In Janeites & Austen L today, Christy Somer wrote: “Ellen, You mentioned the 'six-hundred a year' Mrs.
Norris would be receiving..... I read this as well in my own 'Charnwood' UK
reading copy of MP. And the original
1814 copy …also has these lines: "I hope, sister, things are not so
very bad with you, neither -considering Sir Thomas says you will have six
hundred a year." But strangely, I've not found any other online versions
of MP which include these particular lines…So I'm thinking, for whatever
reasons, some Victorian editions of the novels -excluded them. And Aunt Norris has been 'saver' rather than a
'spender'….”
Ellen Moody replied: I'd like to
confirm Christy's comment that some editions of Mansfield Park have Mrs
Norris's income cited and others don't….So the first edition named the sum and
had franker satiric language in Lady Bertram's mouth.”
Christy and Ellen, you’ve
missed the true purpose of the deletion, but you’ve done me a great service,
because I had previously been utterly unaware of that deletion, and you know
from my comments about JEAL’s deletions from JA’s letters how I feel about that
sort of censorship of JA’s true voice. But thanks to your eagle eye, Christy, I
looked into this and, as my Subject Line indicates, I found out that it really
was a great deal more like the deletion of Mrs. Jennings’s too-frank reference to
illegitimacy that was deleted from the 2d edition of S&S. I hope that by
the end of this message, you won’t be feeling like you wish you hadn’t pointed
it out in the first place!
It’s really easy to show exactly
what I mean. First, here is the relevant passage from the 2nd edition….
"Then you will not
mind living by yourself quite alone?"
"Lady Bertram, I do
not complain. I know I cannot live as I have done, but I must retrench where I
can, and learn to be a better manager. I have been a liberal
housekeeper enough, but I shall not be ashamed to practise economy now. My
situation is as much altered as my income. A great many things were due from
poor Mr. Norris, as clergyman of the parish, that cannot be expected from me.
It is unknown how much was consumed in our kitchen by odd comers and goers. At
the White House, matters must be better looked after. I must live within
my income, or I shall be miserable; and I own it would give me great
satisfaction to be able to do rather more, to lay by a little at the end of the
year."
"I dare say you will.
You always do, don't you?"
…and now, here is the
relevant passage from the 1st edition, BEFORE the deletion:
"Then you will not
mind living by yourself quite alone?"
["Dear Lady Bertram!
what am I fit for but solitude? Now and then I shall hope to have a friend in
my little cottage (I shall always have a bed for a
friend); but the most part of my future days will be spent in utter seclusion.
If I can but make both ends meet, that's all I ask for."
"I hope, sister,
things are not so very bad with you neither, considering Sir Thomas says you
will have six hundred a-year." ]
"Lady Bertram, I do
not complain….[then continuing exactly as in the 2nd edition]
Don’t you see? It wasn’t merely
the wealthy Lady Bertram making a snide remark about Mrs. Norris having enough
income, as if there was any sort of parity between the adverse impact of Sir Thomas’s high grade financial worries back
on the ‘ol plantation now that those damned anti-slavers like Clarkson had
finally ended the slave trade, and the precarious finances of an ageing widow with a meager income and no prospects
for remarriage.
If that HAD been the offending
passage, the deletion would have been much smaller, it would have been limited only
to the following comment by Lady B:
"I hope, sister,
things are not so very bad with you neither, considering Sir Thomas says you
will have six hundred a-year." ]
That
would have worked just as cleanly and would have left Mrs. Norris’s speech
about her solitude intact. But, you see,
the bit about Mrs. Norris’s income is small potatoes. The real “scandal” that triggered this deletion in the
first place is contained in Mrs. Norris’s response to Lady Bertram, a response which
was cleanly excised like a cancerous mole from someone’s face:
“Now and then I shall hope
to have a friend in my little cottage (I shall always have a bed for a friend)”
It’s
clear to me from the FACT of the deletion that there was indeed pressure put on
JA from members of her family (fascinating to speculate which ones they might’ve
been)—all those who were scandalized by JA daring to have one of her characters
describe the actual living arrangement at Chawton Cottage, which did not merely
involve JA and CEA, but also Martha Lloyd----one which apparently had been raising
bigoted eyebrows since 1809 (i.e., for seven years!), in so suggestive a
manner.
And
the context of Mrs. Norris’s deleted speech makes clear that Lady Bertram was
having some sadistic fun with her sister—Mrs. Norris doesn’t just speak about
her keeping a bed for a friend out of the clear blue sky—no, she was provoked
to say this by Lady Bertram’s “casual” suggestion that Fanny ought to go live
with Mrs. Norris! So, we can begin to put two and two together, and realize that
Mrs. Norris most of all doesn’t want Fanny living (and sleeping) in the White
House with her, because then, well, Mrs. Norris won’t have the same complete
solitude she enjoyed, a solitude that made those sleepover visits from friends so
convenient and….discreet.
Puts
a whole new slant on Mrs. Norris and why she never remarried after Mr.
Norris died, doesn’t it? And maybe we
begin to see that Sir Thomas really did have TWO wives—the one who slept with
him (and then otherwise, slept in most other situations, too), and the one who
ran his household—and each of them
getting exactly what they wanted (and didn’t want) from him!
So, I am glad that Jane
Austen always had a bed for a friend, and I hope that it provided her with a
cure for solitude. And now, Christy, thanks to your eagle eye, JA’s original
desire to tell the world about her life has finally been honored by
reinstatement, and I hope my post will inspire future editors of MP to RESTORE
this TRULY scandalous deletion!
Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter
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