47 pages • 1 hour read
Jane AustenSanditon
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1925A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Leisure, Health, and Vanity
Throughout the course of the unfinished novel, Austen develops the tension between characters who are obsessed with their health and those who are directly affected by the reality of sickness. This tension is closely connected with the class tensions that run through the novel. Charlotte comes from a wealthy farming family, but she is not from the same social class as the Parkers or Lady Denham. This class difference is expressed in her father’s skeptical reaction to the Sanditon resort: A pragmatic man, he regards the beach resort as a passing fad that will distort the local economy and make life harder for working people. Charlotte’s own pragmatic character also signifies her difference from the circles she finds herself in at Sanditon. Her family is well-off, but they have attained financial security through hard work, and as a result, Charlotte has developed an aversion to the flights of fancy that—in different ways—define most of the other characters she meets. With too much leisure, characters in this novel lose the ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Edward imagines himself as the hero of Lord Byron’s Don Juan, swept away by romantic passion. Diana Parker imagines herself as a martyr who works tirelessly for the less fortunate despite her crippling illnesses. The illnesses themselves are imaginary—necessary for the maintenance of her self-image as a suffering saint. The root of the problem, Austen writes, is that the Parker sisters “[have] charitable hearts and many amiable feelings—but a spirit of restless activity, and the glory of doing more than anybody else, [have] their share in every exertion of benevolence—and there [is] vanity in all they [do], as well as in all they endure[]” (100-01). The whole Parker family shares in this self-regarding hypochondria. Thomas Parker mocks his sisters, but his insistence on seeing a surgeon for a sprained ankle suggests that he is not immune from this kind of overreaction.
As an inexperienced protagonist, Charlotte initially reacts to Diana, Susan, and Arthur’s sickness with genuine sympathy. Sidney is the only Parker who is not swayed by the Parker sisters and believes that they just have “a good deal of imagination” (79). However, Sidney’s mocking nature highlights the importance of the reality of sickness that is present in the novel. Although the narrative ends before Charlotte meets Miss Lambe, she is the only character who experiences real illness. Miss Lambe is a young lady “under the constant care of an experienced physician;—and his prescriptions must be their rule” (108). Although Lady Denham swears that her long life is due to her having never seen a doctor, she has been affected by grief and the sickness that took her two husbands. Mr. Hollis’s sickness could not be cured, and Lady Denham’s bitterness is clear as she complains that the doctor took “ten fees, one after another,” as he “sent [Mr. Hollis] out of the world” (86). This sentiment highlights the pain of anyone who loses a loved one to illness. Austen contrasts Lady Denham’s loss and bitterness with the flippant way that the Parker sisters use their illness to aggrandize themselves.
The Parkers’ preoccupation with nerves and health illustrates a connection between leisure and vanity. Like Lady Denham and Edward, the Parkers’ deepest obsession is not with their health but with how they are perceived, both by others and by themselves. They need to be seen as leading purposeful lives—a problem that would never occur to Charlotte’s parents, whose days are consumed with the work of the farm. Having nothing much to do, they must busy themselves with charity work and invent a titanic struggle against illness to make their charity work all the more noble.
The Social Effects of Economic Inequality
Sanditon is clearly a location designed for the wealthy. Although there are several characters from different social classes, the wealthier characters, such as Lady Denham, frequently communicate their distaste for the poor. Austen highlights the privileges of the upper class by examining how different characters act in proximity to wealth and privilege. Sanditon itself illustrates this theme, as it is an environment designed to attract the wealthy while keeping out the poor.
The inherently exclusionary nature of the resort reveals itself from the beginning of the novel. Mr. Parker’s invitation to have the Heywood family visit Sanditon exposes the differences in social class between the two families. Other than a few trips to London, Mr. and Mrs. Heywood never leave their home, as their farm requires constant oversight. However, Mr. and Mrs. Heywood wish for their children a more fulfilling and adventurous life than they have had, and thus they allow Charlotte to visit Sanditon. As soon as she reaches Sanditon, Charlotte begins to notice how class and economic privilege leads to conflict. Lady Denham knows that her niece and nephew need money and lodgings, yet she takes pleasure in denying them. She tells Charlotte that she does this because “charity begins at home” (92), as if her denial will somehow teach them a lesson about how to accumulate wealth. She wants Edward to pull himself up by his bootstraps—not by getting a job but my marrying some sickly heiress. Lady Denham’s own wealth has come to her through marriage, yet she treats it as evidence of her own virtue. She hoards her riches and takes pleasure in other people’s dependence on her—something Charlotte thinks often happens when “rich people are sordid” (93). Charlotte realizes that Lady Denham’s attitude is what causes people around her to be so mean and exacting. In fact, she recognizes that Edward and Esther “are obliged to be mean in their servility to her” (93). This realization is a major development for Charlotte, who has never depended on patronage for survival and thus has never had to alter her character to suit someone else’s desires. Clara Brereton, who comes from poverty and would be destitute if Lady Denham had not taken her in, stands as the clearest example of this theme. Clara does not have freedom in her choices: Her survival depends on Lady Denham’s approval.
