In Janeites and Austen L yesterday, I asked for help in understanding the meaning of the following sentence in Chapter 44 of Emma:
"Miss
Bates would hardly give Emma time to say how perfectly new this circumstance
was to her; but as without supposing it possible that she could be ignorant of
any of the particulars of Mr. Frank Churchill's going,
she proceeded to give them all, it was of no consequence."
Subsequently, I posted one interpretation myself, then Christy Somer posted hers, and then, when I awoke today, I saw Diana Birchall’s answer, all of them different! I have now spent even more
time carefully studying all three of our
respective answers to my question as to the proper interpretation of the “shes”
and “hers” in the above sentence from Emma, and
I have come to the entirely sincere conclusion, as hinted at in my Subject Line, that all three of our answers
are not only correct (i.e., make plausible sense in the context of Chapter 44),
but that Jane Austen intended all of them to be correct, for the reasons I will explain at the end of this
post.
But
first here are our three versions, and our own respective explanations, this is the easiest way to keep track
of where we differ:
My
Pronouns: "Miss Bates would hardly give Emma time to say how perfectly new
this circumstance was to [Emma]; but as without [Miss Bates] supposing it
possible that [Miss Bates] could be ignorant of any of the particulars of Mr.
Frank Churchill's going, [Miss Bates] proceeded to give them all, it was of no
consequence."
My
Explanation: I kept telling myself that the "she" in "she could
be ignorant" must be _Emma_, but now I realize, that "she" is
Miss Bates herself! The sentence thus means something different than I
originally understood. It is really Emma's perspective on Miss Bates's state of
mind. She perceives Miss Bates as rattling off all the particulars she knows,
and as blithely assuming that all Miss Bates knows is the same as all that relevant.
Emma feels slighted, because Miss Bates does not bother to ask Emma whether
Emma knew any of it (which of course she did not, but that doesn't stop Emma
from feeling slighted!)
Diana’s
Pronouns: As without [Emma] supposing it
possible that [Miss Bates] could be ignorant of any of the particulars of Mr.
Frank Churchill's going, [Miss Bates] proceeded
to give them all, it was of no consequence."
Diana’s
Explanation: That is: Emma knew
perfectly well that Miss Bates knew the whole story, which Emma herself did not
know. Miss Bates did not stop to ask Emma
if she knew it or not - but she
proceeded to tell the whole story anyway,
so the fact that Emma did NOT know it previously, "was of no
consequence"! Emma did not have to bother to ask - she was told anyway!
Christy’s
Pronouns: "Miss Bates would hardly
give Emma time to say how perfectly new this circumstance was to her; but as
without [Miss Bates] supposing it possible that she" [and I read this
'she' as referring to the latter individual in the preceding sentence -`Emma']
"could be ignorant of any of the particulars of Mr. Frank Churchill's going..."
Christy’s
Explanation: As I read this, the author is presenting Miss Bates as assuming
Miss Woodhouse's intelligence regarding any of the matters pertaining to the
Weston's and whatever may be going on at Randalls, but still, not being able to
stop herself from passing along the information anyway. She is mistaken, of
course, as Emma did not know any of this -that is the irony, imo. The assumed
knowing (and actual not-knowing) being communicated between them. And because
of the ending of this piece with: "it was of no consequence", For me,
this is Emma giving `no consequence' (and at the same time honoring Mr. Knightley's Box Hill lesson), to what might
have been in the past a very irritating and bothersome `consequence'.
Now,
all interpretations arent equal in this case, in various ways. Diana’s is the
most straightforward, in the sense of requiring fewest extrinsic
assumptions. But mine and Christy’s, I
would suggest, are compensated for our extra assumptions by finding richer
resonance as to Emma and Miss Bates’s characterizations.
I.e., note that I found in the passage validation for the motif of Emma being quick to feel slighted, whereas
Christy found in it the opposite meaning, i.e., to show that Emma had well
absorbed the Lesson of Box Hill, which
had occurred only the day before, and no longer felt slighted when she previously
would have.
