Jane Austen and the Americans
Austen's Knowledge of Britain at War with the US and France
The celebrated English novelist Jane Austen's village-centered stories bely her real knowledge and interest of the international events of her day.
Jane Austen, the English writer whose novels including “Pride and Prejudice” continue to be popular with modern audiences was born in 1775 during the American Revolution. Throughout much of her life Britain was at war with France. Her novels reflect little of this political turmoil, but Austen’s Tory family was politically aware.
Jane Austen lived modestly, the unmarried daughter of a minister, the youngest of his seven children. Never having traveled widely or moved beyond her own quiet circle, yet she created a reputation, and an income, as a novelist. Her novels did not mention the American Revolution, but politics influenced her from childhood. Her brothers Francis and Charles were officers in the Royal Navy, and her brothers James and Henry founded a Tory periodical. Jane Austen’s views of the American Revolution were also likely influenced by her Church of England clergyman father’s Tory stance on supporting King George III.
During her first year, their county newspaper, the Hampshire Chronicle, kept the Austen family informed on Sir William Howe’s 63rd Foot and 17th Light Dragoons at Bunker’s Hill. Two weeks after that battle, General George Washington arrived to take command of the American army. After many months of siege, the British were forced to evacuate Boston, and sailed for Canada.
Her father, Rev. George Austen as a clergyman of the Church of England, would have been required to observe days of “public fast and humiliation” for the welfare of the King’s Army on December 13, 1776 when Jane was nearly one year old. Around this time General Howe captured Manhattan and attacked Fort Washington, so the news from the front was picking up.
In the years when Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility”, “Pride and Prejudice”, and “Northanger Abbey” were written, her naval officer brothers saw the decline of the British Navy in the aftermath of the American Revolution, when Britain was pitted against the French and the Dutch, when British Royal fleet was forced out of the Mediterranean.
Though her family did not seem to be directly involved in the American Revolution, her eldest brother, James was married in 1792 to the daughter of British General Edward Mathew who, while in New York, had led part of the attack on Fort Washington, and also fought in Virginia and New Jersey.
Jane Austen had a closer personal tie to the French Revolution, as the nobleman husband of her cousin Eliza was guillotined in February 1794.
During the War of 1812, when the young United States fought Britain again, her brother Francis took command of the HMS Elephant, where he achieved some fame by capturing an American privateer in the Atlantic.
Jane Austen wrote in a letter to her friend Martha Lloyd, “The Americans cannot be conquered,” she reflected her brother Henry’s opinion with gloom, “We are to make them good Soldiers and Sailors, and gain nothing ourselves. If we are to be ruined it cannot be helped -- but I place my hope in better things on a claim to the protection of Heaven, as a Religious Nation, a Nation in spite of much Evil improving in religion, which I cannot believe the Americans to possess.”
Austen inferred that the United States, which observed separation of church and state, must therefore be without spiritual guidance. She was not the only Austen to raise her eyebrows at the Americans’ still revolutionary behavior. In later years when the two nations became more friendly, Francis Austen was welcomed in society on a trip to Saratoga, New York. He was put off by the bold manners of the American women.
Sources:
Park Honan. Jane Austen - Her Life. (NY: St. Martin’s Press) 1987.
David Nokes. Jane Austen - a Life. (NY: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux) 1997.
David Eggenberger. An Encyclopedia of Battles. (NY: Dover Publications, Inc.)
