Love and Freindship and Other Early Works

Summary

This volume gathers comic pieces that Jane Austen wrote as a teenager at Steventon rectory, between about 1790 and 1793, and copied into the notebook she called Volume the Second. The title work, 'Love and Freindship', dated 13 June 1790 when she was fourteen, is a novel in fifteen letters parodying the sentimental fiction of the day. Laura, now fifty-five, tells her friend Isabel's daughter Marianne the misfortunes of her life. Born of a Welsh-Irish father and a mother descended from a Scotch peer and an Italian opera-girl, Laura grows up full of sensibility in the Vale of Uske. A young stranger, Edward, knocks at the cottage door on a stormy night and marries her at once; he has fled his father, Sir Edward, rather than marry the lovely Lady Dorothea, declaring that it shall never be said that he obliged his father. The couple flee to Edward's friend Augustus and his wife Sophia, and the two heroines become bosom friends, fainting alternately on a sofa. Augustus is arrested for debts incurred by living on money taken from his father's desk, Edward disappears, and the women set off for Scotland, where a long-lost grandfather, Lord St Clair, distributes banknotes to four newly discovered grandchildren and leaves. At their cousin Macdonald's house they persuade his daughter Janetta to throw over the suitor her father approves and elope with a stranger, and are turned out when Sophia is caught taking banknotes from Macdonald's drawer. A phaeton overturns near them carrying Edward and Augustus, who are dying; Sophia faints and Laura runs mad by turns, and Sophia later dies of a chill caught from fainting on damp ground, advising Laura to run mad as often as she chooses but never to faint. Laura retires on an allowance from Sir Edward to a Highland village. The volume also contains 'Lesley Castle', an unfinished novel in letters among Scottish and Sussex families, in which Charlotte Lutterell mourns the wasted wedding feast after her sister's fiancé is killed; 'The History of England', a mock textbook 'by a partial, prejudiced, and ignorant historian' that champions Mary, Queen of Scots against Elizabeth; 'A Collection of Letters' dedicated to her cousin Jane Cooper; and short squibs including 'The Female Philosopher', 'The First Act of a Comedy', Anna Parker's letter of cheerfully confessed crimes, 'A Tour through Wales' and 'A Tale'. The pieces were first printed in 1922. The library text follows the Project Gutenberg transcription, which reproduces the stories but not G. K. Chesterton's preface to the 1922 edition.

Plot or Argument

• Love and Freindship, Letters 1–6

  Isabel asks Laura to tell her story to her daughter Marianne. Laura describes her upbringing, her boundless sensibility, and the night Edward arrives at the cottage in the Vale of Uske and marries her. Edward relates his defiance of his father over Lady Dorothea.

• Love and Freindship, Letters 7–10

  Laura and Edward stay with Augustus and Sophia; the friends swoon at every emotion. Augustus is arrested, Edward vanishes, and Laura and Sophia make for Scotland, meeting Lord St Clair, who claims four grandchildren in one inn and pays each fifty pounds.

• Love and Freindship, Letters 11–15

  At Macdonald's house the heroines talk Janetta out of her engagement and into an elopement, and are expelled for theft. The overturned phaeton brings the deaths of their husbands, then Sophia's; Laura meets her relations on a stagecoach and retires to the Highlands.

• Lesley Castle

  Ten letters, dedicated to Austen's brother Henry, between Margaret Lesley in Perthshire and Charlotte Lutterell in Sussex, with letters from the young second Lady Lesley and Mrs Marlowe. Abandoned wives, rival beauties and Charlotte's preoccupation with the uneaten wedding dinner drive a story that breaks off unfinished.

• The History of England

  A mock history from Henry IV to Charles I, inscribed to Cassandra, with few dates and many partisan opinions: the historian defends Richard III and Anne Boleyn, adores Mary, Queen of Scots, and abuses Elizabeth, while confessing a partiality for the Stuarts.

• A Collection of Letters

  Five letters from a mother introducing her daughters into society, a young lady crossed in love, a young lady in distressed circumstances insulted by Lady Greville, a young lady rather impertinent, and a young lady very much in love.

• Scraps

  'The Female Philosopher', 'The First Act of a Comedy' set in an inn, the letter of Anna Parker, who has committed every crime and is going to reform by marriage, 'A Tour through Wales', in which the daughters run beside their galloping mother, and 'A Tale' of a man who furnishes a cottage of two rooms and a closet.

