What would a father in a patriarchal society spanning both Georgian and Regency periods think of a daughter whose core ambition was to become an author and whose primary activities from childhood demonstrated both her talent and commitment? Mr. George Austen was a well-educated clergyman whose income at Steventon Rectory relied primarily on the collection of tithes and running a residential boarding school for young men. In this environment he raised his eight children, six boys and two girls, who benefited from access to an extensive library and whose creativity was encouraged by such family amusements as organizing theatrical productions at home and sharing of their writing skills as family entertainment in the evenings. In this atmosphere Jane Austen’s creative pursuits were encouraged from a young age and were further enhanced by Mr. Austen’s own “slightly unconventional love of novels” according to historian, Lucy Worsley, in her wonderful biography Jane Austen at Home.
He clearly was supportive of her writing efforts; the three notebooks she completed in her early years were “gifts from Jane’s father, and the expensive paper was not inconsiderable evidence of his encouragement.” We may be sure he took pride in her work as well. He wrote a glowing review of the notebook entitled Volume the Third: ‘Effusions of Fancy by a very Young Lady consisting of Tales in a Style entirely new’. His insight is evident today, for Austen’s novels were entirely new when published and still captivate her readers two centuries later. Lucy Worsley, in describing his parental influence on all his children, mentions one very essential ingredient. “Mr. Austen was a careful, considerate father, giving most of his children the priceless gift of confidence.”
Unlike the adversarial relationship with her mother, it appears Jane Austen enjoyed a supportive and nurturing relationship with her father, but is this attitude reflected in the characters of the fathers she creates in her novels? All of them are portrayed with quirks of one kind or another but all, save one, appear to be loving figures.
Bill Nighy as Mr. Woodhouse, Emma 2020
Pride and Prejudice
I often see social media comments scolding Mr. Bennet for being a permissive, withdrawn, and irresponsible father who did not plan or save for his five daughters’ dowries knowing that his estate was entailed. Unlike his wife, he seems to have a lackadaisical attitude towards finding suitable husbands for them and to even have made a poor match for himself based on how Jane describes the marriage. “Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humor, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three and twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character.”
Despite his shortcomings, however, there appears to be a warm and loving relationship between him and his daughter, Lizzy. One can surmise that of all five daughters, she was his favorite and he only wanted the best for her. He could not bear to see her marry someone she could not love or respect, be it the unctuous Mr. Collins or Mr. Darcy, the “proud and unpleasant sort of man” that Mr. Bennet considered him to be. After protesting to her father her love for Darcy and admiration of his character he replied, “I could not part with you, my Lizzy, to any one less worthy.”
Northanger Abbey
Catherine Moreland was one of ten children on the cusp of womanhood, enamored with novels, and in need of adventure when she was allowed by her two well-matched and loving parents to visit Bath with wealthy neighbors. While her expectations ran high, her sensible parents kept her in check. “Her father, instead of giving her an unlimited order on his banker, or even putting a hundred pounds bank bill into her hands, gave her only ten guineas, and promised her more when she wanted it.” When she returned unescorted from Northanger Abbey by post, and appeared listless and depressed, both of her parents were concerned. Then Henry Tilney re-entered the picture and proposed, but her father insisted they could not sanction the engagement without the approval of General Tilney which was eventually secured. Catherine Moreland benefited greatly from having of two loving and sensible parents who had her interests at heart and supported her through difficult times.
Emma
As “the youngest of the two daughters of a most affectionate, indulgent father,” Emma had every reason to enjoy the fact that she was “handsome, clever, and rich.” Although she lost her mother at the age of five, she managed to grow up confident and self-assured under the tutelage of a governess turned friend and a father in whose eyes she could do no wrong. With no one to regulate her besides, on occasion, Mr. Knightly, she was headstrong and willful yet always committed to doing good for others, even when her efforts were sometimes misguided. Her father had an amiable temper, but his hypochondria kept him preoccupied not only with his own wellbeing but that of all those with whom he came in contact. His phobias left him little time to oversee his daughter’s development and she, in turn, became more of a caretaker of him than he was of her. Nevertheless, he was a loving and well-meaning father who could only see the good in his daughter. While this portrayal of fatherly love has its shortcomings, it was genuine and his approbation for his daughter was sincere.
