LitFest celebrated the 250th anniversary year of Jane Austen’s birth by inviting Kathryn Sutherland to talk about her new book Jane Austen in 41 Objects. Kathryn Sutherland is Senior Research Fellow at St Anne’s College, Oxford and a world authority on Jane Austen.
Sutherland explained that despite numerous biographies Jane Austen remains enigmatic as so little is known about her. After her death, aged 41 in 1817, her family destroyed most of the evidence of her life. In particular, her sister Cassandra destroyed most of her letters. All that remains are just over a hundred letters from the thousands that were in existence and her will. Jane Austen’s nephew, James Edward, wrote a biography of her in 1817 which is still being used in recent biographies. James Edward presents Jane Austen as a comfortable country spinster. Sutherland wants to challenge this view in her book.
Sutherland invites us to consider Jane Austen through the lens of objects that were part of her life. “Objects are the most tangible signs of possession…help us get a handle, as we say on someone…To imagine Jane Austen in a series of objects is to intercept their lives at the moment that best reveals hers – the moment we might almost reach out and touch her.”
Sutherland selected 6 objects from her book to illustrate exactly what knowledge of Jane Austen can be gained from considering these objects. First was a portrait of a back view of Jane by Cassandra that the family all agreed was ‘the spit of Aunt Jane’. Since it is a back view little is revealed which was the family’s main aim.
Marianne Knight’s Dancing Slippers give a glimpse into Jane Austen’s love of dancing. The Indian muslin shawl worn by Jane Austen not only reveals her body shape but the fact that although she lived a fairly limited life there was a wider sphere. Her life reached out to India, China, the West Indies and North America through her brothers who were sailors.
A wallpaper fragment with a leaf pattern was discovered at Chawton (JA’s home) in 2018. Replicas have been made and it is now hanging in a room at Chawton. Sutherland imagines Jane Austen writing in the room surrounded by this wallpaper which is reminiscent of the descriptions of the leafy bower in a piece of her early writing.
50 Albemarle Street was the address of Jane Austen’s publishers and her family said she never visited them. Sutherland refutes this with powerful evidence to suggest otherwise, not least Jane Austen’s love of shopping and proximity of this address to Bond Street shops.
A spray of artificial flowers found in the attic in Chawton Cottage and dated to around 1800 is given a possible link to one of JA’s surviving letters which in 1799 describes an errand in Bath for Cassandra and the purchase of some artificial flowers for a hat decoration. Could these be the flowers?
Sutherland has also chosen to include Mr Darcy’s shirt from the 1995 BBC production of Pride and Prejudice. Writing in the introduction to her book Sutherland acknowledges “Despite her short life, Jane Austen has led many different lives, and hers is a life still growing and changing, in cultural memory and in unexpected places.”
There is so much we will never know about Jane Austen but this book certainly gives us the means to imagine.
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