Characters

• Laura, narrator of Love and Freindship

  Self-admiring heroine of exquisite sensibility who tells her disasters at fifty-five.

• Sophia, Laura's bosom friend

  Elegant fellow-sufferer who faints at every crisis and dies of it.

• Edward, Laura's husband

  Baronet's son who marries Laura on sight to avoid obliging his father.

• Augustus, Sophia's husband

  Edward's friend, arrested for debt after living on money taken from his father.

• Macdonald and Janetta, Scottish cousin and his daughter

  Hospitable host and the girl the heroines talk into elopement.

• Charlotte Lutterell, correspondent in Lesley Castle

  Practical housekeeper who grieves chiefly over the wasted wedding food.

• Margaret Lesley, correspondent in Lesley Castle

  Perthshire heiress writing of her brother's abandoned household and her new stepmother.

• The Historian, narrator of The History of England

  Avowedly partial young author who loves the Stuarts and dislikes Elizabeth.

Lessons

• Parody as criticism

  By pushing the sentimental novel's swoons, instant friendships and noble defiance of parents to absurdity, the teenage Austen shows exactly what she thinks is false in them. Parody is a way of reading critically with a laugh.

  • What habits of sentimental heroines does Laura display in her opening letter?
  • Why is Edward's refusal to oblige his father funny rather than noble?
  • Where does Austen let the heroines' selfishness show through their talk of feeling?

• Sensibility and selfishness

  Laura and Sophia boast of hearts too tender for the world, yet they steal, break engagements and ignore others' needs. Austen suggests that cultivated feeling is no substitute for honesty and duty.

  • How do Laura and Sophia treat Macdonald, who has taken them in?
  • What does Sophia's dying advice reveal about the creed of sensibility?
  • How does this early theme return in Sense and Sensibility?

• Writing for an audience at home

  Each piece is dedicated to a family member or friend, and the jokes assume readers who know the novels and history books being mocked. Austen learned her craft by entertaining a circle that loved reading.

  • What does the dedication of The History of England to Cassandra suggest about the sisters' friendship?
  • Why might mock-dedications and promissory notes be part of the fun?

• History and partiality

  The young historian announces that she is partial, prejudiced and ignorant, and proves it. The joke invites readers to notice how real histories also take sides.

  • Whom does the historian praise and whom does she blame, and on what grounds?
  • Is an honest admission of bias better than a pretence of neutrality?
  • How might a historian be fair to both Mary and Elizabeth?

Context

In the 1780s and 1790s the novel of sensibility, often told in letters, was at the height of its fashion; heroines wept and fainted to show the fineness of their hearts, and children's histories such as Oliver Goldsmith's History of England were common schoolroom reading. Austen grew up in a clerical household where her father took boarding pupils and the family staged plays and read novels aloud.

Composition

Austen wrote these pieces roughly between 1790 and 1793 and later copied them into the second of her three manuscript notebooks; 'Love and Freindship' is dated 13 June 1790 and 'The History of England' 26 November 1791, and 'Lesley Castle' carries a date of January 1792 in its first letter. 'Love and Freindship' is inscribed to her cousin Eliza, Comtesse de Feuillide. The notebook descended in the family and was first published in 1922 by Chatto and Windus, with a preface by G. K. Chesterton.

Reception

The 1922 volume surprised readers by showing a young Austen of high spirits and broad comedy. Chesterton's preface praised the gusto of her early laughter, and later critics have read the juvenilia as the workshop in which her mature irony was formed. The spelling 'Freindship' is Austen's own and is kept in modern editions.

Comparisons

• northanger-abbey

  Austen's first finished novel continues the juvenilia's burlesque of fiction, now aimed at the Gothic romance and its reader Catherine Morland.

• sense-and-sensibility

  Marianne Dashwood carries Laura's cult of feeling into a serious novel, where its cost is real illness rather than comic swooning.

• emma

  The mature Austen still writes about imagination misleading a heroine, but Emma's errors are corrected by self-knowledge instead of being exploded by farce.

• pride-and-prejudice

  Lydia's elopement and Mr Collins's absurdities show the juvenilia's comic energy brought within realistic bounds.