Sense and Sensibility
Mr. Henry Dashwood was the inadvertent casualty of an inheritance from his uncle, whose will “destroyed half the value of the bequest.” While he, his wife, and three daughters had cared for the old man over many years, his son from a former marriage, Mr. John Dashwood, inherited the entirety of the estate. To his son he “recommended, with all the strength and urgency which illness could command, the interest of his second wife and three daughters who most needed a provision.” His hopes of relying on his son’s generosity were overly optimistic and, in the end, the widow and her daughters were forced to move to the small cottage of a relative on their meager inheritance of ten thousand pounds. Mr. Dashwood leaves the picture early in the story but clearly, he loved his wife and daughters and wanted the best for them. The depth of their mourning indicates the extent of their attachment and love for him. If he was guilty of anything it was presuming his uncle would be more directly generous in the will because of the service which his family had provided and when that didn’t transpire, there was very little he could do to influence his son from his deathbed.
Persuasion
One of the least admirable of the fathers is Sir Walter Elliot in whom we encounter such a level of self-absorption, conceit, and arrogance that it is impossible to fathom a worse role model for three young daughters who lost their mother. Jane opens by setting the stage for this character when she states, “Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot’s character, vanity of person and of situation. He was remarkably handsome in his youth; and, at fifty-four, was still a fine man.” His partiality for his eldest daughter, Elizabeth, was demonstrated when she was elevated with “all her mother’s rights and consequence” at the age of sixteen, thanks to the fact that she was “very handsome and very like himself”, that is, equally vain and haughty. Such favoritism led to the marginalization of his middle daughter, Anne, and youngest daughter, Mary, although she managed to redeem herself by making an acceptable marriage in a respectable family of large fortune. Anne’s potential engagement to Captain Wentworth at age nineteen was hindered by her father who considered it a “degrading alliance” since the young main had neither wealth nor consequence. She became almost invisible to her father until the age of twenty-seven, when the family relocated to Bath. There Anne became the object of romantic interest to the heir of Sir Walter’s estate, Mr. William Elliot, who had always considered Elizabeth to be excessively vain. By then Captain Wentworth had achieved wealth and rank, reentered her life, and finally declared his love. Captain Wentworth “was now esteemed quite worthy to address the daughter of a foolish, spendthrift baronet, who had not principle or sense enough to maintain himself in the situation in which Providence had placed him.” Clearly Jane Austen had no admiration for this father, but he did make an excellent foil for our heroine who had to overcome self-doubt and adversity to eventually find true love.
Mansfield Park
Once again, we encounter the impact of an imprudent marriage when Fanny Price’s mother chose a Lieutenant of Marines, without education, fortune, or connections, who became “disabled for active service, but not the less equal to company and good liquor, and a very small income to supply their wants.” After producing multiple children, his wife was forced to repair relationships with her sisters and “regain the friends she had so carelessly sacrificed,” resulting in nine-year-old Fanny being sent to live with Sir Thomas Bertram and his family at Mansfield Park. While she received little by way of nurturing from the family, except from her cousin, Edmund, she did live in a stable environment and was dismayed upon returning home as a young adult to find little to admire in either of her parents. She had been raised in a gentile environment and, upon greeting her father who appeared coarse, and common, she was “sadly pained by his language and his smell of spirits.” While Sir Thomas may not have been warm or nurturing towards her over the years and even sent her away for refusing to obey his demand to accept the proposal of Henry Crawford, he was a much better role model for Fanny and enriched her life in ways her father never could. The outcome of her life would have been entirely different had she never been sent away from home to live at Mansfield Park.
Jane Austen wrote about the concerns and risks of being a single woman in her novels and they played out predictably in her own life. At the age of seventy, Mr. Austen abruptly decided to retire feeling he could no longer “discharge his Parochial duties” due to advancing age and chose to move to Bath. Life after Steventon was very stressful for Jane; leaving behind friends, beloved possessions, and her home of twenty-five years was difficult, and became even more so after her father’s death a few years later, which led to financial uncertainty for herself, her mother, and her sister. The loss added further strain to the relationship with her mother, but I believe the bond between father and daughter endured because of his love and support throughout her youth. He recognized her gifts, supported her writing efforts, and took pride in her accomplishments.
There are traces of Jane’s father in her novels. I often think he was a bit like Mr. Bennet and not overly concerned about finding her a suitable match so she would not be a “burden” to the family, nor did he expect her to marry without love to provide future support for her family as when Mr. Biggs-Wither proposed to Jane. My impression is that he never considered her to be a burden, but perhaps he was also a bit like Mr. Dashwood and did not imagine himself dying so early, leaving his wife and daughters to rely on a rotation of visits to family and inexpensive lodgings for so many years until they finally settled at the cottage in Chawton. It was there that Jane Austen was finally able to refocus on her true passion and complete the beloved novels that we all treasure to this day. For that we can all be grateful to her father.