O “cottage” em Chawton, onde Jane Austen viveu, hoje abriga uma casa-museu. Jane Austen nunca se casou: teve uma ligação amorosa com Thomas Langlois Lefroy, entre dezembro de 1795 e janeiro de 1796, que não chegou a evoluir. Chegou a receber uma proposta de casamento de Harris Bigg-Wither, irmão mais novo de suas amigas Alethea e Catherine, em 2 de dezembro de 1802, mas mudou de opinião no dia seguinte ao do noivado.

Tendo-se estabelecido como romancista, continuou a viver em relativo isolamento, na mesma altura em que a doença a afetava profundamente. Até os dias de hoje, não se tem certeza das causas de sua morte: uma teoria recente afirma que Jane Austen pode ter sofrido de intoxicação por arsênico, em função de uma declaração registrada em uma de suas cartas: “Estou consideravelmente melhor agora e estou recuperando um pouco minha aparência, que anda bastante ruim, preta, branca e de todas as cores erradas”. A intoxicação por arsênico pode provocar uma pigmentação em que partes da pele ficam marrons, enquanto outras embranquecem. O arsênico era fácil de ser obtido na época, sendo usado para o tratamento do reumatismo, algo de que Jane Austen se queixava constantemente em suas cartas. Em busca de tratamento para sua enfermidade, viajou até Winchester, falecendo ali, aos 41 anos, em 18 de julho de 1817, e sendo sepultada na catedral da cidade.

A fama de Jane Austen perdura através dos seus seis melhores trabalhos: “Razão e Sensibilidade” (1811), “Orgulho e Preconceito” (1813), “Mansfield Park” (1814), “Emma” (1815), “The Elliots”, mais tarde renomeado como “Persuasão” (1818) e “Susan”, mais tarde renomeado como “A Abadia de Northanger” (1818), publicados postumamente. “Lady Susan” (escrito entre 1794 e 1805), “The Brothers” (iniciado em 1817, deixado incompleto e publicado em 1925 com o título “Sanditon”) e “Os Watsons” (escrito por volta de 1804 e deixado inacabado; foi terminado por sua sobrinha Catherine Hubback e publicado na metade do século XIX, com o título “The Younger Sister”) são outras de suas obras. Deixou ainda uma produção juvenília (organizada em três volumes), uma peça teatral, “Sir Charles Grandison, or The Happy Man: a Comedy in Six Acts” (escrita entre 1793 e 1800), poemas, registros epistolares e um esquema para um novo romance, intitulado “Projeto de um Romance”.

OBRAS INACABADAS

INTRODUCTION

By singular good fortune we are here able to present, in clearly differentiated examples, the four – or possibly five – stages of preparation for a finished Jane Austen novel.

The publication of Love and Friendship revealed the first, scarcely conscious, inspiration of her work. It showed us how perfectly she understood the follies and insincerities of fashionable romance, with its absurd heroics and artificial emotions; how well she loved the impossible “dear creatures” she could so shrewdly burlesque. There was wrath, we suspect, even behind the laughter; and because they were false, she determined that she at all costs would be true.

Burlesque lingers in Northanger Abbey beside the accomplished vulgarity of Isabella Thorpe; accompanied now, and largely eclipsed, by the finer approach to truth through adaptation and development of work at once admirable and admired though immature: the inspiration of Fanny Burney, maintained in all the novels written at Steventon.

That Miss Austen returned to the burlesque of romance in the Plan of a Novel, written in 1816 after four tales had received their last touches of revision and been presented to the public, is evidence of how deeply laid were the foundations of her art. It was born, indeed, out of fun and nonsense, for which she never lost her zest. It was destined to laugh out of existence the idle vapourings of romance.

So far, we see no more than preparation for serious work; of significance by virtue of its exposure of “what to avoid”.

The first, preliminary, steps of actual creative work may be plainly seen in the fragment of Sanditon, written in 1817, a much-corrected manuscript. This cannot, I believe, be accurately called even a first draft. It is rather the beginning of a rough sketch, which may almost be described as shorthand notes of a tale for which all details, possibly even the conclusion or main thread of the plot, have yet to be determined. No hint was given to her family of how the story would be developed. From the ampersands, broken sentences, and other clear signs of carelessness and haste in the original, we may be sure that Miss Austen was merely jotting down ideas for characters and scenes as they came into her mind without a thought for sequence or arrangement. With her experience and natural aptitude for expression, she may by chance have hit upon a phrase or two that could survive revision; but here we have no more than a few interesting and suggestive notes for reference, when she had time – alas! never granted her – to begin writing another novel.

The Watsons, on the other hand, also a much-corrected manuscript, probably written at Southampton in 1807, is an early draft of Emma, probably no further differing from that novel in scenes, characters, and plot than Sense and Sensibility departed from Elinor and Marianne or even Pride and Prejudice from First Impressions. Unlike Sanditon, this fragment has been thought out and composed – both in plot and in phrasing. Miss Austen already knew what she intended to do with her characters, as she informed her family in some detail, and was actually engaged upon telling a tale.

“Mr. Watson was soon to die and Emma to become dependent for a home on her narrow-minded sister-in-law and brother. She was to decline an offer from Lord Osborne, and much of the interest of the tale was to arise from Lady Osborne’s love for Mr. Howard and his counter-affection for Emma, whom he was finally to marry”.

It remained unfinished for reasons wholly connected with personal circumstances of her private life, and when, after the appearance of Mansfield Park, she took up the characters and subject of this interesting fragment, private circumstances again compelled at least one drastic change in the plot – to avoid reflections upon a favourite sister-in-law; and instead of proceeding with the early draft she made a new beginning have the unpolished version of a Jane Austen novel, as carefully written after revisions of a first draft, itself extensively corrected in the process of redrafting; lacking only the final finish of perfected phrase and thought, notably weak we should observe in humour and wit.

It is, however, from the cancelled chapters of Persuasion that we can learn most of her accomplished artistry and marvellous powers of self-criticism; can prove – beyond dispute – the standard of perfection on which she everywhere insists. For this is actually a part of the final, finished, draft: the completed novel which, when writing it, had satisfied her and was intended for publication. Yet even so, it remained the subject of careful thought, and the reflections of a nighttime convinced her that it could be still further improved.

In a few masterly paragraphs, the whole busy scene was created of a large family group’s sudden migration to Bath: lending drama and emphasis to the appropriately quiet, and almost secret, long-deferred understanding between hero and heroine – by contrast with the others’ noisy trifling; setting the climax, or dénouement, of the whole story in a natural and becomingly subdued light, from which the gain is indeed great.

The contrivances of the Cancelled Chapters for bringing Anne and Captain Wentworth together are, comparatively, crude and forced; but it remains a charming example of Jane Austen’s best, most finely polished, work; in which no other writer could have felt anything but just pride, with which one less severely fastidious in the careful practice of her art would surely have remained content.

In many respects, Lady Susan, written in Bath about 1805, must be regarded as somewhat outside the categories enumerated above. Yet it is also a work Jane Austen did not consider worthy of publication, if it was ever designed for print, and it cannot certainly be described as a typical Jane Austen novel.

It is a complete and, as we may safely assume, a final draft: the manuscript almost free from corrections or erasures, in that respect an example of finished work.