Mr Woodhouse's age

[kev67]

I have been wondering a bit about Mr Woodhouse. He is a lovely, old man who dotes on his daughters, but he seems so old. He must be sixty-five if he's a day. He is possibly even getting a touch senile, all that hypochondria about colds and rich wedding cake and not wanting to go out at all, and then only if driven by his careful coach driver, James. I don't think the book says if he was married before he married Emma's mother, but presumably Emma's mother was much younger than her father. Emma is twenty. Emma's sister is about six years older than her iirc, so that would put Mr Woodhouse in his late 30s or early 40s when he married.

SPOILER

I have watched Clueless, so understand that Emma and Mr Knightly eventually get it together. I was surprised that, unlike Clueless, Mr Knightly is sixteen years older than Emma. I wonder if Emma's desire to marry Mr Knightly was influenced by the age of her mother and father.

[kiki1982]

Is Knightley only 16 years older? Because he says he held Emma in his arms when she was born... OK, maybe young men in their teens did that stuff back then...

Before I started to read 19th century classics, I thought people naturally married early because they died early too. I mean, say life expectancy was 45, you kind of need to get married at 20... When I started to read these classics I noticed men thought about marriage at around 30, even waited until their 40s to get married for the first time, unless they really fell in love very early. And people became much older than the official life expectancy statistics. It's like Mary Beard said about these statistics: once you got past the ripe old age of five, you had a good chance of getting to your 50s or even older. So essentially average life expectancy is affected by all the babies who died at 0 or one, all the children who died from childhood diseases and all those who died in child birth. But if you successfully negotiated these issues, you could expect to live to at least your 50-60s if not longer. It's probably not surprising then that Mr Woodhouse is a frail old man, although to us he maybe comes across as 80 whereas he's maybe only 60. That would be a more plausible age. Still, men like Knightley and Colonel Brandon, who were in their latter 30s when they finally considered marriage, were not at all an exception.
In the wake of that Emma adaptation of the BBC, there was an expert of some kind who said that Mr Woodhouse complaining about the cold could have been down to a disease of some kind. It's probably down to that, but I think Austen does mock him a little bit. He's very well portrayed, I think, in the BBC adaptation from the 1970s. He's so very over-protective of his Emma and so very worried about everything. And his pince-nez is absolutely great.

The age difference between Emma and her sister could be down to Mr woodhouse being a widower and marrying a second wife (Emma's mother), who might have died early too (because I don't think she's ever mentioned by Emma herself). That age difference between (half) siblings would then be mirrored in Mr Weston's marriage to Emma's companion/governess (I forget her name). He was married early and had a son, but his wife died in child birth or shortly after, he stays a widower for a long time, ships his son off to be cared for by his aunt, makes a fortune in trade and then marries again and is due to have another child, about twenty years Frank's junior.

[kev67]

I have often been struck the age some people got to in the past. I assumed few people even lived to their forties. I agree infant mortality was high. However, so long as you were not forced to live in some overcrowded slum, or made to do dangerous or unhealthy work, you may live to your 90's. There was very little economic growth before the
20th century so I think men had to wait till they were about 30 before they could afford to support a family. I think it was almost literally a case of dead man's shoes. A young man had to serve his time and wait for an opening, probably when an older man died or retired. I think it was slightly different for working class men in the 19th century because there was factory work or work requiring muscle power. Their prospects would never get much better, so they may as well marry earlier than later. I seem to remember reading even they waited on average till they were 26.

[kiki1982]

90s may be pushing it a bit, but 70s definitely, although part of my husband's family (originally from the north around Lincoln, then came down to Chiswick in the late 18th century) lived all of them to well into their 80s with not medicine to keep them alive. And they were working class and ended up around the docks in Southwark and Poplar. Indeed, as long as you weren't exposed to too much dirt and potential sources of disease, you lived well into old age when you had negotiated the difficult bits.

26 seems about right. Bearing in mind that you either waited until you came out of uni, inherited the estate, or had forged a respectable career in the army, the church or a genteel profession like lawyer or what have you. Point was you had to be able to keep your wife and a family respectably. So not in a dingy pokey place.

