"Austen may or may not have been conservative. Certainly she wrote novels conservatives could read without distress, which have waited for modern critics to reveal their profound radical awareness of the female bondage inherent in that conservative world."
The above is from Carolyn Heilbrun's review of The Life of Jane Austen by John Halperin in NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Winter, 1986), pp. 183-185. In that one nutshell, Heilbrun resolves the paradox--indeed JA wrote novels that conservatives could see themselves in, but also wrote novels that radical feminists could also see themselves in. And Heilbrun also unmasks Halperin's cluelessness about JA and her attitude toward marriage.
Also, I just read, and will be returning to, a marvelously poetic, drily playful, challenging (in some places, I must admit, a little over my head), provocative article by the poet/novelist Harold Brodkey, entitled:
“Henry James and Jane Austen” The Threepenny Review, No. 33 (Spring, 1988), pp. 3-7
It is more about Austen than James, and there are way too many interesting lines in Brodkey's article to quote any in particular. Suffice to say that it is the most sophisticated sort of praise for JA's literary artistry, attributing to her both great knowledge of the literature written prior to her, and also deservedly great influence over the literature written after her, including, but not limited to, Henry James, Leo Tolstoy and James Joyce. A great deal of food for thought, written in the most extraordinarily crafted prose literary criticism ever was written in. A word genius's profound appreciation for, and analysis of, an earlier genius of words.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
“I could a tale unfold whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul.”
Might there be some interesting resonance between the following two pithy accounts, in the first person, of the apparently powerful emotional experience of a male reader (with a famously satirical eye), upon reading a famous novel by a famous female author?
“The Mysteries of Udolpho, when I had once begun it, I could not lay down again; I remember finishing it in two days--my hair standing on end the whole time."
"Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone"
In particular, as a connoisseur of the various parts of the human head, such as skulls and hair, the mysteries I want answers to are these: at the precise moment when Henry Tilney's hair was standing on end, was his tongue in his cheek? And if so, is this a clue as to the location of the tongue of the scrivener of that latter account as well?
P.S.: The title of this post just happens to be the epigraph to Chapter 2 of The Mysteries of Udolpho; and the famous speech from which that epigraph was derived also just happens to include the following predicted, additional effect of that soon-to-be unfolded tale:
"....And each particular hair to stand on end...."
And everybody knows that it is not very difficult to "dig up" descriptions relating to graves, corpses, skulls, and bones in the writings of the author of The Mysteries of Udolpho, and also in the famous play from which that famous epigraph is derived.
It sure makes each particular hair of MY head stand on end, and harrows my soul (but only in the best way), when I contemplate the sku---I mean---the skill of all the famous authors mentioned above, in getting across their meaning, without reducing themselves to the indignity of hitting any of their readers over the head, with shin-bones or otherwise.
“The Mysteries of Udolpho, when I had once begun it, I could not lay down again; I remember finishing it in two days--my hair standing on end the whole time."
"Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone"
In particular, as a connoisseur of the various parts of the human head, such as skulls and hair, the mysteries I want answers to are these: at the precise moment when Henry Tilney's hair was standing on end, was his tongue in his cheek? And if so, is this a clue as to the location of the tongue of the scrivener of that latter account as well?
P.S.: The title of this post just happens to be the epigraph to Chapter 2 of The Mysteries of Udolpho; and the famous speech from which that epigraph was derived also just happens to include the following predicted, additional effect of that soon-to-be unfolded tale:
"....And each particular hair to stand on end...."
And everybody knows that it is not very difficult to "dig up" descriptions relating to graves, corpses, skulls, and bones in the writings of the author of The Mysteries of Udolpho, and also in the famous play from which that famous epigraph is derived.
It sure makes each particular hair of MY head stand on end, and harrows my soul (but only in the best way), when I contemplate the sku---I mean---the skill of all the famous authors mentioned above, in getting across their meaning, without reducing themselves to the indignity of hitting any of their readers over the head, with shin-bones or otherwise.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
The Dedication of Emma to the Prince Regent
Someone just asked in Austen-L whether Jane Austen's own characterization of herself, writing to the the silly James Stanier Clarke as "most unlearned", was tongue in cheek. Here is my response.
After Jane Austen wrote those letters to Clarke, I understand that the apothecary Haden had to perform emergency surgery on her to release her tongue, which had become stuck to her cheek, due to the massive amount of putting-on contained in those letters, especially Letter 138(D).
I.e., there was not a single word in those letters to Clarke that she really meant--JA's best birthday present upon turning 40 was to find, in James Stanier Clarke, the quintessence of a real life Mr. Collins---a fool in a position of small, but (in terms of JA's literary career) significant, power, whom she could lead down a particularly entertaining garden path, in exactly the same way Mr. Bennet got his jollies when he asked Mr. Collins:
"You judge very properly," said Mr. Bennet, "and it is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?"
See how closely the ironic tone of Mr. Bennet's words resembles that of the following two sentences from JA's Letter 138(D) to James Stanier Clarke:
"Under every interesting circumstance which your own talents and literary labours have placed you in, or the favour of the Regent bestowed, you have my best wishes. Your recent appointments I hope are a step to something still better. In my opinion, the service of a court can hardly be too well paid, for immense must be the sacrifice of time and feeling required by it.”
And I can hardly say which is more ironic--Mr. Bennet insincerely flattering Mr. Collins about the latter's expertise in flattery, or JA insincerely commiserating with Clarke's toadyish, relentless (and at times humiliation-garnering) currying of the Prince Regent's favor. I think, all in all, that the real life put-on is more ironic, because her gulling of Clarke was not the sport of a fleeting moment--it actually landed her a "big fish", i.e., the Prince Regent's royal command that she dedicate Emma to him---Emma being the novel which covertly skewers the Prince Regent in every possible way. And the permanent record of the success of her put-on is the Dedication to the Prince Regent.
