This
post comes in two halves, the deep connections between which will become
apparent as you read along.
AMBIGUITY
ABOUT AMBIGUITY IN LETTER 79
As is
obvious from SharpElvesSociety---the name I invented, and have always used, for
my blog-- I consider the following very famous passage in Jane Austen’s Letter
79 dated January 29, 1813 to be the proverbial center of the onion, in terms of
my (heretical) understanding of Jane Austen’s writings, and also of her life.
She, of course, is writing about the recent publication of her “darling
child”, Pride & Prejudice:
"There
are a few Typical errors – & a “said he” or a “said she” would sometimes
make the Dialogue more immediately clear – but “I do not write for such dull
Elves” “As have not a great deal of Ingenuity themselves.” – The 2d vol. is
shorter than I cd wish – but the difference is not so much in reality as in
look, there being a a larger proportion of Narrative in that part. I have lopt
& cropt so successfully however that I imagine it must be rather shorter
than S. & S. altogether. – Now I will try to write of something else; – it
shall be a complete change of subject – Ordination."
It
continues to amaze me that the mainstream scholarly and lay Janeite interpretation of the first part of the above passage,
is that Jane Austen was matter-of-factly acknowledging her own writing errors,
in failing to adequately specify a few pronoun attributions in the novel.
My
interpretation, which I have seen expressed rarely in the Janeite world, is
that this passage is a classic Austenian put-on, in exactly the same vein as certain
other famous passages about her own fiction in JA’s letters to James Stanier
Clarke and nephew JEAL. And whence derives my interpretation? To paraphrase Mr.
Darcy, I have had the pleasure of Jane Austen’s literary acquaintance long
enough to know that she found great enjoyment in occasionally professing opinions---especially
self-deprecatory opinions---which in fact were not her own---quite the contrary.
I find
absurd the notion that JA would so gaily and cavalierly acknowledge such a
serious authorial error as unwittingly misleading readers as to the identity of
characters speaking or behaving in ways important to the story of the novel she
has worked on for 15 years! And yet this absurd notion not only persists, it
still holds center stage. Such is the great power of the enduring myth of Jane
Austen’s artistic modesty, humility, and (as so many Janeites are apparently so
quick to believe) casual compositional slovenliness.
To
paraphrase Elle from Clueless, I
mean, really….AS IF members of Jane Austen’s family read P&P and just
happened to notice these errors as soon as they read it through, errors which
supposedly had eluded JA during all her numerous revisions! ….AS IF when they brought
these errors to her attention, she just said, basically, “Oops, so what” and
did not concern herself with correcting them, let alone getting upset about it.
…Like being told your “darling child” has smallpox, and you gaily respond,
“Oops!”…..I mean, REALLY. (okay, no more channeling of Elle from Clueless)
I
find the mainstream interpretation particularly staggering, because there is
another subtle but overarching aspect of the above passage in Letter 79, which
underscores the put-on, once you notice it. To wit: Jane Austen not only jarringly writes
her self-deprecation in a giddy tone--as I will now elaborate, it also is
written so extremely cryptically, even more cryptic than the “said hes” and “said
shes” in the novel she had just published after 15 years of repeated revisions!
How
so cryptically, you ask? Well, for starters, JA alludes to Scott’s famous poem Marmion, but she materially changes and expands his original
line, which went:
"I
do not rhyme to that dull elf, Who cannot image to himself"
It’s
clear why she changes “rhyme” to “write”, but why does she change Scott’s
“image” to the similar-sounding, but different-meaning “ingenuity”? What does
she mean by this? Judging by scholarly reaction to that sentence, a number of
possible meanings could be plausibly applied to “ingenuity”—and so we must ask,
why would JA be so vague, presenting a mangled line of famous poetry in an
ambiguous way, instead of writing clearly and exactly what she means? I smell a
rat…… ;)
My
reading of “ingenuity”, by the way, is that JA is herself imagining a
sharp-eyed reader who is ingenious enough to figure things out not only who
“he” and “she” are in various passages, but, equally important on a
metafictional level, to figure out why these
attributions have been left ambiguous in the first place—and to then realize
that one effect of such ambiguities is that it permits the text to be plausibly read in alternative ways,
i.e., where “he” might be, e.g., Darcy in one interpretation, but Bingley in
another, with two completely different meanings….this last comment will take on
extra meaning by the end of this post.
And
JA then goes on to cryptically hint at her own intentionality in these “errors”
by highlighting that her final revision involved a massive cutting of text from
the last previous draft—she estimates that P&P is now a bit shorter than
S&S, and--guess what!--she was amazingly accurate in her estimate, as
P&P is 121,880 words and S&S is 119,593 (a difference of less than 2%
between the respective lengths of the two novels!). P&P obviously was once
as long as MP and Emma, the two
longest novels, both close to 160,000 words.
