"[Brother Frank] kindly passes over the poignancy of his feelings in
quitting his Ship, his Officers & his Men.-What a pity it is that he
should not be in England at the time of this promotion, because he
certainly would have had an appointment!-so everybody says, & therefore
it must be right for me to say it too.-Had he been really here, the
certainty of the appointment I dare say would not have been half so
great-but as it could not be brought to the proof, his absence will be
always A LUCKY SOURCE OF REGRET...."
Last year in Austen L and Janeites, Diane Reynolds made the following insightful observations regarding
the above quoted passage in Jane Austen's Letter 32 dated Jan. 21-22, 1801: "And
then, so typically--I think at this point those of us who have been
following the letters know her style in our sleep!--the characteristic
commentary on how people lie, what Ellen would call the cant, what we
might call the commonplace cliches, that JA sees through and just can't
help commenting on--they must annoy/amuse/annoy her no end....The first
part must be a parody what she hears people saying, as she says "so
everybody says ..." Her opinion of it as nonsense is revealed in the
second half of the quote."
Today, I was (surprisingly) brought back to Diane's sharp insight as I
was reading along in Pride & Prejudice and came to the following bit of narration
early in Chapter 42, as Elizabeth contemplates the disappointing stretch
of life in front of her in Meryton during the lull between the departure
of the Regiment for Brighton and of Jane for London, on the one hand,
and the planned tour to the Lake Country, still off in the distance:
"Her tour to the Lakes was now the object of her happiest thoughts; it
was her best consolation for all the uncomfortable hours which the
discontentedness of her mother and Kitty made inevitable; and could she
have included Jane in the scheme, every part of it would have been
perfect. "But it is fortunate," thought she, "that I have something to
wish for. Were the whole arrangement complete, my disappointment would
be certain. But here, by carrying with me one ceaseless source of regret
in my sister's absence, I may reasonably hope to have all my
expectations of pleasure realised. A scheme of which every part promises
delight can never be successful; and general disappointment is only
warded off by the defence of some little peculiar vexation."
Both of these passages, as my Subject Line shows, refer to the sour
grapes of a supposedly lucky source of regret.
In Letter 32, as Diane pointed out, JA is all about keeping it real, and
not buying into fake pieties and consolation--the family must accept
that Frank lacks an appointment, and not try to sugar coat the fact.
In P&P, we are seeing Lizzy at her worst. The mildly sour grapes of
Chapter 27, when Lizzy cracks wise ("Stupid men are the only ones worth
knowing, after all") with Aunt Gardiner after Wickham drops Lizzy like a
hot potato in favor of the Freckled Heiress Miss King, are as nothing in
comparison with these super-sour (dare I say it? Lydiaesque) paranoid
selfish ramblings about being stranded in Meryton while two other
sisters are away on trips.
Notwithstanding the extreme emotional distress that Lizzy knows Jane has
experienced as a result of Bingley's abrupt and then prolonged
abandonment of Jane mid-courtship, it is now clear to me, as I carefully
read the above passage in Chapter 42, that Lizzy feels abandoned by
_Jane_ in what Lizzy evidently and narcissistically experiences as her
_own_ hour of need.
Pretty darned selfish and unempathic of Lizzy, when you think about it.
But I wager that most Janeites--like myself till today--have skimmed by
that obscure passage without ever registering what is really going on in
Lizzy's head.
As my 93 year old father tells people, based on his experience in
reading P&P----with Jane Austen, you have to read every word, slowly, or
else you will miss things--sometimes, important things.
And, in conclusion, the bonus of my connecting the dots between these
parallel passages in Letter 32 and P&P is that it provides yet another
clue (along with the other P&P echoes I have previously discerned in
other JA letters) that JA's process of refining the text of P&P into
pure literary gold over a period of years was an endless process---
whether she had thought of the conceit about Frank's promotion and then
applied it to Lizzy's boredom, or vice versa, I think this is a
particularly apt example of the fact that when she came up with a clever
conceit, she enjoyed riffing on it again before putting it aside.
Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter
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