Karen Cover

On Thursday, May 6th, Sara and I spent our free day visiting the town where Jane Austen (1775-1817) lived during her later life. It took us a little over an hour and only moderate confusion to get from London to Alton by train, and we arranged for a taxi to take us a few miles from Alton Station to her house in the small village of Chawton.
The two places we visited were "Jane Austen's House" and "Chawton House," which is confusing since both are located in Chawton and connected to Jane Austen. To clarify, "Chawton House" is the large estate that was owned by Jane Austen's brother, Edward Knight. Edward was adopted by the wealthy but childless Knight family (distant relatives of the Austen family) when he was a boy. Edward invited Jane, his sister, and his mother to live in the cottage on his property rent free after Reverend Austen died and left the women relatively unprovided for, and this cottage is known as "Jane Austen's House."
The first place we visited was the cottage where Jane spent most of her time, which is now preserved as a museum. Unfortunately the museum doesn't conduct guided tours, but we were free to walk through the cottage and garden. The exhibit wasn't anything special, though. The most meaningful part to me as a Jane Austen fan was walking where Jane walked and gaining a better sense of how she lived two hundred years ago.
The best part of our trip was visiting Chawton House, where Jane would have been invited often to dine with Edward and his family. We booked spots on the afternoon tour of the manor as an afterthought since Jane's house was the main reason for our visit, so we were really surprised by how much we enjoyed Edward's estate. Both the house and the grounds were beautiful, and while we'd already visited houses, churches, and gardens on our trip, we were impressed by how this estate united all of these elements. We expected to see a house but we also got the chance to explore a church, some gardens, and even a historical women's library that is now housed in the manor. One specific example of how the estate related to our class was seeing a section of original Morris wallpaper, which excited us since we've been studying William Morris so intensely on this trip. Another one of my favorite parts was a window that was added to the house in the 19th century to make the house more symmetrical. Oddly this window wasn't even functional until the house was restored a century later. I thought it was funny since I liked the house immediately because it was asymmetrical, and it was interesting to see such a tangible example of changing fashions in architecture.
After the tour of the house, we took a quick look at the church and some secluded walled gardens. My one regret is that we didn't have time to explore the grounds more and do some sketching. Overall, I preferred Chawton House because it reflected the upper middle-class society that Jane Austen's heroines achieved at the end of her novels. I imagine that Jane, like Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, would have loved taking long walks through the vast grounds and gardens, and I'd like to return some day and do the same.