Jane Austen as a daughter of narcissistic mother
From the article "Are We Ready for New Directions? Jane Austen's The History of England and Cassandra's Portraits" by Annette Upfal and Christine Alexander (2010):
"One of the most persistent “myths” originating in the Memoir is that of Jane Austen’s loving family home at Steventon Rectory. Austen-Leigh’s admission of limited knowledge—“I know little of Jane Austen’s childhood”—is overlooked, while the speculative statement that follows has become entrenched in Austen biography: “It cannot be doubted that her early years were bright and happy, living, as she did, with indulgent parents, in a cheerful home”. In fact this speculation conflicts with an earlier account of the “childhood of the Steventon family” written by Catherine Hubback in the 1850s with the authority of her father, Francis Austen, as source and direct informant. Hubback’s manuscript suggests that Mrs. Austen was the dominant figure at Steventon Rectory and was “strict with her children”.
In recent years there has been some questioning of the Memoir’s positive characterization of Mrs. Austen as a parent, noting in particular the apparent lack of empathy for her mother in Austen’s letters, and speculating as to its cause. For example, Alison Sulloway considers that “Mrs. Austen was jealous of her precocious daughter,” who was “usurping the male’s privilege of writing—with the father’s tacit encouragement, too”. She finds that Austen’s “increasingly irritated comments about her mother imply that she suffered keenly from the covert maternal jealousy that mothers are often taught to inflict on their most intelligent daughters”.
Sutherland notes “bi-polar readings of the evidence” relating to Mrs. Austen in published biographies: “Jane Austen’s mother was uncaring towards her children when they were small and a selfish hypochondriac in later years; alternatively, her mother provided practically and lovingly for her small children, and Jane held her in great respect”. Claire Tomalin notes that “the emotional distance between child and mother is obvious throughout [Jane Austen’s] life”, but in the absence of other evidence, has to link this judgment solely to Mrs. Austen’s practice of fostering out her babies, something that (even allowing for historical difference) has always troubled critics (...)
In fact there are at least two separate comments in the surviving letters, quickly passed over in the trivia of family news, that not only indicate “emotional distance” but also a possible damaged relationship between Austen and her mother. In October 1808, the Austens and Martha Lloyd were still living at their rented house in Southampton, but Cassandra and Martha had been away for some weeks, leaving only Jane and Mrs. Austen at home at Southampton. In their absence the duty of attendance on her mother fell wholly on Jane, to entertain her mother’s friends and acquaintances, to attend another “intolerable” party (12-13 May 1801), or to read aloud to her mother by candlelight. Towards the end of the letter Austen wonders that something might still delay Martha’s expected return on 10 October and adds, “I shall not much regard it on my own account, for I am now got into such a way of being alone that I do not wish even for her” (1-2 October 1808). The letter in fact describes a round of busy social activities in the company of her mother. The word “alone” suggests an emotional detachment from these meaningless social encounters and the acquaintances she forms, but this sense of detachment extends to her mother as well. Austen’s feeling of being “alone” despite the presence of her mother allows her to retreat to the comfort of emotional solitude, and it may represent at the least a defensive mechanism in which she becomes an ironic observer, and so impervious to further attacks or pain. Here we see something of “the hard shell” that Claire Tomalin discerned in the letters: “in the adult who avoids intimacy you sense the child who was uncertain where to expect love or to look for security, and armoured herself against rejection”.
In the other revealing incident, five years later, on 21 October 1813, Austen was on a visit to Godmersham and Cassandra had just arrived at the home of her brother Henry in London. It was one of the rare occasions when both sisters were away from home, due to the family emergency of Henry Austen’s illness. Austen wrote immediately to Cassandra, relieved at the news of Henry’s improvement, but in the midst of comments about the state of Edward’s pond and the death of Mrs. Crabbe, the poet’s wife, an unsettling thought struck her:
“I suppose my mother will like to have me write to her. I shall try at least.”