Christy
was convinced I was wrong, I was convinced that Christy was wrong, and Diana
was convinced that both Christy and I were both wrong! And yet, we’re all “right”! How can that be?
That,
ladies, was, I would suggest, Jane Austen’s main intention! We all know she was perfectly capable of
writing unambiguous sentences and pronouns references whenever she chose, and so
it cannot be mere slovenliness that resulted in the tortured ambiguities of
this one little sentence.
Here’s
where I think we begin to find the deeper answer to why Jane Austen would
engage in this sort of authorial chicanery, first in an online article about
the ambiguity of the pronouncements of the ancient Oracle of Delphi:
“Croesus,
king of Lydia: 'Should I make war on the Persians?'. The answer is: 'If you
make war on the Persians, you will destroy a great realm'. This persuades
Croesus to attack. He loses the war. The realm referred to was his own. This could be a useful oracular response to
any question about waging war. But it is first recorded more than a century
after the time of Croesus, and it looks like a typical paradox of the kind
relished in folklore - a detail conceived in hindsight and fashioned into a
satisfying story. There is a shorter
gap, of only about forty years, before the first mention of the answer
supposedly given to Athens (that she should rely on a ‘wooden wall’ against the
Persians). But this too has the marks of hindsight rather than oracular
brilliance. The walls of Athens fail. The ships of Athens prevail. There is the
opportunity for a pleasing riddle with 'wooden wall' as the answer. It will
quickly do the rounds in the aftermath of victory. All the ambiguous answers by the oracle are
from the early centuries, when there is no contemporary evidence. From about
430 BC contemporary evidence is available, and the answers given are
straightforward. It seems clear that the real function of Delphi is one common
to great religious centres - to provide reassurance to the believers. “ END QUOTE
That
last sentence says it all—Jane Austen constructed the sentence we’ve been
discussing (and also, for that matter,
many of Miss Bates’s utterances in the novel) so as to be amenable to more than
one plausible interpretation.
Emma
invariably treats those utterances as verbose nonsense, and therefore so do many
readers of the novel. But Miss Bates’s statements have great oracular value for
those who treat them as significant hints about what’s going on around her, in
regard to Emma, Jane, Frank, Knightley, et al. And so I believe JA took particular care with
the above-discussed sentence, to make all three of our interpretations (and
perhaps even a fourth none of us has
even imagined?) plausible, so that we
would each find “reassurance” for our own beliefs as to the
meaning of what we’ve just read. It is only in conversation like this, when we
each get to hear that our own interpretations are not
exclusively valid, that we begin to appreciate what a subtle masterpiece each
Austen novel really is.
But
wait! Here’s another, related ancient Greek source for Miss Bates, as
described in an essay I just found online:
“From
Strategies of Greek Tragedy: The Chorus and the Structure of Antigone” by Nola Smith
"Thus,
this chorus is the character who, unlike the rigid and strongly opinionated
named characters, is free to weigh options and to change its mind. The chorus
shifts its position throughout the play, and is swayed by each character's best
arguments. This fluctuation is useful, for it validates the opposing claims,
leaving no definite right. Even those chorus opinions that appear settled in Antigone are actually equivocal. The
individual odes are ambiguous. What appears as a condemnation of Antigone would
serve equally well as a denunciation of Creon in a later stage of the play.
Each rebuke at Creon's pride could just as well serve as a criticism of
Antigone's self-righteous posturing as a martyr. The chorus demands that the
audience constantly re-evaluate, and so helps the audience toward discernment,
and even wisdom.” END QUOTE
As I
first wrote back in 2008 in Janeites, “Miss Bates is a Greek chorus at that
moment, a subliminal echo of Emma's private ruminations. But Emma is
"deaf" to Miss Bates's message.” And Diane Reynolds has made much the same point
several times since then, as to various passages.
In
conclusion, then, in addition to being learned in the significance of the
ancient classics, Jane Austen was a connoisseur of the pitfalls of human
subjectivity, the enormous difficulty of being able to see things from more
than one plausible point of view. This is one important way she showed (not
told) that subjectivity to her readers.
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
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