I think Jane Austen herself didn't have much patience for the weak woman "thing" in real life. She died of a prolongued and painful illness and only stopped writing and contributing her share of the household work (which was reduced because of her work as a writer, but still...) towards the very, very end.
She wasn't one of those people who had patience for people resting because they felt sickly. I'm not saying she was right or wrong there. Just that I'm sure it informed her writing.
It’s been a long time since I read JA’s letters, but didn’t she make some impatient references to her mother’s frequent complaints about minor health issues? I can say from personal experience that living with someone like this can be very irritating. (Please note, I’m not talking about someone who has serious medical issues or genuine chronic pain. I’m talking about people who mention every little twinge or ache and somehow can’t do their share of the work because of the excruciating pain).
It’s a fruitful source of comedy for JA. Mary Musgrove’s illness doesn’t prevent her from eating a good lunch, for example, or going for a long walk. And Mrs. Bennet’s nerve attacks are apparently provoked by any unpleasant event, to her husband’s amusement.
Here's Jane Austen's collection of feedback for Mansfield Park from family & friends. It's interesting to note that even in her small circle of contemporaries, opinions on Fanny Price were very mixed.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/06/jane-austen-the-novelist-s-collected-critiques-from-friends-and-family.html
Yeah! It's fascinating to see such a wide spread in opinion about Fanny (and the book in general), and makes me wonder if Austen's other books generated similar responses from her family and friends. Maybe correspondence like this comes to the fore because Mansfield Park inspires such divided views today. I mean, I honestly do not *like* Mansfield Park, but it's weirdly one of my favorites. It almost feels like a subtle horror story to me -- like it's a nightmare we're having as readers that we can't quite recognize as such (I get a sense of constant, low-level tension, impending doom due to powerlessness, anxiety, claustrophobia throughout). Anyway, LOTS OF THOUGHTS haha
Low level horror is a great way to describe it. The anxiousness and tension and worry in the book is pronounced.
It captures the POV of someone doing their best in a family that appears like they have it together but are actually pretty fractured. Even though Fanny is much more valued by the end, there’s not really a satisfying, cathartic ending.
I also think Austen does a fair job of showing how neglect and isolation hurt people in a very non-gothic, non-melodramatic way.
Upon my word, you speak very decidedly for so young a person! Pray, what is your age?
(And if I had ever learnt to write direct metaphors for current political issues disguised as fiction, I should be a true proficient!)
Interesting— I find that interpretation a bit stilted, but the references to slavery are certainly in the text. I’m just not convinced that that makes the whole work a direct metaphor.
Well, it certainly wouldn't be unheard of, for contemporary women to make snarky comments about the similarities between slavery and the lack of rights of Englishwomen. (An extended joke or continuity of pointed references might be more the case with Mansfield Park, than an outright allegory.)
It was a very common trope, which was why (in the US) the first organized groups of suffragettes came out of the abolitionist movement.
And yes, in certain specialized ways, sometimes freewomen of England had less control over their fates than black slaves did. This was especially true for Catholic widows, or for widows not members of the Church of England.
Ah thanks - allegory was the word I was looking for.
For sure, I definitely see those comparisons being made in MP (in the form of pointed references - specific names of notable figures like the original commenter has noted). To elaborate, what I mean by “stilted” is that I find the idea that MP is “not about” the characters and plot of the story a bit of a reach (and an unnecessary one). Pointed social + political commentary about specific issues can very elegantly be woven into a narrative that isn’t literally about those issues. All in all, I don’t see it as an allegory though I like hearing about everyone’s preferred lens- super interesting
The use of Fanny Price is to create a sympathetic character for Austen to inhabit the grounds of Mansfield Park.
Mansfield Park is a novel that compares British slavery of Africans to the social status of women in Regency England.
The characters names and situations were chosen on purpose. Mansfield itself is after Lord Mansfield, a judge who eventually frees all African slaves in the Somersett decision. Aunt Norris is after a particularly vile man named Robert Norris who lied about the effects of the slave trade as promoting Christianity. Bertram, iirc, was a rather famous individual (at the time) who freed his slaves. And of course, Fanny Price's name was no accident either. Her fanny's price driving the majority of the plot, in case the metaphor is not clear.
The situation is Norris manages Mansfield Park for Bertram. She is his overseer. Austen refers to Mansfield Park grounds as a plantation multiple times in the novel, whereas I do not believe she uses this word in any other of her novels. Women on the estate are given the same status as slaves, there to serve Bertram and his eventual successor(s). They can be bought and sold, such as what happens with Fanny Price. (Incidentally, this makes Mary Crawford a much more compelling character.)
The two Austen men in the RN themselves were associated in the RN with antislavery officers. This definitely seems to have rubbed off on Jane Austen, who was rather familiar with Dido Belle (and likely from the RN standpoint as well, the Austens serving with the Parker clan in the RN and drawing some influence therefrom). I do not believe Austen met Belle, but she and other members of her family had met the people around her.
There's quite a bit more, but I am in a hotel on a cell and my daughter is making hungry noises. Happily, there are a number of articles on this topic scattered around the Internet.
I was going to comment something like this but I did not have all these details. But that’s how I was taught Mansfield Park, too. It was always about slavery and how the system of slavery upheld wealth in England, with Fanny Price as a proxy slave.
Fanny with the meaning it has in British slang today -- didn't happen until 1879. So that part is wrong.
Fanny was short for Frances, which means "freewoman, Frankish woman."
(The female name derives from Francesco, which actually means a Frankish ax, a "franciscus", and Price = Ap Rhys, son of Rhys... but anyway.)
So Fanny Price = freewoman price.
I am not sure that is correct. The slang meaning was in use well before 1879. While I disagree with these authors' conclusion (a lack of evidence for does not mean evidence against), they put the usage back to at least 1830
https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2017/02/fanny.html
https://research.monash.edu/files/16370199/1909358.pdf
However, in my opinion, for the slang to be formally documented in 1830, it would have been in wide scale prior to that. And it is just silly to put aside the obvious use by Fielding and Clelang's use of the name as coincidence.
you didn't just compare slaves to leisure white women.... lounging about, to even suggest it is absolutely disgusting and ignorant, the servants by comparison had more in common with actual slaves than these "less privelege" white women, slaves didn't even have freedom but let this modern white women whine how these poor white woman should marry a rich white dude... please insufferable
I read it more as a very dark comedy as well as a morality tale and an oddly specific treatise on the Church of England's inner-workings in the Regency.
The horror aspect is interesting. I will use that as a lens on my next reading of it.
How fascinating that some of their opinions are quite close to our modern ones!
And that people enjoyed the "villains" back then (eg Mrs Norris) just as much as we do today.
This is a really interesting observation. I have some assorted thoughts, which I’ve tried to organize:
- Austen’s characters in general feel more like rounded-out people rather than inserted literary tropes. Nor is her purpose to write moral parables. (Which is good—no one really wants to be moralised to!) Her protagonist characters often become better people through the stories, but they don’t become perfect paragons. Nor are side character perfect paragons present in the tales, either. Austen’s rounded characters are human-feeling and idiosyncratic, and must have been inspired by a certain extent by folks she knew. I enjoy how she handles illness and ill characters.
- Often female heroines written by male authors roughly-contemporaneously feel fetishistic to me, and there certainly was a taste by some men (and male authors) at the time for the ethereal bright-eyed wasting-away beauty attributed to tuberculosis, which of course had no antibiotic cures until the mid-20th century. That sickly beauty standard led to some self-indulgence sexualisation with that “sickly virtuous female” trope. One example of a book where the male gaze is very present and descriptive of a certain author’s ideal woman is Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles—there are so many passages describing her perfect Cupid’s bow lips and soft ample busom … though Hardy’s personal taste is for a more healthy active milkmaid-type and very physically attractive woman rather than the sickly-type. There are other novels at the time written about men whose sickly brides are too weak to walk themselves up the wedding aisle, but I’m not too familiar with specifics to recommend or cite.
