SANDITON: JANE AUSTEN'S UNFINISHED MASTERPIECE COMPLETED

Had Jane Austen lived to complete "Sanditon," it would undoubtedly be as famous and treasured as her other novels. But unfinished at her death, the masterpiece has remained mysterious and overlooked. Now, author Juliette Shapiro has completed "Sanditon" in a vivid style recognizable to any Austen fan. This is what this edition of SANDITON by Jane Austen and Juliette Shapiro, (Ulysses Press, 2009) announces in its back cover. This is the first book I decided to read for the EVERYTHING AUSTEN CHALLENGE.

I made up my mind to read Jane’s fragment of Sanditon (12 chapters) first in the original version I’ve got in my edition of her MINOR WORKS (including also LADY SUSAN and THE WATSONS). Then I went on reading what Sanditon has become in J. Shapiro’s hands and imagination.
You all probably know that Jane was seriously ill when she wrote the opening chapters of Sanditon; she had less than six months to live. It is thus remarkable that the book is so fresh, innovative, and original. In her last completed novel, Persuasion, Austen had depicted how men of merit and small means could rise to affluence and position by means of service in the British navy. Sanditon builds on this theme, depicting the commercial development of a small watering place and the social confusion of its society (one character is a mulatto heiress from the West Indies, Miss Lambe).

DEIRDRE LA FAYE ON SANDITON
Before writing about my impressions of this edition of Austen’s last achievement, I’ll try to give you some more information taken from my precious Deirdre La Faye , JANE AUSTEN – The World of her Novels, pp. 298 -307.
It was intended to be a long wickedly comical tale concerning a group of seaside residents, some hopeful, some foolish, some cunning, but all interested in making money by developing their little local fishing village into a smart holiday resort. These twelve chapters introduce a long list of characters, abd end with the first indication of some kind of intrigue between two of them, but after the date of March 18 at the top of the last page, the rest of it is blank .
The protagonist is Charlotte, a tall and very pleasing young woman of two and twenty, the eldest of the daughters at home, who travels to Sanditon with Mr Parker, who had happened to be involved in a carriage accident just near her house and had stopped there as a guest with his wife waiting to recover . Jane Austen does not , in this fragment, give any description of Charlotte Heywood’s appearance, but in real life she knew a Charlotte Williams, daughter of one of the Hampshire clergy and wrote to Cassandra in 1813: “I admire the Sagacity & Taste of Charlotte Williams. Those large dark eyes always judge well. – I will compliment her, by naming a Heroine after her.” So perhaps Charlotte Heywood shares large dark eyes as well as a Christian name with the intelligent Miss Williams of Hampshire.

The male hero seems to be in Jane’s intentions, Sidney Parker, Mr Parker’s younger brother, who only makes a brief appearance very near the end of the fragment. He is evidently the odd one out in this amiable foolish family, as he is “very good-looking, with decided air of Ease and Fashion, and a lively countenance”.
At Sanditon Charlotte presently meets the brisk, formidable and rather vulgar Lady Denham, who has climbed socially and gained riches from two childless marriages and is now keeping a tight hold on her purse strings; this is greatly to the disappointment of young Sir Edward Denham, who cannot be as extravagant as he feels a baronet is entitled to be - he can only drive a gig instead of a curricle - and of his discontented sister, Esther. By her first marriage Lady Denham has acquired the large and handsome Sanditon House, where she lives with a poor and beauriful cousin, Clara Brereton , as her companion. When Charlotte and Mrs Parker walk up the long drive through the grounds to call at Sanditon House, Charlotte sees through the fence and trees that Clara and Sir Edward are having what is obviously a private conversation...and this is where the fragment ends.

Several attempts have been made in recent years to complete the story, but none with any great success, as there is really no indication how Jane Austen intended to develop the plot. Charlotte Heywood is evidently the heroine and Sidney Parker is introduced in terms which show him as the hero; Sir Eward will be a foolish and probably incompetent sort of villain, who will undoubtedly fail to seduce the astute Clara Brereton; but what with the several visitors to Sanditon who have been introduced by name and are waiting in the background, as well as the Parker family themselves, there is such a large cast of characters to be manipulated that the possibilities remain endless.

MY REVIEW

There are some aspects of the book that I would have changed.

Firstly I don’t like what Shapiro makes of Jane’s male protagonist, the hero of SANDITON, Sidney Parker. For instance, in Shapiro’s completion, Charlotte overhears Sidney revealing to his elder brother, Mr Parker, his intention to propose to her to give Sanditon an exciting event to talk about! Moreover, after his dashing entrance in Jane’s chapter 12, he is always laughing and telling silly shallow things in the following ones by Shapiro! What Kind of Austen’s hero is he? A Mr Elton? A Mr Collins? Rather improbable.
Secondly, I wish there had been more conversations between Charlotte and Sidney before … well … Their relationship is too rushed. Rather unacceptable.
Third disturbing element: there is an embarassing incident between two minor characters . Sir Edward Denham - the silly scoundrel of the story - apparently tries to attack sweet Clara Brereton, Lady Denham’s ward. Charlotte finds the poor girl on the ground in the garden without her collar. The scene is absolutely hilarious but it does not sound very Austenish to me. Such a direct reference to sexual harassment is rather improbable. I don’t remember any similar scene in her other novels. Too risqué!

Did I like anything in the book apart from Jane's infinite mastery at depicting new characters in a few lines which convinced me she could have written her most witty masterpiece - after Emma - if she had had the opportunity to live just a bit longer? YES! The painting in the front cover: THE SOUVENIR by Jean-Honoré Fragonard!

