Readers of Jane Austen are well acquainted with the pervasive imagery of fine ladies, encased in silk and muslin and tied up with ribbons, who while away their days embroidering cushions, sketching portraits, and pondering the cut and color of their next gown. Such are the images that fill Austen’s pages, and such are the images that have historically reduced her in popular estimation. Voices of Austen’s reception have decried her as an author of triviality whose works faithfully reproduce the minutiae of domestic life, but do not approach any subject of true importance. However, in these readings, “trivial” is used as a synonym for “feminine,” and the historical and social importance of women’s pursuits are severely undermined. On the contrary, and as seen in Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey, Austen’s depiction of feminine pursuits is anything but trivial; Austen’s women frequently use traditionally feminine objects as proxies for agency they would otherwise be denied, whereby the feminine objects themselves become metaphors for unauthorized female agency.
Throughout the early reception of her works, Austen’s monitors and critics have been numerous and vocal. James Edward Austen-Leigh said of his aunt’s letters, “readers must be warned not to expect too much from them … the materials may be thought inferior to the execution, for they treat only the details of domestic life” (Austen-Leigh 57). Alice Meynell, a hugely influential writer of Austen’s time, wrote that “With Miss Austen love, vengeance, devotion, duty, maternity, sacrifice, are infinitely trivial,” and Suzanne Juhasz points to a reader of Austen’s letters who is similarly frustrated by the “desert of trivialities” he finds there (Maynell 63, Juhasz 84). Such scathing reviews give readers license to believe that Austen’s writings themselves are a trifle of society, fit for nothing more than to ornament the dainty hands of young ladies and fill the libraries of their grand estates.
However, as Juhasz explains, those who criticize Austen’s attention to the domestic “expect [her] not to be a woman, not to write of her own life, which happened to be domestic life, the life that most women live … One need only replace "trivial" with "feminine" to see the difficulty” (86). No employment is safe: needlework, drawing, painting, filigree work, netting, music playing, novel reading, dressing, and dancing have all been cast aside as worthless, not just because they are trivial, but because they are feminine. Austen’s novels are criticised because they are concerned with the few activities that Regency women were given license to do, and especially those which brought them enjoyment.
But Austen’s women are more intelligent than their critics give them credit for, and it is by way of their trivial interests that they navigate their restrictive social environments. One such woman, Elinor Dashwood, has a vested interest in artistry. Elinor’s drawings are frequently mentioned, either by way of nicety—as with Mrs. Palmer, who remarks that Elinor’s drawings are “quite charming; I could look at them for ever” and promptly forgets “that there were any such things in the room” (101 —or with genuine admiration, as does Colonel Brandon, who “warmly admires” Elinor’s screens (213). Not only are her drawings “affixed to the walls of their sitting room” in Barton cottage, but “a very pretty pair of screens” also hang in her sister-in-law’s drawing room, showing that Elinor’s talent is prized outside of her own home, even by the haughty Fanny Dashwood (28, 218).
As such, it is evident that Elinor is a proficient crafter, a quality which Jennie Batchelor argues often accompanies “keener minds and greater emotional intelligence”(165). Batchelor’s argument is confirmed by the narrator, who informs us of Elinor’s “strength of understanding,” “coolness of judgement,” and “excellent heart,” which enable her to act as a moral guide for her occasionally irrational mother and sister (Austen 4). Elinor’s fervency of spirit, joined with pertinacious strength of character, preserves and insulates her integrity; while Marriane suffers “violent affliction” at the misplaced attentions of Willoughby, Elinor, upon hearing news of Edward Ferrars’ engagement to Lucy Steele, “[stands] in firm incredulity and [feels] in no danger of a hysterical fit, or a swoon,” and only allows herself leave to “think and be wretched” after the Steele sisters take their leave from Barton cottage (71, 121, 126).
Elinor’s use of the filigree basket in the following scene shows that she also uses her proficiency in crafting to gain social agency. After she tries and fails to find another opportunity to talk to Lucy about her secret engagement, Elinor creates her own opportunity by offering to help Lucy with her filigree work during one of Lady Middleton’s dinner parties (133). There, under the cover of Marriane at the piano, the pair are able to talk freely. By using the basket as an excuse to talk to Lucy, Elinor cleverly capitalizes on the expectation of women’s interest in handiwork to avoid suspicion of impropriety. Elinor may be seen as improper or strange if she approaches Miss Steele directly to have a private conversation, but as a lady of accomplishment, it is most befitting for her to help Lucy with her filigree.
Stooped close to each other, engaged in conversation and the steady work of rolling, placing, and glueing papers by candlelight, Elinor and Lucy are “with the utmost harmony engaged in forwarding the same work,” both in the creation of the filigree basket and the construction of understanding through the exchange of information, whereby the basket itself is transformed into a site of community (133). The basket is materially craftwork, but it is also a means for social artistry, becoming a tool that both participates in the creation of community and renders agency to its mistress’ hand. Thus, Elinor commands society as she commands ink and parchment, using every blank space and bold stroke to her advantage with the ease of a practiced professional of the social arts.
