Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

I received some interesting private responses to my message last week raising the question of whether there are still scholars out there who claim JA was hostile or indifferent to, or even ambivalent about, Wollstonecraft's vindication of the rights of woman. One misconception of my own which I have now recognized, after doing some further reading and reflection, is that I was confusing the conservative/liberal dichotomy with the feminist/anti-feminist dichotomy, when they are not necessarily the same. And I think that same confusion has plagued some of the published scholarly discussion of these questions as well.

By this I mean that I realize now that JA could be both a feminist, in the sense of being a staunch, even radical vindicator of the rights of women, and yet also, in some ways, also be a conservative, in the sense of being very wary of social reforms and "improvements" ( a term that Alistair Duckworth put on the map of JA criticism many years ago, in brilliantly illustrating that JA intended this word as a metaphor for more than the literal sense of improvements of great estates).

In a nutshell, just because JA hated the way women were treated in her world, it doesn't mean that she was thereby automatically an advocate for the kind of societal "reform" represented by Henry and Mary Crawford. Mary thought of herself as an emancipated woman, and JA's skepticism about the value of that "emancipation" is evident in MP, even as I think she also, in her authorial honesty, also reveals a bit of ambivalence about Mary, which is why, I think, a fair percentage of readers of MP (not including myself) wish that Mary had been the heroine and not Fanny. E.g., it is not merely Mary who teasingly makes sexual puns, but Jane Austen herself.

I think JA was intensely pragmatic, and was very much afraid of throwing out the baby (the entire social structure) with the bath water (the pervasive injustices perpetrated against powerless women). I also think she mistrusted the "revolutionaries", having seen what murderous madness became routine in France after the Revolution (and had she witnessed the Russian Revolution, she'd have surely been saying, "Yes, here we go with more male revolutionaries, who are, incredibly, making things even worse than the horrifically awful they were before").

And she saw firsthand the havoc that "improvers" had wreaked on the social fabric of the English countryside, in pursuit of a sublime landscape.....and a lot of money! And a reader of her novels makes a VERY big mistake in failing to realize that the glare from the dazzling of Lizzy's eyes by Pemberley, and of Emma's by Donwell Abbey, has distracted our heroines from noticing the one-legged beggar her carriage passed on the road on the way there. This is no accident, or unconscious authorial slip, JA very intentionally wanted her readers to realize this.

In short, I see no inconsistency in JA being a strong critic of the status quo, and at the same time being very very suspicious of, and cynical about, and therefore conservative about, abuses perpetrated in the name of "improvement" of that status quo, along the lines of "We Won't Get Fooled Again" by the Who:

"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

I think her long range goal was, by the subtle effects of her fiction on her readers, to change the hearts and minds of enough women, so as to finally empower them to cut the patriarchal "boss" down to size, a process which is still in progress in our society and the outcome of which is not clear.

Arnie

James Austen's History and Jane Austen's Herstory

"There's an article by him about the benefits of studying history which seems to be without satire, and his love of "the muse of history" as he puts it obviously stayed with him and is expressed later in life in hispoem posted here."

Indeed, James Austen writes without any satire, I think it's clear that he had a tin ear for it, and that JA knew it, and that's why there was more than a laughable trace of Mr. Collins's cluelessness and pomposity in him.

I assert that James’s comments are most noteworthy to Janeites as a prime subject for JA's satire, in that, e.g., the closest thing to his mentioning anything feminine in his comments on history, was his referring to science as a “she”! His attitude was the quintessence of the sort of male-written, male-centric and "bow wow strain of" history that JA lampooned in The History of England and critiqued more directly in Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

James was an intelligent guy, and, I am sure, cannot have failed to realize that this 1789 essay of his was repeatedly in her satirical crosshairs. But, on a deeper level, I wonder if he ever realized that his kid sister, in writing her novels, was writing REAL history, the kind of implicit social history that would actually speak important and meaningful truth about everyday human life in the time in which they lived, truth that people living two centuries later would actually find value and insight in, when the pompous, verbose male histories of his time are today mostly gathering dust and are only read by professional historians.

