Beyond the Bonnets: Working Women in Jane Austen’s Novels

In the year that we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen, Beyond the Bonnets gives a voice to those who were overlooked by many but not neglected in Austen’s novels: working women. 

Jane herself was a working woman, and this unique exhibition, which has been specially created for her landmark anniversary year, explores the untold stories not only of working women in her novels, but those of real-life women from Regency Hampshire, whose lives mirrored her fictional characters. 

Through Austen’s works and her letters historic objects and an absorbing, immersive soundscape, encounter women in domestic service – so frequently footnotes in the narrative - or those who owned and ran their own business. Nursemaid to Jane’s brother Edward, Susannah Sackree (1761-1851) was such a faithful and beloved member of the Knight household, that unusually a portrait was commissioned of her. Mrs Mary Martin of Basingstoke (1730 – 1823) ran an inn and organised public balls, familiar features in Austen’s works. She went on to run a draper’s shop with a lending library before declaring bankruptcy. Much of her story is known from public records.

Compelling, heartwarming and emotive, Beyond the Bonnets reveals the unexpected and often precarious lives of working women at the time of Jane Austen. 

Credit: Head of a Woman, Study for The Bible Lesson, circa 1743, attributed to Paul Sandby RA, 1731 – 1809 after Philippe Mercier, 1689 or 1691-1760. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection