As I
was composing my previous post about the single use of any form of the word “big”
in Jane Austen’s fiction…
…I serendipitously
came across yet another unique word usage in JA’s fiction---the single usage of
the word “ambiguous” (which luckily contains within it the word ‘big’) in any
of her novels, in the following passage in Chapter 9 of Northanger Abbey. Of course, this is when John Thorpe narcissistically
and contradictorily rattles on about the supposedly risky ride of James Morland’s
gig:
“Catherine
listened with astonishment; she knew not how to reconcile two such very
different accounts of the same thing; for she had not been brought up to
understand the propensities of a rattle, nor to know to how many idle
assertions and impudent falsehoods the excess of vanity will lead. Her own
family were plain, matter-of-fact people who seldom aimed at wit of any kind;
her father, at the utmost, being contented with a pun, and her mother with a
proverb; they were not in the habit therefore of telling lies to increase their
importance, or of asserting at one moment what they would contradict the next.
She reflected on the affair for some time in much perplexity, and was more than
once on the point of requesting from Mr. Thorpe a clearer insight into his real
opinion on the subject; but she checked herself, because it appeared to her
that he did not excel in giving those clearer insights, in making those things
plain which he had before made ambiguous; and, joining to this, the
consideration that he would not really suffer his sister and his friend to be
exposed to a danger from which he might easily preserve them, she concluded at
last that he must know the carriage to be in fact perfectly safe, and therefore
would alarm herself no longer.”
What
struck me for the first time today, as I reread this passage, was how perfectly
it performed a secondary function in NA. On the surface level, it works
perfectly as Catherine’s usual level-headed, insightful, and lucid analysis of
Thorpe’s motivations and meanings. However, on the metafictional level it also
functions as a wonderful parody of
the reaction of a hypothetical unimaginative reader of Jane Austen’s
double-storied novels, as I will show you, below.
But
first, for contrast, let me present you an excerpt from a recent mainstream Austen
scholarly take on the above passage. It appears in the 2011 Companion to Jane Austen in a chapter
entitled “Turns of Speech and Figures of Mind” by Margaret Ann Doody. Doody
writes as follows:
“In
Northanger Abbey, devices of language are consistently noted by the author, if
visibly neglected by the heroine. Catherine Morland herself is strikingly
devoid of information regarding figures of speech. She is puzzled by the
inanities of boastful John Thorpe and his contradictory accounts of her brother
James’s gig: we are told this puzzlement is a result of ignorance of what
language does.”
Then,
after quoting the above passage, Doody elaborates: “Catherine cannot bear the ambiguous and has
no method of combing out what is going on at a linguistic level. In her family,
one parent deals in the pun—linguistic doubling, complexity without significant
tenor; the other parent prefers the proverb-plain statement of folk wisdom,
overtly significant tenor without complexity. The alliteration of ‘pun” and “proverb”
indicates the comic problem.
Catherine
Morland’s chief trouble is her ignorance of figures of speech. Her reading in
late childhood and adolescence includes works marked by metaphor and other
devices…Poetic comparisons have made no dent on Catherine; they are merely
lines she can repeat….” END QUOTE
In my
view, Doody has (ironically) fallen into Jane Austen’s clever metafictional
trap. I.e., Doody, in her harsh judgment on Catherine’s apparent shortcomings
in understanding language, is unwittingly describing her own profound tone-deafness to Jane Austen’s language irony, and
at multiple levels.
First,
Doody fails to realize that the narrator’s descriptions of Catherine’s
abilities is deliberately ambiguous, and is meant, as one plausible
interpretation, to be taken ironically,
because Catherine is actually a brilliant analyst of other people’s motivations
throughout the novel, and her only shortcoming is being far too humble about
her own instinctive gifts. And second, Doody fails to realize that in the above
passage Jane Austen is not only mocking the tone deafness and lack of imagination
of those literalistic readers, like Doody, who miss JA’s irony, she’s also
parodying the reactions of those readers who fail to grasp that JA is deliberately ambiguous in her writing!
To be
more specific, using JA’s language, JA expected her sharp readers to “know how
to reconcile two such very different accounts of the same thing” (i.e., one of
her novels); to understand that JA’s
double stories are not “idle assertions and impudent falsehoods”; to understand
that JA used “wit, puns, and proverbs” ironically; to understand that JA was
not “telling lies” but was in fact “asserting at one moment” (i.e., in the
overt story) what JA “would contradict the next” (i.e., JA would reverse the overt
story in the shadow story). And finally,
if read properly, this very passage, when read against the grain as I suggest,
provides the reader “in great perplexity” with “a clearer insight into [JA’s]
real opinion on the subject”.
Above
all JA was not going to make it too easy for her passive readers. I.e., she was
not going to “giv[e] those clearer insights, in making those things plain which
[s]he had before made ambiguous”. Instead,
in order to train her readers to be proactive and imaginative, she was going to
hint and hint and hint, but never say overtly what she was really up to.
And
this is nothing other than a metafictional restatement of JA’s famous ironic
epistolary witticism to sister CEA, right after publication of P&P, in reference to ambiguities of pronoun references
that family and friends had complained about---that she did “not write for such
dull elves who have not a great deal of ingenuity themselves”.
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
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