The Governor, His Wife and His Mistress

In The Governor, His Wife and His Mistress, Sue Williams has written another work of historical fiction set in the early days of the new Colony of New South Wales. Philip Gidley King initially sailed with the First Fleet to the new colony at Sydney Harbour but was then sent with a small party of convicts to establish another settlement at Norfolk Island.

This novel deals with his relationship with Ann Inett, one of the female convicts also sent to Norfolk Island. Ann becomes Gidley King's housekeeper and eventually his mistress. They have two sons. Then Gidley King returns to England to provide a report about the new colony to officials. Before returning to New South Wales, with a promotion, he marries Anna Josepha Coombe who returns to the colony with him. 

The Governor, His Wife and His Mistress describes the relationship that develops between the two women and their families and their life in the colony. It is an account of the early years of colonial life in New South Wales, especially the tensions developing between the Governor and his supporters and the Military. 

Emma

I enjoy reading the novels of Jane Austen though it is many years since I have read Emma - it is on my list of books to read again. In 2011 we visited the Jane Austen Centre in Bath which provided an insight into life in Regency England as well as information about the life of the author. Completing the Future Learn course, Jane Austen: Myth, Reality and Global Celebrity run by the University of South Hampton, also increased my interest in and knowledge of  Jane Austen's works.

Before the cinemas closed due to the COVID-19 lockdown, we had planned to see the new film adaption of Jane Austen's novel, Emma. Several weeks later the film was available for download on television so we were then able to watch the film at home.

It was enjoyable to relax at home and escape what is ocurring in our world while entering the world of Emma Woodhouse. Emma can be described as manipulative as she meddles in the lives of family and friends. She enjoys match making and deciding how those she befriends should behave.

Jane Austen's observation and satirisation of life in a small English village, with its long held social structure, is vividly portrayed in this film as the heroine eventually realises the unintentionial damage that she is inflicting on those around her.

The film is an amusing representation of life in the early nineteenth century with its emphasis on marriage as a way to maintain or improve one's social standing in a community. Emma is a very independent young lady and it takes time for her to understand what her real role in her world shoud be.

Northanger Abbey

Recently we visited the exhibition at the Jane Austen Center in Bath which provides information about Jane Austens's visits to Bath at the end of the 1790s and again in the early 1800s when she lived in the city for several years and also about the two books that she set in Bath, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

Back in Australia I decided to reread Northanger Abbey, a book that I had studied at school in the mid 1960s. This was Jane Austen's first novel but although it was sold to a publisher in 1803 it was not published until after the author's death. It is the story of seventeen year old Catherine Morland who accompanies Mr and Mrs Allen, friends of her parents, to Bath in order that Mr Allen can receive treatment for gout. Bath was very different from the quiet village in which Catherine lived and she was soon introduced to the social life available in the city as well as making new acquaintances including the Thorpes and the Tilneys. During her time from home Catherine learns about friendship, real and imagined, as well as the importance of  accepting the realities of life rather than entertaining the romance and horrors as decribed in the gothic novels that she enjoyed so much such as Mrs Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho.

Jane Austen's books have been analysed in great detail and Northanger Abbey is no exception. Janine Barchas in Mapping Northanger Abbey, published in the Review of English Studies in 2008, discusses some of the historical elements the author included in the book. The article concentrates on the theme of mistaken identity when John Thorpe and General Tilney believe that Catherine will inherit the fortune of the Allen Estate. Ralph Allen was a wealthy Bath landowner in the 1700s but when the novel is set it is uncertain who the new owners of the estate are except that they are members of the Allen family living in the country. Barchas argues that the inhabitants of Bath would know the Allen story and appreciate the misunderstanding made by characters in the book.

Jane Austen's descriptions make it possible to trace the locations where some of the events in the novel take place and when in Bath we visited some of the sites frequented by the characters. As a major tourist location from the 1700s many maps of Bath as well as guidebooks were published and as copies were found among books owned by the Austen family the author was probably familiar with them. Barchas discusses how Jane Austen may have based the descriptions of Blaise Castle on a Bath garden folly called Sham Castle. She also refers to the possibility of the author choosing the surname of a well known mapmaker of Bath for the character who promised to show Catherine one site but takes her to another location. This idea is expanded further in another article by Janine Barchas, The real Bluebeard of Bath,  published in Persuasions in 2010. While Thorpe promised to take Catherine to Blaise Castle north of Bath there are ruins of a Gothic castle - Fairleigh Hungerford Castle  - nine miles south of Bath. Bacchus suggests that Jane Austen may have used the abbey near the castle as the basis for her descriptions of Northanger Abbey and stories of Fairleigh Hungerford Castle for Catherine's imaginings of what may have occurred there.

At seventeen I enjoyed reading Northanger Abbey but I enjoyed the book more this time around, especially appreciating the humour throughout the book. I look forward to rereading the other works of Jane Austen.