Article 2: Riddles and Puzzles In a time without television and internet, word games, puzzles and riddles were entertainment for adults and children. In Emma Harriet has already collected 300 riddles. Jane Austen and her family were fond of word play, writing and sending poems to commemorate the birth of a baby or to entertain an absent family member. Sons and daughters The children of the gentry were expected to be
educated. Boys either had their
own master at home or were sent to school or to live with a learned gentleman
like Jane Austen’s father, who was a minister of religion and teacher. For many sons, particular younger sons
unlikely to inherit, such education was important preparation for a profession
in the church, military, navy or the law.
Being literate and numerate were valuable skills that gentlewomen needed to run a household and educate their own children. Reading, writing, mathematics and the accomplishments of music, languages and needlework formed the curriculum for girls. Girls either had a governess as Emma Woodhouse and the Bertram sisters did, were sent to school like Anne Elliott or as was quite common in times of financial constraint, educated at home by their mother and father as the Bennet sisters were. A box of letters and a blunder In Emma, Isabella and John Knightley’s children are evidently
encouraged to learn, and use, their alphabet from at least before the age of
six, the age of their eldest child Henry.
It is the Knightley children’s box of letters which Frank Churchill uses
to communicate with Jane Fairfax that he had made a “blunder” in almost giving
away that they were writing to each other, an obvious sign of an engagement
between the pair. He also uses the
letters to distract Emma with the word “Dixon” playing on the joke that they
share at Jane’s discomfort. | "Miss Woodhouse” said Frank Churchill, ….. “have your nephews taken away their alphabets – their box of letters? It used to stand here. Where is it? This is a sort of dull-looking evening, that ought to be treated rather as winter than summer. We had great amusement with those letters one morning. I want to puzzle you again”.(Emma) Spinning tops and toy soldiers Toys for children, such as dolls, spinning tops, toy soldiers, marionettes and shuttlecock, could increasingly be purchased from the toy shops found in the larger towns and cities of Britain. However given the availability of paper and cardboard it is likely that many families made their own box of letters. The carpentry skills of a family member, or a staff member in wealthier families, were also called upon to fashion letters out of wood for the children.  |
