The Genteel Reading Circle For Ladies

Oh yes, the bidding between the parents and grandparents about the heights of the children!

The details of the tedious conversations are hilarious - all form and no content. Everyone saying the 'right' thing but no-one saying anything remotely interesting.

I am v. grateful to this thread for encouraging me to reread Sense and Sensibility for the first time in many years.

You can tell it's JA's first published novel; Elinor is too sensible for a 19-year-old, even one with a lot of responsibility on her shoulders, and is not really developed as a character. What strikes me most is JA writing out her utter boredom and irritation at years of tedious social events. All those occasions when Elinor and Marianne have to go over to Sir John Middleton's just to be sociable, and sit around for hours having to listen to banal chat, while ill-disciplined children rage around them! I think we can safely deduce that JA was an introvert.

We have flown at a tangent, haven't we? But I'll finish our digression by saying I expect the Bennet's manservant to be in rather the same position as Downton's Thomas was went he left them and went to his 'new' position in the final season. He seemed to be neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring, but a bit of all three.

As far as SS servants, to an extent I expect that long serving ones probably built up a strong loyalty to kind employers and began to identify with them as 'family'. And, especially in a situation where they see them being basically turfed out with 'nothing', that loyalty may have extended to uprooting themselves to go with them, to 'take care of them'. Or perhaps they realized that Mrs Dashwood Jnr was probably going to be a right bitch to work for, cut wages, and probably sack a few of them to reduce expenses which might massively increase their workloads. And to an extent, even though the Dashwood ladies' household was small, it may have been an easier workload.

I think they must have had, though no idea what he would have been called, or how his role defined.

Austen seems to use 'manservant' rather than anything more defined like valet or butler or footman, doesn't she? At least for her main families. (Does Lady Catherine de B have a butler?) The Dashwoods when they leave Norland for Barton Cottage take three of their servants with them, two woman and Thomas, a 'manservant' - and his jobs at Barton seem to involve doing errands in town, where he sees the married Lucy Steele, and also indoor work. Is he doing something like waiting on table when he tells the Dashwoods that he saw her?

I always hmm inwardly when the Dashwoods speedily select three of their Norland servants to take with them to a completely different part of the country - the implication is that the Dashwoods are such lovely mistresses that any of their servants would follow them anywhere, even to a distant part of the country to a much downgraded establishment with so little time off that their chances of seeing their families in the Norland area again are pretty slim!

Can you imagine the shock of having been a servant with dozens of other servants in a big house like Norland, and suddenly you're one of three in an isolated spot in a comparatively tiny house where you're shut up with with a moody teenager almost literally on top of your employers all the time?

(Since the thread is supposed to be about S and S, which I forgot )

You are right! It is Uncle Gardiner.

Cross the footman/manservant off the Bennet's list. But do you think it'd be safe to assume that there was a manservant in the Bennet household anyway? I'd think that Mr Bennet would have someone to assist him in dressing, care of men's clothing etc and I wouldn't think they'd have just a valet, but someone with other duties as well.

I haven't got a copy of P and P to hand, but I thought the manservant that gets referred to as an escort on a journey was the Gardiners'? Doesn't the divine Lady Catherine de B seem rather surprised that Lizzie's uncle keeps a manservant, which I think was a sort of social barometer, hence her raising her eyebrows that someone so ungenteel as to be living in Cheapside has one?

IIRC, JA mentions specifically in PP that there's Hill (housekeeper), maids (plural), and a manservant (who is to meet the girls to escort them home). I'd assume the manservant is a footman-type rather than an 'official' butler, as he's someone who could be dispensed with to go collect the girls. There could be a cook, or Hill could be a cook/housekeeper.

One would assume that there are 'outside' servants, such as a groom and gardeners.

Sarah is the maid's name. And I think she's only mentioned by name once in P&P. Obviously in Longbourn she gets the starring role.

There some reference to a maid helping the girls dress/do their hair somewhere in P and P, too, but even though the hairdressing skills suggest a proper lady's maid, it does sound as if all the ladies share her services...?

Well, Pemberley is what we would now class as a stately home occupied by a wealthy family, and at the centre of a huge estate, so it would be crammed with servants. Presumably part of what Pemberley's nice housekeeper who shows Lizzie and the Gardiners around means when she gushes about what an excellent master Darcy is that he's retained a big household staff after he inherited and he and Georgiana were usually somewhere else, so could have had just a skeleton staff at Pemberley and more at his house in town...?

