• Review: “The Great Gatsby”
  • Review: “Mud”
  • Review: “The Place Beyond the Pines”
  • Review: “Ginger & Rosa”
  • Review: “Stoker”
  • Review: “Side Effects”
  • Review: “Mama”
  • Review: “Zero Dark Thirty”
  • Review: “Gangster Squad”
  • Review: “Les Misérables”
  • Review: “This Is 40”
  • Review: “Any Day Now”
  • Review: “Anna Karenina”
  • Review: “Silver Linings Playbook”
  • Review: “Hitchcock”
  • Review: “Lincoln”
  • Review: “Life of Pi”
  • Review: “Flight”
  • Review: “Skyfall”
  • Review: “Argo”
  • Review: “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”
  • Review: “Looper”
  • Reviews: “Arbitrage” and “The Master”
  • Review: “The Words”
  • Review: “Celeste and Jesse Forever”
  • Review: “Lawless”
  • Review: “The Campaign”
  • Review: “Total Recall”
  • Review: “To Rome with Love”
  • Review: “The Dark Knight Rises”
  • Review: “Moonrise Kingdom”
  • Review: “Magic Mike”
  • Review: “The Amazing Spider-Man”
  • Review: “Brave”
  • Review: “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”
  • Review: “Prometheus”
  • Review: “Snow White and the Huntsman”
  • Review: “Bernie”
  • Review: “The Dictator”
  • Review: “The Raven”
  • Reviews: “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” and “Jiro Dreams of Sushi”
  • Review: “Chimpanzee”
  • Review: “The Cabin in the Woods”
  • Review: “American Reunion”
  • Review: “Detachment”
  • Review: “The Hunger Games”
  • Review: “Casablanca” (In Re-Release; 1 Night Only)
  • Review: “Silent House”
  • Review: “Wanderlust”
  • Review: “This Means War”
  • Review: “Safe House”
  • Review: “The Woman In Black”
  • Review: “The Grey”
  • Review: “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close”
  • Review: “Contraband”
  • Review: “Shame” and “Young Adult”
  • Review: “War Horse”
  • Review: “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”
  • Review: “Like Crazy”
  • Review: “Hugo”
  • Review: “The Descendants”
  • Review: “My Week with Marilyn”
  • Review: “J. Edgar”
  • Review: “In Time”
  • Review: “Take Shelter”
  • Review: “The Thing”
  • Review: “The Ides of March”
  • Review: “Dream House”
  • Review: “50/50”
  • Review: “Moneyball”
  • Review: “Abduction”
  • Review: “Drive”
  • Review: “Contagion”
  • Review: “The Debt”
  • Review: “Our Idiot Brother”
  • Review: “The Help”
  • Review: “Fright Night”
  • Review: “Beginners”
  • Review: “Crazy Stupid Love”
  • Review: “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”

Colin Carman

~ Jane Austen Scholar & Culture Vulture

Colin Carman

Tag Archives: south warnborough

Was Austen a Holy Roller?

Featured

Posted by colincarman in Jane Austen

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

anglicanism, book of common prayer, British literature, chawton, chawton house, christianity, hampshire, incest, Jane Austen, jane austen house museum, mansfield park, sense and sensibility, south warnborough, upton grey, winchester

“Miss Austen has the merit (in our judgment most essential) of being evidently a Christian writer…by her religion not at all intrusive” – Reviewer for Quarterly Review (1821)

Before we get started, what in the photo below doesn’t belong?

IMG_0743.jpeg

What we know for certain is that Austen was a clergyman’s daughter (and brother) and did not wear her faith on her sleeve. Nevertheless, the family attended church not once but twice on Sundays and read from the Book of Common Prayer (with its morning and evening prayers). The great biographer Claire Tomalin notes, in her fine biography (from 1997), that while Austen came from a devoutly Anglican family, there are very few scenes that actually take place in a church in her fiction. Once she realizes the error of her ways, Marianne Dashwood declares the following toward the end of Sense and Sensibility: “But it shall be regulated, it shall be checked by religion, by reason, by constant employment.” Easier said than done, and Austen scholars tend to agree that the line is under-motivated, meaning, not really earned. Marianne is merely paying her more sensible sister Elinor (and the reader) lip-service.

As for Sunday services, the church close to the author’s heart was Saint Nicholas, which was destroyed by fire, in 1871, more than fifty years after she died. The installation of a new heating unit caused a varnished dado to go up in flames. Talk about a backfire. The church that Austen worshipped in probably looked much different pre-restoration; regardless, in her day, she attended the baptisms of the Digweed and Clement children (family friends). Just prior to her death, her brother Henry was made Curate of Chawton. Inside Saint Nicholas (dating to 1270), you will find a three-paneled reredos, in an oak frame, depicting the Crucifixion. I’m of the opinion that the manor-house, Chawton, just up the driveway from St. Nick provided the inspiration for Mansfield Park. Inside there are eleven stained glass windows and a memorial for Lady Bradford whose husband, Major Bradford, lost his arm to a man-eating tiger.

