I
want to return the favor to Diane Reynolds that she gave me this morning with
her rich response to my post about
Elizabeth Bennet’s unconsciously blaming Darcy for Wickham’s deserting her.
Specifically, I will pick up on one of Diane’s comments, and show how it yokes
together, in ironic fashion, two passages a dozen chapters apart in Pride & Prejudice.
Diane
wrote: “She may have thought the day before
how wonderful to be mistress of Pemberley, but it is really not until Wickham
is off the market that she really, truly entertains the idea. And she
understands the situation in all its irony: what makes it possible that she
could change her feelings towards Darcy ([Wickham's] elopement) is what exactly will make (she thinks) the marriage with Darcy
impossible (the disgrace of the elopement): she "sighed at the
perverseness of those feelings which would NOW have promoted it continuance
[the relationship with Darcy], and would formerly have rejoiced in its
termination." The NOW is NOW--after Wickham is gone to her.
Austen
then goes on to tell us that Wickham is the first love and Darcy the
consolation prize: "her partiality for Wickham and ... its ill
success" will now lead Lizzie "to seek the other less interesting
mode of attachment" based on "gratitude and esteem." In
other words, NOW Lizzie is willing to settle.”
END
QUOTE FROM DIANE’S POST
Diane,
your above comment zeroes in on how strongly JA signals that Elizabeth has
never stopped (unconsciously?) holding onto hope that Wickham will come back to
her, especially after she is knocked out by the one-two punch of Jane’s two letters
which she reads one right after the other. Now, take a closer look at this bit
of narration of Lizzy’s thoughts that you quoted:
“Never,
since reading Jane's second letter, had she entertained a hope of Wickham's
meaning to marry her. No one but Jane, she thought, could flatter herself with
such an expectation. Surprise was the least of her feelings on this development.”
It’s
clear that you’ve recognized the negative implication of that first sentence. I.e.,
Lizzy’s marks the milestone of reading
of Jane’s second letter as the tombstone
for her doomed hope that Wickham might propose to her. This tells us that Lizzy
must have held on to that expectation right
up till that moment!
And
it makes sense that Lizzy would not have given up hope, since she observe her learning
from Lydia in Chapter 39 that Wickham’s courtship of Miss King has failed:
“…Well,
but now for my news; it is about dear Wickham; too good for the waiter, is it
not? There is no danger of Wickham's marrying Mary King. There's for you! She
is gone down to her uncle at Liverpool: gone to stay. Wickham is safe."
"And
Mary King is safe!" added Elizabeth; "safe from a connection
imprudent as to fortune."
"She
is a great fool for going away, if she liked him."
"But
I hope there is no strong attachment on either side," said Jane.
"I
am sure there is not on his. I will answer for it, he never cared three
straws about her—who could about such a nasty little freckled thing?"
Elizabeth
was shocked to think that, however incapable of such coarseness of expression
herself, the coarseness of the sentiment was little other than her own
breast had harboured and fancied liberal! “
In
other words, Elizabeth can only admit to herself that she has been thinking the
same uncharitable thoughts about Miss King that Lydia speaks aloud, and for the
same reasons---jealousy and envy!
But
that’s all warmup for the amazing connection of that passage to another, more
famous one, in P&P, a connection I’ve already flagged in my Subject Line.
I.e., those rueful words spoken to herself by Lizzy in Chapter 46, mourning the
death of hope of Wickham’s marrying her, constitute Jane Austen’s Mozartean counterpoint
to, and echo of, the milestone-marking words spoken by Lizzy to Darcy in Chapter 34, while rejecting his proposal, and in effect sentencing
his hopes to a shockingly unexpected demise:
“…I
had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world
whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry."
“I
had not known you a month….” and “Never, since reading Jane’s second letter…” The parallelism between the two is
breathtaking. Each of these expressions of Lizzy’s perceptions of her two primary
suitors unconsciously reveal the opposite of what they seem to say on the surface.
Lizzy’s kiss-off to Darcy reveals that she has been unconsciously considering marriage
to him since knowing him less than a month. And then Lizzy’s reflections on
Wickham reveal that she was still unconsciously considering marriage to him
until she read Jane’s second letter. These two passages are a matched pair of bookends
-- and how typical of Jane Austen to
show great authorial restraint in resisting inserting the heavy handed textual
prompts that lesser authors routinely insert, fearing that the dull elves among
their readers will miss the parallel.
And
that’s all I’ve got for now on that point, Diane, but before I close, I also
want to add a late modification of my first response to your final comment
about Lizzy settling for her second choice, Darcy:
“This is MP is reverse. This is what could have happened to Fanny had
she received the letter that Edmund had married Mary."
The
assumption you make, which is indeed the one most Janeites would make, is that
Edmund is Fanny’s first choice, and only Edmund’s marrying Mary would have
induced her to marry Henry Crawford. I take a different view. I think this is
the courtship climax of MP not in reverse, but in disguise! By this I mean, that just as Wickham’s character is
assassinated by Darcy (and his minions) in the last volume of P&P, so too
is Henry’s character assassinated in the last volume of MP! And, even though
Fanny has indeed been strongly attached to Edmund since puberty, I’ve
previously written about the strong romantic attraction that Henry exerts over
Fanny, once he puts his mind to making a hole in her heart. I believe that in
the aftermath of that dazzlingly romantic stroll on the pier at Portsmouth,
Fanny’s heart has been successfully pierced, and Fanny is holding on to her old
feelings for Edmund by a fraying thread.
So,
in both P&P and MP, then, I see Lizzy and Fanny as both being deeply in
denial as to the intensity of their feelings for the “rakes” who court them.
And
don’t even get me talking about similar patterns of romantic denouement vis a
vis Willoughby, Frank, and cousin Elliot---all birds of that same feather---but
that’s a topic for another post!
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
onTwitter
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