It is hard to believe, but Mistaken Premise is already a year old. My little book baby, all grown up and making an impression on the world!
I have decided to share here, at Always Austen, a modified version of the post I initially wrote for Ms Meredith’s lovely blog, Austenesque Reviews, within weeks of Mistaken Premise’s publication. I knew as I wrote the story – and the reviews have borne this out – that Lizzy’s trials with the Tyrant would be the hardest for readers, so, please, allow me to share with you my reasoning.
I have already shared with you, dear readers, that I am an unrepentant nerd. I sometimes wonder if the only reason I became a writer is to justify my research addiction. I am constantly reading or listening to books either that my characters would have read or books about Georgian/Regency history. A genre I added to my repertoire when researching Mistaken Premise is comportment books for girls, young ladies, and even matrons. I’m slogging through Sermons for Young Women(1766), by James Fordyce (1720-1796) – 10 out 10 do not recommend – but one I somewhat enjoyed is The Mirror of Graces (1811), by the anonymous ‘A Lady of Distinction’.
I also researched child training of the Georgian era. Thanks to the era of enlightenment and the writings of Rousseau (1712-1778), and his introduction of childhood as a condition of innocence, the children of the latter half of the eighteenth-century were allowed to be just that, children, not miniature adults as they were viewed in earlier times. The mass manufacture of toys, books written specifically for children, and children’s clothing as a distinct style, not just small reproductions of adult fashions, were a result. Parents were encouraged to spend time with their children and to shower them with gifts and affection.
The earlier English Enlightenment philosopher, John Locke (1632-1704) and his theory of the tabula rasa – that children were born with a ‘blank slate’ – was most influential in the education of young children. This meant that the nurture side of the nature versus nurture debate was in the ascendancy. Thus, it was up to parents to ensure the proper etchings of right and wrong, shaping a young child’s ability to reason, were made upon their child’s tabula rasa. “That all the men we meet with, nine parts of ten are what they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education,” Locke wrote.i (After all my research, upon re-reading P&P last winter, I wonder if Austen specifically wanted to showcase the pitfalls of the very Roussean approach at Longbourn with the entirely Lockian approach at Pemberley. Yeah – this is the way my brain works. I am a nerd!)
There could be a dark side to this tabula rasa, too, for this was still a time of classical education. Plato’s belief that individuals, including children, learned what is good through education, and Aristotle’s theory that the habituation of virtue was best if started early, held equal, if not greater, sway as Locke and Rousseau, in the United Kingdom’s gentry and nobility.
The late Georgian and Regency periods were a time of enormous transition: economically, politically, culturally, and philosophically as English society shifted to the morality, prosperity, domesticity, and arts of the Victorian Era (beginning in 1837, but 25 years after the typical settings of P&P variations). These were the days of ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ii, and children still possessed no rights of their own – the first of the child labour laws in England did not pass through Parliament until 1833 – and remained under the complete control of their father, even in the highest reaches of the ton.
Children of the upper classes might have been showered with gifts and eaten regularly with their parents, particularly their mothers, but for most of them, much of the rest of their day was spent in education, moral and academic, in the schoolrooms and nurseries of the country houses across England or the fashionable houses in Town. Alongside the more fashionable languages of French and Italian, Greek and Latin were also required subjects for many toddlers as young as two or three, and chairs fashioned with iron restraints to hold these young scholars still during their lessons were commonplace. (See Erickson below) Such lessons could last from six to eight hours a day, as governesses and tutors ‘improved’ the minds, instilled virtue, and wrote ‘good principals’ on the tabula rasa of their young charges. The offspring of the gentry and nobility were then expected to participate in their parents’ social sphere by showcasing their manners and performing recitations or recitals for their parents’ guests’ entertainment.
And as Fordyce, in particular, proves, the burden of somehow regulating the propriety and behaviour of the entire nation was placed on the young shoulders of the daughters of the gentry and nobility.
One of the best-selling and best-known writers of Jane Austen’s lifetime, the Evangelical moralist, Hannah More (1745-1833) wrote several comportment books – one, Hints Toward Forming the Character of a Princess (1805), was specifically addressed to Prinny’s only daughter, and heiress to the throne, Princess Charlotte (1796-1817). Hannah More believed that education could not be separated from morality and that the best way to improve the plight, both physically and spiritually, of the lower classes was to improve the personal piety of those in the ton. The higher the rank of the young lady she addressed, the more Miss More – and Society – expected of them, not only in terms of education and accomplishments, but in terms of manner and morality.
In Mistaken Premise, Lizzy’s Uncle Malcom and Papá Bennet were of a more Lockian, balanced with Rousseau, view as they prepared their charge for her future as the Duchess of Soloway. My fictional Lady Tyranholt, finds this education insufficient merely because Lizzy possesses an open disposition, instead of the ennui her ladyship expects of a future duchess. As the only other suo jure title holder in the land, Lady Tyranholt believes she alone is capable of training Lizzy in her future role. As much as readers might hate her – I sure did! – she is not entirely made up, either. There are aspects of her character which come from historical personages of the late Georgian era, nor is she entirely unfamiliar to a reader of Jane Austen. Lady Catherine and Sir Walter Elliot are both consumed with the preservation of rank, a belief which would have been familiar to Jane’s contemporary readers. And as much as a modern reader might wish it otherwise, a young lady of Mistress Lizzy Boyte’s future rank, would very likely, historically, had training more in line with the Tyrant’s than the more enlightened childhood at Longbourn.
It was important to me to show this historical probability, and whilst our dear girl might lose herself for a time, under the extremity of Lady Tyranholt’s treatment, she refinds her true self with our dear boy. His love and support give Lizzy the courage to utilise all that she has learned in becoming her best self, with Darcy at her side.
Godspeed, dear readers!
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i John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 1693
ii“spare the rod and spoil the child” is a line, paraphrased from Proverbs 13:4, in a poem, Hudibras (1664), by Samuel Butler (1612-1680)
~ Sources ~
Our Tempestuous Day, by Carolly Erickson, 1986, William Morrow publishers, Audible edition
The Georgian Guide to Perfect Parenting: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09612020100200286
The Regency Town House – Children: http://www.rth.org.uk/regency-period/family-life/children
Hannah More: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09612020100200286
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