Exploring the World in Highbury

An atlas of the novel. Behind these words, lies a very simple idea: that geography is not an inert container, is not a box where cultural history happens, but an active force that pervades the literary field and shapes it in depth. Making the connection between geography and literature explicit, then--mapping it: because a map is precisely that, a connection made visible--will allow us to see some significant relationships that have so far escaped us. --Franco Moretti 1814 (January): Austen begins Emma 1814 (March): Austen in London reviews proofs of Mansfield Park 1814 (April): Napoleon abdicates and is exiled to Elba 1814 (June): Allied Sovereigns visit Portsmouth 1815 (March): Napoleon escapes from Elba 1815 (March): Austen finishes Emma 1815 (June): Napoleon is defeated at Waterloo IN THE SAME YEAR Jane Austen was born, Captain James Cook was engaged in his second voyage of exploration. Along with him a year later his third voyage was young George Vancouver, who learned a great deal about mapping the Northwest Pacific coast of America. By the time Austen reached her twentieth birthday, Vancouver had completed one of the most ambitious surveying expeditions in history, proving that a long-sought Northwest Passage did not exist. Early accounts of these explorations proliferated, and Jane Austen was no doubt aware of the explorations of Cook and Vancouver. Much more closely, she followed her brothers own naval exploits, which ranged from the Caribbean, to Gibraltar, to the North Sea. During 1814, when Austen was writing Emma, the Family Record describes the atmosphere this way: Spring and summer 1814 was a time of national happiness, for it was now clear that at last the twenty-year struggle against Napoleon was drawing to a close (190). In June, the King of Prussia and the Czar of Russia joined the Prince Regent to review the British Fleet, so influential in Napoleon's defeat, at Portsmouth. Huge crowds attended this display of English achievement and pride. One question readers continue to ask in connection with Austen's novels is this: With the world at England's doorstep, why did Austen limit the scope of her novels to a relatively small part of the country? In the midst of writing Emma, she gave her niece the well-known advice writing a novel: 3 or 4 Families in a Country Village is the very thing to work on (9 September 1814). When asked to write a romance concerning the House of Saxe Cobourg, Austen responded to the Prince Regent's librarian that she only dealt with pictures of domestic in Country Villages and could begin a Romance only to save [her] Life (1 April 1816). Yet the significant explorations and naval actions of the era had a deep and lasting effect upon England and Austen's idea of what England was--or could be. Of Austen's six novels, Emma is one of the most limited geographically, and yet the most intriguing to consider in relation to a world which was seeing the end of the Napoleonic era. In The Atlas of the European Novel, Franco Moretti suggests that there are Englands: one with and local roots, the a mobile, urbanized group of seducers (20). He writes, Think of two Englands ... [that] form a field of narrative forces, whose reiterated interplay defines the nation as the sum of all its possible (20). Although he almost ignores Emma, I propose to elaborate upon Moretti's theory to show Highbury as a nation-state, the world in Highbury. As we explore the world in Highbury, let us see how Emma reflects Austen's understanding of the geopolitical events of her day and ultimately provides a vision of a nation as defined by its stories. Stories from the other England--mostly the coasts--mix with the homely stories of rural southern England. Although Highbury is no utopia, it does illustrate the nationalistic pride that Austen experiences in 1814 and 1815. …

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