He 'appears perfectly proportion'd': English ladies’ encounters with Napoleon with Dr Emma Gleadhill

In Pride and Prejudice young Lydia and Kitty Bennett can ‘talk of nothing but officers’. Their mother does not blame them, reflecting on ‘the time when I liked a red coat myself very well’. Lydia is ultimately seduced by the rake, Officer George Wickham, and her social standing is ruined. In Mansfield Park and Persuasion, the Navy shapes the social status of the main characters, with Anne Elliot marrying up into a respectable naval family, whilst Fanny Price’s poor social prospects stem from her father’s status as a disabled Royal Marine. 

Born in 1775 and dying in 1817, Jane Austen lived through the Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815) and her plots include a revolving array of Royal Navy and Army officers being stationed in and out of her female character’s lives. Many of Austen’s readers would have themselves been impacted by the Wars, with one in five families directly involved in the army, navy, militia and or as volunteers. This included Austen’s family: her brother Henry was an officer in the Oxfordshire militia and contractor to the military, while her brothers Frank and Charles served in the navy. 

From 1802-03, however, there was a brief break in hostilities following the Treaty of Amiens, and British women tourists flocked to Paris, keen to see the sites of the Revolution and, despite general anti-French sentiment, to be presented to Napoleon Bonaparte. In talk, we’ll take a brief look at two such women, who had quite contrasting views of Napoleon’s appearance shaped by their politics. 

Dr Emma Gleadhill is a social and cultural historian, and watercolour artist, based in Melbourne, Australia. She is specifically interested in women’s history, travel, and accessing new dimensions of the female experience through souvenir culture. Emma's first academic monograph, Taking Travel Home: The Souvenir Culture of British Women Tourists, 1770-1830, was published by Manchester University Press in their ‘"Gender in History"’ series in April 2022. Her book uncovers the souvenir culture British women developed around the texts and objects they brought back with them to realise their ambitions in the arenas of connoisseurship, friendship, and science. It argues that the rise of the souvenir is representative of female agency, as women used their souvenirs to form spaces in which they could create and control their own travel narratives. 

Your ticket includes tea or Market Lane coffee served before the presentation, and time to browse our exclusive range of books, gifts, and homewares at TJC Emporium.

This event is presented on-site at The Johnston Collection. Please see your ticket for details. NOTE: Tickets for this event do not include access to our exhibition-house, Fairhall. Guided tours of the current exhibition can be booked separately.

This event is supported by The Colin Holden Charitable Trust.

Image: James Gillray, Introduction of Citizen Volpone and his suite, at Paris, 1802 (detail). National Portrait Gallery, London.