On that time I visited Jane Austen's house.

If I remember one thing from my undergraduate foray into literary theory and criticism (and believe me, I don't remember much), it's this gem from David Hume, penned in 1757:

We choose our favourite author as we do our friend, from a conformity of humour and disposition. Mirth or passion, sentiment or reflection; whichever of these most predominates in our temper, it gives us a peculiar sympathy with the writer who resembles us. ("On the Standard of Taste")

I love the beautiful simplicity of this idea: we like the books we like because we're drawn to authors we can imagine being friends with. It speaks to an immediacy and an intimacy of the reading process that I had never really considered before -- that a love of reading is more than an appreciation of the written word and more than a sympathetic attachment to a beloved character. That reading is not a solitary activity, but an exchange of ideas between people. That there is a very real, human connection between a writer and a reader, though they may be separated by thousands of miles and hundreds of years.

I first read Jane Austen in a first-year history course, of all places. We were asked to choose a novel written by a nineteenth-century European author and examine its validity as a primary historical document (great assignment topic, by the way). For no specific reason (other than the fact that it was probably on TV the weekend before the assignment sheet got handed out), I chose Sense and Sensibility. Little did I know that it would effectively shape my academic path -- I went on to write an Honours paper and Master's thesis about Austen, and to publish and present on her. It also opened the floodgates for some embarrassing Austen paraphernalia. I'm looking at you, Jane Austen finger puppet.

...and at you, Jane Austen action figure.

I found myself drawn to Austen in a way that I had never experienced with any other author. I love that you can read into her novels as much or as little as you want -- that you can analyze the complex gender dynamics, political commentary, colonial undercurrents &c. of the texts while also swooning over her characters. I love that her heroines are inspiring and relatable and surprisingly modern even though they were written by a woman who didn't have the right to vote. I love the romance. I love the stories. I love the wit.

And I also love Austen herself. Because you do get an innate sense when you're reading an Austen novel that she is actually the one telling you the story, not some intermediary narrator. Every time I read one of her books, I'm reminded that she was a living, breathing woman who was bitingly funny and incredibly smart. And I really can't help but think that we'd be friends. Not in a creepy, delusional "I dream about braiding Jane Austen's hair and talking about boys as we skip off into the sunset hand-in-hand" kind of way (FYI, gentlemen: that's what female friendships really are all about). But I do feel a strange affinity for this woman who died 170 years before I was born. I identify with the humbleness of her life. I identify with her frustrations. And most of all, I identify with her sarcasm. Because if there's one word my long-suffering boyfriend would use to describe me, it's "saucy."

Jane Austen would have been hilarious to go to a bar, get drunk, and people watch with. Her letters are humourous, often mean, and always caustic. Exhibit A: in a letter to her sister Cassandra, dated Christmas Eve 1798, she anticipated my life's mantra:

I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.

Merry Christmas! On April 25, 1811, she writes again to Cassandra to congratulate her on the birth of their nephew:

[...] if he ever comes to be hanged it will not be till we are too old to care about it.

A Hallmark card in the making. I also love her sartorial musings, because while she obviously cared quite a bit about what she wore, she was fully aware of how ridiculous the fashions of the period were. Re: new trimmings for her hat:

We have been to the cheap shop, & very cheap we found it, but there are only flowers there, no fruit -- & as I could get 4 or 5 very pretty sprigs of the former for the same money which would procure only one Orleans plumb [...] I cannot decide on the fruit till I hear from you again. -- Besides, I cannot help thinking that it is more natural to have flowers grow out of the head than fruit. (June 11, 1799)

I love seeing that she was an actual woman with a real personality who lived a life beyond the pages of her books.

So when I finally took my first trip overseas this summer, I knew a visit to Jane Austen's House Museum was non-negotiable. (To my boyfriend's eternal credit, he never once complained about taking an entire day out of his vacation to visit some dead chick's house in the English countryside, and for that I am forever in his debt.)

But don't worry, he got to check an item off his bucket list, too, and see Stonehenge. And, luckily for me, our bus tour included an afternoon in Bath. Jane Austen's family moved from their home in Steventon to Bath in 1801 after her father abruptly announced his retirement from the Church. He died in 1805, and Jane, Cassandra, and their mother remained in the city until the following year. Bath loves Jane Austen: there's a Jane Austen Centre (which is located a few doors down from her former house and which includes a very creepy statue on the front steps) and an annual Jane Austen Festival. (You've missed the boat on this year's festivities, though. Apologies.) Supremely ironic, as Austen famously hated Bath: aside from being the place where she lost her beloved father (a chief supporter of her writing and the person who convinced her to try publishing her novels), her writing stagnated there, and she found her fellow city dwellers insufferable.

