Your mistake is in the place: The Orientation and Disorientation of Jane Austen's Sanditon

Your mistake is in the place: The Orientation and Disorientation of Sanditon.

[Note: I wrote this as part of my MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia

during the 1995-1996 academic year. I would like to dedicate it to Roger Sales, whose

Jane Austen MA class I was lucky enough to attend.]

Introduction

This is, in many ways, an unorthodox essay. A number of approaches towards the text are

made, but none is definitive. Some of the approaches rely upon a use of historical data

similar to that of the New Historicists; some exploit a post-Marxist, perhaps post-

Baudrillardian fascination with commodity; some draw upon a rather less fashionable

method - the scrupulous mapping-out of fictional houses and towns that Nabokov

I urged upon his students. All, however, were chosen because of their applicability to a

certain aspect of the text. All are dependent upon a minute and passionate attention to

textual detail. Sanditon is a text that has too often been patronised by a generalising

approach. Yet I believe that every single detail within the text is highly significant and

will repay the intensest examination.

The Opening

Sanditon begins with a short series of orientations followed by a long series of

disorientations. There is social orientation - ‘A Gentleman & Lady...’; geographical

orientation - ‘travelling from Tunbridge towards that part of the Sussex Coast which lies

between Hastings at E. Bourne...’; narrative orientation - ‘being induced by business to

quit the high road...’ and topographical orientation, ‘& attempt a very rough Lane...’

After which, we come to the first of the many disorientations, ‘were overturned in toiling

up its’ long ascent half rock, half sand.’

In quick succession, three of Mr Parker’s chief assumptions are similarly overturned:

a. that the nearby house is that of the Surgeon he and his wife are seeking: ‘There, I fancy

lies my cure.’ (155)1

b. that there is, in fact, a Surgeon in the Parish at all: ‘Then Sir, I can bring proof of your

having a Surgeon in the Parish - whether you may know it or not.’ (157)

c. that they are in the Willingden advertised in The Morning Post: ‘Is not this

Willingden?’ (157)

Mr Parker is not where he thinks he is. His intention to return to Sanditon - ‘the best thing

that we can do will be to measure back our steps into the Turnpike road & proceed to

Hailsham, & so home...’ (158) - is almost immediately overturned. Mr Parker’s injury (a

twisted ankle) prevents their departure. (The usual means of individual human transport,

the foot2, becomes the cause of two people remaining where they are. Logical relations

are overturned.) To go back the way they came, they must wait until ‘these good people

have succeeded in setting the Carge to rights & turning the Horses round...’ (158) The

carriage, like Mr Parker’s world, is upside down and back to front.

It is also, more importantly, in the wrong place: the lane beyond Mr Heywood’s house is

one along which ‘no wheels but cart wheels could safely proceed.’ (155) The driver

knows this in advance; Mr Heywood, in retrospect, expresses ‘some surprise at

anybody’s attempting that road in a carriage.’ (156) Being in the wrong place is the most

characteristic form of disorientation in Sanditon.

1 All page references to Sanditon are for the Penguin edition, however, certain aspects of the text (capitalisation, use of abbreviations, ampersands) have been restored by consultation of the manuscript. The text is, hopefully, as un-modernised as possible. 2 There is quite an intense concentration on feet throughout Sanditon. Later on we hear that, ‘Mr H. went no farther than his feet or his well-tried old Horse could carry him...’ (163) Later still we have Diana Parker massaging a coachman’s foot for six hours and one of the first things she does on arriving in Sanditon is inspect Mr Parker’s ankle. Diana’s particular form of disorientation, it might be argued, is the frantic pursuit of displacement activities. (A ‘disease of activity’.) An essay similar to this one might be envisaged on ‘Placement and Displacement of/in Sanditon.’

Being in the Wrong Place: People and Objects

Being in the wrong place has two aspects; we may call them subjective and objective.

- Subjectively (i.e., from a subjective, human point of view) to be in the wrong place is to

be lost. Sanditon is, in many ways, a text about being lost: socially, geographically,

narratively, physic-ally. Confusions of location of every sort - of symptom and cure, truth

and fiction, cause and effect - dominate the text.

- Objectively (i.e., from a point of view external to a non-sentient object) to be in the

wrong place is to be classified as an import, an exhibit, a piece of exotica, a foreign body.

Sanditon, as I will shortly demonstrate, is a text littered with an incredible density of dis-

or mis- placed objects.

Yet, such is the playfulness of the text, these aspects of displacement are often confused:

people are treated as objects, objects as people.

Underlying this often satiric play, however, is a more serious question: whether anything,

any object or person, can actually be in the wrong place? A parallel question is also,

inevitably, implied: is there anything or anybody who has an indisputably right place?3

Sanditon, on this reading, engages directly with the conservative view of society; a view

declared by critics as different in approach as B.C.Southam4 and Marilyn Butler5, to be

3 The questions which follow on directly on from this are many: Can there be nationality? Can there be community? Can there be property? There are also fictional questions, for example: If style and genre are fundamentally acts of exclusion (of certain words and constructions, of certain events and locations), can they be maintained in a text which admits (grants admission to and confesses) everything? Sanditon, it seems to me, sets out to dramatize these very questions. 4 ‘There is an emphatic contrast between the settled, traditional past, the instability of the past and uncertainty about the future. This contrast, made throughout the work, is figured

the moral conclusion of Austen’s final text.

Mr Heywood’s Farm: A Vacant Barn

Many previous readings of Sanditon claim to discover Jane Austen’s moral centre in the

values of Mr Heywood and Willingden: Willingden is played off against Sanditon; Mr

Heywood against Mr Parker. ‘In deliberate contrast are the Heywoods, who rescue the

Parkers after their accident. Even their name may be significant - hay and wood,

suggesting the natural and organic, in contrast to Sanditon. Surely it is not simply by

accident that Mr. Heywood is first seen in his hayfield, supervising the haymakers. They

represent an older England, a more stable way of life.’6

This is the traditional, conservative interpretation.

However, a closer reading of all the references to Mr Heywood, not just those that

comprise his introduction, gives a very different impression.

Most significantly, and most often ignored or dismissed, is the number of children that

Mr and Mrs Heywood have produced: fourteen.

John Lauber7 writes of the fourteen children ‘surely that farcical number would have

been lessened in revision!’ No, I don’t believe it would. The text, which has already been

revised, is as it is. We cannot read it with speculative revisions in mind, particularly when

those revisions visible in the Sanditon manuscript are, as B.C.Southam has noted, almost

initially between Mr Parker and Mr Heywood... [Mr Heywood] speaks for a way of life....’ B.C.Southam, Jane Austen’s Literary Manuscripts (Oxford, 1964), p.113. 5 ‘Sanditon is so firm in its sense of organic community, so hostile to the modern tendency to social fragmentation, so sceptical towards the unbridled fantasies of the individual, so outspoken in its diagnosis of contemporary menace, that it ought to make us very wary of any reading of Persuasion which proclaims a fundamental change of philosophy.’ Marilyn Butler, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (Oxford, 1975), p.289. 6 John Lauber, ‘Sanditon: Kingdom of Folly,’ Studies in the Novel, 4, 1972, p.353. 7 John Lauber, ‘Sanditon: Kingdom of Folly,’ Studies in the Novel, 4, 1972, p.356.

all in the direction of exaggeration8. Mr Heywood, as he exists, has fourteen children9.