Austen, during the previous month of her visit would have been able to avoid this obligation by writing to Cassandra at home in Chawton, who would pass on news and any message to their mother. Austen was an inveterate letter writer, who could dash something off at a moment’s notice, but the comment “I shall try at least” suggests how difficult this task must be for her and how alienated she feels from her mother (...)
Another source of evidence for this new reading is in critical studies of Austen’s fiction that consistently challenge the biographical readings of Austen’s life of cozy domesticity. Critics have long observed the absence of “united family happiness” in her novels: Reginald Farrer for example, notes as “significant”:
"the fact that nowhere does she give any picture of united family happiness; the successful domestic unity will certainly not be successfully sought at Longbourn or Mansfield, Northanger or Kellynch. This, to any one who understands Jane Austen’s preoccupation with truth, and her selection of material only from among observed facts tested by personal experience, speaks volumes, in its characteristically quiet way, for her position towards her own family. She was in it; but she was not really of it."
These kinds of readings can be far more outspoken in their suggestions of some serious problem in early family life. R. W. Chapman refers to the novelist E. M. Forster’s suspicion of Austen family life at Steventon Rectory: “Mr. Forster invites his readers to walk in the rectory garden and to guess what is wrong: ‘Can it be the drains?’”
John Halperin is more specific, when he considers how Austen at eighteen was able to create the evil but totally believable character of Lady Susan, in the story of that name:
"It is an astonishing, frightening performance by an eighteen-year-old girl—who somehow, within the confines of the Rectory at Steventon, acquired vision into the heart of darkness within man, (or, more properly, woman) and learned to articulate her vision of that darkness with unerring conviction. . . . Clearly, the Rectory at Steventon was no Garden of Eden: indeed, the monsters may have seemed, to the young writer, always on the verge of taking it over"
In his study Between Self and World: The Novels of Jane Austen (1988), James Thompson presents a psychological reading of the novels and refers in particular to Heinz Kohut, whose landmark publication was The Analysis of the Self (1971). Kohut’s emphasis on narcissism “as a compensation for an insufficiently developed sense of self or identity,” Thompson suggests, “provide[s] a very compelling explanation for a number of features in Austen’s fiction”:
" In Austen’s novels, parents are inadequate at best and hateful at worst. If mothers are not dead as in Emma and Persuasion, they are distant and callous, as in Mansfield Park; ineffectual and vain, as in Sense and Sensibility; or foolish and stupid, as in Pride and Prejudice. (The only sensible parents are Catherine Morland’s in Northanger Abbey, so sensible, in fact, that Austen must remove Catherine from their good influence for the bulk of the novel and substitute a type of Mrs. Bennet). . .Ineffectual fathers are just as numerous."
Austen’s biographer Halperin in his analysis of Austen’s early work Lady Susan and its story of a mother who hates her daughter (...) remains deeply suspicious of Mrs. Austen, suggesting that she may be the cause of both “Jane’s adolescent bitterness, obvious everywhere in the Juvenilia” and her “early and lifelong ironic detachment”. Halperin notes as well that “the number of unpleasant mothers in the fiction is striking".
