Today I
came across “Irony in Jane Austen: A Cognitive-Narratological Approach” (by a
German professor emeritus, Wolfgang G. Muller), a chapter in a recently
published book on narrative theory. Muller’s essay addresses what I consider to
be the most central yet challenging-to-understand aspect of Jane Austen’s
genius – her pervasive use of irony. Muller’s ideas provided me with rich
inspiration for some reflections of my own on that important topic.
I quote
below the first two excerpts therefrom relating to irony in Pride & Prejudice, which I found
most significant, and, as to each such excerpt, my reaction to it. In a second,
separate post, I will react to two other
excerpts in Muller’s essay, also with
my comments, which pertain, respectively, to irony in Emma, and then to Austen’s narrative structure in all six of her
completed novels. So, here goes.
MULLER EXCERPT
#1: “It is curious that secondary criticism of JA tends to praise her irony
without going more deeply into this aspect of her art…To my knowledge, there is
only one comprehensive study of Austen’s irony, Kuhnel’s monograph (1969)…some
passages in JA can be explained in terms of ironia
verborum or litotes, for instance the following comments of Mr. Bennet in
Austen’s P&P (1813) on the conceited, domineering Lady Catherine and the
insolent good-for-nothing Wickham:
“She is
a very fine-looking woman! and her calling here was prodigiously civil! for she
only came, I suppose, to tell us the Collinses were well. She is on her road
somewhere, I dare say, and so, passing through Meryton, thought she might as
well call on you. I suppose she had nothing particular to say to you, Lizzy?”
“He is
as fine a fellow,” said Mr. Bennet, as soon as they were out of the house, “as
ever I saw. He simpers, and smirks, and makes love to us all. I am prodigiously
proud of him. I defy even Sir William Lucas himself to produce a more valuable
son-in-law.”
The
context of the two passages makes it obvious that Mr. Bennet intends his
utterances not to be taken literally. He makes his point by stating the
opposite of what he purports to convey. His comment on the two characters is a
transparent misrepresentation. Using this form of verbal irony is his way of
showing his wit and of passing a negative judgment on others. Mr. Bennet’s
ironic statements also have the function of correcting the effusive evaluation
of the same persons by his wife, which in contrast to his remarks constitute
non-ironic misrepresentations of the reality of things and persons that are
derived from wishful thinking….” END OF MULLER EXCERPT #1
Muller
contrasts Mr. Bennet’s ironic absurd statements with Mrs. Bennet’s unironic
absurd statements. However, Muller doesn’t realize that many of Mrs. Bennet’s
absurd statements can also plausibly be read as ironic! To do so, the reader must
entertain the possibility that Mrs. Bennet is not the consistently over-the-top
fool she seems (to Eliza) to be, but actually is clever enough to feign hysteria in certain instances for
strategic purposes. As you might guess, I believe JA did indeed intend Mrs.
Bennet to be ambiguous in this way, plausibly viewable as either an actual or a feigned fool. Which Mrs. Bennet you see
depends on whether the reader can imagine a Mrs. Bennet who has motivations
very different than Elizabeth, the focal consciousness of the novel, ascribes
to her.
Muller
also missed the opportunity to note that Mr. Bennet is not alone in P&P in ‘mak[ing]
his point by stating the opposite of what he purports to convey.” All readers
of P&P would agree that Eliza’s ironic sense of humor reveal her to truly be
her father’s daughter in this regard. We have no lesser authority on this point
than Mr. Darcy: “…[Darcy] making with his usual deliberation towards the
pianoforte stationed himself so as to command a full view of the fair
performer’s countenance. Elizabeth saw what he was doing, and at the first
convenient pause, turned to him with an arch smile, and said: “You
mean to frighten me, Mr. Darcy, by coming in all this state to hear me? I will
not be alarmed though your sister does play so well. There is
a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of
others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”
“I shall not say you are mistaken,”
he replied, “because you could not really believe me to entertain any design of
alarming you; and I have had the pleasure
of your acquaintance long enough to know that you find great enjoyment in
occasionally professing opinions which in fact are not your own.”
Elizabeth laughed heartily at this
picture of herself…”
MULLER EXCERPT
#2: “…such an irony-saturated narrative [as P&P] requires a perceptive
reader…A similar, yet somewhat more intricate example…is the representation of
Charlotte Lucas’s consciousness as she eagerly waits for the arrival of Mr.
Collins: ‘Miss Lucas perceived him from an upper window as he walked towards
the house, and instantly set out to meet him accidentally in the lane.”
Here,
the use of the adverb ‘accidentally’ does not fit its context. Again, the
reader is more than aware of the situation, namely that Charlotte Lucas, in
intending to ‘catch’ Mr. Collins, is making a show of acting in an
unpremeditated way. Irony is here a device of exposing and criticizing a
character’s hypocrisy…the narrator inserts the adverb ‘accidentally’ in
reference to the impression that Charlotte Lucas desires to create. The
insertion of this word can also be seen as a glimpse of the figural character’s
point of view. We can here observe that Austen is more sophisticated than
run-of-the-mill ironists….”
END OF
MULLER EXCERPT #2
All
readers of P&P would agree that Charlotte’s meeting Mr. Collins in the lane
is the furthest thing from “accidental”. However, Muller fails to extrapolate
from this scene showing Charlotte’s opportunistic, proactive approach to
courtship, in which she is the active pursuer of Mr. Collins, while disguising
her actions so as to appear to be a traditional, passive female object of
courtship. Muller (and most readers of P&P) fail to utilize that rare window
into Charlotte’s character which this scene provides, and wonder whether there
might be other points in the story in
which Charlotte, while outside of Elizabeth’s gaze, also takes covert action in
order to inobtrusively direct the behavior of other, unsuspecting characters.
