ABSTRACT

This chapter is an analysis of Jane Austen's last, unfinished novel, 'Sanditon' (1925), one which develops particular themes and ideas established in the previous chapter's discussion of The Borough; for, like the latter poem, 'Sanditon' finds in the physical boundary represented by the sea a certain moral force. 'Sanditon', composed in 1817, was cut short by the author's death in the same year. It is in some ways a valedictory piece. Austen's moral vision is at its most uncompromising in 'Sanditon', possibly because of her own impending mortal knowledge; it is also perhaps closest in this work to the George Crabbe of The Borough, with its pervasive sense of the need for a strong and testing tide. It is this resourcefulness which, in its different senses, has been the subject of the author's book, and which he have sought to bring to prominence as representing a particular affinity of Crabbe and Austen.