Here is a link for the full text of James's Loiterer issue, written when JA was 14. To me, it's like cotton candy--tastes good, undeniably well intentioned, but when you take a bite, you realize it's 99% (hot) air: I can just imagine JA reading it, and then, exerting maximum effort to keep her countenance, asking him "May I ask whether these important reflections proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?"

http://www.theloiterer.org/loiterer/no7.html

New JA video

Someone posted the following in an online Jane Austen discussion, in response to a question I asked about an event I had heard about in which contemporary authors were going to express opinions about Jane Austen.

"I don't know if this is relevant or not but there's a video accompanying the Jane Austen exhibit at the Morgan in which authors share their experiences with Austen. It's accessible on the Morgan web-site."

I then replied:

Thanks! For others, here is the URL, I just watched it, and it is MANDATORY watching for any Janeite, really wonderfully done!

http://www.themorgan.org/video/austen.asp

I don't know if it was the same thing I read about, but it was great, so I am very glad I asked!

There are a few dozen profound comments in the 15 minutes of the film, but the three most significant comments for me were:

Cornel West: "She was preoccupied with freedom"

Colm Toibin: "She had a way of writing that would both conceal and reveal"

Colm Toibin: "If I had a dinner party for her, I would put Freud on one side and Jung on the other...and I would ...feed them quite a lot of alcohol. It would be very very interesting to know what Austen would make of Freud as she discovered slowly what Freud was actually proposing."

I would love to hear other Janeites's reactions to this video. It gave me goosebumps just watching and listening to it. Send the link to all your intelligent friends and family who have been resisting reading Jane Austen. IMMEDIATELY. Feel free to forward this email to whomever you wish.

Cheers,
ARNIE

Pools of Commerce and Thorough Parties

I became curious today to understand the rules of Commerce, the card game that is mentioned in two of JA's novels, and 4 times in her letters:


NA: Catherine was disturbed and out of spirits; but Isabella seemed to find a pool of commerce, in the fate of which she shared, by private partnership with Morland, a very good equivalent for the quiet and country air of an inn at Clifton.

P&P: "Yes; these four evenings have enabled them to ascertain that they both like Vingt-un better than Commerce; but with respect to any other leading characteristic, I do not imagine that much has been unfolded."

11/20-21/00: “The three Digweeds all came on Tuesday, & we played a pool at Commerce.”

09/14/04: My mother had her pool of commerce each night & divided the first with Le Chevalier, who was lucky enough to divide the other with somebody else. *...*

10/01-02/08: Our party at Mrs. Duer's produced the novelties of two old Mrs. Pollens and Mrs. Heywood, with whom my mother made a quadrille table; and of Mrs. Maitland and Caroline, and Mr. Booth without his sisters, at commerce. ….A second pool of commerce, and all the longer by the addition of the two girls, who during the first had one corner of the table and spillikens to themselves, was the ruin of us; it completed the prosperity of Mr. Debary, however, for he won them both.

10/07-09/08: We found ourselves tricked into a thorough party at Mrs. Maitland's, a quadrille and a commerce table, and music in the other room. There were two pools at commerce, but I would not play more than one, for the stake was three shillings, and I cannot afford to lose that twice in an evening.

For those of you who are also curious, here is the explanation of the rules of the game that I found online:

*COMMERCE: *"....Any number can play with an ordinary pack . There are several variations of the game, but the following is a common one. Each player receives three cards, and three more are turned up as a "pool ." The first player may exchange one or two of his cards for one or two of the exposed cards, putting his own, face upwards, in their place. His object is to "make his hand" (see below), but if he changes all three cards at once he cannot change again. The next player can do likewise, and so on. Usually there are as many rounds as there are players, and a fresh card is added to the pool at the beginning of each. If a player passes once he cannot exchange afterwards. When the rounds are finished the hands are shown, the holder of the best either receiving a stake from all the others, or, supposing each has started with three "lives," taking one life from the lowest. The hands, in order of merit, are: (i.) Tricon - three similar cards, three aces ranking above three kings, and so on. (ii.) /Sequence - three/ cards of the same suit in consecutive order; the highest sequence is the best. (iii.) Flush - three cards of the same suit, the highest "point" wins, /i.e./ the highest number of pips, ace counting eleven and court-cards ten. (iv.) /Pair - two/ similar cards, the highest pair winning. (v.) /Point - the/ largest number of pips winning, as in "flush," but there is no restriction as to suit. Sometimes "pair" and "point" are not recognized. A popular variation of Commerce is /Pounce Commerce./ In this, if a player has already three similar cards, /e.g./ three nines, and the fourth nine comes into the pool, he says "Pounce!" and takes it, thus obtaining a hand of four, which is higher than any hand of three: whenever a pounce occurs, a new card is turned up from the pack."

So it is a kind of 3-card draw poker, and it looks like it would be fun, as it would combine luck and skill. It sounds like all that a player risked was the initial "stake" or ante, and that there was not, as there is in poker, betting on every round. Just doing some quick math, it sounds like a pool of commerce could consist of as many as 8 or 9 players, which would mean, as many as 8 or 9 rounds, which would take a while to play out, with every increasing suspense as a player had to watch nervously as all the other players exchanged a card, in between turns. Sounds like fun, but I'd want to play it with betting at the end of every round!

I also have two questions about the above references to the game by JA:

First, what exactly is meant by Isabella being described as being in “private partnership with Morland”? It’s an odd phrasing—does it mean that she, Catherine and James entered into some alliance during a pool of commerce, to share profits and losses? Or does it mean that the act of participating in the pool of commerce with Catherine and James was in itself a way of having as much fun together as they would have had they made it to Clifton?

Second, when JA writes “We found ourselves tricked into a thorough party at Mrs. Maitland's”, what exactly is a “thorough party”? By the context, it sounds like it describes a scam like in the Redford/Newman movie The Sting, i.e., a fixed game, like going to a crooked gambling casino. But when I looked in Google Books, I could not find ANY other usage of that expression—the closest I came was the term “thorough party man”, which was an expression often used to describe a politician who put party above scruples in his political dealings. So both usages involve a lack of scruples in dealing with others. Which suggests that the word "thorough" may have had ironic significance for JA in her other usages of same in the novels.

JA uses the word “thorough” numerous times in all the novels, all of them superficially having the normal meaning, i.e., of emphasis, although the usages by the likes of Mrs. Elton carry a strong taint of insincerity.

The one that sticks out as unusual in the whole bunch is the famous narration about Mary Bennet:

“They found Mary, as usual, deep in the study of thorough bass and human nature; and had some new extracts to admire, and some new observations of thread-bare morality to listen to.”

The normal interpretation is that Mary was studying music, and reading moralizing books. But purely as a matter of syntax, the adjective “thorough” in that sentence could modify not only of the word “bass” but also the term “human nature”. And that could be an ironic suggestion that Mary (as a representation in that moment of one side of JA's personality, i.e., her bookish side) was usually deep in the study of “thorough” (i.e., unscrupulous) human nature”. It would then follow that Mary (aka JA) “had some new extracts to admire, and some new observations of thread-bare morality to listen to”, i.e., a very tongue-in-cheek ironic description of JA's novels themselves! The word "thread-bare" is exactly the sort of pseudo-self deprecating, minimizing language that JA used in describing her own writing to James Stanier Clarke.

Arnie

Privacy Issues re JA's Letters

It is a (claimed) truth (nearly) universally acknowledged that CEA,
before she died, destroyed a number of JA's letters out of concern for
the privacy of the deceased JA and/or of CEA or other members of the
Austen family.

There is a certain irony in regard to the above, in that it is another
(claimed) truth (nearly) universally acknowledged, that the letters JA
wrote to CEA were typically not read by CEA alone, but were passed
around to other family members who were with CEA at the time of her
receipt of a given letter from JA. I.e., there was not a whole lot of
privacy between JA and CEA with regard to those of the letters which
were actually passed around, at least within the family circle.

