Friday Ruminations, 24 January 2025

Jane Austen on Transportation

Image 1. Cover of 1894 George Allen republication of Pride and Prejudice. Image source: Internet Archive.

I have never read Pride and Prejudice, nor any other any Jane Austen novel, but I have seen no fewer then three screen adaptations. My wife and I only own one television, and we negotiate what we watch on TV. Each time we watched Pride and Prejudice, I had lost in the negotiations. In the end, though, I did not lose because I learned something against my own judgement. My reward was a brief dialogue about differing perceptions of distance, time, expense, and transportation between Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy. Here is the text of this scene as it appears in the novel, with Darcy starting the conversation:¹

"Mr. Collins appears to be very fortunate in his choice of a wife."

"Yes, indeed, his friends may well rejoice in his having met with one of the very few sensible women who would have accepted him, or have made him happy if they had. My friend has an excellent understanding—though I am not certain that I consider her marrying Mr. Collins as the wisest thing she ever did. She seems perfectly happy, however, and in a prudential light it is certainly a very good match for her."

"It must be very agreeable for her to be settled within so easy a distance of her own family and friends."

"An easy distance, do you call it? It is nearly fifty miles."

"And what is fifty miles of good road? Little more than half a day's journey. Yes, I call it a very easy distance."

"I should never have considered the distance as one of the advantages of the match," cried Elizabeth. "I should never have said Mrs. Collins was settled near her family."

"It is a proof of your own attachment to Hertfordshire. Anything beyond the very neighbourhood of Longbourn, I suppose, would appear far."

As he spoke there was a sort of smile which Elizabeth fancied she understood; he must be supposing her to be thinking of Jane and Netherfield, and she blushed as she answered:

"I do not mean to say that a woman may not be settled too near her family. The far and the near must be relative, and depend on many varying circumstances. Where there is fortune to make the expenses of travelling unimportant, distance becomes no evil. But that is not the case here. Mr. and Mrs. Collins have a comfortable income, but not such a one as will allow of frequent journeys—and I am persuaded my friend would not call herself near her family under less than half the present distance."

Austen sets Pride and Prejudice in the early nineteenth century, when there were not many good roads in England. In addition, most people, including the Bennets, lacked access to horses and carriages. So the perception of distance was different for Elizabeth compared to Darcy. Elizabeth perceived distance and accessibility from the point of view of a pedestrian. Darcy perceived distance and accessibility from the point of view of someone who could afford the fastest and most expensive means of transport in his day.

A few other points:

• Darcy makes the point that transit time between settlements depended on the quality of the roads.

• Elizabeth was bound to her neighborhood.

• How credible is Darcy’s claim of the average travel-time by horse and carriage being a little more than a half day?

• Elizabeth ends the dialogue by highlighting the expense of mobility and how that creates constraints for different households based on income.

1. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Project Gutenberg, 223-4. For more about Jane Austen on walking, see John Urry, Mobilities (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2007), 80.