A guest post by Katherine Cowley
The Author
Readers and scholars have generally seen the reaction to snow in Emma as an overreaction, both ridiculous and absurd. Yet a look at the snowfalls in England in January and February of 1814 puts the snow in Emma—which was published in December of 1815—in context. Readers of the time would have seen the fears of snow as justified, or, at the very least, understandable.
A pivotal scene in Emma occurs at a Christmas Eve dinner at the Westons’ home. The dinner brings together a number of important characters—Emma, her father Mr. Woodhouse, the Westons, Mr. Knightley, Mr. Elton (who Emma believes is in love with her friend Harriet), and Isabella and John Knightley (Emma’s sister and brother-in-law). Yet the perfect holiday meal does not occur—the falling snow causes a panic (especially for Mr. Woodhouse), and everyone leaves early, hurrying home before more snow can arrive. This places Emma in the uncomfortable position of being alone in a carriage with Mr. Elton, which leads to one of literature’s most famous drunk proposals.
The General Consensus: Absurd Reactions to Snow
Modern readers and film viewers love to laugh at the absurd reactions to snow in Emma. We know with absolute certainty that it does not snow very much in England and that the reactions of the characters are overblown.
Take, for example, a sampling of quotes on the scene from past issues of Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal. Louise Flavin calls Mr. Woodhouse an “over-cautious valetudinarian worrying over a half-inch snowfall.” Sara Wingard writes of the “false alarms raised.” Juliet McMaster describes how Mr. Woodhouse “becomes almost catatonic.” Jan Fergus features the scene in an article titled “Male Whiners in Austen’s Novels.”
In Nora Bartlett’s book, Jane Austen: Reflections of a Reader, she includes a chapter titled “Emma in the Snow.” She writes:
I have always treasured the snowfall in Chapter 15 of Emma, which endangers no one’s safety, despite Mr. Woodhouse’s fears, but threatens everyone’s equanimity: at the news that snow has fallen while the party from Hartfield is having an unwonted evening out at Randalls, “everybody had something to say”—most of it absurd.
Not Just Mr. Woodhouse
Mr. Woodhouse is often seen as a hypochondriac, and the portrait of him which Austen paints throughout the novel invites us to question his sense and find him amusing. When he learns of the snow, we read that he is “silent from consternation.” When he does speak, he says, “What is to be done, my dear Emma?—what is to be done?” Yet he is not the only character who reacts to the snow as if it is a serious matter.
Many readers have pointed out that the most sensible people during the evening are Emma and Mr. Knightley. Yet earlier in the day, Emma herself anticipates that snow could be a problem:
It is so cold, so very cold—and looks and feels so very much like snow, that if it were to any other place or with any other party, I should really try not to go out to-day—and dissuade my father from venturing; but as he has made up his mind, and does not seem to feel the cold himself, I do not like to interfere, as I know it would be so great a disappointment to Mr. and Mrs. Weston.”
During the snow scene, Mr. Knightley behaves rationally—he steps away from the house and checks on the road, discovering that there is only a half inch of snow. He also converses with the coachmen, who “both agreed with him in there being nothing to apprehend.” Taking this effort indicates his desire to help Mr. Woodhouse feel comfortable—but it also indicates that he considers it worth checking on the quantity of snow.
Mr. Weston, on the other hand, begins joking about wanting everyone to be trapped in his house:
[He] wished the road might be impassable, that he might be able to keep them all at Randalls; and with the utmost good-will was sure that accommodation might be found for every body, calling on his wife to agree with him, that with a little contrivance, every body might be lodged, which she hardly knew how to do, from the consciousness of there being but two spare rooms in the house.
Meanwhile, Mr. John Knightley speaks of what he perceives as the worst harm that could come to them:
I dare say we shall get home very well. Another hour or two’s snow can hardly make the road impassable; and we are two carriages; if one is blown over in the bleak part of the common field there will be the other at hand. I dare say we shall be all safe at Hartfield before midnight.”
