Two weeks ago, during a
discussion with Anielka Briggs, I noted that Jane Austen, in Northanger Abbey, misquoted the exact
same stanza in Gray’s famous Elegy in
the exact same way as her literary poseur Mrs. Elton did in Emma:
Emma, Chapter
33:
“…upon my word, I talk of
nothing but Jane Fairfax.—And her situation is so calculated to affect
one!—Miss Woodhouse, we must exert ourselves and endeavour to do something for
her. We must bring her forward. Such talent as hers must not be suffered to
remain unknown.—I dare say you have heard those charming lines of the poet,
'Full many a flower is born to blush
unseen,
'And waste its fragrance on the
desert air.'
We must not allow them to
be verified in sweet Jane Fairfax."
Northanger Abbey, Chapter 1:
“[Catherine] read all such
works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations
which are so serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful
lives.
From Pope….
From Gray, that
"Many a flower is born to blush unseen,
"And waste its fragrance on the desert
air."
From Thompson…
From Shakespeare… (from Othello, Measure for Measure & Twelfth
Night )”
Aside from this curious
revisiting of the same quoted lines, I also am particularly struck by how
Catherine, for all that she is supposed by most Janeites to have
unsophisticated, underdeveloped literary taste, somehow manages to blunder her
way, without any adult guidance, into gathering “a great store of information”
from a sampler of three of Shakespeare’s most profound plays (one tragedy, one
comedy, and one problem play), in addition to Pope, Gray, and Thompson---a list
of literary loves overlapping the refined tastes of three of JA’s greatest
readers--- Anne Elliot, Mary Crawford, and Henry Crawford!
But back to my main point.
In that post a few weeks ago, I also pointed out that, as far as I was aware,
that was the only explicit literary quotation by JA that she repeated in more
than one of her novels---which made it very unlikely, I asserted, that this was
a haphazard misquotation, and which also made it likely that JA intended it as
a significant allusion, and not just random filler.
Well, today I realized
that I was not accurate in asserting that as the sole repeated explicit
literary allusion in the Austen canon---i.e., I now recognize that there
actually is a second explicit
literary allusion that also appears
in two different Austen novels—although, technically, one of the allusions is a
quotation from the particular external literary source, while the other
allusion only states the title of that source—still there is inded a second
repeated explicit allusion.
Based on those clues, can you guess the identity of that second
allusion that JA alluded to, and then revisited in another one of her novels? Hint:
if you are a wonk like myself who actually reads scholarly annotations, the answer
is right under your nose! ;)
SCROLL DOWN FOR THE ANSWER
SCROLL DOWN FOR THE ANSWER
SCROLL DOWN SOME MORE
SCROLL DOWN A LITTLE BIT
MORE
AND THE ANSWER IS....
Northanger Abbey, Chapter 1:
"Not that Catherine
was always stupid—by no means; she learnt the fable of "The Hare and Many
Friends" as quickly as any girl in England."
and….
Emma,
Chapter 52:
“…[Emma] saw [Mrs. Elton]
with a sort of anxious parade of mystery fold up a letter which she had
apparently been reading aloud to Miss Fairfax, and return it into the purple
and gold reticule by her side, saying, with significant nods, "We can finish this some other time, you
know. You and I shall not want opportunities. And, in fact, you have heard all
the essential already. I only wanted to prove to you that Mrs. S. admits our
apology, and is not offended. You see how delightfully she writes. Oh! she is a
sweet creature! You would have doated on her, had you gone.—But not a word
more. Let us be discreet—quite on our good behaviour.—Hush!—You remember those
lines—I forget the poem at this moment:
"For when a lady's in the case,
"You know all other things give
place."
Now I say, my dear, in our
case, for lady, read——mum! a word to the wise.—I am in a fine flow of
spirits, an't I? But I want to set your heart at ease as to Mrs. S.—My
representation, you see, has quite appeased her."
And again, on Emma's
merely turning her head to look at Mrs. Bates's knitting, she added, in a half
whisper, "I mentioned no names,
you will observe.—Oh! no; cautious as a minister of state. I managed it
extremely well."
