Jane Fairfax's (and Jane Austen's) Independence Day

Purely by happenstance this morning, while revisiting some of my prior posts about _Emma_ for an entirely different reason, I was led to see some interconnections I had not previously noticed, which I wish to elaborate for you, as they represent, in a way, a crystallization of themes I have been working on for the entire duration of my writing project, and which, more and more, have been coming together for me in this final stage of my research:

To wit, three months ago (less a day), on July 4, 2011, I posted the following here and at my blog:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/search?q=Declaration+of+Independence

In a nutshell, I claimed then that the "courtship" charade in _Emma_ , in addition to all the other covert meanings hidden in it by JA which had previously been brought forward by various Janeites including myself, was also a parody of the American Declaration of Independence itself!

Now I see the connection of that argument to other key points in the Jane Austen Matrix I have been constructing all these years, and the added value from those connections gives me great pleasure and satisfaction. Read on to see why.


Not quite one year ago, I posted a second, secret solution to the "patriot" charade attributed to Henry Austen:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/12/answer-to-my-best-quiz-ever.html

My second secret solution was the name "Hancock" (I speak about this at each of my Jane Fairfax presentations, I urge you to read the way I arrived at my solution, it is, to say the least, surprising), and the connection I saw today for the first time was that, of course, John Hancock was the _American_ patriot who famously signed the Declaration of Independence with a huge signature, putting himself, in effect, at the front of the line for the firing squad if the British had squelched the American Revolution.


So is it a coincidence that there would be a secret answer ("Declaration of Independence") to the "courtship" charade in Emma that would be so directly connected to a secret answer ("Hancock") to the "patriot" charade in the Austen family charade album?

Of course not! And what is most compelling to me is how well _all_ four of these answers, as well as the "Prince of Whales" answer that Colleen Sheehan first discovered in 2006, and the "Leviathan" answer discovered by Anielka in 2009, seamlessly fit with _each other_.


First, as to the "courtship' charade, we can fairly say that the American Revolution was, according to the American Declaration of Independence, the result of egregiously bad "courtship":

1. In terms of the bungling operations of the English royal "court", which at times must have resembled Hartfield, a kind of riderless horse, with King George III acting in many ways like Mr. Woodhouse; but also

2. In terms of the unwillingness of George III to "court" the colonies with reasonable and fair governance, resulting in those colonies reacting the way that Emma did to Mr. Elton on Christmas Eve in the carriage ride back to Hartfield from Randalls.

We can also say that King George III had himself at one time early in life been the Prince of _Wales_ but he also had as his eldest son a dissipated, narcissistic "gentleman" who was known as the Prince of _Whales_.

And Hobbes's "Leviathan" was about the nature of royal governance in England, in regard to an English king who lost his crown, in both senses of the word, i.e., Charles the First.


PLUS, as to the private charade, as I just wrote above, we can also fairly say that John Hancock signed the Declaration of Independence, with the result that after the successful American Revolution, the "United" States (which is symbolized by "woman lovely woman") thenceforth did indeed overthrow British despotism and thenceforth did (and still does) "reign alone"!

All of that, as we Jews say at the Seder (a holiday about the most famous uprising of all an oppressed people against royal tyranny) would have been enough, but there's another layer that is even more spectacular than that. I.e., this consolidated interpretation of secret and overt answers relative to the theme of revolution and independence seamlessly works in concert with the level of the radical feminism that I ascribe to Jane Austen, and which receives special emphasis in _Emma_ as a novel.

I.e., I read Jane Fairfax as symbolizing the American colonies, and I see her as achieving, at the end of the novel, true independence---I believe that, having survived her harrowing ordeal of concealed pregnancy, attempts to find a husband, and finding a good placement for her baby, Jane F. never actually does marry the unworthy Frank Churchill (just as the young United States did not "marry" itself to "Frankish" France, but stood on its own completely independent feet), but instead takes the Churchill family jewels (symbolized as economic wealth) and establishes herself as an independent woman in London, free from domination by, or indebtedness to, any man--whether that man be named Campbell, Knightley or Churchill.

And how poignant and tragic is the historical fact that Jane Austen, the alter ego of Jane Fairfax, believed in early 1816 that _Emma_ was her own declaration of artistic independence, which would mark the dawn of a completely new epoch in her own life, in which she would live in economic prosperity using money she herself earned as an author, without the need for any of the Chawton Cottage ladies to "depend" upon help from unreliable brothers. And she also would have anticipated spending the next few decades writing more and more groundbreaking novels, which eventually would bring her the power to assume the public mantle once worn by Mary Wollstonecraft, and lead English womankind into a new era of pragmatic independence.