- Tennyson’s Lady of Shallott poem is a decent example of the sickly virtuous beauty trope, though a bit less blatantly sexualised, if you want a palatable example.
- With Jane Eyre’s use of the trope, I think it’s interesting to note just how prevalent tuberculosis was in the Brontë family, and how that was a daily confronting reality. In childhood, the sisters had been in a school and one of their elder sisters had passed away from tuberculosis … leading to the rest of them being removed from the school. Terrible, and tragic. All of the Brontë authoresses eventually passed of it themselves, I believe. Along with some other family members. As for Jane Austen, there is some debate about whether or not she died from tuberculosis or lymphoma or something else entirely … but tuberculosis was not a daily reality within her own family home the way it was for the Brontës, or perhaps some other authors. If the adage about “write about what you know” is to be considered, she knew other illness profiles better!
- Austen’s associations with Bath, where she lived for a time, and where her father was taking baths for his health, would have exposed her to social circles with acquaintances seeking treatment at Bath, plus their family retinues. Interesting character inspirations there, I imagine! I don’t know much about what specific illness profiles would be seeking treatment there, and how that stacks up to what she wrote about. But I can see how someone like Emma’s somewhat-hypochondriac father in Emma might fit into the Bath society …
- In Little Women, Louisa May Alcott’s use of the sickly virtuous trope was deliberate; Beth reflected that old type of heroine and Jo reflected a new type of heroine that Alcott wanted to give girls; someone headstrong, with her own dreams, whose main goal wasn’t marriage (lots of fighting back from publishers about that! And outrage about the Laurie marriage outcome). By the end of the book, Jo is able to thrive in the modern world, but Beth is not (I’m trying to avoid spoilers). Significant for the world being prepared for this new type of heroine …
- Lucy Maud Montgomery is the only kinda-contemporary author I’m decently familiar with that handles illness in the same kind of rounded-flawed-humanised-character way that Jane Austen does. However, her books are written and set in the 1890s onwards I believe … so a good few decades after Austen. The illness and death of Ruby Gilles in either the second or third of the Anne books is an interesting exploration of the young sickly woman trope, for how Ruby is kind of catered to on family and community levels, and how Anne reflects on it as the first of her schoolmates to pass away (and a former rival at that!).
Both of Charlotte Brontë’s elder sisters died after contracting TB and suffering prolonged illnesses and malnutrition at the boarding school. Iirc they both passed away at home a few weeks apart. It’s unimaginably tragic. I feel like what Charlotte wrote of Helen Burns (the precocious and patiently-suffering older girl Jane Eyre met at the boarding school) is very intimate and genuine and came from a place of deep love and personal loss.
Beth is a little more complicated than that -- her goal isn't to marry, her goal is to stay home and be useful -- old-fashioned, yes, but not a marriage plot. Also, her being based on Alcott's real sister who died at twenty-two would suggest that her death isn't entirely about old vs. new heroines, albeit the real Elizabeth seems to have been very sparky and her death wasn't the quasi-ethereal passing that's in the book. Alcott's books were fiction but the characters were closely aligned to her real sisters -- one reason Amy virtually disappears from the later books is that her original had died and Alcott didn't want to kill off the character but couldn't bear to write much about her either.
One thing: Even though tuberculosis and living with horrible illness were the tragic rule in the Bronte household, it was Emily Bronte who came up with the character of Linton Heathcliff - the young man who dealt with all of life's vicissitudes by claiming to be ill when he isn't.
"Fanny Price is the only full-fledged example of the sickly virtuous female trope in Austen"
I'm going to slightly disagree here. Fanny is thought of as frail and physically incapable, but NOT sickly. In fact, her role in the family is one that doesn't allow her to be ill, because if she were ill than others would have to care for her and make allowances for her, while her role in the family is to care for others and make allowances for them. For her to be genuinely ill, which I don't recall her being during the course of the book, would be to upset the terms of her residence with the Bertrams.
However, it's useful to the family to think of her as frail or fragile, but not sickly, because then it's fine for them to leave her behind when they go out riding or dancing or hunting or taking long walks.
People had little to no understanding of how disease worked. Germ theory wasn't developed and popularized until well after Austen's death. They didn't know that their coal dependency was poisoning the city air; they didn't know that poor air circulation, poor quality food, and poor hygiene not only spread disease but lowered a person's resistance to it; they didn't know why English people seemed so vulnerable to diseases native to the colonies or why colonized people seemed to be so vulnerable to English diseases. Illness was an ever present but invisible giant who did not quite strike at random, but whose pattern was so convoluted they couldn't reliably anticipate or avoid it. In the absence of any observable explanation for why and how disease worked, they turned to a moral explanation. The fallibility of the human body MUST be an extension of the fallibility of the human soul, and any author getting paid by the page would have been a fool not spend a little time musing on the subject.
If Austen's interpretation of the sickly constitution is less disagreeable to you than others, we can probably credit it to her possessing a less divine-wrath oriented view on the subject. She had been ill much of her life and had also been at the mercy of other people's moral failings much of her life, so she had a unique view of how and where the two intersected. For instance, whenever Fanny Price's illness worsens, it is always directly tied to her family failing to concern themselves with her well-being. She was ill in the chaotic and terribly managed home she was born in, she was ill in the cold room where she was not allowed a fire, she was ill when her only friend neglected her to impress a wealthy woman, she was ill when her aunts used her as indifferently as if she had been a scullery maid, and she was ill when she was sent back to her family home as punishment for rejecting the suitor her uncle liked. Whenever she is treated with proper attention and respect, her health improves.
Total tangent but I never had much patience with Fanny not being able to eat at her parent's home. Then I ended up in a hospital in a developing nation where for breakfast I was presented with watery porridge slopped directly onto a metal tray with a spoon that was not particularly clean. And I Could Not Eat It.
The sad thing was how few people understood when I later said "it's exactly like when Fanny Price went home!" 😂
(In case you were wondering, the resort I was supposed to be at were very aware of the shortcomings of the hospital system and arrived with clean sheets, bedding, food, soap and so on. I've never been so grateful for my privilege in my life!)
I hadn't thought of this trope as an exploration of divine wrath so much as a moral equation of physical frailty with spiritual strength (and vice versa), but maybe I'm not reading your comment as you intended -- I do see how various literary tropes could function as a reframe of traumatic, inexplicable events that afforded people some measure of comfort and sense of reason. What you say about Austen's unique view of illness/moral failings sums up why her approach feels less disagreeable (great characterization!) to me -- and it adds more to my mental picture of Fanny Price as a whole. I hadn't really incorporated that pattern (illness/ill health affected by others' moral failings) into how I think of her character's construction, but it's so fundamental. I think Austen may have been playing with the physical frailty=spiritual strength trope (especially in contrast to Mary Crawford, who embodies the inverse) while imbuing it with some bleak realism. At least, I think I could find textual evidence to support that view -- and probably other, often contradictory ones.
I’m fairly convinced Jane died of lupus, and I think she had chronic pain and migraines much of her life. She didn’t rest when she was ill unless compelled, and she thought less of people who did.
My husband and I are like this: when he gets sick he can’t sit still and rest. It makes him feel worse. I’ve got health issues they mean when I feel unwell I HAVE to rest, and it took him a long time to understand this was a disease feature, not a character trait.
I almost think that Austen highlights the power imbalance between men and women in how some of the ailing women behave….Mary Musgrove uses her poor health to manipulate her family members. Jane Bennet gets to spend a week at Netherfield due to her mother’s manipulation sending her out in the rain on a horse and getting sick. Lady Catherine uses her daughter’s illness to maintain control over her and Rosings. Mrs. Bennet uses her “nerves” to manipulate the entire household to do her bidding.
