In response to my claim that the following passage in Letter 26 dated May 1801....
"With such a provision on my part, if you will do your's by repeating
the French Grammar, & Mrs. Stent will now & then ejaculate some
wonder about the Cocks & Hens, what can we want?”
...is an obvious example of Jane Austen's sexual innuendoes, which I have been patiently cataloguing for over a decade now, Rita Lamb wrote the following:
"Arnie, aren't you taking words out of their historical context
here, and then presenting them so that they strike a modern hearer with only
their modern meaning? Specifically, 'ejaculate'? The word has become associated so much with
one activity in modern minds that we now avoid using it in other contexts. But this was not so in Austen's day, when its
primary meaning was still 'to utter suddenly'. Now, I'm guessing you're going
to retort that's all very well, but the mention of 'cock' in close proximity to
'ejaculate' confirms we're in the presence of a racy pun? And if JA had accused
Mrs Stent of ejaculating 'some wonder about cocks and bulls', I would have
agreed with you. But I don't, because
she didn't - she said Mrs Stent would go on about 'cocks and hens'....I suspect
you'll consider this so much wilful naivety.
Well you may roll your eyes and mutter that to the pure, all things are
pure. But that cuts both ways. If you're
determined to look for sexual double-entendres everywhere, then - with the
added help of semantic drift - you will soon find them." END QUOTE
Rita, as
we say here in the USA on this Memorial Day which traditionally used to be
filled with major league baseball doubleheaders, you’re throwing me such a big,
slow softball, that I can’t avoid hitting it out of the park—it makes me wonder
if you are not just playing the Devil’s Advocate. I.e., you’re a very sharp
elf, and so it would have been easy enough for you to do a quick search of my
blog and find the following two posts:
5/28/11
“11-year olds and alternative ejaculations in Tristram Shandy and Jane Austen's Writings”
12/14/10
“The Answer to my Best Quiz Ever” [re
what I call the “Hancock” Charade]
Those
who are interested can readily follow the above links and see how JA on at
least two separate occasions, covertly alluded to Laurence Sterne’s broadly-hinted
phallic cocks and ejaculations in both Letter 26 and also in the charade composed sometime during JA’s youth.
Which
one? The one that the Austen family attributed to elder brother Henry, but
which I claim was written by the same young Jane Austen who filled her
juvenilia with all sorts of extravagant sexual innuendoes. As my second
above-linked post reveals, I discovered 8 years ago that behind the official innocent
charade answer “patriot”, was a second, secret, and very sexual, answer, the American patriot, “HanCOCK” (which was
also, of course, the maiden name of JA’s cousin Eliza!) If you don’t believe me, read those posts!
But with
all that strong proof already in the bank, Rita, you have induced me to revisit
this question of interpretation of the word “ejaculate” during JA’s era, and
so, after an enjoyable hour watching French Open tennis and doing word searches,
I will now take this opportunity to publicly adduce further evidences from JA’s
novels.
But first
re JA’s letters. Other than the sexually supercharged passage in Letter 26 re
Mrs. Stent, we have only one other “ejaculation” in a JA Letter, and that is in
the famous little poem in her January 1809 Letter 65 to CEA, which JA wrote a
little poem for 13 year old nephew JEAL, who must’ve been enthusiastic for Brag
and Speculation—so, it was hardly a place setting for JA to “go sexual”!
JA very rarely
used any variant of the word “ejaculate” in her fiction, too, and that in
itself is significant, as it distinguished her from her contemporaries who did
indeed use it, I would guess, perfunctorily, where the context was utterly
unsuggestive sexually, with only the innocent meaning that was primary.
So when
JA did use this word in a novel (a total of 5 times, once in each novel except
P&P, and also once in The Watsons fragment),
it was most likely calculatedly and not haphazardly, so it is noteworthy, and it
all depends, obviously, on the textual context where she used it.
