So, it seems that our dear Jane Austen might be turning up as the face of the new British ten-pound note.
I love this because, although I’m sure the guy who comes up with these things was probably just thinking, “Hey, there’s a British person with ladyish bits; let’s put her on a tenner,” anybody who’s read any Austen knows that Jane felt some feelings about money. It’s everywhere in the novels: Bingley has five thousand a year, and Darcy has ten thousand, and it’s the first thing we know about either of them; the Dashwoods are suddenly impoverished, and there begins the story; Fanny Price is suddenly un-impoverished, and there begins the story; Emma Woodhouse is “handsome, clever, and rich.” A debate-team captain of average skill could probably convince me, without undue effort, that the Austen canon is as much about finances as it is about love and respect between equals.
Jane herself was a gentleman’s daughter—not necessarily champagne wishes and caviar dreams, but enough. But being ON money? Like, printed there to (apparently) represent the female gender to the entirety of her own United Kingdom?* Along with the Queen? I’m pretty sure she couldn’t even have imagined. And THAT—the fact that it makes so much sense to us—makes me really, really happy.
I hope they choose a flattering picture, anyway, because: PRIORITIES.
*My favorite part is actually this: “‘[Governor Sir Mervyn King’s] comments followed fears that the imminent removal of social reformer Elizabeth Fry from the £5 note would mean there were none in circulation featuring women – other than the standard image of the Queen’s head.” A country that worries about gender representation on its currency! HOW NOVEL, she says, side-eyeing the Sacagawea dollar, which only ever comes from public-transit change machines.
austenacious 
For a long time it seemed very likely that after Elizabeth Fry was replaced by Winston Churchill we weren’t going to have any women on our banknotes (other than the Queen, of course). That would have been a great shame because there are so many women from British history who deserve that kind of recognition, so I’m glad that someone somewhere had the sense to include Jane in the new line-up even if they probably didn’t realise how good a decision it really is. Only this afternoon I started rereading Mansfield Park, which of course starts out by comparing the wealth of Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram and remarking upon her good luck in securing him when her fortune was £3,000 too small for it to be an equal match. Obviously Jane is being her usual ironic self, but there’s still something fascinating in the idea that status could be quantified so exactly.
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Actually, it wasn’t a “guy who comes up with these things”–there was a woman (Caroline Criado-Perez) who campaigned really strongly for Jane Austen to be on a banknote. The upsetting thing is that even though she succeeded in the end, she then became the target of major harassment over Twitter.
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