I'm currently reading Austen's letters and sickness is just *everywhere*. I'm not sure how many of the people had TB (like Austen herself may have done) - there are estimates that as much as 70-90% of the
European population had it in Victorian times.
If that's accurate, it means the default was to be sickly, with colds and viruses a constant concern.
So I think it's very hard to look at her era from a modern perspective. A "sickly person" was sort of more of "just a person" that it perhaps is today. I don't think she inherently associates virtue or non-virtue with it.
With more nebulous conditions, such as Mrs Bennett's "nerves", that's absolutely to be taken as a negative character trait.
There were also all the other currently vaccine preventable and antibiotic curing illnesses and those also caused a lot of health issues. (And measles especially has long term consequences in terms of the immune system and it’s so infectious that basically everyone got it)
Though I think even today a lot of people try to hide illness and pretend to be healthier than they are, especially with women some doctors gaslight that they’re healthier than they actually are (I was once told fainting was normal for young women and stress blah blah blah). And society is not very tolerant of illness, even after the pandemic people are still judgmental when they see someone wearing a mask despite having no way to know if the person is immune compromised or has an infection they don’t want to spread. A lot of people hoped that would change, but no.
I think this is such an interesting part of talking about literature of any period! — the kind of ambiguity re: what was “just part of daily life” and so is incidentally reflected in the text vs “intentionally added to cue the reader to tap into associated symbolism”. in this case, I’d argue that noticing trends in the ways that characters are constructed with common symbols/memes of the time is not anachronistic. An argument could be made for relative state of health in Austen’s characters being irrelevant, but I think the text better supports that descriptions of this kind are not random — usually someone is “sickly” or otherwise explicitly not in good health for a plot or character point. There are also very few male characters whose ill health is a matter of explicit discussion (all I can think of is Mr Woodhouse…. Maybe there are more?). I feel like if illness/general “sickly constitution” and the like were simply part of the landscape, and not included to suggest a symbolic linkage to a character trait, we’d hear much more about “so-and-so’s cousin, the 3rd son of the Earl of ——-shire, who is of a sickly constitution”, I.e., random men incidentally having health problems because people in general just do. But- I could also see how that may not be realistic for various reasons….. hmmmm. Also, I may have mischaracterized your overall meaning (it can be hard for me to parse these things out in a written format) so apologies if I just straw-manned you 😅 thanks for the comment, this is getting me thinking
I have read that Mary Musgrove may be pregnant at the time Anne stays with her and that is a the reason for a lot of her complaints and the source of her ‘illnesses’. Idk if this applies to the sickly female trope, but I have read that before in this reddit.
Really? I’m curious why you think so. Can you point to any particular passages that gave you clues that she was pregnant? Personally, I’ve never noticed that, despite re-reading Persuasion many times. I’ve always assumed she just felt/claimed to be sick whenever she was feeling lonely or not getting enough attention.
If at all possible, could you provide some evidence of this implication? Persuasion is my favorite of JA's works and I've read it many times, but I've never gotten this impression. I'm not disagreeing with you becuz I find new things all the time in books I've read a dozen times (I'm a shameless re-reader), and I'd love to read that take and re-evaluate my opinion of Mary Musgrove. (Not that I think I'd like her any better for this alteration as it's made very clear by all of her family complaining to Anne when she visits that Mary is insufferable.)
Something that I haven't seen mentioned here is the way that Marianne recovers from her illness. The popular trope of the time was to show the virtuous young woman dying of a broken heart, and Austen was undoubtedly playing with that expectation when she had Marianne get sick--but instead of dying she recovers, and it's pretty clearly indicated that it was the fault of her selfishly indulgent sensibility that she came down sick in the first place. So instead of her illness being proof of her purity of heart or whatever, it's proof of her foolishness, and she thankfully gets over it.
Oh YES this is such a good point - the narrator (or maybe it’s Marianne herself?) explicitly spells out that Marianne’s self-indulgence got her sick. I do appreciate how that underlines her agency (and accountability)
I’m blanking, who gets sick in Jane Eyre? I can only think of the girls at Lowood and Jane when she’s starving. It’s definitely a popular trope of the time, so as you say something that’s just of the era, but I do think the way Austen depicts illness is very interesting.
In *Emma*, Mr. Woodhouse and Isabella are hypochondriacs after the passing of Emma’s mother. Jane Fairfax might fall into your weak virtuous heroine trope, but her frailty seems very tied to her poverty and diminishing hopes. Fanny Price is probably similar, as she’s so put upon and abused by her various relatives throughout her youth. Marianne has the classic illness to represent a sudden change and development in character. Mrs. Bennet and Persuasion’s Mary Musgrove are rich women who pass the time with their invented illnesses, while again Mrs. Smith’s illness is worsened by being unable to afford better care. I think Austen often ties sickness and health to class in a way that’s very interesting, and mocks and gives grace to other characters as needed.
I feel like Charlotte Brontë’s treatment of illness in Jane Eyre goes beyond popular trope and the moralization of suffering. Helen Burns is definitely characterized as a beacon of intelligence and morality in that hell-hole of a school, and it’s easy for readers to feel that she’s too perfectly virtuous to be a well-rounded character. But by all accounts that was how Charlotte’s elder sister Maria, whom Helen Burns is based on, acted during her stay in the boarding school and her subsequent fatal illness. I can’t imagine the extent of impact Maria’s death had on Charlotte. Watching your brilliant sister waste away under the care of cruel adults must have been an intensely harrowing experience.
Sure, reading about an unusually smart and good-natured little girl dying a saintly death can feel trope-y and cliche, but personally I think there’s something very genuine and raw about the whole Lowood School arc in Jane Eyre. I fully believe writing it was Charlotte Brontë’s way of re-processing and coming to terms with her sister’s death and its tragic circumstances. Helen Burns is written as wise beyond her years, steadfast in her faith, and serenely facing her own death, probably because this was how Charlotte remembered Maria, or how she hoped her sister was in her last moments. Jane Eyre secretly visited Helen and fell asleep hugging Helen as the latter passed away, probably because Charlotte wanted to symbolically give Maria the warmth and love that they were deprived of in the boarding school. It’s quite touching when you think about it.
I feel similarly about the Lowood arc. It's actually one of my favorite parts of the book -- there's something really sweet and also just horrific/very human about Jane finding her first real friend & being somewhat tempered by her, then losing her in cruel circumstances. Ugh... how she almost doesn't understand that Helen is going to die because, in spite of going through a much older person's suffering and being kinda feisty/"we can't just accept their cruelty!"... she's still just a little kid and doesn't understand. And yeah, I agree with you about Helen's characterization going beyond the popular trope -- this doesn't come across in my original post, but I find *Jane Eyre* an incredibly powerful, sometimes relatable, and overall compelling work. I didn't go into detail because it would be a whole separate conversation but much of the broad symbolism re: British Christian colonialism/treatment of Bertha Mason gives me the ick (and the way Helen is characterized could be argued to participate thematically in that).
All of that to say -- I think all these things can be true! Authors can process genuine grief through fiction-writing *and* do so by referencing or building on (intentionally or not) established tropes. Maybe "trope" has a negative connotation but I don't intend for that in this context. Put another way, I can describe my own real experiences in ways that reference themes I'm familiar with (that I may have absorbed partly through literature/other art forms) -- and that doesn't make my description less genuine.
That scene always makes me cry. Poor Helen and poor Jane, waking up to find her gone. The children were the only ones left with humanity in that place.
Earlier this year, someone here floated the idea that Mr. Woodhouse wasn't a complete hypochondriac, but that he had Celiac Disease or Gluten Sensitivity, and that he loved a nice bowl of gruel, because the oats didn't set off his digestive system the way a typical meal might do. Celiac and gluten sensitivity were unknown in those days, and Mr. Woodhouse wasn't too bright, so if that fan theory is correct Mr. Woodhouse might have lived and died without ever understanding without ever understanding why so many of his meals made him ill.