Emma could not doubt. It
was a palpable display, repeated on every possible occasion….”
As has long been
identified by Austen scholars, those two lines Mrs. Elton quotes are from Gay’s
“The Hare and Many Friends”, the very poem which Catherine Morland learnt by
heart at record speed!
And now you know why I
hinted that the answer was right under your nose, because it turns out that not
only do both of these repeated explicit allusions appear in both NA and Emma, what’s even more striking is that the
Gray allusion and the Gay allusion both
involve Catherine Morland’s early literary autodidactism in the former, and
Mrs. Elton quoting about Jane Fairfax
in the latter. And, zeroing in even more minutely…Mrs.Elton’s quotings both hint very histrionically (as only
Mrs. Elton can) toward significant, hidden intelligence about the mysterious tight-lipped
Jane Fairfax.
So, what the heck does
this very precise hidden parallelism between Emma and Northanger Abbey mean?
I’ll begin my answer by
summarizing what I’ve known for nearly a decade now about Mrs. Elton. I.e., one
of the linchpins of my analysis of the shadow story of Emma has been that, entirely unknown to Emma (and therefore to the
reader as well), Mrs. Elton, while she was still Miss Hawkins, was jilted on
Valentine’s Day by Frank Churchill, who had previously given her the same “courtship
“ charade that Mr. Elton gives to Emma. Therefore, when Mrs. Elton shows up in
Highbury, she is, also entirely unknown to Emma (and the reader), the
proverbial woman scorned, who is ruled by an overpowering angry and bitter
desire for revenge against the woman whom she blames for “stealing” Frank (with
his substantial income and inheritance prospects) away from her ---Jane
Fairfax! And Mrs. Elton’s favored tactic for obtaining the most satisfying
revenge on Jane is blackmail—to coerce Jane, by threatening to expose her
concealed pregnancy to the worlds of Highbury and London, into the double
whammy of “abolition” (i.e., abortion of
Jane’s unborn child) and then “governessing” (i.e., prostitution).
So….I’ve long understood
that Mrs. Elton communicated her threats to Jane via coded quotations from
popular literature---i.e., the hidden “talents” Mrs. Elton hintingly ascribes
to Jane via the Gray quotation are those of a woman of low morals who “performs”
sexually in order to win the hand of Frank, the “abominable puppy”, in contrast
to Miss Hawkins who refused to “put out” for him, as we read here, via yet another
literary allusion, to As You Like It, via
“Hymen’s saffron robe”:
"Very true, Mr.
Weston, perfectly true. It is just what I used to say to a certain gentleman in
company in the days of courtship, when, because things did not go quite right,
did not proceed with all the rapidity which suited his feelings, he was apt to
be in despair, and exclaim that he was sure at this rate it would be May
before Hymen's saffron robe would be put on for us. Oh! the pains I have been
at to dispel those gloomy ideas and give him cheerfuller views! The carriage—we
had disappointments about the carriage;—one morning, I remember, he came to me
quite in despair."
She was stopped by a
slight fit of coughing…”
And similarly, Mrs. Elton
quotes Gay’s “Hare and Many Friends” to remind the very pregnant (“in the case”)
Jane how vulnerable Jane really is, like a “hare” without strong friends to
protect her from the “bull”—Mrs. Elton herself!-- who is bearing down on her
with cruel intentions. That Mrs. Elton’s vengeful scheme is defeated, because
Jane in the end is a hare who has strong and resourceful friends, is
why Jane’s story ends not as a tragedy, but happily.
So, how does Mrs. Elton’s
predilection for covert messages via literary quotation correlate with Catherine
Morland’s store of serviceable and quotations? Why does JA go out of her way to create this covert
parallelism between two characters who would seem to otherwise be as opposite
as any two characters in the entire Austen canon? If anything, it’s Isabella Thorpe, and not
Catherine, who is the NA character who reminds us of Mrs. Elton in their social
climbing and hypocrisy.
I have my own theories as
to why JA drew this covert parallel, but
I’ve gone on long enough for today, so I’d be curious to hear from those of you
who made it this far in this post what your thoughts are in regard to any or
all of the above.
Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter
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