Muller
also fails to notice a major allusive wink in the next sentence after his
quoted excerpt from P&P:
“But
little had [Charlotte] dared to hope that so much love and eloquence awaited
her [in the lane].”
12
years ago, I first used Google to learn that the striking phrase “love and
eloquence” was not merely one part of the mock-romantic tone of that narration,
in the identical vein as Mr. Bennet’s earlier satirical mockery of Mr. Collins:
[Mr.
Collins] “…I am happy on every occasion to offer those little delicate
compliments which are always acceptable to ladies…These are the kind of little
things which please her ladyship, and it is a sort of attention which I
conceive myself peculiarly bound to pay.”
“You
judge very properly,” said Mr. Bennet, “and it is happy for you that you
possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these
pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result
of previous study?”
“They
arise chiefly from what is passing at the time, and though I sometimes amuse
myself with suggesting and arranging such little elegant compliments as may be
adapted to ordinary occasions, I always wish to give them as unstudied an air
as possible.”
Mr.
Bennet’s expectations were fully answered. His cousin was as absurd as he had
hoped, and he listened to him with the keenest enjoyment, maintaining at the
same time the most resolute composure of countenance, and, except in an
occasional glance at Elizabeth, requiring no partner in his pleasure.”
Mr.
Collins displays narcissism when he rejects Mr. Bennet’s suggestion that Mr.
Collins has studied the art of flattery, instead claiming to improvise his
compliments. That indirect boast is actually belied by the phrase “love and
eloquence”, because that is actually the title of a 17th century
advice book entitled The Mysteries of Love
& Eloquence by Edward Phillips
(subtitle: The arts of wooing and complementing as they are manag'd in the
Spring Garden, Hide Park, the New Exchange, and other eminent places : a work
in which is drawn to the life the deportments of the most accomplisht persons,
the mode of their courtly entertainments, treatments of their ladies at balls,
their accustom'd sports, drolls and fancies, the witchcrafts of their
perswasive language in their approaches, or other more secret dispatches)
To a
reader who recognizes that title, this pulls the rug out from under Mr.
Collin’s improvisation claim, and suggests instead that, as Mr. Bennet implied,
the worldly wise Charlotte suspects that Mr. Collins has actually been boning
up (so to speak) in Phillips’s self-help book on the art of wooing! I also
assert that Austen later winks at “the witchcrafts of perswasive language” when
Lady Catherine accuses Eliza:
“But
your arts and allurements may, in a moment of infatuation, have made him forget
what he owes to himself and to all his family. You may have drawn him in.”
And
finally, perhaps you noticed the coincidence of the author’s name, Phillips,
with the name of Mrs. Bennet’s brother in law the lawyer, Mr. Phillips. If you
are sitting down, you are now ready to read Wikipedia’s description of the far
greater claim to fame of that 17th expert on wooing:
“He was
the son of Edward Phillips of the crown office in chancery, and his wife Anne, only sister of JOHN MILTON…Edward Phillips and his younger
brother, John, were educated by
Milton. Edward entered Magdalen Hall, Oxford, in November 1650, but
left the university in 1651 to work as a bookseller's clerk in London. Although
he did not share Milton's religious and political views, and seems, to judge
from the free character of his Mysteries of Love and Eloquence (1658),
to have undergone a certain revulsion from his Puritan upbringing, he
remained on affectionate terms with his uncle to the end. He was tutor to the
son of JOHN EVELYN, the diarist, from 1663 to 1672 at Sayes Court,
Deptford, and in 1677–1679 in the family
of Henry BENNET, 1st Earl of Arlington, a prominent Roman
Catholic…”
The
notion that the imbecilic Mr. Collins was taking non-PG-rated courtship advice
from Milton’s nephew is droll enough. That Milton’s said nephew whose ideas Mr.
Collins studied so diligently was also tutor to a real life Bennet family must
have had JA and her intimate friends and family who were in on the erudite
humor, ROFL (as we say these days!).
But
that’s not all about Edward Phillips that relates to questions of authorial
authenticity. In another of his books, Theatrum
Poetarum, he argued that “poetry should not deviate from what could be
considered historical truth, unless fictional invention afforded means to
express some greater truth allegorically …. The subject of ‘a Heroic Poem’ must
enable ‘feigning of probable circumstances, in which and
in proper Allegorie, Invention ... principally consisteth, . . . for whatever
is pertinently said by way of Allegorie is morally though not historically
true.’ ‘... in which the Poet hath an
ample feild to in large by feigning
of probable circumstances, in
which and in proper Allegorie, Invention ... principally consisteth, and
wherein there is a kind of truth…’ “
I can
only say a heartfelt “Amen!” to the notion that Jane Austen was one of the
greatest masters in literary history of “feigning of probable
circumstances…wherein there is a kind of truth”!
But I
have still one last observation about Excerpt#1. Muller also fails to
extrapolate the pattern I have long perceived in the entire Austen canon and
not just in Charlotte in P&P, wherein seemingly marginalized, powerless female
characters use their strong minds to inobtrusively direct the behavior of
others. And that provides the perfect segue to the next excerpt, about another
such strong-minded character, in Emma,
which I will address in the second post I promised, which l link here:
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2017/12/irony-in-emma-and-in-jane-austens.html
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
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