In those chapters, and much more formally than in her other novels, Austen introduces her dramatis personae, positioning them in a particular time and place.
This makes the eleven and a bit chapters she left us both poignant and fascinating in equal measures. However, the signs are otherwise, and commentators generally agree that Sanditon marked a decided change of direction for Austen. That is the opposite of what we expect from Austen, and it may be that with time and revision, it too would have been rounded out and resolved with her usual confidence and firmness of moral and narrative purpose. Even allowing for its sketched form, this novel has uncertainty and contingency at its very heart. But the last work of Jane Austen, necessarily broken off by first her illness and then her death invites all sorts of impressions, imaginings and extrapolations. An unfinished – indeed a barely started – novel will always be the subject of speculation. Sanditon begins with an accident and ends in mid-air.
‘A little higher up, the Modern began’: Sally Minogue assesses Jane Austen’s unfinished final novel ‘Sanditon’, a venture into a new world.
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