MEN AT JANE AUSTEN'S TIME

In my little spare time, these days, I'm experiencing a total immersion in the world of Jane Austen and her novels. The enriching, masterful essay by Deirdre Le Faye has revealed itself an unexpectedly pleasant reading.
I've read through Part I: "The world of Jane Austen" and just finished the long chapter titled "England and the world". What I want to share with you is the detailed description Le Faye proposes of the differences between male and female education, career chances, occupations and pursuits.
I've always admired Jane Austen for her witty outlook, her intelligent irony, at dealing with these discriminating decisive differences in her novels; Deirdre Le Faye, instead, collected facts taken from documents and provides the modern readers an outline of that world, so that they can step through the looking glass and find themselves in the England of two centuries ago. They little by little discover what being a man or a woman might be like.

There are lots of important facts to be reported so I'm going to start with only men for now.

MASCULINE OCCUPATIONS

Most of the leading male characters in Jane Austen's novels are landed gentry, and in the Georgian period it was accepted that of the several sons a family the eldest son inherited the paternal estate intact and the second son could hope to inherit some land or money from his mother's side of the family. All other younger sons, and the second son if there was no inheritance, would have to make their own way in the world and wuld be expected to do so by entering the Navy or the Army, taking the Holy Orders or being called to the Bar. Gentlemen could become physicians or surgeons but apothecaries and attorneys were definitely lower class. To be a banker or rich merchant -say in the East India Company - was acceptable. The larger landowners would delegate the day-to-day business of farming and parish politics to a bailiff or steward but it was still incumbent upon them to give personal attention to the well-being of their dependants on the estate. Mr Darcy is said by his housekeeper Mrs Reynolds to be"the best landlord, and the best master that ever lived. Not like the wild young men nowadays, who think of nothing but themselves. There is not one of his tenants or servants but what will give him a good name".

NAVAL AND MILITARY LIFE

During the 18th century the British Royal Navy had become the best in the world, and island's nation symbol of security and prosperity, and popularly regarded as invincible. Younger sons of the landed gentry seized the opportunities afforded by the revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars to join the Navy in the hope of gaining both honours and prize-money. The official arrangement was that any hostile ship which the Navy captured , together with cargo, was sold to the British Government, and the proceeds were divided amongst the victorious crew. Captains and admirals could certainly expect to become rich. In Persuasion Captain Wentworth, by 1814, has amassed prize money to the sum of £25,000 and so is able to contemplate buying his own landed property and living in married comfort thereafter. Did you know? Jane Austen's brothers Frank and Charles were away on active service for many years during wartime period,Frank in the Mediterranean and the Baltic and Charles first of all in home waters and then in the West Indies; and both in due course and long after her death, rose to become admirals.
The Army was not so highly regarded as a career as the Navy. Most of the officers were drawn from the younger sons of the local gentry and the colonel was usually some landowner of the country. It is the arrival of a militia regiment in Hertfordshire that starts to thicken the plot of Pride and Prejudice and no doubt Jane was aided in her composition of this novel by her brother Henry's tales of his service with the Oxfordshires.

CLERICAL LIFE

In the 18th century there was no need for a young man to feel that he had a vocation for clerical life - to be a clergyman in the Church of England was viewed merely as a suitable profession for an educated gentleman, and the main problem was to find a parish rich enough to enable the parson to live like any other country landowner. At that time there were no fixed salaries for the clergy, whose income had instead tiìo be made up from several sources - mainly from tithe payments (the right of the parson to receive one-tenth of the annual gross product of all cultivated land in the parish) and the produce of farming their own glebe land with surplice fees (customary payments for baptisms, marriages and burials) in addition. A clergyman was not expected to devote himself full-time to his duties, as the basic requirements were only that he should attend his church on Sundays to take morning and evening service, with or without preaching a sermon, and that he should hold Holy Communion services at least three times a year.

MALE EDUCATION AND PURSUITS

The boys who would grow up to follow these gentlemanly careers received by our standards a very narrow education. Small boys were taught reading, writing and elementary arithmetic by their parents or by a governess; some might then be tutored in a private household, like Jane's father's pupils at Steventon rectory;others might be sent to board at a preparatory school from about eight to thirteen, followed by five years at a public school, and university thereafter. The curriculum was still very limited, consisting mainly of Latin and Greek classical texts
in prose and verse, with some modern history leading on from that of the ancient world; geography (use of the globes), French and Italian were usually taught as extras, along with handwriting, dancing, drawing and miscellaneous lectures on scientific topics. Conditions in the old-established public schools were invariably spartan, discipline was ferocious, for most headmaster still held to Dr Johnson's view of children that "not being reasonable, can only be governed by fear", and flogged their pupils as a matter of fact.

MALE FASHION

The fashion in masculine clothes changed only slowly during Jane Austen's lifetime, but in the end there were considerable differences in appearance between the boys and men of 1760 and 1820. In the earlier years of the century the basic male suit consisted of a knee-length coat with long and bulky skirts, a long waistcoat, and close-fitting knee-breeches worn with stockings and buckled shoes. The coat gradually evolved by alterations in its cuts, removing the skirts in front and dividing those at the back into two tails that would fall more conveniently when the wearer was on horseback, and likewise diminishing baggy sleeves and wide cuffs to a far neater outline. The waistcoat dwindle accordingly to fit inside a smaller coat. In 1790s the breeches lengthened to become tight pantaloons worn tucked into short boots, and in the early 19th century the pantaloons became looser and evolved into trousers worn with shoes.
Young men started to wear their hair cut short in the 1790s. In Jane Austen's early novels, most of the gentlemen would have had long hair, powdered and tied back in a queue with a large bow of black ribbon.

Well, it's all for now. Till very soon to compare what men's lives were like to women's. If you're interested in getting this precious book you can buy it online at Amazon . CLICK HERE