Plus,
JA points out that she is fully cognizant that as a result of her cutting,
there is now a much greater proportion of narrative to dialogue in the second
volume than there was previously. So it’s not just quantity she has
dramatically altered, it’s the fundamental nature of the words themselves,
since narration is a whole different beast than dialogue.
All
of which ought to make the reader wonder why JA would consciously alter the
“feel” of the latter part of the novel so drastically, especially given that
she had to have been fully aware that what makes P&P so “light, bright and
sparkling”, and therefore so especially pleasing to her readers, is not the
narration, but is the witty, play-like dialogue, which is almost entirely
confined to the first volume.
And
my answer to that puzzling authorial decision is that this is intended to make
the suspicious reader wonder what happened exactly to the witty, vivacious Lizzy
Bennet with whom we all fell in love with in Volume 1. We will feel the absence
of her sparkle even if we don’t consciously take note of it. This is an aspect
of the novel which has been noted by Austen scholars over the years, but I don’t
recall any scholar realizing that this was entirely intentional on JA’s part—indeed,
a late decision in the composition
process.
And
why would a writer careful and precise enough to monitor, pretty much exactly,
how long her first two novels were, and also to monitor the balance of
narration and dialogue in different parts of P&P, also be such a blockhead
as to fail to adequately show something as elementary as who “he” and “she”
were, every time she referred to her characters! It’s just more absurdity
heaped on the other absurdity!
And
finally, JA ends this passage in Letter 79 by abruptly turning to the topic of
her next fictional effort, and then writing in even more ambiguous fashion—forests have fallen in the service of the
effort to explain what Jane Austen meant by “ordination”. My point being, once
again, JA is incredibly vague and ambiguous---and do you believe she did this
because she was incapable of expressing herself clearly if she had wished
to? How absurd is that, given that she
is known for the incredibly elegant, limpid lucidity of her prose!
And
by the way, all of the above only reinforces the claims of myself and a handful
of other scholars that Mark Twain was putting William Dean Howells on when he
wrote the following in a letter to said Janeite buddy:
"Every
time I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the
skull with her own shin-bone"
For
more on that Twainian put-on, start here:
Now I
see that Twain, on top of the passages in P&P which he picked up on and
emulated, had also picked up on, and was emulating, the ironic put-on about
“dull elves” in Letter 79!
THE
MYSTERY PASSAGE IN CHAPTER 45 OF PRIDE & PREJUDICE
But
now, with that lengthy prelude, I turn to the specific passage in Chapter 45 of
P&P which I quoted from in my Subject Line.
P&P might actually rank first (even above Emma) in the number of textual mysteries which tend to be raised by
non-scholarly readers over and over again over the years, and never get
definitively resolved.
I’m
talking about questions repeatedly raised by readers who are not (a) English professors, or (b) suspicious
readers who, like me, read strongly against the grain, looking for textual
trouble. These are everyday Austen readers who are just genuinely trying to
figure out what has happened at a particular point in the story, and not on a
seemingly obscure questions I like to ask (like “Who was the girl who whispers
to Lizzy?”….
…whom
I continue to assert was Mary Bennet), but meaty basic stuff like “Who told Lady
Catherine? (about Darcy’s and Elizabeth’s “engagement”)”
That
is the only one which became a book title (when John Sutherland lifted the idea
that Charlotte was the leaker from amateur scholar Kim Damstra), but not far
behind in frequency of being raised over and over again, is the passage in
Chapter 45 when Lizzy visits Pemberley. As will be apparent when you reread it,
it is one of the several passages in P&P which JA had in mind especially when
she referred to the “said he” or a “said she” which “ingenuity” needed to be
applied to. Let’s take a closer look at it.
Janeites
have been puzzling over various ambiguous pronomial attributions in the
following passage for a very long time. There are lots of them scattered through this
longish passage, but I am writing today to discuss only one of them---at the
very end---the one which actually has received the least attention, and I will explain why I think that is, i.e.,
because it is so very inexplicable by conventional readings---but I am giving
you the whole passage, so you can have the overall context clear in your mind
when you get up to it.