It is little wonder that Norah Bartlett concludes that “‘everybody had something to say’—most of it absurd.” There is a beautiful absurdity to the scene, a lovely snapshot of humanity as we see individuals react very differently to a single threat.
Yet while Austen may be intentionally creating a situation meant to be read as absurd, the threat of snow would have felt real to readers of Emma in 1815.
The Snows of Early 1814
The novel Emma was published in December of 1815. Contemporary readers would have recent memories of frightening winters due to the intense snow falls across England during January and February of 1814.
Let’s take, as an example, the reports of snow on January 24th, 1814. In The Times, which was published in London, there was an article titled the “State of the Roads.”
Transcription: State of the Roads. On the Dover road, the snow is 10 and 12 feet deep on the other side of Gravesend, where between 300 and 400 men are employed to clear a passage through it.
Clearly, it is no small matter for the road from London to Dover to be covered with 10 to 12 feet of snow, if more than 300 men were hired to shovel it. Yet it was not just the area southeast of London that was covered by snow. In Exeter—in southwest England—there was 4 to 6 feet of snow. Carriages heading from Bath to Marlborough became stuck in the snow. In Worcester and Gloucester it was reported that “it was as easy to get through a wall as pass the drifts of snow.” Mail coaches from Liverpool and Manchester made it to London, but they “risked their lives” in the process. Huge amounts of snow were also reported in Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland.
The article continues:
Transcription: Never since the establishment of mail coaches has correspondence met with such general interruption as at present. Internal communication must, of course, remain at a stand till the roads are in some degree cleared; for besides the drifts by which they are rendered impassable, the whole face of the country presenting one uniform sheet of snow, no trace of road is discoverable, and travellers have had to make their path at the risk of being every moment overwhelmed. Waggons, carts, coaches, and vehicles of all descriptions are left in the midst of the storm. The drivers finding they could proceed no further, have taken the horses to the first convenient place, and are waiting until a passage is cut, to enable them to proceed with safety.
We can hardly blame Mr. John Knightley for his speculations about losing a carriage in the snow, when so many travelers in 1814 were forced to abandon their carriages.
On January 25, 1814, The St. James’s Chronicle discussed the potential sewage problems that could overwhelm (or flood) London, should the snow melt quickly. The paper also reported that in the village of Dunchurch, “drifts have exceeded the height of 24 feet.”
This was not snow to laugh at—for weeks the snow built up, making travel near impossible. In London, the Guildhall issued announcements not to shovel the snow from roofs onto the roads, because of the trouble it was causing. The snow did begin to melt, but then it became even colder, so cold in fact that the Thames River froze over in London, and the last London Frost Fair was held on its frozen waters. Printing presses were pulled onto the ice, meat was roasted on fires on the surface of the river, and tents were erected with various attractions. The ice was thick enough that an elephant—yes, an elephant—walked across the river, from one side of the Thames to the other.
The Fair on the Thames, Feb. 1814, by Luke Clenell (art in public domain). (To read more about the frost fair, see the following sources at the bottom of this post: Andrews; de Castella; Frost Fairs; Frostiana; and Knowles.)
The snows in 1814 were not just inconvenient: they were dangerous and sometimes even deadly.
During the Regency period, it was difficult to stay dry and warm. Two previous posts on Jane Austen’s World address the efforts people took to keep warm in the Regency: part 1 and part 2.
In another article in The St. James’s Chronicle from January 25, 1814, several snow-related injuries were described. First we read that a middle-aged man slipped and fractured his knee, and then we read:
A young Lady of Kentish-town, whose name is Eustace, by passing from thence on Friday to London, by the public foot-path behind the Veterinary College, got completely immersed in a deep ravine by the side of the path which she was attempting to cross. After struggling for some time, she became quite exhausted, and must have fallen a victim to her unfortunate situation, had not two Gentlemen, who witnessed her distress, although at a considerable distance, ventured to her assistance, and relieved her from her perilous situation.”
With vivid prose, the article paints the precarious situation for Eustace—she almost fell “a victim to her unfortunate situation,” or, in other words, she almost froze to death.
While the middle-aged man and Eustace recovered from their mishaps, others were not so fortunate.