The tragedy is that less than 18 months later, JA lay in her fresh grave in Winchester Cathedral, and her dreams of female independence were as quickly covered over with cement (or whatever they used in those days) by her brother Henry in his Biographical Notice, and brother James with his hokey Venta poem, and it has taken nearly 200 years to exhume the "body" of her literary productions and to show the world that her ideas and dreams have never actually died, even if her mortal body did.

Cheers, ARNIE

P.S.: I got so carried away with all of the above that I almost forgot the _OTHER_ connection to the Declaration of Independence that I saw earlier today. Want to guess what date the secret of Jane and Frank's engagement was announced to Emma by Mrs. Weston? Which also happens to be the date on which, in the shadow story, Jane Fairfax was finally freed from the torment of her concealed pregnancy, having just given birth to her baby to deliver her into the safe hands of the wonderful Mrs. Weston, the beginning of the rest of Jane Fairfax's life (and don't believe for a second the fable that JA told her family that Jane F would die within three years)?

I would think you have by now guessed what date that all takes place, in Chapter 46 of _Emma_, but if not, I will save you the trouble of taking a peek at Ellen Moody's calendar for Emma, where she provides the following description for the date I am hinting at:

""By counting June 26 and the Monday as full days", "about ten days after Mrs Churchill's decease, Frank's ride from Windsor to Jane to make-up and then to Randalls to announce engagement ("he had not time to enter into much explanation. Jane looked "wan, sick", Frank thinks he persuaded it all away. He was here only a quarter of an hour") also occurs day after he and Mr Churchill received letters and he has time to tell his adopted stepfather; on same day, but "he cannot stay five minutes" and she "must come this morning" Mr Weston brings Emma to Mrs Weston; as they walk Frank "half way to Windsor by this time"; Emma tells Mrs Weston that "for at least three months" (from May, time of second visit) she has "cared nothing for him"; now that afternoon Emma and Harriet first understand one another. Time mentioned twice: Emma withdraws eyes from Harriet and meditates "for a few minutes. A few minutes ...", and she sees "Mr Knightley must marry no one but herself" ... her own conduct ... her own heart ... before her in the same few minutes. Harriet's story of Mr Knightley's growth of love for her are described as "Circumstances that might swell to half an hour's relation ...": Harriet measures strength of Mr Knightley's attachment by how much time he spends with her: "they had been walking some time before Emma came ... his having sat talking with her nearly half an hour ... when he first came in, he said he could not stay five minutes ... " The rest of the day; the following night, were hardly enough for her thoughts. 46:384, 387, 389; 47:396, 399"

http://www.jimandellen.org/austen/emma.calendar.html

For those of you who don't like to follow links, and who don't take broad hints, that date is.......................... July 4th!

Which makes me wonder, what happened in JA's personal life on July 4, 1814?

Well, that is the time period not long before Anna Austen's marriage to Benjamin Lefroy, when Anna, then 21 (the same age as Emma and Jane F, and also as Fanny Knight in real life) was writing her novel-that-she-never-completed under Aunt Jane's loving tutelage. It does not take a rocket scientist to read those famous letters JA wrote to Anna during that time period--letters which Anna obviously saved as precious remembrances of JA---and to realize that this was a period of exhilaration for JA, as she wrote her own masterpiece simultaneously with her beloved niece beginning her own literary career, walking in her aunt's footsteps.

And in JA's Letter 102, dated 6/23/1814, we read of JA's intent to spend up to a fortnight in London during July, as she writes:

"I certainly do not wish that Henry should think again of getting me to Town. I would rather return straight from Bookham; but if he really does propose it, I cannot say No, to what will be so kindly intended."

What comes through loud and clear to me from this passage is that the eternal rigamarole of having to depend on brothers to transport JA here and there has gotten intolerably old at this stage of her life. JA is dreaming of the day, hopefully not far off, when she will finally be independent in the precious liberty to travel when, where and how she might choose. Another dream ultimately shattered by harsh reality.

The Governess & Jane Austen: the Scholarly Plot Thickens!