If one pauses for a moment, considering the social implications of this number of

children - both within the social frame of Austen’s other novels and within the general

context of society at this time - several things become immediately obvious.

First, far from being perfectly fitted to his environment (to the extent, in some readings,

of becoming almost an emanation of the rural), Mr Heywood is guilty of hugely

overpopulating it. There is, therefore, an implicit economic strain of great force placed

upon Mr Heywood’s haymaking. As Lauber writes ‘Surely it is not simply by accident

that Mr. Heywood is first seen in his hayfield, supervising the haymakers.’10

Of course it is not an accident. But the reason is not, or is not just fictional. Mr Heywood

is among his haymakers not merely to participate but to stimulate, not just to assist but to

survey. Rather than living off the fruits of the land, Mr Heywood is anxiously trying to up

its yield.

Second, Mr Heywood has been highly irresponsible in respect of the marriage and other

prospects of each of his children. The only other major family of comparable size in

Austen’s fiction is Mrs Price’s. Her nine children are referred to as a ‘such a superfluity

of children’11. Mrs Price has ‘a large and still increasing family’12; Mr Heywood has ‘a

very numerous family...’ (Italics mine.) (163) We might also bear in mind Mr Bennet’s

8 B.C.Southam, Jane Austen’s Literary Manuscripts (Oxford, 1964), p.131. 9 Furthermore, there is a tendency towards inflation (economic and numeric) throughout Sanditon. Inflation is the sole basis of Lady Denham and Mr Parker’s discussion in Chapter 6: ‘...they who scatter their money so freely, never think of whether they may not be doing mischief of raising the price of things -.’ (180) Fourteen children is, fictionally, no more or less farcical than rubbing a servant’s ankle for six hours or having three teeth extracted. All the numbers in Sanditon have the same factor of exaggeration. 10 If so, then neither is it an accident that Mr Parker’s carriage is ‘wheeled off to a vacant barn.’ (161) Traditional readings of Mr Heywood’s farm insist upon its plenitude, here - as the very last words of the opening chapter - is its vacancy. 11 Tony Tanner, ed., Mansfield Park (London, 1966), p.42. 12 ibid., p.42.

difficulties in finding suitable matches for his mere five daughters. (Mary, we should

perhaps note, remains unmarried at the end of Pride and Prejudice as does Fanny’s

younger sister, Susan, at the end of Mansfield Park.) How Mr Heywood might be

expected to find suitable partners and to provide sizeable enough dowries for each of his

daughters is a question worth asking. Seen from Mr Heywood’s point of view, the

accidental arrival of the Parkers is an absolute godsend.

Third, Mr Heywood is seen to be guilty of an almost complete inability sensibly to

govern his sexual desires. Although families of such a size were by no means unusual at

the time, previous critics have been perfectly correct in viewing the number of Mr

Heywood’s children as an anomaly within the social realm of Austen’s other fiction.

(One might note in passing that in Austen’s letters, the increase of already large families

is almost always a matter of either censure or satire.13) The fourteen children, while they

would be excessive in any of Jane Austen’s other novels, are perfectly at home within the

excessive world of Sanditon. By means of this visible evidence of his past excesses of

desire, Mr Heywood is brought within the realm of satire. He has ‘made hay while the

sun shone’. He has ‘had his oats’. He has ‘cast his seed upon fertile ground’. Yet his past

fecundity is the very thing that threatens to bring him and his family a future of sterility:

numerous unmarried sons and daughters with but a single property to divide between

them.

There is, along with the number of his children, another important fact about Mr

Heywood that his previously been overlooked: he does not just live off the land, he has

investments: ‘Excepting two journeys to London in the year, to receive his Dividends...’

(163)

All arguments based upon Mr Heywood’s agrarian self-sufficiency immediately collapse.

Mr Heywood is, like Mr Parker, a speculator and a capitalist. He deals with hypothetical

money as well as cash crops. Mr Heywood’s farm is not a self-contained centre, an

13 Roger Sales, Jane Austen and Representations of Regency England (London, 1994), p.50-51.

organic community; it has links with London and, thereby, with the rest of the world.

What is most noticeable on this reading is that Mr Heywood and Mr Parker are both

businessmen; and that, in the first three chapters, they do a piece of mutually profitable

business - a transaction occurs. In return for two weeks accommodation with Mr

Heywood, Mr Parker offers him and his family seemingly unlimited accommodation at

Sanditon. There is barter, alteration of terms: ‘When Mr & Mrs Parker ... ceased from

soliciting a family-visit, and bounded their views to carrying back one Daughter with

them, no difficulties were started.’ (164) Charlotte, one of Mr Heywood’s main assets

(‘the eldest of the Daughters at home...’ (164)) is sent to Sanditon to be put on display, to

be advertised. She herself goes with the intention of participating financially in the

enterprise: ‘to receive every possible pleasure which Sanditon could be made to supply

by the gratitude of those she went with - & to buy new Parasols, new Gloves, & new

Broches, for her sisters & herself at the Library, which Mr P was anxiously wishing to

support...’ (164)

To sum up the argument so far, Sanditon is not the only location of anxiety within the

text. On a close reading, Mr Heywood’s farm is also revealed to be a precarious

establishment. Mr Heywood has put at risk both his family and his livelihood by making

an overinvestment in his sexuality.

If Mr Heywood’s farm (as an expression of Mr Heywood’s ‘values’) has up until now

been held by the majority of critics to form the moral centre of the text, it can from now

on be retained as such only by the witting or unwitting suppression of all those details

within the text which, when closely read, reveal Mr Heywood’s sexual profligacy,

financial dependency, social anxiety and overall insecurity.

With Mr Heywood’s centrality disproved, a different and more experimental reading of

Sanditon can take place. Sanditon is a text without a moral centre. In this sense it is an

amoral text.

Tony Tanner is the critic who has come closest to assuming this radical position14. His

discussion of the various ‘circles’ in Sanditon society is one of the strongest pieces of

criticism on the text.15 However, it is clear from the main line of his argument

(concerning ‘the disease of activity’) that Tanner views the activity of Sanditon’s

inhabitants as neurotic and motiveless. I would argue that, while it may indeed be

neurotic, it has a definite motive: the search, if not for a centre, then for some means of

orientation.16

The Orient

Before looking into some of the issues of orientation within the text, I would like to

spend a short while establishing a vocabulary.17

14 ‘‘Sanditon’ is in every way a decentred non-society.’ Tony Tanner, Jane Austen (London, 1986), p.273. 15 Tony Tanner, Jane Austen (London, 1986), pp.272-273. 16 One of the ways in which one can try to orientate oneself is by walking in circles, hoping, at least, to return to a place one had previously been. There are, however, other means of orientation which the text investigates. 17 The first thing to note, if only as a linguistic curiosity, is that the concept of disorientation seems to precede that of orientation: the dates of first usage for ‘disorientated’ and ‘disorientate’ are given as 1655 and 1704 respectively whereas those for ‘orientation’ and ‘orientate’ are 1839 and 1849. However the word ‘orient,’ as noun, adjective and verb, was well established. I have picked out only the relevant definitions: Orient ... sb. ... 2. Eastern countries, or the eastern part of a country; the East ... 3. Rising (of the sun, or the daylight); sunrise, dayspring, dawn. B. adj. 1. Situated in or belonging to the east; eastern, oriental. Now poet. 2. Applied to pearls, etc., of superior value and brilliancy... often a vague epithet; Precious, brilliant, lustrous, sparkling ... Orient ... v. 1727 ... 1. trans. To place or arrange (anything) so as to face the east; spec. to build (a church) with the longer axis due east and west, and chancel or chief altar to the east end ... b. By extension: To place with the four faces towards the four points of the compass; to place in any particular way with respect to the cardinal points; also, to determine the bearings of (anything) relatively to the points of the compass 1842. (I apologise for quoting both entries at such length, but they are a necessary prologue to much of what follows. All definitions are from The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.)