So,
please read the following quoted passage carefully, reacquaint yourself with
what it tells us, and then my analysis of the last sentence will immediately
follow the quote. Let me set the scene. We
are at this crucial moment, not long in the plotline before Lizzy receives
Jane’s shocking letter about Lydia eloping with Wickham, when Darcy has just
walked into the parlor at Pemberley where Lizzy has been sitting with the
Bingley sisters and Georgiana, among others present:
“No
sooner did [Darcy] appear than Elizabeth wisely resolved to be perfectly easy
and unembarrassed; -- a resolution the more necessary to be made, but perhaps
not the more easily kept, because she saw that the suspicions of the whole
party were awakened against them, and that there was scarcely an eye which did
not watch his behaviour when he first came into the room. In no countenance was
attentive curiosity so strongly marked as in Miss Bingley's, in spite of the
smiles which overspread her face whenever she spoke to one of its objects; for
jealousy had not yet made her desperate, and her attentions to Mr. Darcy were
by no means over. Miss Darcy, on her brother's entrance, exerted herself much
more to talk; and Elizabeth saw that he was anxious for his sister and herself
to get acquainted, and forwarded as much as possible every attempt at
conversation on either side. Miss Bingley saw all this likewise; and, in the
imprudence of anger, took the first opportunity of saying, with sneering
civility -- "Pray, Miss
Eliza, are not the -- -- shire Militia removed from Meryton? They must be a
great loss to your family."
In
Darcy's presence she dared not mention Wickham's name; but Elizabeth instantly
comprehended that he was uppermost in her thoughts; and the various
recollections connected with him gave her a moment's distress; but exerting
herself vigorously to repel the ill-natured attack, she presently answered the
question in a tolerably disengaged tone. While she spoke, an involuntary glance
shewed her Darcy, with an heightened complexion, earnestly looking at her, and
his sister overcome with confusion, and unable to lift up her eyes. Had Miss
Bingley known what pain she was then giving her beloved friend, she undoubtedly
would have refrained from the hint; but she had merely intended to discompose
Elizabeth, by bringing forward the idea of a man to whom she believed her partial,
to make her betray a sensibility which might injure her in Darcy's opinion, and
perhaps to remind the latter of all the follies and absurdities by which some
part of her family were connected with that corps. Not a syllable had ever
reached her of Miss Darcy's meditated elopement. To no creature had it been
revealed, where secresy was possible, except to Elizabeth; and from all
Bingley's connexions her brother was particularly anxious to conceal it, from
that very wish which Elizabeth had long ago attributed to him, of their
becoming hereafter her own. He had certainly formed such a plan, and without
meaning that it should effect his endeavour to separate him from Miss Bennet,
it is probable that it might add something to his lively concern for the welfare
of his friend. Elizabeth's collected behaviour, however, soon quieted his
emotion; and as Miss Bingley, vexed and disappointed, dared not approach nearer
to Wickham, Georgiana also recovered in time, though not enough to be able to
speak any more. Her brother, whose eye she feared to meet, SCARCELY RECOLLECTED
HER INTEREST IN THE AFFAIR; and the very circumstance which had been designed
to turn his thoughts from Elizabeth, seemed to have fixed them on her more, and
more cheerfully….” END QUOTE
So,
my question to you is, who is “her” in the ALL CAPS section in that last
sentence, and what “interest in the affair” is being referred to?
From searching
online and in the scholarly databases, I believe that the only time this
specific question has come up, the explanation given is that “her” must be
Georgiana, because Darcy is “Her brother” and who else but “she” would fear to
meet Darcy’s eye. And, so the explanation goes, “her brother” (Darcy) had nearly
forgotten about Georgiana’s having nearly eloped with Wickham, so much so that
Caroline Bingley’s intended provocation had boomeranged by bringing Elizabeth
to Darcy’s attention from across the room.
But even
though the syntax seems to strongly support “her” being Georgiana, how could it
possibly be the case that Georgiana’s having nearly eloped with Wickham only
one year earlier has nearly slipped entirely out of Darcy’s recollection? The mind reels at the very suggestion!
Consider:
even if Darcy had been trying desperately to forget it; even if he was
especially susceptible to Freudian repression due to guilty feelings; even if
he took a deep swallow of laudanum; we know for a fact that less than 4 months
earlier, when he wrote his letter to Elizabeth, he specifically recounted to
her the salient facts of the near-elopement, and impressed upon Elizabeth the
total secrecy of that event. Darcy would
have to be as psychotic as Norman Bates to have had Georgiana’s central and
shattering role in this event be “scarcely recollected” by him at Pemberley.
Oh,
and I almost forgot the most obvious refresher of his memory---Caroline Bingley
has just mentioned Wickham!
So,
unless (as is possible) I have made some fatal error somewhere in my analysis,
and have misconstrued some key point---in which case, please put me out of my misery and tell me what it is!---it appears
that “her” cannot refer to Georgiana.
