Humour in Jane Austen's Writing
Austen Demonstrates Her Wit in Many of Her Works Including Pride and Prejudice
Jul 5, 2009
Comedy in Jane Austen’s novels and letters takes many forms, including dry wit in conversation, situational and character comedy, and some of the best throwaway lines ever.
She took great pleasure in entertaining her beloved sister Cassandra in her letters, making even mundane things seem amusing, and in her novels, she infuses gems throughout, whether it be conversation or characters themselves.
Dry, Shaken, and Stirred-Up Conversation
Jane Austen’s famous novel Pride and Prejudice is rife with funny, but quite witty and dry, conversations.
- Mr. Bingley says to his sisters, Mr. Darcy, and Elizabeth Bennet: “My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express them – by which means my letters sometimes convey no ideas at all to my correspondents.” Mr. Darcy replies: “When you told Mrs. Bennet this morning, that if you ever resolved on quitting Netherfield you should be gone in five minutes, you meant it to be a sort of …compliment to yourself – and yet what is there so very laudable in a precipitance which must leave very necessary business undone, and can be of no real advantage to yourself or anyone else?” “Nay,” cried Bingley, “this is too much, to remember at night all the foolish things that were said in the morning.”
- “…(Mr. Collins) begged to know which of his fair cousins the excellency of its cooking was owing. But here he was set right by Mrs. Bennet, who assured him with some asperity that they were very well able to keep a good cook, and that her daughters had nothing to do in the kitchen. He begged pardon for having displeased her. In a softened tone she declared herself not at all offended; but he continued to apologise for about a quarter of an hour.
- To Elizabeth it appeared that, had her family made an agreement to expose themselves as much as they could during the evening, it would have been impossible for them to play their parts with more spirit or finer success…”
Sitcoms and Characters
- From Sense and Sensibility: “Lady Middleton could no longer endure such a conversation, and therefore exerted herself to ask Mr. Palmer if there was any news in the paper. ‘No, none at all,’ he replied, and read on.”
- From Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice: “People who suffer as I do from nervous complaints can have no great inclination for talking. Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.”
- More from Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice: “‘People who suffer as I do from nervous complaints can have no great inclination for talking…’ She (Mrs. Bennet) talked on.”
The Best Throwaway Lines Ever
- From Persuasion: “It was a struggle between propriety and vanity; but vanity got the better.”
- In a letter to Cassandra in October 1798, on one of their cousins: “I shall think with tenderness and delight on his beautiful and smiling countenance and interesting manner, until a few years have turned him into an ungovernable, ungracious fellow.”
- In a letter to Cassandra in April 1811: “I give you joy of our new nephew, and hope if he ever comes to be hanged it will not be till we are too old to care about it.”
- From Persuasion: “A lady, without a family, was the very best preserver of furniture in the world.”
There are so many more examples of shining humour in her letters and novels that could be quoted, such as this gem to Cassandra in February 1813: “If Mrs. Freeman is anywhere above ground give my best compliments to her.”
Or perhaps this line in a letter to Cassandra dated October 1808: “Poor woman! how can she honestly be breeding again?”
Jane Austen’s sense of humour may not please everyone, but she wrote as she spoke and lived, and who cannot but admire that kind of intense honesty? Besides, she did the greatest thing of all, which was to show deprecating humour toward herself.
Sources:
The Wicked Wit of Jane Austen, compiled by Dominique Enright, Michael O’Mara Books Limited, 2002, 2007.
Pride and Prejudice, Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1945.
Persuasion, by Jane Austen, Oxford University Press, 1990.
Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen, Penguin Classics, 1995.
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