There seems something a bit perverse in the notion of preserving privacy
for a dead person, when that same person (JA), when alive, had to take
into account a rather serious lack of privacy in the reading of her
letters by family members other than CEA, when JA was composing those
letters!

The first claimed truth has, I think, been discussed often over the
years, and does not warrant fresh consideration, but I think the second
one has not received the critical attention it deserves.

One example of a critical comment I found, which I believe is typical,
is Chapman's, in his 1932 Second Edition of the Letters, when he
blithely opines:

“….They were from time to time separated by long visits, and then
corresponded regularly. But the purpose of their letters was to exchange
information not only between themselves, but between two branches of a
large family. There are indications that these letters and others like
them were ready by, and to, a number of people. …“

I say "blithely" because he fails even to consider the possibility that
JA might, during at least some of these long separations, have wished to
communicate private thoughts for CEA's eyes only--e.g., to complain
about a family member. Easy for Chapman to pontificate on "the purpose"
of their letters, as he did not have to regularly endure situations in
which he had absolutely no freedom to travel even short distances
without the indulgence of a male family member, was often isolated from
the sister she was so close to for extended time periods, and yet also
could not really write with total candor to a trusted sister who
otherwise would have discreetly kept secret what was written to her.
And, to boot, to have to worry about every word costing money. I would
imagine that this situation was sometimes a considerable hardship and
source of resentment for JA, and with good reason.

Which makes me wonder things like whether JA might have sometimes
slipped an extra small sheet into some of her letters to CEA, which
extra sheet would have been for CEA alone to read, with all the candid
comments, and might have included at the end something like what Lucy so
ungrammatically wrote to Edward: "Please to destroy my scrawls...." And
then CEA would read that slip, absorb its meaning and then set it
aflame, before bringing the rest of the letter to everyone else's
attention? Like Mission Impossible. ;)

Has this subject of the privacy, or lack thereof, vis a vis JA's letters
to CEA, been addressed well in one or more of the biographies or in
scholarly articles? I did a quick search and came up empty, except for
that Chapman quote, but I am sure I have missed several other comments
on the subject of the privacy, or lack thereof, of the correspondence
between JA and CEA.

It seems like a topic that would be of interest to a lot of Janeites.

JA's Synthesis

Nancy,

Thanks for posting that excerpt from James Collins's "A Truth Universally Acknowledged". I was strongly struck by the following passage:

"In their essence, Austen's books are moral works. "Northanger Abbey" is really about Catherine Morland's moral education: She learns that the world does not operate on the principles of a gothic novel. As the title indicates, "Sense and Sensibility" is a moral tale: It is the story of Elinor's self-command and Marianne's self-indulgence. The central event of both "Pride and Prejudice" and "Emma" is each heroine's discovery of her own moral weakness. "Mansfield Park" treats any number of moral issues, from the propriety of engaging in amateur theatricals to the consequences of leaving one's husband for another man. The premise of "Persuasion" is that Anne Elliot once sacrificed her happiness by doing her duty and obeying the admonishment of her moral guide, Lady Russell. Moral concerns are not only reflected in the large themes of the books, however: They are pervasive. Even the smallest act or the briefest dialogue or the mere description of a character's manner of dress is freighted with moral content. "

Mr. Collins (I couldn't resist calling him that!) is 100% correct that JA's primary goals were didactic, and he does an admirable job of summarizing the moral content of JA’s overt stories. However, he is unaware of the existence of the shadow stories, and therefore he fails to realize that there is a whole additional layer of didacticism in JA's novels, a whole additional layer of moral content, contained in the shadow stories, and the bonus from that is that there is a third level generated by the interaction of the first two, which interacts with the moral content of the overt stories in a dazzlingly Hegelian synergy.

