Discussing
the passage about Brunton's Self Control in Jane Austen’s 1815 Letter
111 to Anna Austen Lefroy.....
"I will improve upon it; - my Heroine shall not merely be wafted down an
American river in a boat by herself, she shall cross the Atlantic in the same
way, & never stop till she reaches Gravesent."
.....Diana
Birchall wrote the following today in Janeites & Austen-L:
"[JA]
earlier expressed her unease about Self-Control, writing in Letter 72 (5/29/11)
to CEA before reading it, " We have tried to get "Self-control,"
but in vain. I should like to know what her estimate is, but am always half
afraid of finding a clever novel too clever - & of finding my own story
& my own people all forestalled."...Later, in Letter #91, 1813,
(10/11/13) to CEA: she has read it, and
writes, "I am looking over Self Control again, & my opinion is confirmed of its being an
excellently-meant, elegantly-written Work,
without anything of Nature or Probability in it. I declare I do not know
whether Laura's passage down the American River, is not the most natural, possible, every-day thing she ever does.-
"
Diana, it is noteworthy that Jane Austen writes about Self-Control three times in letters over a span of four years, and
in the latter two instances, zeroes in, as you quoted, on the improbability of
Laura's passage down the American River.
I became
curious to read the actual passage JA repeatedly mocked. Here it is, it occurs
just before the end of the novel, and as you can readily ascertain, it
describes the heroine going over a waterfall in a canoe, surviving somehow, and
then being rescued promptly thereafter by a witness to her fall. “Improbable”
is precisely the word for it!:
“Chapter
33 (near end): The day declined; and Laura, with the joy of her escape, began
to mingle a wish, that, ere the darkness closed around her, she might find
shelter near her fellow beings. She was not ignorant of the dangers of her
voyage. She knew that the navigation of the river was interrupted by rapids. A
cataract which broke its course had been purposely described in her hearing.
She examined her frail vessel and trembled; for life was again become precious,
and feeble seemed her defence against the torrent. The canoe, which could not
have contained more than two persons, was constructed of a slender frame of
wood, covered with the bark of the birch. It yielded to the slightest motion,
and caution was necessary to poise in it even the light form of Laura. Slowly
it floated down the lingering tide; and, when a pine of larger size or form
more fantastic than his fellows enabled her to measure her progress, she
thought that through wilds less impassible her own limbs would have borne her
more swiftly. In vain behind each tangled point did her fancy picture the haunt
of man. Vainly amid the mists of eve did she trace the smoke of sheltered
cottages. In vain at every winding of the stream she sent forward a longing eye
in search of human dwelling. The narrow view was bounded by the dark
wilderness, repeating ever the same picture of dreary repose.
The
sun went down. The shadows of evening fell; not such as in her happy native
land blend softly with the last radiance of day; but black and heavy, harshly
contrasting with the light of a naked sky reflected from the waters, where they
spread beyond the gloom of impending woods. Dark, and more dark the night came
on. Solemn even amid the peopled land, in this vast solitude it became more
awful. Ignorant how near the place of danger might be, fearing to pursue
darkling her perilous way, Laura tried to steer her light bark to the shore,
intending to moor it, to find in it a rude resting place, and in the morning to
pursue her way. Laboriously she toiled, and at length reached the bank in
safety; but in vain she tried to draw her little vessel to land. Its weight
resisted her strength. Dreading that it should slip from her grasp and leave
her without means of escape, she re-entered it, and again glided on in her
dismal voyage. She had found in the canoe a little coarse bread made of Indian
corn; and this, with the water of the river, formed her whole sustenance. Her
frame worn out with previous suffering, awe and fear at last yielded to
fatigue; and the weary wanderer sunk to sleep.
It
was late on the morning of a cloudy day, when a low murmuring sound stealing on
the silence awoke Laura from the rest of innocence. She listened. The murmur
seemed to swell on her ear. She looked up. The dark woods still bent over her.
