Last
night, I was thinking some more about the veiled allusion to Swift's "a
modest proposal" in Emma which I
posted about twice yesterday….
…and this
time I focused on the macabre essence of Swift's satire, which was the
"kindly meant" advice to Irish parents to eat their babies who were a
“burden” they could not otherwise carry.
Thinking
about babies who were a burden a parent could not handle took me straight to
the heart of the shadow story of Emma, as
to which I have maintained for the past decade that Jane Fairfax is the shadow heroine,
not Emma, and Jane’s “burden” is Jane’s unborn child and the pregnancy she
conceals while searching for a solution to her longterm problem—what to do with
the baby after she’s born?!
In the
end, Jane’s desperate returns to Highbury to conceal her unwed pregnancy is
successful, as she winds up giving her baby Anna to Mrs. Weston. But it became
clear to me last night that Jane Austen, with her own sharply macabre sense of
humor, went out of her way to repeatedly but subliminally point to Swift’s “Modest
Proposal” specifically vis a vis Jane Fairfax.
I.e.,
Jane Fairfax has a comparable "problem" to that of Swift’s “poor” Irish
parents, and Jane Austen makes sure we are constantly reminded that Jane may
feel forced by the exigencies of her situation, especially the malicious
meddling of Mrs. Elton, to in effect “eat” (i.e., abort) her baby!
Let’s
start with a quick tally of all of Jane Fairfax’s Irish connections, which clearly
have some coded meaning, since Jane F. is unique among Austen characters for
her multiple, varied, and seemingly random associations with Ireland and the
Irish:
First
re the suitor Emma imagines Jane is involved with is the Irishman, Mr. Dixon,
who is engaged to Jane’s “sister”, Miss Campbell, we hear all about Ireland
from the informative Miss Bates:
Ch.
20: GOING TO IRELAND, DUBLIN, BALY-CRAIG
"…The
case is, you see, that the Campbells are GOING TO IRELAND. Mrs. Dixon has
persuaded her father and mother to come over and see her directly. They had not
intended to go over till the summer, but she is so impatient to see them
again—for till she married, last October, she was never away from them so much
as a week, which must make it very strange to be in different kingdoms, I was
going to say, but however different countries, and so she wrote a very urgent
letter to her mother—or her father, I declare I do not know which it was, but
we shall see presently in Jane's letter—wrote in Mr. Dixon's name as well as
her own, to press their coming over directly, and they would give them the
meeting in DUBLIN, and take them back to their country seat, BALY-CRAIG, a
beautiful place, I fancy. Jane has heard a great deal of its beauty; from Mr.
Dixon, I mean—I do not know that she ever heard about it from any body else;
but it was very natural, you know, that he should like to speak of his own
place while he was paying his addresses—and as Jane used to be very often
walking out with them—for Colonel and Mrs. Campbell were very particular about
their daughter's not walking out often with only Mr. Dixon, for which I do not
at all blame them; of course she heard every thing he might be telling Miss
Campbell about his own home in Ireland; and I think she wrote us word that he
had shewn them some drawings of the place, views that he had taken himself. He
is a most amiable, charming young man, I believe. Jane was quite longing TO GO
TO IRELAND, from his account of things."
At
this moment, an ingenious and animating suspicion entering Emma's brain with
regard to Jane Fairfax, this charming Mr. Dixon, and the NOT GOING TO IRELAND…”
Colonel
and Mrs. Campbell."
…"But,
in spite of all her friends' urgency, and her own wish of SEEING IRELAND, Miss
Fairfax prefers devoting the time to you and Mrs. Bates?"
…"Jane
caught a bad cold, poor thing! so long ago as the 7th of November, (as I am
going to read to you,) and has never been well since. A long time, is not it,
for a cold to hang upon her? She never mentioned it before, because she would
not alarm us. Just like her! so considerate!—But however, she is so far from
well, that her kind friends the Campbells think she had better come home, and
try an air that always agrees with her; and they have no doubt that three or
four months at Highbury will entirely cure her—and it is certainly a great deal
better that she should come here, than GO TO IRELAND, if she is unwell. Nobody
could nurse her, as we should do."
