All language subtitles for Jane.Austen.Rise.Of.A.Genius.S01E02.WEB.H264-RBB

1803. 27-year-old Jane Austen dreams of
being a published writer.

She has broken with convention, turning
down a marriage offer in order to pursue

her passion.

Jane has gambled. She's gambled
everything on writing.

She's turned down the final, the most
plausible offer to marry into wealth.

At this point, she has to commit herself
to the life of a writer.

And the only question now is, she wants
to make as much money as she possibly

can.

Jane often wants to be published, but
with all her ambition, her ferocious

intelligence, even she might not have
foreseen that this could come at a cost.

And what that cost would be.

Today, few records of Jane Austen's life
survive.

But now, with the help of writers,
experts... Jane Austen

was a writer teeming with new ideas.

There is writing before Austen, and
there is writing after Austen. That

achievement is enormous.

Jane Austen is the greatest comic
novelist we have ever produced.

At a time when women were supposed to
know their place, Jane ripped up the

rule book.

She's not just writing about romance.

We should see her as a political
novelist. She's telling young women, I

see you and I hear you, which I think is
such a modern thing.

Austen's life is a tale of ambition,
struggle and tragedy.

A genius.

cut down in her prime.

She's really good at the light, the
ironic, the beautifully observed, and

then life drives a truck into that.

This is the story of how a self-taught
country girl from a Hampshire village

defied the conventions of her day to
become one of the greatest novelists who

ever lived.

Her voice is so strong and funny and
perceptive, and her work...

still being copied and stolen by people
like me.

She did what she wanted to do and it
makes me feel like I can always do what

I want to do.

Jane Austen has already written Pride
and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility,

and Northanger Abbey, but nobody outside
her family has ever read them.

If she's going to survive in her new
life, she needs to get them published.

Jane Austen wants to be famous, be known
as a writer, and she's starting to feel

impatient. She's been writing
brilliantly since her teenage years.

That's a decade of good writing in the
bank.

She wants the next thing to happen.
She's ready for the next phase.

In Northanger Abbey, Jane believes she's
written a brilliant novel.

Determined to find a publisher, she
enlists the help of her older brother,

Henry.

One of the Austin Brothers' star has
been rising.

Henry has set up a bank in London, now
living with the incredibly hot wife,

Cousin Eliza.

Back from the moment when she walks
through the door, having lost her last

husband.

She gains Henry Austin.

Henry and Eliza are living in London, so
they're right in the heart of society.

They have contacts in the publishing
industry.

Austin obviously has eyes on this as a
route to a publishing deal.

Henry and Eliza.

They're just a force. They're like a
power couple.

I can imagine him saying to Jane, I'll
get you this deal. Don't worry, leave it

with me.

Henry and Eliza's London is a city awash
with the profits from empire and trade.

It is an age of glittering fashion,
conspicuous consumption, and the

relentless pursuit of profit.

At the heart of this new world, Henry
uses his contacts to approach famous

publisher Benjamin Crosby.

Crosby agrees to buy the rights to
Northanger Abbey and announces his plan

to publish it in the press.

To get your first publishing deal is a
rush like no other. You just want to go

out and scream in the streets that
someone wants to publish you.

She's thinking, this is just all going
so well for me. This is just a whole new

chapter in her life as a female author.

But the celebrations are premature.

Before her novel can go to print, Austin
returns to Bath.

Her father is ailing, and it falls to
the women of the family to look after

him.

George Austin is in his 70s. He's an old
man.

He's had a long life of very hard work,
indeed, and he is not in good health.

George has always been Jane's biggest
supporter, encouraging her to follow her

passion at a time when many fathers
would not.

He is himself a scholar, he's a
moralist, and he's someone who believes

in her capacity.

He's prepared to go out and advocate for
her writing, encouraging the expansion

of his daughter's mind. It shapes her
world, it shapes her writing.

So she wants him to be with her and to
be cared for by her.

While Austin cares for her elderly
father...

The idea for a new novel starts taking
shape.

The Watsons.