And speaking of Hegel, I never read Hegel, but my scant knowledge of his ideas has always been that he espoused a view of dialectics, and now I think I REALLY need to read some of his stuff, after reading the following at Wikipedia:

"Hegel developed a comprehensive philosophical framework, or "system", to account in an integrated and developmental way for the relation of mind and nature, the subject and object of knowledge, and psychology, the state, history, art, religion and philosophy. In particular, he developed a concept of mind or spirit that manifested itself in a set of contradictions and oppositions that it ultimately integrated and united, without eliminating either pole or reducing one to the other. Examples of such contradictions include those between nature and freedom, and between immanence and transcendence.”

That is fabulous, in terms of how it almost seems to have been written to describe my understanding of what JA was about in writing her novels—I do see the overt story as the thesis, the shadow story as the antithesis, and JA’s “true meaning” (difficult as I know it to be, to try to synthesize and reconcile two such radically different interpretations of the stories of the novels) to be the synthesis of the two. But the following is even more fabulous and on point, in describing the reactions to JA’s novels by Janeites over the past two centuries, as much today as way back when:

“Some historians have spoken of Hegel's influence as represented by two opposing camps. The Right Hegelians, the allegedly direct disciples of Hegel….advocated the orthodoxy and the political conservatism of the post-Napoleon Restoration period. The Left Hegelians, also known as the Young Hegelians, interpreted Hegel in a revolutionary sense, leading to an advocacy of atheism in religion and liberal democracy in politics.”

Sounds awfully familiar to me, just substitute those who read JA as a conservative defender of the social status quo, and those who read JA as a subversive, radical critic of the status quo.

And in that regard, consider the following Wikipedia comments on Hegel:

“In previous modern accounts of Hegelianism (to undergraduate classes, for example), especially those formed prior to the Hegel renaissance, Hegel's dialectic was most often characterized as a three-step process, "thesis, antithesis, synthesis"; namely, that a "thesis" (e.g. the French Revolution) would cause the creation of its "antithesis" (e.g. the Reign of Terror that followed), and would eventually result in a "synthesis" (e.g. the Constitutional state of free citizens). However, Hegel used this classification only once, and he attributed the terminology to Immanuel Kant. The terminology was largely developed earlier by Johann Fichte. It was spread by Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus in a popular account of Hegelian philosophy, and since then the misfit terms have stuck…….. What is wrong with the "thesis-antithesis-synthesis" approach is that it gives the sense that things or ideas are contradicted or opposed by things that come from outside them. To the contrary, the fundamental notion of Hegel's dialectic is that things or ideas have internal contradictions. From Hegel's point of view, analysis or comprehension of a thing or idea reveals that underneath its apparently simple identity or unity is an underlying inner contradiction. This contradiction leads to the dissolution of the thing or idea in the simple form in which it presented itself and to a higher-level, more complex thing or idea that more adequately incorporates the contradiction. The triadic form that appears in many places in Hegel (e.g. being-nothingness-becoming, immediate-mediate-concrete, abstract-negative-concrete) is about this movement from inner contradiction to higher-level integration or unification.”

I do believe that JA rejected both shallow conservatism and shallow radicalism, and instead aspired to, and often achieved, a profound understanding of the morality and dynamics of her world, which is , for all our technological advances in the past two centuries, still very much like her world, in terms of how we humans live in families.

I was curious to see if any scholars have written about parallels between Austen and Hegel (he was five years older than JA and he lived 14 years beyond her death), and Google tells me that a large number of scholars have done so, in various ways. From my initial scan of results, I found the following very interesting discussion in a 1996 book, in a chapter by Frances Olsen, entitled “Hegel, Sexual Ethics, and the Oppression of Women…” in _Feminist Interpretations of GWF Hegel_ edited by Patricia Jagentowicz Mills.