"Yes—entirely
her own doing, entirely her own choice; and Colonel and Mrs. Campbell think she
does quite right, just what they should recommend; and indeed they particularly
wish her to try her native air, as she has not been quite so well as
usual lately."
…With
regard to her not accompanying them TO IRELAND, her account to her aunt
contained nothing but truth, though THERE MIGHT BE SOME TRUTHS NOT TOLD. It was
her own choice to give the time of their absence to Highbury; to spend,
perhaps, her last months of perfect liberty with those kind relations to whom
she was so very dear: and the Campbells, whatever might be their motive or MOTIVES,
WHETHER SINGLE, OR DOUBLE, OR TREBLE, gave the arrangement their ready
sanction, and said, that they depended more on a few months spent in her native
air, for the recovery of her health, than on any thing else. Certain it was
that she was to come; and that Highbury, instead of welcoming that perfect
novelty which had been so long promised it—Mr. Frank Churchill—must put up for
the present with Jane Fairfax, who could bring only the freshness of a two
years' absence.
It is
no accident that the above passage includes the broadly hinting language I’ve
put in all caps about truths not told, and treble motives.
And
next we have two passages where Frank Churchill, who, I have long maintained,
first realizes that Jane is pregnant as he stares at her, twice invokes Jane’s
Irish connections in coded reference to Jane’s pregnancy, a code Emma is
clueless about:
Ch.
26: AN IRISH FASHION
He
started. "Thank you for rousing me," he replied. "I believe I
have been very rude; but really Miss Fairfax has done her hair in so odd a
way—so very odd a way—that I cannot keep my eyes from her. I never saw any
thing so outree!—Those curls!—This must be a fancy of her own. I see nobody
else looking like her!—I must go and ask her whether it is AN IRISH FASHION.
Shall I?—Yes, I will—I declare I will—and you shall see how she takes
it;—whether she colours."
Ch.
28: A NEW SET OF IRISH MELODIES
"What
felicity it is to hear a tune again which has made one happy!—If I
mistake not that was danced at Weymouth."
She
looked up at him for a moment, coloured deeply, and played something else. He
took some music from a chair near the pianoforte, and turning to Emma, said,
"Here
is something quite new to me. Do you know it?—Cramer.—And here are A NEW SET OF
IRISH MELODIES. That, from such a quarter, one might expect. This was all sent
with the instrument. Very thoughtful of Colonel Campbell, was not it?—He knew
Miss Fairfax could have no music here. I honour that part of the attention
particularly; it shews it to have been so thoroughly from the heart. Nothing
hastily done; nothing incomplete. True affection only could have prompted
it."
Emma
wished he would be less pointed, yet could not help being amused; and when on
glancing her eye towards Jane Fairfax she caught the remains of a smile, when
she saw that with all the deep blush of consciousness, there had been a smile
of secret delight, she had less scruple in the amusement, and much less
compunction with respect to her.—This amiable, upright, perfect Jane Fairfax
was apparently cherishing very reprehensible feelings.
In
the next two passages, Emma has no idea as to what Jane’s blush really means,
but that doesn’t stop Emma from picking up on Frank’s ironic Irish digs. And then
Miss Bates chimes in again.
It
seems half of Highbury is speaking in an Irish code that Emma does not
understand the full meaning of:
Ch.
34: THE IRISH MAILS
Jane's
solicitude about fetching her own letters had not escaped Emma. She had heard
and seen it all; and felt some curiosity to know whether the wet walk of this
morning had produced any. She suspected that it had; that it would not
have been so resolutely encountered but in full expectation of hearing from
some one very dear, and that it had not been in vain. She thought there was an
air of greater happiness than usual—a glow both of complexion and spirits.
She
could have made an inquiry or two, as to the expedition and the expense of THE
IRISH MAILS;—it was at her tongue's end—but she abstained. She was quite
determined not to utter a word that should hurt Jane Fairfax's feelings; and
they followed the other ladies out of the room, arm in arm, with an appearance
of good-will highly becoming to the beauty and grace of each.