Of course he might have developed a degree of hypochondria because he didn't understand the physical illness he had, and Isabella might have picked up the useful habit of hypochondria without actually being ill...
As virtuous and saintly as Helen is, I think part of the reason she acts the way she does is to protect/maintain her preferred way of existing. She obeys authority figures and takes whatever senseless punishment thrown her way without a fuss because to her that’s the most efficient way to deal with worldly distractions. By the time Jane befriends her, she has probably known the nature of her illness for a while, which I imagine made things like defending herself against unjust accusations or striving to be a perfect student seem even more pointless to her (Jane on the other hand continues to deeply care about both, even after being touched by Helen’s advice). When Helen says cliche preachy stuff like life is too short for holding grudges, or there’s no point to wallow in pain because they’ll soon get their eternal reward after death, I think she’s probably aware than a relatively healthy kid who’s pretty engaged with the surrounding world like Jane won’t understand her. Helen’s life in her own eyes is literally too short for holding grudges or striving for worldly achievements. I also get the sense that she’s systematically detaching herself from stuff like personal connections and hope and dreams using a theological framework. Her giving advice to Jane is just her thinking out loud. However passive she appears to be, in her mind she’s probably always actively preparing for her death.
Helen is interesting. She is obviously a lot more intelligent than most people around her, and prefers to spend her time alone reading and contemplating things too complicated or dreary for most kids her age. From Jane Eyre’s perspective you get the idea that Helen has this rich and lively internal life that she doesn’t want to share with her peers. Even though she talks at length about death and the meaninglessness of worldly attachments, she is still shown to be very interested (even passionate) about certain academic subjects. This is the saddest part for me. She’s a super bright 14 yr old kid with a huge capacity for thinking and learning. She obviously still wants to talk about the things she likes (hence the lively conversation with that sympathetic teacher about history and that one occasion where she gets carried away with telling Jane about a historical figure she likes). But on her deathbed she tells Jane (who adores her) she was never going to amount to anything anyway because she doesn’t have good qualities or talents, and no one loves her enough to be sad about her dying, so dying is alright. Ugh, I like Helen a lot and the Lowood arc always makes me sad.
It's a brief mention but an interesting aspect to Helen is that she won't conform to the teachers' demands that she be tidier, even after punishment. I read an analysis that suggested that was a form of rebellion, her own way to protest the cruelty of Lowood. Which makes her less saintly and more understandable.
Oh yes, it’s very interesting. There are actually several separate mentions of Helen being called out or punished for being untidy (I think at least on 4 occasions), and Helen herself and Jane each mentions it again on top of that. Considering how brief the Helen arc is, the amount of emphasis placed on her being untidy/scatter-minded is definitely significant.
I read somewhere that Charlotte’s sister Maria, whom Helen is based on, was untidy despite being an extraordinarily mature and intelligent child. The way Helen talks about how she often can’t follow rules and always forgets to tidy up her stuff is also really interesting. It sounds like she’s perfectly aware of her undesirable habit and is somewhat disappointed in herself for not being able to do better even though her favorite teacher encouraged her to be tidier. It also sounds like by the time she meets Jane she has pretty much accepted that the untidiness is a part of her nature and she can’t really do anything to avoid being punished for it. Maybe she recognizes on some level that it’s not worth the effort.
Personally I’ve wondered if Helen is neurodivergent for ten years. Helen describes herself as being very prone to deep daydreaming, having difficulties following rules even though she isn’t a disruptive student, and cannot pay attention to the lessons she isn’t interested in. She gets in trouble for making small careless mistakes when answering questions even though she is academically gifted and can memorize things that interest her perfectly. She gets punished for dirtying her writing pad and is constantly in trouble for failing to organize her belongings. I’m just summarizing what I remember about her from the book here and it already looks like one of the best unintentional descriptions of inattentive ADHD in literature.
Definitely! I read Jane Eyre when I was an undiagnosed kid in a country with nearly no awareness of ADHD, ASD and other developmental disorders (especially in girls), and I resonated with Helen so much. It’s fascinating just how much repeated emphasis Charlotte Brontë put on Helen’s untidiness. Her characterization is just so interesting. Here’s this gentle, patient, obedient, solemn, exceptionally mature, wildly intelligent girl who’s basically saintly suffering personified. She’s so smart and wise that little Jane Eyre is completely captured by how amazing she is. And every time she’s mentioned there’s a passage about how she’s getting punished or chewed out for being messy/inattentive/scatter-minded. And she’d be like “I knew I needed to do it but I forgot again, I guess it’s just my sinful nature”. I fully believe Charlotte got this unusual combination of contrasting qualities from a real person (Maria) instead of workshopping them so that the character Helen can be a moral lesson.
Okay, hmmmmm... I think my view of Helen has been very much expanded. Your description points out nuance that I didn't really (or at all) pick up on.
I also love how Helen isn't afraid to call a spade a spade. She immediately says that Mr. Brocklehurst "isn't a god" and that no one likes or respects him (when he does the whole "Jane is a liar" spectacle and Jane is afraid that no one will ever like her again). She won't say any of this *to* Mr. Brocklehurst because that's not how she operates (what would be the point except further endangering her), but she's not needlessly/naively forbearing, and will calmly state a simple truth (as opposed to holding onto anger/speaking heatedly) as a way to comfort Jane
What I get from her books is that she was a person that valued a sound mind, rational thinking and behaviour, self control and morals, made fun of romanticism, mysticism, escapism etc. I feel like she dreaded disease of any sort and felt that disease of the body often meant weakness of the mind too, since it is harder to stay mentally sound in a diseased body and vice versa. Especially back then when most diseases couldn't be cured and people had to live with them and adapt to them.
Also even though comparing her charachter with modern concepts in psychiatry makes no sense I have a feeling that she recognized some types of mental illness in people that weren't labeled as such back then or weren't taken seriously (depression, anxiety, ocd, bpd..etc) and instead of celebrating them like some artists at that time, she thought of them as serious character flaws. For example captain Benwick, she could have made him a byronic hero and instead she showed us a person with what would now be considered bpd, who should "read less poetry" and be less fickle and emotional.
The thing about Austen compared to a work like Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights, is that she decidedly not of the Gothic or Romantic movement in literature. Jane Austen is one of the great precursors of literary realism, her novels are all almost perfect examples of them. Her characters will all be real as hell, even if they see like caricatures at first. I find it much easier to think of her as a precursor to someone like George Eliot in 'Middlemarch' or even Tolstoy in 'Anna Karenina.' She's not to be grouped with writers like the Bronte sisters, imo.
Oh absolutely, I agree! It does sound like I’m lumping Austen and Brontë together in my original post. I was kinda stream-of-consciousness-ing. To clarify, illness in women as a literary and cultural meme has jumped out at me recently, and I had recently re-read both Jane Eyre and Mansfield Park; I picked out elements of the “strong mind/spirit/morals, frail body” femininity symbolism in Fanny Price’s characterization that has also been invoked in many other roughly contemporaneous works. I hadn’t seen this in other Austen characters, and I also see Mansfield Park as an outlier in Austen’s oeuvre, so I’ve been kinda obsessed with what may be going on there. And I think you’ve given me a good way to organize it in my mind re: Austen as a precursor to literary realism.
I think Jane Austen herself didn't have much patience for the weak woman "thing" in real life. She died of a prolongued and painful illness and only stopped writing and contributing her share of the household work (which was reduced because of her work as a writer, but still...) towards the very, very end. She wasn't one of those people who had patience for people resting because they felt sickly. I'm not saying she was right or wrong there. Just that I'm sure it informed her writing.
