A 12-year-old Jane Austen's cunning creation, dedicated to her older sister, Cassandra.
Fashion plate with "morning hat", c. 1780s
Janeites, hello and welcome to the Austen 250 Reader series! Today, we focus on a story from "Volume the First" of Austen's extensive adolescent portfolio.
"The beautifull Cassandra" is dedicated to Jane Austen's beloved older sister, Cassandra. The inscription of this "novel, in twelve Chapters" is lavish in compliments and foreshadows the lively, precocious brilliance that is to follow. If you don't have physical copy of Austen's Juvenilia nearby, you can read the story here, graciously uploaded by Jane Austen's House.
(And for a special treat, I implore you to take a look at Juliet McMaster's delightful edition.)
A Very Brief Summary of a Very Brief Work
Cassandra, the heroine of this tale, is the only daughter of a "Millener" mother (read: hat maker) and "noble" father (read: he has a relation who butlers for a duchess). Our plucky heroine celebrates her sixteenth birthday and is given a beautiful bonnet by her mother, promptly setting off on a grand escapade "to make her Fortune." She meets the esteemed Viscount of – and curtsies, then visits a patisserie, eats no less than six ices with no intention of purchasing them, and "knock[s] down the Pastry Cook" on her way out. (Scandalous!)
Cassandra promptly orders a "Hackney Coach"* and is driven to the Hampstead, which was a fashionable late-18th century neighborhood overlooking London. Immediately upon her arrival, she asks to be taken away again. The coachman returns his passenger and requests to be paid. This– as previously witnessed with the pastry chef incident– Cassandra cannot do, so she "place[s] her bonnet on his head & r[uns] away."
Our saucy heroine walks on, finding nothing in the least adventurous until she comes across Maria. (Maria is presumably an acquaintance, but the text does not explore the connection.) The girls' brief encounter proves to be awkward, and the two "[pass] each other in a mutual silence." Cassandra almost immediately meets another friend, a widow, who calls to the girl from her small, upper-room window. Another curtsy is deployed and then Cassandra finishes the last quarter of a mile of her journey back to her home, approximately seven hours after she had set out. Her dear mother is waiting to embrace her daughter, and Cassandra muses happily on the nature of the day.
An Even Briefer AnalysisÂ
In "The beautifull Cassandra", the young heroine exhibits rash behaviors as well as illegal actions. The absurd nature of the story paints a vastly different picture than reality for many young women in the Georgian Era. Cassandra finds on more than one occasion that she has not the funds to sustain her amusement. This important, if seemingly ridiculous, detail could be a young Austen's direct response to women's reliance on men for financial security.
The "novel" is made up of twelve three-to-four sentence chapters, so no more than 367 words all told, without the inclusion of the introduction. Jane Austen's ability to write such a vivid and humorous story with such ease and brevity illuminates her innate writer's eye.
* For more information on the horse-drawn transportation of Jane Austen's world, please peruse this in-depth article. The "Hackney Coach"– a less-than-reputable for-hire carriage– is mentioned under the heading Desperate Carriage Rides.
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