This article, from the 19 January 1814 edition of The Times, reprinted information about deaths in Exeter and Shrewsbury on the 15th of January:
Transcription: Several accidents have occurred, some of which were fatal; on Wednesday a soldier was found dead on Haldon…and yesterday three of the Renfrew Militia were dug out near the same spot, and their bodies conveyed to Chudleigh…. Last week, several of the West Middlesex Militia, who had volunteered for foreign service, were frozen to death on their march from Nottingham. The unfortunate men had been drinking till they were intoxicated, and, lying by the road side, slept—never to wake again!
A week later, on the 26th of January, The Times reported on three more people who died in the snow.
Transcription: The Guard of the Glocester mail reports, that three persons now lie dead at Burford; one a post-boy, who was dug out of the snow yesterday morning; a farmer, who was frozen to death on horseback; and another person, who died in consequence of the inclemency of the weather.
Reports of deaths caused by snow, ice, and cold were printed regularly in newspapers across the country throughout January and February of 1814.
Readers of Emma would have read of death after death in the snow. Some of the readers might have become trapped in carriages in the snow, or forced to lodge with an acquaintance during the storm. If they had not personally suffered from the weather, they would have known people who had suffered. Would these readers really have blamed Mr. Woodhouse for asking “What is to be done, my dear Emma?—what is to be done?”
We do not have any letters from Jane Austen written in January or February of 1814, so we cannot directly access her thoughts on these snowfalls, yet we do know that she began writing Emma in January of 1814. She would have been well aware of the public memory that would develop around these snowfalls, and she uses the snow to not only influence the plot of Emma, but to create larger symbolism.
The scholar Elizabeth Toohey makes the argument that Mr. Knightley’s proposal to Emma is superior to Mr. Elton’s, in part because of the snow and all it symbolizes:
“Mr. Elton’s proposal takes place in a closed carriage in a snowfall at night with all the associations of coldness, darkness, and enclosure, in contrast to Mr. Knightley’s proposal, which occurs in the garden in the warmth of a late summer evening.”
Much of the beauty of Mr. Knightley’s proposal derives from its contrast with Mr. Elton’s proposal on a snowy night.
The characters of Emma lived in an age without snow plows, snow tires, or central heating, when large snowfalls were not just an inconvenience. Snow regularly caused disruption, injury, and death.
During their journey to the Westons, as the first snowflakes begin to fall, John Knightley declares:
“The folly of not allowing people to be comfortable at home—and the folly of people’s not staying comfortably at home when they can! If we were obliged to go out such an evening as this, by any call of duty or business, what a hardship we should deem it;—and here are we, probably with rather thinner clothing than usual, setting forward voluntarily, without excuse, in defiance of the voice of nature, which tells man, in every thing given to his view or his feelings, to stay at home himself, and keep all under shelter that he can.”
John Knightley’s view of snow has a certain soundness to it. Wouldn’t it behoove us all to take what shelter we can during difficult times?
As we read the snow scene in Emma, let us do so with a realization that while Austen may be painting an absurd portrait, the views of these characters are not, in and of themselves, absurd. For 1815 readers, a fear of snow and ice would be justifiable, or at the very least, understandable.
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About the author
Katherine Cowley is the author of the Mary Bennet spy novel, The True Confessions of a London Spy, which features Mary Bennet of Pride and Prejudice in London during January and February of 1814. In addition to surviving epic amounts of snow and attending the last Ice Fair ever held on the Thames, Mary experiences her first London Season and investigates the murder of a messenger for Parliament.
Note from Vic, Jane Austen’s World: In 2021, we reviewed Katherine Cowley’s first mystery in the Mary Bennet series, The Secret Life of Mary Bennet. Attached to it is an interview with the author.
Accessing Regency Newspapers
If you would like to explore Regency newspapers, you can purchase an affordable monthly subscription to the British Newspaper Archive. They have digitized hundreds of newspapers from across the United Kingdom. While to my knowledge individual subscriptions to The Times Digital Archive are not available, many libraries and university libraries have subscriptions that allow you to browse and search the archives of The Times.