By the way, it occurs to me now that, when you take into account how Emma satirizes the Prince Regent in Emma, that in a very real sense converts the Dedication into the first words of the novel itself, i.e., it causes us to view the novel in a larger frame, a la Henry Fielding, with his various prefatory materials in Shamela, among JA's literary models, or Barth, Nabokov, or Fowles, among many modern novelists.
And I think that enlargement of the novelistic frame is a clue to ONE of the meanings of the following comments by Emma to Harriet about the charade in Chapter 9:
"Leave out the two last lines, and there is no reason why you should not write it into your book."
"Oh! but those two lines are" --
"The best of all. Granted; -- for private enjoyment; and for private enjoyment keep them. They are not at all the less written you know, because you divide them. The couplet does not cease to be, nor does its meaning change. But take it away, and all _appropriation_ ceases, and a very pretty gallant charade remains, fit for any collection. Depend upon it, he would not like to have his charade slighted, much better than his passion. A poet in love must be encouraged in both capacities, or neither. "
I really do believe that JA was in part thinking about the novel Emma as the "charade" and the Dedication of the novel as being metaphorically represented by "the couplet". Recall, e.g., the young Prince Regent's notorious and public courtship of "Perdita" (Mary Darby Robinson), in which he was so Mr. Eltonish in his galanterie, a heartsick poet in love.
And the following lines from Lydia's letter to Mrs. Forster seem to me to be a particularly apt description of what JA must have been feeling as she wrote to Mr. Clarke:
"What a good joke it will be! I can hardly write for laughing."
The final intriguing question that I fear we can never know the answer to, is whether Clarke had actually read P&P before meeting JA. My guess is he did not, or if he did, he only skimmed it. If he had read it carefully, I find it difficult to imagine that even a pompous fool such as himself could have failed to discern his own resemblance to Mr. Collins, and further that Mr. Bennet was sporting at Mr. Collins's expense, and further still that in general P&P was a skewering of the kind of aristocratic snobbery that was his own raison d'etre.
If Clarke had read P&P and really understood it, is it possible that he could have then failed to discern that he himself was being hoist on the same petard of clueless narcissism as Mr. Collins, and by the very same person, Jane Austen, who created the character of Mr. Collins? The mind reels!
And....if for whatever reason you remain unconvinced by all of the above, and if the irony which permeates every sentence of her letters to Clarke is not sufficient, then the crowning hint that JA was putting Clarke on, is the DATE of Letter 138(D)!
Get out your Le Faye and you'll see how big a fool Clarke REALLY was!
ARNIE
After Jane Austen wrote those letters to Clarke, I understand that the apothecary Haden had to perform emergency surgery on her to release her tongue, which had become stuck to her cheek, due to the massive amount of putting-on contained in those letters, especially Letter 138(D).
I.e., there was not a single word in those letters to Clarke that she really meant--JA's best birthday present upon turning 40 was to find, in James Stanier Clarke, the quintessence of a real life Mr. Collins---a fool in a position of small, but (in terms of JA's literary career) significant, power, whom she could lead down a particularly entertaining garden path, in exactly the same way Mr. Bennet got his jollies when he asked Mr. Collins:
"You judge very properly," said Mr. Bennet, "and it is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?"
See how closely the ironic tone of Mr. Bennet's words resembles that of the following two sentences from JA's Letter 138(D) to James Stanier Clarke:
"Under every interesting circumstance which your own talents and literary labours have placed you in, or the favour of the Regent bestowed, you have my best wishes. Your recent appointments I hope are a step to something still better. In my opinion, the service of a court can hardly be too well paid, for immense must be the sacrifice of time and feeling required by it.”
And I can hardly say which is more ironic--Mr. Bennet insincerely flattering Mr. Collins about the latter's expertise in flattery, or JA insincerely commiserating with Clarke's toadyish, relentless (and at times humiliation-garnering) currying of the Prince Regent's favor. I think, all in all, that the real life put-on is more ironic, because her gulling of Clarke was not the sport of a fleeting moment--it actually landed her a "big fish", i.e., the Prince Regent's royal command that she dedicate Emma to him---Emma being the novel which covertly skewers the Prince Regent in every possible way. And the permanent record of the success of her put-on is the Dedication to the Prince Regent.
By the way, it occurs to me now that, when you take into account how Emma satirizes the Prince Regent in Emma, that in a very real sense converts the Dedication into the first words of the novel itself, i.e., it causes us to view the novel in a larger frame, a la Henry Fielding, with his various prefatory materials in Shamela, among JA's literary models, or Barth, Nabokov, or Fowles, among many modern novelists.
And I think that enlargement of the novelistic frame is a clue to ONE of the meanings of the following comments by Emma to Harriet about the charade in Chapter 9:
"Leave out the two last lines, and there is no reason why you should not write it into your book."
"Oh! but those two lines are" --
"The best of all. Granted; -- for private enjoyment; and for private enjoyment keep them. They are not at all the less written you know, because you divide them. The couplet does not cease to be, nor does its meaning change. But take it away, and all _appropriation_ ceases, and a very pretty gallant charade remains, fit for any collection. Depend upon it, he would not like to have his charade slighted, much better than his passion. A poet in love must be encouraged in both capacities, or neither. "
I really do believe that JA was in part thinking about the novel Emma as the "charade" and the Dedication of the novel as being metaphorically represented by "the couplet". Recall, e.g., the young Prince Regent's notorious and public courtship of "Perdita" (Mary Darby Robinson), in which he was so Mr. Eltonish in his galanterie, a heartsick poet in love.