The
first three passages, re Margaret Watson in The
Watsons, Mrs. Allen in NA, and Mrs. Jennings in S&S, do not particularly
lend themselves to sexualized interpretations, so perhaps this indicates that
JA (who had already used the word sexually in Letter 26) was not yet ready to
unveil one in a published novel when she wrote those passages.
But the solitary
usages in each of the last 3 novels published during JA’s lifetime are so spectacularly
suggestive of sexual meaning, that they collectively suffice, along with Mrs.
Stent’s ejaculation, to convincingly nail down my claim, and to further suggest
that JA chose to go overt on them after she had achieved enough success and recognition to be willing to risk it, I
think.
First, in
MP, we have the sexual landscape imagery (JA was far from the first author to
write such passages, and we see them in every one of her novels) that subliminally
and delicately hovers over the following narration about what I see as a subtly
romantic tete-a-tete between Fanny and Mary in Mrs. Grant’s “shrubbery”,
another more intimate Garden of Eden as a bookend to the wilderness at
Sotherton where Maria is seduced by Henry’s charms:
Mansfield Park, Chapter 22:
“She
went, however, and they sauntered about together many an half-hour in Mrs.
Grant's shrubbery, the weather being unusually mild for the time of year, and
venturing sometimes even to sit down on one of the benches NOW COMPARATIVELY
UNSHELTERED, remaining there perhaps till, in the midst of some TENDER EJACULATION
of Fanny's on the SWEETS of so protracted an autumn, they were forced, by the SUDDEN
SWELL of a cold gust shaking down the last few YELLOW LEAVES about them, to
jump up and walk for warmth.”
Clearly
this is a revisiting of the even more blatant sexual imagery of Marianne and
Edward talking about dirty bottoms and dead leaves, which I wrote about long
ago, a coded sexualized conversation that goes straight over Elinor’s naïve head.
Next,
in Emma, we have an intensely sexual
conceit where a number of surrounding words and images all contribute to a
subliminal depiction of sodomy, in which Mr. Woodhouse’s “thin gruel”
(disgustingly) is suggested as being introduced (via his lower “head” which he “shakes”
that has a vertical “eye”) into “a
dangerous opening” of Emma’s (r)ear, her “South End”, where basic human biology
dictates that she “does not bear” any “sad consequences”—like getting pregnant.
Emma, Chapter 12:
“Here
was A DANGEROUS OPENING.
"Ah!"
said Mr. Woodhouse, SHAKING HIS HEAD and FIXING HIS EYES on her with TENDER
concern.—The EJACULATION IN EMMA's ear expressed, "Ah! there is no END of
the sad consequences of your going to SOUTH END. It DOES NOT BEAR talking
of." And for a little while she hoped he would not talk of it, and that a
silent rumination might suffice to restore him to the RELISH of HIS OWN SMOOTH
GRUEL. “
And finally,
JA returns again to the sexual metaphor of an Edenic “fall”, when Louisa “falls”
and (to borrow from the bawdily poetic Admiral Croft)--"Ay, a very bad
business indeed. A new sort of way this, for a young fellow to be making love,
by breaking his mistress's head, is not it, Miss Elliot? This is breaking a
head and giving a plaster, truly!"
Persuasion Chapter 12:
“The HEAD
had received a severe contusion, but he had seen greater injuries recovered
from: he was by no means hopeless; he spoke cheerfully.
That
he did not regard it as a desperate case, that he did not say a few hours must END
it, was at first felt, beyond the hope of most; and the ECSTASY of such a
reprieve, the rejoicing, DEEP and silent, after a few FERVENT EJACULATIONS of
gratitude to Heaven had been offered, may be CONCEIVED. “
Again,
the same cluster of words of sex and conception surrounding the word “ejaculations”,
the same subtly sinister and disturbing reference to injuries and sad
consequences.
Which is
why I consider this humor to be very dark, as JA’s humor often is—it’s a kind
of sexual “gallows humor” in which a powerless victim has recourse to humor in
order, at least, to reclaim some sense of control, at least by hiding her mockery
of the perpetrator in plain sight to those with eyes to see.
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
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