But they no longer touched the margin of the stream. They stretched their giant
arms from the summit of a precipice. Their image was no more reflected
unbroken. The gray rocks which supported them but half lent their colours to
the rippling water. The wild duck, no longer tempting the stream, flew
screaming over its bed. Each object hastened on with fearful rapidity, and the
murmuring sound was now a deafening roar. Fear supplying super-human strength,
Laura strove to turn the course of her vessel. She strained every nerve; she
used the force of desperation. Half-hoping that the struggle might save her,
half-fearing to note her dreadful progress, she toiled on till the oar was torn
from her powerless grasp, and hurried along with the tide. The fear of death
alone had not the power to overwhelm the soul of Laura. Somewhat might yet be
done perhaps to avert her fate, at least to prepare for it. Feeble as was the
chance of life, it was not to be rejected. Fixing her cloak more firmly about
her, Laura bound it to the slender frame of the canoe. Then commending herself
to heaven with the fervour of a last prayer, she, in dread stillness, awaited
her doom. With terrible speed the vessel hurried on. It
was whirled round by the torrent—tossed fearfully—and hurried on again. It shot
over a smoothness more dreadful than the eddying whirl. It rose upon its prow.
Laura clung to it in the convulsion of terror. A moment she trembled on the
giddy verge. The next, all was darkness!
Chapter
34: When Laura was restored to recollection, she found herself in a plain
decent apartment. Several persons of her own sex were humanely busied in
attending her. Her mind retaining a confused remembrance of the past, she
inquired where she was, and how she had been brought thither. An elderly woman,
of a prepossessing appearance, answered with almost maternal kindness, 'that
she was among friends all anxious for her safety; begged that she would try to
sleep; and promised to satisfy her curiosity when she should be more able to
converse.' This benevolent person, whose name was Falkland, then administered a
restorative to her patient; and Laura, uttering almost incoherent expressions
of gratitude, composed herself to rest.
Awakening
refreshed and collected, she found Mrs Falkland and one of her daughters still
watching by her bed-side. Laura again repeated her questions, and Mrs Falkland
fulfilled her promise, by relating that her husband, who was a farmer, having
been employed with his two sons in a field which overlooked the river, had
observed the canoe approach the fall; that seeing it too late to prevent the
accident, they had hurried down to the bed of the stream below the cataract, in
hopes of intercepting the boat at its reappearance: That being accustomed to
float wood down the torrent, they knew precisely the spot where their
assistance was most likely to prove effectual: That the canoe, though covered
with foam for a moment, had instantly risen again, and that Mr Falkland and his
sons had, not without danger, succeeded in drawing it to land. She then, in her
turn, inquired by what accident Laura had been exposed to such a perilous
adventure; expressing her wonder at the direction of her voyage, since Falkland
farm was the last inhabited spot in that district. Laura, mingling her natural
reserve with a desire to satisfy her kind hostess, answered, that she had been
torn from her friends by an inhuman enemy, and that her perilous voyage was the
least effect of his barbarity. 'Do you know,' said Mrs Falkland, somewhat
mistaking her meaning, 'that to his cruelty you partly owe your life; for had
he not bound you to the canoe, you must have sunk while the boat floated on.'
Laura heard with a faint smile the effect of her self-possession; but
considering it as a call to pious gratitude rather than a theme of self-applause,
she forbore to offer any claim to praise; and suffered the subject to drop
without further explanation.” END QUOTE
Now, to
anyone who believes Jane Austen was serious when she wrote, in that 1811 letter
to CEA, that she was worried that readers would find Self-Control a “clever” novel which might have “forestalled” (i.e., scooped) Sense & Sensibility (published later in 1811), and that JA
actually felt competitive toward and/or threatened by, Brunton as a formidable literary
rival-well, I have a bridge for sale, very cheap, which spans Niagara Falls…..
Seriously….what’s
clear from the sting in JA’s irony is that JA considered Brunton a hack,
writing popular trash. JA’s irony is particularly sharp, when she refers to the
heroine’s survival of a fall over a watery precipice as the most probable event in the novel! In
other words, the fatal flaw of Brunton’s novel is not the improbability of the survival
of an unsurvivable plunge, but the improbability of the characters and their behavior towards each other. That’s a fatal “fall”
in literary skill from which no survival is possible, at least worthy of the
name “literature”.
And
all of the above is background to a fourth
writing by JA referring, obliquely this time, to Brunton’s bestseller---which
is the poem JA wrote about niece Anna (interestingly, also the recipient of
Letter 111):
Mock Panegyric on a Young Friend
In
measured verse I'll now rehearse The
charms of lovely Anna:
And,
first, her mind is unconfined Like any
vast savannah.
