In response to the
suggestion that Jane Austen did not deliberately place Brandon in India during
the Second Mysore War (1780-84) , so as to suggest that Colonel Brandon was one
of the British soldiers imprisoned, brutalized, and circumcised during their
captivity, as Linda Walker claimed was clear in her 2013 Persuasions Online article…
…I have two prongs of
counterargument which both bolster Linda’s claims:
THE MILITARY CALENDAR
I point out first the
incontrovertible related fact that JA was in composing her novels acutely aware
of the calendar vis a vis British wars.
The best example I know of
was first pointed out by Jocelyn Harris in A
Revolution Beyond Expression, to wit: JA began writing Persuasion right after Napoleon was sent packing to St. Helena, and the end of the action in Persuasion coincides with Napoleon’s
first exile to Elba.
Anyone who believes those
two factoids to be an unintentional coincidence may also wish to explain why JA
chose to copy out Byron’s famous poem imagining Napoleon seeking to recapture
past glory for France and himself, and (as I was the first to discover in 2008)
for JA to change several words in Byron’s poem, words and phrases which just
happen to be key words and phrases in Persuasion!
So, for JA to place Brandon
in India during the precise duration of the Second Mysore War strikes me as
being in exactly the same vein as the above-described military calendar
coordination of Persuasion. I.e., JA,
from the beginning to the end of her publication history, showed the same
extremely meticulous attention to the calendar of British military and naval history,
all conveyed in her usual subliminal manner, so that the dates will only pop
out to a reader who knows about the dates of the Second Mysore War, and who
also attends to her subtle dating clues.
In this regard, it’s
really ironic that in the following blog…
…we read what I call a
Trojan Horse Moment about Brandon and the Mysore Wars in an address given
earlier this year by a gentleman with the very Austenesque name of Rupert
Willoughby, who clearly had read neither Linda’s article nor Ellen Moody’s
calendar for S&S when he wrote the following interesting observations:
“So, far from being
heedless of contemporary events, Jane Austen reveals herself to have an
intricate grasp of them. Jane had earlier portrayed a soldier of quite a different
type. Colonel Brandon of Sense and
Sensibility had by the age of 30 a considerable amount of active service
under his belt, some of it in India. During those years of service Brandon had
been a comfortably-off younger son but when the unexpected death of his brother
had left him the master of Delaford he had retired. Details in the novel are
scant. ‘I was with my regiment in the East Indies,’ says Brandon, ‘having
procured my exchange.’ This he had done in the wake of his unhappy love affair
with a view to getting as far away from England as possible….Most commissions
in that period were obtained by purchase. Under the purchase system a would-be
officer bought his first commission in the lowest officer rank, that of ensign
in the infantry or cornet in the cavalry, and he would then buy his way up the
ranks as suitable vacancies arose, chiefly when the existing holders were
willing to sell them.
The transactions were in
theory between the individual and the government but in practice a hefty
premium was paid through an agent to the officer who was relinquishing his
commission. Incidentally, Jane Austen’s brother Henry became just such an agent
himself in 1801. The amounts of money involved were considerable. ….Brandon’s
reason for exchanging – to heal a broken heart – may not have been an uncommon
one.
Fierce wars were being
fought in India in this period. For example, we had the Third Mysore War in
1790-2 and the Fourth Mysore War in 1799 and that’s the one which toppled Tipu
Sultan, but the novel actually falls between these dates so Brandon was not
involved.” END QUOTE
So, Rupert Willoughby must
have been using the calendar for S&S that was proposed by another scholar
prior to our Ellen Moody’s 2000 article on that topic, but I find Ellen’s
argument for dating S&S as if written in 1797-8 rather than in 1810-11 very
persuasive. I will reach out to Mr.Willoughby and see what he thinks, and let
you know if he replies, but I believe, from reading the above, that he would be
pleased to know that it is plausible to argue that Brandon COULD
have been involved in one of the Mysore Wars after all!
POINTED HINTS IN THE TEXT
OF S&S:
I want to devote the rest
of this post to expanding textually upon an important section in Linda’s article:
“Austen’s pointed hints: No
other Austen novel bristles with as many references to cutting and the
instruments used to do so. Sense and Sensibility is full of
needles, scissors, and pins. Austen’s own scissors are felt in
the omission of Brandon’s first name and of any conversation between him and
Marianne, and Marianne in turn excises his rank in the one comment she directly
addresses to him. In a game of Casino, Elinor is cut in and cut out of a
rubber. Marianne says goodbye to the trees at Norland but declares that
“‘you will continue the same’”—until, that is, John Dashwood, the sisters’
half-brother, cuts down all the walnut trees. Children are cut off from
their homes and parents with great cruelty and consequences. Brandon is
sent away, apparently with no support, forcing him to join the army; Edward’s
mother cuts him off as a son and an heir when his engagement to Lucy is
revealed; Mrs. Smith temporarily cuts off the wayward Willoughby. In the
only funny passage in the book, whose humor dims as its fateful consequences
become apparent, John Dashwood’s proposed gift of £3000 to his half-sisters,
which, he predicts, “‘would [have been] enough to make them completely easy,’”
and even if reduced to £1500 would have ensured that “‘If they marry, they will
be sure of doing well,’” is cut to annual gifts of fish and game.
