y pride and prejudice and she was able to write Mansfield Park, emma Y Persuasion .
During the eight years that she lived in Chawton she did not have much privacy (the anecdote of the door that she allowed herself to squeak because she warned of an unexpected visit is famous) nor great means, but Jane loved the place that allowed her to advance her works and in which he began to publish them with the help of his brothers. Her work table is a silent lesson from the times when a female writer in the family could give more headaches than joy, but also about the talent that overcomes any environment.
Jane Austen's house in Chawton
WINCHESTER
The most important thing about the town where Jane would go to recover from an unexplained illness - from which she herself was aware that she would never recover - is the wonderful cathedral in which she is buried , a short distance from the house in which she spent her last months. Today next to her grave there are later placed plaques in her honor and an exhibition on her life accompanies the visitor, but in the epitaph on her grave there is a significant omission: not a word is mentioned about her works or that she was a writer, despite her relative success in her lifetime. That was Jane to her loved ones and contemporaries: a sweet sister, a loving aunt, a pleasant spinster.
Here is buried Jane Austen
It took a few years for her sense of humor, insight and charm of writing to be recognized as part of the universal literary canon and her humble, dark and somewhat bland existence vindicated. Jane Austen never suspected that she would become such a relevant writer two centuries after her death and in all a popular phenomenon; had she known, her comment would probably have been full of irony.
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One of the 'Austen' balls at the Jane Austen Center in Bath