Ironically during the 17th century, even the working classes married later, not until about thirty. As you said, due to little economic growth, so to 'keep' a wife, they had to establish themselves in a saturated market, if you will, which took more time. Women too married in their latter 20s or even later sometimes, which in turn caused fewer children. After the Industrial Revolution people started marrying earlier, because men could indeed either establish themselves earlier due to economic growth or had no better prospects anyway. Although the upper classes still waited quite a while before they stuck their head into the sacred noose, as Rochester put it.

[kev67]

I wonder if Mr Woodhouse was going a bit senile. He is a man of fixed ideas, but in the last chapter I read, he referred to Mrs Weston as poor Mrs Weston, while she was in the same room. Luckily Mr Weston was not there to take offence, but Mrs Weston herself might have.

[kiki1982]

Yes, I always had the impression that he was a bit like some old people who have their own ideas which they have formed purely because of their own experiences (which are not necessarily the ones of others) and won't change them for the world.

Maybe poor Mrs Weston has to do with at least his one wife who died, possibly his second too. And he sees marriage as a threat rather than a merit?
Or otherwise poor Mrs Weston is to be pitied because she changed Mr Woodhouse's life and he projects his sadness onto her lot, as it were.

[Clopin]

Is Knightley only 16 years older? Because he says he held Emma in his arms when she was born... OK, maybe young men in their teens did that stuff back then...

He also says he fell in love with her when she was twelve or something, their relationship always bothered me for these reasons.

[kiki1982]

Yes, from the time she was thirteen... If he was sixteen when she was born, that would have made him 32 at the time... Slightly creepy when you look at it from that point of view, but he said this in a way that's the same as Darcy who was in the middle of it before he really realised he was totally in love. So Knightley, a house friend and neighbour, has seen this girl grow up, has become a kind of second father figure but suddenly realises that his affection is not that of an uncle, but of a man. It's beyond friendship. And he realises it when he tells her off on Box Hill. And Emma too, realises her affection is not the one of a niece but the one of a woman when he has left for London and she's mistakenly convinced he will ask Harriet. Emma at last realises she has taken him for granted all the while. The scene in that Davies adaptation of the 90s is quite good, but I find the one of the 70s BBC adaptation better in the sense that Knightley is more of a father figure who is trying desperately to guide the conversation the way he wants and she's trying to avoid it. Davies didn't have enough time to draw it out. In the 1970s adaptation, you see and feel the tension mount from his side. It's quite adorable.

At any rate, it's not as creepy as Colonel Brandon and Marianne where the age difference is 20 years and she's sixteen! And a bit sad because of another man. The gallant Colonel will take care of her. I'm not sure how much that love will 'grow', though, as they put it back then. No doubt he will dote on her, a little bit like Dobbin in Vanity Fair, but I'm not sure how much that love will be reciprocated beyond gratitude. It's a bit sad to think that in such a case one party will give all and have to content himself with whatever he gets...

[Iain Sparrow]

At any rate, it's not as creepy as Colonel Brandon and Marianne where the age difference is 20 years and she's sixteen! And a bit sad because of another man. The gallant Colonel will take care of her. I'm not sure how much that love will 'grow', though, as they put it back then. No doubt he will dote on her, a little bit like Dobbin in Vanity Fair, but I'm not sure how much that love will be reciprocated beyond gratitude. It's a bit sad to think that in such a case one party will give all and have to content himself with whatever he gets...

My last girlfriend was 22... I was twice her age and then some.
My dad was 36 when he met my mom, she was 17. They bumped into each other on a train out of Toronto and fell in love at first sight, married, had four kids, and had a wonderful life together until my dad died of cancer. I've always been with younger women, usually way younger, and it's never been some weird role playing relationship where I become a "father" figure.
It's not "creepy" at all... age means nothing, just a number.

[Clopin]

My last girlfriend was 22... I was twice her age and then some.

Damn, nice.

[Jackson Richardson]

And I understand the age difference (with a man old enough to support a family financially and a woman young enough to start breeding) was perfectly usual in Jane Austen's day for her class.

Incidentally, Mr Woodhouse convinces kev he is a "lovely old man". For me he is totally self centred. (Mrs Weston is "poor Mrs Weston" from his point of view, not hers.) That's why Jane Austen is a genius: both sides of the character are there.

Reading Emma a few years back I thought that nearly every speech by every character reveals something about them that they are not aware of. Maybe not Jane Fairfax, but she is the one character that knows she needs to conceal her position.