And the following lines from Lydia's letter to Mrs. Forster seem to me to be a particularly apt description of what JA must have been feeling as she wrote to Mr. Clarke:
"What a good joke it will be! I can hardly write for laughing."
The final intriguing question that I fear we can never know the answer to, is whether Clarke had actually read P&P before meeting JA. My guess is he did not, or if he did, he only skimmed it. If he had read it carefully, I find it difficult to imagine that even a pompous fool such as himself could have failed to discern his own resemblance to Mr. Collins, and further that Mr. Bennet was sporting at Mr. Collins's expense, and further still that in general P&P was a skewering of the kind of aristocratic snobbery that was his own raison d'etre.
If Clarke had read P&P and really understood it, is it possible that he could have then failed to discern that he himself was being hoist on the same petard of clueless narcissism as Mr. Collins, and by the very same person, Jane Austen, who created the character of Mr. Collins? The mind reels!
And....if for whatever reason you remain unconvinced by all of the above, and if the irony which permeates every sentence of her letters to Clarke is not sufficient, then the crowning hint that JA was putting Clarke on, is the DATE of Letter 138(D)!
Get out your Le Faye and you'll see how big a fool Clarke REALLY was!
ARNIE
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Words of wisdom
" As soon as a writer throws in short cuts, speedy action, we know he is trying to please us. Therefore, is afraid of us. Jane pleases us in her way; other writers please us in our way." ---- John Fowles
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
THE NEED FOR REASON AND IMAGINATION
I have just enjoyed reading the following article, which somehow had eluded my previous research, even though I have taken a special interest in literary criticism which recognizes Jane Austen's philosophical sophistication.
“Sense and Semantics in Jane Austen” by Donald D. Stone Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Jun., 1970), pp. 31-50
Stone not only (correctly, in my view) compares Austen to Wittgenstein (high praise indeed) in terms of her emphasis on the power of words to shape thought, he then shows an acute insight into the double-parody of Northanger Abbey, which has eluded most other critics:
“In the real world, [Catherine Morland] learns of both the inadequacies of a romantic point of view and the disadvantages of a realistic point of view. In the real world, she discovers, heroism is nonexistent but evil exists, although in a less readily recognizable form, with the same ferocity as in Gothic fiction. ‘…in suspecting General Tilney of either murdering or shutting up his wife, she had scarcely sinned against his character, or magnified his cruelty.’.… if one is to get by in life, one must be wary of both illusion and the presumed absences of illusion. When Tilney mocks the simplicity of Catherine’s background—‘What a picture of intellectual poverty!’ (79)—Jane Austen by no means intends for us to agree. When the author unites anti-heroine Catherine and anti-hero Tilney, she in effect combines a noble simplicity with an ironical intelligence—and implies that the latter may need the former more than the reverse."
All you ever hear about in Northanger Abbey is that Catherine has great common sense, yes, but she needs Henry Tilney to bring her runaway imagination down to earth so she can see what is "really" there. Just as all you ever hear about re Knightley's recall of Cowper's famous poetic line "Myself creating what I saw" is that it alerts us to the dangers of overimagination.
Stone did briefly discuss Emma, but he failed to mention that highly relevant passage in Emma, and the parallel between it and Catherine's situation in Northanger Abbey. Regarding that passage in Emma, a point parallel to Stone's WAS caught, by the way, in 2004, by William Deresiewicz in his wonderful book Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets, where Deresiewicz very astutely pointed out that JA very cleverly has not only overtly alluded to Cowper, she has also COVERTLY alluded to Wordsworth's subtle poetic formulation to the effect that one needs both reason AND imagination in order to understand what is most worth understanding.
Emma's mistake is not that she imagines too much, it's that she applies her imagination spectacularly in order to spot all sorts of stuff that others overlook, but then she goes astray in the interpretation of what she has spotted.
But Jane Austen lays a trap for the unwary reader, by making it look in each of these cases that the problem is too much imagination, which is very ironic, since the reader, in order to avoid that trap, has to use.....imagination!
I have just enjoyed reading the following article, which somehow had eluded my previous research, even though I have taken a special interest in literary criticism which recognizes Jane Austen's philosophical sophistication.
“Sense and Semantics in Jane Austen” by Donald D. Stone Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Jun., 1970), pp. 31-50
Stone not only (correctly, in my view) compares Austen to Wittgenstein (high praise indeed) in terms of her emphasis on the power of words to shape thought, he then shows an acute insight into the double-parody of Northanger Abbey, which has eluded most other critics:
“In the real world, [Catherine Morland] learns of both the inadequacies of a romantic point of view and the disadvantages of a realistic point of view. In the real world, she discovers, heroism is nonexistent but evil exists, although in a less readily recognizable form, with the same ferocity as in Gothic fiction. ‘…in suspecting General Tilney of either murdering or shutting up his wife, she had scarcely sinned against his character, or magnified his cruelty.’.… if one is to get by in life, one must be wary of both illusion and the presumed absences of illusion. When Tilney mocks the simplicity of Catherine’s background—‘What a picture of intellectual poverty!’ (79)—Jane Austen by no means intends for us to agree. When the author unites anti-heroine Catherine and anti-hero Tilney, she in effect combines a noble simplicity with an ironical intelligence—and implies that the latter may need the former more than the reverse."
All you ever hear about in Northanger Abbey is that Catherine has great common sense, yes, but she needs Henry Tilney to bring her runaway imagination down to earth so she can see what is "really" there. Just as all you ever hear about re Knightley's recall of Cowper's famous poetic line "Myself creating what I saw" is that it alerts us to the dangers of overimagination.
