Sanditon

Jane Austen’s novels take place around the turn of the 19th century. At the end of the 18th century, England experienced profound social and political changes that affect the setting of Austen’s novels. The American Revolution and the French Revolution marked the start of the decline of the British Empire. The rise of industrialization greatly affected the British economy during Austen’s life. By the beginning of the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing, allowing for the expansion of manufacturing and agricultural production across the country. Social mobility became newly possible—at least in theory—as never before. At the same time, economic inequality deepened as industrial capitalism enriched the already wealthy and impoverished those who had little to begin with. The Industrial Revolution produced a growing divide between the social classes. Among the novel’s upper-class characters, this growing divide manifests in an overweening ambition combined with a fear of unrest among the masses.

During this period, massive fortunes were being built through enslaved labor in England’s colonies in the Caribbean. Racist anxieties about the growing influence of these colonies in British life were common in the era. In Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel Jayne Eyre, the main obstacle to Jane’s eventual happy marriage to Edward Rochester is the fact that he is already married to Bertha Mason, a wealthy Jamaican woman described as being of Creole heritage on her mother’s side. Strikingly, it is also on her mother’s side that “madness” runs in the family, and by the time the novel opens, Bertha is mentally ill and confined to the attic of Rochester’s house. Interracial marriage, in this novel, introduces “madness” into the family line and leads to ruin. The figure of Miss Lambe in Sanditon occupies a similar position—a wealthy young woman of mixed racial heritage, she is both an alluring object of desire and a threat to the social order. Unlike Brontë, though, Austen is working as a satirist and does not herself appear to endorse these views, putting them in the mouth of the odious Lady Denham, whose racism regarding Miss Lambe is only eclipsed by her greed.

The rise of feminism was another social issue discussed in British society since Mary Wollstonecraft published The Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792. The growing discussion of women’s rights ties in with Austen’s themes of a woman’s role in 19th-century British society since a woman was expected to marry to advance her family’s social status and wealth. Lady Denham has achieved her enviable social position through marriage, and she wants the same for her younger relatives. Charlotte is unusual among Austen protagonists in that she does not obviously need to marry to preserve her social status, and in the extant fragment of the novel, she is not actively looking for a husband, nor is anyone pressuring her to do so. As a result, she has a degree of independence useful for the novel’s satirical goals—she doesn’t depend on anyone, and thus she can see other people’s dependencies with clearer eyes than they can.