(Frank and Jane are of the same age, but they are engaged in all probability because they have had sexual relations.)

[Clopin]

Awh come on Jonathan, he's cute, always pushing a basin of thin gruel on everyone! And he's concerned about their health throughout the book. Actually I burst out laughing when it starts to snow while he and Emma are at Mrs. weston's house and he gets more and more concerned before pleading with Emma "what do we do?". He wouldn't wish pork on the digestion of his worst enemy and he requires everyone to mind they don't allow their hot bodies to contact the cool air; does that sound selfish to you?

[kiki1982]

My last girlfriend was 22... I was twice her age and then some.
My dad was 36 when he met my mom, she was 17. They bumped into each other on a train out of Toronto and fell in love at first sight, married, had four kids, and had a wonderful life together until my dad died of cancer. I've always been with younger women, usually way younger, and it's never been some weird role playing relationship where I become a "father" figure.
It's not "creepy" at all... age means nothing, just a number.

Yes, OK, I was carrying on the 'creepiness' of the age difference between Knightley and Emma. I've always preferred older men, in fact, though I don't think I'd ever thought about getting one who was double my age. Though I say that... If I had met the right man and he happened to be older than forty whereas I was only 17, then who's to say I wouldn't have been happy? As it is, I've settled for 9 years older.

[kiki1982]

And I understand the age difference (with a man old enough to support a family financially and a woman young enough to start breeding) was perfectly usual in Jane Austen's day for her class.

Within boundaries, though. Most women were introduced into society when they were about 16 to get married around 20-21. If not a little bit earlier. Men like Bingley from P&P who married at 22 were considered young, even in the 1850s, because a) they didn't have a fortune to call their own (either through inheritance or work) or they didn't have proper employment yet and that was a universally acknowledged requirement and b) they were still a bit childish. They couldn't possibly know what was good for them at such a young age.
That said though, a difference of 20 years was a bit much, although it probably also depended on how much you were actually worth and how good you still looked. I mean, if you were a woman and 20 years old and you married a man of fashion who was loaded but was a bit wrinkly and rickety, that also reflected on you as 'what you could get', i.e. you can't have been very interesting/accomplished, because otherwise you would have caught something better, if you will. A bit like Miss Bingley's sister in P&P. She's married to a man who is slightly older, but can't be bothered with anything.

Reading Emma a few years back I thought that nearly every speech by every character reveals something about them that they are not aware of. Maybe not Jane Fairfax, but she is the one character that knows she needs to conceal her position.

That's very true. They do their own commentary.

(Frank and Jane are of the same age, but they are engaged in all probability because they have had sexual relations.)

It would very much surprise me if that was the reason. He namely doesn't have to upset his aunt. And where would he have accomplished anything sexual in plain view of everyone?

Awh come on Jonathan, he's cute, always pushing a basin of thin gruel on everyone! And he's concerned about their health throughout the book. Actually I burst out laughing when it starts to snow while he and Emma are at Mrs. weston's house and he gets more and more concerned before pleading with Emma "what do we do?". He wouldn't wish pork on the digestion of his worst enemy and he requires everyone to mind they don't allow their hot bodies to contact the cool air; does that sound selfish to you?

Yes he is kind of cute, in an overbearing sort of way.

[kev67]

And I understand the age difference (with a man old enough to support a family financially and a woman young enough to start breeding) was perfectly usual in Jane Austen's day for her class.

Incidentally, Mr Woodhouse convinces kev he is a "lovely old man". For me he is totally self centred. (Mrs Weston is "poor Mrs Weston" from his point of view, not hers.) That's why Jane Austen is a genius: both sides of the character are there.

I think I may have been putting that down to a bit of senility, but it could be self-centredness. In the last chapter I read, Miss Bates says how her mother, Mrs Bates, was disappointed when Mr Woodhouse returned some asparagus and sweetbread because the asparagus had not been boiled enough. Mrs Bates was keeping Mr Woodhouse company because Emma was at a ball. Mrs Bates is partial to asparagus and sweetbread.

(Frank and Jane are of the same age, but they are engaged in all probability because they have had sexual relations.)

I have not got to that bit yet, and I would be surprised as Professor John Mullan has only just discovered they had a snog.