Names in Jane Austen
The names in Jane Austen's novels may appear bland and commonplace, but are always carefully chosen and often contain coded meanings. In Pride and Prejudice, Austen gave the heroine a name, Bennet, that is a close twin of her own. Austen or Austin is a contraction of "Augustine". Austin-friars in the City of London is a street where before the Reformation there was a monastery of the order of St Augustine, one of many in England. The name Bennet is a contraction of "Benedict" another saint who founded a monastic order. Austen surely chose the name because the heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, is a self-portrait. The Bennet family resemble the Austens in one crucial respect - they cannot pass on the family home to the next generation. Their predicament is due to an entail whereas that of the Austens arose out of the fact that her father was a clergyman whose rectory would pass to the next incumbent. One of the privileges of the English aristocracy is...