This
morning, I awoke to the following interesting and provocative comment by
someone named Ceri at my blog post about my “wild idea” about Anne Elliot being
vision-impaired:
“Well
it's an interesting argument but I think many of the times that she didn't see
it's not that she couldn't see, but because she was thinking. E.g 'These were
thoughts, with their attendant visions, which occupied and flurried her too
much to leave her any power of observation' (Chapter 20)”
I was
delighted, because I had somehow overlooked the passage she quoted from in
Chapter 20, when I was scouring the text of Persuasion
for examples of Anne’s visual deficit and aural bountifulness.
While
Ceri is in one sense correct, and her interpretation is plausible, yet, in
another sense, as I will show, below, this passage at the same time also actually
provides fantastic additional support for my reading as a plausible alternative.
And,
for those willing to hang with me till the end of this post, I promise you not
one but two additional textual
discoveries about Ann’s vision impairment, in Chapters 19 and 23, respectively,
which are not only linked to each other in a remarkable way, they also both
(but especially the second one) change our understanding of the end of the
novel, in particular our understanding of the mysterious “Mr. E”, Mr. Elliot.
But I
begin with Ceri’s passage, expanded to quote with full surrounding context:
Chapter
20: Anne SAW NOTHING, THOUGHT NOTHING of the brilliancy of the room. Her
happiness was FROM WITHIN. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks glowed; but SHE
KNEW NOTHING ABOUT IT. She was thinking only of the last half hour, and as they
passed to their seats, her mind took a hasty range over it. His choice of
subjects, his expressions, and still more his manner and look, had been such as
she could see in only one light. His opinion of Louisa Musgrove's inferiority,
an opinion which he had seemed solicitous to give, his wonder at Captain
Benwick, his feelings as to a first, strong attachment; sentences begun which
he could not finish, his half averted eyes and more than half expressive
glance, all, all declared that he had a heart returning to her at least; that
anger, resentment, avoidance, were no more; and that they were succeeded, not
merely by friendship and regard, but by the tenderness of the past. Yes, some
share of the tenderness of the past. She could not contemplate the change as
implying less. He must love her.
These were THOUGHTS, WITH THEIR
ATTENDANT VISIONS, which occupied and flurried her too much TO LEAVE ANY POWER
OF OBSERVATION; and she passed along the room WITHOUT HAVING A GLIMPSE OF HIM, WITHOUT
EVEN TRYING TO DISCERN HIM. When their places were determined on, and they were
all properly arranged, she looked round to see IF HE SHOULD HAPPEN TO BE IN THE
SAME PART OF THE ROOM, but he was not; HER EYE COULD NOT REACH HIM; and the
concert being just opening, she must consent for a time to be happy in a
humbler way. “
This
is exactly the sort of passage that Hennedy was referring to in his 1973
article as being present in multiple places in the text, when he said that
Anne’s lack of visual perception was severely diminished. What I find most
fascinating is the self-talk that Anne is engaging in, as she repeatedly
reframes her lack of seeing as a lack
of thinking. It appears that she is
in denial about her diminished vision—and who wouldn’t be, if your vision
started to fail and it might seem as if you were slowly going blind, and you
lived in an era when doctors had no clue whatsoever as to the cause or cure of
such an alarming condition--and so she keeps desperately trying to convince
herself, over and over again, that it’s just”” that she’s not thinking about
watching , or he’s “just” not in the same part of the room as she is, etc
etc----all of this is much preferable to admitting to oneself that one is increasingly
incapable, physically, of the taken for granted human faculty of seeing the
world around you, at any distance, even
across a concert room.
In
particular, I love the line “her eye could not reach him”---think about that,
it’s presented without special emphasis by JA, but when you pull it out of the
paragraph and look this statement in isolation, it’s literally saying that,
even at a distance of, say, 25 feet, he’s too far away from her for her to even
see him! And this is clearly not a new experience, it’s something she has
clearly experienced in her life long enough not to freak out when it
happens---it’s become normal for her, even as she rationalizes what is
happening into something over which she has the power of choice, if only she
chose to look.