Mirroring her own life, The Watsons
features an ageing clergyman whose

daughters fear being left penniless when
he dies.

She's playing around with the idea of
auto-fiction, of using her own

biographical background.

to work its way into her writing. This
is a work where the family in it are as

close to her family as it gets in any of
her writing.

The father isn't well, just as Jane's
father wasn't well.

And if he dies, that's trouble, because
there are too many daughters and not

enough money.

As fact and fiction collide...

Jane's fears pour out onto the page.

There's a particularly striking passage
where an older sister in the story

delivers a stinging verdict on the fate
of unmarried women later on in their

lives. And she writes, I could do very
well.

Single, a little company.

And a pleasant ball now and then would
be enough for me if one could be young

forever.

But my father cannot provide for us, and
it is very bad to grow old and be poor

and laughed at.

It's bad enough to be old, it's bad
enough to be poor, but the final

indignity would be to be laughed at.

Jane and Cassandra at this point...

are conscious of the fact that they
don't have dowries when their father

dies they will have nothing

but before jane

can finish her story events overtake her

her father becomes very ill

She doesn't have enough distance.

And it's all a bit too real.

It's all a bit too close for comfort.

And she suddenly stops writing the
Watsons manuscript.

The final page of the Watsons ends
almost in mid-sentence with a scene

where the others are playing cards
downstairs and Emma goes upstairs and

reads to her father, who's ill, just as
Jane's father.

is upstairs, ill.

There's no distance between fact and
fiction which would allow you to escape

into make-believe.

It's all too real.

We know that actually she was going to
kill off the father in this work.

One wonders if there is a sort of
horrible sense for Jane Austen that, you

know, art is somehow bringing on life.

often spends this quiet, enclosed and
very intense time with her dying father,

sitting and reading to him as George
gradually dies.

She loves her father deeply.

That moment of grief, I think, affected
her profoundly.

George Austin dies, aged 73.

Bereft, Jane must break the news of her
father's death to her brothers.

He was seized on Saturday with a return
to the feverish complaint which he had

been subject to for the last three
years.

To have been in languishing long,
struggling for hours, would have been

dreadful. And, thank God, we were all
spared from it.

He did not suffer.

He was mercifully spared from knowing
that he was about to quit Object So

Beloved, and so fondly cherished as his
wife and children ever were.

Gosh, that writing is just so emotional.

She's able to articulate something so
universal in that moment.

It's so thoughtfully written as to try
and soften the blow for somebody else

who wasn't there.

She is losing the man who...

up until this point, has been her great
supporter as a writer, and now he is

gone.

The shadow of what is about to come is
cast very, very darkly over that moment.

The death of her father not only takes a
devastating emotional toll on Jane

Austen, It also leaves her financially
vulnerable.

Losing the father, who is still very
traditionally the head of the family,

has implications for the Austin women.

It's now that the economic realities are
really laid bare, that he hasn't

prepared. at all for their welfare.

George Austin leaves his family with
nothing.

The women are now completely reliant on
their brothers for support.

Women are at the behest of the men. The
Austin women are at the complete mercy

of the brothers.

Henry and Frank must decide how much
help they can afford to give.

So you see, my dear Frank, she will be
able to pay occasional visits

of health and pleasure to their friends.

Very condescending, very patronising.

How little empathy they have for what
their sisters are living through. And I

think that just says everything about
the power imbalance between the brothers

and sisters of this family.

Jane Austen is expected to wear mourning
dress for up to a year.

For women who can't afford a new set of
clothes, this means dyeing your current

wardrobe black.

For Jane, poverty might be bad, but to
be laughed at is far worse.

She writes to her sister.

As I find on looking into my affairs,
that instead of being very rich, I am

likely to be very poor.

I cannot afford more than ten shillings.

It is as well, however, to prepare you
for the sight of a sister sunk in

poverty, but it may not overcome your
spirit.

I find this really compelling.

Jane and her sister Cassandra are forced
into kind of a poverty.

They're still doing better than the
lower classes.

They are in the gentry class, but
comparatively they're in a really,

really difficult situation.