, As followup to the four posts I have posted during the past several days about the 1806 Godmersham theatricals, and also Jane Austen's _Emma_, as being strongly connected to various literary works by the famous brother and sister Henry and Sarah Fielding, I got around to checking more deeply, and only then became aware of an article published in the 2009 print edition of the JASNA journal Persuasions, entitled "Identifying Jane Austen’s “Boarding-school”: A Proposed Author for The Governess; or, the Boarding School Dissected" by Arden Hegele.

I quickly read her article, and here is the relevant portion of the email I sent her a short while ago:

...I am writing to you about your 2009 Persuasions article...have a read of the following four entries at my blog that I've written during the past several days:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/09/jane-austens-playlet-adaptation-of.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/09/theres-even-more-fielding-subtext-in.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/09/sarah-fieldings-governess-unmistakable.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/09/sempronius-in-sarah-fieldings-governess.html

Now let me try to brlefly put all of this together. After reading your article, I went right to the ECCO database and quickly found and skimmed the 1785 play, and I have now (tentatively) concluded as follows:

1. I think the 1785 playlet is ITSELF an adaptation of Sarah Fielding's 1749 novella, The Governess and Henry Fielding's play The Virgin Unmasked. The character name "Teachwell" seems a spin on Sarah's character name "Teachum", and there is both an apothecary and a dancing master mentioned in the 1785 play, just as there are in Henry Fielding's play. And... I also note that there is a character in the 1785 play surnamed Simple (like Sarah Fielding's famous hero, David Simple), and also a character named Miss Sly (just as in Sarah Fielding's The Governess).

So I think that Mrs. Paxson, or whoever wrote the 1785 play, was clearly pointing to those earlier Fielding works, BUT....Paxson took the story in a very very different direction. There is very very little overlap, content-wise, between the 1749 novella and the 1785 play. What Paxson did was akin to what Mary Sherwood did in 1820 (i.e., after Jane Austen's death) when Sherwood adapted Fielding's novella, and "defanged" it, making it much less subversive and mysterious as to its meaning.

2. I think that you and Vivien Jones are probably correct in your guess that Jane Austen's reference to giving The Boarding School to Fanny Knight in her 1801 letter to Cassandra is indeed a reference to the 1785 play--so your article has made me retract the claim that the 1801 letter reference was to Fielding's Governess. BUT....

3. I nonetheless believe that the June 1805 amateur theatrical at Godmersham reported by Fanny Knight in her diary was NOT principally based on the 1785 play, but was instead primarily based, as I argued in my four blog entries, on the two 1749 works by Sarah and Henry Fielding, respectively. If the name of the Governess noted in Fanny Knight's Diary had been "Teachwell" instead of "Teachum", I might well have agreed with you-but I think that very distinctive name is crucial and decisive in making this determination--Teachum can only refer to Sarah Fielding's famous protagonist. BUT....

4. Given #2, that obviously means that Jane Austen was ALSO aware, in 1801, of the 1785 play, and of its being an allusion to the Fielding play, and so it seems plausible that the 1785 play was also in the back of Jane Austen's mind as well, and perhaps some elements from it were therefore woven into the Godmersham theatrical, perhaps at the request of Fanny Knight, then aged 11, who might have made the request for performance of the 1785 play, thereby triggering Jane Austen to make things more interesting by instead substituting a Fielding spinoff. END QUOTE


If she responds to me substantively, and gives me permission, I will pass on to you what she writes.

Just think--all of this wonderful complexity rescued from history only because the 11 year old Fanny Knight was apparently so affected by her aunts's theatricals that she happened to mention the name "Teachum" in her diary 205 years ago, starting a chain of connection that has led me to all of the above!

Cheers, ARNIE

Sempronius in Sarah Fielding's The Governess

In followup to my last post, I was curious to know why Sarah Fielding chose the name Sempronius for the "older man" ("Knightleyesque") suitor for Chloe and Caelia in The Governess, and I found the following excerpt in an 1813 book, entitled _The rule and exercises of holy living_ by Jeremy Taylor:

"But that which we miscall poverty, is indeed nature: and its proportions are the just measures of a man, and the best instruments of content. But when we create needs that God or nature never made, we have erected to ourselves an infinite stock of trouble that can have no period. Sempronius complained of want of clothes, and was much troubled for a new suit, being ashamed to appear in the theatre with his gown a little thread-bare; but when he got it, and gave his old clothes to Codrus, the poor man was ravished with joy, and went and gave God thanks for his new purchase; and Codrus was made richly fine and cheerfully warm by that which Sempronius was ashamed to wear; and yet their natural needs were both alike: the difference only was that Sempronius had some artificial and fantastical necessities super-induced, which Codrus had not; and was harder to be relieved, and could not have joy at so cheap a rate: because he only lived according to nature, the other by pride and ill customs, and measures taken by other men's eyes and tongues, and artificial needs. He that propounds to his fancy things greater than himself or his needs, and is discontent and troubled when he fails of such purchases, ought not to accuse providence, or blame his fortune, but his folly. God and nature made no more needs than they mean to satisfy; and he that will make more must look for satisfaction where he can."