Stone did briefly discuss Emma, but he failed to mention that highly relevant passage in Emma, and the parallel between it and Catherine's situation in Northanger Abbey. Regarding that passage in Emma, a point parallel to Stone's WAS caught, by the way, in 2004, by William Deresiewicz in his wonderful book Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets, where Deresiewicz very astutely pointed out that JA very cleverly has not only overtly alluded to Cowper, she has also COVERTLY alluded to Wordsworth's subtle poetic formulation to the effect that one needs both reason AND imagination in order to understand what is most worth understanding.
Emma's mistake is not that she imagines too much, it's that she applies her imagination spectacularly in order to spot all sorts of stuff that others overlook, but then she goes astray in the interpretation of what she has spotted.
But Jane Austen lays a trap for the unwary reader, by making it look in each of these cases that the problem is too much imagination, which is very ironic, since the reader, in order to avoid that trap, has to use.....imagination!
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
It must be borne
[The following is the text of the messages I have just sent to the Austen-L and Janeites groups-I believe I explain the context sufficiently to make what I wrote explicable]
As you will see, below, I feel I have no choice but to set the record straight on some matters of importance to me. But first, my apologies to those of you in Janeites who have in the past objected to discussions of shadow stories---I did not start this thread here, I did not have any desire for this thread to be started here, but now that it has been started, these are important points for me to be clear about here, publicly.
Perhaps this particular round will be a source of amusement for David, Victoria, Jeannie and others who believe that Jane Austen never wrote any shadow stories. ;)
"It must be borne" was the title of the talk I gave at Chawton House in July (i.e., 8 weeks ago), in which I revealed publicly, for the first time, my own original interpretation of the circumstances of the shadow story of _Emma_, in which Jane Fairfax's giving birth to a girl baby is followed by Jane Fairfax covertly giving that baby to Mrs. Weston to pretend it is really Mrs. Weston's baby (just think about the rumors last year about Sarah and Bristol Palin).
It was in the Spring of 2007 that I made my breakthrough and figured out that, in the shadow story (always, I must repeat that caveat), Jane gave her baby to Mrs. Weston. That was shortly before I gave my first public talk about Jane Austen, at Oxford (for which honor I will always be grateful to Fiona Stafford, Georgina Green and Olivia Murphy!), about the puzzles of _Emma_ in June, 2007. I came to that discovery after being uncertain for over two years from the time I first realized Jane F. was pregnant, as to whether the various physical symptoms Jane F. was undergoing in the latter part of the novel were reflective of an actual birth or of a miscarriage or even an abortion. After all, the big question was, if she was pregnant, what happened to the baby? Then I realized the solution to JA's diabolically clever puzzle. It was, as you might imagine, a wonderful moment for me.
Even though I did not reveal my discovery publicly until July, 2009, I began, in June, 2007, revealing it in confidence to selected friends. It was four months after I began doing that, that in October, 2007, I privately revealed the above to a new acquaintance, Anielka Briggs, whom you cannot fail to have noticed has recently joined this Janeites group. It is her recent posts in Janeites and Austen-L which have prompted me to set the record straight.
Although she has been a serious Austen scholar for many years, with particular focus on genealogical matters, Anielka, by her own honest and explicit acknowledgment to me at the time she first contacted me in October 2007, previously had NO idea whatsoever as to any shadow or concealed plotting in _Emma_. She acknowledged quite freely that _Emma_ had always been opaque to her. Therefore, with regard to the above, it is quite odd when Anielka now writes "No need to wait for me to print a book to tell you my theory - might as well tell you now and get your feedback. Besides, it would be terrible to publish a book and then discover you had the theory wrong, wouldn't it?".
This statement by her, made immediately after she has cited a sampler of some of the textual clues regarding Jane F's concealed pregnancy, gives the false and misleading impression that somehow the notion of Jane F. being pregnant was Anielka's idea--but it was not. This idea of Jane having a baby and giving it to Mrs. Weston was one I explicitly revealed to Anielka in October 2007, and as to which she had no prior inkling whatsoever.
Be that as it may, despite the oblique advice which Anielka, by the above comment, unmistakably is giving to ME (and which I take as being as "kindly meant" as the advice the shadow Mrs. Elton gives to the shadow Jane F. about "the abolition", which, as I stated at Chawton House, is code for "abortion"!), I will nonetheless somehow blunder ahead on my own and "deliver" my book about the shadow story of _Emma_ .
But that leads to one OTHER very important point in regard to this matter. When I privately revealed my interpretation of Jane F's pregnancy and baby swap to Anielka in October, 2007, she then made what I consider a very, very important discovery for the world of Janeites, i.e., that there was a word game in _Emma_ which seemed to suggest a real life referent for Jane F's pregnancy and baby swap.
Anielka revealed the essence of her discovery publicly on March 2, 2009, in Austen-L, and so I quote her now:
"Jane Austen uses these codes all the time. For example, in "Emma" the Weston's baby is Miss Anna Weston which is Miss A. Weston = Miss Awe-ston which (as with Elinohr) is the correct pronunciation of the educated classes for Miss Austen ("oss-tin" being also the more modern pronunciation). Jane Austen uses the same code for Miss Emma Watson with the addition of an anagram. Miss E. Watson = Miss aWEston = Miss Austen once again."
I.e., anyone reading those comments can readily infer that "Anna Weston" becomes "Ann Awe-ston" becomes "Anna Austen". That was the brilliant discovery that Anielka made in October 2007 AFTER I privately revealed to her that Jane Fairfax had given her baby to Mrs. Weston. And, by the way, when I mentioned this discovery of the punny meaning of "Anna Weston" at the end of my recent Chawton House presentation, I cited its brilliance and gave Anielka full credit for that discovery.