Orientation is, in the most basic sense, the establishment of some stable relationship

between a person or an object and the points of the compass. The most important point on

the compass is East, the direction from which the sun rises. Therefore orientation is, in a

very simple way, the establishing of a stable relationship with the East. However, the

East exists not just on a directional but also a figurative level. The East, as the Orient, is

the source of glamorous objects (orient pearl) and exotic people (orientals). To be

oriented is, as much as anything, to establish a stable relationship with these things.

(Whether or not it has succeeded in attaining stability in this relationship, it is clear that

Sanditon - most obviously in the example of the ‘nankin boots’ (172) - is having to deal

with the Orient.)

On considering these definitions, several things come immediately to mind. First, the

disorientation of Miss Lambe, a West Indian. Second, the disorientation of the many

objects imported into Sanditon. Third, the question of the orientation of Mr Parker’s new

house. Fourth, the orientation of Sanditon as a whole. Let us take the points one by one.

Miss Lambe

It is particularly interesting that the only actual strangers to arrive in Sanditon (unless we

count Charlotte or Sidney’s friends) are ‘the West Indians’18 (195): Mrs Griffiths and

‘Miss Lambe, a young W. Indian of large fortune...’ (204) (Here one might remember

‘Precious, brilliant, lustrous, sparkling.’) Being from the West, Miss Lambe is, in the

18 It is an interesting exercise to collate all the references within the text to the ‘West Indians’: we begin with ‘a rich West Indian from Surry,’ (176) and continue ‘A West Indy Family’ (180); ‘W. Indians’ (180); ‘your West-injines’ (180); ‘the West Indians,’ (194); ‘The West-indians’ (194); ‘the West-indians’ (195); ‘a young Westindian of large Fortune,’ (204); ‘a young W. Indian of large Fortune, in delicate health,’ (204); ‘The rich Westindians’ (205). Such instability of signification is, I think, unprecedented in Austen’s fiction.

simplest sense, dis-orient.19

The introduction of a ‘half-mulatto’ character is unprecedented in Austen’s fiction.20 The

nearest she had previously come to introducing a ‘foreigner’ was probably those

characters with French-derived surnames (Darcy, de Bourgh). What part Miss Lambe

was to play in the plot of the novel remains, of course, a matter of speculation (though the

emphasis given to both her arrival and her riches suggest it was likely to be an important

one). That such a character must surely have been involved in the sexual interplay of

Sanditon’s later plot is not the least remarkable aspect of her appearance. If my earlier

point that Sanditon is involved in a debate over whether anything or anybody can be in

the wrong place is granted, another exemplary role is prepared for Miss Lambe. The main

question adhering to her as the fragment stands is, ‘How will this character fit in?’ Will

she, in other words, find her place and will that place be a permanent one?

Upon Miss Lambe’s eventual but unknown fate lies the resolution of the question of

personal disorientation. A novel in which Miss Lambe found a husband and a home

would be quite different from one in which she did not. in this sense, the conclusion of

her story is infinitely more important than that of Charlotte or Clara. However, as we lack

any but the slightest hints as to what that conclusion might have been, all that can be said

with certainty is that the issue is so unavoidably raised that there is no way the novel

could end without some decision - even if that decision itself were upon a form of

indeterminacy.

19 However, consider also the dis-orient nature of the non-Indic Indies: ‘discovered’ in an attempt to circumnavigate the globe and find a cheaper, safer trade route to the Orient; displaced from self-considered centrality to a distant peripherality. The West Indies were not what or where they were meant to be - they completely disorientated their discoverers, who thought they had arrived in the East. 20 Margaret Drabble’s reaction, in the Penguin edition of Sanditon, is worth quoting: ‘I cannot help but comment on the extraordinary effect of the phrase ‘half mulatto, chilly and tender’. It is as though one had entered another world. Who would ever have thought Miss Lambe would prove to be half mulatto?’ (221)

As I argued earlier, in Sanditon people are often treated as objects and objects as people.

Miss Lambe, it seems to me, is probably the most objectified and commodified character

in the text21. She has been ‘imported’ from a great distance away. Her wealth, her orient

nature (‘Rich,’ ‘Fortune’) is constantly referred to; she is an object of value.

Imports

In terms of future plot, Miss Lambe is probably the most important import into the text,

but Sanditon is littered with other dis-oriented objects, with imports22. (Perhaps it should

be noted, in passing, that Sanditon itself is a port of sorts.)

The list (see footnote) might be doubled were one to include people (during the course of

the existing fragment, almost everyone we meet is imported into Sanditon and absolutely

no one leaves), the elements (wind, water, light) and perhaps most importantly words (Sir

Edward’s ultra-fashionable vocabulary and the French imports being most numerous)23.

21 The commodification of Charlotte, in the business transaction between her father and Mr Parker, has already been mentioned. Clara Brereton is the object of a comparable exchange. The treatment of Susan, the drawing of three of her teeth, objectifies her by taking no account of her pain. (There is also the hint that Diana is, very cruelly, damaging her sister’s beauty and therefore her marriage prospects.) 22 It is worth listing them, just to get some idea of their proliferation: ‘Tea’ Sanditon, (179 and throughout); ‘new Parasols, new Gloves, & new Broches’ (164); ‘a tasteful little Cottage Orn_e’ (167); ‘the Canvas Awning’ (170); ‘a Parasol at Whitby’s ... or a large Bonnet at Jebb’s’ (170); ‘white Curtain’ (172); ‘books & camp stools’ (172); ‘a Harp’ (172); ‘Blue Shoes, & nankin Boots!’ (172); ‘Bathing Machines’ (173); ‘Venetian window’ (173); ‘Linen’ (173); ‘Straw Hats & pendant Lace’ (177); ‘Novels’ (177); ‘glossy Curls & smart Trinkets’ (178); ‘all the useless things in the World that cd not be done without’ (178); ‘Money’ (178); ‘Camilla’ (178); ‘Drawers of rings & Broches’ (178); ‘French windows’ (182); ‘Gold Watch’ (187); ‘all the Essays, Letters, Tours & Criticisms of the day’ (191); ‘Drops’ (199); ‘several Phials’ (199); ‘Drops & salts’ (199); ‘Wine’ (201); ‘Cocoa’ (201); ‘Teapots’ (201); ‘Herb-tea’ (202); ‘Green tea’ (203); ‘a Harp’ (206); ‘some Drawing paper’ (206); ‘Tonic Pills’ (207); ‘blinds’ (207); ‘flower pot’ (207); ‘Balcony’ (207); ‘Telescope’ (207); ‘white ribbons’ (211). 23 ‘Certainly [Sir Edward’s] conversation is loaded with the latest literary jargon and affectation. Prefixes such as ‘hyper-’ or ‘pseudo-’ or ‘anti-’ were then the vogue - they were to leave a lasting legacy - and Sir Edward speaks dutifully in the current cant... Elsewhere, he extols the ‘anti-puerile’ man, this compound being Jane Austen’s final

I would challenge anyone to find a similar density of dis-oriented objects in any other

similar length piece of Austen’s writing, fictional or non-fictional.