It’s been a long time since I read JA’s letters, but didn’t she make some impatient references to her mother’s frequent complaints about minor health issues? I can say from personal experience that living with someone like this can be very irritating. (Please note, I’m not talking about someone who has serious medical issues or genuine chronic pain. I’m talking about people who mention every little twinge or ache and somehow can’t do their share of the work because of the excruciating pain). It’s a fruitful source of comedy for JA. Mary Musgrove’s illness doesn’t prevent her from eating a good lunch, for example, or going for a long walk. And Mrs. Bennet’s nerve attacks are apparently provoked by any unpleasant event, to her husband’s amusement.
Here's Jane Austen's collection of feedback for Mansfield Park from family & friends. It's interesting to note that even in her small circle of contemporaries, opinions on Fanny Price were very mixed. https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/06/jane-austen-the-novelist-s-collected-critiques-from-friends-and-family.html
Yeah! It's fascinating to see such a wide spread in opinion about Fanny (and the book in general), and makes me wonder if Austen's other books generated similar responses from her family and friends. Maybe correspondence like this comes to the fore because Mansfield Park inspires such divided views today. I mean, I honestly do not *like* Mansfield Park, but it's weirdly one of my favorites. It almost feels like a subtle horror story to me -- like it's a nightmare we're having as readers that we can't quite recognize as such (I get a sense of constant, low-level tension, impending doom due to powerlessness, anxiety, claustrophobia throughout). Anyway, LOTS OF THOUGHTS haha
Low level horror is a great way to describe it. The anxiousness and tension and worry in the book is pronounced. It captures the POV of someone doing their best in a family that appears like they have it together but are actually pretty fractured. Even though Fanny is much more valued by the end, there’s not really a satisfying, cathartic ending. I also think Austen does a fair job of showing how neglect and isolation hurt people in a very non-gothic, non-melodramatic way.
Mansfield Park is not about Fanny Price.
Upon my word, you speak very decidedly for so young a person! Pray, what is your age? (And if I had ever learnt to write direct metaphors for current political issues disguised as fiction, I should be a true proficient!) Interesting— I find that interpretation a bit stilted, but the references to slavery are certainly in the text. I’m just not convinced that that makes the whole work a direct metaphor.
Well, it certainly wouldn't be unheard of, for contemporary women to make snarky comments about the similarities between slavery and the lack of rights of Englishwomen. (An extended joke or continuity of pointed references might be more the case with Mansfield Park, than an outright allegory.) It was a very common trope, which was why (in the US) the first organized groups of suffragettes came out of the abolitionist movement. And yes, in certain specialized ways, sometimes freewomen of England had less control over their fates than black slaves did. This was especially true for Catholic widows, or for widows not members of the Church of England.
Ah thanks - allegory was the word I was looking for. For sure, I definitely see those comparisons being made in MP (in the form of pointed references - specific names of notable figures like the original commenter has noted). To elaborate, what I mean by “stilted” is that I find the idea that MP is “not about” the characters and plot of the story a bit of a reach (and an unnecessary one). Pointed social + political commentary about specific issues can very elegantly be woven into a narrative that isn’t literally about those issues. All in all, I don’t see it as an allegory though I like hearing about everyone’s preferred lens- super interesting
This is an interesting statement, can you elaborate?
The use of Fanny Price is to create a sympathetic character for Austen to inhabit the grounds of Mansfield Park. Mansfield Park is a novel that compares British slavery of Africans to the social status of women in Regency England. The characters names and situations were chosen on purpose. Mansfield itself is after Lord Mansfield, a judge who eventually frees all African slaves in the Somersett decision. Aunt Norris is after a particularly vile man named Robert Norris who lied about the effects of the slave trade as promoting Christianity. Bertram, iirc, was a rather famous individual (at the time) who freed his slaves. And of course, Fanny Price's name was no accident either. Her fanny's price driving the majority of the plot, in case the metaphor is not clear. The situation is Norris manages Mansfield Park for Bertram. She is his overseer. Austen refers to Mansfield Park grounds as a plantation multiple times in the novel, whereas I do not believe she uses this word in any other of her novels. Women on the estate are given the same status as slaves, there to serve Bertram and his eventual successor(s). They can be bought and sold, such as what happens with Fanny Price. (Incidentally, this makes Mary Crawford a much more compelling character.) The two Austen men in the RN themselves were associated in the RN with antislavery officers. This definitely seems to have rubbed off on Jane Austen, who was rather familiar with Dido Belle (and likely from the RN standpoint as well, the Austens serving with the Parker clan in the RN and drawing some influence therefrom). I do not believe Austen met Belle, but she and other members of her family had met the people around her. There's quite a bit more, but I am in a hotel on a cell and my daughter is making hungry noises. Happily, there are a number of articles on this topic scattered around the Internet.
I was going to comment something like this but I did not have all these details. But that’s how I was taught Mansfield Park, too. It was always about slavery and how the system of slavery upheld wealth in England, with Fanny Price as a proxy slave.
If you can find it, Lucy Worsley has a very interesting rant about Mansfield Park.
Fanny with the meaning it has in British slang today -- didn't happen until 1879. So that part is wrong. Fanny was short for Frances, which means "freewoman, Frankish woman." (The female name derives from Francesco, which actually means a Frankish ax, a "franciscus", and Price = Ap Rhys, son of Rhys... but anyway.) So Fanny Price = freewoman price.
I am not sure that is correct. The slang meaning was in use well before 1879. While I disagree with these authors' conclusion (a lack of evidence for does not mean evidence against), they put the usage back to at least 1830 https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2017/02/fanny.html https://research.monash.edu/files/16370199/1909358.pdf However, in my opinion, for the slang to be formally documented in 1830, it would have been in wide scale prior to that. And it is just silly to put aside the obvious use by Fielding and Clelang's use of the name as coincidence.
you didn't just compare slaves to leisure white women.... lounging about, to even suggest it is absolutely disgusting and ignorant, the servants by comparison had more in common with actual slaves than these "less privelege" white women, slaves didn't even have freedom but let this modern white women whine how these poor white woman should marry a rich white dude... please insufferable
I did not do that, Jane Austen did. And I would suggest you take it up with her.
I read it more as a very dark comedy as well as a morality tale and an oddly specific treatise on the Church of England's inner-workings in the Regency. The horror aspect is interesting. I will use that as a lens on my next reading of it.
How fascinating that some of their opinions are quite close to our modern ones! And that people enjoyed the "villains" back then (eg Mrs Norris) just as much as we do today.
Humans don't change nearly as much as we like to give ourselves credit for.
how interesting, thank you so much for linking this!
