Here are two examples of where I see Jane Austen as subtly demonstrating herself to sharply diverge from Hannah More on some important matters of morality and religion.
VEILED ALLUSION TO HANNAH MORE IN MANSFIELD PARK:
First, as I posted the other day, Alistair Duckworth directed me to a complex allusion in Mansfield Park to Hannah More's lengthy 1791 tract "An Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World":
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/12/suspiciously-learned-mary-crawford\
.html
Subsequently I delved more deeply into JA's literary reactions to that tract, and focused in particular on the following passage where Hannah More trained her sights squarely on "the fashionable world" and its role as a moral corrupter:
"...prudent skepticism has wisely studied the temper of the times, and skilfully felt the pulse of this relaxed, and _indolent, and selfish_ age. It prudently accommodated itself to the reigning character, when it adopted sarcasm instead of reasoning, and preferred a sneer to an argument. It discreetly judged, that, if it would now gain proselytes, it must show itself under the _bewitching_ form of a profane _bon-mot_; must be interwoven in the texture of some amusing history, written with the _levity_ of a romance, and the point and glitter of an epigram; it
must embellish the ample margin with some _offensive_ anecdote or _impure allusion_, and decorate _impiety_ with every loose and meretricious ornament which a _corrupt_ imagination can invent. It must break up the old, flimsy system into little _mischievous_ aphorisms, ready for practical purposes; it must divide the rope of sand into little portable parcels, which the _shallowest wit_ can comprehend, and
_the shortest memory_ carry away."
All of the underscored words resonate in some significant way to the Crawfords in Mansfield Park, in particular to Mary.
But what is most interesting is how JA seems to go along with that thinking in terms of how Edmund and Mary parse moral situations, and yet at times JA seems to put the shoe on the _other_ foot. How? Look at the word "indolent" or "indolence", which is used far more in MP than in any other Austen novel--many of the usages describe Lady Bertram, who seems to be the quintessence of indolence. And look at the word "selfish", which is used in MP several times to describe Henry Crawford, and also,
with such cruel and absurd unjustness, by Sir Thomas to refer to Fanny.
But there are other usages of those terms which come out of the mouth of Mary Crawford, and they pertain to her brother in law, the clergyman Dr. Grant, about whom I wrote a series of posts during September 2010, including the following one:
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/09/ps-re-mary-crawfords-sisterly.html
First here are Mary's two comments about Dr. Grant which sound to me like veiled allusions to More's 1791 tract:
"...And though Dr Grant is most kind and obliging to me, and though he is really a gentleman, and, I dare say, a good scholar and clever, and often preaches good sermons, and is very respectable, _I_ see him to be an _indolent, selfish_ _bon vivant_, who must have his _palate_ consulted in everything; who will not stir a finger for the convenience of any one; and who, _more_over, if the cook makes a blunder, is out of humour with his excellent wife. ......It is _indolence_, Mr Bertram, indeed. _Indolence_ and love of ease; a want of all laudable ambition,
of taste for good company, or of inclination to take the trouble of being agreeable, which make men clergymen. "
And for good measure, even before Mary utters these judgments on her brother in law, we have the acid-tongued narrator pointing the way:
"It delighted Mrs Grant to keep them both [i.e., Mary and Henry} with her, and Dr Grant was exceedingly well contented to have it so: a talking pretty young woman like Miss Crawford is always pleasant society to an _indolent_, stay-at-home man; and Mr Crawford's being his guest was an excuse for drinking claret every day. "
And, apropos Mary Crawford's reference to Dr. Grant's "palate", it turns out that in Coelebs, we even have the morally scrupulous protagonist himself opining about this very subject of palate consultation in a similar way:
'Surely,' said I, ' (L'Almanac des Gourmands at that instant darting across my mind,) 'it is as honourable for a gentleman to excel in critical as in culinary skill. It is as noble to cultivate the intellectual taste, as that of _the palate_. It is at least as creditable to discuss the comparative merits of Sophocles and
Shakespeare, as the rival ingredients of a soup or a sauce."