In
this way of using as the central focalizing character a person with some
perceptual or cognitive deficit, I am strongly reminded of the novel of about
10 years back, Haddon’s The Curious
Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, in which the 15-year old male
protagonist in a murder mystery is a Sherlock Holmes obsessive (hence the novel
title) and is also intensely autistic. Here’s a synopsis:
That’s
sorta what I think Jane Austen was up to in Persuasion,
but whereas Haddon does not hide from his readers the nature of his
protagonist’s condition, Jane Austen most assuredly does hide Anne’s
deficit from explicit notice. And I see this as Jane Austen, in her last
completed novel, rising to the fresh challenge of covertly creating a focal
consciousness with an implicit deficit, and telling the story from her point of
view, leaving it to us to figure out her mental state merely from our being
able to “eavesdrop” on her thoughts, and without the narrator telling us “this
woman is half-blind”.
And
now as I was thinking about the dog who didn’t bark as the crucial negative
fact which Sherlock Holmes had to notice in order to solve the case of Silver
Blaze, because it told him that the murderer was known to the watchdog, I just
realized a remarkable negative fact about Anne Elliot’s perception, in the
following oft-noted passage in Chapter 19:
“…now,
if she were by any chance to be thrown into company with Captain Wentworth, her
imperfect knowledge of the matter might add another shade of prejudice against
him.
The
following morning Anne was out with her friend, and for the first hour, in an
incessant and fearful sort of watch for him in vain; but at last, in returning
down Pulteney Street, she distinguished him on the right hand pavement at such
a distance as to have him in view the greater part of the street. There were
many other men about him, many groups walking the same way, but there was no
mistaking him. She looked instinctively at Lady Russell; but not from any mad
idea of her recognising him so soon as she did herself. No, it was not to be
supposed that Lady Russell would perceive him till they were nearly opposite.
She looked at her however, from time to time, anxiously; and when the moment
approached which must point him out, though not daring to look again (for her
own countenance she knew was unfit to be seen), she was yet perfectly conscious
of Lady Russell's eyes being turned exactly in the direction for him--of her
being, in short, intently observing him. She could thoroughly comprehend the
sort of fascination he must possess over Lady Russell's mind, the difficulty it
must be for her to withdraw her eyes, the astonishment she must be feeling that
eight or nine years should have passed over him, and in foreign climes and in
active service too, without robbing him of one personal grace!
At
last, Lady Russell drew back her head. "Now, how would she speak of
him?"
"You
will wonder," said she, "what has been fixing my eye so long; but I
was looking after some window-curtains, which Lady Alicia and Mrs Frankland
were telling me of last night. They described the drawing-room window-curtains
of one of the houses on this side of the way, and this part of the street, as
being the handsomest and best hung of any in Bath, but could not recollect the
exact number, and I have been trying to find out which it could be; but I
confess I can see no curtains hereabouts that answer their description."
Anne
sighed and blushed and smiled, in pity and disdain, either at her friend or
herself. The part which provoked her most, was that in all this waste of
foresight and caution, she should have lost the right moment for seeing whether
he saw them.” END QUOTE
I
imagine that some of you will by now have taken my hints and realize what I
just realized about this passage. I.e., it appears quite likely to me that Anne
Elliot only thinks she sees Wentworth
walking on the other side of Pulteney Street in Bath, but because of her poor
distance vision, it is not really Wentworth she sees, but another man!!
That
would be a very plausible alternative explanation for why Lady Russell does not
recognize Wentworth---far superior , actually, to Anne’s confabulation (which
she never actually mentions to her friend, and therefore never learns what her
friend really was thinking) about Lady Russell’s being spellbound staring at
Wentworth and how well his good looks have weathered his years at sea.