Mrs Austen as Mary Musgrove:
“My Mother has not been down at all today; the Laudanum made her sleep a good deal, & upon the whole I think she is better” (October 1798)
“Soon after I had finished my letter from Staines, my Mother began to suffer from the exercise & fatigue of travelling so far, & she was a good deal indisposed from that particular kind of evacuation which has generally preceded her Illnesses. She had not a very good night at Staines, & felt a heat in her throat as we travelled yesterday morning, which seemed to foretell more Bile. She bore her Journey however much better than I had expected, & at Basingstoke where we stopped more than half an hour, received much comfort from a Mess of Broth, & the sight of M‘ Lyford, who recommended her to take 12 drops of Laudanum when she went to Bed, as a Composer, which she accordingly did.—It is by no means wonderful that her Journey should have produced some Kind of visitation; I hope a few days will entirely remove it (…) I had the dignity of dropping out my mother’s Laudanum last night, I carry about the keys of the Wine & Closet” (October 1798)
“My dear Cassandra, you have already heard from Daniel, I conclude, in what excellent time we reached and quitted Sittingbourne, and how very well my mother bore her journey thither. I am now able to send you a continuation of the same good account of her. She was very little fatigued on her arrival at this place, has been refreshed by a comfortable dinner, and now seems quite stout (…) My mother took some of her bitters at Ospringe, and some more at Rochester, and she ate some bread several times” (October 1798)
“My mother continues well” (November 1798)
“My dear Cassandra, if you paid any attention to the conclusion of my last letter, you will be satisfied, before you receive this, that my mother has had no relapse, and that Miss Debary comes. The former continues to recover, and though she does not gain strength very rapidly, my expectations are humble enough not to outstride her improvements. She was able to sit up nearly eight hours yesterday, and to-day I hope we shall do as much.” (November 1798)
“I have just received a note from James to say that Mary was brought to bed last night, at eleven o’clock, of a fine little boy, and that everything is going on very well. My mother had desired to know nothing of it before it should be all over, and we were clever enough to prevent her having any suspicion of it” (November 1798)
“My Mother continues hearty, her appetite & nights are very good, but her Bowels are still not entirely settled, & she sometimes complains of an Asthma, a Dropsy, Water in her Chest & a Liver Disorder” (December 1798)
“My mother made her entrée into the dressing-room through crowds of admiring spectators yesterday afternoon, and we all drank tea together for the first time these five weeks. She has had a tolerable night, and bids fair for a continuance in the same brilliant course of action to-day.” (December 1798)
“My Mother's spirits are not affected by her complication of disorders; on the contrary they are altogether as good as ever; nor are you to suppose that these maladies are often thought of. She has at times had a tendency towards another which always relieves her, & that is, a gouty swelling & sensation about the ancles.” (December 1798)
“I returned from Manydown this morning, & found my Mother certainly in no respect worse than I left her. She does not like the cold Weather, but that we cannot help” (December 1798)
“Mr Lyford was here yesterday; he came while we were at dinner, and partook of our elegant entertainment. I was not ashamed at asking him to sit down to table, for we had some pease-soup, a sparerib, and a pudding. He wants my mother to look yellow and to throw out a rash, but she will do neither” (December 1798)
“It began to occur to me before you mentioned it that I had been somewhat silent as to my mother’s health for some time, but I thought you could have no difficulty in divining its exact state - you, who have guessed so much stranger things. She is tolerably well - better upon the whole than she was some weeks ago. She would tell you herself that she has a very dreadful cold in her head at present; but I have not much compassion for colds in the head without fever or sore throat” (January 1799)
“My Mother seems remarkably well” (June 1799)
“I hope it will be a tolerable afternoon; when first we came, all the Umbrellas were up, but now the Pavements are getting very white again. - My Mother does not seem at all the worse for her Journey, nor are any of us I hope” (June 1799)
“I like the Gown very much & my Mother thinks it very ugly” (October 1800)
“I left my Mother very well when I came away, & left her with strict orders to continue so” (December 1800)
“My mother has not been so well for many months as she is now” (February 1801)
“Excepting a slight cold, my Mother is very well; she has been quite free from feverish or billious complaints since her arrival here” (May 1801)