The Austin women have no choice but to
lodge with their brother Frank, who

serves in the Navy.

Still mourning her father and forced to
live in a dirty, crowded city, Jane has

completely lost her moorings.

The death of her father seems to make
her writing dry up. She knows what she's

really good at.

The light, the ironic, the beautifully
observed, the detailed, the fine.

And then life drives a truck into that.

And she can't write.

With the Watsons still unfinished, Jane
finds herself in the grip of every

novelist's nightmare.

Writer's block.

She probably thought her life was over.

I can imagine that she would have sunk
into a very deep depression.

I can't write. What's my worth? Who am I
when I can't do that?

You're just like, well, there's...

There's nothing really to live for.

I'm besieged with doubt and fears about,
you know, how long can this go on? It

must have really worn her down.

It's as if she's as far away now from
being a writer as she's ever been.

She just feels adrift.

That's really hard.

These are probably the hardest years.

She must now be thinking, what can I do?

What are my options?

And she knows her writing gives her the
way to do this. I mean, otherwise she's

going under.

Jane's not only struggling to produce
new work, she's also frustrated by her

publisher, Benjamin Crosby.

It's been six years since he bought the
rights to Northanger Abbey.

And it's still not in print.

So Jonathan sits down to pen a letter to
Mr Crosby.

There's no father to stand up for her
now. There's no brother that is doing

that. I'm almost feeling if I don't do
it, nobody else will.

In the spring of the year 1803, a
manuscript novel in two volumes was sold

to you and the purchase money, £10,
received at the same time.

Six years have since passed, and this
work has never, to the best of my

knowledge, appeared in print.

It's a wonderfully passive-aggressive
letter.

This is a moment where we see Jane
Austen really standing up for herself.

Like, she's really had enough.

I can only account for such an
extraordinary circumstance by supposing

the manuscript by some carelessness who
have been lost. And if that was the

case, I'm willing to supply you with
another copy.

She's almost incandescent with rage. I
feel the rage in that letter. I feel it.

What has happened to this novel? It was
meant to come out years ago. I've been

sitting here waiting.

Should no notice be taken of this
address, I shall feel myself at liberty

to secure the publication of my work by
applying elsewhere.

Mrs Ashton Dennis, M-A-D.

Silently seething, signs herself with a
pseudonym.

Mrs Ashton Dennis.

M-A-D, mad.

She's mad, she's angry.

M-A-D.

There's not much to laugh about in this
period of Austen's life, but the fact

that she signs what becomes known as the
mad letter, because she's really mad

about what's been happening, that can't
be a coincidence.

And what she gets back in return is
inelegant, condescending and lazy.

Jane's publisher refuses to budge.

Madam, it is true we purchased a
manuscript and paid £10,

but there was not any time stipulated
for its publication.

Neither are we bound to publish it.

When Crosby bought Northanger Abbey,
Gothic fiction was all the rage.

But nobody is interested in that
anymore.

If Jane wants the book back, she'll have
to pay £10 for the rights.

The reality is she doesn't have £10 to
buy back her own manuscript because

they've had to live on it. It's been
part of their income and what has

sustained them.

This is just the most crushing blow.

Let down again.

She's feeling humiliated.

She could very mean of her own situation
and of her own lack of agency.

But there is one ray of hope.

As a boy, Jane Austen's brother Edward
was adopted by wealthy relatives with no

children of their own.

He's now called Edward Knight.

For the Austens, this was a chance to
secure a better future for one of their

sons.

Edward still has a strong sense of
loyalty to the Austen family.

And in 1809, he's given the opportunity
to help them when a house on his estate

falls vacant.

Chawton Cottage.

Edward, after years of not really
supporting his sister and his mother in

the way that he perhaps ought to have
done, finally steps up to the mark and

reserves Chawton Cottage for them.

Finally, with Chawton Cottage, they have
a point of safety, they have a point of

stability, they have somewhere where
they can settle.

The cottage is just 12 miles from
Steventon.

Jane's beloved childhood home.

She hoped the return to her roots will
re-energise her writing.