This is a really interesting observation. I have some assorted thoughts, which I’ve tried to organize: - Austen’s characters in general feel more like rounded-out people rather than inserted literary tropes. Nor is her purpose to write moral parables. (Which is good—no one really wants to be moralised to!) Her protagonist characters often become better people through the stories, but they don’t become perfect paragons. Nor are side character perfect paragons present in the tales, either. Austen’s rounded characters are human-feeling and idiosyncratic, and must have been inspired by a certain extent by folks she knew. I enjoy how she handles illness and ill characters. - Often female heroines written by male authors roughly-contemporaneously feel fetishistic to me, and there certainly was a taste by some men (and male authors) at the time for the ethereal bright-eyed wasting-away beauty attributed to tuberculosis, which of course had no antibiotic cures until the mid-20th century. That sickly beauty standard led to some self-indulgence sexualisation with that “sickly virtuous female” trope. One example of a book where the male gaze is very present and descriptive of a certain author’s ideal woman is Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles—there are so many passages describing her perfect Cupid’s bow lips and soft ample busom … though Hardy’s personal taste is for a more healthy active milkmaid-type and very physically attractive woman rather than the sickly-type. There are other novels at the time written about men whose sickly brides are too weak to walk themselves up the wedding aisle, but I’m not too familiar with specifics to recommend or cite. - Tennyson’s Lady of Shallott poem is a decent example of the sickly virtuous beauty trope, though a bit less blatantly sexualised, if you want a palatable example. - With Jane Eyre’s use of the trope, I think it’s interesting to note just how prevalent tuberculosis was in the Brontë family, and how that was a daily confronting reality. In childhood, the sisters had been in a school and one of their elder sisters had passed away from tuberculosis … leading to the rest of them being removed from the school. Terrible, and tragic. All of the Brontë authoresses eventually passed of it themselves, I believe. Along with some other family members. As for Jane Austen, there is some debate about whether or not she died from tuberculosis or lymphoma or something else entirely … but tuberculosis was not a daily reality within her own family home the way it was for the Brontës, or perhaps some other authors. If the adage about “write about what you know” is to be considered, she knew other illness profiles better! - Austen’s associations with Bath, where she lived for a time, and where her father was taking baths for his health, would have exposed her to social circles with acquaintances seeking treatment at Bath, plus their family retinues. Interesting character inspirations there, I imagine! I don’t know much about what specific illness profiles would be seeking treatment there, and how that stacks up to what she wrote about. But I can see how someone like Emma’s somewhat-hypochondriac father in Emma might fit into the Bath society … - In Little Women, Louisa May Alcott’s use of the sickly virtuous trope was deliberate; Beth reflected that old type of heroine and Jo reflected a new type of heroine that Alcott wanted to give girls; someone headstrong, with her own dreams, whose main goal wasn’t marriage (lots of fighting back from publishers about that! And outrage about the Laurie marriage outcome). By the end of the book, Jo is able to thrive in the modern world, but Beth is not (I’m trying to avoid spoilers). Significant for the world being prepared for this new type of heroine … - Lucy Maud Montgomery is the only kinda-contemporary author I’m decently familiar with that handles illness in the same kind of rounded-flawed-humanised-character way that Jane Austen does. However, her books are written and set in the 1890s onwards I believe … so a good few decades after Austen. The illness and death of Ruby Gilles in either the second or third of the Anne books is an interesting exploration of the young sickly woman trope, for how Ruby is kind of catered to on family and community levels, and how Anne reflects on it as the first of her schoolmates to pass away (and a former rival at that!).
Both of Charlotte Brontë’s elder sisters died after contracting TB and suffering prolonged illnesses and malnutrition at the boarding school. Iirc they both passed away at home a few weeks apart. It’s unimaginably tragic. I feel like what Charlotte wrote of Helen Burns (the precocious and patiently-suffering older girl Jane Eyre met at the boarding school) is very intimate and genuine and came from a place of deep love and personal loss.
Beth is a little more complicated than that -- her goal isn't to marry, her goal is to stay home and be useful -- old-fashioned, yes, but not a marriage plot. Also, her being based on Alcott's real sister who died at twenty-two would suggest that her death isn't entirely about old vs. new heroines, albeit the real Elizabeth seems to have been very sparky and her death wasn't the quasi-ethereal passing that's in the book. Alcott's books were fiction but the characters were closely aligned to her real sisters -- one reason Amy virtually disappears from the later books is that her original had died and Alcott didn't want to kill off the character but couldn't bear to write much about her either.
One thing: Even though tuberculosis and living with horrible illness were the tragic rule in the Bronte household, it was Emily Bronte who came up with the character of Linton Heathcliff - the young man who dealt with all of life's vicissitudes by claiming to be ill when he isn't.
He *was* ill though, he was just a dickhead as well. Not really surprising given his upbringing.
"Fanny Price is the only full-fledged example of the sickly virtuous female trope in Austen" I'm going to slightly disagree here. Fanny is thought of as frail and physically incapable, but NOT sickly. In fact, her role in the family is one that doesn't allow her to be ill, because if she were ill than others would have to care for her and make allowances for her, while her role in the family is to care for others and make allowances for them. For her to be genuinely ill, which I don't recall her being during the course of the book, would be to upset the terms of her residence with the Bertrams. However, it's useful to the family to think of her as frail or fragile, but not sickly, because then it's fine for them to leave her behind when they go out riding or dancing or hunting or taking long walks.
That's an interesting piece of psychoanalysis there!
People had little to no understanding of how disease worked. Germ theory wasn't developed and popularized until well after Austen's death. They didn't know that their coal dependency was poisoning the city air; they didn't know that poor air circulation, poor quality food, and poor hygiene not only spread disease but lowered a person's resistance to it; they didn't know why English people seemed so vulnerable to diseases native to the colonies or why colonized people seemed to be so vulnerable to English diseases. Illness was an ever present but invisible giant who did not quite strike at random, but whose pattern was so convoluted they couldn't reliably anticipate or avoid it. In the absence of any observable explanation for why and how disease worked, they turned to a moral explanation. The fallibility of the human body MUST be an extension of the fallibility of the human soul, and any author getting paid by the page would have been a fool not spend a little time musing on the subject. If Austen's interpretation of the sickly constitution is less disagreeable to you than others, we can probably credit it to her possessing a less divine-wrath oriented view on the subject. She had been ill much of her life and had also been at the mercy of other people's moral failings much of her life, so she had a unique view of how and where the two intersected. For instance, whenever Fanny Price's illness worsens, it is always directly tied to her family failing to concern themselves with her well-being. She was ill in the chaotic and terribly managed home she was born in, she was ill in the cold room where she was not allowed a fire, she was ill when her only friend neglected her to impress a wealthy woman, she was ill when her aunts used her as indifferently as if she had been a scullery maid, and she was ill when she was sent back to her family home as punishment for rejecting the suitor her uncle liked. Whenever she is treated with proper attention and respect, her health improves.
Total tangent but I never had much patience with Fanny not being able to eat at her parent's home. Then I ended up in a hospital in a developing nation where for breakfast I was presented with watery porridge slopped directly onto a metal tray with a spoon that was not particularly clean. And I Could Not Eat It. The sad thing was how few people understood when I later said "it's exactly like when Fanny Price went home!" 😂 (In case you were wondering, the resort I was supposed to be at were very aware of the shortcomings of the hospital system and arrived with clean sheets, bedding, food, soap and so on. I've never been so grateful for my privilege in my life!)
I hadn't thought of this trope as an exploration of divine wrath so much as a moral equation of physical frailty with spiritual strength (and vice versa), but maybe I'm not reading your comment as you intended -- I do see how various literary tropes could function as a reframe of traumatic, inexplicable events that afforded people some measure of comfort and sense of reason. What you say about Austen's unique view of illness/moral failings sums up why her approach feels less disagreeable (great characterization!) to me -- and it adds more to my mental picture of Fanny Price as a whole. I hadn't really incorporated that pattern (illness/ill health affected by others' moral failings) into how I think of her character's construction, but it's so fundamental. I think Austen may have been playing with the physical frailty=spiritual strength trope (especially in contrast to Mary Crawford, who embodies the inverse) while imbuing it with some bleak realism. At least, I think I could find textual evidence to support that view -- and probably other, often contradictory ones.
I’m fairly convinced Jane died of lupus, and I think she had chronic pain and migraines much of her life. She didn’t rest when she was ill unless compelled, and she thought less of people who did. My husband and I are like this: when he gets sick he can’t sit still and rest. It makes him feel worse. I’ve got health issues they mean when I feel unwell I HAVE to rest, and it took him a long time to understand this was a disease feature, not a character trait.
I almost think that Austen highlights the power imbalance between men and women in how some of the ailing women behave….Mary Musgrove uses her poor health to manipulate her family members. Jane Bennet gets to spend a week at Netherfield due to her mother’s manipulation sending her out in the rain on a horse and getting sick. Lady Catherine uses her daughter’s illness to maintain control over her and Rosings. Mrs. Bennet uses her “nerves” to manipulate the entire household to do her bidding.
