In her final incomplete novel, Sanditon (written in 1817), Jane Austen explored her interest in the oral construction of a society by means of a town – and a set of families – that is still in the process of being formed. Sanditon is the third novel that Austen named after a place; the other two, Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park are about ancestral homes and families to which the heroine must assimilate herself. But the people of “modern Sanditon” (pg 22), as Austen calls it, have moved out of the “old house – the house of [their] forefathers” (22) and are busily constructing a new world in the form of a modern seaside commercial town. The town is less of an actual reality than it is an ideal of the inhabitants – one that they express in their descriptions. These inhabitants have a conception of the town’s identity and of the way in which this identity should be spread to, and appreciated by, the world:

"My name perhaps… may be unknown at this distance from the coast – but Sanditon itself – everybody has heard of Sanditon, – the favourite – for a young and rising bathing-place, certainly the favorite spot of all that are to be found along the coast of Sussex; – the most favoured by nature, and promising to be the most chosen by man.” (Sanditon, 10-11)

However, the founders of Sanditon must create the town within their own circle of intimate acquaintances before it may be spread to the world. Each time these townsfolk meet, their “conversation turn[s] entirely upon Sanditon, its present number of visitants and the chances of a good season” (36). Thus, these people are the founders and supporters of the town by means of the images that they share through conversation; they build the town by means of words with greater facility than it is built in reality. Mr. Parker, one of the founders and most eager creators of the town demonstrates this oral formation when discussing the relation between the building of streets and the arrival of lodgers: “if we have encouragement enough this year for a little crescent to be ventured on… then, we shall be able to call it Waterloo Crescent – and the name joined to the form of the building, which always takes, will give us the command of lodgers” (23). Later, events demonstrate that there is not likely to be such an abundance of lodgers, and that the town is therefore unlikely to grow so rapidly as Mr. Parker expresses; yet, in his mind and in his communications, the town thrives.

From these conversations amongst intimates, Sanditon’s fame spreads through letters and by word of mouth. Mr. Parker’s sister sends him a letter in which she states that she has “secur[ed]… two large families… I will not tell you how many people I have employed in the business – Wheel within wheel” (31). This letter provides a perfect description of the epistolary and oral communication that furthers the creation of the town by means of reputation. But Austen develops a sense of the artificial foundation of the town by undermining the gossip with which she built it in the first chapters of the story: the two families turn out to be one – exaggerated in number by the multiple “intermediate friend[s]” (65) who had relayed the information – “Mrs. Charles Dupuis lives almost next door to a lady, who has a relation lately settled at Clapham, who actually attends the seminary and gives lessons on eloquence and Belles Lettres” (57). Austen allows the reader to imagine the development of the town’s reputation as it spread from mouth to mouth in one direction and the way in which the number of families was augmented in the other.

Thus, Sanditon is a text that demonstrates Austen's interest in the practical results of communication — an issue with which she had experiemented since she used the epistolary novel form in such early works as Lady Susan.

References

• Austen, Jane. Sanditon and Other Stories. Ed. Peter Washington. New York: Alfred A. Knopf; Everyman’s Library, 1996.
• Spacks, Patricia Meyer. Gossip. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1985.

External links

• Jane Austen Information Page
• Jane Austen Center, Bath, England