Ontario's
lake may fitly speak Her fancy's ample
bound:
Its
circuit may, on strict survey Five
hundred miles be found.
Her
wit descends on foes and friends Like famed Niagara's fall;
And
travellers gaze in wild amaze, And
listen, one and all.
Her
judgment sound, thick, black, profound,
Like transatlantic groves,
Dispenses
aid, and friendly shade To all that in it roves.
If
thus her mind to be defined America
exhausts,
And
all that's grand in that great land In
similes it costs --
Oh
how can I her person try To image and
portray?
How
paint the face, the form how trace, In
which those virtues lay?
Another
world must be unfurled, Another language
known,
Ere
tongue or sound can publish round Her
charms of flesh and bone.
Although
neither Brunton nor Self Control is explicitly mentioned, there is an
obvious resonance in terms of American aquatic imagery that suggests that JA
was alluding to them again in this little poem, and Kathryn Sutherland, in
2002, was thinking along similar lines:
"The
geography of the poem––‘Ontario’s lake’, in fact the smallest of the five Great Lakes, ‘Niagara’s Fall’,
and ‘transatlantic groves’ (groves beyond the Atlantic)––represents a popular,
even hackneyed, setting for romantic adventure in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. See, for example, Charlotte Smith, The Old Manor House
and Mary Brunton, Self-Control, to which JA makes amused reference in a
letter to Cassandra…”
I
think Sutherland is correct that Charlotte Smith was lurking in the back of JA’s
mind as well, given that the following passage in Smith's The Old Manor
House refers to "an extensive savannah" along the banks of a
great North American river:
"This
was on the banks of the river St Lawrence, at a spot where it was about a mile
and a quarter over. The banks where they encamped were of an immense height,
composed of limestone and calcined shells; and an area of about an hundred
yards was between the edge of this precipice, which hung over the river, and a
fine forest of trees, so magnificent and stately as to sink the woods of Norway
into insignificance. On the opposite side of the river lay AN EXTENSIVE
SAVANNAH, alive with cattle, and coloured with such a variety of swamp plants,
that their colour, even at that distance, detracted something from the vivid
green of the new sprung grass: beyond this the eye was lost in a rich and
various landscape, quite unlike any thing that European prospects offer; and
the acclivity on which the tents stood sinking very suddenly on the left, the
high cliffs there gave place to a cypress swamp, or low ground, entirely filled
with these trees; while on the right the rocks, rising suddenly and sharply, were
clothed with wood of various species; the ever-green oak, the scarlet oak, the
tulip tree, and magnolia, seemed bound together by festoons of flowers, some
resembling the convolvuluses of our gardens, and others the various sorts of
clematis, with vignenias, and the Virginian creeper; some of these already in
bloom, others only in the first tender foliage of spring: beneath these
fragrant wreaths that wound about the trees, tufts of rhododendron and azalea,
of andromedas and calmias, grew in the most luxuriant beauty; and strawberries
already ripening, or even ripe, peeped forth among the rich vegetation of grass
and flowers. On this side all was cheerful and lovely – on the other mournful
and gloomy…”
In
addition to the subtle parody of Brunton’s uninspired prose in JA’s poem, I
just also noticed that the last two lines are a clever parody of Bottom’s hyperbolic
(and Paulian) pronouncements upon awakening:
But back to Brunton. JA, sharp, retentive reader that she was, was well aware
that Brunton was not only a hack writer, but also that her writing was "inspired"
by Smith’s superior productions----(e.g., Brunton's uncompleted last manuscript
was entitled Emmeline, the same title as Smith's much earlier and very
famous novel of the same name. Plus, Self-Control’s heroine is named "Laura Montreville", and
Montreville was the name of a male character in Smith's Emmeline).
So I
guess this was why JA chose to point to both Smith and Brunton in her poem, and
it also tells me that Anna was in on the entire joke, and was expected by her
aunt to pick up on all the nuances of Anna as a heroine in an American
adventure by Smith or Brunton, as Anna worked on the writing of…..Which is the HEROINE”!
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
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