Before retiring from the lists for the day, something was tickling my memory, and I just _knew_ that I was forgetting some important additional textual evidence that I already had discovered before, which would even further strengthen my claim that the words "penetration", "whole", and "point", and also the shorter first charade in Chapter 9 of Emma, were all intentionally used by JA as sexual innuendo.
So I searched my own blog for the word "penetration", and lo and behold, I found that my memory was being tickled because I had posted exactly that additional evidence only 6 weeks ago:
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/12/jane-austens-rearward-look-at-james-i.html
If you read that earlier blog entry of mine, you will see that Jane Austen's 1793 History of England contains a section on James the First's sexual proclivities, which contains the word "penetration", the word "whole", the word "point" _and_ a charade, exactly as does Chapter 9 of her 1814 novel _Emma_ !:
"His Majesty was of that amiable disposition which inclines to Freindship, and _in such points_ was possessed of _a keener penetration_in discovering Merit than many other people. I once heard an excellent _Sharade_ on a Carpet, of which the subject I am now on reminds me, and as I think it may afford my Readers some amusement to _find it out_, I shall here take the liberty of presenting it to them.
SHARADE
My first is what my second was to King James the 1st, and _you tread on my whole_." END
And recall also Mr. Knightley's emphasis on Frank's being amiable like James I? (and is this what Amy Heckerling had in mind when she has the Frank Churchill character be gay in Clueless?)
So, in addition to turning what I already considered a very powerful case for the sexual innuendo in Emma being intentional into a case ten times _more_ powerful--because any doubter must now not only explain away the sexual innuendo of _each_ of these two separate literary works by the same author, but must also explain this extraordinary quadruple parallelism _between_ these two texts written more than two decades apart. And I therefore feel safe in claiming that if even _this_ can be deemed a coincidence, as something only a vulgar, buffoonish fool with a smutty imagination would perceive, then no proof can ever be enough to a person who takes skepticism to such lengths. But I do not regret having been challenged, because that is why I went to the trouble of discovering and explaining all this convergent evidence.
And so, having proved this as far as I believe such a claim _can_ be proved, I move on to a deeper and far more important question than worrying about whether Jane Austen was the kind of writer who would write such things. Taking as a given that she _was_ indeed such a writer, the deeper question, for me, is----_why_ does Chapter 9 of Emma point these four very sharp arrows _back_ in time toward a 20 year old, private, family riddle text, the History of England?
And my answer is that the story being told in _Emma_, the subject of the second secret sexual answer to the "woman" charade in Chapter 9 of _Emma_ that I wrote about in my blog a few weeks ago, is that of the youthful "ignorant and prejudiced historian" herself, who wrote that History of England--the seventeen year old Jane Austen--the alter ego of the shadow heroine of _Emma_, who, like her creator, has the face of Mary Queen of Scots---Jane Fairfax.
Jane Austen is, in those three pointed sexualized words, and in that sexualized charade, and in the sexualized novel Emma itself, telling her own whole _sexual_ "history".
Cheers, ARNIE
“Jane Austen, Book Owner”
3 days ago
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