Please note that if you don't know anything about the shadow story of _Emma_, in particular that Jane F. gives her baby to Mrs. Weston, then this "Anna Weston/Ann Awe-ston/Anna Austen" word game, while elegant and beautiful in its "hiding in plain sight" aspect, is not significant in terms of what it seems to suggest about the Austen family.
After all, as to the overt story of _Emma_, where Anna Weston really is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Weston, the word game is only a private hommage. I.e., it would suggest that Mr. and Mrs. Weston stand for James Austen and his first wife, and that the girl baby, Anna Weston, stands for Anna Austen. If there is no baby swap, i.e., then the word game is just an Austen family in-joke.
But if you know that in the shadow story of _Emma_, Jane F gives her baby to Mrs. Weston, then the innocent word game takes on additional potential meaning.
Apropos that, Anielka wrote the following the other day in Austen-L:
"Also if you look at Ellen's magnificent calendar for Emma http://www.jimandellen.org/austen/emma.calendar.html
you will notice something interesting about 1796 which she has kindly spelled out for us!"
Here are the relevant portions of Ellen's calendar entries:
"1793 Birth of Jane Fairfax; she is 21 when story opens...."
"1796: Jane Fairfax's mother dies when Jane is three"
"1796, June 23: Harriet is 17 when novel opens so Harriet Smith born in the same year that Mrs Jane Fairfax died. Edith Lank has suggested Miss Henrietta Bates could have left Highbury during this time to help her poor sister, thus giving an alibi for a pregnancy (!). See Edith Lank's intriguing essay in /Persuasions/ 7, pp. 14-15. "
In regard to the above, note that Anna Austen and Fanny Knight were both born in 1793, and that James Austen's first wife died in 1795.
But note also that Ellen's entry for 1793 should have read "Births of Jane Fairfax [and Emma Woodhouse, they are both] 21 when story opens..."
That is the truth as to the above matters.
ARNIE
As you will see, below, I feel I have no choice but to set the record straight on some matters of importance to me. But first, my apologies to those of you in Janeites who have in the past objected to discussions of shadow stories---I did not start this thread here, I did not have any desire for this thread to be started here, but now that it has been started, these are important points for me to be clear about here, publicly.
Perhaps this particular round will be a source of amusement for David, Victoria, Jeannie and others who believe that Jane Austen never wrote any shadow stories. ;)
"It must be borne" was the title of the talk I gave at Chawton House in July (i.e., 8 weeks ago), in which I revealed publicly, for the first time, my own original interpretation of the circumstances of the shadow story of _Emma_, in which Jane Fairfax's giving birth to a girl baby is followed by Jane Fairfax covertly giving that baby to Mrs. Weston to pretend it is really Mrs. Weston's baby (just think about the rumors last year about Sarah and Bristol Palin).
It was in the Spring of 2007 that I made my breakthrough and figured out that, in the shadow story (always, I must repeat that caveat), Jane gave her baby to Mrs. Weston. That was shortly before I gave my first public talk about Jane Austen, at Oxford (for which honor I will always be grateful to Fiona Stafford, Georgina Green and Olivia Murphy!), about the puzzles of _Emma_ in June, 2007. I came to that discovery after being uncertain for over two years from the time I first realized Jane F. was pregnant, as to whether the various physical symptoms Jane F. was undergoing in the latter part of the novel were reflective of an actual birth or of a miscarriage or even an abortion. After all, the big question was, if she was pregnant, what happened to the baby? Then I realized the solution to JA's diabolically clever puzzle. It was, as you might imagine, a wonderful moment for me.
Even though I did not reveal my discovery publicly until July, 2009, I began, in June, 2007, revealing it in confidence to selected friends. It was four months after I began doing that, that in October, 2007, I privately revealed the above to a new acquaintance, Anielka Briggs, whom you cannot fail to have noticed has recently joined this Janeites group. It is her recent posts in Janeites and Austen-L which have prompted me to set the record straight.
Although she has been a serious Austen scholar for many years, with particular focus on genealogical matters, Anielka, by her own honest and explicit acknowledgment to me at the time she first contacted me in October 2007, previously had NO idea whatsoever as to any shadow or concealed plotting in _Emma_. She acknowledged quite freely that _Emma_ had always been opaque to her. Therefore, with regard to the above, it is quite odd when Anielka now writes "No need to wait for me to print a book to tell you my theory - might as well tell you now and get your feedback. Besides, it would be terrible to publish a book and then discover you had the theory wrong, wouldn't it?".
This statement by her, made immediately after she has cited a sampler of some of the textual clues regarding Jane F's concealed pregnancy, gives the false and misleading impression that somehow the notion of Jane F. being pregnant was Anielka's idea--but it was not. This idea of Jane having a baby and giving it to Mrs. Weston was one I explicitly revealed to Anielka in October 2007, and as to which she had no prior inkling whatsoever.
Be that as it may, despite the oblique advice which Anielka, by the above comment, unmistakably is giving to ME (and which I take as being as "kindly meant" as the advice the shadow Mrs. Elton gives to the shadow Jane F. about "the abolition", which, as I stated at Chawton House, is code for "abortion"!), I will nonetheless somehow blunder ahead on my own and "deliver" my book about the shadow story of _Emma_ .
But that leads to one OTHER very important point in regard to this matter. When I privately revealed my interpretation of Jane F's pregnancy and baby swap to Anielka in October, 2007, she then made what I consider a very, very important discovery for the world of Janeites, i.e., that there was a word game in _Emma_ which seemed to suggest a real life referent for Jane F's pregnancy and baby swap.
