Why would Charlotte Lucas of Pride and Prejudice marry such a fool as Mr. Collins, who had already been turned down by Elizabeth Bennet? Because, in her late twenties, this was Charlotte’s last—perhaps only—chance to escape the dominion of her parents and establish her own home. A home of one’s own—we find this phrase, or a parallel expression, everywhere in Austen’s work. Unlike Elizabeth Bennet, Charlotte Lucas would have suppressed her physical antipathy for conjugal life with Mr. Collins and, once assured of an heir and a spare, be able to construct a relatively separate existence—a marriage of compromise, of good sense and practicality.

What other possibilities were there? Within Jane Austen’s immediate view there were no women artists, writers, or performers. Women of intellectual accomplishment were rare. What, besides marriage, might intervene? Her neighbor Mrs. Lefroy was intelligent and well read, but she was a wife and the mistress of a household. The witty, accomplished cousin Eliza provided, briefly, an example of an independent woman of unorthodox opinions, but even Eliza rather quickly formed a second marriage and surrendered her notions of independence.

Between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-three, the rhythms of Jane Austen’s life—and the rhythms of her writing, too—were profoundly disturbed. She had been born in rural Steventon, and in her midtwenties was living there still, under the family roof, within the confines of her father’s income and will. Early schooling and occasional travels—London, Kent, Bath—had taken her away from home for short periods, but home was what she loved best, home in its real sense—those comfortable and familiar Steventon surroundings. Home also meant psychological security—daily routines, old friends, acceptance, usefulness to those she loved, and the series of small accomplishments that gave purpose to her existence. Her sense of irony often throws biographers off course when assessing the Austen personality, but of two or three things we can be sure: She loved the natural world and drew strength from it. She thrived in circumstances that were steady and assured. Her creativity, her ability to put pen to paper, flowed from the reality of the familiar, the predictable.

Her attachment to nature and to the calm of Hampshire was genuine, and each temporary uprooting had brought, at its conclusion, renewal and the recaptured appreciation of the deep value she placed on home, the one place where she had a measure of autonomy and encouragement and where she felt at ease with her creative self.

In the year 1800 an enormous upheaval occurred in Jane Austen’s settled life. The story is muddled and riddled with inconsistencies, probably because the most complete account of it was written many years after the actual event—almost seventy years, in fact, by Austen’s niece Caroline. “My aunts had been away [from Steventon] a little while, and were met in the hall on their return [in fact, only Jane was present] by their mother who told them it was all settled, and they were going to live in Bath. My mother who was present said my aunt [ Jane] was greatly distressed.” There is no mention of fainting in this account, but the traditional tale is that Jane Austen fainted on hearing the news that the family was to leave its beloved Steventon and move to a place that was different in tone, feeling, and familiarity.

Can she really have fainted, she who in her earliest work mocked extravagant emotional responses, especially those assigned to women? The story accords well with her recently finished novel, Susan, but it is not securely embedded in eye-witness reports. She would have been shocked; there can be no doubt of that. The move to Bath came as a surprise to all the Austen family, though it is hard to believe that the possibility of such a move had not been previously discussed and debated. What were the old folks to do with themselves in their later years?

Every family has to deal with such questions. George Austen was seventy, a rather remarkable age to achieve in such a time; his wife was in up-and-down health, but her ups declared her to be still a woman of force and a full partner in a marriage that had always been an authentic partnership. The two of them lived in an isolated rural neighborhood. Their children had scattered, and even the two spinster daughters who lived at home were away at the time the parents concocted the Bath plan. What might this empty-house period of childlessness have given them? Possibly each was directed toward an honesty of approach; perhaps each of them spoke clearly. But could they have dismissed their daughters’ wishes at that moment? There must have been ample time over the years for parents and children—the mother and father and their daughters—to sit around a breakfast table and discuss the future. What might they do in their old age to alleviate and alter their current arrangements, which could not possibly go on in the old, comfortable, and familiar way? Two spinster daughters still lived at home—the perplexing daughter Cassandra, who had survived, but barely, the death of her beloved fiancé, and Jane, the literary daughter, the writer of novels, the ironic, spiky daughter who was sometimes misunderstood.

The family, the scattered sons and the daughters, must have made their feelings known about the obvious possibilities in letters or in the rare opportunities when they came together. Steventon was their home; they were all attached to what Steventon meant, its compacted memories and embodiment of family happiness. At the same time, they must all have looked forward in time and wondered what sort of decision their parents would make. Negotiations would have been delicate; age carried power in families, particularly when the elderly were, like the senior Austens, in full possession of their senses.