“Oh! certainly,” cried his faithful assistant, “no one can be really esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved.”  

“All this she must possess,” added Darcy, “and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.” Caroline Bingley and Mr. Darcy, Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 8  

It is well known that Jane Austen was a voracious reader. Her father George Austen’s library contained over 500 volumes, and having been home schooled by her father and her brother James, both ‘Oxford men’, she had at hand the resources for a solid education and a varied library from her father’s shelves.¹ In the last year of her life, she wrote to her eight-year old niece Caroline Austen who was a budding writer and recommended that she should, ‘cease writing till (she) was sixteen; that she had herself often wished she had read more, and written less in the corresponding years of her own life.’²

We see books and novels discussed frequently in her works as social and moral commentary. If you will note, many of her characters who read or collect books are often portrayed in a more sympathetic light; — Fanny Price in Mansfield Park with her affinity to poetry, Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility who “had the knack of finding her way in every house to the library“, and even Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey, that Gothic fiction obsessive, all have their faults, but are overall portrayed postively, learn and grow throughout the story, and by the conclusion are endearing to the reader. On the opposite side of the spectrum, those characters that are negligent readers are unsympathetically slighted; — the odious Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice who “often observed how little young ladies are interested by books of a serious stamp, though written solely for their benefit“, Emma Woodhouse in Emma who “has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old”, Sir Walter Elliot of Persuasion “who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage” and John Thorpe of Northanger Abbey who thinks novels are “the stupidest things in creation“. These, with the exception of Emma Woodhouse, all have a less favourable end.

With so much praise and admonishment on reading peppered about, it is amusing to ponder if Jane Austen’s character Mr. Darcy from her novel Pride and Prejudice is the moral voice of the authoress when he states that all accomplished women must improve their minds with extensive reading! Much to our benefit, the level of education that Jane Austen’s received was not the norm for ladies in Georgian England. There were some who felt that educating women was a waste of money and resources. Is Mr. Darcy’s progressive attitude working Jane Austen’s personal principals? Is she projecting here?

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