Jane Austen reading-A BEAUTIFUL DESCRIPTION OF DIFFERENT EFFECTS OF SENSIBILITY ON DIFFERENT MINDS

A reading of Jane Austen’s juvenilia writing, entitled ‘A Beautiful Description of the Different Effects of Sensibility on Different Minds’, from ‘Detached Pieces’ in Volume the First (written c.1793).
You can see the manuscript here janeausten.ac.uk/manuscripts/...
JANE AUSTEN READING
JANE AUSTEN JUVENILIA
JANE AUSTEN WRITING
JANE AUSTEN SENSIBILITY
18th CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE
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[@DrOctaviaCox]

If you like the work I do, then you can support my channel here: www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=D8LSKGJP2NL4N Thank you very much indeed for watching.

[@maryhamric]

This made me smile! Loved following along in her handwriting!

[@nancymcclymont2858]

I need to watch later, but I just had to stop & comment on the art in the thumbnail… It is one of my favorite pieces. So much so that I bought it twice! It’s called “Flaming June” and was painted by Lord Frederick Leighton. He has several other gorgeous portraits. That’s all. Cannot wait to watch this on my break!

[@DrOctaviaCox]

A beautiful painting. When I saw it I knew I just had to use it!

[@hannahdonovan6742]

Oh my lord I had no idea this existed what a joy. Am working on romantics and medical history of mind and this is such a delight!

[@nikitakekana5095]

What a spectacular reading voice you have. I am usually so caught up in what you are saying in your analyses and interpretations that it has only struck me now. This was wonderful!

[@sixeses]

Thank You for showing us more Jane Austen than what we've read in the novels .

[@DrOctaviaCox]

It's absolutely my pleasure. It's so fascinating, I think, to see the young writer in action trying out her techniques and playing with tone.

[@freedpeeb]

Even as a teenager dear Miss Austen had a wicked sense of humour.

[@davebonello1944]

(Melanie here) This reminds me of Mary in Persuasion!

[@DrOctaviaCox]

" 'I am so ill I can hardly speak. I have not seen a creature the whole morning! ... I made the best of it; I always do: but I was very far from well at the time; and I do not think I ever was so ill in my life as I have been all this morning: very unfit to be left alone, I am sure. Suppose I were to be seized of a sudden in some dreadful way, and not able to ring the bell!' ... Then, forgetting to think of it, she was at the other end of the room, beautifying a nosegay; then, she ate her cold meat; and then she was well enough to propose a little walk." (Persuasion ch.5) What a swift recovery, Mary!

[@sixeses]

@@DrOctaviaCox Anne Eliot was the cure. I always wondered how much of Cassandra is in some of the sister characters.

[@londongael]

@@sixeses Interesting! If I think about it, perhaps Elinor Dashwood?

[@nickwilliams7547]

Thanks Octavia. It's so interesting to see Jane's sense of humour (mixed with a little mischief!) in her early writing. Do you think she was consciously building up to writing her more substantial works, or were these simply the musings of a girl just wanting to amuse herself and her family? I suspect the latter, but I can also imagine that if they were well received by the people she knew, it would have encouraged her to be more ambitious.

[@DrOctaviaCox]

It's my pleasure, Nick. I agree - seeing the humour and mischief in her early works reveals so much about the tone of her later, more developed, more nuanced, sentence-making. I wish I knew the answer to that question! The Austens were quite an active literary family. JA's brothers, James and Henry, had published a periodical magazine while they were at the University of Oxford, called The Loiterer, published from January 1789 to March 1790. It has even been argued that one of the letters in issue no.9, signed by ‘Sophia Sentiment’, was in fact written by JA. In it 'Sophia' chastises the editors (i.e. James and Henry) for not taking enough notice of women readers, and ends by making a joke about brothers and sisters: "may you always continue a bachelor, and be plagued with a maiden sister to keep house for you". If this was JA, then she would have seen her own writing in published form at the age of 13! Even if this wasn't JA, the fact that her brothers had had their writing published into print might have brought the idea of publication closer to home for the young JA than it might otherwise have been. Here is an online version of The Loiterer: www.theloiterer.org/loiterer/contents.html

[@londongael]

@@DrOctaviaCox and Nick Williams - this is indeed the question! I think of all the successful authors who recall having professional ambitions from childhood. Much of Austen's juvenilia is laid out, in fair copy (an appreciable amount of work) like a printed piece, complete with dedications and sometimes imaginary publisher's details. It's nearly impossible to imagine a teenage girl who loves writing and reading, as much as Jane Austen clearly does, who would NOT nurse an ambition to appear in print! The Sophia Sentiment piece - very plausibly a juvenile work of Austen's - might also, intriguingly, hint at an early determination not to marry. It also displays a remarkable self-confidence - "...perhaps I may even give you a little assistance..." - which, if it is Austen, sounds exactly like the cherished and indulged almost-youngest of a large family!