The most obvious point to be made about all the imports into Sanditon listed in the above

footnote is that there is almost nothing to counterbalance them. Sanditon, in other words,

has a huge trade deficit.24

It is this lack of any exportable product that is the main reason for the necessity, as far as

Mr Parker and Lady Denham (in their differing ways) see it, of turning Sanditon itself

into a commodity. (See Appendix I.)

The other primary function of the imports is to decorate Sanditon, to make it attractive to

visitors. Having reinvented Sanditon, changing it from a fishing village to a bathing place

(a function it has yet to perform with any success), Mr Parker has created a vacuum.

There is accommodation, there are commodities, all that is lacking are consumers.

Trafalgar House

Which brings us on to the next of our points: the orientation of Mr Parker’s new house.

Scattered throughout the text, there is quite a lot of information about Trafalgar House.

We are informed that the front of the house faces south, toward the Down, the Hotel, the

Terrace and the sea. When Charlotte arrives we see her, ‘standing at her ample Venetian

substitution for what she originally wrote, ‘sagacious’. Oliver MacDonagh, Jane Austen: Real and Imagined Worlds (London, 1991), p.156. 24 What Sanditon produces is little, what it exports is even less: there are ‘fruit & vegetables’ and ‘Gardenstuff’ (170), Lady Denham’s ‘asses’ milk’ (170), bread from the Bakery (presumably requiring imported flour) and fish from the fishing-village (though this is never mentioned and, significantly, Lady Denham is more concerned over the rise in meat prices). There is also the money, in the form of charitable donations, that is discussed as something that should be sent to various parts of the country but which we never actually see being sent.

window, & looking over the miscellaneous foreground of unfinished buildings, waving

linen, and tops of houses, to the sea, dancing and sparkling in sunshine and freshness.’

(173) We hear, slightly later, of ‘the low French windows of the drawing room which

commanded the road & all the Paths across the Down... ‘ (182-183) (In passing, some

comment should be made upon the mixtures of architectural styles: ‘Venetian’ and

‘French’. This was quite usual, particularly for the period immediately following

Waterloo, when the mixing of styles became more extravagant. It is worth mentioning the

Brighton Pavilion, a short distance down the coast, where an Indian exterior was, in 1817

when Austen was writing Sanditon, in the process of being given a chinoiserie interior.25)

The view from the French windows is particularly important. As the names of two of the

other buildings, ‘Prospect House’ (173) and ‘Bellevue Cottage’ (173) indicate,

surveillance was an important consideration for Mr Parker in planning Sanditon. From

the French windows of his own house, Mr Parker is able to keep a close eye on

everything that passes. On two occasions, he sees people either passing (Lady Denham

and Miss Brereton (183)) or approaching (193).

The suspicion that spying would have played an important part in Sanditon’s future plot

is further strengthened by Charlotte’s discovery in Chapter 12 of what she thinks is a

liaison between Sir Edward and Clara Brereton. (This incident is discussed below.)

The relative positions of the houses in Sanditon, and the question of who can spy on

whom, is obviously a prime concern of the following paragraph:

‘The corner house of the Terrace was the one in which Miss Diana Parker had the

pleasure of settling her new friends, and considering that it commanded in front the

favourite lodging of all the visitors at Sanditon, and on one side, whatever might be going

on at the hotel, there could not have been a more favourable spot for the seclusions of the

Miss Breretons. And accordingly, long before they had suited themselves with an

25 ed., Ralph Edwards and L.G.C.Ramsey, The Connoisseur’s Complete Period Guides to the Houses, Decoration, Furnishing and Chattels of the Classical Periods (London, 1968) p.1058.

instrument, or with drawing paper, they had, by the frequency of their appearance at the

low windows upstairs, in order to close the blinds, or open the blinds, to arrange a flower

pot on the balcony, or look at nothing through a telescope26, attracted many an eye

upwards, and made many a gazer gaze again.’27

Sanditon is a place whose inhabitants are able to keep a very close watch upon eachother.

Whatever other kinds of social disorientation are to go on there, the physical orientation

of the buildings is not in doubt. From any point in Sanditon, we know how to get to any

other point. We know what we will pass; we know what we will see28.

This, I believe, forms part of a divergence in the text between people and objects. The

actual buildings of Sanditon do not exist on the same fictional level as the characters that

reside there. They are not so caricatured; they are not so generic. In Dickens, with whose

novels Sanditon is often compared, the objects are as Dickensian as the people. Sanditon,

it seems to me, is described all but naturalistically, whereas its inhabitants are almost all

described satirically. (In this, Sanditon appears very theatrical: three-dimensional

characters in front of one-dimensional scenery.)

Returning to the subject of Trafalgar House, the question remains whether it is oriented

or disoriented. Obviously, the orientation we are talking about is secular rather than

religious. In other words, we are not looking for it to be built with ‘the chancel or chief

altar to the east end’. But it does appear, from what we know, that Mr Parker has built his

house ‘with the longer axis due east and west’.

Why should this be important? Well, in the strictest sense of the words of the time, Mr

26 Although, as a general rule, speculation on the future development of Sanditon is unwise, I find it impossible to believe that Austen would plant a telescope so early in the plot and not use it later on. The possibilities are fantastic. 27 This is the sort of passage that makes Derrideans faint. 28 It is an easy exercise to create quite a detailed map of Sanditon.

Parker has a house that is perfectly orient. However, it is made obvious to us that the

house, in many fundamental ways, is in the wrong place. There is nothing intrinsically

wrong with French windows29, but they are rather a bad idea when they face into a strong

prevailing wind. The exposure of Trafalgar House to the elements is, to Mr Parker’s

mind, its great advantage over the old house. ‘Our ancestors, you know, always built in a

hole. - Here we are, pent down in this contracted nook, without air or view...’ (169) Yet it

is clear from what is said and implied that the situation of the new house brings huge

discomforts. There is the wind: Mrs Parker mentions ‘those dreadful nights [last winter],

when we had been literally rocked in our bed’ (170) which the Hilliers30, occupying the

old house, ‘did not seem to feel ... at all.’ (170) And there is the sun: Mr Parker insists,

‘we shall have shade enough ... in the course of a very few years ... In the mean while we

have the canvas awning, which gives us the most complete comfort within doors...’ (170)

And there is the lack of a suitable garden for the children to play in, with trees providing

both shelter and shade: Mr Parker resorts to the old patriarchal argument in support of

any and every discomfort, ‘I am sure we agree my dear, in wishing our boys to be as

hardy as possible.’ (170)

In his quest for air and view Mr Parker, in his own words, has exchanged ‘a better house’

for ‘a rather better situation’ (169). He is nothing if not consistent in his adherence to

fashionable theories.