At Page 109-112, we read, in relevant part:

“GWF Hegel and David Krell’s essay on Hegel (see Ch. 4) raise the question of how men and women can relate to one another as equals—or at all. How is it possible to have intimate relations between men and women in a society in which men as a group dominate women as a group? Women are systematically subordinated to men….Men’s voices are heard…men of goodwill are faced with a quandary….When Hegel suggests that the stakes regarding sensuous abandon are higher for women than men and that men have another field for ethical efficacy, is he not basically correct in describing his society?...Perhaps we should read Hegel as approaching the world as it actually was—recognizing the radical subordination of women—and making the best he could of it all within that context…..Jane Austen approaches the world as it is—recognizing the present inequality—and in P&P offers us Elizabeth. ..Elizabeth is neither Hegel’s plant nor Nietzsche’s castrating, moralizing woman. JA can be viewed as carrying out the same project as Hegel: creating a world alive with sensibility and yet safe from the death, suicide, and madness of excess romanticism..While Elizabeth is a remarkable and appealing young woman, she is not the rare exception of a woman who is subject to less domination. Elizabeth exists as a woman in a world in which women are oppressed. Austen’s irony saves her from apologetics and allows her to criticize the inequality she recognizes. Elizabeth’s behavior deals with the world that existed at that time as well as one could. “

Bishopthorpe

Can you guess why the following two passages in a 1911 describing the ancient estate of the Archbishop of York caught my eye this morning? How many connections to JA can you spot? Do you see which of her novels in particular seems to be everywhere implied?


"It was, however, the next archbishop, Robert Hay Drummond, " a man of parts and of the world, and a dignified and accomplished prelate," who made the greatest changes and enlargements at Bishopthorpe since the original manor-house had been first added to by Rotheram. Drummond practically transformed the entire residence, and the alterations made by him were great improvements as far as convenience was concerned, but the taste of the period proved a hopeless drawback to any true artistic design or continuity in the construction of the new buildings. Indeed, the preservation of the old character of the house does not seem to have occurred to the architect, Thomas Atkinson of York, who preferred to adhere to the fashionable Strawberry-Hill style of the age, and reproduced a semblance of Gothic architecture entirely wanting in its spirit. The entrance gateway which he built in 1765, partly from stone taken from the ruins of Cawood, is a striking example of this. Drummond pulled down the old stables and built the present ones, including a coach-house, brewhouse, bakehouse, and living-rooms, on the other side of the gateway. He demolished the old Early English west front of the house, and threw the whole forward, adding the present drawing-room and business-room, and greatly enlarging the entrance-hall. The servants' hall and other offices were built underneath, as well as new rooms above, and a flight of stone steps leading up to the main entrance under a somewhat florid porchway was also constructed. The archbishop, who loved the old house, spared no pains in remodelling it. Nor did he neglect the chapel and the garden. The latter he laid out anew, and the chapel windows he filled with stained glass, probably putting down the black and white marble pavement at the same time. Drummond's generosity was one of his most attractive characteristics, and he was renowned for his open-handed hospitality. The death of his wife in 1773 was a grievous blow, from which he never recovered. He died three years later at Bishopthorpe, and was buried under the altar of the parish church, according to his desire, with as little display as possible.

His successor, William Markham, occupied the see of York for nearly thirty-one years, from 1777 until 1807. He did not confine his attention to his diocese, and took no small share in public affairs. In the same year that he was consecrated to York he was appointed Lord High Almoner and a member of the Privy Council. Contemporary writers allude to his hot temper, his pompous bearing, and especially to his commanding presence. He was a friend of Lord Mansfield, and narrowly escaped from the Gordon rioters when they attacked the latter's house in London. He was also very intimate with Edmund Burke, until the trial of Warren Hastings severed their friendship, and he is said to have corrected and revised Burke's Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas on the Sublime and the Beautiful. Markham's attention to Bishopthorpe was chiefly directed to the kitchen garden of seven acres. According to a writer of 1788, he "built a large icehouse, an exceedingly good, convenient pinery, and a flued wall 181 feet in length."*//*


I don't normally ascribe much significance to this sort of thing in terms of penetrating JA's secrets, but there is such a high density of connection here, especially with William Markham, that I believe it cannot be coincidence. But at the moment, I also can't see what the meaning of it is......

ARNIE