So Sempronius was, during JA's time, a symbol of a man who has been corrupted by wealth into being unsatisfied with simple goods, that were pleasing to a poor man, Codrus, who had lower expectations.

Looking behind still further, Wikipedia told me that Codrus was the last of the semi-mythical Kings of Athens....an ancient exemplar of patriotism and self-sacrifice. Whereas there was a real life prominent Roman family named Sempronius, and one member was co-consul with Scipio during the Punic Wars---Tiberius Sempronius Congus--who apparently was reputed to be very greedy.

So....that all provides an intriguing subtext to Sarah Fielding's choice of the name Sempronius, and JA's decision to allude to Fielding's Sempronius in the character of Knightley--does it suggest a mercenary motivation in marrying Caelia.

Sarah Fielding's The Governess: The Unmistakable Austen allusions to same in Emma and S&S

My recent two part discovery was that JA, CEA and Anne Sharpe, joined by Elizabeth Knight, put on a Fielding extravaganza combining Sarah's The Governess with Henry's The Virgin Unmasked----joined, no doubt, by Fanny, Louisa, and Marianne Knight, playing some unknown combination of the girls at the Female Academy and the very un-naive heroine of The Virgin Unmasked:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/09/theres-even-more-fielding-subtext-in.html

(which includes a link to my first post)

I will now disclose the principal Austenian allusions to The Governess I see:

First and foremost, the story of Chloe, Caelia, and Sempronius was taken by JA and reworked in the most interesting and complex way imaginable into the characters of Emma, Jane F/Harriet S, and Knightley, respectively.

Chloe and Caelia are two girls of 22 (Emma and Jane are both 21) who lost their mothers while they were six (Emma was 3, Jane was younger still), who are supposed to be friends, but one (Chloe) tells jealous and slanderous tales about the other (Caelia) --sound familiar?

And, even more important, the same disturbance noted in Ellen's blog at the Machiavellian character of Sempronius has been mirrored even more disturbingly in the character of Knightley. He is the self-interested Pygmalion who covertly sets up "educational" experiences for the young women who place their trust in him.

I think JA was well aware of Sarah Fielding's subversive silence about Sempronius's machinations, and mirrored it with her own subversive silence about the dark side of Knightley's machinations---and it's no accident that the tale of Sempronius comes not longer after we read the fairy tale of the two giants, one benevolent, one malevolent----those are transformed by JA into two _alternative_ views of Knightley.

And there's much, much more to this allusion when you carefully read Fielding's tale, and match it, in your mind, against the 1000 times more complex interaction of Jane F and Emma in Austen's novel.

And that's just the beginning....

We also, of course, have Mrs. Teachum, the wise, proactive governess of the Little Female Academy, transformed satirically into Mrs. Weston, the governess who seems to have _no_ power to educate her primary charge, Emma, and also into the societal role of governess itself, which is held up by Jane Fairfax as a horrible fate to be avoided at all costs, "the sale of human intellect".

And....we have Mrs. Teachum's boarding school transformed satirically into Mrs. Goddard's parlour boarding school, where the primary education the girls receive seems to be how to place themselves in the path of dangerous and/or mercenary young men, and/or to ingratiate themselves to rich naive girls they can manipulate to gain advantage.

And the story of Lucy Sly is transformed by JA into the story of the very sly Lucy _Steele_ Ferrars ("Lucifer", as I noted years ago), a survivor who finds a way to level the playing field tilted so heavily against females. Lucy Sly has "a pair of exceeding fine black eyes, only with the alloy ofsomething cunning in their look". Lucy Sly also says of her original governess, "I knew by her tone of voice, and her manner of speaking, that she did not blame me in her heart, but rather commended my ingenuity." Lucy-Ferrars to a tee, I'd say.

