SPINSTER, Why Jane Austen Never Married

What was also new, what gave her pride and pleasure, was the growing assertiveness of Englishwomen, who were starting their own quiet English Revolution. Intuitively, Austen had rejected Harris Bigg-Wither’s marriage proposal because she had always received enough emotional support from the company of other women, particularly her sister Cassandra, but also her mother and her friends. This gave her a freedom that was (or is) never understood or appreciated by those who turn up their noses at sisterhood and spinsterhood. This new freedom gave her the privacy she needed to write and it was her writing that gave her the emotional expression she felt she needed. Who needs a husband for that? If she were married she would be expected to run a household, bear a dozen children and then raise them. She would have no privacy, no time to write and without a doubt no imagination left. It would have destroyed her. Because her father was a clergyman she had been luckier than most in having the advantages of a library, an important factor when women were otherwise disadvantaged by being prevented from studying at university, but it was the company of women that gave her a diverse group of characters on whom she could test her storylines and from whom she could derive a steady supply of raw material.

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