] I have been thinking of her brother Edward and the Knight's adoption of him. I can't help but wondering how it came about.

] Remember that Edward was 14-15 at this time. And how do you go about telling a boy about such a thing?

Leif, thanks for sharing all of these interesting details surrounding Edward’s pre-adoption relationship with the Knights. I hadn’t read, before, of the Knights involvement with Edward before the adoption. It is interesting to know that the Knights favored Edward
even before they could have known of their inability to bear children. The adoption seems strange from our modern perspective, and I’m comforted to think that the whole affair may have been conducted with real love and sensitivity.

However, for the sake of a more interesting discussion, I’ll play devil’s advocate. :-)

Perhaps Edward’s adoption was a more unsympathetic ordeal, a cold businesslike transaction? Somewhere I saw a painting of George Austen presenting his son Edward to Mr. Knight, while Mrs. Knight and another lady sit playing a game at a table, not troubling themselves to interrupt their game. To our modern eyes at least, this painting portrays the adoption in an unsympathetic light. Furthermore, we may look to Jane’s writings for clues of how she may have regarded adoptions of children by wealthy relatives. Fanny Price’s unhappy ordeal comes to mind, although Frank Churchill’s situation seems to be more of a parallel to Edward Austen Knight’s. Frank may seem to be a fortunate fellow, but JA makes either Emma or her sister Isabella – sorry I don’t have a book with me here – remark that there is something fundamentally ‘unnatural’ about giving up one’s children to adoption. Could JA have been thinking of her brother’s adoption when writing Frank’s and Fanny’s stories?