Anielka revealed the essence of her discovery publicly on March 2, 2009, in Austen-L, and so I quote her now:
"Jane Austen uses these codes all the time. For example, in "Emma" the Weston's baby is Miss Anna Weston which is Miss A. Weston = Miss Awe-ston which (as with Elinohr) is the correct pronunciation of the educated classes for Miss Austen ("oss-tin" being also the more modern pronunciation). Jane Austen uses the same code for Miss Emma Watson with the addition of an anagram. Miss E. Watson = Miss aWEston = Miss Austen once again."
I.e., anyone reading those comments can readily infer that "Anna Weston" becomes "Ann Awe-ston" becomes "Anna Austen". That was the brilliant discovery that Anielka made in October 2007 AFTER I privately revealed to her that Jane Fairfax had given her baby to Mrs. Weston. And, by the way, when I mentioned this discovery of the punny meaning of "Anna Weston" at the end of my recent Chawton House presentation, I cited its brilliance and gave Anielka full credit for that discovery.
Please note that if you don't know anything about the shadow story of _Emma_, in particular that Jane F. gives her baby to Mrs. Weston, then this "Anna Weston/Ann Awe-ston/Anna Austen" word game, while elegant and beautiful in its "hiding in plain sight" aspect, is not significant in terms of what it seems to suggest about the Austen family.
After all, as to the overt story of _Emma_, where Anna Weston really is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Weston, the word game is only a private hommage. I.e., it would suggest that Mr. and Mrs. Weston stand for James Austen and his first wife, and that the girl baby, Anna Weston, stands for Anna Austen. If there is no baby swap, i.e., then the word game is just an Austen family in-joke.
But if you know that in the shadow story of _Emma_, Jane F gives her baby to Mrs. Weston, then the innocent word game takes on additional potential meaning.
Apropos that, Anielka wrote the following the other day in Austen-L:
"Also if you look at Ellen's magnificent calendar for Emma http://www.jimandellen.org/austen/emma.calendar.html
you will notice something interesting about 1796 which she has kindly spelled out for us!"
Here are the relevant portions of Ellen's calendar entries:
"1793 Birth of Jane Fairfax; she is 21 when story opens...."
"1796: Jane Fairfax's mother dies when Jane is three"
"1796, June 23: Harriet is 17 when novel opens so Harriet Smith born in the same year that Mrs Jane Fairfax died. Edith Lank has suggested Miss Henrietta Bates could have left Highbury during this time to help her poor sister, thus giving an alibi for a pregnancy (!). See Edith Lank's intriguing essay in /Persuasions/ 7, pp. 14-15. "
In regard to the above, note that Anna Austen and Fanny Knight were both born in 1793, and that James Austen's first wife died in 1795.
But note also that Ellen's entry for 1793 should have read "Births of Jane Fairfax [and Emma Woodhouse, they are both] 21 when story opens..."
That is the truth as to the above matters.
ARNIE
Friday, August 21, 2009
Darcy and Wickham
The following is a response to posts by fellow Janeites Sylwia and Simon which I just posted to the Janeites yahoogroup (which I heartily recommend as the best online forum for discussion of all things Jane Austen, but where I must be careful not to wear out my welcome with undue discussion of shadow stories!) to a couple of excellent comments regarding the shadow story of P&P. I welcome any additional comments here.
"Thank you for your explanation, Arnie. I'm not sure I can read the book the way you do. I don't see two stories there, only many accounts. Although it's true that many readers read the book superficially, I think that there are many others who see it in a deeper way. Nonetheless, what I see is still in line with the main story rather than not."
Fair enough, Sylwia. Then I say, do it your way and enjoy it. Your augmented version of the overt story is an interesting and complex one, even if it is one that I don't believe was intended by JA.
"Could you tell me where you disagree? If there are any holes in it I'd be happy to stand corrected."
No, I really can't, because that would reveal all the other shadow story elements I have discerned over the past 4 years. It's not a question of holes or errors, you have done a very thorough job within the scope of what you've discerned. Rather, what I can say, borrowing from AJ Harvey's 1968 metaphor of the shadow story as an invisible planet exerting a kind of "gravity", is that when you are aware of the other shadow story elements besides the secret relationship between Darcy and Wickham, that relationship is "reshaped" in very complicated ways by the gravity exerted by the other pieces of the shadow story.You've seen one planet, but there are actually nine planets in the solar system. ;)
.
"The problem with Darcy is that the range of interpretations of him as a character is very wide. Some people think that he's shy, some that he has Asperger's, some that he's a libertine, some that he's Superman (as a friend of mine often jokes), and some that he's Jesus Christ (as I like to joke about the Darcy who sacrifices himself for just about anybody who's around and in need)."
And I am suggesting that about half of that huge interpretive variance is accounted for by the inadvertent conflation of the overt and the shadow story. Even after one does the separation of the overt from the shadow story, there is still plenty of interpretive variance in each version of the story, but it is over a smaller range of possibilities.
"From what I've seen all over the internet, in fanfiction and in movies i.e. Lost in Austen or Bridget Jones, Darcy often personifies anything from Prince Charming for adults to Heathcliff. There is now a P&P retelling published where Darcy has sex with various women all the way to Pemberley, and I've seen people argue that it's in line with Austen's Darcy too."
There's a reason for all those reader reactions to P&P. At least some of those responses to P&P are genuinely midrashic, in that they do constitute a kind of implicit response to actual shadow story elements intentionally created by JA, and are not merely, as a shadow-story denier such as Victoria would suggest they are, entirely and solely the products of those later writers's imaginations. All of the Bronte sisters did definitely read JA's novels, and you can see this much more clearly in their novels when you let in the shadow story of JA's novels.