It is fairly clear, then, that Mr Parker’s house is dis-orient in all but the least important

way, that of alignment to the points of the compass; and that its south-facing aspect is, in

29 Nothing architecturally wrong, but in Mansfield Park Austen strongly associates French Windows with the immoral Mary Crawford, her harp and her attempted seduction of Edmund: ‘A young woman, pretty, lively, with a harp as elegant as herself; and both placed near a window, cut down to the ground, and opening on a little lawn, surrounded by shrubs in the rich foliage of summer, was enough to catch any man’s heart.’ Mansfield Park, p.95. There is a case to be made for Austen’s suspecting and mistrusting anything French. 30 There are a number of linguistic games going on here: the Hillers, who used to have the hillier house, have now moved into one ‘in a hole’; Mr Parker (or ‘park-keeper’) has now moved to a house with no park to keep.

fact, one of the chief causes of its many discomforts. It would be a perfectly good house,

if it were in one of the less fashionable sidestreets in Brighton.

In a perfectly commonsensical way, therefore, Austen seems to be asserting that an object

(but not necessarily a person) can be in the wrong place.

Sanditon

We now come to the last of our questions immediately following on from the orient

definitions: the orientation of Sanditon as a whole. Let us begin by addressing some

fundamental questions.

Where is Sanditon? According to the narrator it is on ‘part of the Sussex Coast which lies

between Hastings & E. Bourne.’ (155) According to Mr Parker it is ‘The most desireable

distance from London! One complete, measured mile nearer than East Bourne.’ (160) As

the Parker’s route back to Sanditon from Great Willingden would ‘proceed to Hailsham,

& so home’ (158) we may presume that Sanditon is located rather closer to Eastbourne

than to Hastings. An exact position on the coast might be estimated by finding the point

one mile less distant from London than East Bourne. (However, one suspects that Mr

Parker is reckoning the distance to London as the crow flies, and that, taking minor and

inferior roads into consideration, the journey to Sanditon from London would actually be

longer and more arduous than that to East Bourne.)

We therefore have a fairly accurate location for Sanditon, more accurate than for

Austen’s other fictional town and villages. The main reason for this is that Sanditon is on

the coast. There is a line, running longitudinally (West-East), from which Sanditon

cannot deviate by more than a couple of miles. (‘Here are we ... only one miles and three

quarters from the ... ocean ...’ (169)) In other words, if Sanditon were a real place one

was trying to find, one could always walk East from Hastings or West from East Bourne

until one arrived.

How is Sanditon oriented? Or rather, is Sanditon in the West or the East? Is Sanditon

orient or dis-orient?

This is a particularly interesting question as the prime meridian, passing through the

Royal Greenwich Observatory, reaches the South Coast of England at a point between

Brighton and Newhaven. Sanditon, therefore, lies less than 0.3° to the East of the 0°

longitude line.

Sanditon is almost exactly due South of London. Sanditon is just in the East. Sanditon is

therefore orient: East of Eastbourne but with Brighton in the West.

(See Appendix II.)

In 1817 the Greenwich meridian, had not yet been firmly established as the point at

which West and East met. This was not to happen till the end of the century. At the time

Austen was writing, sailors of different nationalities chose to use different meridians. A

French sailor would probably use Paris. English sailors, on the whole, would use

Greenwich for two main reasons. First, because, since about 1794, that would have been

the meridian marked on their maps. Second, because The Nautical Almanac and

Astronomical Ephemeris (the book giving sailor information on how to derive longitude

from astronomical observations), had been published from observations made at

Greenwich Observatory since 176731.

The importance of the meridian is that it is crucial for working out one’s orientation

(one’s position in relation to the East and West) whilst at sea. ‘ ... if you can compare [the

Local Hour Angle] with the hour angle at that moment at some other known spot, then

the difference between the two is the difference in longitude ... You will see now why it

was so important to be able to carry Greenwich time around the world on the

chronometer - if you could find the Local Hour Angle, you could also work out the

31 Columbia Encyclopedia, 5th edition, (New York, 1994)

longitude.’32

There are a number of ways in which these contemporary issues of navigation link up

with the text of Sanditon.

To begin with, there is the fact that Jane Austen, possessor of two sailor brothers, was

quite likely to be aware of such issues. Her brother Francis, among many other journeys,

made sea voyages to the East Indies (1788, 1792) and to China (1809-10).33

In ‘Jane Austen’s Sailor Brothers’ J.H.Hubback and Edith C.Hubback write: ‘... nothing

could be more characteristic of Francis Austen and some of his descendants than the

overpowering accuracy with which Edmund Bertram corrects Mary Crawford’s hasty

estimate of the distance in the wood.’34

But it is the Edmund’s watch that is the crucial thing in this scene. Mary says:

‘Oh! do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot

be dictated to by a watch.’35

But it was, in fact, a highly accurate chronometer invented by John Harrison in the

middle of the preceding century that enabled British ships to calculate longitude whilst at

sea and therefore navigate with greater efficiency than those of other nations. This

32 David and Joan Hay, No Star at the Pole, A History of Navigation from the Stone Age to the 20th century (London, 1972) p.206. 33 J.H.Hubback and Edith C.Hubback, Jane Austen’s Sailor Brothers: Being the Adventures of Sir Francis Austen, G.C.B., Admiral of the Fleet and Rear-Admiral Charles Austen (London, 1906) 34 J.H.Hubback and Edith C.Hubback, Jane Austen’s Sailor Brothers: Being the Adventures of Sir Francis Austen, G.C.B., Admiral of the Fleet and Rear-Admiral Charles Austen (London, 1906) p.3. 35 Tony Tanner, ed., Mansfield Park (London, 1966), p.122-123

chronometer, successfully tested by Cook on his voyages, was one of the main bases of

British sea power. Trading journeys to the East and West Indies were facilitated by

Harrison’s discovery. All the orient imports in Sanditon are dependent upon successful

navigation over long stretches of sea. This required a watch that was neither too fast nor

too slow.

What we in fact see Edmund doing in the scene is what sailors did before they had

accurate ways of discovering longitude: he calculates his present position using the

available information - last definite bearing, average speed, approximate direction. By

these means, Edmund is able quickly to orient himself.

It is these skills, or skills approximating to these, that almost all the characters in

Sanditon lack.36

What is the importance of navigation to Sanditon? Well, in many ways, Sanditon is a

town ‘at sea’.

On the most literal level, Sanditon is a coastal town. It can be approached both by land

and by sea. It owes its existence, both as fishing village and bathing-spot, to this simple

fact.

On a metaphoric level, Sanditon is a town ‘at sea’. It is ‘at sea’ financially: critics often

compare it to a South Sea Bubble37. It is ‘at sea’ socially: ‘Every neighbourhood should

have a great lady.’ (165) Sanditon has the penny-pinching Lady Denham. It is ‘at sea’ in

terms of its occupants: their disorientation is due to their inability to navigate. It is ‘at

sea’ narratively: by the time the fragment ends, we have little indication as to future

36 Notably, the only character in similar possession of the means of accurate orientation (a watch) is Sir Edward. Lady Denham makes a very large point of this. ‘And when [Sir Harry] died, I gave Sir Edward his gold watch. - ‘ (187) However, from what we see of him, Sir Edward is one of the characters least aware of where he is. 37 ‘Sanditon is a Regency South Sea Bubble....’ B.C.Southam, ‘Sanditon: the Seventh Novel.’ in Jane Austen’s Achievement, ed., Juliet McMaster (London,1976), p.21.

events and can be fairly sure that we are being mislead in numerous instances.