It's a household which is constituted
entirely of women, a republic in which

the women can order their domestic space
as they wish. That's very significant

indeed.

Chawton brings her stability, allows her
a kind of rhythm to the day that works

for her.

And so they divvy up the chores so that
the households work around her writing.

They came up with a system whereby Jane
would make the breakfast.

But then she would be left to write for
the morning and maybe some of the

afternoon.

I think it provides a space for her to
think, a kind of rhythm that...

Probably all novelists need, actually,
to just be able to sit down each day and

produce something.

Back in the countryside, she loves so
much, the words start to flow.

She has this incredible creative surge.
She gets her mojo back. She's writing

again.

Jane sets out to rework an old
manuscript she first began ten years

earlier. A tale of two very different
sisters.

Sense and Sensibility.

All the experiences in her own life are
getting reworked into this manuscript.

Eleanor and Marianne Dashwood are left
nothing following the death of their

father. and must now find security
through marriage.

You must help them.

Of course.

You must promise to do this. The story
opens with a dying father being

reassured by his son that he will look
after the women in the family, a promise

he will later break.

Help them?

What do you mean, help them?

Dearest, I mean to give them 3,000
pounds.

The interest will provide them with a
little extra income.

Such a gift will certainly discharge my
promise to my father.

I have a question more than anything.

One had rather, on such occasions, do
too much than too little.

Of course, he did not stipulate a
particular sum.

What's glorious is Austen uses the bad
behaviour of her brothers.

She takes it almost verbatim.

and plonked it down in the start of
Fenton Sensibility.

It's

some

of her best writing. It's subtle, but
it's

pointed, and I think she's really good
at those kinds of... those interactions

with people where you see...

viewpoints being changed very cleverly.

Although, to say the truth, I'm
convinced within myself that your father

had no idea of your giving them money.

They will have 500 a year amongst
themselves.

And what on earth could four women want
for more than that?

Their housekeeping will be nothing at
all. They'll have no carriage, no

horses, hardly any servants, and will
keep no company.

Only conceive how comfortable they will
be.

The money is chipped away.

And at the end of a couple of pages,
they've literally got a packet of

smarties.

And an Aldi voucher.

About to be made homeless, the two
sisters respond very differently to

their predicament.

Eleanor is sense.

Marianne, sensibility.

Marianne, can you play something else?

Mama has been weeping since breakfast.

something less mournful, dearest.

What I love is the fullness of the
female experience.

Marianne is not at all girdled by
responsibility.

Eleanor sold us everything.

And so with these two characters, she's
really placed two sides of her own

personality in opposition.

Who's going to rule? Is it the head or
the heart?

Mirroring Jane's own experiences.

The Dashwood sisters are offered a
cottage on the estate of a relative.

These women, pressed together with no
money, no space, no hope, and

suddenly this thing appears.

In this sweeping adaptation, Marianne is
saved by a heroic figure

on horseback, John Willoughby.

Pouring with rain, there's thick mists,
and you hear a...

And a horse rears.

His appearance on the scene is so highly
charged.

Don't be afraid.

He's quite safe.

Shane Austin is not afraid to write a
little bit of saucy steaminess.

Hearts would have been at flutter.

It is not broken.

It's so sensual and would have driven
young girls absolutely wild.

Can you put your arm about my neck?

Allow me to escort you home.

The first moment they have of connection
is the ultimate physical connection

of her body weight in his hands.

That's pretty sexy.

Did you see him? He expressed himself
well, did he not?

With great decorum and honour. And
spirit and wit and feeling. And economy.

Ten words at most.

And he is to come tomorrow.

Marianne, you must change. You will
catch a cold.

What care is the cold when there is such
a man? You will care very much when your

nose swells up.

You are right. Help me, Eleanor.

In this scene, I think Jane's really
interesting in the way that she flips.

that situation, and she invites you to
fall in love with this character.

And then later we discover that he's
really not so good as a person.

Willoughby abandons Marianne.

In this dramatic scene, she's left alone
and heartbroken.

Willoughby.

