Bath: Even Jane Austen Didn't Really Like It After a While

I'm a country girl. Having grown up in the suburbs of Suffolk County, Long Island and the suburbs of Southeastern Connecticut, I've become accustomed to Neighborhoods (with a capital N), woods, farms, and shore. I attend UMass in Amherst, and while all the Eastern Massholes will tell you there is nothing in Western Massachusetts, I quite like it. Neighborhoods, woods, farms...I think it's beautiful. 

That's not to say I dislike cities. I will always love The City (nowhere like New York), and I've grown to really love Boston as well.  I'm sure I'll end up living and working in one of these two metropolises, but when it comes down to it, my soul dances faster for the reel of fresh air and the hum of flora than for the dazzling lights of the hustle and bustle. 

Jane Austen was as much a lady of the country as I am. She grew up the village of Steventon in Hampshire, dancing, reading, writing, and basically enjoying herself in the British countryside. She started a fair number of works there, including Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. And then her dastardly devil of a father decided to move the family to Bath, of all places, when she was twenty-six (Her father was actually a wonderful man, and he had just retired from the village rectory). 

While Austen began writing Northanger Abbey before moving to Bath, the novel tells the mockingly Gothic story of Catherine, a seventeen-year-old Gothic novel aficionado who visits Bath for the first time. When asked if she is fond of the country, Catherine initially responds, "Yes, I am. I have always lived there, and always been very very happy. But certainly there is much more sameness in a country life than in a Bath life. One day in the country is exactly like another." But she soon tires of and learns to detest the superficial city life of Bath, finding "society" all rather silly (see note).
Jane did not like Bath. While initially enamored by the bustling city, she soon found it stifling, superficial, and depressing. As a result, she was hardly productive in the literary sense at all (although this should also be attributed to the hard times which befell her family after Poppa Austen died). It wasn't until she moved back to the country in Chawton that she continued to write, polish, and publish her stories.
"Oh! Who can ever be tired of Bath?" says Catherine.
I can tire of Bath rather easily, as it turns out. The first few glances are filled with appreciation for the clean yet decorous Georgian architecture, the Romanesque facades. And then you turn one corner, and then another, and you find more and more of the same yellow-grey stone buildings shooting up right from the curb. The buildings turn into walls, the windows become eyes surveying you through snooty lace curtains, the socialites (while not quite from London) stalk the streets in their smug raincoats...Even the small, green lawns of carefully constructed parks seem so trite, so dreary.

But I might be a little crazy and overly dramatic about Bath. There is really pretty river that runs through the city, and one can visit the Roman Baths...in Bath. The folks at the Jane Austen Center were also quite friendly, and while the exhibits were poorly put together and very sparse, I left learning quite a bit about Jane Austen. I also left with a lovely writing set, which cheered me up considerably. Besides, it was on and off rainy the day we visited. Bath might be a wonderful city when the sun shines for more than a few hours, though god knows when that happens here.


Note: I've only ever read 1.5 of Austen's books to tell you the truth. I fear this is becoming a trend; me, always writing about books and authors I don't seem to know much about. I do my research though! *cough*wikipedia*cough* And besides, I do like Austen. Well, I like Pride and Prejudice. I tried reading Emma and, much to my dismay, found it to be rather akin to girly rubbish. Ah well.