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5 - The short fiction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

By
Margaret Anne Doody
Edited by
Edward Copeland  and
Juliet McMaster
Edward Copeland
Affiliation:
Pomona College, California
Juliet McMaster
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
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Summary

In Jane Austen's unfinished Catharine, or the Bower, found in the notebook Volume the Third, we hear silly Camilla Stanley and her mother gushing over Camilla's correspondence with her friend Augusta:

'You received a Letter from Augusta Barlow to day, did not you, my Love?' said her Mother - . 'She writes remarkably well I know.'

'Oh! Yes Ma'am, the most delightful Letter you ever heard of. She sends me a long account of the new Regency walking dress Lady Susan has given her, and it is so beautiful that I am quite dieing with envy for it.'

'Well, I am prodigiously happy to hear such pleasing news of my young freind; I have a high regard for Augusta, and most sincerely partake in the general Joy on the occasion. But does she say nothing else? it seemed to be a long Letter - Are they to be at Scarborough?'

'Oh! Lord, she never once mentions it, now I recollect it; and I entirely forgot to ask her when I wrote last. She says nothing indeed except about the Regency.' 'She must write well' thought Kitty, 'to make a long Letter upon a Bonnet Sc Pelisse.' (C&O W 203)

Austen's abortive novel can be heard here making fun of the epistolary mode, and of both the opposing views regarding female letter-writing. Mrs. Stanley approves of female correspondence: 'I have from Camilla's infancy taught her to think the same ... Nothing forms the taste more than sensible & Elegant Letters' (C&O W202).

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Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen , pp. 84 - 99
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1997

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