Austen’s criticism of social class and the divide between these classes is central to understanding Sanditon. Through humor and satire, Austen shows how class divisions corrode relationships. As the beach resort becomes more popular, the divide between the upper and lower class grows. The desperation to claim some of this wealth fuels Mr. Parker, Edward, Esther, Clara, and Diana to become as ambitious as possible, with the hopes that Lady Denham will part with some of her money.
The Corrupting Power of Ambition
One of the driving forces of the novel is social mobility. The English society depicted in the novel is so rigidly stratified that characters become consumed with class ambition, seeking to improve their social standing through marriage or business propositions.
Austen’s best-known novels revolve around marriage: Their female protagonists must navigate a perilous social gauntlet on the way to the altar, negotiating between conflicting needs—social, economic, and emotional—to make decisions that will shape the course of their lives. Sanditon deviates from the pattern of Austen’s work by placing a male character in the position of having to marry for money. Through Edward and Lady Denham, Austen satirizes the rigid class hierarchy that leads some to view their future spouse not as a life partner but as a business acquisition. Lady Denham schemes to ensure that Edward and Esther marry well—a prime example class ambition taking precedence over all other values. Edward has the possibility of inheriting wealth from Lady Denham, but from Lady Denham’s perspective, this would merely transfer her wealth to him, rather than adding to it. Thus, she makes it clear to Charlotte that “he must marry for money” (91). Lady Denham wishes that they “could but get a young heiress to S! But heiresses are monstrous scarce! I do not think we have had an heiress here, or even a co—since Sanditon has been a public space” (91). The way that Lady Denham discusses heiresses as if they were objects and not real people reveals her overarching lack of empathy. For her, people are pawns in a game whose object is to acquire ever greater wealth. Even more than Edward, the weight of marrying well lies with Esther because Edward will not be able to support her his whole life. Although Lady Denham could help Esther by giving her money, she tells Charlotte that Esther “must get a rich husband. Ah, young ladies who have no money are much to be pitied!” (92). Lady Denham herself acquired her great house and fortune from her first husband and her aristocratic title from her second. Lady Denham works with emotionless ambition to achieve the same outcome for her close relatives.
Like Lady Denham’s marriage schemes, Mr. Parker’s Sanditon boosterism pervades every aspect of his life. His ambitions force him into a dependent relationship with his benefactor, Lady Denham. However, this union reveals how this kind of ambition can be detrimental to character. Once Charlotte sees the cruelty of Lady Denham, she realizes that Mr. Parker’s judgment cannot be trusted because “their very connection prejudices him” (93). Mr. Parker’s dependence on Lady Denham prevents him from acknowledging her true nature. Instead, “because their object in that line is the same, he fancies she feels like him in others” (93). Mr. Parker is willing to sacrifice his integrity and even his judgment to achieve his goal of turning Sanditon into a beach resort. His behavior exhibits his obsession with progress and achievement as a basis for self-worth. He wants to see the same kind of ambition in the rest of his family, and although he does not agree with his siblings on everything, he admires Diana’s urgency in bringing families to Sanditon and praises Sidney’s business ventures in the city. However, he is displeased with the lack of ambition that he finds in Arthur. As the youngest sibling, Arthur learned his health anxiety from his sisters, and his character illustrates the folly of this mindset in its most extreme form. Despite the Parker sisters’ preoccupation with health, they still find ways to make themselves useful to the family, yet Arthur’s obsession with health is so great that he has no other interests. Mr. Parker worries that Arthur fancies “himself too sickly for any profession—and [will] sit down at 1 and 20, on the interest of his own little fortune, without any idea of attempting to improve it, or of engaging in any occupation that may be of use to himself or others” (82). Mr. Parker finds Arthur’s lack of ambition upsetting and selfish, especially as he is a man in a patriarchal society that expects him to improve his social situation through business endeavors.
Nineteenth-century England’s class hierarchies were so rigid that ambition was often tied to survival. Austen’s other novels make clear that, especially for young women, the failure to make an advantageous marriage really could bring on disaster. In Sanditon, her most satirical novel, Austen pokes fun at those who become so obsessed with climbing the social ladder that they lose the ability to see themselves and others clearly. Because she is unfamiliar with the world of ambition, connections, and politics, Charlotte initially struggles to understand the motivations of the people she meets in Sanditon. However, her outsider status soon allows her to see more clearly than anyone else in the novel.
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