Jane Austen discussion
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Miss Jane Bennet and the rain
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I am not going to argue too strongly, but the Bingley sisters' feelings for Jane were of a mixed kind. Wasn't it the brother, Mr. Bingley, that was most concerned for Jane?
I think they felt threatened as the relationship between their brother and Jan developed and that caused their friendship to cool down. Remember, they have their own plans. Mrs. Bennett was not the only one scheming with respect to marriages.
It's hard to say. Maybe it was a major downpour, and was chilly outside, and ... and ...? Maybe her immune system was already a little enervated at that time? Maybe ... oh heck, maybe it was just artistic liberty doing the mischief, like Brit suggested above.I will say this though. Jane Austen seemed a writer who was devoted and meticulous in trying to create plausible scenarios in her stories. So it would seem that Jane Austen thought the scene acceptably plausible according to common life experiences of her time and era.
And now that I think about that, I've often noticed just how seriously her characters seem to regard the possibility of even relatively trivial health issues (trivial by modern standards I mean). Again and again in her stories, various characters show extreme caution about risking even colds for example, and also react with unusual alarm about practically any indispositions (again by our standards). Obviously much less was medically known both about health issues and their treatments-- and the availability of those who did have medical training of some kind probably was much less certain back then. The town or village physician may have been, who knows, away from home, or drunk, or tied up in some other way, I guess ....
I love the amount of thought put into this. This never occurred to me before. I think it is probably the education and knowledge level at that time period. Jane Austen wrote Pride & Prejudice in the time it was based, so she likely thought like others of her time that colds could be acquired through simply riding on horseback in the rain for a good half-hour. This idea marks the book in case of time period, dating in the author and the novel to be related prior to a certain time period.
I get the sense (though I can’t offhand cite a passage confirming it) that Jane is susceptible to colds, and to what in those days was called “putrid sore throat” (which may have been scarlet fever and could be fatal). There was also the possibility that anyone who got frequent respiratory infections might have consumption (tuberculosis). Without antibiotics and other modern interventions, any kind of respiratory infection could wind up killing you. This might account for Elizabeth’s sense of urgency about going to be with her sister.
What strikes me, half way through P&P, is how little mention there is of rain and inclement weather. Elisabeth seems little bothered by the weather on her frequent walks. While frost has been mentioned, if there is a snow reference so far it escaped my notice.
Jon wrote: "What strikes me, half way through P&P, is how little mention there is of rain and inclement weather. Elisabeth seems little bothered by the weather on her frequent walks. While frost has been menti..."True. If I remember correctly, half of the novel is based in winter months.
I think the ability to get sick from staying out in the rain usually has more to do with the temperature at the time than the rain alone, so perhaps it was extra cold that day? Also, this may not be historically accurate, but in the '95 version of the movie, they show Jane with a blanket around her shoulders but not in different clothes. So, perhaps they would have removed her wet coat and given her a blanket but not have her change clothes? I'm not sure the Bingley sisters would have rushed to lend Jane a dress that probably cost more than her entire wardrobe. I agree with the rest of you that Jane seems more susceptible to colds than Elizabeth throughout the novel.
Remember the thin cloth their dresses were made of. Supposedly pneumonia was known as "muslin disease." I'm guessing that the belief that colds were caused by being wet, combined with the need to move Jane to Netherfield and then Lizzie, drove Jane Austen to write the scene the way she did.
#kellyjane I absolutely agree with you! All over Jane Austens novels there seem to be people quite worried about trivial events which might cause them to catch a disease. When Catherine Morland leaves her mother, she urges her daughter to wrap up warmly, as a way of saying goodbye.
Mr Woodhouse is constantly worried that something will happen to anyone's health as soon as they eat cake.
Lizzy is definitely worried for Jane's health as it starts to rain and so is Mr Bennett, even though he expresses it rather sarcastically.
However, there also seem to be characters in Jane Austens novels who don't seem to care much about the weather and their health.
Marianne Dashwood runs off while rain is pouring down.
Lizzy walks hundreds of yards without mentioning one drop of rain.
Also, Emma seems not to be worried at all against her fathers warning to eat cake and hold a baby.
Mrs Bennett doesn't seem to worry at all about Jane catching a cold, as long as she reaches Netherfield Park.
Then there are the people who don't express a particular worry about health or the weather, but remain silent about it.
In my opinion, this is a way in which Jane Austen describes the several opinions about health and how to deal with health issues in her lifetime. In her novels, a doctor only comes around when someone is almost dying. I remember reading about a doctor only when Marianne Dashwood is very ill. Or at other places too??