Perhaps the disorientation felt by so many of the characters is a form of sea-sickness; and

perhaps their illnesses are as well.

Throughout the text there is an emphasis on means of transport and means of finding

ones way. Coachmen and carriages, right from the opening, play a remarkably important

rôle. To give only one instance, when Sidney Parker arrives, it is he that is driving, not

his coachman. This may suggest that he is the kind of person that knows his way around,

whereas a person like Mr Parker gets lost and has an accident the moment he leaves the

beaten track. (The Parkers’ accident, and therefore the whole plot of the book, is caused

by ignoring a coachman’s advice.) Perhaps the importance of coachmen is that they are

the navigators of the text: they enable characters who are disorientated to travel from one

place to another.

Whether or not this was all written into the text on a conscious level, I cannot say.

But I believe that a preoccupation with the mechanics of orientation (compass-points,

topography, cartography, transportation) is undeniably there. That it fits so neatly with

the texts other orientations and disorientations, suggests to me some level of intention.

Charlotte’s Eyesight

Hardly anyone in Sanditon is able to find out where they are and, therefore, to make an

informed decision as to whether it is the right place for them. If we compare Edmund’s

cool reckoning of his position with Mr Parker’s frantic flutter after he arrives back in

Sanditon, the contrast becomes clear: ‘He longed to be on the sands, the cliffs, at his own

house, and everywhere out of his house at once.’ (173) Mr Parker fragments: one location

is no longer enough for him, he wants to be omniscient.38

38 Sanditon is constantly referred to as his ‘Speculation’: it is the object not just of his investment but of his investigation. Sanditon is his gazebo.

But because he can’t be everywhere and watch everything at once, Mr Parker must

content himself with staring out the drawing room window and observing any passersby.

Charlotte, it seems to me, is the main character in Sanditon who makes an attempt to

orient themselves. This she does, geographically, by standing at the Venetian window

and socially, by taking bearings off every person she meets.

Many previous critics have believed Charlotte to be a reliable observer and have taken

her reckonings at face value. This often requires special pleading, as can be seen in this

disingenuous section of Duckworth’s The Improvement of the Estate:

‘...unlike Elizabeth Bennet, [Charlotte] is not prone to wrong first impressions of

character,’ We know this is untrue, and so does Duckworth - but to witness his attempt at

a cover-up is frankly painful: ‘of if she is, as with her initial assessments of Lady

Denham and Sir Edward Denham,’ A fairly high percentage, one would have thought:

‘she quickly redresses the balance and, at least in the latter instance, comes to an accurate

appraisal of character...’39

(Why compare Charlotte with Elizabeth? Why not, rather, compare her with the never

erring Anne or the ever erring Emma?)

In the final extant chapter of Sanditon, Charlotte, Mrs Parker and ‘her little girl’ (209)

Mary go to Sanditon house. The presence of Mary on this excursion seems curious until

the moment comes when the three of them sight a carriage approaching. Because it is ‘a

close, misty morning’ (209) it is difficult for them to see what kind of carriage it is. ‘It

appeared at different moments to be everything from the gig to the phaeton, - from one

horse to four, and just as they were concluding in favour of a tandem, little Mary’s young

39 Alistair M. Duckworth, The Improvement of the Estate (Baltimore, 1971), p.217.

eyes distinguished the coachman and she called out, ‘T’is Uncle Sidney Mama, it is

indeed.’ And so it proved.’ (209-210)

During this passage a linkage and a separation occur: Charlotte’s perception is linked to

fallible to Mrs Parker’s - they are the ‘they’ ‘concluding in favour of a tandem’ (209-210)

- but separated from ‘Mary’s young eyes’ (210) which are demonstrably more accurate.

For Charlotte to be associated with Mrs Parker in terms of what she sees and doesn’t see

is surely for her credibility as an observer to be undermined. This, I think, is the main

reason for Mary’s previously unexplained presence on this outing.

What is perhaps even more interesting is that, immediately after this, we come across a

scene of which Charlotte is the only witness and for which her powers of observation

must be at their utmost: ‘Charlotte as soon as they entered the enclosure, caught a

glimpse over the pales of something white and womanish on the other side; - it was

something which immediately brought Miss Brereton into her head - and stepping to the

pales, she saw indeed - and very decidedly, in spite of the mist ... Miss Brereton seated,

apparently very composedly - and Sir Edward Denham by her side.’ (210-211)

This is all very intriguing. The ‘very decidedly’ (210) seems immediately to be undercut

by ‘in spite of the mist’ (211). We must surely harbour some small doubt as to whether it

actually is Clara Brereton or, even, Sir Edward Denham that Charlotte sees. Especially as

the passage shortly continues: ‘[Charlotte] was glad to perceive that nothing had been

discerned by Mrs Parker; if Charlotte had not been considerably the tallest of the two,

Miss Brereton’s white ribbons might not have fallen within the ken of her more observant

eyes.’ But it has just been demonstrated to us that Charlotte’s eyes are no more and no

less observant than Mrs Parker’s. There seems to be an element of self-regard in

Charlotte’s clearsightedness: she thinks she sees better than other people and she thinks

she sees better than she actually does. In this she is comparable to Emma; and perhaps in

Charlotte’s observations of the ‘romance’ between Clara and Edward there is a similar

misapprehension to Emma’s of Jane Fairfax’s relations with Colonel Campbell. But this

may be to expect Austen to replay plots with too little variation.

Sanditon: A Fragmentary History

It is now time to ask a few questions about the contemporary orientation of Sanditon.

How is the text currently oriented? We first need to have a short look at the text’s

publishing history.

Sanditon was first published in its entirety as late as 1925. James Edward Austen-Leigh

did not choose to publish Sanditon in the second edition (1871) of his ‘Memoirs of Jane

Austen,’ though he did print, for the first time, the cancelled chapter of Persuasion as well

as the full texts of The Watsons and Lady Susan. Instead, arguing ‘such an unfinished

fragment cannot be presented to the public...’ he provides a plot-summary and prints, in

extract form, around a tenth of the full text. (It is alright, he seems to be saying, to have

fragments of a fragment but not an unfragmented fragment.)

