Jane Austen exhibition focuses on working women

26 July 2025

News image — The exhibition highlights stories of the women who enabled the comfortable lives of characters in the novels

Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection A Visit to the Child at Nurse by William Ward, a painting which shows a rich Georgian lady visiting a room full of children, the smallest held by a nurse. — The exhibition highlights stories of the women who enabled the comfortable lives of characters in the novels

An exhibition is marking the 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen by focusing on the Georgian working women of the county in which she was born.

Hampshire Cultural Trust's Beyond the Bonnets exhibition includes voiced extracts from the author's novels, correspondence with her sister Cassandra and contemporary newspaper advertisements.

Organisers say the objects on display "celebrate the ordinary and hold an importance that goes beyond their unassuming appearance", such as a calico apron, a wooden sandal and a tortoiseshell hair comb.

It opens in The Gallery at The Arc, Winchester, on Saturday, and runs until 2 November.

Getty Images A painting of Jane Austen, who has short curly hair, blue eyes and is wearing a pink ruffled headband. — It is 250 years since Jane Austen was born

Jane Austen was born in Steventon, Hampshire.

Her novels, which include Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma and Persuasion, are renowned for their wit, social observation and insights into the lives of early 19th Century women.

But the exhibition aims to highlight the stories of the women who enabled the comfortable lives of some of the characters in the novels, exploring domestic service, education, childcare and trade.

Wellcome Collection A caricature of a convalescing woman trying in vain to rouse her slumbering hired nurse. — Beyond the Bonnets explores domestic service, education, childcare and trade

Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection A watercolor of two woman meeting to trade milk. The younger one carries equipment and seems to be measuring something. A very old, frail-looking woman looks on, carrying a pot. — The organisers said it would look "past the glamour and opulence" of the novels

Curator Kathleen Palmer said the exhibition brought together a "multitude of Hampshire voices – Austen's distinctive and wry voice, the voices of individual working women around her and the echoes of their lives found in collections and archives".

"Visitors will discover unexpected and rich real-life histories of Georgian Hampshire in parallel with enjoying the acute observation of Austen's own words," she said.

The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University A drawing of a Georgian lady with an absolutely enormous hat. — The exhibition is running in The Gallery at The Arc, Winchester

Paul Sapwell, chief executive at the trust, described the exhibition as "compelling, heartwarming and emotive".

He said it would reveal the "unexpected and often overlooked lives of working women at the time of Jane Austen and gives them a voice".

He added: "At times provocative, the exhibition purposefully looks past the glamour and opulence of her lead characters in the novels and, indeed, our general consciousness of the period, to explore and expose the stories of real working women."

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