The Watsons
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Author | Jane Austen |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | |
| Released | |
| Media Type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | NA |
The Watsons is an incomplete novel by Jane Austen. She began writing it c.1803 and probably abandoned it after her father's death in January 1805.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
Mr. Watson is a widowed clergyman with two sons and four daughters. The youngest daughter, Emma, has been brought up by a wealthy aunt and is consequently better educated and more genteel than her sisters. But when her aunt contracts a foolish second marriage, Emma is obliged to return to her father's house. There she is chagrined by the crude and reckless husband-hunting of two of her twentysomething sisters. She finds the sardonic wit of her eldest and most responsible sister, Elizabeth, more attractive.
Living near the Watsons are the Osbornes, a great titled family. Emma attracts some notice from the boorish and awkward young Lord Osborne, while one of her sisters plaintively pursues Lord Osborne's arrogant, social-climbing friend, Tom Musgrave. Various minor characters provide potential matches for Emma's brothers and sisters.
Mr. Watson is seriously ill in the opening chapters, and it is clear that Austen intended for him to die in the course of the work. Emma would apparently reject consequence for comfort in marrying the Osbornes' frank and virtuous young tutor.
[edit] Literary significance & criticism
Why did Austen abandon this promising work? Her nephew suggested that she abandoned the work because she realized that she had placed her heroine too far down in the social hierarchy to interest her readers. Austen biographer Claire Tomalin speculates that Austen more probably abandoned the work because she simply could not face the ordeal of writing about Mr. Watson's death, and his daughters' bleak financial prospects, when faced with the pain of her own father's death and her and Cassandra's own bleak prospects.
[edit] Continuations
Austen's niece Catherine Hubback completed The Watsons and published it in the mid-nineteenth century.
John Coates also published a completion in 1957.
[edit] Footnotes
[edit] References
- Austen, Jane (19thC). The Watsons.
- Tomalin, Claire (1997). Jane Austen: A Life. New York: Vintage.