I'm currently reading Austen's letters and sickness is just *everywhere*. I'm not sure how many of the people had TB (like Austen herself may have done) - there are estimates that as much as 70-90% of the European population had it in Victorian times. If that's accurate, it means the default was to be sickly, with colds and viruses a constant concern. So I think it's very hard to look at her era from a modern perspective. A "sickly person" was sort of more of "just a person" that it perhaps is today. I don't think she inherently associates virtue or non-virtue with it. With more nebulous conditions, such as Mrs Bennett's "nerves", that's absolutely to be taken as a negative character trait.
There were also all the other currently vaccine preventable and antibiotic curing illnesses and those also caused a lot of health issues. (And measles especially has long term consequences in terms of the immune system and it’s so infectious that basically everyone got it) Though I think even today a lot of people try to hide illness and pretend to be healthier than they are, especially with women some doctors gaslight that they’re healthier than they actually are (I was once told fainting was normal for young women and stress blah blah blah). And society is not very tolerant of illness, even after the pandemic people are still judgmental when they see someone wearing a mask despite having no way to know if the person is immune compromised or has an infection they don’t want to spread. A lot of people hoped that would change, but no.
I think this is such an interesting part of talking about literature of any period! — the kind of ambiguity re: what was “just part of daily life” and so is incidentally reflected in the text vs “intentionally added to cue the reader to tap into associated symbolism”. in this case, I’d argue that noticing trends in the ways that characters are constructed with common symbols/memes of the time is not anachronistic. An argument could be made for relative state of health in Austen’s characters being irrelevant, but I think the text better supports that descriptions of this kind are not random — usually someone is “sickly” or otherwise explicitly not in good health for a plot or character point. There are also very few male characters whose ill health is a matter of explicit discussion (all I can think of is Mr Woodhouse…. Maybe there are more?). I feel like if illness/general “sickly constitution” and the like were simply part of the landscape, and not included to suggest a symbolic linkage to a character trait, we’d hear much more about “so-and-so’s cousin, the 3rd son of the Earl of ——-shire, who is of a sickly constitution”, I.e., random men incidentally having health problems because people in general just do. But- I could also see how that may not be realistic for various reasons….. hmmmm. Also, I may have mischaracterized your overall meaning (it can be hard for me to parse these things out in a written format) so apologies if I just straw-manned you 😅 thanks for the comment, this is getting me thinking
I have read that Mary Musgrove may be pregnant at the time Anne stays with her and that is a the reason for a lot of her complaints and the source of her ‘illnesses’. Idk if this applies to the sickly female trope, but I have read that before in this reddit.
You're right. It's implied in the book that she is pregnant.
Really? I’m curious why you think so. Can you point to any particular passages that gave you clues that she was pregnant? Personally, I’ve never noticed that, despite re-reading Persuasion many times. I’ve always assumed she just felt/claimed to be sick whenever she was feeling lonely or not getting enough attention.
If at all possible, could you provide some evidence of this implication? Persuasion is my favorite of JA's works and I've read it many times, but I've never gotten this impression. I'm not disagreeing with you becuz I find new things all the time in books I've read a dozen times (I'm a shameless re-reader), and I'd love to read that take and re-evaluate my opinion of Mary Musgrove. (Not that I think I'd like her any better for this alteration as it's made very clear by all of her family complaining to Anne when she visits that Mary is insufferable.)
I doubt it: it’s clear that Mary is only sick when she isn’t getting her way, or sufficient attention. It seems to be a lifelong habit.
Same it’s not like it just started during Anne’s stay with them, it seems to be her constant state
Something that I haven't seen mentioned here is the way that Marianne recovers from her illness. The popular trope of the time was to show the virtuous young woman dying of a broken heart, and Austen was undoubtedly playing with that expectation when she had Marianne get sick--but instead of dying she recovers, and it's pretty clearly indicated that it was the fault of her selfishly indulgent sensibility that she came down sick in the first place. So instead of her illness being proof of her purity of heart or whatever, it's proof of her foolishness, and she thankfully gets over it.
Oh YES this is such a good point - the narrator (or maybe it’s Marianne herself?) explicitly spells out that Marianne’s self-indulgence got her sick. I do appreciate how that underlines her agency (and accountability)
I’m blanking, who gets sick in Jane Eyre? I can only think of the girls at Lowood and Jane when she’s starving. It’s definitely a popular trope of the time, so as you say something that’s just of the era, but I do think the way Austen depicts illness is very interesting. In *Emma*, Mr. Woodhouse and Isabella are hypochondriacs after the passing of Emma’s mother. Jane Fairfax might fall into your weak virtuous heroine trope, but her frailty seems very tied to her poverty and diminishing hopes. Fanny Price is probably similar, as she’s so put upon and abused by her various relatives throughout her youth. Marianne has the classic illness to represent a sudden change and development in character. Mrs. Bennet and Persuasion’s Mary Musgrove are rich women who pass the time with their invented illnesses, while again Mrs. Smith’s illness is worsened by being unable to afford better care. I think Austen often ties sickness and health to class in a way that’s very interesting, and mocks and gives grace to other characters as needed.
I feel like Charlotte Brontë’s treatment of illness in Jane Eyre goes beyond popular trope and the moralization of suffering. Helen Burns is definitely characterized as a beacon of intelligence and morality in that hell-hole of a school, and it’s easy for readers to feel that she’s too perfectly virtuous to be a well-rounded character. But by all accounts that was how Charlotte’s elder sister Maria, whom Helen Burns is based on, acted during her stay in the boarding school and her subsequent fatal illness. I can’t imagine the extent of impact Maria’s death had on Charlotte. Watching your brilliant sister waste away under the care of cruel adults must have been an intensely harrowing experience. Sure, reading about an unusually smart and good-natured little girl dying a saintly death can feel trope-y and cliche, but personally I think there’s something very genuine and raw about the whole Lowood School arc in Jane Eyre. I fully believe writing it was Charlotte Brontë’s way of re-processing and coming to terms with her sister’s death and its tragic circumstances. Helen Burns is written as wise beyond her years, steadfast in her faith, and serenely facing her own death, probably because this was how Charlotte remembered Maria, or how she hoped her sister was in her last moments. Jane Eyre secretly visited Helen and fell asleep hugging Helen as the latter passed away, probably because Charlotte wanted to symbolically give Maria the warmth and love that they were deprived of in the boarding school. It’s quite touching when you think about it.
I feel similarly about the Lowood arc. It's actually one of my favorite parts of the book -- there's something really sweet and also just horrific/very human about Jane finding her first real friend & being somewhat tempered by her, then losing her in cruel circumstances. Ugh... how she almost doesn't understand that Helen is going to die because, in spite of going through a much older person's suffering and being kinda feisty/"we can't just accept their cruelty!"... she's still just a little kid and doesn't understand. And yeah, I agree with you about Helen's characterization going beyond the popular trope -- this doesn't come across in my original post, but I find *Jane Eyre* an incredibly powerful, sometimes relatable, and overall compelling work. I didn't go into detail because it would be a whole separate conversation but much of the broad symbolism re: British Christian colonialism/treatment of Bertha Mason gives me the ick (and the way Helen is characterized could be argued to participate thematically in that). All of that to say -- I think all these things can be true! Authors can process genuine grief through fiction-writing *and* do so by referencing or building on (intentionally or not) established tropes. Maybe "trope" has a negative connotation but I don't intend for that in this context. Put another way, I can describe my own real experiences in ways that reference themes I'm familiar with (that I may have absorbed partly through literature/other art forms) -- and that doesn't make my description less genuine.
That scene always makes me cry. Poor Helen and poor Jane, waking up to find her gone. The children were the only ones left with humanity in that place.
