A few
weeks ago, I posted about various staged overhearings over hedgerows and
hunting metaphors in both Pride & Prejudice
and Persuasion, and also in their shared
antecedent, Much Ado About Nothing….
Even
so, until an hour ago, my opinion was that the allusion to Much Ado was central in P&P, but was only peripheral in Persuasion.
But
then, as I responded this morning to Deb Barnum’s post about Anne Elliot’s
vision in Austen-L, I found myself writing about my discovery of an amazing
additional allusion to Much Ado in Persuasion:
“…that’s
why Mary [Musgrove] (who is one of the matchbreaking (vis a vis Mr. Elliot) and
matchbreaking (vis a vis Wentworth) family cabal, whom Jim Heldman first
described so well thirty years ago…
…uses
Anne’s inability to see at a distance in order to trick her. After all, as far
as the family knows, Anne is really into
Cousin Elliot, so what better way to put the kibosh on his chances with Anne
than to use Anne’s vision impairment to slander him.
If
this sounds awfully familiar, there’s a [really good] reason---this is
(ironically) the exact same trick, in reverse, that Borachio hatches and successfully pulls
off in order to slander Hero in Claudio’s eyes in Much Ado. Both involve observing someone through a window, but in
the Shakespeare, the observers have been carefully gulled into standing down
below and looking up through a window
and misidentifying a lover supposedly engaging in cheating behavior, whereas
the Austen involves someone who is gulled into looking down through the window and misidentifying someone below supposedly
engaging in cheating behavior.”
As I have
now had an hour to reflect further on the significance of this extraordinary veiled
allusion by JA to Much Ado in Persuasion, I now realize, more and more,
that Much Ado was actually a very
significant allusive source for Persuasion,
much more than I had previously ever imagined it to be.
How
cleverly Jane Austen hid that allusion in plain sight, and her strategy for
that hiding is now clear to me. The reason why Much Ado is so visible as a key source for P&P is of course the
merry war of witty words between Lizzy and Darcy, which is, paradoxically, the
most perfect “original copying” in the history of English literature, in that
the allusion is obvious (and was noted in one of the very first printed review
of P&P two centuries ago) and yet, so brilliantly executed that no one
would ever dream of accusing Jane Austen of parroting Shakespeare. If anything,
Lizzy and Darcy wage an even merrier war than Beatrick and Benedick.
But there
is much more to the global allusion to Much
Ado in P&P than the merry wars they share, it is fair to say that the
verbal jousting constitutes only the very visible tip of the proverbial iceberg
of allusion that I have written about over the years.
Now,
contrast that to Persuasion—not only
is there not a merry war between Anne
and Wentworth, there’s actually the reverse of same-they barely speak to each other
for most of the novel, even when there is opportunity, and when they do, it’s
awkward, strained, the furthest thing from a witty exchange. It’s “dark, cloudy,
and flat” rather than “light, bright, and sparkling”!
It
has in fact been well documented that Persuasion
is autumnal in mood, in vivid contrast to the “hot summer” of P&P. And as I have posted about Anne’s failing
eyesight, actual light bright and sparkling would have been experienced by Anne
as a very unpleasant white glare!
But…despite
this surface oppositeness, which might make it seem that Much Ado was the last place you’d want to look among Shakespeare’s
plays for a source for Persuasion, yet,
there it is, quietly resonating in the cloudy muted environment of JA’s last
novel.
It’s
not just the staged eavesdropping over a hedgerow, and it’s not just the staged
overlooking of an illicit romantic tryst, which I have already documented. It’s
much more global, fundamental and pervasive.
Here’s
the best way to think about it—you tell me
which famous love story I am describing when I refer to:
…a young
man in the armed forces
… who
has a romantic history with a young woman onshore
…which
leaves both of them upset and embittered about each other,
….until
a point some time later,
….after
his successful performance in the wars abroad,
…the
young man returns to “the scene of the crime”
….and
then the guy and the girl proceed to stumble around, hurting each other’s
feelings repeatedly for most of the period of time depicted for the audience,
….until,
with more than a little help from their friends, secret matchmakers all,
…..and
after a girl close to them both nearly dies,
….and
a malevolent sneak also connected to one of them is foiled in his own plans to
wreak havoc,
…..they
eventually realize they both still love each other after all, and get together
in the end, happily ever after etc etc.
Could
there be a better synopsis of all the key plot points of BOTH Much Ado AND Persuasion,
and how they march in virtual lockstep with each other, in a way that no other
Shakespeare play or Austen novel even remotely fits with them?