My
interpretation satisfies Occam’s Razor, as it requires only that we treat this
like all the other scenes I’ve written about, in which Anne does not see what
happens around her unless it is very near to her physically.
In a
very real, Shakespearean sense, Anne is seeing a “ghost” on Pulteney Street. And
note the subtle artistry that JA deploys in order to provide clues to the
reader of the psychological motivation for Anne to see Wentworth where he
actually is not. First, it is only earlier in that chapter that Wentworth
enters the room where Anne is, and she sees him close up, and it throws her
into a tizzy. So she knows he’s in Bath, and that’s why the above-quoted
passage begins with Anne anticipating seeing Wentworth again.What we have here is closely analogous to Catherine Morland
expecting to see the ghost of Mrs. Tilney around the next corner in the Abbey. And third, we
have Anne deciding not to look again when Wentworth is just across the street,
and actually within her field of
accurate vision, a decision she rationalizes as not feeling worthy of
being seen herself so she hides her face. And as far as I can recall, she never
ever talks about it with Wentworth himself, so as to find out that he was not
there.
But
finally and most tellingly (this is the icing on the cake), Jane Austen gives
us one final wink back to the above-quoted scene of onstreet-identification,
when we read the following strikingly similar scene in Chapter 22:
"Anne,"
cried Mary, still at her window, "there is Mrs Clay, I am sure, standing
under the colonnade, and a gentleman with her. I saw them turn the corner from
Bath Street just now. They seemed deep in talk. Who is it? Come, and tell me. Good
heavens! I recollect. It is Mr Elliot himself."
"No,"
cried Anne, quickly, "it cannot be Mr Elliot, I assure you. He was to
leave Bath at nine this morning, and does not come back till to-morrow."
As
she spoke, she felt that Captain Wentworth was looking at her, the consciousness
of which vexed and embarrassed her, and made her regret that she had said so
much, simple as it was.
Mary,
resenting that she should be supposed not to know her own cousin, began talking
very warmly about the family features, and protesting still more positively
that it was Mr Elliot, calling again upon Anne to come and look for herself,
but Anne did not mean to stir, and tried to be cool and unconcerned. Her
distress returned, however, on perceiving smiles and intelligent glances pass
between two or three of the lady visitors, as if they believed themselves quite
in the secret. It was evident that the report concerning her had spread, and a
short pause succeeded, which seemed to ensure that it would now spread farther.
"Do
come, Anne" cried Mary, "come and look yourself. You will be too late
if you do not make haste. They are parting; they are shaking hands. He is
turning away. Not know Mr Elliot, indeed! You seem to have forgot all about
Lyme."
To
pacify Mary, and perhaps screen her own embarrassment, Anne did move quietly to
the window. She was just in time to ascertain that it really was Mr Elliot,
which she had never believed, before he disappeared on one side, as Mrs Clay
walked quickly off on the other; and checking the surprise which she could not
but feel at such an appearance of friendly conference between two persons of
totally opposite interest, she calmly said, "Yes, it is Mr Elliot,
certainly. He has changed his hour of going, I suppose, that is all, or I may
be mistaken, I might not attend;" and walked back to her chair,
recomposed, and with the comfortable hope of having acquitted herself well.”
Everyone
always reads this scene as if Mary was correct in spotting Mrs. Clay and Mr.
Elliot ending a tryst outside the White
Hart----but what if Mary was wrong (or lying), and she was taking advantage of
Anne’s poor distance eyesight, combined with Anne’s stubborn refusal to openly
acknowledge her increasing vision problems?
All
these details fit perfectly with the simple outside the box explanation : i.e.,
that Anne only sees what is close to her, and therefore she cannot see who the
man is who drops Mrs. Clay in front of the White Hart Inn!