Willoughby. You feel it so vividly.

Often gift is to take us right inside
their human dramas and their lived

experience.

This wedding scene may look like a happy
ending, but both Marianne and Willoughby

have had to give up on love and marry
for money.

This is not a fairytale ending.

We see Austen at her most subtle,
because we're not entirely sure that she

thinks this is a delightful ending
either.

It's something that Austen looks at all
the time, is what does it mean to

settle? What does it mean to sort of be
OK? Those compromises between money and

love.

To make her readers feel vividly what
her characters are going through.

Austin pioneers a groundbreaking
technique.

The first draft of Sense and Sensibility
had been written in a simple style,

typical of the period, taking the form
of a series of letters written between

the protagonists.

It's a first-person exchange.

So one person's saying, oh, I did this,
and the other person's saying, I did

this. What she does is merge this into a
novel with a narrator, so a voice above

that's describing the action and the
characters within it.

By fusing these two styles, Austen keeps
the individual perspective of the

characters, but puts them in the voice
of the narrator.

In this passage, Austen begins by
describing the action as though

observing it.

Eleanor and her mother rose up in
amazement at their entrance.

He apologized for his intrusion.

But then she slips into the perspective
of Eleanor's mother and her emotional

response to the action.

Had he been even old, ugly, and vulgar,
the gratitude and... She can give

you as the reader is sent quite, but the
theme then is established, not as a

drama between the characters, but as a
drama between the reader and the page.

This is what she's refining.

Austen's technique will become known as
free indirect speech, and it will change

how novels are written to this day.

Like all the great advances, it's a huge
change that is so obvious that now we

can't imagine not having this.

This is the way that literature is now
written.

And of course, often pioneered that
technique.

Sense and Sensibility is Austen's third
novel, but as yet, none have been

published.

Determined to finally get into print,
she returns to London and seeks out her

brother Henry.

Henry, he needs someone he can trust.

He has to use people with whom he has a
certain amount of leverage.

And the person he turns to is Thomas
Edgerton.

Henry knows Thomas Edgerton from his
time in the militia.

Thomas Edgerton publishes books about
military manoeuvres and guns and

strategies. It's highly improbable that
he'll take on a book about two teenage

girls and their love travails.

And yet, there it lands.

The question is, will they be able to
strike a deal?

This was a crucial moment for Jane.
She's been planning this moment all her

life.

Ultimately, it was Henry's connection
with Edgerton.

But Eliza, just behind the scenes,
played quite a silent but encouraging

part in, this is really important, we
really need this to happen, we really

need to get her published.

Thomas Edgerton drives a hard bargain.

There's evidence that Henry and Eliza
advanced money to Thomas Edgerton.

to persuade Edgerton to publish Sense
and Sensibility.

Finally, a deal is struck.

But Jane knows from experience that
getting a contract is only the first

step.

She needs to make sure the book gets
into print.

Austin is not going to leave anything
for chance this time.

She upsticks and moves in with Henry and
Eliza in London and bases herself

with the manuscript.

She takes charge of the edits and the
final proofs of the manuscript.

So she's actually there kind of almost
guarding it.

to make sure that nothing goes wrong.

My dearest Cassandra, no, indeed, I am
never too busy to think of sense and

sensibility. I can know more than a
mother can forget her sucking child.

I have two sheets to correct.

But the last only brings us to
Willoughby's first appearance.

Austin has been waiting for this moment
for over 17 years.

Finally, at the age of 35, she is a
published author.

To actually be given the first copy of
your first printed book felt quite

euphoric. Now she knows she's a
successful writer. She's a successful

published writer. Not in her mind
anymore. Not on someone else's desk. In

her hands, a real object in this world.

All of the delays, the rejections, the
obstacles, all of it. She's finally

here.

Well, that feels amazing.

That feels really good.

And now that her book is out in the
world...

Jane is about to discover she has
readers in high places.

No less than a prince in place of his
ailing father, George III.

He is the unlikely fashion icon of this
indulgent age.

