'You had better go on horseback'

In celebration of the author's 250th year, Bethany Stone delves into the small but significant role of horses in Jane Austen's fiction

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IT is a truth universally acknowledged that a 19th-century social novel that needs to advance its plot must be in want of a horse. As far as opening sentences go, this one may feel a touch contrived, but pray, let me argue the case.

First of all, it would be most improper to have penned a piece about Jane Austen without referencing Pride and Prejudice’s famous opener, so it’s best that we’ve got that out of the way early.

Second, when we think of fiction that deals with class, wealth, status and marriage in the Georgian period, Jane Austen is the literary titan that flashes before us.

Third, in that era, nothing – but nothing – happened without horses. A horse and carriage was the car of that time, and written correspondence – so central to Jane Austen’s life and writings – could not be sent without a steed.

“The plots of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice in particular hang around letters,” says Sophie Reynolds, curator of Jane Austen’s House at Chawton, Hampshire. “In Pride and Prejudice, there are 42 letters, none of which could have arrived with their recipients without horses.

“We’re talking about the pre-telegram age, so an express post where letters were handed between galloping riders was the fastest means of communication.”

Urgent letters drive the drama in the world of Austen, inspiring immediate departures for “town” in Sense and Sensibility, dispatching family patriarchs in pursuit of wayward daughters in Pride and Prejudice and representing revelatory evidence of Captain Wentworth’s enduring love in Persuasion. Although, admittedly, his letter is not delivered by horse.

IT is in Pride and Prejudice that we find the most iconic example of equine influence – and it’s arguably a damp ride to a handsome country house that sets the two elder Bennet sisters on their path to marrying the highly eligible Messrs Darcy and Bingley.