[@nickwilliams7547]

@@DrOctaviaCox Thank you Octavia. I hadn't heard of the Loiterer (a good name for a magazine by the way!); I'll certainly take a look at it. That letter by 'Sophia Sentiment' has a definite touch of Jane about it!

[@nickwilliams7547]

I agree with you @londongael although I wouldn't say that JA was 'determined not to marry'. I think it was perhaps more a case of the right man never coming along at the right time?

[@londongael]

@@nickwilliams7547 Thank you for your reply! I think I didn't express myself clearly. I don't mean that she was so "determined" that she would never consider marriage - there was that wobble of a twelve-hour engagement, after all. I meant that I imagine her as the kind of young girl who *says* she will never marry, having another destiny in mind (and perhaps, looking at her mother's life, and thinking "Not for me"). I think the spinster housekeeper in the Sophia Sentiment letter, who will "plague" her brother is meant for herself, not her sister - always assuming she wrote it, of course. For other reasons, I do think Austen was quite marriage averse. She doesn't seem to have been short of admirers, but, as an adult, she must have realised that marriage and motherhood, if she survived childbirth, would have meant no more writing. It ties in with the question you raised about how seriously she took her life as an author, and from what age. Austen's Emma also says she will never marry - and (spoiler alert :-) ), of course, she does - but Emma has no work, no other real contribution to make to the world, nothing meaningful to which to devote her life. Jane Austen had, and I think she knew it.

[@bonniehagan9644]

Thank you, Dr. Cox! I love young Jane's tone.

[@DrOctaviaCox]

My pleasure, Bonnie. Me too!

[@londongael]

I imagine Melissa had a slight cold...

[@DrOctaviaCox]

Yes, if you actually had flu then cheese - toasted or otherwise - would be the last thing you'd want!

[@cafepoem189]

Thank you so much, Dr. Cox.🙏

[@melissashiels7838]

My name! It's so rare to see my name in anything prior to the 20th century (although, when I watched the movie Lincoln, Daniel Day Lewis playing Abraham Lincoln recounts an actual court case that Lincoln defended before he was president, and the defendant was named Melissa, and she was born in the late 18th century). I wonder if the name "Melissa" was a contender for S&S, but Marianne won out. I've always wanted to be named Elizabeth, since that's what my parents were originally going to name me, but now I don't mind being a Melissa so much.

[@AD-hs2bq]

Thank you! ♥️

[@DrOctaviaCox]

How do you respond to Austen’s early comic responses to sensibility?

[@maryhamric]

I smiled and laughed! Brilliant!

[@londongael]

Overall, that, for Jane Austen, "sensibility" was a very different thing from true feeling. Characters who display "sensibility" are always self-centred, self-indulgent and, well, selfish. They have no genuine sympathy with others, being more concerned with the performance of sensibility - by swooning, weeping, screaming, "running mad" etc. In short, for Austen, sensibility is a fashionable affectation, learned from fashionable novels. We learn that there are dangers to health in over the top displays of feeling. I can't offhand remember in which juvenile piece a character advises her friend not to overdo the fainting, but stick to the running mad, which at least provides healthy exercise! This idea is treated more seriously, and with more nuance, in Sense and Sensibility, in which Marianne's life is endangered by her extreme expression of her feelings. Marianne's feelings are real, but she is also influenced by the literary "cult of sensibility" that sees uncontrolled expression of emotion as a guarantee of authenticity. Elinor's feelings are just as deep, and just as real, but not put on display. Jane Austen seems to approve of Elinor's self-control, but I can't help feeling each sister would have benefitted by taking a leaf out of the other's book, to reach a balance.

[@HRJohn1944]

Thank you - can you recommend an edition available in the UK of the three volumes of Juvenilia, preferably with some facsimiles from the manuscripts?

[@DrOctaviaCox]

The Cambridge University Press edition is excellent and scholarly (titled 'Juvenilia' and edited by Peter Sabor), as is the Oxford UP edition (titled 'Teenage Writings' and edited by Kathryn Sutherland and Freya Johnston). The manuscripts of all the juvenilia are available at janeausten.ac.uk/manuscripts/index.html

[@HRJohn1944]

@@DrOctaviaCox Many thanks

[@londongael]

There is a Penguin Classic of Juvenilia from both Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, in one volume. I don't know if it is still in print, but if not, probably obtainable secondhand.

[@beckyginger3432]

she's so funny

[@dorothywillis1]

LOL!

[@mnbzxc5841]

Eres un ídolo siempre en mi corazón,hermosa,amorc,elecciones,culturales.❤️ Son unos de los mejores conciertos.