But her novels come alive in Bath. It was absolutely amazing to see settings made real that had previously only existed for me in her books.

"[They] set off in good time for the pump-room, where the ordinary course of events and conversation took place; Mr. Allen, after drinking his glass of water, joined some gentlemen to talk over the politics of the day and compare the accounts of their newspapers; and the ladies walked about together noticing every new face, and almost every new bonnet in the room."

-- Northanger Abbey 

"They were in Union Street, when a quicker step behind, a something of a familiar sound, gave her two moments' preparation for the sight of Captain Wentworth. He joined them; but, as if irresolute whether to join them or pass on, said nothing, only looked. Anne could command herself to receive that look, and not repulsively. The cheeks which had been pale now glowed, and the movements which had hesitated were decided. He walked by her side."

-- Persuasion

Of this I was now certain: I had to get to that damn house.

Jane Austen's House is located in Chawton, Hampshire, and became home to Austen, Cassandra, her mother, and their family friend Martha Lloyd in 1809. It was where Jane Austen lived for the last eight years of her life -- when her health deteriorated severely in 1817 (due to an undiagnosed illness that contemporary scholars have anachronistically claimed to be everything from TB, to Addison's Disease, to breast cancer), Cassandra and their brother, Henry, accompanied her to the nearby village of Winchester, where they believed she would benefit from the medical expertise of its doctors. She died later that year at the age of 41, and is buried in Winchester Cathedral. She didn't live to see any of her works bear her name -- Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, published posthumously, were the first two novels to identify Austen as their author.

All six of her completed works were shaped, in some way, at the house in Chawton. Northanger Abbey, which Austen began writing in her early 20s, was revised here, as were Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, both of which were published while she lived in Chawton. Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion were entirely written in this house.

We got seriously lost trying to find the museum and weren't helped by the fact that track maintenance meant that our train line terminated two stops ahead of our ultimate destination. After two buses, a useless map, and a very friendly local who took us under her wing and basically walked us to the front door, we finally arrived.

We came around a slight bend in the road, and there it was, right in front of us. The house where some of the most beloved novels in the English canon were written. And I cried. Oh, I cried a lot.

I was struck by the humbleness of the whole thing. The house is beautiful by modern standards, but not particularly large and not particularly fancy. All I could think while we were walking around was: She lived here. She walked down these hallways. She looked out these windows while she ate her breakfast. She sat under this tree and thought about her day. This was hardly a moment of idolatry. On the contrary, while I had idolized Austen and her works for years, the mundaneness of the house, the connection I felt to Jane Austen the Person while in it was completely surreal, totally overwhelming, and even more emotional than I'd imagined it would be. The house gave a glimpse into her existence that no other artefact could. It's where she lived. Suddenly, Jane Austen became more real to me than she had ever been before.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

The famous first lines of Pride and Prejudice...in Mandarin. 

The museum boasts relatively few items that can actually be linked to Austen herself -- a lock of her hair and a necklace given to her by her brother, Charles, are some of the only memorabilia owned by the House. In the corner of the dining room, however, sits a small, innocuous desk. It's completely unassuming and very easy to overlook. But it's the desk where she sat and wrote.

I cried, guys. I cried over a desk.

This otherwise unimpressive piece of furniture rendered Austen's books, books that I had devoted three years of my life to studying, so small and so tangible. The idea of Austen sitting at this little desk, watching people pass by her window or chickens roam her backyard while she wrote what would become literary classics was incredibly moving in its simultaneous simplicity and magnitude. We so often forget that the books we hold in our hands were actually created by someone, but that's what I was struck by as I looked at this desk -- that these six incredible works were conceived by a very ordinary woman who lived a very ordinary life in a very ordinary village. I wonder what she thought while writing, which people and what events inspired her, what she envisioned as the future of her books. While I'm sure Austen was very confident that what she wrote was good (don't let that whole "little bit of ivory" crap fool you), there's no possible way that she could have imagined the monumental and enduring success these books written at this desk would have.

She definitely didn't see an action figure in her future.

In the kitchen, the museum's curators have set up an area with quills, ink, and parchment, where visitors are encouraged to write messages. Some of these notes are later displayed in the visitor's centre, and they're written in countless languages from fans all over the world. My contribution was "I can't believe I'm finally here." And I still can't believe I was. It was genuinely awesome to see how widespread Austen's fame is, and how much her books mean to so many people. From this little house in a tiny English village, she has penetrated every corner of the globe. And that truly is a truth universally acknowledged.