Hampshire Cultural Trust is marking the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth with an exhibition focusing on the previously overlooked stories of working women, both in Jane’s novels and across real-life Georgian Hampshire.
To millions of readers, TV viewers and cinema-goers Jane Austen (1775-1817) needs little introduction as one of Hampshire’s most famous daughters, who gained a level of financial independence thanks to the four novels published in her lifetime. Arguably less well-known to her legions of fans, however, are the female characters occupying the incidental roles in Jane’s stories.
Beyond the Bonnets – opening at Winchester’s Arc on 26 July – will focus on these lives lived in the background, allowing visitors to hear their voices and discover the stories of working women from Austen’s home county and further afield.
Finding parallels between fact and fiction, this fascinating exhibition follows the precarious lives of real Georgian women, who experienced tragedy and triumph in equal measure as they navigated limited opportunities and rights. These were the women who enabled the comfortable lives of the likes of Emma Woodhouse or Lady Catherine de Bourgh who inhabit Austen’s novels.
Presented through her works, letters and an absorbing soundscape – featuring voiced extracts from Jane’s novels, correspondence with her sister Cassandra and contemporary newspaper advertisements – visitors will encounter real women. The 65 objects on display celebrate the ordinary and hold an importance that goes beyond their unassuming appearance: a calico apron, a wooden patten, a tortoiseshell hair comb.
Stories in the exhibition include that of Susannah Sackree (1761-1851), nursemaid to Jane’s brother Edward, who was such a faithful and beloved member of the Knight household, that unusually a portrait was commissioned of her; and Mrs Mary Martin of Basingstoke (1730 – 1823) who ran an inn where she held public balls – familiar features in Austen’s novels – and went on to run a draper’s shop, evoking Ford’s in Emma, complete with a lending library.
The exhibition will explore three key areas of work during the 18th century – domestic service, education and childcare and trade – through the lens of lesser-known characters and vignettes from Austen’s works. These themes explore the range of roles generally regarded as ‘woman’s work’, from housekeepers, exemplified by Mrs Reynolds in Pride and Prejudice, to maid servants and governesses, such as Jane Fairfax, Emma’s rival in Emma. Together, they reveal the seemingly limited opportunities available to Jane’s female counterparts.
The exhibition also shows how changes in circumstance could force women to look for work in less socially acceptable fields, such as prostitution, or discover their entrepreneurial skills. After her husband died, Ann Freeman of Alresford took on his business as a glazier, placing an advertisement in an edition of the Hampshire Chronicle, published on 2 August 1790, in which she sought a journeyman plumber and glazier. She built a successful business, employing several male labourers, which appears to have flourished with her at the helm after her husband’s death.
Although modern screen adaptations of Austen’s stories tend to focus on life ‘above stairs’, with sumptuous clothing, grand country houses and bucolic settings, things were very different for the lower classes in Georgian Britain. In rural areas and on country estates, life was much more codified than today and failure to meet standards or expectations could be extremely punitive, catastrophic even. A maid was usually hired for a year for around £8 on top of accommodation, meals and sometimes clothing. This was a contract, in which leaving without permission could mean a fine or imprisonment. In such circumstances, local women could be sent to the squalid County Bridewell prison in Winchester where hard labour was used to reform the ‘idle and disorderly’. Inmates – both men and women together – were put to work grinding corn on a treadmill.
To illustrate this, the exhibition includes a reproduction Calendar of Prisoners from 1790, which detailed those confined in prison. Sarah Ranger is listed as being charged with keeping a disorderly house. This would have been a bawdy house, or a gambling house, or possibly a combination. Sarah, age 47, was imprisoned after refusing to enter a recognizance, which involved finding a guarantor to put up a bond.
The exhibition also prompts visitors to contrast modern life with that of their forbears. Today, ‘convenience’ is an accepted part of western society. Washing clothes, for example, is the work of a moment and a machine. In the 18th century, the onerous task of washing clothes and linen was done entirely by hand. Intriguingly, no washerwoman is named in Austen’s novels, although the work is mentioned. The process was both arduous and unpleasant, so washerwomen dressed accordingly, with bare arms and legs to avoid getting too wet or hot, and this led to a reputation for loose morals. The detergents of the day were lye, a harsh alkali made from wood ash, or stale urine.
If Austen's plotlines can be, perhaps crudely and reductively, categorized as revolving around themes of love, marriage, social class and societal expectations, the exhibition features a section that gets down to brass tacks. Sex. A reproduction of the 1773 edition of Harris’s List (a regularly updated illustrated guidebook to Covent Garden’s prostitutes published between 1757 and 1795) in which the names, locations, assets and services they provided can be seen. The directory is together with a jelly mould. Why? Jelly was a popular, quick and cheap snack for Georgian sex workers. In turn, this attracted clients to congregate around confectioner’s shops as potential pick-up spots.
Curator Kathleen Palmer says: "It has been a real privilege to delve deeper behind the scenes in Jane Austen’s novels. The resulting exhibition brings together a multitude of Hampshire voices – Austen’s distinctive and wry voice, the voices of individual working women around her and the echoes of their lives found in collections and archives. Visitors will discover unexpected and rich real-life histories of Georgian Hampshire in parallel with enjoying the acute observation of Austen’s own words."
Paul Sapwell, Chief Executive at Hampshire Cultural Trust, comments: “Compelling, heartwarming and emotive, Beyond the Bonnets reveals the unexpected and often overlooked lives of working women at the time of Jane Austen and gives them a voice.”
He adds: “At times provocative, the exhibition purposefully looks past the glamour and opulence of her lead characters in the novels and, indeed, our general consciousness of the period, to explore and expose the stories of real working women.”
Beyond the Bonnets opens on Saturday 26 July and runs until Sunday 2 November.