What Is The Regency Era? The World of Jane Austen

hello my bookish friends out there in booktube land and welcome to another episode of tristan and the classics in this episode we're sort of going off-piste as it were we're going to look at something slightly different and that is what is the regency period because if you love your classic literature a fair amount of it is set in the regency period and we have programs like bridgeton on at the minute which are regency series so what is the regency period well without further ado let's dig in shall we the regency period in great britain stretches some say from 1811 to 1820 which i suppose is technically correct but it tends to encompass a bigger amount of time from around 1795 all the way to the year 1837. why is it called the regency period though it makes sense when we talk about the tudor period because the kings and queens were from the house of tuda and of course you have the elizabethan although she was a tudor as well but elizabethan is a very specific time that in literature is sometimes called the shakespearean age named after a person you've got the victorian age the edwardian age the georgian age they're all named after the monarchs apart from shakespeare of course at the end of king george iii's reign he went potty and they had to sort of i mean no one wants a potty monarch on the throne it's quite embarrassing for national relations so they stuffed him in his padded cell as it were and when you don't have a king who can rule someone has to stand in their stead you can't just say oh we'll get rid of the king and make a new king you know the british are very reserved and they they like structure and order and how things should be done good form as it were so you can't just say a king's no longer king because he's bonkers he's still the king what you have in his place is someone called a regent it is a person who makes the decisions who has the authority of the king until the king dies in the regency period this fell to king george the third's son who was also called george and he became the prince regent so the regent rules regnal rules on behalf of the king and because it was the prince regent's time period it became known as the regency now strictly as i said that goes from 1811 to george's um appointment as king as king george the fourth in 1820 but that period of time is stretched out a bit more to include his entire reign and some years before he officially became the regent because the king was still you know mad as a bicycle kind of thing you know so what was the regency period like especially pertaining to getting a backdrop for classic literature the regency period comes at the end of the georgian era which dominated the whole of the 18th century now under the georgian era that's the reign of king george the first second and third britain had become the world's superpower um it had pushed france out of canada it had beaten france in america although at the end the peasants of america had revolted over you know tax on their tea and all that kind of stuff britain also dominated the trade with the indies both east and west so britain really was at its height at this point now although with a puritanical background britain still suffered the excesses and the debauches and the rambunctious goings-on of the upper class high society um there was the the fame the veneer of being proper in prim but there was quite a lot of scandal at the top very much like the french aristocracy only the french had gone to a really far end you know they had become absolutely decadent which is one of the reasons the french revolution took place when it comes to the regency period you find the echelons of society at the top from the landed gentry up to the aristocracy have got to the height of refinement in manners and in etiquette and in good form and in propriety and the social structure was rigid you know you really had to watch how you behave between each structure even if you were landed gentry you could be lower upper class you had the higher middle class you had the upper class and then you had the absolute aristocracy and you would know your place and the way that you spoke for instance you wouldn't shake hands with just anybody in fact you could go through most of your life as a gentleman and shake hands with maybe two people who your best friends your boom companions you certainly didn't want to be seen at an event to engage too animatedly with someone beneath your station and certainly not too animatedly with someone above your station that could completely ruin your chances of advancement and there was a slow progression of marrying an intermarrying which you could slowly build your family up in society but it was hard the fashion changed at this time as well you probably heard of bo brummel who stands for men's fashion the height of fashion he was the one essentially who changed the fashion from half knee britches and and stockings to wearing full length trousers and boots and everything was simplified into a more elegant style things were well fitting with normal colors nothing too elaborate like had gone on through the 18th century and so you get this manner of perfect form perfect etiquette beautifully cut the way you stand and present yourself this is the regency period and at this time you have authors like eta hoffman um you have sarah farrier you have of course the most famous jane austen and jane austen captures the moment of the regency there is a shift not only in the styles of the regency but that catches in literature in the arts where writers move from sort of the memoirs and letters and poetry being top all formed on class and religion to the romantics the romanticism so you've got um uh mary shelley's around this time so percy shelley is there blake wordsworth um byron they're all there amongst the poets and you've got this romantic ideal emotions begin to be important rather than just status this is particularly important and interesting when reading regency classics because you get an idea of what the readers are going to be understanding the gap between the lower classes and the top was vast like it was a chasm a great abyss which couldn't be transversed the lower echelons just got on with their grimy existence but the upper classes they lived in great luxury but like i said even amongst them there were definite levels of hierarchy and this becomes noticeable when you read jane austen because let's take the most famous pride and prejudice you've got the bennett family and then you have darcy now the bennett family um are the lower upper class and as such they have a position in the social pecking order you can't just have elizabeth bennett and lydia bennett and jane bennett marrying super super high up men because those men in the higher stations would have families who would want them to marry within their station everything was about pretence and appearance to everyone else this was everything in regency england for six months of the year they had the tour which was where the hoipaloi the the rich and the landed would move around the country engaging in all societal affairs and parties and soirees this is why jane austen