Jane Austen is known today as the first English woman to write great comic novels.
Jane Loves Laughter (…and Books) The Austen house at Steventon was a lively place. The children, including the girls, were encouraged to learn, be curious, and read anything they found in their father’s library. We know how much Jane read because her first works were inspired by some well-known books of the time. In fact, as a young girl, Jane recreated these popular works in a way
The family of Adrianus Bonebakker during a visit, by Adriaan Bonebakker (1809).
The Austen home at Steventon, by Edward Austen-Leigh.
that was meant to make her readers laugh. She exaggerates, laughs at, and copies these writers. Her sister, Cassandra, did the drawings for these little books. In her early writing, Jane’s main characters are women. All are confident and make their own decisions, even if that sometimes goes against the social rules of the time. In these books, we get a sense of Jane, and how she saw herself.
A World of Money Jane lived in a world where travel was difficult and slow, and you were expected to spend time only with people of a similar wealth and social class to you. Her father and mother were not rich, but did have enough money to pay for a small number of servants. Jane was lucky. She had a large family. Some of her brothers did have money and good connections.
Jane wrote in Pride and Prejudice: ‘For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and to laugh at them in our turn?’
There were many rules for the people who worked in your house – your servants. Servants had to enter a room silently, not talk in a loud voice, sing or shout. They had to go up and down stairs quietly.
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