The Green Goddess and her Heroine Jane Austen

Jane Austen, as they say, "lived in interesting times". During her life there was the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars and the issue of slavery was beginning to be fiercely debated. Interestingly, Jane Austen's novels make almost no comment on any of these political issues of the day, although her books are peppered with military men--as she mentions in "Mansfield Park", she has known admirals "both rear and vice"!!!

It is little known, for instance, that Jane's cousin Eliza married a French officer. Eliza moved in the highest circles in Paris, so much so that she was able to describe Marie Antoinette's outrageously opulent Turkish dress at a ball she attended. Eliza's husband was a fervent royalist, and was later arrested and condemned to death by the guillotine.

While this turmoil was happening in the world, Jane Austen was describing more domestic battlegrounds--marriage vs spinsterhood, poverty vs a comfortable life, and marrying for love vs a marriage of convenience, were the sagas of her heroines. And for her heros: marrying a woman of suitable status or, if not the eldest son, the choice of career in the military, the clergy or (the career of?) marrying the wealthy woman. It is their very domesticity that makes these tales classic.

It seems to the Green Goddess that nowadays people have forgotten how to have a domestic life. They are out in the world vying for their position--being at home is only a transition until the next foray into the melee. Where is the Goddess Hestia, keeper of the home and the hearth, so there is a sanctuary from the world and a training ground for being in the world? At Castle Green, the Green Goddess is queen--and there is beauty and order in her universe there. It is not to be forgotten that the Goddess Hestia, because she was keeper of the fire, is also the keeper of the consciousness. It is the raising of this consciousness which is needed in the world if there is to be beauty and order in the universe on a much grander scale.

When in "Pride and Prejudice" did Elizabeth Bennet first realize to herself that she was in love with Mr Darcy (perhaps a long time after the reader!): it was when, as she was coming up its sweeping drive, she saw Mr Darcy's stately home of Pemberely! And it was as Mr Darcy's housekeeper was showing Elizabeth and her aunt and uncle around Pemberley and speaking in glowing terms of its "master" did she get insight into the real man and his universe. A universe which she now wanted to share with him.

And do we not all, in some way aspire to that universe--it is not just about the money and priviledge that comes with it--but the history, the culture, the belonging to place of the family for generations, and the beauty of the house and its surrounds.

As James Lovelock says in "The Revenge of Gaia"--how achingly beautiful was the world in 1800. It is well known that Jane Austen died of consumption before middle age, and many of her sisters-in-law died in childbirth, and close friends died in horse accidents. Today, post industrialization, we have added more opportunities (especially for women
thank heavens!! as women had been undervalued for centuries), longevity and safety to our lives--but we have paid the price in the form of ugliness and our lack of connection to the land. The pastimes of journal writing, sewing, painting, reading, playing a musical instrument and performing plays amongst ones circle--ie the arts of the domestic scene--are all but gone. It is true that other pastimes, often more ennervating, have taken their place. Let alone the opportunity of continual consumption...

None-the-less, the Green Goddess wonders what it must have been like to have the priviledge to see a world of such "aching beauty". Something we can only see in the min's eye nowadays.