The Watsons is one of Jane Austen’s unfinished novels–the tale of Emma Watson, a young lady returning home for the first time after spending fourteen years in the care of her well-to-do aunt. Austen began the novel around 1803 but abandoned it not long after. The reason behind Austen’s choice to leave The Watsons unfinished is unknown, but it is commonly held that the death of her father may have prompted her to leave off working on the piece.
Like many of Austen’s works, the reader is introduced to most of the principal characters in the first chapters of the novel. We soon learn that Emma Watson is returning home after a fourteen year-long stay in her aunt’s home. Accustomed to the well-appointed style of living that she enjoyed in her aunt’s home, Emma is somewhat unprepared for her family’s reduced circumstances. A stranger among her brothers and sisters, Emma tries to make the most of the situation, but soon finds herself preferring the company of her infirm father to the studied civility of her siblings and their fashionable neighbors. And that is where Emma’s story abruptly ends.
My copy of the text is only 40 pages long, leaving me wanting more. While several writers have completed their vision of Austen’s Sanditon, I have only been able to find 2 continuations of The Watsons–The Watsons by Jane Austen and Another Lady (Helen Baker) and The Younger Sister by Austen’s niece, Catherine Anne Hubback (copies of both can be found on Amazon, though The Younger Sister appears as a facsimile of the original published in 1850).
While brief, the fragment does raise several issues regarding the place of unmarried daughters, especially those without fortunes to attract eligible gentlemen. Here is one of my favorite passages:
Your lordship thinks we always have our own way. That is a point on which ladies and gentlemen have long disagreed–but without pretending to decide it, I may say that there are some circumstances which even women cannot controul [sic].–Female economy will do a great deal my Lord, but it cannot turn a small income into a large one.
From the little we have to go on, it seems to me that The Watsons would have had elements similar to those explored in Sense and Sensibility with regards to poverty and womanhood (and the selfishness of brothers). We’ll never know. I will, however, look into those completions that I found.
