Last
night, I came across the following elegant, laudatory comments about Jane
Austen's novels (including a passing mention of Mr. Rushworth's famous two-and-forty
speeches, which supports my claim earlier this week that they are what many
Janeites fondly think of first when Mr. Rushworth is
mentioned)
in a published essay from 120 years ago by the American essayist Agnes
Repplier:
"...Miss
Austen is likewise the best of midnight friends. There stand her novels, few in
number and shabby with much handling, and the god Hermes smiles upon them
kindly. We have known them well for years. There is no fresh nook to be
explored, no forgotten page to be revisited. But we will take one down, and
re-read for the fiftieth time the history of the theatricals at Mansfield Park;
and see Mr. Yates ranting by himself in the dining-room, and the indefatigable
lovers rehearsing amorously on the stage, and poor Mr. Rushworth stumbling through
his two-and-forty speeches, and Fanny Price, in the chilly little schoolroom,
listening disconsolately as her cousin Edmund and Mary Crawford go through
their parts with more spirit and animation than the occasion seems to demand.
When Sir Thomas returns, most inopportunely, from Antigua, we lay down the book
with a sigh of gentle satisfaction, knowing that we shall find all these people
in the morning just where they belong, and not, after the fashion of some
modern novels, spirited overnight to the antipodes, with a breakneck gap of
months or years to be spanned by our drooping imaginations...." END QUOTE
The
author of these wonderful reflections on JA's writing was Agnes Repplier, who
(Wikipedia informed me) published the above comments while still in her early
forties, but then was lucky enough to live till the age of 95, meaning that
Repplier perhaps deserves an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records for
most rereadings of Jane Austen's novels!
What
especially caught my eye, and, I am sure, caught some of yours as well, in the
above passage, was the way Repplier quietly demonstrated herself to have been a
true Janeite, by her understated imitation of one of JA's most famous lines.
I.e.,
when Repplier wrote...
"There
stand her novels, few in number and shabby with much handling, and the god
Hermes smiles upon them kindly. We have known them well for years.",
..all
Janeites should hear immediately that Repplier was personifying JA's NOVELS in
exactly the same manner that Mr. Bennet personified Mrs. Bennet's NERVES:
"You
mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old
friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these last twenty
years at least."
How Austenian
of Repplier!
First
we have the ironic contrast between Repplier's sincere description of JA's
novels as her dear old friends, on the one hand, and Mr. B's ironic description
of his wife's nerves as not-so-dear old friends, on the other. And yet, behind
the contrast there really is a deeper parallelism, in that throughout the
twists and turns of a long life, we come to know well certain repeated
experiences which are very pleasurable, but also some which are quite
unpleasant, and together they provide the complex and dissonant harmonies of a
full life. And maybe also Mr. Bennet's feelings about Mrs. Bennet's frequent
ejaculations about her nerves were not entirely negative, as it is part of the
perversity of human nature that we often do come, in a strange way, to cherish
even the things which irritate us the most? Because both the good and the bad
that play a significant role in our lives come to be woven together
inextricably, and so Mr. Bennet
finds
in his wife's nerves fertile ground for the highly enjoyable (at least, to him!) sport of making fun of
her!
Second
we have the wordplay, as "novels" and "nerves" are both
words which begin with the letter "n", and have the letter-pair
"ve" in the middle. So there is that poetic subconscious pleasure in
manipulation of words to deepen substantive resonance.
And
finally third, I also detect a very subtle sexual innuendo, when Repplier
writes of "midnight friends" and "no fresh nook to be explored"---there
are echoes of the sexualized folds, crevices, keys, and locks that Catherine
Morland examines so intently at the Abbey, and so I do very much suspect
Repplier of meaning to link pleasure derived from reading very familiar novels
while in bed, with sexual pleasure derived from more carnal forms of knowledge
with a very familiar partner while in bed.
And
maybe....Repplier is thereby also suggesting that Mr. Bennet himself is partly
speaking in code when he refers to Mrs.
Bennet's "nerves" as his frequent companions--i.e., perhaps he misses
the early years of his marriage to the beautiful young Mrs. Bennet, when (from
the evidence of 5 daughters born in 6 years) we can infer that he regularly
enjoyed handling Mrs. Bennet's "pages" and exploring Mrs. Bennet's
"nooks".
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
No comments:
Post a Comment