![]() And considering how many people seek to monetize their social media followings, we can’t delude ourselves that we are superior for naming our friends’ metrics rather than their money. If Austen’s characters are striking for the candor with which they discuss one another’s income, their discretion on other subjects looks truly remarkable to my modern eyes.īut how can I be squeamish about Austen’s characters referring to their new neighbors with reference to these kinds of figures, when my friends and acquaintances so frequently do the same? No, they don’t refer to new friends by their tax bracket-but if that friend has a hundred thousand Twitter followers, or five hundred likes on their latest Insta post, I’m sure to hear about it. Hume points out in “ Money in Jane Austen,” this places him not just in the top one percent of English families, but in the top ten percent of the one percent. It is not enough for Austen to point out, in the famous opening line of Pride and Prejudice, that “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife” before long we (along with all the characters in the novel) know that this “good fortune” is an annual income of £4,000 to £5,000. ![]() ![]() This is another way in which social media replicates the dynamics of Austen’s world: both place great emphasis on the value of introductions, and both quantify the value of each new friend or connection.Īusten’s characters assess one another in pounds: they constantly refer to the wealth of their various acquaintances, naming their annual incomes or the size of their estates. Of course, if our inboxes are overflowing, it’s often because we’ve followed the many admonitions to build up our professional networks and attract social media fans. ![]() Austen’s characters may face a nonstop parade of callers, but at least they don’t have to deal with Facebook friend invitations and an endless series of requests to connect on LinkedIn. But I soon found myself wondering how the inhabitants of Austen’s world put up with this constant pressure to socialize-until I realized that we face just as much demand for interaction, albeit in digital form. Calling on acquaintances typically does the following: announces that the caller deems his or her host worthy of notice and feels some obligation to call obliges the host(s) to receive the caller and to return the visit and opens (or closes, depending on the tenor of the visit) doors for further social intercourse.Īt first, I envied Austen’s characters this daily face-to-face social interaction: I often go weeks without seeing even my closest friends in person, staying in touch via Facebook or SMS instead. The convention of calling on one’s acquaintances, which requires either conversing with the members of the household for at least fifteen minutes if they are home, or leaving a card if they are not. In addition to their month-long visits (does anyone want an Airbnb guest who stays that long?), Austen’s characters indulge in a daily exchange of “calls.” In “ Jane Austen’s Speech Acts and Language-Based Societies,” Candace Nolan-Grant describes this practice as The similarities begin with the sheer volume of social interaction required of both English gentry and social media users. (Yes, I’m afraid I really have fallen down the Austen rabbit hole this time.) Indeed, as I plunged into Austen’s England from the very device that normally connects me to Facebook and Twitter, her world and ours looked more and more alike. ![]() I soon got past the incongruity of finding Jane Austen on my phone, in my audiobook app, and in the ebook I downloaded so that I’d have access to explanatory annotations on the text. I soon found myself wondering how the inhabitants of Austen’s world put up with this constant pressure to socialize. ![]()
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