RELATED POSTS AND SITES

SANDITON in WIKIPEDIA

A DIFFERENT ATTEMPT TO COMPLETE THE FRAGMENT

JANE'S NIECE CONTINUATION OF SANDITON

A REVIEW BY PAMELA MOOMAN OF THIS EDITION

MY EVERYTHING AUSTEN CHALLENGE LIST

BEING A WOMAN AT JANE AUSTEN'S TIME

As promised, here I am, sharing with you part of my current reading of Deirdre Le Faye's JANE AUSTEN.THE WORLD OF HER NOVELS .It's time to compare what being a woman at that time was like to what we discussed in my previous post, MEN AT JANE AUSTEN'S TIME.

FEMININE OCCUPATIONS

The daughters of the landed gentry families would probably have had only the minimum of formal instruction before leaving home - in many cases while still in their teens, like Catherine Morland or Marianne Dashwood - to marry country gentlemen in their own rank of society. Until well into the 19th century education was not considered necessary for girls.

(If you're interested in the woman question in the Victorian Age CLICK HERE and HERE)

In fact, it was felt to be rather a hindrance to their settlement in life, as they wouldbe regarded with suspicion if thought clever or bookish. Jane Austen was well aware of this attitude, and wrote teasingly in Northanger Abbey: "Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well-informed mind, is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can".

Most girls were educated at home, either by their parents or by governess with the assistance of visiting tutors, but the sum total was the same: needlework, both for necessity and for pleasure; simple arithmetic; fine hand writing, which was considered a very elegant accomplishment; enough music to be able to sing and play the piano or harpsichord for family entertainment; a little drawing; some French fables to recite; reading the Bible, Shakespeare, other poetry and sone respectable novels such as Sir Charles Grandison; and some very scrappy ideas of history and geography.
In Persuasion, Jane lists female occupations as the "common subjects of housekeeping, neighbours, dress, dancing and music".

FEMALE FASHIONS

Women's fashion changed radically during this period of George III's reign. In the second half of the 18th century dresses still had bunchy skirts, though no longer supported by hoops, and were made in softer fabrics rather than the stiff bracaded or embroidered silks.

In 1770s a fashion arose for building the hair up into a huge pile above the head, by means od a large triangular thing called a cushion to which the hair was frizzed up with three or four enormous curls on each side; the higher the pyramid of hair, feathers and other ornaments was carried the more fashionable it was thought. These heads were not opened for a week or more with horribly unhygienic results.

As men's clothes, female wear became simpler as the time passed, with soft cotton fabrics, especially white muslin and lawn, being made into less voluminous garments. The hair too changed and was no longer built up into a pyramid, but allowed to fall in loose curls and only powdered for formal occasions. This is the style that enables Willoughby to cut off a long lock of Marianne's hair, as it lies tumbled down her back. By the end of the century the fashion of the very short waist arrived from France, with a light sash or ribbon tied immediately under breasts, and remained popular for the next twenty years; dresses were now at their skimpiest, nearly always white, and made of the thinnest of fabrics, and hair styled to be short and curly.

COSMETICS

As well as hairstyles, cosmetics are all part of female fashion, and here again the appearance of women's faces changed quite radically during Jane's lifetime. In the earlier part of the 18th century the fashion was for powdered hair, and a dead- white face with dark eyebrows, rouged cheeks and red lips. This style was achieved by using the proverbial "powder and paint". The powder itself could be more white lead, or kaolin clay or talc, all ground very fine. The eyebrows were trimmed and blackened or else disguised by gluing on false brows made of strips of mouse-skin. Black "patches"were also stuck on the face, either to provide a visual contrast against the white mask or more practically to cover up pimples; they were cut out of black velvet, taffeta or silk and were usually circular, but sometimes more elaborate shapes such as stars and crescents, or even birds and trees, were created. Patches continued to be used well into the 18th century.

By the 1780s the crude contrasts of "powder and paint" were going out of fashion, and cheeks were now simply dusted with talc and only lightly rouged, perhaps with a red leather imported from Brazil; the colour of the lips was strengthened with carmine or with lipsticks made from ground and coloured plaster of Paris. Even though powder and paint were no longer used, a pale complexion was still admired, hence Miss Bingley's sneer that Miss Eliza Bennet was grown so brown and coarse - to which Darcy chivalrously replies that he perceived no alteration than her being rather tanned, - no miraculous consequence of travelling in the summer.

There is no evidence that either Jane or Cassandra Austen ever used such cosmetics and with her pink cheeks Jane would certainly never have needed rouge.

PASTIMES, SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AND CULTURAL PURSUITS

One of the girls' favourite social activity was dancing, for this was the chief way in which young people could become acquainted with each other in a respectable and carefully chaperoned environment. Modern readers are sometimes puzzled as to why dance scenes have so prominent a place in Jane Austen's novels; but in her lifetime the dance floor was the best, and indeed almost the only place, where marriage partners could be identified and courtship could flourish.

With or without dancing, music was an important part of entertainment in the evening and girls were usually taught to play the harpsicord, piano, harp or guitar.

Theatre-going was primarily an urban entertainment for the winter months.For more private entertainment there were always books which were expensive - Emma in 1816 cost a guinea which was the weekly salary upon which a poor curate might have to keep himself and his family. Novels, especially the romantic tales of mystery and horror that were so popular then - The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Romance of the Forest, The Midnight Bell- were considered to be conducive to frivolity and immorality, especially among female readers - but the Austens were great novel-readers.

Letter-writing was an essential part of social life , both to maintain family connections and to act as mini-newspapers. Apart from letters, women but also men kept "pocket-books", very small printed diaries with room for just a few words on the page.

Drawing and painting were usually female pastimes as well as the various kinds of needlework popular at the period, fine sewing and embroidery.

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