Nobody is as aptly
named as Lucy Steele with her “sharp quick eye” (120), “little sharp eyes”,
“sharp reprimand”, and a name synonymous with a dueling blade (OED). And
of course, there is her sister’s friend, Martha Sharpe. Thaler, who also
has taken note of the “sharps” and Lucy’s dueling with Elinor, points out that
duels at the time of Austen’s writing were usually conducted with pistols.
She reminds us, however, that Andrew Davies used swords in his staging of the
duel in the 2008 BBC dramatization with Brandon and Willoughby. Perhaps
by making no reference to the way the duel was conducted, Austen invites us to
imagine the drama of flashing steel. There is even a dagger: every word
Marianne wrote Willoughby was a “‘dagger to my heart’”.
In Sense and
Sensibility, pins and scissors are associated with physical pain or illicit
behavior. A pin in Lady Middleton’s headdress scratches her
three-year-old daughter, who sobs until soothed by apricot marmalade .
The Steeles have their “knives and scissars stolen away” by the Middleton
children. Willoughby and Marianne defy convention when he cuts a lock of
her hair: “‘[T]hey were whispering and talking together as fast as could
be,’” Margaret, the youngest Dashwood sister, tells Elinor, “‘and he seemed to
be begging something of her, and presently he took up her scissars and cut off
a long lock of her hair, for it was all tumbled down her back; and he kissed
it, and folded it up in a piece of white paper, and put it into his pocket-book’”.
If there were no
references to sharp things or acts of cutting, there would still be one of the
most contrived and unnatural scenes, so explicit in its construction that it
would seem to establish Austen’s intention to bring circumcision to mind.
Edward Ferrars tells the Dashwoods that his brother, Robert, has married, with
the attendant implication that he is now free to marry Elinor. Insecure
and agitated, he uses his hands restlessly and destructively and, in so doing,
mimics circumcision: “He rose from his seat and walked to the window,
apparently from not knowing what to do; took up a pair of scissars that lay
there, and while spoiling both them and their sheath by cutting the latter to
pieces as he spoke. . . .”
Had this action been
attributed to a woman, it would have been less contrived, less
noticeable. A scene of a man “cutting” a “sheath”—synonymous then as now
for “foreskin”—is about as explicit a reference to circumcision as Austen could
incorporate without a literal description.
END QUOTE FROM WALKER
ARTICLE
I 100% concur with all of
Linda’s arguments, above, and I present the following additional passages in
S&S which, subliminally, add significantly to the examples provided by
Linda:
I SAW HIM CUT IT OFF:
" "But, indeed,
Elinor, it is Marianne's. I am almost sure it is, for I saw him cut it off. Last
night after tea, when you and mama went out of the room, they were whispering
and talking together as fast as could be, and he seemed to be begging something
of her, and presently he took up her scissors and cut off a long lock of her
hair, for it was all tumbled down her back; and he kissed it, and folded it up
in a piece of white paper; and put it into his pocket-book."
For such particulars,
stated on such authority, Elinor could not withhold her credit; nor was she
disposed to it, for the circumstance was in perfect unison with what she had
heard and seen herself. "
SHE HAD MANY RELATIONS AND
OLD ACQUAINTANCES TO CUT:
"What immediately
followed is known. They passed some months in great happiness at Dawlish; for
she had many relations and old acquaintances to cut..."
NOT TO CUT IN TILL ANOTHER
RUBBER:
The passage Linda mentioned
briefly when Elinor and Lucy discuss cutting out a gift for dear Annamaria
Middleton also involves cutting something in paper (what was done with the
British foreskins by their Indian captors?) And “rubbers” in JA’s day, as well
as our own, had a phallic meaning as well…
EXTORT A CONFESSION re
VEAL CUTLETS
"Mrs. Jennings on her
side treated them both with all possible kindness, was solicitous on every
occasion for their ease and enjoyment, and only disturbed that she could not
make them choose their own dinners at the inn, nor extort a confession of their
preferring salmon to cod, or boiled fowls to veal cutlets."
WHAT A SWEET FIGURE I
CUT!-WHAT AN EVENING OF AGONY IT WAS!
"...If you CAN pity
me, Miss Dashwood, pity my situation as it was THEN. With my head and heart
full of your sister, I was forced to play the happy lover to another
woman!—Those three or four weeks were worse than all. Well, at last, as I need
not tell you, you were forced on me; and what a sweet figure I cut!—what an
evening of agony it was!..."
All of the above are
classic Austen subliminal sexual innuendoes. Standing alone, none of them would
be probative, but in the context of everything
Linda Walker argued in her article, these passages, deliberately hidden
from conscious notice by context (exactly as with the clues in a very hard
crossword puzzle) become the filler that subliminally provide a richer setting
for the allusion to Brandon’s surviving the Second Mysore War.
Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode onTwitter
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