Yet there seems, even at the time of Austen’s death, to have been an aesthetic by which

such fragments might be appreciated. As William Godwin writes in his Preface to Mary

Wollstonecraft’s fragmentary Maria (first published in his Memoir of her): ‘There are

few, to whom her writings could in any case have given pleasure, that would have

wished that his fragment should have been suppressed, because it is a fragment.’ And he

continues: ‘There is a sentiment, very dear to minds of taste and imagination, that finds a

melancholy delight in contemplating these unfinished productions of genius...’40

Until 1925, Sanditon was suppressed. Perhaps because such a precedent as Godwin’s and

Wollstonecraft’s would hardly have appealed to Austen-Leigh, even supposing it to have

been in his mind; perhaps because the desire to protect Austen’s already-established

reputation overrode the desire to provide her readers with the means of making a fully-

informed estimate of her worth. Yet the chief reason for its suppression has a great deal

to do with the ‘usual’ reading of Austen as a ‘finished’ and a ‘classical’ writer: not a

sentence out of place, not a hint of disorientation. As even the editor of the facsimile

edition of Sanditon, B.C.Southam, writes: ‘Of all English novelists, she is the artist par

excellence, the acknowledged perfectionist in the finest detail of diction and phrasing and

in the arrangement and presentation of her material...’41

Austen, as a writer known and assimilated, becomes a writer no longer capable of

surprising or threatening us. Austen-Leigh’s ‘protective’ reading of Sanditon was not to

be squared with the Romantic aesthetic of the fragment. (Coleridge himself chose to print

‘Kubla Khan’. Keats, with caveats, printed ‘Endymion’ and ‘Hyperion’.) In other words,

the suppression was based on a circular argument: because Austen was a ‘finished’ writer

nothing too ‘unfinished’ must appear; because nothing too ‘unfinished’ was allowed to

appear, Austen continued to be a ‘finished’ writer. It is not accidental, I think, that when

Sanditon finally made its appearance in print, over a hundred years after it was written, a

new aesthetic of the fragment had recently been established by Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’

and Pound’s early ‘Cantos’. (It might be argued - in reference, for example, to

Tennyson’s ‘Maud,’ - that it had never really gone away.)

Sanditon’s ‘contemporary’ reviewers were E.M.Forster and Virginia Woolf; neither of

them unaware of this new aesthetic, but both of them resistant to any unfinishing of

Austen. They were concerned more with admission to the canon. Love and Friendship,

reviewed by both of them, was admitted without difficulty: ‘The amazing Love and

Friendship...’42 wrote Forster; ‘an astonishing and unchildish story, Love and Friendship,

which, incredible though it appears, was written at the age of fifteen,’43 wrote Woolf.

Sanditon, on the other hand, encountered a great deal more resistance. Forster concluded

that it possesses ‘small literary merit’ and Woolf deliberately averted her eyes: ‘Let us

take Persuasion, the last completed novel, and look by its light at the books she might

have written had she lived.’ An extraordinary moment of suppression: despite the fact

that part of one of the ‘books she might have written’ is in print, Woolf chooses to ignore

it completely.

40 Janet Todd, ed., Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary and Maria (London, 1992), p.57. 41 B.C.Southam, ed., Sanditon, Oxford, 1975. 42 E.M.Forster, Abinger Harvest (London, 1965), p.165.

This generally negative reception effectively dictated the response to Sanditon for the

next fifty years. If it is dealt with at all in most studies of Austen, Sanditon is lumped

together with other fragments or given, at most, a short chapter to itself.44

More recently, as yet another (postmodern) aesthetic of the fragment has emerged, critics

have begun to celebrate the unfinishedness of Sanditon. none more so than Tony Tanner:

‘As a fragment, Sanditon is of course unfinished, but, without wishing to make a virtue of

necessity or turning (sic) the unavoidable into a formal felicity, it seems to me that the

abrupt termination, which is the reverse of a conclusion, could hardly be more

appropriate ... Sanditon is ‘unfinished’ and incomplete, so it is right that Sanditon is as

well.’45

I think it is important that we now dismiss Forster’s and Woolf’s dismissals of Sanditon.

The history of the text’s reception is clearly that of a very gradual, very grudging

acceptance. Yet as well as being the most excited of Austen’s texts, Sanditon is the most

exciting. Because of its very unfinishedness, it offers a greater freedom of interpretation.

Even more importantly, it allows us to confront Austen’s work as process, not product.

By examining the Sanditon manuscript46, we are able to perceive Austen not as the

monument she has become but as the artist she was.

Conclusion

It is now time to attempt a few conclusions.

43 Virginia Woolf, Collected Essays (London, 1966), p.145. 44 ‘Sanditon does not feature prominently in the criticism of Jane Austen and many studies happily ignore it altogether....’ B.C.Southam, ‘Sanditon: the Seventh Novel,’ in Jane Austen’s Achievement, ed., Juliet McMaster (London, 1976) p.1. 45 Tony Tanner, Jane Austen (London, 1986), p.285. 46 Despite the existence of this manuscript, work on the actual physical text to investigate Austen’s working practices seems to have totally neglected. When the musicological research on, say, Mozart’s manuscripts has been so fruitful, this neglect seems wilful.

From the beginning, critics have agreed that Sanditon, whatever else it is, is in some

essential way different from Austen’s other novels.

Critics have also agreed on its energy.47 I would disagree with neither judgement.

However, I think, in coming to the latter conclusion, previous critics have always taken

effects for causes. I believe that the ‘restlessness,’ ‘the disease of activity,’ the ‘Activity

run mad!’ are resultant from, not causative to, the text’s many disorientations. In other

words, characters are disorientated not because they rush round frantically, but

rush round frantically because they are disorientated. Disorientation is the origin of

everything that happens in the text; it is the explanation of every detail within the text.

Sanditon lacks not just a centre but any reliable point of orientation whatsoever. In order

to demonstrate this it is necessary to discredit the usually accepted centre (Mr Heywood’s

farm) and the usually accepted point of view (Charlotte). This I believe I have done.

There is an unprecedented moral relativism to Sanditon. There is no point, within the

text, from which accurately to observe and reliably to judge any other point. The satire of

Sanditon is so energetic and so exuberant precisely because it realises its own amorality.

Sir Edward Denham is celebrated at least as much as he is censured. The tendency of

satire has always been, whether intentionally or not, to glorify its subjects by enlarging

them, energising them, disseminating them and, if nothing else, by choosing them in the

first place. In a characteristic inversion, satire immediately disproves the unspeakability

of any vice by speaking of it. However bad the subject may be, it is not bad enough to

cause the satirist to avert their eyes and choose another.

In Sanditon, Austen is implicitly celebrating the disorientation of the Regency for the

47 ‘... Sanditon is the most vigorous of all Jane Austen’s writing.’ B.C.Southam, Jane Austen’s Literary Manuscript (Oxford, 1964) p.102. ‘... restlessness is at once its

opportunity it has given her to indulge in colourful new vocabulary (Sir Edward’s),

colourful new props (Nankin boots) and colourful new characters (Miss Lambe).

Sanditon is the fictional equivalent of a shopping spree.

Sanditon has a far greater concern with modishness than Austen’s previous novels whose

fashionable’ subjects (the Picturesque, Gothic literature) were well out-of-date by the

time the novels were printed, if not even as they were being written. Sanditon is a novel

novel.

In its concerns - healthcare and charity, surveillance and advertising, tourism and

community, race and immigration - Sanditon is very much our contemporary; far more

than, say, Mansfield Park, with its redundant arguments over ordination.

To read Sanditon closely, to read Sanditon without patronising it, is radically to alter ones

view of Austen’s capabilities and constancies. Because Sanditon does not fit easily in

with any of the usual generalisations about Austen, it is suppressed; because it is

suppressed, the usual generalisations continue unchecked. Too often critics have read

towards Sanditon, through the other writings; it is time to read back through the other

writings, after beginning with Sanditon.

