Any Other Place

"Such a fortnight as it has been!" he continued; "every day more precious and delightful than the day before! - every day making me less fit to bear any other place. Happy those, who can remain at Highbury!" (Frank Churchill, Emma, chapter 30)

Along with compelling characters, a good writer also delivers an engaging setting. It grounds the story by planting its people and events in a specific time and place. It gives the reader a world to escape to and explore. Tara, Pemberley, Mitford, even the Planet of the Apes: these names evoke strong images. We experienced them first through the pages of books.

Setting doesn't require exhaustive, flowery descriptions of landscape, architecture, and furnishings. Preferably not. Jane Austen never resorted to that technique. She gave us just enough information to set our imaginations off in the right direction. The rest unfolded primarily through the kind of people who inhabited her houses and villages, the way they behaved (or misbehaved), and how they felt about where they lived and visited. For example...

It was a handsome, stone building, standing well on rising ground and backed by a ridge of high woody hills ... Elizabeth was delighted. She had never seen a place for which nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste ... The rooms were lofty and handsome, and their furniture suitable to the fortune of their proprietor; but Elizabeth saw, with admiration of his taste, that it was neither gaudy nor uselessly fine ...

Our opinion of Pemberley is influenced more by Elizabeth's impressions and the high regard the housekeeper, Mrs. Reynolds, has for her position and her employer than by direct description of what the place looks like. The same is true for Highbury in Emma. I don't recall any of the specific facts Austen surely gives us about the town, only that everyone (even a recent arrival like Frank Churchill) speaks of the village with affection.

How magical, then, to create fictitious worlds of our own! As writers, we fashion them brick by brick, laboring until we can taste the dust of the streets, smell the pile of horse manure we sidestep, and exchange greetings with the other inhabitants - our good friends - as they go about their business. We come to delight in our daily sojourns there ... perhaps a little too much. The downside? The deeper we immerse ourselves in a beloved book (as readers, and especially as writers) the more attached we become to the neighborhood. Perhaps, as Frank says, this makes us less and less fit to bear any other place ... such as the real world.

Close Relations

"I do not mean to say that a woman may not be settled too near her family. The far and near must be relative, and depend on many varying circumstances. Where there is fortune to make the expense of travelling unimportant, distance becomes no evil." (Pride and Prejudice, chapter 32)

Elizabeth says this to Mr. Darcy after he implies that fifty miles distant is a very agreeable place to keep one's family. No doubt, he was already thinking of carrying Lizzy off to Pemberley (shown above is Hampton Court Palace, the closest thing I have to Pemberley) and away from her most uncouth relations. I echoed the sentiment in The Darcys of Pemberley when Jane and Mr. Bingley announce their intentions to move away from Hertfordshire: Although he did not say the words, his meaning was clear enough. They could all appreciate the idea that it is possible for a woman to be settled too near her family. This was to fulfill what Jane Austen tells us in the last chapter about their future:

Mr. Bingley and Jane remained at Netherfield only a twelvemonth. So near a vicinity to her mother and Meryton relations was not desirable even to his easy temper and her affectionate heart. The darling wish of his sisters was then gratified; he bought an estate in a neighboring county to Derbyshire, and Jane and Elizabeth, in addition to every other source of happiness, were withing thirty miles of each other.

I concur with Elizabeth's statement above. It depends entirely on the circumstances. Had I a mother like hers, fifty miles would be a bare minimum. I am more fortunate, though. I have always enjoyed the support of close family, especially when I was a clueless young mother. Now it is my turn to be there for ageing parents and busy adult children with children of their own. My husband and I have talked about how wonderful it would be to retire to someplace with endless sunshine, surf, and sandy beaches. But, since we don't have a "fortune" to constantly travel back and forth whenever mood or need arises, the distance for us would be an evil impossible to overcome. Elizabeth had no such limitations. She ended living in a bit of paradise with her favorite sister close by and means to travel at will. The best of both worlds.