In
response to my previous post about Letter 154 and its veiled Sense & Sensibility subtext, Diana Birchall wrote the following response in Janeites & Austen-L:
"Arnie
points out John Dashwood's praise of his ghastly mother-in-law Mrs.
Ferrars:
"To
give you another instance of her liberality: The other day, as soon as we came
to town, aware that money could not be very plenty with us just now, she put
bank-notes into Fanny's hands to the amount of two hundred pounds. And
extremely acceptable it is, for we must live at a great expense while we are
here."
How
ironic that Jane Austen calls usurper Mary Austen's gift of seacale an arrowroot-like,
sardonic "extremely acceptable."
Must be a phrase she liked to use for a kind of barbed thanks!" END
QUOTE
I am
so glad my point resonated with you, Diana! In the interim, I’ve extended my
argument further. To wit, while "extremely acceptable" was ONLY used
by JA in these two instances (in Letter 154 and in S&S Ch. 33), there is a
subtext of the word "acceptable" throughout S&S in particular,
which shows even more clearly that JA was focused in S&S (and in Letter
154) on the nature of true generosity –and so she-- ever alert to the
psychology and etymology behind everyday words most people use without ever
thinking about---zeroed in on the primal meaning of “accept”, which meant to
voluntarily receive something from someone else.
For
starters, it’s interesting in this regard that the word “acceptable” appears 22
times in the King James Bible, and most of them, judging by a quick scan, have
to do with whether sacrifices or other behaviors of human beings were “acceptable”
to God. Knowing JA’s deep familiarity with the Bible, and in particular the way
the Bible is written, I think this theme of the “acceptable” was in the back of
her mind as she wrote S&S in particular, as she reflected on the nature of
charity.
Look
at how this theme subtly echoes through S&S, always with a pinging echo of “accept”
to alert us:
In
Chapter 2, which of course is Ground Zero of Fanny & John Dashwood’s
infamous, universally noted selfish lack of generosity, the subtle drumbeat
begins:
“He
really pressed them, with some earnestness, to consider Norland as their home;
and, as no plan appeared so eligible to Mrs. Dashwood as remaining there till
she could accommodate herself with a house in the neighbourhood, his invitation
was ACCEPTED.”
Of
course, this invitation by John is made with a string, which Fanny D. proceeds
to pull back over the course of the next few chapters, as she makes her step-inlaws
feel so unwelcome that they soon leave Norland for Devon.
But back
to the famous, Shakespeare-drenched scene which is Chapter 2 of S&S, in
which the precatory bequest by John’s dying father is sliced and diced into
practically nothing by Fanny’s casuistry. Note the eerie resonance of the
following narration published in 1811, to what JA hints at in Letter 154
written six years later:
“Indeed,
to say the truth, I am convinced within myself that your father had no idea of
your giving them any money at all. The assistance he thought of, I dare say,
was only such as might be reasonably expected of you; for instance, such as
looking out for a comfortable small house for them, helping them to move their
things, and sending them presents of fish and game, and so forth, whenever they
are in season.”
Isn’t
this a perfect encapsulation of the way James and Mary (and Edward Austen
Knight) consecutively treated their sisters and mother, in the former displacing
them from their beloved home in 1801, and then the latter in 1809 and thereafter,
damning them with faint generosity? And isn’t it clear that JA means to invoke
the above quoted passage in particular vis a vis the gift of seacale? JA shows,
by her sarcastic irony in writing Chapter 2, how she feels about token,
unhelpful “presents of fish and game, and so forth, whenever they are in season”
(as the seacale was at the time of the gift)? Is it
any wonder that JA thought of S&S when JA first heard about the seacale?
And
then Fanny goes on: “…Altogether, they
will have five hundred a-year amongst them, and what on earth can four women
want for more than that?—They will live so cheap! Their housekeeping will be
nothing at all. They will have no carriage, no horses, and hardly any servants;
they will keep no company, and can have no expenses of any kind! Only conceive
how comfortable they will be! Five hundred a year! I am sure I cannot imagine
how they will spend half of it; and as to your giving them more, it is quite
absurd to think of it. They will be much more able to give YOU something."
I don’t
recall before if I ever noticed what an ironic bookend the above passage is to
the passage in Chapter 33, when John Dashwood calls his mother in law’s gift of
cash to him “extremely acceptable” – in Chapter 2, above, Fanny argues that the
Dashwood women living so constricted a life means they don’t need a lot of
money—in Chapter 33, John rationalizes that his living such a high life in
London is very expensive! And both passages are associated with the word “acceptable”!
And here
is John’s accommodating reply to Fanny’s casuistry:
"Upon
my word," said Mr. Dashwood, "I believe you are perfectly right. My
father certainly could mean nothing more by his request to me than what you
say. I clearly understand it now, and I will strictly fulfil my engagement by
such acts of assistance and kindness to them as you have described. When my
mother removes into another house my services shall be readily given to
accommodate her as far as I can. Some little present of furniture too may be ACCEPTABLE
then."
Then
we see “acceptable” appear again and again in short order, in regard to: (1) the
gratefulness of Mrs. Dashwood accepting Sir John’s invitation to live at Barton
Cottage; (2) the impropriety of Marianne accepting Willoughby’s proposed gift
of a horse; (3) the mystery of Willoughby’s repeated refusal to accept Mrs.
Dashwood’s invitation at Barton Cottage; (4) Marianne and Elinor’s accepting
Mrs. Jennings’s invitation to London, etc etc.
And
then we have Chapter 33, in which John’s reference to Mrs. Ferrars’s “extremely
acceptable” gift is followed by his whining about specifics of the vast cash needs of the real
estate magnate (unquestionably a dig at brother Edward Austen Knight), and
then, he returns to the magic word:
“You
may guess, after all these expenses, how very far we must be from being rich,
and how ACCEPTABLE Mrs. Ferrars's kindness is."
"Certainly,"
said Elinor; "and assisted by her liberality, I hope you may yet live to
be in easy circumstances."
If it
were not for the fact that this drumbeat of “acceptables” is implicit, this
would be overkill by JA, but that’s just the point—by her never being so heavy
handed a moralist as to explicitly direct her readers to take note of this
wordplay on “acceptable” and the theme of generosity, as many a lesser writer
has done in such cases, JA effectively creates a pervasive, but entirely subliminal,
aura ---it’s up to the sharp elves among her readers to realize that the strong
chord sounded in Chapter 2 is never abandoned thereafter, it merely goes
underground.
And then at the end of the novel, we have a final
“acceptable” counterpoint between two passages, both having to do with proposals
of marriage by Edward Ferrars:
First,
when Elinor accepts his proposal of marriage:
“…His
situation indeed was more than commonly joyful. He had more than the ordinary
triumph of ACCEPTED love to swell his heart, and raise his spirits. He was
released without any reproach to himself, from an entanglement which had long
formed his misery, from a woman whom he had long ceased to love…”
And second,
when Lucy sends a final zinger in Edward’s direction, the letter she fittingly signs
LUCY FERRARS (aka LUCIFER):
"DEAR
SIR, Being very sure I have long lost your affections, I have thought myself at
liberty to bestow my own on another, and have no doubt of being as happy with
him as I once used to think I might be with you; but I scorn to ACCEPT a hand
while the heart was another's….”
So, I
hope that anyone was skeptical of my previous post (in which I made a quick argument
in support of my claim that JA meant to invoke S&S by her reference to Mary’s
gift of seacale as “extremely acceptable”) will now not only be convinced, but
will, moreover, find my argument……
…..“extremely
acceptable”! ;)
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
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