In 1995, the novelist Anna Quindlen, in her Intro to an edition of Pride & Prejudice, wrote: "For
those of us who suspect all the mysteries of life are contained in the
microcosm of the family, that personal relationships prefigure all else, the
work of Jane Austen is the Rosetta Stone of literature. We can only hope that
when she described her first novel as “rather too light and bright”, she was
being ironic rather than self-deprecating.”"
That
is why, when I first became aware, in early 2005, of secret answers in Emma's
Chapter 9 word games, I myself began calling Chapter 9 of Emma the Rosetta
Stone of Jane Austen's fiction, because these word games are perfect symbols of
the novels themselves, i.e. , each novel has one "answer" (i.e., one
story line) that everyone sees, and a second secret "answer" that is
concealed. And, as I will explain before this post is over, the second charade
in Chapter 9 of _Emma_ is also a Rosetta Stone in the sense of revealing a
crucial secret within the shadow story of _Emma_.
I
began calling the second charade a Rosetta Stone in early 2005, based on the
following two discoveries that had already been made by other scholars by that
time, but which I only first became aware of then, when I began reading the
scholarly literature about Jane Austen.
In
1999, in "Slipping into the Ha-Ha", Jill Heydt-Stevenson made a remarkable
discovery re the fragment from Garrick's Riddle which Mr. Woodhouse recalls in
Chapter 9 of Emma. JHS claimed that while the official answer to Garrick's
Riddle was "chimney sweep", the second secret answer was about the
symptoms and treatment of tertiary syphilis, which makes the official answer
metaphorical in a very graphic, sexual way. And the Bates's housemaid Patty's
Freudian comment about the "chimney" needing "sweeping" in
Emma is one way we know that JA knew about that secret answer. And JHS also
noted the disturbing implications of Mr. Woodhouse remembering Garrick's Riddle,
and of Emma's responding that she had previously copied it from Elegant
Extracts, which is more or less the equivalent of someone today saying that
they copied the text of a graphic Richard Pryor monologue from Good
Housekeeping!
In
2000, in "The Riddles of Emma", Colleen Sheehan made another remarkable
discovery re the FIRST charade in Chapter 9 of Emma--Sheehan claimed that while
the official answer was "woman" (which by the way does NOT appear in
the novel), the second secret answer is "heartfiel", which is the
love dust that Puck sprinkles on Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream. The
"woman" charade, by the way, was NOT written by JA herself (I have my
own theory about who the identity of the actual author), JA found it in a
published Riddle collection, which also contained a reprint of Garrick's
Riddle. And Colleen's connection of Emma to A Midsummer Night's Dream in this
way is extremely synergistic with Jocelyn Harris's brilliant 1986 analysis of
the complex allusion to A Midsummer Night's Dream in the plot of Emma itself.
That
was great, but then things got really exciting in terms of understanding what
was going on in Chapter 9 of Emma.
In
the 2007 Persuasions Online, Colleen Sheehan published the second secret
solution to the second charade in Chapter 9 of Emma, "Prince of Whales":
I was
privileged to have been emailing with Colleen about the Dedication of Emma to
the Prince Regent, and our shared belief that it was a total put-on, when she
made that spectacular discovery. It gave my own research into the shadow story
of Emma a huge lift, as it is a true smoking gun, which dovetails perfectly
with the two earlier discoveries of secret answers to wordgames in Chapter 9 of
Emma. It made Chapter 9 even more of a Rosetta Stone (which had THREE languages
on it).
And
then in 2009, in Janeites & Austen L, Anielka, inspired by Colleen's discovery,
published a _third_ secret solution to the second charade in Chapter 9 of Emma,
"Leviathan":
And
that immediately inspired me to discover a _fourth_ secret solution to the
second charade in Chapter 9 of Emma, "Crown of Thorns":
And
now, the other day, Anielka has published yet another _fifth_ secret solution,
"Church of England". And I believe her when she claims she has more
secret answers in reserve as well. Nothing surprises me anymore in terms of
JA's virtuosic wordgames.
And I
will add one last discovery I made regarding word games in Chapter 9 of _Emma_,
which I speak about at every one of my presentations about Jane Fairfax as the
shadow heroine of Emma (actually, Kathy, you heard me say this at the NYC
presentation 13 months ago), and which I believe to be a particularly
significant and elegant extension and culmination of all of the above.
As my
Subject LIne states, I claim that Mrs. Elton's acrostic _is_ Mr. Elton's
charade! I realized this a few years ago, when I revisited the question which
had first occurred to me in 2005, i.e., where in Emma was Mrs. Elton's
acrostic? I was convinced that JA would not have had Mrs. Elton mention
receiving an acrostic on her name from an unnamed puppy, unless the text of
that acrostic was hidden somewhere in Emma, and unless the identity of that
puppy was somehow revealed in Emma as well. Like Chekhov's famous dictum:
"If
you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the
second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be
fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."
I
believe that JA adhered to that dictum, and that all the "background"
details in her novels which appear to be insignificant are actually significant.
In that regard, I had guessed, in 2005, for various reasons, that Frank
Churchill was the puppy who gives Miss Hawkins an acrostic,. But beyond that, I
was frustrated, because I could not find any hints as to the actual text of the
acrostic anywhere in the text of
the
novel.
That
was when I realized that the answer had been hiding right in front of my nose
since 2006!---because Colleen Sheehan, in her later Persuasions Online article,
had not only discovered "Prince of Whales" as a second secret answer
to the second charade, she also had discovered that the second charade in Emma
contains not one but _two_ anagrammed acrostics, both of them on the name
"Lamb". So the second charade is _also_ a double acrostic!
In
her article, Colleen made the sensible inference that the acrostic on "Lamb"
was there to point to _Charles_ Lamb, the author of the satirical poem which JA
was pointing to, which has as its punch line "the Prince of Whales".
And that is certainly correct. But that was when I realized _another_ meaning
of that acrostic, as it relates to the shadow story of _Emma_, which is Mr.
Elton's charade must be the same acrostic that was given to Miss Hawkins!
I
then combined that insight with my earlier guess that Frank Churchill was the
puppy who gave that acrostic to Miss Hawkins, and deduced that Frank Churchill
must therefore be _both_ the puppy, and also the unnamed friend of Mr. Elton
who gives Mr. Elton that charade/acrostic to deliver to Emma!
So,
the second charade is the acrostic, Frank is both the unnamed puppy and Mr.
Elton's unnamed friend. This is Occam's Razor in duplicate---two mysteries
explained by one answer! Everything ties together in an incredibly neat bow,
and, more important, the implications of this discovery shed crucial light on
the shadow story of Emma.
And
that is why I claim that the second charade really is a Rosetta Stone for
discovering the shadow story of _Emma_.
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
1 comment:
It is very interested indeed! Thanks
Alice, www.janeausten.fr
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