One of
the nicer traditions of JASNA (I don’t know how far back it dates) is the
publication of the latest edition of Persuasions
Online on Jane Austen’s birthday. This past Friday, # 241, was no
exception, and so I eagerly skimmed through the contents for articles for the
few (based on my experience with past issues) I could hope would open new
Austenian vistas for me – and my wish was rapidly fulfilled, when I clicked on
the link for this one:
“If Art
Could Tell”: A Miltonic Reading of Pride and Prejudice by
James M. Scott
During
the weekend, I spent some very enjoyable hours reading and rereading Scott’s
article, which fulfilled its title’s great promise for me, because it’s not
only fantastic scholarship in its own right, it also just happens to intersect
and synergize with my own research to an extraordinary degree.
Specifically,
I've been blogging about the Paradise
Lost subtext of Austen's novels – but especially Pride and Prejudice -- for over six years now. So I really was
Scott’s ideal reader, because I could appreciate, from my own personal experience
as an Austen scholar, the marvelous, systematic way he gathered his evidence, and then laid out his arguments. And
even as to the arguments he presented which were close to my own (for example,
his claim that Paradise Lost was
subjected to protofeminist readings during Jane Austen’s lifetime), Scott’s
point of view, his starting point, was very different from mine, and therefore
very interesting and fresh to me.
And by
the way, it is very clear to me from reading his article that Scott was completely
unaware of my research (a fact which he verified when I contacted him
yesterday). He’s not really an Austen specialist at all, he’s never
participated in Austen virtual community or in JASNA, and he’d have had to
Google pretty persistently in order to find my relevant blog posts (which I’ve
never taken particular care to make more v Google-visible). And I love what he
wrote in his reply to my initial email to him: “there is comfort in knowing that your own independent
research tends to confirm my approach, even though you are coming at the subject from
another angle and with a different lens." I feel exactly the same
about his work!
You
see, when I say his point of view is very different from mine, I’m not saying
that I believe any of Scott’s interpretations of Austen’s allusions to Milton
are wrong. Quite the contrary, I believe they’re 100% correct and brilliant; but...they only pertain
to what I call the "overt story" of Pride & Prejudice. Whereas all of my posts of the past six
years that bear in some way on Paradise
Lost and Pride & Prejudice,
relate to what I call the "shadow story" of P&P:
[For
background on what I mean by these two terms, read and/or watch these: “Austen’s
6 novels are all double stories (2 parallel fictional universes), undetected
for 200 yrs,” http://tinyurl.com/onftqz7
I will
now zero in on the shadow story of P&P. As those who’ve read a lot of my
posts know, in the overt story of Pride
& Prejudice, the version of the novel that “everybody knows”, Darcy is
a fundamentally good man who, after his botched first proposal to Elizabeth,
repents his bad behavior and reforms. However, in the shadow story as I’ve
sleuthed it out, Darcy is fundamentally a very BAD man who remains bad all the way through to the end of the novel,
and only pretends to repent. Topsy turvy was the name of Austen’s fictional
game, two stories for the price of one.
Now, in
the shadow story of P&P viewed through a Miltonian lens, Darcy (not
Wickham) is a great deal like Milton’s Satan, because Darcy manipulatively
tempts Elizabeth to marry him, using Pemberley as bait (as with Satan tempting
Jesus in Matthew 4); whereas Mary Bennet (yes, Mary!) is a good and wise Satan
who whispers to Elizabeth to try to warn her elder sister about the grave danger
Darcy poses to her, but Elizabeth isn’t listening, because she mistakenly believes
Mary is a foolish pedant! And the members of Darcy's Satanic crew (think Moloch
and Belial) include Mr. Gardiner and Mrs. Reynolds, who each play their crucial
role in the complex charade that Darcy stages for Elizabeth at Pemberley. And
finally there’s Charlotte, another master manipulator like Satan, who has her
own very romantic reasons to work behind the scenes to bring her true love, Elizabeth,
to Pemberley, where, as Charlotte plots from early on, Mr. Collins will be the
local clergyman!
So, in
an oversimplified way, that begins to explain why I see Jane Austen's engagement
with Paradise Lost as even more
radically feminist than the feminist point of view Scott so elegantly and
persuasively ascribed to Jane Austen in her encounter with Milton. As thrilling
as the character of Elizabeth Bennet is in her light, bright and sparkling wit
and audacity in the overt story of P&P, so in the shadow story are Mary,
Charlotte (and even Mrs. Bennet!) making the best of their “weak” feminine
position in society.
For
those who want some meat on these theoretical bones, and to end up with a rich
understanding of Jane Austen’s engagement in Pride & Prejudice with Paradise
Lost, I suggest you first read Scott’s article, and absorb its rich
content. Then you can move on to the following sampling of my relevant blog posts,
and see the other side of Eden in Meryton.
When
you’ve done that, which may take some time, you’ll then really understand how Scott
and I have, while unaware of each other, been tracking the same allusive literary
scent for a while, but, as I said, viewing it all through the two different
lens that Jane Austen thoughtfully provided to her readers.
So,
without further ado, here are my relevant posts, in the order of salience:
Mr.
Darcy, Eliza, & Lady Catherine as Satan, Eve & Raphael: the answers to
my “tempting” quiz
06/02/2015
Re-reading
P&P: Mary Bennet the Good Satan of Longbourne 08/25/2010
Darcy’s
stunning (& cunning) vindication of his own right…to re-educate Elizabeth! 07/05/2016
MARY
Bennet & MARY Crawford as MARY Wollstonecraft, the Satan who whispered to
Jane Austen: Jane, the Raffish Disciple of Wollstonecraft, abhorred Polwhele’s
misogynistic Unsex’d Females
10/13/2014
The
rain falls mainly on Jane: Colin Firth as Darcy, A Single Man, ‘enry
‘iggins….& Milton’s Satan?
05/28/15
Jane
Austen’s profoundly “light, bright & sparkling” (Biblical) subtext in Pride
& Prejudice 07/25/2015
Pemberley
as Elizabeth Bennet’s Fool’s Paradise (Hall) Lost & Regained 04/24/2016
The
Notorious 3rd Duke of Dorset in the subtext of 3 Jane Austen novels (along with
Garrick's disturbing Riddle & Joshua Reynolds's disturbing "Cupid as
Link-Boy") 03/12/2014
The
answer to my latest Jane Austen quiz: Darcy as Jesus and Eliza as Mary
Magdalene 06/15/2015
Ill-Humour
at Pemberley with Darcy’s Pens and Mrs. Hurst’s Singing 01/30/2015
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
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