Here is my quiz question:
As
my Subject Line suggests, in this little followup, I am zeroing in on the parts
of that long post in which I made the case for Lady Catherine De Bourgh being
represented by both Orlando and Oliver from As You Like It. In a nutshell, I
argued that the allusion was centered on the confrontation between the two
brothers in Act 1 Scene 1 of AYLI, and the failure of Oliver to provide a
proper gentleman's education to Orlando. I already considered the allusion to
be ironclad, based on the argument I made, given the multiple points of
thematic intersection between JA's novel and Shakespeare's play in this very
laser-like allusion. But it was only an
hour ago that it dawned on me that Jane Austen had left a true smoking gun in
the text of P&P, which (like Mrs. Elton inadvertently speaking the exact
title of As You Like It during her "pastoral" speech) provides the
giant wink from Jane Austen, which says, "Yes, THIS one is MUCH more
likely to be seen by someone who has already realized the connection between
Lady C and Shakespeare's two feuding brothers."
And
now, here are the two hints I gave, with the answer:
Hint
One: The clue in P&P actually
appears exactly 39 times in the text of the novel, and it pertains to another
clue in As You Like It that appears exactly 5 times in the text of the play.
Answer
One: The surname “de Bourgh” appears 39 times in P&P, the surname “de Boys”
appears 5 times in As You Like It.
Hint
Two: The textual clues in both the novel and the play pertain to something that
Lady Catherine very visibly has in common with both Oliver and Orlando.
Answer
Two: Obviously, as you can see, above, that is their strikingly similar surnames.
Now,
of course, strikingly similar surnames, standing alone, could be coincidental.
But recall that my entire post the other day was filled with descriptions of veiled
thematic and wordplay allusions to AYLI which I detected in P&P, most of
all the number “twenty” as hyperbole, allusions which in particular created a
strong but strange resonance between Lady Catherine, on the one hand, and the
de Boys brothers, on the other, on the
theme of the proper provision of education to a gentleperson.
So
the thinly veiled surname allusion then becomes the proverbial icing on an
already substantial cake of allusion! What are the odds of my finding all that “smoke”
linking P&P to As You Like It (on
top of the Rosalind-Elizabeth smoke originally
found by several other famous literary scholars), and then also finding such a
resemblance of surnames? Zero.
But
you see it’s so much better even than that, because the surname resemblance goes
to the heart of the intense parallelism between Act 1 Scene 1 of AYLI, on the
one hand, and several different scenes in P&P. Let me repeat for you now the
heart of the interchange between Orlando and Oliver in 1.1:
“ORLANDO:
Ay, better than him I am before knows me. I know you are my eldest brother;
and, in the gentle condition of blood, you should so know me. The courtesy of
nations allows you my better, in that you are the first-born; but the same
tradition takes not away my blood, were there twenty brothers betwixt us: I have
as much of my father in me as you; albeit, I confess, your coming before me is nearer
to his reverence.
ORLANDO I am no villain; I am the youngest son of Sir Rowland de Boys; he was my father, and he is thrice a villain that says such a father begot villains. Wert thou not my brother, I would not take this hand
from thy throat till this other had pulled out thy tongue for saying so: thou hast railed on thyself.”
from thy throat till this other had pulled out thy tongue for saying so: thou hast railed on thyself.”
END QUOTE
“I am the youngest son of Sir Rowland DE BOYS, he was my
father.” Isn’t JA gently mocking Orlando’s earnest, injured pretension as he
desperately asserts his own value as a person, when she has Mr. Collins, in
Chapter 13 of P&P, pontificate as follows in his first letter to Mr.
Bennet?” “I have
been so fortunate as to be distinguished by the patronage of the Right
Honourable Lady Catherine DE BOURGH, widow of Sir Lewis DE BOURGH, whose bounty
and beneficence has preferred me to the valuable rectory of this parish…”
I had in my earlier
post pointed out how Orlando’s claim of his own worthy status was clearly
echoed by Lizzy’s saying to Lady C: “He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman's
daughter; so far we are equal."
But
now I see that JA has echoed that specific nuance of Orlando’s speech twice in
P&P, the earlier one being Mr. Collins’s above statement. Both Orlando and
Mr. Collins can be heard to place special emphasis on the “distinguished” aristocratic
ring of the “Sir” and in the Norman surname, as if that alone proves how
important Orlando and Lady Catherine really are. Jane Austen is laughing at
both of them, as she laughs at Sir Walter Elliot, for the silliness of such
affectations.
JA
aligns Mr. Collins with Orlando, because Orlando should know that he has value
not merely because of his father’s title, but just because he is a good and
worthy human being. She makes this veiled commentary by the caricature Mr.Collins,
who ought to concentrate on being a good clergyman and husband, and not so much
on his connection to Lady Catherine, as evidence of his personal worth.
And I also believe that JA means for the discerning reader to take a second look at Lizzy's famous riposte to Lady Catherine--even as her defiance of power thrills us, it must give us pause that Lizzy relies on her own father's status as a gentleman as a reason why she should be considered worthy to marry Darcy. Hmmm.... I see Jane Austen's wry smile behind all of this.
And…as
I was writing this post, I saw yet one
more echo of that same very short exchange
(between Oliver and Orlando) in P&P., which I hadn’t picked up on when I wrote my long post the other day:
First,
in Chapter 53 of P&P, Elizabeth chats with Wickham after he has married Lydia and is stopping off at
Longbourn before proceeding north into “exile”. She first deftly scores
palpable hits on him with references to her now full knowledge of the disingenuousness
of Wickham’s earlier allegations about Darcy’s wrongdoing about paying for
Wickham’s education. Then after his second attempt to rewrite history and claim
he hadn’t deceived her earlier, she cuts him off and says:
"COME,
Mr. Wickham, we are BROTHER and sister, you know. Do not let us quarrel about
the past. In future, I hope we shall be always of one mind."
Now
I see that this is a tip of the pen by JA to Shakespeare, who has Orlando say
to Oliver, after Oliver dismisses Orlando’s passionate claim for status:
“COME, COME, elder BROTHER, you are too young in this.”
By such a seemingly trivial correspondence of trivial words
and expressions, JA yet creates a subtle but powerful echo. And what delicious
irony, that Orlando says this to Oliver right after grabbing Oliver in a
headlock, while Lizzy delivers her “blow” to Wickham “with a good-humoured
smile”!
And
that seems a good place to end my answer to my quiz, and hope that you all
liked it a lot!
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
P.S.: I completely overlooked pointing out, in any of my recent posts about Jane Austen alluding to Shakespeare's As You Like It, that only 5 months ago, I had posted about the veiled allusion to that very same confrontation between Orlando and Oliver that I detected then in Chapter 2 of Sense & Sensibility, when John and Fanny Dashwood screw the Dashwood women out of THEIR inheritance!:
P.S.: I completely overlooked pointing out, in any of my recent posts about Jane Austen alluding to Shakespeare's As You Like It, that only 5 months ago, I had posted about the veiled allusion to that very same confrontation between Orlando and Oliver that I detected then in Chapter 2 of Sense & Sensibility, when John and Fanny Dashwood screw the Dashwood women out of THEIR inheritance!:
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