“My Mother’s cold disordered her for some days, but she seems now very well; - her resolution as to remaining here, begins to give way a little; she will not like being left behind & will be glad to compound Matters with her enraged family.” (May 1801)
“My Mother bears the Shock [death of her husband Mr. Austen] as well as possible; she was quite prepared for it, & feels all the blessing of his being spared a long Illness. My Uncle & Aunt have been with us, & shew us every imaginable kindness” (January 1805)
“But we could not keep our Engagement with Ms Chamberlayne last night, my Mother having unluckily caught a cold which seems likely to be rather heavy (…) My Mother’s cold is not so bad to day as I expected. It is chiefly in her head, & she has not fever enough to affect her appetite” (April 1805)
“They want us to drink tea with them tonight, but I do not know whether my Mother will have nerves for it” (April 1805)
“My mother does not seem at all more disappointed than ourselves at the termination of the family treaty; she thinks less of that just now than of the comfortable state of her own finances, which she finds on closing her year’s accounts beyond her expectation, as she begins the new year with a balance of 30 l. in her favour; and when she has written her answer to my aunt, which you know always hangs a little upon her mind, she will be above the world entirely (…) My mother is afraid I have not been explicit enough on the subject of her wealth; she began 1806 with 68 l., she begins 1807 with 99 l., and this after 32 l. purchase of stock” (January 1807)
“My mother is not ill” (October 1808)
“My Mother has not been out of doors this week, but she keeps pretty well” (December 1808)
“I was very glad of your letter this morning, for my Mother taking medicine, Eliza keeping her bed with a cold, & Choles not coming, made us rather dull & dependant on the post” (December 1808)
“My Mother is well, & gets out when she can with the same enjoyment, & apparently the same strength as hitherto” (January 1809)
“For a day or two last week, my Mother was very poorly with a return of one of her old complaints—but it did not last long, & seems to have left nothing bad behind it.—She began to talk of a serious Illness, her two last having been preceded by the same symptoms;—but thank Heaven! she is now quite as well as one can expect her to be in Weather, which deprives her of Exercise” (January 1809)
“Harriot & Eliz. dined here yesterday, & we walked back with them to Tea; not my Mother - she has a cold which affects her in the usual way, & was not equal to the walk. She is better this morning & I hope will soon physick away the worst part of it. It has not confined her; she has got out every day that the weather has allowed her” (May 1811)
“My Mother’s cold is better, & I believe she only wants dry weather to be very well. It was a great distress to her that Anna should be absent, during her Uncle’s visit - a distress which I could not share.” (June 1811)
“My Mother slept through a good deal of Sunday, but still it was impossible not to be disordered by such a sky, & even yesterday she was but poorly. She is pretty well again today, & I am in hopes may not be much longer a Prisoner” (February 1813)
“Your letter was truely welcome & I am much obliged to you all for your praise; it came at a right time, for I had had some fits of disgust; - our 2nd evening’s reading [Pride and Prejudice] to Miss Benn had not pleased me so well, but I believe something must be attributed to my Mother’s too rapid way of getting on - & though she perfectly understands the Characters herself, she cannot speak as they ought” (February 1813)
“Now my Mother will be unwell again. Every fault in Ben’s blood does harm to hers, & every dinner-invitation’ he refuses will give her an Indigestion” (September 1813)
“Thank you my dearest Cassandra for the nice long Letter I sent off this morning. I hope you have had it by this time & that it has found you all well,’ & my Mother no more in need of Leeches” (September 1813)
“I told M's C. of my Mother’s late oppression in her head. She says on that subject - “Dear Mrs. Austen’s is I believe an attack frequent at her age & mine. Last year I had for some time the Sensation of a Peck Loaf resting on my head, & they talked of cupping me, but I came off with a dose or two of calomel & have never heard of it since” (September 1813)
“Mary’s blue gown! My Mother must be in agonies. I have a great mind to have my blue gown dyed some time or other” (October 1813)
“I suppose my Mother recollects that she gave me no Money for paying Brecknell & Twining; & my funds will not supply enough” (March 1814)
“I am sorry my Mother has been suffering, & am afraid this exquisite weather is too good to agree with her. I enjoy it all over me, from top to toe, from right to left, Longitudinally, Perpendicularly, Diagonally; & I cannot but selfishly hope we are to have it last till Christmas; nice, unwholesome, Unseasonable, relaxing, close, muggy weather!” (December 1815)