What I hear in all of the above is JA's hoisting Hannah More on her own rhetorical petard---if if it fair game for More to take a critical close look at the behavior of the fashionable world epitomized by Henry and Mary Crawford, it should also be fair game for a canny observer from the fashionable world, like Mary Crawford, to take an equally critical close look at the behavior of the clergy, who are in More's way of seeing things supposed to be the moral shepherds for the rest of us, and to
point out that it's no so simple as More presents, in her claiming that the fashionable world is the biggest culprit.
Or, to indulge myself for a moment in some wordplay, what's good for the goose (whether green or not) is also good for the gander!
VEILED ALLUSION TO HANNAH MORE IN _EMMA_
A second veiled allusion to Hannah More which I find in Austen's novels is in _Emma_, and is in the famous retort by Jane Fairfax to Mrs. Elton about governessing being akin to slavery.
It turns out, perhaps to the surprise of some, that Hannah More wrote a short and very odd satirical essay sometime during the 1790's entitled "The White Slave Trade", subtitled "Hints toward framing a Bill for the Abolition of the White Female Slave Trade, in the Cities of London and Westminster"
The piece is a little too long to reproduce here, but the gist of it is that it takes the real-life noble movement (of which More was herself a strong supporter) to abolish the enslavement of Africans on English colonial plantations, and issuing a mock-exhortation to extend that same thinking in order to liberate women from the exigencies of "Fashion", which is the "arbitrary, universal tyrant" she blames for the "slavery" that white Englishwomen endure during courtship and marriage. She takes
the metaphor very far, referring to chains, enforced exile from one's home, crowded courtship meat market milieus like Catherine Morland experiences in the Pump Room in Bath as being akin to slave trade ships crammed with slaves and slave auction markets, etc etc. She takes particular notice of "coming out", which of course is what Tom Bertram and Mary C discuss in MP. It's clear to me that JA has read this essay, and is playing with it in the scene when Jane Fairfax makes her famous
comment, and Mrs. Elton calls herself a "friend of the abolition".
Here is the climax of More's piece, as to which I will give my brief remaining comments at the end of this post:
From all the above causes it is evident, that the white slave trade has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished.
Till, therefore, there be some hope that a complete abolition may be effected, the following regulations are humbly proposed: —
Regulation
I. That no slave be allowed to spend more than three hours a day in preparing her chains, beads, feathers, and other implements for the nightly labour.
II. That no slave be allowed to paint her person of more than two colours for any market whatever.
III. That each slave be allowed at least sufficient covering for the purposes of delicacy, if not for those of health and comfort.
IV. That no /little /slave be compelled to destroy her shape, and ruin her health, by being fastened to different instruments of torture, for the sake of extracting sweet sounds, till some time after she can walk alone; and that in her subsequent progress she be not obliged to sit or stand at it more than half her waking hours.
V. That no slave be put under more than four posture masters, in order to teach her such attitudes and exercises as shall enable her to fetch more money in the markets.
VI. That no slave be carried to more than three markets on the same night.
VII. That no trader be allowed to press more slaves into one /hold /than three times as many as it will contain.
VIII. That the same regard to comfort which has led the black factor to allow the African slaves a ton to a man be extended to the white slaves, who shall not be allowed less than one chair to five slaves.
IX. That no white slave /driver, /or horses, be allowed to stand in the street more than five hours in a dry night, or four in a rainy one.
X. That every elderly female slave, as soon as her youngest grandchild is fairly disposed of, be permitted to retire from her more public labours without any fine or loss of character, or any other punishment from the despot.
To conclude: — the Black Slave Trade has been taken up by its opposers, not only on the ground of inhumanity and impolicy, but on that of Religion also. On the two first points alone have we ventured to examine the question of the White Slave Trade. It would be a folly to enquire into it on this last principle; it /can /admit of no such discussion, as in this view it could not stand its ground for a single moment; for if that principle were allowed to operate, mitigations nearly approaching
to abolition must inevitably and immediately take place.