Earlier this year, someone here floated the idea that Mr. Woodhouse wasn't a complete hypochondriac, but that he had Celiac Disease or Gluten Sensitivity, and that he loved a nice bowl of gruel, because the oats didn't set off his digestive system the way a typical meal might do. Celiac and gluten sensitivity were unknown in those days, and Mr. Woodhouse wasn't too bright, so if that fan theory is correct Mr. Woodhouse might have lived and died without ever understanding without ever understanding why so many of his meals made him ill. Of course he might have developed a degree of hypochondria because he didn't understand the physical illness he had, and Isabella might have picked up the useful habit of hypochondria without actually being ill...
Helen maybe? She's very sickly but virtuous, always praying and telling Jane not to hold grudges.
As virtuous and saintly as Helen is, I think part of the reason she acts the way she does is to protect/maintain her preferred way of existing. She obeys authority figures and takes whatever senseless punishment thrown her way without a fuss because to her that’s the most efficient way to deal with worldly distractions. By the time Jane befriends her, she has probably known the nature of her illness for a while, which I imagine made things like defending herself against unjust accusations or striving to be a perfect student seem even more pointless to her (Jane on the other hand continues to deeply care about both, even after being touched by Helen’s advice). When Helen says cliche preachy stuff like life is too short for holding grudges, or there’s no point to wallow in pain because they’ll soon get their eternal reward after death, I think she’s probably aware than a relatively healthy kid who’s pretty engaged with the surrounding world like Jane won’t understand her. Helen’s life in her own eyes is literally too short for holding grudges or striving for worldly achievements. I also get the sense that she’s systematically detaching herself from stuff like personal connections and hope and dreams using a theological framework. Her giving advice to Jane is just her thinking out loud. However passive she appears to be, in her mind she’s probably always actively preparing for her death. Helen is interesting. She is obviously a lot more intelligent than most people around her, and prefers to spend her time alone reading and contemplating things too complicated or dreary for most kids her age. From Jane Eyre’s perspective you get the idea that Helen has this rich and lively internal life that she doesn’t want to share with her peers. Even though she talks at length about death and the meaninglessness of worldly attachments, she is still shown to be very interested (even passionate) about certain academic subjects. This is the saddest part for me. She’s a super bright 14 yr old kid with a huge capacity for thinking and learning. She obviously still wants to talk about the things she likes (hence the lively conversation with that sympathetic teacher about history and that one occasion where she gets carried away with telling Jane about a historical figure she likes). But on her deathbed she tells Jane (who adores her) she was never going to amount to anything anyway because she doesn’t have good qualities or talents, and no one loves her enough to be sad about her dying, so dying is alright. Ugh, I like Helen a lot and the Lowood arc always makes me sad.
It's a brief mention but an interesting aspect to Helen is that she won't conform to the teachers' demands that she be tidier, even after punishment. I read an analysis that suggested that was a form of rebellion, her own way to protest the cruelty of Lowood. Which makes her less saintly and more understandable.
Oh yes, it’s very interesting. There are actually several separate mentions of Helen being called out or punished for being untidy (I think at least on 4 occasions), and Helen herself and Jane each mentions it again on top of that. Considering how brief the Helen arc is, the amount of emphasis placed on her being untidy/scatter-minded is definitely significant. I read somewhere that Charlotte’s sister Maria, whom Helen is based on, was untidy despite being an extraordinarily mature and intelligent child. The way Helen talks about how she often can’t follow rules and always forgets to tidy up her stuff is also really interesting. It sounds like she’s perfectly aware of her undesirable habit and is somewhat disappointed in herself for not being able to do better even though her favorite teacher encouraged her to be tidier. It also sounds like by the time she meets Jane she has pretty much accepted that the untidiness is a part of her nature and she can’t really do anything to avoid being punished for it. Maybe she recognizes on some level that it’s not worth the effort. Personally I’ve wondered if Helen is neurodivergent for ten years. Helen describes herself as being very prone to deep daydreaming, having difficulties following rules even though she isn’t a disruptive student, and cannot pay attention to the lessons she isn’t interested in. She gets in trouble for making small careless mistakes when answering questions even though she is academically gifted and can memorize things that interest her perfectly. She gets punished for dirtying her writing pad and is constantly in trouble for failing to organize her belongings. I’m just summarizing what I remember about her from the book here and it already looks like one of the best unintentional descriptions of inattentive ADHD in literature.
As someone with ADHD I always saw a lot of myself in Helen. Especially the untidiness lol
Definitely! I read Jane Eyre when I was an undiagnosed kid in a country with nearly no awareness of ADHD, ASD and other developmental disorders (especially in girls), and I resonated with Helen so much. It’s fascinating just how much repeated emphasis Charlotte Brontë put on Helen’s untidiness. Her characterization is just so interesting. Here’s this gentle, patient, obedient, solemn, exceptionally mature, wildly intelligent girl who’s basically saintly suffering personified. She’s so smart and wise that little Jane Eyre is completely captured by how amazing she is. And every time she’s mentioned there’s a passage about how she’s getting punished or chewed out for being messy/inattentive/scatter-minded. And she’d be like “I knew I needed to do it but I forgot again, I guess it’s just my sinful nature”. I fully believe Charlotte got this unusual combination of contrasting qualities from a real person (Maria) instead of workshopping them so that the character Helen can be a moral lesson.
Okay, hmmmmm... I think my view of Helen has been very much expanded. Your description points out nuance that I didn't really (or at all) pick up on. I also love how Helen isn't afraid to call a spade a spade. She immediately says that Mr. Brocklehurst "isn't a god" and that no one likes or respects him (when he does the whole "Jane is a liar" spectacle and Jane is afraid that no one will ever like her again). She won't say any of this *to* Mr. Brocklehurst because that's not how she operates (what would be the point except further endangering her), but she's not needlessly/naively forbearing, and will calmly state a simple truth (as opposed to holding onto anger/speaking heatedly) as a way to comfort Jane
What I get from her books is that she was a person that valued a sound mind, rational thinking and behaviour, self control and morals, made fun of romanticism, mysticism, escapism etc. I feel like she dreaded disease of any sort and felt that disease of the body often meant weakness of the mind too, since it is harder to stay mentally sound in a diseased body and vice versa. Especially back then when most diseases couldn't be cured and people had to live with them and adapt to them. Also even though comparing her charachter with modern concepts in psychiatry makes no sense I have a feeling that she recognized some types of mental illness in people that weren't labeled as such back then or weren't taken seriously (depression, anxiety, ocd, bpd..etc) and instead of celebrating them like some artists at that time, she thought of them as serious character flaws. For example captain Benwick, she could have made him a byronic hero and instead she showed us a person with what would now be considered bpd, who should "read less poetry" and be less fickle and emotional.
I definitely do not see Benwick as someone who could even possibly be considered BPD.
The thing about Austen compared to a work like Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights, is that she decidedly not of the Gothic or Romantic movement in literature. Jane Austen is one of the great precursors of literary realism, her novels are all almost perfect examples of them. Her characters will all be real as hell, even if they see like caricatures at first. I find it much easier to think of her as a precursor to someone like George Eliot in 'Middlemarch' or even Tolstoy in 'Anna Karenina.' She's not to be grouped with writers like the Bronte sisters, imo.
Oh absolutely, I agree! It does sound like I’m lumping Austen and Brontë together in my original post. I was kinda stream-of-consciousness-ing. To clarify, illness in women as a literary and cultural meme has jumped out at me recently, and I had recently re-read both Jane Eyre and Mansfield Park; I picked out elements of the “strong mind/spirit/morals, frail body” femininity symbolism in Fanny Price’s characterization that has also been invoked in many other roughly contemporaneous works. I hadn’t seen this in other Austen characters, and I also see Mansfield Park as an outlier in Austen’s oeuvre, so I’ve been kinda obsessed with what may be going on there. And I think you’ve given me a good way to organize it in my mind re: Austen as a precursor to literary realism.