References and Further Reading
Andrews, Willam. Famous Frosts and Frost Fairs in Great Britain, George Redway, 1887. Accessed through Project Gutenberg, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/55375/55375-h/55375-h.htm, 1 Jan 2022.
Bartlett, Nora. Jane Austen: Reflections of a Reader, edited by Jane Stabler, Open Book Publishers, 2021.
de Castella, Tom. “Frost fair: When an elephant walked on the frozen River Thames.” BBC News Magazine, 28 Jan. 2014, https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-25862141. Accessed 31 Jan. 2022.
Fergus, Jan. “Male Whiners in Austen’s Novels.” Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal, vol. 18, 1996, pp. 98-108.
Flavin, Louise. “Free Indirect Discourse and the Clever Heroine of Emma.” Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal, vol. 13, 1991, pp. 50-57.
“Frost Fairs: Where Thames Smooth Waters Glide. Frost Fairs on the River Thames.” Thames.me.uk, https://thames.me.uk/index.htm. Accessed 31 January 2022.
Frostiana: or a History of The River Thames, In a Frozen State, G. Davis, 1814.
“Keeping Warm in the Regency Era, Part One.” Jane Austen’s World, 21 Jan. 2009, https://janeaustensworld.com/2009/01/21/keeping-warm-in-the-regency-era-part-one/. Accessed 31 Jan. 2022.
“Keeping Warm in the Regency Era, Part Two.” Jane Austen’s World, 3 Feb. 2009, https://janeaustensworld.com/2009/02/03/ways-to-keep-warm-n-the-regency-era-part-2/. Accessed 31 Jan. 2022.
Knowles, Rachel. “The Frost Fair of 1814.” Regency History, 3 Jan. 2021, https://www.regencyhistory.net/2020/05/the-frost-fair-of-1814.html. Accessed 31 Jan. 2022.
McMaster, Juliet. “The Secret Languages of Emma.” Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal, vol. 13, 1991, pp. 119-131.
Mullan, John. “How Jane Austen’s Emma changed the face of fiction.” The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/05/jane-austen-emma-changed-face-fiction. Accessed 31 January 2022.
The St. James’s Chronicle (London, England), Tuesday, Jan. 25, 1814; pp. 1-4; Issue 8757. Accessed through The British Newspaper Archive 28 Jul. 2020.
The Times (London, England), Monday, Jan. 19, 1814; pp. 1-4; Issue 9122. Accessed through The Times Digital Archive 31 Jan. 2022.
The Times (London, England), Monday, Jan. 24, 1814; pp. 1-4; Issue 9126. Accessed through The Times Digital Archive 27 Jul. 2020.
The Times (London, England), Monday, Jan. 26, 1814; pp. 1-4; Issue 9128. Accessed through The Times Digital Archive 31 Jan. 2022.
Wingard, Sara. “Folks That Go a Pleasuring.” Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal, vol. 14, 1992, pp. 122-131.
Jane Austen's World 
I have been reading and re-reading jane Austen’s novels for several decades. This excellent article will certainly add understanding to my next reading of ”Emma”. Another scene that often seems slightly absurd to modern readers is Louisa Musgrove’s fall at Lyme and the horror it engenders in the other characters. However given the state of medical knowledge and practice at the time, head injuries must often have killed people who would survive today. I’m always rather worried that Louisa is carried to the Harvilles’ house. We all know today about putting the person into the recovery position until the paramedics arrive.
I hadn’t thought about Louisa Musgrove’s fall, but you’re completely right! There would not have been any good medical treatments for head wounds, and we take for granted the ability to do MRIs and other things to determine what is wrong. And when you read about the Battle of Waterloo and other events in the time period, they didn’t do basic things we take for granted, like washing hands before treating patients.
Great article. Having read the diary of James Woodforde, I’ve taken more note of the daily life hinted at in Jane Austen. Woodforde depicts several awful winters, and the trials of travelling any distance, regardless of season. And even in my childhood I recall great drifts of snow in Kent, and my father talks about the great freezes of post-war Britain. I love the humanity of the Randalls Christmas scene, but never doubted that the snow itself could turn deadly. It reminds me of the scene in S and S where everyone is terrified that Marianne will die – it was a perilous world.
