In my
previous post, I quoted the following passage from Sir Walter Scott’s 1816
review of Jane Austen’s writing, which included this about P&P:
".....The
story of the piece [P&P] consists chiefly in the fates of the second
sister, to whom a man of high birth, large fortune, but haughty and reserved
manners, becomes attached, in spite of the discredit thrown upon the object of
his affection by the vulgarity and ill-conduct of her relations. The lady, on
the contrary, hurt at the contempt of her connections, which the lover does not
even attempt to suppress, and prejudiced against him on other accounts, refuses
the hand which he ungraciously offers, and does not perceive that she has done
a foolish thing until she accidentally visits a very handsome seat and grounds
belonging to her admirer. They chance to meet exactly as her prudence had begun
to subdue her prejudice; and after some essential services rendered to her
family, the lover becomes encouraged to renew his addresses, and the novel ends
happily..... "
I
became curious to see if any later Austen scholars had ever engaged with Scott’s
subversive reading, which (again) suggests that Elizabeth’s sudden emergence of
loving feelings toward Darcy arose because she had been overawed and seduced by
the wealth and grandeur of Pemberley.
And I
found a remarkable reaction to Scott, in “Jane Austen ob. July 18, 1817” an
article by renowned early 20th century Austen scholar, Reginald
Farrer, in The Quarterly Review.I had
not previously read Farrer’s July, 1917 commemoration of Austen on the
centennial of her death, but now I see that it contains a quintessential
example of how the Myth of Jane Austen has blinded even the most insightful
Austen scholars to evidence of her shadow stories, even when it has been placed
right in front of their noses by the one contemporary of Jane Austen who would have
been the best example possible of a sophisticated contemporary reader of her
novels--- Sir Walter Scott, in the above quoted passage. Scott, after all, was
the author whom JA famously jokingly wished would stop writing such successful
novels, because he was making it so hard for other authors like her to get
their books published, sold, and read.
For
starters, the following passage in Farrar’s article is of interest, because
Farrer so blithely states, as facts, assertions about JA’s writing which I
believe most Janeites today, including myself, would consider either wrong or wrong-headed—see if you can
spot Farrers’s errors of fact and opinion about P&P:
“But
now comes the greatest miracle of English Literature. Straight on the heels of Lady Susan and Sense and Sensibility this country parson’s daughter of barely
twenty-one breaks covert with a book of such effortless mastery, such easy and
sustained brilliance, as would seem quite beyond reach of any but the most
mature genius. Yet, though Pride and
Prejudice has probably given more perfect pleasure than any other novel
(Elizabeth, to Jane Austen first, and now to all time, ‘is as delightful a
creature as ever appeared in print,’ literature’s most radiant heroine, besides
being the most personally redolent of her creator), its very youthful note of
joyousness is also the negation of that deeper quality which makes the later
work so inexhaustible. Without ingratitude to the inimitable sparkle of this
glorious book, even Northanger Abbey,
in its different scale, must be recognised as of a more sumptuous vintage. Pride and Prejudice is, in fact, alone
among the Immortal Five, a story pure and simple, though unfolded in and by
character, indeed, with a dexterity which the author never aimed at repeating.
For, as Jane Austen’s power and personality unfold, character becomes more and
more the very fabric of her works, and the later books are entirely absorbed
and dominated by their leading figures; whereas Darcy and Elizabeth are actors
among others in their comedy, instead of being the very essence of it, like
Anne or Emma. And to the reader, the difference is that, whereas he can
never come to an end of the subtle delights that lurk in every sentence of the
later books, there does come a point at which he has Pride and Prejudice completely assimilated.