talks about you know going to bath you think of north hangar abbey they're they're actually at bath for north anger abbey but they've talked about things that have been going on in london and other events that they've been to they go to these events to see and to be seen and to snag themselves some kind of eligible bachelor but that will be within a certain rank you want to just step up a fine level and over years your family might raise a notch in society now beneath all the finery and delicacy of feeling which are portrayed during the regency period there is a great deal of adultery and debauchery now if you are in the aristocratic level it may cause gossip and a little bit of scandal but you could get away with it kind of thing if you were in a lower level of the upper class so say the bennett family and pride and prejudice scandal could literally ruin you because you could not then find a wife or a husband for your children in a higher level in fact you may end up finding that no one wants to marry them at all you may end up having to marry the upper middle class [Music] at this time also there were highly influential salons that were going on um clubs so you would have had almax which was one of the greatest of the clubs of its day it was a mixed sex club a mixed sex society which held regular events which only a select number of people could go to you also had amongst the gentlemen's clubs you had boodles the very very famous gentleman's club which you know if you were turned away from that that was quite the snub and even the duke of wellington was turned away from that because he although a great victor on the field of battle he didn't dress so well so he wasn't allowed in doodles today we would term these the influencers the glitterati the hollywood set back then they were called the tun it comes from the french le bon ton which roughly translates as the good set you know the top the fashionistas of the world and these ones were the key holders to people's reputations they could really savage you or they could elevate a favorite but what you must never do with all these perfect prim precise standards that they'd set out of what was fashionable of what was sophisticated of what was truly aristocratic if you dared cross that line they would snub you they'd push you out now with that in mind think of the regency period books you begin to understand for instance why they were so worried when wickham eloped with lydia because this wouldn't just ruin lydia the scandal could reach so far that all of the daughters no matter how loved they were no matter how much bingley loved jane if lydia had got involved in that scandal then that was definitely finished you couldn't go any further it also explains something about that perennial question in pride and prejudice which one is pride and which one is prejudice out of elizabeth and darcy well of course they both share the two qualities but often most people say darcy is the proud one when you understand regency england he's the prejudiced one more than anything he can't be proud because he doesn't mind he wants to marry out of love this romantic ideal you see how jane austen is building on emotions rather than status and society so this is romanticism and darcy wants to marry for love we know from what his servants say about him and the more elizabeth finds out about darcy that he is not proud so how do we explain that awful proposal that he gave to elizabeth where he talks about how shocking her family is and that she's beneath his station when we understand roughly what regency period england was like we understand he was prejudiced to their position on the social ladder and so he was saying i will marry you despite the fact that you are beneath me he was not saying i'm better than you he was simply saying as a matter of fact your rank is beneath me and i don't you didn't say well but i don't mind elizabeth to marry you don't you worry about me being higher than you in the ranking order i will still marry you but he just absolutely hashed his lines and so that leaves us with elizabeth actually being the one who carries the most amount of pride really and why does she feel the right to have pride it's because jane austen is focusing on the emotions how would anyone feel when they're referred to as being lower than your own personal pride is touched but it can go to the point of thinking i am superior just because you're higher born than me i'm actually superior and you you watch elizabeth quite a lot of what she does she acts quite superior in many respects and a person that keeps calling someone else proud they tend to be proud and it's elizabeth that keeps accusing darcy of pride what i love about jane austen is she's focusing on the emotions not the class so there was a standard expectation that normally this girl elizabeth bennett should just roll over and be like oh well yes i am beneath him jane austen thinks no the human emotion of pride of anger of being irked of being snubbed she gives voice to those feelings at the same time mary shell is writing frankenstein in this period and what's she focusing on horror terror these are qualities which don't form the the main line in literature before this time so through the georgian period and before and this is what's going on in the regency and it's why it's so funny for us is because jane austen does is she is introducing realism as a form now realism will develop a bit later after the romantic period with the bronte so in the 1840s and dickens is there because instead of just the feelings of romantic feelings and happy endings what you've got with the realist movement is the down and dirty state of affairs and maybe i could do another video if you would like me to on that part of history as well in the 19th century but for now in the regency period we have the peak of refinement and societal pecking order we have the refinement of dress the refinement of manners and sort of a completely rigid ladder of where you are in life and you've got the top few rungs and then all the other runs are missing until you've got the bottom rung down here where the peasants are what jane austen and a lot of others do they shine a light on the fakery and the pretence and the hypocrisy of the drawing rooms of the salons of the the the tongue remember that's the the hoipaloi that go on their tours through the year of all these different events and dances and balls and soirees and clubs she shines a light on that and makes a mockery of it and instead starts bringing in the romantic ideals of marrying for love instead of marrying for status so in that respects darcy and elizabeth are real trailblazers not to mention all the others for instance and with captain wentworth ideally her family would not like her to marry a sailor but she loves wentworth and so romantically following your heart this really spoke to people who were trapped in such a rigid rigid society and that's the regency period so i hope that this little chat has been engaging for you and it's been beneficial i thought it might be interesting as a background for when we read some of the classical literature especially jane austen i wish you joy in your reading