But
then, who could it be? The only
females who have been mentioned in this paragraph, who could therefore possibly
be “her”, are:
Georgiana—but
I’ve just gotten through demolishing her as a candidate;
Lizzy---but
that is equally absurd, in a different way, because we know for certain that Lizzy
was never “interested”, in the sense of “involved”, in the Wickham-Georgiana
fracas; and if “interest” meant, instead, “curiosity” and not “involvement”, how could
Darcy possibly have forgotten that he wrote to Elizabeth four months earlier
specifically to confide the fact of that nearly-catastrophic affair to her?
Mrs.
Hurst—she is in the parlor at Pemberley, that is true, but she is not even
mentioned in the paragraph, so for JA to suddenly refer to her as “her” out of
the clear blue sky is absurd, even before we reach the absurdity of wrenching Mrs.
Hurst into an interpretation that makes any sense at all—try it , you’ll
quickly see.
So
that only leaves two other females who are mentioned in this paragraph:
Miss
Bennet, i.e., Jane, who is not there at Pemberley, but who has been mentioned
only a few sentences earlier, and very saliently so---so the “her” could
syntactically refer to her; and
Miss
Bingley, i.e., Caroline, who is there, and who has just been mentioned.
So, let’s
try each one out and see how they each “fit”, and see whether a plausible
explanation can be generated for either or perhaps both of them:
“as
Miss Bingley, vexed and disappointed, dared not approach nearer to Wickham,
Georgiana also recovered in time, though not enough to be able to speak any
more. [Darcy], whose eye [Georgiana] feared to meet, SCARCELY RECOLLECTED [Jane’s]
INTEREST IN THE AFFAIR; and the very circumstance which had been designed to
turn [Darcy’s] thoughts from Elizabeth, seemed to have fixed them on [Elizabeth]
more, and more cheerfully….”
Unless
Jane was somehow “interested” in the Wickham-Georgiana affair (because she had
been in London without Lizzy), how could it be Jane? Actually, I have some ideas about that possibility,
but I recognize that they are far, far from the grid of the overt story, so I
will leave those ideas for another venue….
But
let’s try Miss Bingley, and see if we can stay on the grid with her as “her”:
“as
Miss Bingley, vexed and disappointed, dared not approach nearer to Wickham,
Georgiana also recovered in time, though not enough to be able to speak any
more. [Darcy], whose eye [Caroline or Georgiana, take your pick] feared to
meet, SCARCELY RECOLLECTED [Caroline’s] INTEREST IN THE AFFAIR; and the very
circumstance which had been designed to turn his thoughts from Elizabeth,
seemed to have fixed them on [Elizabeth] more, and more cheerfully….”
Hmm….very interesting, as a wise man one
said. While it would seem preposterous for Jane to have been involved somehow
in the Wickham-Georgiana affair, I suspect it seems to you, as it does to me,
much less preposterous for Caroline to have been involved—most Janeites see her
as a scheming, manipulative, desperate character, who would probably do just
about anything to get Darcy to marry her.
Now,
let’s speculate intelligently about how she might have been involved. Darcy
wrote to Elizabeth: “I joined [Georgiana and Mrs. Yonge] unexpectedly [in
Ramsgate] a day or two before the intended elopement…” We know that Darcy often traveled in company
with his close friends, especially when on a pleasure trip, as a trip to
Ramsgate would have been. Darcy, if he is telling the truth to Lizzy, went to
Ramsgate as a kind of surprise visit to Georgiana, and you’d think that Bingley
and his sisters, who were all well-acquainted with Georgiana, would have been
prominent members of his entourage.
So
perhaps Caroline really was part of his entourage there, and, while there,
somehow got wind of Wickham’s being there? Recall how Mary Musgrove spots Mrs.
Clay and Cousin Elliot from the window in Bath—perhaps Caroline caught a
glimpse of Wickham alone with Georgiana on the street in Ramsgate, and alerted
Darcy?
Now,
if this all makes Caroline sound a little like Mrs. Clay, that’s not an
enormous leap, is it? It does not mandatorily propel us into an alternative
story line, it can be seen instead as bringing to light an event which Darcy
might have had really good reason not to disclose to Lizzy in his letter. After
all, we know that even though he claimed not to lie, he was not averse to
keeping silent about something in a way that functioned like a lie. And he had
penetration, and could readily imagine what a major turn-off it would have been
to Lizzy, to read that Caroline Bingley had played some positive role in saving
Georgiana from infamy. In a letter in which he seeks to win Lizzy’s sympathy
and understanding, a very bad idea to throw the woman in Lizzy’s face who was
working so hard to win Darcy for herself.
At
least, that scenario is a whole lot more plausible than all the alternatives I
went through previously, or so it seems to me.
What
do you think?
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
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