Comments on: Jane Austen’s Memorials in Winchester Cathedral

By: imogen88

imogen88 — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 14:43:33 +0000

Very good post, I didn’t know of the windows either. The “bead of mercury” is very apt about JA Julie, yet in spite of that you give us much to go on, and this post is a fitting tribute, allowing us to learn more. Thank you!

By: Five things to do in West Sussex & Hampshire | magellanstraits

Five things to do in West Sussex & Hampshire | magellanstraits — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 09:30:52 +0000

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By: hablandodejane

hablandodejane — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 10:20:43 +0000

No problem at all!! Here we are to look for her wherever she may be…

By: jfwakefield

jfwakefield — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 16:19:16 +0000

Oh goodness, yes. And the more you study her works, the more her genius reveals itself, but she, somehow, seems to recede into the ether….;)

By: hablandodejane

hablandodejane — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 16:09:18 +0000

Well, I think what you say is very “exact”. In fact, not only with her life, but with her novels, the lack of physical descriptions allow the readers to create and recreate her stories… and somehow, her life too. That’s her trick… and what a trick! A genius’, definitely.

By: jfwakefield

jfwakefield — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 15:39:06 +0000

I think-and its difficult to express exactly why I mean(!)- its all part of her elusiveness. She’s like a bead of mercury rolling around a piece of glass. Difficult to grasp. We don’t know what she really looked like, often her statements in her letters can be read many ways..we think we know her, (intimately) but do we? And this elusiveness is echoed in her memorials, in a way.

By: hablandodejanedejane

hablandodejanedejane — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 15:35:37 +0000

What a fascinating entry! I agree, too, with the fact that mentioning the works of Jane at that time would not have been the most appropriate. A woman was, as Jane herself wrote, admired by her beauty or her disposition, but not by her genius. So the best they could write about her was the goodness of her heart and character.

The way we see it now is that it wasn’t fair but, definitely, was more realistic. And Jane was extremely aware of what was going on at that time.

Her brave steps were so subtle that many people are even nowadays unable to identify them correctly.

By: jfwakefield

jfwakefield — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 09:16:40 +0000

I often do wonder what she thinks of it all- the memorials,the fame, the sometimes crazed adulation.

By: jfwakefield

jfwakefield — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 09:15:26 +0000

No, being an author of novels was at the time rather “not quite the thing” so her fame would not have helped her. Permission was probably granted for her to be buried in the cathedral due to her being a member of an ecclesiastical family, with Henry playing the major part, and also because of the support of friends of Jane’s who lived in the cathedral close, notably her old friend Elizabeth Bigg, who was by this time Mrs Heathcote. She was a life long friend of Jane and her sister Cassandra and almost became Jane’s sister-in-law when her brother proposed marriage to Jane( she accepted but, next morning, refused him, remember)

By: jfwakefield

jfwakefield — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 09:09:40 +0000

Very probably, Henry’s inscription is entirely conventional for the time. But…Henry took an age to say very little -it is 122 words long-and what he did say was as nearly as much about her family as opposed to being solely about her ;) And it is interesting to compare the wording of the stone with the obituary notices. There were 11 and looking at Gibson’s Bibliography, – seven of them include the fact that she was an author,and it is thought that Henry composed the most comprehensive of these, published in the “Salisbury and Winchester Journal”. In my opinion, for what it is worth, the gravestone is a product of its age and Henry Austen’s new found vocation as a clergyman: he had only recently been ordained in the Church of England by the Bishop of Winchester in December 1816.

Its very interesting to me that you note that on your visit to the cathedral the Memorial Window was not pointed out to you, but the grave and the tablet were.