But,
you say, why would Mary pretend to see Mr. Elliot if it weren’t really him? The
answer to that question is way beyond the scope of this post, but suffice for
now to remind you that in the cancelled chapters of Persuasion, Admiral & Mrs. Croft are very overt and clumsy
matchmakers for Anne and Wentworth, an
idea that has been out there for twenty years, courtesy of my friend Jim
Heldman who wrote the following article in the JASNA journal Persuasions in
1993...
...presenting
ideas which I have taken further in more recent years:
So,
it’s no big stretch to imagine Mary Musgrove being part of a benevolent Much Ado-like conspiracy of friends
acting as matchmakers by deceiving the lovers into mutual recognition of true
love.
But
what about Mrs. Clay? Doesn’t she admit to the tryst with Cousin Elliot? Here’s the relevant text, you tell me if this
isn’t yet another Emmaesque moment
for Anne Elliot, confabulating an admission out of thin air, just as Anne did
with Lady Russell on Pulteney Street:
“[Anne]
only roused herself from the broodings of this restless agitation, to let Mrs
Clay know that she had been seen with Mr Elliot three hours after his being
supposed to be out of Bath, for having watched in vain for some intimation of
the interview from the lady herself, she determined to mention it, and IT
SEEEMED TO HER there was guilt in Mrs Clay's face as she listened. IT WAS
TRANSIENT: CLEARED AWAY IN AN INSTANT; but ANNE COULD IMAGINE SHE READ THERE
the consciousness of having, by some complication of mutual trick, or some
overbearing authority of his, been obliged to attend (perhaps for half an hour)
to his lectures and restrictions on her designs on Sir Walter. She exclaimed,
however, with A VERY TOLERABLE IMITATION OF NATURE:-- "Oh! dear! very true. Only think, Miss
Elliot, to my great surprise I met with Mr Elliot in Bath Street. I was never
more astonished. He turned back and walked with me to the Pump Yard. He had
been prevented setting off for Thornberry, but I really forget by what; for I
was in a hurry, and could not much attend, and I can only answer for his being
determined not to be delayed in his return. He wanted to know how early he
might be admitted to-morrow. He was full of 'to-morrow,' and it is very evident
that I have been full of it too, ever since I entered the house, and learnt the
extension of your plan and all that had happened, or my seeing him could never
have gone so entirely out of my head."
I
would suggest to you that Mrs. Clay is part of
“the team”, but again, the full proof of that requires much more
evidence, and not at the present time.
CONCLUSION
I am
smacking myself upside the head for not even looking for such a thing as Anne’s
vision impairment hidden in plain sight (ha has) in any of JA’s novels until I
read an article by a uniquely sensitive reader that gave me the giant hint I
apparently needed in order to see what was always there.
I really
shoulda known better, as a great poet once wrote, because I have known for many
years that Jane Austen was particularly interested in the intersection of
epistemology and psychology. So it makes perfect sense that she would have done
such a thing, it is in a way the culmination of her experiments in point of view in all her novels, to bring it down to
the physical, sensory level, and see if she could pull it off—and boy, did she!
And speaking
of eavesdropping, it also reminds me what I recognized years ago, i.e., that
Jane Austen was entirely conscious of the metafictional aspect of novel
writing—we as readers are all eavesdroppers —but this example of Anne as covertly vision
impaired is an example that just because Jane Austen allows us to eavesdrop, it
doesn’t mean it’s obvious to us that Anne’s vision in impaired. What Jane
Austen is also demonstrating is that she
can both show “the truth” about Anne’s vision, by giving us all the
textual hints I have collected, and
surely there are others I’ve overlooked, and yet, by also allowing us to
eavesdrop on Anne’s rationalizations, we are seduced into buying the same
explanations that work on the heroines themselves.
The
search for objective truth, and the enormous difficulty of even moving
ourselves in that direction, is the ultimate subject of Jane Austen’s fiction, and
Anne Elliot, viewed as I have now presented her, emerges as her most poignant
heroine, as her “cluelessness” is at the bottom about how she
(literally) sees the world.
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter
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