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We cannot fix the hour, but do we even notice? The importance of the year in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
Conference presentation

We cannot fix the hour, but do we even notice? The importance of the year in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

Janet Lee
USC Research Conference, 2013 (Sunshine Coast, Australia, 01-Jul-2013–05-Jul-2013)
University of the Sunshine Coast
2013
url
https://www.usc.edu.au/View
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Abstract

Literary Studies Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice literature
Jane Austen's novel, Pride and Prejudice, celebrates its 200th anniversary in 2013. Through multiple editions, spin offs and numerous film adaptions, it remains a much loved, much read novel which is seen as a timeless classic. Pride and Prejudice may also be considered timeless, because it is without a time. Even Mr Darcy "cannot fix the hour" (Austen 2003,359;ch.18). Jane Austen did not tell her readers in what year she set her most popular story, yet she plots the passing of time in Pride and Prejudice very carefully and theorists have argued Austen used specific almanacs to do this. In the novel, she repeatedly refers to hours, days, weeks, months and parts of the date, but at no point does Jane Austen tell readers the actual year in which Pride and Prejudice is set. To fill this perceived gap, renowned Austen scholar, R.W. Chapman, proposed Austen places Pride and Prejudice in two specific years and provided a detailed timeline to support his theory. This raises the question of why Austen didn't just tell readers herself. Does the actual year of the novel matter? Or does Austen create her own time? This paper analyses the use of time in the novel, the proposed timelines, the critical heritage and relevance of the year in Pride and Prejudice. It argues Jane Austen chose not to tell her readers in what year her most popular novel is set, and gives reasons why.

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