It
makes me wonder, how did I miss how strong these parallels were till now? Well,
a search of my old files just reminded me that in late 2005, in reference to
someone posting about “Anne's being allowed to tell
her feelings about constancy and love to Captain Harville at a natural moment,
and at a time when Wentworth can overhear and interpret her words feelingly.”,
I responded as follows:
“This
of course alludes to Much Ado About
Nothing and the overhearing of love statements (which JA added when she
thought about how to alter that penultimate chapter—it is actually a window
into how she revised to bring Shakespeare in!), and also shows that Harville is
a Cupid, he must deliberately raise this subject with Anne…”
If
only I had taken my own words more seriously back then eight years ago, and had
not, perhaps, been “persuaded’ by doubters that I was reading too much into
Jane Austen, I’d have dug deeper and realized that this was a small wisp of
smoke drifting up from a large wildfire of allusion! In any event, better late than never!
And I
conclude by closing the circle, and coming back to Jane Austen’s having hidden
Anne Elliot’s vision impairment in plain sight, so to speak, and now showing
how this significant plot twist is also pointing to Much Ado About Nothing in a compelling way which Jane Austen chose to tag with one
of her most telling textual allusions, so that anyone who had come upon it, as
I have now done, could not help but smile at her “confirmation”.
Recall
that in one of my most recent posts about Anne’s vision problems, I made the
following statement about Wentworth’s reaction to same:
“But Mrs. Smith is unaware in
Chapter 17 of the actions which wind up being taken, which save Anne from
adverse consequences for not having thought seriously, because Anne ends up
with a husband who will watch over her, even when she loses her eyesight
entirely. As Anne unwittingly anticipates when she says to Elizabeth about Mrs.
Clay’s freckles in Chapter 5: "There is hardly any personal defect,"
replied Anne, "which an agreeable manner might not gradually reconcile one
to." In this case, it is Anne’s
agreeable manner which will gradually reconcile Wentworth to Anne’s blindness,
and Anne, like Scheherazade, will live another day despite her physical and
psychological blindness.”
Now I see that Jane Austen, when she
revised her ending of Persuasion as
she did, managed to wink at Wentworth’s noble action in choosing to marry a
woman who could be going blind, with “much ado”!
I.e., just read these word of love
which Beatrice speaks to Benedick just after she gets to see a letter he has
written to her which declares his undying love (sound familiar?), and right before
he stops her mouth with a kiss:
“I
would not deny you; but, by this good day, I YIELD UPON GREAT PERSUASION; and partly
to save your life, for I was told you were in a consumption.”
There
you have, in a witty joking epigram, the very sentiment I ascribed to Wentworth—he
observed (and was reminded by the Crofts) that Anne’s vision was being consumed
by disease, and he loved her so much that he married her with his eyes wide
open as to her “consumption”—what extra beauty this adds to their love story!
And it’s
not just a parallel of idea---those of you who know Persuasion well will recognize immediately how Jane Austen unmistakedly
echoed Beatrice’s debriefing words in the following, less sparkling, more
staid, romantic debriefing between Anne and Wentworth:
"You
should have distinguished," replied Anne. "You should not have
suspected me now; the case is so different, and my age is so different. If I
was wrong IN YIELDING TO PERSUASION once, remember that it was TO PERSUASION
exerted on the side of safety, not of risk. When I YIELDED, I thought it was to
duty, but no duty could be called in aid here. In marrying a man indifferent to
me, all risk would have been incurred, and all duty violated."
"Perhaps
I ought to have reasoned thus," he replied, "but I could not. I could
not derive benefit from the late knowledge I had acquired of your character. I
could not bring it into play; it was overwhelmed, buried, lost in those earlier
feelings which I had been smarting under year after year. I could think of you
only as one who had YIELDED, who had given me up, who had been influenced by
any one rather than by me. I saw you with the very person who had guided you in
that year of misery. I had no reason to believe her of less authority now. The
force of habit was to be added."
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
P.S.:
When I checked to see if any prior scholars had written other than in passing
about the allusion to Much Ado in Persuasion, I found the following blog
post from 2 ½ years ago…
….which
was captioned “Move Over Jane Austen, William
Shakespeare's Written His Own 'Persuasion' “ but which, despite the promise of
that title, did not reach the point of recognizing that it was not merely the
case that Shakespeare had, in Much Ado,
written a play which was all about “persuasion”-as to which the blogger does an
excellent job summarizing the evidence for same---but that Jane Austen had not
only recognized the “persuasion” subtext
of Much Ado, she had taken that ten
steps further by covertly patterned her own Persuasion
after his!
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