Atlas of the European Novel, 1800-1900

Marriage market, then. Like every other market, this also must take place somewhere, and figure 4 shows where: London, Bath, the seaside. Here people meet to complete their transactions, and here is also where all the trouble of Austen's universe occurs: infatuations, scandals, slanders, seductions, elopements- disgrace. And all of this happens because the marriage market (again, like every other market) has produced its own brand of swindlers: shady relatives, social climbers, speculators, seducers, déclassé aristocrats ...

Neighbours in Jane Austen are not the people actually living nearby; they are the people living a little less
nearby, who, in social recognition, can be visited. What she sees across the land is a network of propertied
houses and families, and through the holes of this tightly drawn mesh most actual people are simply not seen. To
be face-to-face in this world is already to belong to a class [ ... ] The country [ ... ] becomes real only as it
relates to the houses which are the real nodes.

RA YMOND WILLIAMS, Tbe Country and tbe City

Literary sociology has long insisted, as we know, on the relationship between the novel and capitalism. But Austen's space suggests an equally strong affinity (first pointed out by Benedict Anderson, in Imagined Communities) between the novel and the geo-political reality of the nation-state. A modern reality, the nation-state - and a curiously elusive one. Because human beings can directly grasp most of their habitats: they can embrace their village, or valley, with a single glance; the same with the court, or the city (especially early on,
when cities are small and have walls); or even the universe - a starry sky, after all, is nota bad image of it. But the nation-state? 'Where' is it? What does it look like? How can one see it? And again: village, court, city, valley, universe can all be visually represented - in paintings, for instance: but the nation-state? Well, the nation-state ...
found the novel. And viceversa: the novel found the nation-state. And being the only symbolic form that could represent it, it became an essential component of our modern culture.