"It's just very easy to read the book in a way that ignores the text and impresses one's fantasy."
Yes, but the subtle trick is to tether one's fantasy to the text of P&P, in order to see the shadows that JA intentionally created, and to discard the ones that do come solely from one's own fantasy. The rigorous act of tethering, and insisting on textual "bread crumbs" as validations of fantasy, and on knitting together different strands of shadow story elements into a coherent alternative story, is the corrective for unbridled fantasy.
"In short I don't think there's one Darcy out there, and even people who read only the story that "everybody knows" are in disagreement about him."
Yes, but as I suggested above, much less disagreement if you separate the overt from the shadow story.
"What I've been trying to do is to find out what the text says about him (and about others too), in as fair a way as possible, even if I didn't like what I found."
Me, too! It's just that I am taking into account a lot more shadow material than you are. I could tell that you were otherwise reading against the grain of the normative reading of Darcy, in a way similar to my own approach. You were REinterpreting the text of the novel in light of Darcy and Wickham's secret relationship, and you did a pretty good job of it. But you were not working from all available information.
"So I wasn't assuming that the good characters say truth and only truth and that the bad ones lie, but rather compared the evidence. Perhaps I cannot read two stories there because I cannot pretend that some things never happened when they're clearly supported by the text, which means that if it's a shadow story then I don't see there any overt one with a better Darcy in it."
Where you and I part ways is that while I agree with you that what you see about Darcy and Wickham is "clearly supported by the text" (you must know that not only you and I, but also several others have also seen it), but that I believe, but you do not, that there are indeed a number of OTHER such strands of shadow story which are ALSO "clearly supported by the text", involving all the other major characters except Lizzy (in whose head we have been all along, and so she is the only major character who is the same in the shadow story as in the overt story).
It is fundamental to JA's artistry that we be in the head of the heroine and the heroine alone (except in rare instances) during the entire novel. It gives JA enormous freedom with all the other characters.
I invented the term "Trojan Horse Moment" to describe the technique that JA used---the shadow story is like a Trojan Horse, that JA has planted inside the heads of all her readers. There are a lot of little "soldiers" inside the "Horse", and one of the soldiers in P&P is the Darcy-Wickham secret relationship. That soldier became visible to you one day. What you don't realize is that there are a lot of other little soldiers in there whom you haven't seen yet!
Now, imagine the joy and challenge of making those other soldiers visible over a period of years--that describes what I've been doing since late 2004! It's as much art as it is science, and it is the meanest high of all! Like doing a hard NY Times crossword puzzle that takes many years to solve. And what's even better, each of the novels is its own puzzle, but these puzzles are also related to each other, so that solutions in one help you see solutions in the others!
And now to reply to Simon as well.....
"Lurker replying here... I'm intrigued, Arnie, by your latest posts on the shadow story. I've been reading messages for years, and so am very, very familiar with your theories (at least in outline; in specifics they somewhat elude me)."
Because I've never been that specific, and intentionally so!
"I was just wondering - does anything where we're not-quite-told something, where something happens off the page, immediately transfer to the shadow story? Is it ever possible that a subtly hidden character trait, or action, is intended for the primary story - or can that only be read as what happens 'in front of the reader', as it were?"
To shadow or to overt, that IS indeed THE question for an interpreter of JA's novels! I cannot give you a mathematically precise answer--perhaps there is a skeleton key that has even after all these years eluded me, which enables a reader to reliably assign some of those shadows to the overt story rather than to the shadow story. But for whatever my intuition is worth after all these years of reading JA's subtle hints and clues, my sense is that there is a certain cleanness and elegance in the separation of overt from shadow story, which fits with my conception of JA as a classicist, a kind of Mozart of Words. Once you let in all the shadows, the blending seems hopelessly complicated, contradictory, messy, fuzzy, and Romantic (in the musical sense of that term). There is a crystalline quality that emerges when you do the separation, which is so beautiful, that it must have been what she intended.
And one more point, that relates back to Sylwia's perception of the Darcy-Wickham secret relationship. If you see that secret relationship, and let in its full implications, it changes EVERYTHING in the novel, because it changes Darcy so fundamentally, and he is so central to the action of the novel. So it is a kind of fulcrum, a crossroads. Take one road, and you have the overt story, take the other, and you have the shadow story.
Thanks to you both for your excellent questions, and the opportunity to explain myself more fully.
Cheers, ARNIE
"Thank you for your explanation, Arnie. I'm not sure I can read the book the way you do. I don't see two stories there, only many accounts. Although it's true that many readers read the book superficially, I think that there are many others who see it in a deeper way. Nonetheless, what I see is still in line with the main story rather than not."
Fair enough, Sylwia. Then I say, do it your way and enjoy it. Your augmented version of the overt story is an interesting and complex one, even if it is one that I don't believe was intended by JA.
"Could you tell me where you disagree? If there are any holes in it I'd be happy to stand corrected."
No, I really can't, because that would reveal all the other shadow story elements I have discerned over the past 4 years. It's not a question of holes or errors, you have done a very thorough job within the scope of what you've discerned. Rather, what I can say, borrowing from AJ Harvey's 1968 metaphor of the shadow story as an invisible planet exerting a kind of "gravity", is that when you are aware of the other shadow story elements besides the secret relationship between Darcy and Wickham, that relationship is "reshaped" in very complicated ways by the gravity exerted by the other pieces of the shadow story.You've seen one planet, but there are actually nine planets in the solar system. ;)
.