Appendix I: Mr Parker’s Persuasions

In order for Mr Parker and Lady Denham’s ‘Speculation’ to become profitable, it is first

necessary to bring people to Sanditon. However, as Lady Denham asserts, not just any

people will do, they have to be people with money: ‘Families come after families, but as

far as I can learn, it is not one in an hundred of them that have any real property.

Clergymen may be, or lawyers from town, or half pay officers, or widows with only a

jointure. And what good can such people do anybody? - except just as they take our

empty houses...’ (188) Which, of course, is exactly the point: what Sanditon has in

leitmotif and its key stylistic note.’ Oliver MacDonagh, Jane Austen: Real and Imagined Worlds (London, 1991) p.148.

overabundance is accommodation. And in order to persuade people to take this

accommodation, Mr Parker must first persuade them that they will benefit from being in

Sanditon; to do this, he has first to attempt to persuade them that bathing is a great

improver of health and that their health will be improved by bathing. Finally, in order to

persuade people their health can be improved, Mr Parker must convince them that they

are not in perfect health, that they are unhealthy, that they are ill. ‘He held it indeed as

certain, that no person could be really well, no person (however upheld for the present by

fortuitous aids of exercise and spirits in a semblance of health) could be really in a state

of secure and permanent health without spending at least six weeks by the sea every

year.’

There are numerous paradoxes here. For example, the discovery of the cure precedes the

discovery of the illness. The prescription of the cure precedes the visit to the doctor.

(Because sea-bathing is a panacea, no diagnosis need be made: all patients, whatever

their symptoms, will be sent to Sanditon.) Despite there being no need for a doctor, a

doctor must be found. Illness also is not avoided, it is sought. The sick are not to be

quarantined, but placed in close proximity to eachother.

Even the short excerpt of Mr Parker’s speech, quoted above, contains two paradoxes: that

‘the semblance of health’ is no indication of health and that there is such a chimera as

‘permanent health.’

In the process of creating Sanditon as a bathing-place, Mr Parker will be turning a place

of health into one of illness. The more successful Sanditon becomes as a restorer of

health, the iller its population will be. During the course of the existing text, the overall

health of the population declines noticeably. It is in the area of health that Sanditon’s

disorientation seems most often to take the form of a reversal of cause and effect. It

seems most likely that Diana Parker’s remedies are the main cause of her sister’s illness.

In a final paradox, Mr Parker, in changing Sanditon from fishing village to bathing place,

will not actually be re-orientating it. It will still face in the direction of the sea and the sea

will remain the reason for its existence.

Appendix II: Brighton

The orientation of Sanditon to the East of Brighton is rather ironic as, at this exact time,

Brighton was by far the most orient town in England, and was in the process of becoming

even more so. Following the Prince Regent’s lead, the fashion for all things Chinese - for

wallpapers and chintzes, for lacquered cabinets and peacock’s feathers - was at its height.

The Orient was a political issue of the time. The money the Regent was lavishing on the

Pavilion was seen as coming from the Privy Purse. Cartoons regularly lampooned the

Prince Regent as an idle Eastern Emperor. For example, George Cruikshank’s 1816

cartoon, ‘The Court at Brighton à la Chinese!!’ In Cruikshank’s cartoon, the fat Regent is

sending off, ‘Instructions for Lord Amherst to get fresh Patterns of Chinese deformities to

finish the decorations of the Pavilion.’ Thirteen years later, Robert Seymour was still

playing upon the same themes in his cartoon, ‘The Great Joss and his Playthings’.

Austen’s own dislike of Brighton was inveterate. ‘I assure you that I dread the idea of

going to Brighton as much as you do, but I am not without hopes that something may

happen to prevent it.’48

Another letter, however, admits:

‘A letter from Mrs. Cooke, they have been at Brighton a fortnight, stay at least another &

Mary is already much better. – ’49

Austen obviously did not totally deny the curative properties of sea-bathing.

There is also the interesting case of Austen’s relations with the Regent:

48 R.W.Chapman, ed., Jane Austen’s Letters (Oxford, 1952) Letter 17 ibid., Letter 84, p.334.

‘It appears that Henry Austen, in his serious illness in the autumn of 1815, was attended

by one of the Regent’s physicians, who took the opportunity to inform his patient’s sister

that the Prince was an admirer of her novels ‘and kept a set of them in every one of his

residences.’50

In other words, Austen was already in - and knew herself to be in - the Royal Brighton

Pavilion. Amusing as, in one way, she might have found this, it must also have been

somewhat disorienting. However, there is a case to be made for Austen’s viewing herself

as, in one way at least, an orientalist. Her most famous comment on her own writing

concerns: ‘the little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush,

as produces little effect after much labour...’51

Critics insisting on Austen’s Englishness choose to ignore the faraway origin of that

piece ivory. Austen’s art must have nothing to do with ‘the neighbourhood of Timbuctoo’

(192); nothing to do with elephants, African or Indian.

Sanditon’s orientation in respect of Brighton is an important one. As B.C.Southam notes:

‘Sanditon is an infant Brighthelmstone...’52

Until 1750, when Dr Richard Russell published his pamphlet ‘A Dissertation Concerning

the Use of Sea Water in Diseases of the Glands, etc.’53 Brighthelmstone had been a small

fishing village, just like old Sanditon. Although Mr Parker defines Sanditon as, among

other things, not-Brighton54, he hopes it will mimic Brighton’s development.

49 ibid., Letter 84, p 334. 50 R.W.Chapman, Jane Austen: Facts and Problems (Oxford, 1948), p.138. 51 R.W.Chapman, ed., Jane Austen: Selected Letters 1796-1817, (Oxford, 1985), p.189. 52 B.C.Southam, Sanditon (Oxford, 1975), p.xii. 53 W.S.Mitchell, East Sussex (London, 1978), p.77. 54 ‘It may apply to your large, overgrown places, like Brighton, or Worthing, or Eastbourne - but not to a small village like Sanditon....’ (159)

Appendix III: Sanditon Today

How is Sanditon to be oriented, today, as a text? If we mention Sanditon to a friend, and

they express an interest in reading it, how, in a bookshop or a library, do they locate it? In

the popular paperback editions, Penguin choose to print Sanditon in a volume along with

The Watsons and Lady Susan whereas Oxford University Press include it in a volume

with Northanger Abbey. Neither of the publishers of budget £1 Classics (Wordsworth and

Penguin Popular Classics) have chosen to bring out an edition of Sanditon. In the

standard edition of ‘The Works of Jane Austen’, edited by R.W.Chapman, Sanditon is

located in Volume VI, the last volume, the volume entitled ‘MINOR WORKS’. Sanditon

comes on pages 363 to 428, under the subheading ‘FRAGMENTS OF NOVELS’,

directly between ‘The Watsons’ and ‘Plan of a Novel c.1816’. Earlier in the volume are

the ‘JUVENILIA’ and later the ‘OPINIONS, VERSES, PRAYERS, NOTES and

INDEX’. Previously, Sanditon has been printed in two ‘completed’ versions.

Taken together, all this evidence demonstrates that Sanditon is a contingent text;

dependent for its appearance on other texts. It is believed that it cannot stand alone: it is

too short, it is a fragment. It is harder to find (and buy) than one of the six ‘major’ novels.

It is more disoriented.