He celebrates the start of his regency
with a banquet so extravagant the guests

eat off a gold dinner service costing
the equivalent of five and a half

million pounds today.

The Prince Regent reigns over a culture
of carnal and culinary excess, where

waistlines expand and necklines plummet.

For those with the wealth to enjoy it,
it is an exciting and glittering time

where arts, music and literature all
flourish.

For Jane, this just absolutely blows
things out of the water because if

you've got the Prince Regent, yes, a
notoriously...

messy character, but nevertheless, the
most trendy gentleman around.

If he is endorsing your book, then you
officially have made it.

The ultimate celebrity reader, Prince
Regent, absolutely adores it, falls in

love with it, and the public fall in
love with it as well.

Boosted by the royal endorsement, Sense
and Sensibility wins plaudits from the

critics.

The characters are naturally drawn and
judiciously supported.

It reflects honour on the writer, who
displays much knowledge of character and

very happily blends a great deal of good
sense with the lighter matter of the

piece. A very pleasing and entertaining
narrative.

Jane sells nearly a thousand copies of
the first edition.

Double the usual print run.

She makes £140, four times what an
average worker earns in a year.

Now, Jane Austen has been propelled to
the very heart, indeed the very pinnacle

of London society.

I mean, this is so exciting. Come on!

My dear Cassandra, I have so many little
matters to tell you of that I cannot

wait any longer before I begin to put
them down.

I am getting very extravagant and
spending all my money.

Naturally, her publisher, Edgerton, is
very, very keen to see what else she's

got.

Here you go.

Bosh. Pride and Prejudice.

And this time round, it's Austen who's
calling the shots.

She demands payment up front and pockets
over ten times more than her first book.

The first edition soon sells out and a
second print run is ordered.

It is the novel everybody's talking
about. It is the novel of the day.

Now she has two incredibly successful
books behind her.

She's basking in the glory.

We see this whole new side of us.

We drank tea again yesterday with the
Tilsons and met the Smiths. I find all

these little parties very pleasant.

Jane Austen discovers a whole new side
of herself.

She loves going to the plays.

She's going to parties.

She's a city girl.

I feel like she's living for the first
time.

Above 80 people are invited for next
Tuesday evening and there is to be some

very good music.

She is having so much fun.

You feel this great sense of achievement
when you're young and when you are good

at something and you feel passion and
you feel excitement and you know that

you have captured the world around you.
You think that you can do anything.

But as Jane revels in her new life at
the heart of London society...

She also turns her writer's eye on some
of the bleaker aspects of the capital.

Austen continues to scan her
surroundings and

she witnesses up close some of the
seedier aspects of London life and some

of the people who are definitely not
benefiting from all this wealth.

While the rich indulge themselves,

The poor are crowded into urban slums to
feed the demands of the new factories.

Children as young as four work at the
machines.

Disease and malnutrition run rife.

She's looking at the world now as a
whole, and she's like, oh, these things

aren't right.

In London, Jane is confronted by extreme
social inequality.

One injustice in particular stands out.

Britain's booming economy is powered by
the products of slavery.

Cotton, sugar, and tobacco all rely on
slave labor, and this demand has fueled

an international trade in human life.

Guns and alcohol go to Africa.

Enslaved people are transported to the
Americas and the raw materials they

produce are brought back to Europe.

The country is benefiting from a massive
influx of wealth.

Money is flooding in from the slave
plantations as well as from trade

networks in Asia.

It's transformed British society from
the bottom up.

This inhumanity has sparked a growing
campaign to abolish slavery.

and stand up to the vested interests
protecting it.

Her father, George Austin, had been a
trustee of a fund based on a sugar

plantation in Antigua.

So there was family involvement with the
sugar plantations of the Caribbean and

with chattel slavery.

But we also know that Austin is inspired
by the abolitionist movement.

She's a particularly keen fan of the
greatest of the abolitionist organisers,

Thomas Clarkson. She says that he is a
sort of hero to her at this point. There

are other sources as well. Her brother
Frank is writing to her with tales of

his disgust at witnessing chattel
slavery when he was sailing around the

Atlantic.