"The problem with Darcy is that the range of interpretations of him as a character is very wide. Some people think that he's shy, some that he has Asperger's, some that he's a libertine, some that he's Superman (as a friend of mine often jokes), and some that he's Jesus Christ (as I like to joke about the Darcy who sacrifices himself for just about anybody who's around and in need)."
And I am suggesting that about half of that huge interpretive variance is accounted for by the inadvertent conflation of the overt and the shadow story. Even after one does the separation of the overt from the shadow story, there is still plenty of interpretive variance in each version of the story, but it is over a smaller range of possibilities.
"From what I've seen all over the internet, in fanfiction and in movies i.e. Lost in Austen or Bridget Jones, Darcy often personifies anything from Prince Charming for adults to Heathcliff. There is now a P&P retelling published where Darcy has sex with various women all the way to Pemberley, and I've seen people argue that it's in line with Austen's Darcy too."
There's a reason for all those reader reactions to P&P. At least some of those responses to P&P are genuinely midrashic, in that they do constitute a kind of implicit response to actual shadow story elements intentionally created by JA, and are not merely, as a shadow-story denier such as Victoria would suggest they are, entirely and solely the products of those later writers's imaginations. All of the Bronte sisters did definitely read JA's novels, and you can see this much more clearly in their novels when you let in the shadow story of JA's novels.
"It's just very easy to read the book in a way that ignores the text and impresses one's fantasy."
Yes, but the subtle trick is to tether one's fantasy to the text of P&P, in order to see the shadows that JA intentionally created, and to discard the ones that do come solely from one's own fantasy. The rigorous act of tethering, and insisting on textual "bread crumbs" as validations of fantasy, and on knitting together different strands of shadow story elements into a coherent alternative story, is the corrective for unbridled fantasy.
"In short I don't think there's one Darcy out there, and even people who read only the story that "everybody knows" are in disagreement about him."
Yes, but as I suggested above, much less disagreement if you separate the overt from the shadow story.
"What I've been trying to do is to find out what the text says about him (and about others too), in as fair a way as possible, even if I didn't like what I found."
Me, too! It's just that I am taking into account a lot more shadow material than you are. I could tell that you were otherwise reading against the grain of the normative reading of Darcy, in a way similar to my own approach. You were REinterpreting the text of the novel in light of Darcy and Wickham's secret relationship, and you did a pretty good job of it. But you were not working from all available information.
"So I wasn't assuming that the good characters say truth and only truth and that the bad ones lie, but rather compared the evidence. Perhaps I cannot read two stories there because I cannot pretend that some things never happened when they're clearly supported by the text, which means that if it's a shadow story then I don't see there any overt one with a better Darcy in it."
Where you and I part ways is that while I agree with you that what you see about Darcy and Wickham is "clearly supported by the text" (you must know that not only you and I, but also several others have also seen it), but that I believe, but you do not, that there are indeed a number of OTHER such strands of shadow story which are ALSO "clearly supported by the text", involving all the other major characters except Lizzy (in whose head we have been all along, and so she is the only major character who is the same in the shadow story as in the overt story).
It is fundamental to JA's artistry that we be in the head of the heroine and the heroine alone (except in rare instances) during the entire novel. It gives JA enormous freedom with all the other characters.
I invented the term "Trojan Horse Moment" to describe the technique that JA used---the shadow story is like a Trojan Horse, that JA has planted inside the heads of all her readers. There are a lot of little "soldiers" inside the "Horse", and one of the soldiers in P&P is the Darcy-Wickham secret relationship. That soldier became visible to you one day. What you don't realize is that there are a lot of other little soldiers in there whom you haven't seen yet!
Now, imagine the joy and challenge of making those other soldiers visible over a period of years--that describes what I've been doing since late 2004! It's as much art as it is science, and it is the meanest high of all! Like doing a hard NY Times crossword puzzle that takes many years to solve. And what's even better, each of the novels is its own puzzle, but these puzzles are also related to each other, so that solutions in one help you see solutions in the others!
And now to reply to Simon as well.....
"Lurker replying here... I'm intrigued, Arnie, by your latest posts on the shadow story. I've been reading messages for years, and so am very, very familiar with your theories (at least in outline; in specifics they somewhat elude me)."
Because I've never been that specific, and intentionally so!
"I was just wondering - does anything where we're not-quite-told something, where something happens off the page, immediately transfer to the shadow story? Is it ever possible that a subtly hidden character trait, or action, is intended for the primary story - or can that only be read as what happens 'in front of the reader', as it were?"
To shadow or to overt, that IS indeed THE question for an interpreter of JA's novels! I cannot give you a mathematically precise answer--perhaps there is a skeleton key that has even after all these years eluded me, which enables a reader to reliably assign some of those shadows to the overt story rather than to the shadow story. But for whatever my intuition is worth after all these years of reading JA's subtle hints and clues, my sense is that there is a certain cleanness and elegance in the separation of overt from shadow story, which fits with my conception of JA as a classicist, a kind of Mozart of Words. Once you let in all the shadows, the blending seems hopelessly complicated, contradictory, messy, fuzzy, and Romantic (in the musical sense of that term). There is a crystalline quality that emerges when you do the separation, which is so beautiful, that it must have been what she intended.
And one more point, that relates back to Sylwia's perception of the Darcy-Wickham secret relationship. If you see that secret relationship, and let in its full implications, it changes EVERYTHING in the novel, because it changes Darcy so fundamentally, and he is so central to the action of the novel. So it is a kind of fulcrum, a crossroads. Take one road, and you have the overt story, take the other, and you have the shadow story.
Thanks to you both for your excellent questions, and the opportunity to explain myself more fully.
Cheers, ARNIE
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