Jane Austen Quote – Week 57

Jane Austen has a very unique advice for family planning! But of course; knowing well that excessive number of children did not bode well with family’s prosperity, particularly if they were poor. Well, or at least she was clever enough to suggest a simple method of family planning, in a dark time where healthy birth control was unheard of. This is from a letter where she was talking about a Mrs. Deedes giving birth to another child:

I would recommend to her and Mr D. the simple regimen of separate rooms.

LOL! I say: laugh out loud! What a witty woman! Makes me wonder why they never thought of having a decent family planning program in ye olde days. Perhaps due to lack of hygienic technology...

By the way, the quote was taken from Jane’s letter to Fanny Knight, 20-21 February 1817, a few months before Jane’s own death. Obviously, she still retained her sense of humour. Oh, and I snatched the quote from Dominique Enright’s very interesting compilation of ‘The Wicked Wit of Jane Austen’, p. 114. Amazing read, truly.

Pic: four cute children are already rather unmanageable. How about 8 or 10? Yeah, these are Victorian children, not Georgian... From this site