It's there in her family, it's there in
her reading. This is a live issue for

her.

It feels like now is the time to talk
about not just the small world around

her, but the politics of the world that
she sees. She understands that she has a

voice and she's going to use it. She's
pushing herself.

She's testing the boundaries.

What can she do?

She thinks, I'll do something really
different. It's going to be quite

serious. There aren't going to be quite
so many jokes.

And there's going to be shadows.

This will be a book of shadows.

and the shadow is the slave trade, the
shadow is women's oppression, women

being silenced.

on an estate called Mansfield Park.

Mansfield Park has been built on the
spoils of the slave trade. The head of

the house has plantations and Antigua.
This is a novel of a whole different

magnitude to the bright and sparkling
Pride and Prejudice.

Calling the house Mansfield Park is
deliberately ironic.

Mansfield, to the people of that time,
means Lord Mansfield.

one of the foremost judges of his time.

Two of his judgments played a large part
in the movement that was beginning to

recognize that slavery was not
acceptable.

And he says that in England we do not
have slaves.

So while the house has been built on
slavery, the name Mansfield is

associated with the abolition movement
that opposes it.

Jane Austen being very politically overt
by invoking Mansfield.

That's a huge klaxon. That's a ginormous
flashing red light going slavery,

slavery, slavery.

That's what it says to a contemporary
audience right there in the title.

There's something very, very dark and
unsettling about this novel at the heart

of it.

It's the only one of her novels where
she gives us... the background for the

heroine. Fanny, he's here.

Austin explores inequality through the
eyes of an outsider thrust into a world

of wealth.

Yes, ma. And you will write to tell me
when I'm to return? Austin shows us the

childhood and Fanny Price being uprooted
from the home that she's known, going

into Mansfield Park.

Now, let us have a look at you.

Well, I'm sure you have other qualities.

And these terrible, really affecting
scenes are really powerful.

Dear Susie, it seems that Mother has
given me away.

This child, completely bereft, crying
and sobbing.

Fanny Price grows up with her extended
family and kept firmly in her place.

What do you think, Miss Price?

I'm sorry to disappoint, Mr Crawford,
but I do not have a ready opinion.

I suspect you're almost entirely
composed of ready opinions not shared.

Fanny?

Yes, Lord Norris?

What are you doing here?

I beg your pardon?

You are aware, surely, that the sewing
wasn't cleared away from yesterday

afternoon?

Yes, you're quite right. It wasn't
our... She's humiliated.

The fact that Fanny doesn't say a great
deal leaves the reader with the anger.

The frustration the reader feels is
angered on her behalf, and that's a much

more powerful way of communicating what
Jane Austen wanted the

reader to feel.

Part of Austen's genius is structuring a
novel so the reader knows that something

is going on as undercurrent, as
something barely mentioned, is actually

dominant. But you, as the reader, are
the only one to realise this.

At the heart of Mansfield Park is a
really important moment when the

very oppressed and silenced heroine
makes this shocking observation.

It's more about the Negroes, dear.

Yes, the mulattos are in general
well-shaped, and the women especially

well-featured. I have one so easy and
graceful in her movements.

In this adaptation, Fanny Price
confronts her uncle in a highly charged

scene. Fanny, the person who's always
been quiet, who's overlooked, who's

talked over, who's pushed in the corner,
she has the temerity to ask Sir Thomas

about the slave trade.

Anyway, I've a good mind to bring one of
them back with me next trip.

To work here as a domestic.

Correct me if I am in error, Sir Thomas,
but I've read, sir, that if you were to

bring one of the slaves back to England,
there would be some argument as to

whether or not they should be freed
here.

If I'm not mistaken.

That silence is very deafening in the
novel.

It almost mirrors conversations that we
have now, or I have now, around slavery.

No one really wants to listen. No one
really wants to engage in it.

And I think it's kind of devastating
because it's easy to turn a blind eye

because you are, I guess, complicit in
it or you benefit from it in some way.

I think there's one way we can read her,
you see, as a political novelist, as

someone who's constantly alert, not
merely to the day-to-day things, but the

large questions of class.

and movement in England, where money
comes from.

