Greg Wise as the dangerously attractive but unreliable Willoughby, in Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility (1995). Who are the musical men – not just the ones who enjoy music, but those who have some musical skill? There are not many. With the men, things are a bit different. It tells us something about each of them, but there’s nothing that the musical women have in common – they can be heroines, anti-heroines, dependant orphans, or spoilt rich young women.
Emma knows perfectly well that Jane is much the better musician, and coming to admit that to herself and others is one stage in her faltering journey to maturity.Īnd in Persuasion, Anne Elliot is a consummate musician but does not envy the more showy accomplishments of the Musgrove sisters who play the harp, while she is still on the old-fashioned pianoforte.Īll sorts of women can be musical – or not – in Austen’s novels. Even at the age of ten, she can see that competing with her cousins for accomplishments will be futile, and she refuses to have lessons.Įmma Woodhouse doesn’t exactly compete with Jane Fairfax in the music stakes in Emma. Fanny has been brought to Mansfield Park as a young child to be brought up with her rich cousins, Maria and Julia, who are slightly older. In Mansfield Park, Fanny Price is not musical. In their case, the contrast is between their attitudes to their music-making: Mary insists on playing a “long concerto” at an evening party, while Elizabeth “easy and unaffected, had been listened to with much more pleasure, though not playing half so well”. Marianne’s music becomes a “nourishment of grief” for her when she is abandoned by Willoughby.Īnother pair of sisters, Elizabeth and Mary Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, are both musicians.
In Sense and Sensibility Marianne Dashwood is the musical one, while her sister Elinor was “neither musical, nor affecting to be so”. Musical women featured in 5 of Austen’s 6 novelsĬatherine Morland in Northanger Abbey happily abandoned her music lessons at an early age, but there are female musical characters in the other five of Austen’s six completed novels. Sense and Sensibility in a time of coronavirus: vicarious escape with Jane AustenĢ. The Piano Forte often talks of you – in various keys, tunes & expressions I allow – but be it Lesson or Country dance, Sonata or Waltz, You are really its’ constant theme. Caroline remembers some of the songs Austen sang for her in her last years, and in January 1817, six months before her death, Austen wrote to Caroline: Uniquely among her younger relatives, it seems, Caroline actively shared both Austen’s literary and musical interests. Most of what we know directly about Austen’s musicianship relies on the memories of her niece Caroline, who was only 12 when Austen died. She could accompany herself, improvising the piano part if necessary. Her family inherited some of her books of sheet music, including hundreds of manuscripts in her hand as well as printed music.Īlong with piano music, there are many songs in the collection, and judging by the music we have, she seems to have been a soprano. Jane Austen played the piano from the age of about ten.
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