Perhaps
Jane Austen never quite recovered this first fine careless rapture; still, the
book has other signs of youth. It has a vice-word, ‘tolerably,’ and its
dialogue retains traces of Fanny Burney. Compare the heavy latinised paragraphs
of the crucial quarrel between Darcy and
Elizabeth (the sentence which proved so indelible a whip-lash to Darcy’s pride is
hardly capable of delivery in dialogue at all, still less by a young girl in a
tottering passion) with the crisp and crashing exchanges in the parallel scene
between Elton and Emma. The later book provides another comparison. Throughout,
when once its secret is grasped, the reader is left in no doubt that
subconsciously Emma was in love with Knightley all the time.” END QUOTE FROM FARRER
I
leave it you to count all the questionable assertions that Farrer makes in the
above passage, in particular his claim that the dialog of the first proposal
scene between Darcy and Elizabeth is “hardly capable of delivery in dialogue at
all” –anyone who has seen Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth deliver those very same
lines would beg to disagree, right?
But
now we come to the point, as Mr. Bennet would say. Here is where Farrer
blithely slams Sir Walter Scott’s 1816 comments about P&P, which I quoted
above:
“In Pride and Prejudice the author has
rather fumbled with an analogous psychological situation, and is so far from
making clear the real feeling which underlies Elizabeth’s deliberately fostered
dislike of Darcy, that she has uncharacteristically left herself open to such a
monstrous misreading as Sir Walter Scott’s, who believed that Elizabeth was
subdued to Darcy by the sight of Pemberley. In point of fact, we are expressly
told that her inevitable feeling, ‘this might have been mine,’ is instantly
extinguished by the belief that she could not bear it to be hers, at the price
of having Darcy too; while her subsequent remark to Jane is emphatically a
joke, and is immediately so treated by Jane herself (‘another entreaty that she
would be serious,’ etc.), wiser than some later readers of the scene. Sir
Walter’s example should be a warning of how easy it is to trip even amid the
looser mesh of Jane Austen’s early work. Rapid reading of her is faulty reading….”
Now
do you see a quintessential example of why Jane Austen’s shadow stories have
not been spotted and properly understood for 200 years. The legitimate question
of whether Sir Walter Scott has makes an incisive subversive interpretation of
the climax of P&P is begged in the most cavalier, superficial manner by
Farrer, and yet Farrer has the intellectual chutzpah
to accuse Scott of reading P&P too fast to have understood it properly!
Physician, heal thyself, I say!
Note
in particular how Farrer accuses JA of making a rather large mistake, i.e., in
leaving Elizabeth’s feelings about Darcy ambiguous. Farrer thereby implicitly
and inadvertently concedes that there is an ambiguity in the novel on this
crucial point—but again, with colossal chutzpah,
he accuses JA herself of having “rather fumbled” the execution of this central aspect
of her novel. And on top of that, he inadvertently also reveals that he has so
misunderstood the manner in which P&P was composed by JA—did you note that
he believed that JA wrote P&P at 21? That shows that Farrer did not bother
to read JA’s 1812 letter in which she reported to Cassandra about her progress,
at age 37, in lopping and cropping P&P for publication. Again, Mr. Farrer, physician
heal thyself!
And
finally note how Farrer accuses Scott of the “monstrous misreading” of that “mistake”,
when Scott takes JA’s ambiguity as intentional on JA’s part. And then Farrer
gives as “proof” that Scott has misread JA two pieces of evidence which are anything but
probative, because they can very plausibly be read as (1) Elizabeth’s
self-deluding rationalizations about her immunity from the seduction of wealth and
power; and (2) yet another ignoring of unpleasantness by Jane Bennet, the
quintessential Pollyanna, who ought to be the last character in the world to
cite as an authority on whether Elizabeth was joking!
But,
who was ever going to challenge Farrer, in 1917…..or in 2016, for that matter, with
these sorts of objections, other than a stubborn obsessive contrarian like
myself? Nobody! Only I have had both the necessary firmness of belief that
Scott was correct, plus, in the past 15 years (out of the 203 years since
P&P was published), the power of the Internet and computers at my disposal,
with all that those resources provide. And I’ve also been fortunate to have had
the enormous amount of time to completely research the entire range of Austen
scholarship—in particular, the ability to gather hundreds of nuggets like Scott’s,
and to put them all in their proper place in a well organized argument,
alongside my own discoveries.
And
that’s yet another reason why Jane Austen’s shadow stories have not been
discovered until now.
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
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