I think that often Americans have this perception that the UK doesn’t get really cold winters or large amounts of snow, which taints the readings of American scholars. I haven’t read James Woodforde’s diary, but I need to add it to my to-read list!
I recall one December in London in the 1990’s when the weather was so warm I wore only a light jacket as I walked through Mayfair and to the V&A Museum. I also recall an April in London when I was so cold I could not keep warm. I purchased Woodforde’s illustrated diary, which makes the period between 1759-1802 come alive.
It never occurred to me to question the very real fears of snow in Emma, having been at school in the very snowy years of the late 1970s, which even so did not approach the terrible years engendered in the mini ice age of the Dalton Minimum of which 1814 was at the nadir. I would like to share a day when we were sent home from school because it was snowing and the heaviness of the snow was increasing, so I took my bike and left for home. It wasn’t too bad until I got into the dip through the cemetary. Here I was feeling down at waist level for the 6′ high railings, because the snow over several days had drifted and compacted. but it was once over the humpback bridge over the railway that i got scared.
The snow was no more than 6″ deep here, but it was blowing in swirls and eddies so thick I could not see the front wheel of my bicycle [obviously, I was pushing it, not attempting to ride.] I was disoriented, cold, sleepy, confused, and I had to cross a road, whose mouth was particularly wide, almost 30 feet, with the width of the pavement taken into account, ie wall to feel to wall to feel, which is how I was progressing. I couldn’t stop; but continuing led to a risk, if I got too disoriented, in progressing down the middle of one of the two roads. I made it, but I don’t think I’ve ever been so terrified in my life [it didn’t help that I had not long since read ‘The Long Winter’ by Laura Ingalls Wilder]. But that was a whiteout. And it’s not just the depth of snow, it can be the amount falling. And may I point out, this was in the middle of a town in East Anglia, not in the country.
Should I have phoned home to ask to be collected by car by the main road, not the back road short cut I used by bike? probably. But it did not seem too bad at first. It worsened over about fifteen minutes. And half an hour after I stumbled into the door, in early stage hypothermia and in need of being wakened from the stupor which overcame me, the snow stopped. But if I’d paused? well, I am not sure if I would have survived. Don’t laugh at Mr, Woodhouse’s fear of snow. 1963 was a year so cold my husband remembers all the family living in the one room they could heat properly and essensially living in there. I have had my glass of water for overnight freeze on the table by the bed. England in the throes of global warming is not the same; and also, bear in mind that cars keep going at a lower temperature than horses. Once your horse drops dead of cold, you are in trouble.
My goodness, you tell a harrowing tale. It must have been terrifying and could have ended tragically for you. Thank you for sharing.
in retrospect, I could have felt my way tto someone’s front door and knocked, but that would have been impolite…
That is an incredibly frightening experience! I would’ve definitely panicked. Your readings of Emma would be completely in line with those of Austen’s original readers, who had so many similar experiences.
and what we also have to remember is that it was dark after sundown; really, totally pitch black, the stars and moon the only light and if obscured by the clouds, it could have been so easy to get off roads which were not always much more than dirt tracks. Even the Great North Road, for all its tolls, had rutted areas. And you only need a hard freeze, and a rut on the road can break an axle, and then, what? do you walk and hope you are in walking distance of habitation? and if it was fine when you left, and you did not put on good overshoes or boots, how long is it before cold wet feet have you freezing? I can tell you my school maryjanes did not last the course, and I could not feel my feet when I got in. My flannel scarf saved my face from being scoured too much, but my eyelids were sore for days, and my feet too… but as dad said, if your feet hurt, you’re not hurt.
