Mikinski, Madeleine. “‘The Daily Interchange of News’: Networks of Information in Austen’s Adult Work”

Two decades ago, Frances Beer posed the question: “How can [Austen] so effectively transform the micro into the macro? How do we (how does she) get from the ‘two inches’ to the broad, satirical critique of her society?”1 Beer refers here, of course, to Austen’s letter to her nephew James Edward in 1816, where she likens her writing to “the little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush,” and of her letter to her niece Anna from 1814, mentioning her choice of characters: “3 or 4 Families in a Country Village.”2 Beer’s questions evoke the esprit de corps of the turn of the century, one where the political is personal. Austen focused on the minute, diurnal life of the gentry, rather than the sweeping, national politics of the era in which she lived, yet she was still able to convey how those political movements shifted the minutiae within the lives of regular folk in the countryside. In her brief survey of Austen’s various information exchange mechanisms in the essay at hand, Mikinski identifies how the personal outcompetes the political, arguing that Austen condenses news from the global into the quotidian, favoring the micro over the macro as her standard of information sharing. Of course, Austen’s fine brush could achieve literary feats of grandeur when two inches of ivory was all that was needed to convey the interests of that handful of families. As Mikiniski points out, gossip was the word of the day.Mikiniski smartly hits on the irony of Austen’s focus on gossip,3 when history clearly points to the eighteenth century as a period of increasing literacy, broadening access to education, growing periodical subscription numbers, and expanding publication practices. Globalization during a time when the British Empire was reaching the height of its expansionist power should indicate a simultaneous expansion of cosmopolitan attitudes. But the local still reigned supreme for those outside of London—and even sometimes for those within. A piece of gossip carried by a visiting neighbor traveled faster than information in a newspaper and, as Mikinski notes, letters posted from a port of call reach their intended destination more quickly than the notice of the ship’s arrival in the newspaper. Highlighting this disparity, Austen situates Henry Crawford’s announcement to Fanny Price that her brother William’s ship has docked, an occurrence he learns from a paper, as being too little, too late, since Fanny has already received a letter from William himself. Public and government information mechanisms, such as the newspapers in Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey, and the navy lists in Persuasion, are indirect; they must operate within the publishers’ and bureaucracy’s boundaries. Letters, written and sent from one character to another, are direct in their messages and their paths of travel, and thus deemed a more reliable and accurate means by which to glean the news.Realistically, letters were frequently lost or misdirected and suffer from a lack of objectivity as sources of information. However, Austen writes fiction, and we, readers, enjoy her work. As Mikinski astutely notes, “plots turn on the revelation of sensitive information.” If a letter is misdirected—as is Jane’s letter to Lizzy when the latter is traveling with the Gardiners—tension is heightened when it does eventually arrive, in this case, in tandem with Jane’s notice of Lydia’s absconding with Wickham, timed to be sure Darcy is informed of the event.The relationships developed between Austen’s characters—in their realms of a few families in country villages—support Mikinski’s argument that wider-reaching publications or news sources are construed as less informative (or at least less reliable), and “the digestion of news is instead a much smaller-scale endeavor, deriving knowledge accrued through first-hand experience—that is, through the maintenance of interpersonal relationships.” What can be learned from those closest to one, or at least from a close-knit web of informants whom one knows personally, is more trustworthy than information from outside sources. Newspaper reading becomes performative for many characters: either a device to separate oneself from the action—Mikinski uses General Tilney and Edmund Bertram as examples—or to caricaturize a flaw—here, Mikinski highlights Mr. Palmer’s avoidance of his wife and mother-in-law by hiding behind a paper. Neither instance valorizes the newspaper’s primary purpose; instead, the details of the other characters’ interactions, which often include the exchange of information between acquaintances, are more important to the overall narrative.Though brief, Mikiniski’s article cleverly demonstrates that in a society with increasingly expansive reach and ever-enlarging information networks (networks that lead to today’s lightning-fast exchange of news on social media and the internet), it is the contracted news networks that serve inhabitants of Austen’s novels best. Austen’s adult work highlights “the commonalities of common life: the return of a loved one after a long separation, the vacation plans of one’s neighbors, the termination of an unwise and hasty engagement.” These are the tidbits that delight us today—not just in the lives of Austen’s characters, but in our own. Mikiniski writes that “news items of these happenings run continuously and concurrently, like the many columns of a broadsheet, passed around breakfast tables and tea tables, during spontaneous encounters and weekly calls.” Here is the answer to Beer’s question of how the micro can become the macro: in the circulation of the titillating details of our friends’ and neighbors’ lives. Like Austen’s characters, we do not need our New York Posts or News of the Worlds to bring us information. Nor do we need our Boston Globes or our Philadelphia Inquirers. Instead, we have our personal, reliable networks to bring us the news that is worth knowing: who is dating whom, which cousin is having a baby, what scandal our high school nemesis has been engrossed in, and how long it took for our ex to get over us. The broader movements of national and global politics will eventually reach us: economics, war, and death are inevitable occurrences in our daily news. But the minute, diurnal details, the local connections, the individual nodes of information, keep societies running. Thus, a few decades into the twenty-first century, I look forward to more of Madeleine Mikinski’s promising work.