• don-quixote

  Cervantes's parody of chivalric romance is the great model for fiction that mocks a fashionable genre by following its rules too faithfully.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• Every faint, swoon and fit of madness in 'Love and Freindship'; count them.
• Moments where the heroines praise their own virtue while doing something wrong.
• Austen's own spellings, such as 'freind', 'greif' and 'beleive'.
• The dedications at the head of each piece and whom they address.
• The historian's open bias toward the Stuarts and against Elizabeth.

Key terms and names

Juvenilia

Works an author wrote in youth; Austen's fill three notebooks.

Sensibility

The eighteenth-century ideal of a heart quick to feel, shown by tears and faints in fashionable novels.

Epistolary novel

A story told through letters, the form of 'Love and Freindship' and 'Lesley Castle'.

Burlesque

Comic imitation that mocks a serious form by exaggerating it.

Phaeton

A light, open, fast carriage; the overturned one brings Edward and Augustus to their end.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension How do Laura and Edward meet and marry?
2. Comprehension What advice does Sophia give Laura before she dies?
3. Comprehension Which monarchs does the historian admire and which does she dislike?
4. Interpretation What does Laura's claim that her only fault was too much sensibility tell us about her?
5. Interpretation How does the letter form help Austen expose her characters' vanity?
6. Interpretation What does Charlotte Lutterell's worry about the wedding food add to the comedy of 'Lesley Castle'?
7. Big Question Is it possible to feel deeply and still act selfishly, and how can we tell real compassion from its imitation?

Faith Connections

• James 2:15–16 (Scripture)

  Faith that says 'be warmed and filled' without giving anything matches the heroines' tears that never turn into help.

• Ephesians 6:1–3 (Scripture)

  Edward's boast that he will never oblige his father turns the commandment to honour parents upside down for comic effect.

• Proverbs 26:4–5 (Scripture)

  Answering folly according to its folly, so that the fool is not wise in his own eyes, describes the method of parody itself.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: By letting sentimental heroines narrate their own conduct, Austen argues that the fashionable ideal of sensibility, separated from principle, excuses selfishness and folly.

Rhetorical device: bathos. Sophia's solemn deathbed warning ends in the anticlimax 'Run mad as often as you chuse; but do not faint'.

Debate: Resolved: that parody is a better way than argument to correct a bad fashion in literature.

Memory Work

Run mad as often as you chuse; but do not faint—

Writing Prompts

Essay: Argue that 'Love and Freindship' is a moral as well as a comic work, using Laura's opening self-portrait, the treatment of Macdonald, and Sophia's death.

Comparison with Sense and Sensibility: Compare Laura and Sophia with Marianne Dashwood: how does Austen's treatment of sensibility change when she moves from burlesque to a serious novel?

Medical Lens

The comedy turns on the period's belief that fine feeling showed itself in the body: Laura and Sophia faint, swoon and 'run mad' at every emotion, and Sophia dies of a chill caught from fainting on damp ground, warning that a frenzy fit is better exercise than a swoon. Austen is mocking the swooning heroine of sentimental fiction, not describing a disorder, and the burlesque is a useful period counterpoint to serious contemporary writing on nervous sensibility. In 'Lesley Castle' a fiancé is killed by a fall from his horse just before his wedding, treated with deliberately callous comedy.

• Love and Freindship, Letter the 13th

  Finding their husbands dying by the overturned phaeton, Sophia faints and Laura runs mad, alternately, for over an hour.

  Madness Psychosis Hysteria
• Love and Freindship, Letter the 14th

  Sophia's fatal illness from fainting in the night air and her deathbed warning against swoons.

  Hysteria Death Dying

Creative Prompts

• Fiction

  Write a sixteenth letter in which Marianne replies to Laura with the common sense Laura lacks.

• Essay

  List the conventions of the sentimental novel that 'Love and Freindship' mocks and show how Austen exaggerates each.

• Adaptation

  Write a mock 'History of' your own school or town by a partial, prejudiced and ignorant historian, keeping dates to a minimum.

• Classroom

  Stage the scene of the overturned phaeton as a melodrama, with the class as a chorus counting faints and fits of madness.

Further Reading

• Catharine and Other Writings, Jane Austen (ed. Margaret Anne Doody and Douglas Murray)

  Collected edition of all three juvenilia notebooks.

• Jane Austen: A Life, Claire Tomalin

• A Memoir of Jane Austen, James Edward Austen-Leigh

  The 1870 family memoir by her nephew.

• The History of England, Oliver Goldsmith

  The kind of schoolroom history Austen's mock version answers.