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The Pleasures and Pitfalls of Tourism In Jane Austen

Dates

  • Sat 30 Mar 2019, 2:00pm–4:00pm

Restrictions

All Ages

Travel, they say, broadens the mind. And when your usual world is a modest family dwelling in Wiltshire or Hertfordshire, the chance to visit something grander can be very enticing. It can also be life-changing.

This talk will look at some interesting examples of “domestic tourism” in Jane Austen’s novels. I will provide an illustrated background of travel in late-Georgian England. By Jane’s time, genteel families could and did travel within their own country more than ever before.

We will survey the different types of travel that had become fashionable by the turn of the century (picturesque, sublime, Gothic etc), with a particular emphasis on the trips to great estates. The “improvements” visible on these estates were objects of particular interest since they echoed, on a grander school, the genteel accomplishments expected of young ladies (i.e. the acquisition of good taste). At the same time, the quality of an estate could tell a shrewd tourist much about the moral worth of the estate’s owner.

The second, longer part of my talk will consider how these ideas play out in Jane’s novels. In Pride and Prejudice, for example, the first visit to Pemberley builds on period travel motifs that, in Jane’s hand, both reveal and conceal important insights into the main characters.

The “tourist” experience of Northanger Abbey draws not only on Gothic novels, but the idiom of a certain kind of overheated travel writing. Other examples from the novels also come to mind, so there should be an opportunity for a wide-ranging discussion.

Yes, you will get to see several slides of Regency travel (real and imagined). And apologies in advance if I start holding forth about favourite TV home-makeover shows such as “Grand Designs” along the way.

Paul Stone: I’m not originally from Wellington, but came here as soon as I could. Most of my working life has been in education. After teaching at universities in Auckland and Toronto, I moved into private training colleges in the late 90s, and spent some happy years marketing “NZ Inc” in north-east Asia.

I’m now a civil servant (at NZQA). I’m also a long-time Janeite, and enjoy re-reading the novels and watching the movies (though – sadly – I’ve never quite got the notorious “Colin Firth in a wet shirt” thing).

Bonus talk!

Helen Jones will tell us about the "My Jane" quilt she's made about Jane Austen.

Tea and cake provided.

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