And that she can find ways of describing
this or dramatising it, which are not

obvious.

That we can read this novel as being a
private novel about private life if we

want, but I think at our peril, because
large questions are coming into it.

It's about a really, really broad
spectrum of what slavery means and about

people as commodities and treating
people badly.

Austin ultimately shows us the
consequences when those without power

try to stand up for themselves.

Fanny is banished from Mansfield Park,
back to poverty.

It's one of the great set pieces in her
novel.

We see Fanny Price's awful home in
Portsmouth, just awful.

And she realises that her idea of home
that had been so potent is again

overturned. She's re-traumatised.

Mother. Fanny.

Come, come in.

I must be exhausted from your journey.

No, it's a pretty short, really.

Look at you.

Betty,

get father up. Come in.

Fanny's homecoming is both deeply moving
and deliberately unsentimental.

So, did you have a tiring journey? You
must be exhausted.

Betsy! I got him up yesterday.

This scene is a really very

realist sense of poverty, not with
disgust, just really straight-up

reported.

Her eyes could only wander to the table,
cut and notched by her brothers, the

cups and saucers wiped with streaks.

The milk, a mixture of moats floating in
thin blue, and the bread and butter

growing every minute more greasy than
even Rebecca's hands had first produced

it.

It's quite striking in this description
of a small, humble family space.

It's just a straight-up telling of this
is how this family lives, almost moving

in the direction of Hardy or Dickens.

You see an author growing, I think.

This depiction of chaotic, working-class
life is a departure from the genteel

poverty of Austen's previous story.

It is social realism.

There's this abrasion that she's writing
about that doesn't exist in the other

novels.

There's nobody else writing this kind of
prose at this time and writing these

kinds of scenes.

It feels very contemporary.

You know, she's already a great
novelist. She's on the cusp of

becoming... An absolute genius novelist,
I think, of pushing all the boundaries.

Jane is about to push even further into
uncharted creative territory.

But she will have to do it alone.

Her sister-in-law, Eliza, is dying.

Eliza has been this...

A force of nature in Jane's world,
different from all the other women she

knows, more independent, more exotic,
more glamorous.

But she has cancer.

The person that Eliza wants to nurse her
in this final, agonisingly painful

battle with breast cancer is Jane
Austen.

Her calming, soothing presence is
required in her final hours.

Once more, here she is at the deathbed
of someone that inspired and trusted her

and encouraged her. An early figure of
inspiration and of female solidarity.

Another body blow for Austin.

Eliza dies on the 25th of April, 1813,
with Jane at her bedside.

Jane has lost a close friend and her
loudest literary cheerleader just at the

moment in her career when she needs her
most.

In 1814, Mansfield Park, Austin's most
political work, is published.

It's obviously a novel that she feels
immensely proud of.

She feels its weight, she feels its
gravity as a fiction.

The thought of what her readers are
going to feel and think when they

respond to Mansfield Park.

And there's so much to respond to in
that novel.

Thanks to the popularity of her previous
books, the first print run sells out.

But her readers are left unimpressed.

And worse still... There's a deafening
silence from the critics.

Even all these years later, there are
still only some of us who love Mansfield

Park, and critics just ignore the book.

Jane gets no critical feedback, no
reviews, no critical acclaim, nothing at

all. A wonderful, terrible silence.

And in an echo of what, you know, Fanny
Price not having a voice, the book...

Doesn't have a voice.

No one hears it. You create something, a
piece of art, a work of art, and if

nobody comments on it or there's no
feedback about it, it is as though you

are invisible. You don't exist.

But as she's attempted to tackle bigger
themes and gain respect as an artist of

substance, the critics have ignored her.

Jane realizes that if she wants to pose
big questions and challenge social

convention, she must do it through a
more engaging and entertaining

character. She will create a new
heroine, and she will call her Emma.

Jane is facing homelessness.

She needs profits. She needs to make as
much money as she possibly can.

And then she is cut down at the very
peak of her power.

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