Whereas Lonbgourn is a modest gentleman's house on a presumably fairly small estate where the horses have to double up as workhorses and carriage horses, and where Mr Collins can assume (even though he's crass to say it aloud and Mrs Bennet indignantly denies it and says they are perfectly able to keep a cook) that some of the daughters help out with cooking. So a much more modest establishment. (I do think that one of the problems with a lot of TV and film adaptations is that Longbourn is far too large and glossy!)

And if Mrs B's slightly bitchy suggestion that Charlotte cooks at the Lucases is true, it's possible we should be seeing the Bennets keeping a cook is part of Mrs B's extravagance. In fact, if Charlotte does do some of the cooking at Lucas Lodge, she would have been far better prepared for the modest life at Hunsford Parsonage than if say, Jane, Lizzie or Mary had accepted Mr Collins. Obviously Jane and Lizzie won't need cooking skills in their marriages, though...

There's a lot of places in S&S where you have to read carefully to catch the sarcasm, I think.

I'm about a third of the way through S&S now. Is it just me or is it written in a much more convoluted, wordy style than P&P? I have to keep re-reading passages to get the sense and I didn't have to do this with P&P.

How many servants does Longbourn depict the Bennets as having, then?
A housekeeper, butler/handyman (Mr and Mrs Hill), maid of all work (Sarah), skivvy (Molly who had to change her name from Mary) and eventually a manservant/footman (James. They all seemed to have to turn their hand to anything required and worked very hard. At Pemberley, later in the book, there were a lot more servants and consequently it was easier. It wasn't me who asked the question but I'd also be interested to know.

How many servants does Longbourn depict the Bennets as having, then?

John Sutherland and Deirdre LeFaye's 'So You Think You Know Jane Austen?' is also fun for Austen novel trivia which turns out not to be so entirely trivial in some ways. (It's set up as a series of quiz questions on each novel ranging from easy to hard, with lengthy answers at the back). I does cover some of the stuff we've talked about here, like why does Wickham elope with Lydia, why isn't Mr Collins's name Bennet, and things like who tells Lady Catherine de Burgh that there's rumoured to be an engagement between Lizzie and Darcy (presumably Charlotte Lucas via Mr Collins?)

Though some of their answers are debatable and some plain wrong - they appear to think that when Darcy says at the Assembly ball( when Bingley suggests he dance with Lizzie, who isn't dancing) that he doesn't want to give consequence to 'young ladies who are slighted by other men', he's suggesting that someone has been spreading rumours or gossip about Lizzie.

Which I think is nonsense. Darcy is just saying he doesn't want to dance, and if he were going to, he would definitely not be taking pity on a wallflower like Lizzie who's sitting out a dance because there aren't enough men. (Charming! Even Mr Knightley takes pity on poor, slighted Harriet Smith when Mr Elton rudely refuses to dance with her.)

Would still like to hear views on Emma please !

Going on holiday soon and have been busily downloading books to the kindle based on suggestions from.this thread.

Longbourn

I enjoyed Longbourne, but wonder (from pure ignorance) if there would have been so very few servants.

I'm enjoying What Matters in Jane Austen by John Mullan, but haven't come across anything relevant to this question.

because I would have been one of them if I'd been around at the time

Me too, probably. I just didn't enjoy it (although I know a lot of people did).

I didn't think Longbourn sucked the joy out of the story, it just showed that for all the entertaining, dressing up and going to balls etc. someone else had to do all the work with precious little recognition. My sympathy was with the servants probably because I would have been one of them if I'd been around at the time. My grandmother was 'in service'.

Have just started S&S. Austen wasn't subtle in her descriptions of any of the Dashwoods.

I didn't like 'Longbourn'. It sucked all the joy out of the original story, and while I understand the concept, setting it in the P&P household was just a marketing gimmick. I probably would have enjoyed it more if it had been it's own story.

I've just finished reading Longbourn by Jo Baker as recommended on the Mr & Mrs Collins thread (P&P from the servants' point of view). I really enjoyed it and couldn't put it down but although I was pleased with the ending, in real life, I don't think it would have turned out this way.

Now I can start on S&S.