What the elders decided must be respected. Children, especially dependent children, had little choice but to go along with their parents’ choices.

Nevertheless, for Jane Austen to leave a settled and comfortable rectory—its bucolic peace, its long family history—would have required extraordinary feats of adjustment.

Swallowing hard, she seems to have made that adjustment. It wasn’t long before she was writing to Cassandra, “We have lived long enough in this neighbourhood, the Basingstoke balls are certainly on the decline, there is something interesting in the bustle of going away & the prospect of spending future summers by the sea or in Wales is very delightful.”

These comments come soon after the first shock of the news, but they cannot be dismissed as mere bravery (the holidays by the sea and in Wales are meant to signal compensatory elements in a questionable new undertaking). She must have suspected, and resented, that her out-of-date country parents considered Bath to be good husband-hunting territory. The move to Bath might be seen as a desperate move, and even a sacrifice on the parents’ part, to assist their daughters in achieving independence.

Jane Austen chatters on to her sister about accommodations to be had at Bath, about which furniture can or cannot be transported, and, rather endearingly, about her parents’ bed that, it is decided, cannot be replaced and so must be removed to the new household. Her father’s five hundred books must be sold or otherwise disposed of. Certain new arrangements concerning servants were to be made—and the particulars teasingly concealed from Mr. Austen, who, like Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, might offer objections. Austen is fanciful about these servants, the novelist already in top gear, laying out the scene: “We plan having a steady Cook & a young giddy Housemaid, with a sedate, middle aged Man, who is to undertake the double office of Husband to the former & sweetheart to the latter.—No Children of course to be allowed on either side.” The pictures and much of the furniture were to go to her brother James and his wife Mary, an arrangement Jane clearly resented. James, the oldest of the Austen children, had always been the least favorite of her brothers, though he matches her in her attachment to home. He had gone away to Oxford as a young boy, but in a sense he had never left home, returning frequently and taking up parish duties close by, and now moving into Steventon and into his father’s ecclesiastical position.

Jane Austen’s tone in her letters to Cassandra is merry, and expectant, and feverishly false. There is too much heartiness, and there are too many intervening letters after the first announcement that appear to have been destroyed by Cassandra. If we take Jane at her word, a new series of opportunities is opening up. If she had suffered a severe shock on hearing the news, she made at least the appearance of a rapid recovery and a quick recounting. Perhaps she remembered what her own Henry Tilney said in Northanger Abbey: “One day in the country is exactly like another.” Or else she looked ahead to hear Anne Elliot in Persuasion say, “We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us.”

In Bath, there would be a refuge from those ever-present, preying thoughts. There would be new people to meet, new social patterns offered, new circumstances in which to re-create herself, and at the very least, new distractions from her predicament: her spinsterhood, now established, and the lack of money to bring to any marriage bargain that might present itself. Bath was also a place from which excursions might be made, and there were the possibilities of visits from other family members. She must have weighed these conditions carefully, whatever her first reaction to her father’s decision to move to Bath, though the question remains: Did other choices occur to her? Were other possibilities offered?

Decisions surrounding the move were almost immediately being made for her, and these she resisted. A new degree of petulance radiates from her correspondence. Her parents and sister suggested how she might dispose of some of her possessions. Politely, tartly, she refused. “You are very kind,” she wrote to Cassandra, “in planning presents for me to make, & my Mother has shewn me exactly the same attention—but as I do not chuse to have Generosity dictated to me, I shall not resolve on giving my Cabinet to Anna [her niece] till the first thought of it has been my own.”

Mrs. Austen, while acknowledging that her family comprised two unmarried daughters, was able to think of her life without them. In 1797 she welcomed a new daughter-in-law, Mary Lloyd, by saying, “I look forward to you as a real comfort to me in my old age, when Cassandra is gone into Shropshire & Jane—the Lord knows where.” Cassandra, in this quote, possesses context; Jane remains unpredictable, a young woman whose ability to offer comfort and companionship to an aged parent is doubtful. There is a great shrug of resignation in such a casual dismissal, and there is also a suggestion of rupture between parent and child. The two daughters were troublesome, and the younger daughter in particular. Mr. and Mrs. Austen must hatch their plans without taking them into consideration.

11

IN CHAPTER TWO of Northanger Abbey there is a paragraph that begins exuberantly: “They arrived at Bath.