Ch.
43: THE IRISH CAR PARTY
"Now,
ma'am," said Jane to her aunt, "shall we join Mrs. Elton?"
"If
you please, my dear. With all my heart. I am quite ready. I was ready to have
gone with her, but this will do just as well. We shall soon overtake her. There
she is—no, that's somebody else. That's one of the ladies in THE IRISH CAR
PARTY, not at all like her.—Well, I declare—"
JANE’S
HUNGER FOR BAKED APPLES
So
now, after reading the above, and recognizing that Ireland and Jane are
connected for a deeper reason not explicitly told but everywhere hinted at, read
the following passages with Swift's culinary proposal very specifically in
mind, I.e., think about Jane Fairfax as the parent whom "friends"
like Mrs. Elton "modestly propose" that Jane “abolish" (i.e.
abort):
The first
two passages occur in Chapter 27, when Jane Fairfax is about midway through her
concealed pregnancy:
First
Emma talking with Harriet about Jane’s and Emma’s comparative piano skills, and
Harriet refers three times to Emma’s “taste”:
"Those
who knew any thing about it, must have felt the difference. The truth is,
Harriet, that my playing is just good enough to be praised, but Jane Fairfax's
is much beyond it."
"Well,
I always shall think that you play quite as well as she does, or that if there
is any difference nobody would ever find it out. Mr. Cole said how much TASTE
you had; and Mr. Frank Churchill talked a great deal about your TASTE, and that
he valued TASTE much more than execution."
&
then Miss Bates talking about Jane’s lack of appetite in language that is a
direct and indeed virtuosic multiple echoing of Swift’s satiric rhapsodies
about the wonderful taste and wholesome nutritional value of Irish babies—just think
of the baby as a “baked” apple, as in the still common colloquial expression
about “buns in the oven” as a euphemism for gestating embryonic babies in utero:
"Then
the baked apples came home, Mrs. Wallis sent them by her boy…we have never
known any thing but the greatest attention from them. And it cannot be for the
value of our custom now, for what is our consumption of bread, you know? Only
three of us -- besides DEAR JANE at present -- and she REALLY EATS NOTHING --
makes SUCH A SHOCKING BREAKFAST, YOU WOULD BE QUITE FRIGHTENED IF YOU SAW IT. I
dare not let my mother know HOW LITTLE SHE EATS -- so I say one thing and then
I say another, and it passes off. But about the middle of the day SHE GETS
HUNGRY, AND THERE IS NOTHING SHE LIKES SO WELL AS THESE BAKED APPLES, AND THEY
ARE EXTREMELY WHOLESOME, for I took the opportunity the other day of asking Mr.
Perry; I happened to meet him in the street. Not that I had any doubt before --
I HAVE SO OFTEN HEARD MR. WOODHOUSE RECOMMEND A BAKED APPLE. I BELIEVE IT IS
THE ONLY WAY THAT MR. WOODHOUSE THINKS THE FRUIT THOROUGHLY WHOLESOME….”
Just
let that sink in----Miss Bates, in code, is repeatedly invoking Swift’s “Modest
Proposal”!
And,
as an unmistakable echo of that passage, the following description of Miss
Bates’s comments to Emma occurs at precisely the moment when Jane Fairfax is in
labor and therefore obviously receiving no visitors:
Ch.45
“…[Emma] submitted, therefore, and only
questioned Miss Bates farther as to her niece's appetite and diet, which she
longed to be able to assist. On that subject poor Miss Bates was very unhappy,
and very communicative; JANE WOULD HARDLY EAT ANY THING: -- MR. PERRY
RECOMMENDED NOURISHING FOOD; but every thing they could command (and never had
anybody such good neighbours) was DISTASTEFUL."
I
mean, really, No wonder the radically absurdist Sixties playwright Joe Orton
loved Jane Austen's fiction- she was there 150 years before him!!! Except that
in one of his plays, Jane Fairfax would've actually eaten her baby.
Cheers,
Arnie
@JaneAustenCode
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