Another feminine object, Isabella Thorpe’s hat in Northanger Abbey, is used for a similar purpose. After spotting two young men leaving the pump rooms, Isabella convinces Catherine to follow them under the thinly-veiled guise of going to see her new hat in Edgar’s buildings, which just so happen to lie in the same direction the men are heading (27). The hat, like the filigree basket, is used to gain agency, but with an unequal outcome. The hat enables the girls, or rather, Isabella with Catherine in tow, to do what propriety would never assent to and follow two young men with whom they have no acquaintance down the streets of Bath. But unlike Elinor Dashwood, whose aim is principled but does not appear so, Isabella’s contrivance to rush to the hat is not for the sake of an unwitting audience—the girls are unaccompanied in the pump rooms, where nobody could be any the wiser as to the propriety of their actions. Its sole purpose must lie, therefore, in assuaging Isabella’s conscience about chasing the boys and deluding the naive Catherine. Like the filigree basket, the hat is transformed into a metaphor for feminine agency—but this time, it is agency unethically taken, not from the clutches of a strict society, but from the scruples of a culpable conscience.
Neither Catherine nor Isabella are equipped with Elinor’s morality and prudence, and, consistent with Batchelor’s criticism that accomplished minds manifest in accomplished hands, neither are they particularly adept at craftsmanship. As a child, Catherine’s “taste for drawing was not superior,” and her hastily-drawn sketches were “all very much like another” (6). Her studies in English and French were equally “not remarkable,” and “the day which dismissed the music-master was one of the happiest of [her] life” (6). Such fantastic descriptions of failure cannot be produced for Miss Thorpe, but it may be sufficient proof that no indications are given of accomplishments more material than a general knowledge of gothic novels, procured second-hand from a “Miss Andrews,” of whom nothing is known (25). Here again, it is evident that mental, social, and material artistry are inextricably intertwined. It is because Catherine and Isabella are lacking in accomplishment and prudence that they are inept at navigating social manipulation gracefully. This intertwinement shows that, in the world of Austen, a woman’s skill in feminine pursuits may serve as an indicator of, if not the cause of, both social and moral proficiency.
Isabella and Catherine’s engagement in the trivial as a site of community, too, is done less skillfully than Elinor. Turning about the pump rooms the day after their first acquaintance, “Their conversation turned upon those subjects, of which the free discussion has generally much to do in perfecting a sudden intimacy between two young ladies: such as dress, balls, flirtations, and quizzes” (19). The narrator satirically comments the “delicacy, discretion, originality of thought, and literary taste” of the girls’ friendship shortly before detailing their discussion of gothic novels—whose absurdities are parodied extensively in Northanger Abbey—and inaccurate, school-girlish gossip. It is upon these trivialities that the friendship of Catherine and Isabella is founded, a liaison which proves detrimental as Isabella frequently attempts, and occasionally succeeds, at manipulating Catherine into disadvantageous situations, the scene analyzed above case in point.
Neither can it be said that Elinor’s use of the filigree basket creates earnest friendship, but this is not Elinor’s goal. Elinor observes soon after their acquaintance that Lucy is “naturally clever,” but “[joins] insincerity with ignorance,” is “[deficient] of all mental improvement,” and has “thorough want of delicacy, of rectitude, and integrity of mind” (119). Elinor’s own quality of mind, character, and artistry mean that she has no desire for a genuine friendship with Lucy, and fittingly, at the end of their conversation, “nothing had been said on either side, to make them dislike each other less than they had done before” (139). The filigree basket is used only to exchange information—to learn about the details of Lucy’s engagement and to communicate that Elinor poses no threat to that engagement—and in that aim, Elinor is successful. Even though Elinor, like Catherine, participates in the trivial as a means of building community, she is protected from the pernicious effects of doing so with a morally and socially corrupt woman because of her upstanding social and moral integrity.
By using the feminine object as a tool to garner agency and construct community, Austen effectively defies the Regency tendency to devalue femininity and demonstrates that women’s pursuits are not as unimportant as many would like to believe. Instead, they are throwing knives, sharply honed by the socially-restricted Regency lady turned skilled marksman, which can be used to propel either malicious or benevolent aims. Regency women, provided with little in the way of education and restricted by expectations of propriety, which must govern their conduct at all hours and severely restrict their agency, are left with nothing but trifles to call their own. Out of hats and filigree baskets they create agency and community; they build a figurative palace for themselves out of the miniscule plot of land that Regency society has granted them, thus transforming the trivial into a tool for social mobility. Therefore, it is clear that Austen’s novels do not exist merely to provide commonplace narratives to suit the taste of delicate ladies, nor did Austen write about drawing rooms because she could not write about war. Her novels are domestic because her life was domestic, as were the lives of all Regency women. By portraying the domestic as an intricate, powerful tool, Austen proclaims that patriarchal society must take pains not to undermine the mundane, the trivial, and above all, the feminine.