Anyway, this means that on occasion of the smaller health issues, people had to form their own opinion, not bases on any science or medical knowledge. And probably these three manners of responding to health issues were found in Jane's era.
Because the English winter is not very cold, English people nowadays are not so aware of the possibility of getting pneumonia as in Russia or America.However, when someone gets wet, this can easily cause them to get pneumonia. Without antibiotics this can quite easily be fatal. So I think this part of the book is realistic. Letting Jane go out in the rain was therefore fairly ruthless on Mrs Bennet's part. She is the most serious member of the family, in that she is the only one that recognises that without at least one of her daughters marrying well, the family will be destitute, so she is prepared to risk a lot.
It is still possible to retrace Jane Bennet's journey in real life on footpaths from Breakspear Place in Abbots Langley (formerly Langley House) (Longbourn) to Kings Langley (Meriton) and from there to Chipperfield Manor (Netherfield Park). It is a very pleasant 3 mile walk across fields. The reason the journey is cross country can be seen in real life, which is that going by road is a diversion of an extra mile.
Breakspear Place (then Langley House) was the home of Mrs Freeman, a close friend and relative of the Austen family.
As for the characters who are always worrying about health problems, I understand that Jane Austen’s mother was quite the hypochondriac, and Jane was pretty impatient with her about it. There might be a little family satire going on here!
I know, it makes me think people were crazy over what they worried over sometimes, but really.. just because you were well to do didn't mean you had better health than the poor, who were more hardy and used to rugged conditions, and also, back then, the common cold was a serious threat. So let's say that Jane rode for 30 min in a chilling rain, and was left in her wet clothes, in a large ( and probably drafty to some extent) house, with a health system that is not usually exposed to rugged conditions.. I could see a cold in that case.
What has always struck me about life before 1900 is the grim toll on children and mothers. If a woman had to bear a half-dozen or more children, just to have a couple survive until adulthood (which came as young as 14 to 16 then), didn't she had the right - the duty - to be concerned about common medical problems that could easily spiral into death?Yet child birth - to create the needed number of children - was probably the biggest cause of mortality for women. Not a trivial task women had, simply assuring that a family name, in the form of an heir and a spare, survived until the next generation.
In Jane Austen's day (the 18th and early 19th century) medical people linked colds to fluctuations in the weather.There's a scene in the '95 Pride and Prejudice near the end of the film where Elizabeth and Jane are in a sort of shed, tying up and hanging herbs and dried plants. This would probably have been an extension of the "kitchen garden" that was kept on most estates, where the ladies of the house grew herbs for things like sachets and cologne, but also seasoning for food and herbs for household medicine. Many common illnesses were treated at home; if it was beyond the mistress of the house, an apothecary was sent for (sort of a pharmacist, like the Mr. Jones in P&P). If it required "bleeding" or setting a bone, that would be the work of a surgeon. Both of these jobs were considered common labor and the practitioners addressed as "Mr.". A doctor was of a higher class; because there were fewer of them (remember that the Bingley ladies wanted to send to town for a physician), especially in rural areas, they were more difficult and more expensive to access.
I think that getting a cold after being caught in the rain is perfectly fine. It's pretty certain that Jane didn't have clothes to change into immediately, nor could she have washed up. I found this a bit weird to me though, since I have been told since young that one is very likely to catch a cold after being caught in the rain and if one does not wash up fast. If anything, I remember that people in the 1800s could catch a cold from even just a walk in the morning anyways.
From a more scientific point of view, diseases such as flu are by far easier to be transmitted during a rainy weather than usually too.
Of course, Jane's "cold" may not have been due to the rain but to a virus she picked up on the Netherfield property.In Northanger Abbey, Tilney introduces Catherine to the "friends of his solitude", a Newfie and some terriers. (Thorpe also mentions an exchange of terriers.) Perhaps Bingley didn't keep dogs because he was only leasing Netherfield, but any man of property, or any farmer with a large tract would keep a pack of terriers. Their "job" was to keep the grounds clear of "vermin" - there are still people who use "ratters". Landowners needed terriers to keep away disease-bearing rodents, foxes, etc for the sake of their own animals and crops, but an incidental benefit of this was that the occupants of an estate with a good pack of terriers had a lower incidence of disease.
You are much more susceptible to becoming ill when you are chilled. Because of this, many places where they do surgery now give their patients heated blankets.
ᏒIᎪlᎥstᎥc wrote: "We're also assuming that the horse was going at an average speed, Jane was a great rider, there were no delays and the rain started so late."Oh, yes! to netherfield, it is only three miles!
However, to be fair, maybe she stayed I her wet clothes and caught a cold from the combination of being caught in the rain and staying wet and cold after she arrived.