Abstract
In Chap. 2, I analyse the phenomenon of the changing seasons in relation to other cycles. All of Austen’s novels integrate hitherto unrecognized natural-cultural cycles: the cycle of human life, the cycle of the changing seasons, the agricultural cycle, the liturgical and calendar cycle, the cycle of the social seasons, and the social cycle of everyday life. These different cycles are superposed or fitted into each other. Thus, Austen’s plots have an internal rhythm in which the changing seasons intertwine with the other cycles and with linear events. The reader follows one of the most important and transformative years in the lives of the novels’ main characters. All the heroines go over the threshold that separates an unmarried girl from a married woman, which brings the major change in their social status. But before they get there, the female, as well as the male characters go through a psychological transformation, which often closely mirrors the changing seasons.
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Notes
- 1.
See Todd, 185–192.
- 2.
According to Ronald Hutton, the pagan ritual calendar contains eight main points in the cycle of the year. These are the solstices, the equinoxes and four dates which marked the traditional beginnings of the seasons: the first days of May, August, November and February, which respectively started summer, autumn, winter and spring. All these days (or their eves) hosted important feasts such as May Day (on the first of May) and November Eve.
- 3.
I use Easter as a spring reference point because in Austen’s novels this moment plays an important pivotal role. However, Easter was not one of the four Quarter Days on which rents and taxes were due and salaries were paid which were Lady Day (25 March) Midsummer, Michaelmas and Christmas. Before the Calendar Reform in 1752 (a switch from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian) Lady Day was also the first day of the year.
- 4.
See Pool, 50.
- 5.
Edgecombe suggests that Austen’s real intention here is to mock the Picturesque way of thinking: “for this tendency to immobilize, for this habit of thinking in tableaux, Marianne’s cult of the Picturesque is partly to blame, since, in its popular form at least, that aesthetic is nothing if not the collation of freeze frames, freeze frames that the viewer privileges above such instances of dynamic evolution as the movement of a river, or the change of seasons” (611).
- 6.
Deresiewicz sees Austen’s Persuasion as a succession of several two-stage processes such as growth and decay, loss and recovery, desertion and repopulation, parting and reunion, down and up, which, in his opinion, reflect “the deepest movements of nature” (140).
- 7.
In his article “Marriage and Birth seasons” published in Economica in 1936 Sir William H. Beveridge gives statistics for marriage and birth rates in the 12 months of a year. Although he notes certain differences from one county to another, he concludes that “the seasonal fluctuations” of births and marriages in the mid-nineteenth century are due to social habits (160). Moreover, he adds that “in purely agricultural districts autumn retains much of its importance as a marriage season” (160). This phenomenon is explained by a quotation from William Far (1885) which attributes its causes to “the accumulations of autumn supply a store of food and the harvest wages of young swains” (133). Arguably, Austen’s plot patterns correspond to these observed social realities.
- 8.
The percentages are rounded.
- 9.
Genteel girls used to be introduced into society at 17 or 18 (Davidoff 51), however, in some families the younger sisters had to wait till the older ones were married before they could come out (MP 651 note 7) Lady Catherine has this practice in mind when she is questioning Elizabeth about her family in Vol. II Ch. 6 (P&P 187) and referring to the Miss Bennets being out together as “very odd.” However, we notice that most of the families Austen writes about do not stick to this rule (the exception is the Lucas family in P&P where after Charlotte’s engagement “the younger girls formed hopes of coming out a year or two sooner than they might otherwise have done” (P&P 137): in S&S the two Dashwood sisters are out together (Margaret is only 13, thus too young); in P it must also have been the case for the youngest sister, Mary, was the first to get married; in MP the Miss Bertrams are out together and only Fanny has to wait till she is 18 (however, when Fanny’s coming out ball was organized, Maria Bertram was already married); the Thorpe sisters in NA are also out together.
- 10.
The OED states that this word can be spelled cob or cobb. Interestingly, there is another sense to it. In 1884 R. Holland’s Gloss. Words County of Chester (1886): Cob, a blow, generally on the head.
- 11.
The accident happens in mid-November and Louisa returns home on 2 February (Shapard 488–489).
- 12.
See Shapard P timeline.
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Baublyté Kaufmann, R. (2018). Changing Seasons: The Cyclical and the Linear. In: The Architecture of Space-Time in the Novels of Jane Austen. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90011-7_2
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