Elopements, actual and thwarted, are scattered through Austen’s published works.
The young Jane Austen perfectly reflected the feeling of the times (elopement was amusing — when it happened in other people’s families), and displayed her early comic genius when she dropped in to her story ‘Frederic and Elfrida’ the fact that ‘the eldest Miss Fitzroy ran off with the Coachman’ and in her story ‘Jack and Alice: A Novel’ when Lady Williams describes the last words of her governess, Miss Dickins:
‘…Under her tuition I daily became more amiable, and might perhaps by this time have nearly attained perfection, had not my worthy Preceptoress been torn from my arms e’er I had attained my seventeenth year. I never shall forget her last words. ‘My dear Kitty’ she said ‘Good night t’ye.’ I never saw her afterwards’ continued Lady Williams, wiping her eyes, ‘She eloped with the Butler the same night.’
Pride and Prejudice, a novel preoccupied with the different shapes of marriage, features two, both with Wickham. There is one in Persuasion (Mr Elliot elopes with Mrs Clay, although they do not appear to marry) and the plot of Mansfield Park hinges on the ill-advised elopement of Fanny Price’s mother, the result of which is a lazy drinker for a husband and nine children. In the same novel, married Maria Bartram elopes with the wicked Henry Crawford, and her sister Julia with Mr Yates.
Austen’s depiction of elopement is complex and subtle. Her heroes stand up to protect, defend and forgive women who have been deceived by scoundrels who use the promise of marriage to seduce them away from their families. In Sense and Sensibility Colonel Brandon maintains a touching loyalty to his former love Eliza and her daughter, the victims of Willoughby, and Darcy never blames his sister Georgiana for agreeing to elope with Wickham.
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