Collage_Fotor 76.jpg

The novel’s heroine, Fanny, described as “well-principled and religious,” winds up marrying her first cousin Edmund, a chatty clergyman. Students are usually discomforted by the fact that (1) the happily-ever-after ending involves two cousins tying the knot and, more troublingly, that (2) Fanny and Edmund are raised as siblings from the age of ten onward. If you want to go there, cousin-coupling wasn’t unheard of, especially amongst the landed gentry who didn’t leave their own social class, but if it had to happen, families preferred that the bride and groom were not of the same matrilineal line. In other words, uterine incest (or a couple whose mothers are sisters) was best to be avoided. Even nineteenth-century people sensed that inbreeding could result in genetic abnormalities. Ah well, it’s all relative.

Speaking of Henry Austen, below is the memorial plaque for Austen found in Winchester Cathedral. Famously it makes no mention of her authorship and it’s believed that Henry, the most pious of her older brothers, had to amplify her identity as a Christian in order to secure her a spot in the cathedral. I’ll spare you the details but in the summer heat of 1817, a body would not be returned to its original chapel. For this reason, Austen is interred in Winchester while the two Cassandras (her mother and sister) are buried in the St. Nicholas churchyard. Later, in 1923, prayers by Austen were published though, again, the authorship is sometimes questioned. Below is my awkward selfie taken in Winchester. I’m going to delay the details of my pilgrimage to the grave until my final post next week, however.

IMG_0428.jpeg

Yesterday I walked from South Warnborough to the quiet hamlet of Upton Grey. All of the animals below give you an indication of just how rural this area is. That being said, a few Mercedes zipped by on the country road, so it’s not exactly slumming it.

Collage_Fotor 56.jpg

“Upton” is derived from the Anglo-Saxon for “homestead upon the hill.” The church, Saint Mary’s, has been there for over a millennium! The Norman arch and knave date back to 1120. Note the “King & Country” dedication. There’s a fine memorial for a nineteenth-year-old lieutenant John Henry Beaufoy who fell, in 1809, at the Battle of Talavera in Spain. Over the past month, I’ve been delighted to find that village parishes are left open. The bigger church here in Alton, St. Lawrence, still has a damaged front door from the Civil War in the 1600s.

Collage_Fotor 98.jpg

There is no escaping history in England. And, in the countryside, there is no escaping the centrality of the church and the natural world. Having gone to the capital this week, I can safely say that Hampshire smells like manure whereas London smells like s**t. And there’s a big difference!

 

51.144484 -0.974935

Recent Posts

  • It’s Alive…with Mary Shelley!
  • A Rare & Exclusive Interview with Plague-Writer Daniel Defoe!
  • Sign Posts!
  • What Killed Jane Austen?
  • Was Austen a Holy Roller?

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 260 other subscribers

Top Posts & Pages

  • Review: “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”

Jane Austen

action alien alpha dog amanda seyfried animals anton yelchin blue valentine bradley cooper brad pitt British literature bromance carey mulligan charlize theron chawton christina hendricks christopher plummer colin farrell comedy crazy stupid love daniel craig dickens dracula drama emma stone england ewan mcgregor family frankenstein freud gay george clooney hampshire hbo horror jack russell terrier Jane Austen jessica chastain john lithgow joseph gordon levitt jude law kurt cobain mad men madonna mansfield park mary shelley matthew mcconaughey michael fassbender naomi watts oscars paris paul rudd philip seymour hoffman poetry politics portsmouth pride and prejudice romantic romantic comedy romanticism ryan gosling science fiction september 11 sex shakespeare shelley steven soderbergh summer blockbuster the hangover the help the social network thriller tim burton true blood twilight viola davis

Blog Stats

  • 52,655 hits
  • RSS - Posts
  • RSS - Comments

Colin Carman Twitter

  • "I don't think I'd be here without @Madonna" prayer hands emoji twitter.com/PopBase/status… 2 days ago
  • RT @PopBase: Kim Petras becomes the first transgender woman to win the #GRAMMYs award for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance. https://t.co/V2xN… 2 days ago
  • #M3GAN is MORE fun than Avatar & its budget was a third of Avatar’s catering M3GAN 2.0 - SNL youtu.be/MAprAHEw18I via @YouTube 2 weeks ago
  • RT @70RA: Bruce Springsteen - Tunnel of love "So somebody ran out Left somebody's heart in a mess Well if you're looking for love Honey I'm… 2 weeks ago
  • @MadonnaGreece Las Vegas Oct & Denver Aug 2 weeks ago
Follow @ColinCarman

Colin Carman

Colin Carman

Archives

  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • July 2019
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011

Blogroll

  • Cinema Train
  • Dan the Man's Movie Reviews
  • Fogs' Movie Reviews

Category Cloud

Film Reviews Jane Austen Pandemic Posts Poems and Plogs (Poem-Blogs) Uncategorized

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Colin Carman
    • Join 175 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Colin Carman
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...