… and I don’t like to think where I’d have been without my thick woolly hat and fur lined leather gloves
Ice cold snow is dangerous today as well, and there’s a reason police and medics caution people to stay in their cars when they’re in trouble. In January, a young man’s car became stuck on a rural country lane in Virginia. He texted his parents to say he was walking home (I believe he was only several miles away), but the snow was heavy and temperatures were freezing. He got lost in the woods when his phone’s GPS signal failed and was found frozen the following morning, even though rescue personnel were searching for him.
a sad story and a salutary one on respecting the elements
Yes. Rescuers found his car before finding him. So sad.
Thank you very much. I suggest Austen’s refusal to admit that snow can be and was dangerous for the purpose of comedy and character revelation, is of a piece with her almost obsessive refusal to admit anyone can really be sick. She tends strongly to disbelieve people — unless they are near death’s door, and then she is likely to make a macabre joke (as in women dying of childbirth).
One can connect some of the later to the consensus of opinion Austen’s mother was a over-reacting hypochondriac And the story of Jane near death persisting in laying across three chairs rather than disturb her frail/aging (hypocritical) mother reinforces this.
We enjoy the humor of Emma and no carriage is over-turned. The interesting case is Austen’s Sanditon. How much of it is her understandably obsesses with her own very ill condition (she was dying). A way of keeping at bay reality. How much left-over from an attitude we find throughout the novels. I’ll be iconoclastic in the sense I’m going to non-hagiographic or non-emphatic to Austen. Some of the POV which makes her very conservative (it’s still with us) might come from her refusal to be sympathetic and to recognize vulnerability OTOH, there is her very real empathy with Jane Bennet and Fanny Price I don’t recall if she has any truly disabled characters; the famous incident in her letters where she talks with her fingers is ambiguous, or enigmatic (perhaps there’s been some cutting away of lines by Cassandra or someone else).
I forgot this: It’s curious about the over-turned carriage at the opening of Sanditon where Mr Parker has actually half-engineered the accident since her great friend, Mrs Leroy died from a fall from a horse (was it?) and you could die from a carriage over-turning. Maybe had Austen had time to revise and revise in the end it would no have been broad burlesque. When John Thorpe drives a carriage so recklessly, he is risking Catherine’s life — and his own, but then we are not to mourn for characters like him Austen tells us in another novel.
Really perceptive insights! It is interesting that she constantly denies sicknesses, though they were such a real threat. It does provide a more humorous lens for both her and her readers to deal with the real life risks and threats around them.
And per your second comment, I imagine that it would be especially frightening to be in a carriage driven so recklessly. I remember going on a date when I was 18 and the guy had a nice car and decided to drive it over 100 miles per hour to impress me…and it did not impress me. And cars you have metal and airbags and all these protections built in, but carriages are going to leave you even more vulnerable.
Miss Smith in Persuasion was disabled, but she is the only functionally disabled character in a JA novel that I can think of offhand.
Terrific research.
This story reminds me of Reverend Carr who became lost in snow in the Shropshire Hills near where I live in the Victorian times. He left a harrowing account of his struggles to reach safety: https://www.shropshirestar.com/entertainment/2016/01/26/shropshire-legend-reverend-edmund-donald-carr/
It’s fascinating how much more snow there was in the Regency era and the problems it posed. I read of ice markets in Janice Robertson’s Regency novel ‘Eppie.’
In a letter to Cassandra dated 10 January 1809, Jane mentioned “Has your newspaper given a sad story of a Mrs. Middleton, wife of a farmer in Yorkshire, her sister, and servant, being almost frozen to death in the late weather, her little child quite so? I hope the sister is not our friend Miss Woodd, and I rather think her brother-in-law had moved into Lincolnshire, but their name and station accord too well. Mrs. M. and the maid are said to be tolerably recovered, but the sister is likely to lose the use of her limbs.”
It struck me at the time, that in those days, bitter cold was a public threat to all. Thank you for these informative insights!
I loved this post, if only because we had about 5″ of blowing and drifting snow this morning (In Eastern Washington) and wind chills down in the single digits. Mr. Knightly was the wisest of all – stay inside where it’s warm and dry. (Whatever would Emma’s friends do if they had been stuck in Yorkshire a few weeks ago?) ;-)
Enjoyed your article.
denise