Jane Austen and Leisure
David Selwyn

Jane Austen's novels portray a leisured society of gentlemen and ladies who do not need to work. Even the minority of clergymen, soldiers and sailors - men with professions - are almost never seen working. Jane Austen herself, despite responsibility for some domestic tasks, wrote as a woman of leisure. Yet leisure, the distinguishing mark of a gentleman, was not meant to be an excuse for idleness. The proper use of leisure to fulfil duties, to read and to think, and above all to pursue social relations in a world where family and marriage for the propertied was of central importance, was a vital test of character.

The kinds of activity pursued in Jane Austen's novels, and the way in which people apply themselves to them, have significance for our understanding of her characters and the roles they play. The smooth working of society depended on a round of visits, dinners and evening parties, sometimes enlivened by cards, music, dancing or amateur theatricals; and there were also regular outings to balls and assemblies, plays and concerts. Bath and other spas were active centres of entertainment of all kinds; and the seaside resort was steadily growing in importance. Jane Austen experienced all these herself and put them to good use in her novels; but she also registered the fact that quiet, solitary pursuits such as reading, walking or the inevitable needlework might be more to the taste of a Fanny Price or an Anne Elliott. Male characters employ their leisure in a number of sports, often glimpsed offstage - shooting, hunting, racing, gaming; John Thorpe drives his gig wildly through the streets of Bath and talks of bloodstock and the speed of his horses; Tom Bertram is nearly killed by a fall at Newmarket.

Jane Austen and Leisure identifies leisure and its use as a central characteristic of Jane Austen's work. David Selwyn examines it both in Jane Austen's life and by looking at the whole range of leisure pursuits in her novels.
256 pages 26 illus. January 1999
1 85285 171 6 £25