And, continuing with allusions in _Emma_, take a look at this description in The Governess of the youngest student in Mrs. Teachum's Little Academy, Polly _SUCKLING_:

"Miss Polly Suckling was just turned of eight years old, but so short of her age, that few people took her to be above five. It was not a dwarfish shortness; for she had the most exact proportioned limbs in the world, very small bones, and was as fat as a little cherub. She was extremely fair, and her hair quite flaxen. Her eyes a perfect blue, her mouth small, and her lips quite plump and red. She had the freshness of a milkmaid; and when she smiled and laughed, she seemed to show an hundred agreeable dimples. She was, in short, the very picture of health and good-humour, and was the plaything and general favorite of the whole school."

JA not only gives the last name of this little girl to Mrs. Elton's sister and brother in law, JA also gives many of the little girl's physical and personality attributes (shortness, plumpness, fairness, blue eyes, milkmaidishness, good humour) to Harriet Smith!

And, what's more, look at how JA transforms the following description in Fielding's story of the al fresco adventure Mrs. Teachum takes her little female charges on:

"The housekeeper led them through an avenue of tall elm-trees into this magnificent house, in which were many spacious apartments, furnished with the utmost grandeur and elegance. Some of the rooms were adorned with fine pictures, others were hung with tapestry almost as lively as those paintings, and most of the apartments above stairs were furnished with the finest sorts of needle-work.....in short, they should not go till they had been in her room, and eat some sweetmeats of her own making. The good woman seemed to take so much delight in giving them any pleasure, that Miss Jenny could not refuse accepting her offer; and, when they were all in her room, Polly Suckling said, 'Well, this is a most charming house; I wish we could all live here for ever. How happy must the lord and lady of this fine place be!'

There you have the prototype of Harriet Smith at Donwell Abbey, being led by Mr. Knightley through an avenue of lime trees, and then not long afterwards shocking Emma with Harriet's ambition to marry Knightley and become the lady of Donwell Abbey (and by the way, the fairy tale (and there are two fairy tales in The Governess) of Harriet and the Gipsies takes place just outside Highbury on a road "deeply shaded by _elms_ on each side"! And when Emma's nephews insist on hearing the story of Harriet and the Gipsies repeated just so, we hear the echo of the girlsat Mrs. Teachum's school also wishing to hear the fairy tales recited just so.

And as I was just editing this post, I realized that this passage in The Governess is also (and equally disturbingly) pointed to in Lizzy Bennet's reactions upon first seeing Pemberley.

And underlying all of the above is the overarching question of female education--what is good for girls to learn, and what role should imagination play in the development of their minds? The mind reels at the richness and mysteriousness of Austen's allusions to The Governess, which seem to me to demonstrate that JA read Fielding _against_ the grain, picking up on the unstated satire subtly embedded by Sarah Fielding beneath the seemingly conventional moral message to young girls to conform, accept, and obey the orders of men.

And there's more, but that's plenty for now.....

So, how is it possible that so many Janeites, including a fair number of knowledgeable Austen scholars, could actually read Sarah Fielding's The Governess and _not_ see any of the above unmistakable parallels that, it is obvious to me, were intentionally drawn by JA to Fielding's _very_ famous and influential novella, which is generally acknowledged as the first English fiction written for _and_ about children?

I claim that this deep blindness has arisen because nobody before me has read JA as being so audacious, sly, _and_ erudite, as to allude so subtly and covertly, so as to hide such massive parallels in plain sight. JA knew from personal experience in the world, especially at Godmersham where she was viewed by many of the rich and powerful she met as a poor spinster nobody, that her readers would not accord JA sufficient respect to pay attention to those echoes, but instead would treat these echoes the way that Emma treats Miss Bates's stream of comments about everything--as so much blah, blah, blah, to be ignored, and thereby the most important layer of meaning is missed entirely. No one before me has suspected JA of this sort of massive subversive feminist agenda, and therefore no one has seen it. Because, as Tom Wolfe so cleverly turned the proverb on its head 40 years ago, believing is seeing--and no one has previously believed that JA was this sort of author!

JA knew exactly what she was doing, and hoped that there would be some sharp elves among her readers who would pick up on some or all of this. Her novels were _her_ incredibly sophisticated version of Mrs. Teachum's fairy tales and parables, intended to educate her adult female readers as to what they needed to know in order to survive in a man's world!

And all of the above must be related back to JA's enactment of an amateur theatrical at Godmersham in 1805 (ie., 10 years before she wrote _Emma__), and we must realize that JA made very very good use of the delay in publication of her novels until she was in her mid 30's, enabling her to send all six of them out into the world as works of mature fiction, all informed by her fully developed genius.

Cheers, ARNIE