END OF QUOTE FROM MORE' S PIECE
There are two levels where I see JA as critiquing More. First, I think Mrs. Elton is a veiled representation of Hannah More, to illustrate the hypocrisy of a woman who would not realize that it was grossly insensitive to think that this satire was appropriate on any level; and also because of missing the point entirely, which is that there were plenty of injustices wreaked on Englishwomen in that era which were
real, substantial and awful. So More in her essay has somehow managed to be offensive both to brave abolitionists like Clarkson and Sharpe, and also to women like Jane Austen who saw the true source of oppression of Englishwomen as being the patriarchal male-dominated power structure.
Cheers, ARNIE
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Letter #2: Unpleasant matters falling out re Eliza Fowle and Tom Lefroy
In response to my previous post about Eliza Fowle's "illness" being a veiled reference by Jane Austen in her surviving Letters #1 & 2. Ellen Moody had several comments, to which I reply as follows:
[Ellen] "I read Arnie's suppositions on Eliza's miscarriage but see there is no evidence for a pregnancy in 1796. I don't "betcha" the woman had miscarriages in those years. We don't know. I agree the husband seems to be regularly inflicting her this way but it's a leap to say there were miscarriages in between with no evidence. Other letters from this era (including Austen's) are not shy to cite miscarriages."
Ellen, I am not persuaded by _your_ arguments. From my research I have found that there is a small army of references (over the entire range of JA's letters) to pregnancy and its various outcomes and effects, with a whole spectrum of ways of presenting them, ranging from the purely factual to the wildly fanciful. In that context, this one is mainstream, and shares characteristics with several of the others. So I consider my speculation an informed and strong one.
The sequence of my discovery is revealing. First, I responded to the cues in that sentence at the very end of Letter #1, standing alone. Then, I was pleasantly surprised to see them validated by an elaboration of the same theme in the very _beginning_ of Letter #2. Almost like the famous anadiplosis with "She could not forgive her" between chapters in _Emma_. Which fits with my sense that JA, in an important way, saw her letters to CEA as successive chapters in a never ending collaborative "novel" telling the story of JA's and CEA's shared journey in life.
Alas, that story was _not_ never ending, it _did_ end tragically, far too soon, in 1817--like the fragment of _Sanditon_, something recognizable as remarkable even as a fragment, but which is almost unbearably poignant, because we know that the full story would have been another immortal masterpiece.
In short, I see the very thrifty Jane Austen taking advantage of letters she was writing for mundane purposes of reporting real life events, and turning those letters into a particularly wonderful form of performance art, transforming real life into art in the moment, improvisationally. With each passing year, my appreciation for her letters has grown and grown, as I see more and more of these layers.
"If she did have a miscarriage it's another leap to say that this particular day in this year was a miscarriage day. I see the reference to "unpleasantness" (as I said) as separate from Eliza's illness. The latter comes in what would be another paragraph were Austen making separate paragraphs."
Speaking of leaps, I just saw _The Black Swan_ and recommend it highly as an extraordinary meditation on, among other things, art and creativity, which can appear very dangerous and threatening to some. But what would ballet be without leaps? I feel the same way about literary criticism, the whole point in describing works of imagination (and, as I said, above, I consider even JA's letters as composed works of imagination as much as fact) is in imaginatively making leaps based on reasonably firm foundations.
As for the separated paragraphs you mention, what I have found is almost as common in JA's letters as abrupt changes of topics, is how often JA subtly and covertly alludes _back_ to the topic just (apparently) abruptly abandoned. She does it all the time, in fact, now that I think about it, she does it all the time in her novels too. She only appears to be randomly flitting from topic to topic like a manic bumblebee, but actually some of these "flits", as in ballet, are choreographed. It is a way of writing that at times verges on poetry, of which we of course all know she, like her creatures Marianne Dashwood and Anne Elliot, was a very sophisticated reader, and of which I also claim she was also a vastly underestimated writer. Great poetry reaches for the unspoken connection between seemingly unrelated ideas via imagery.
And this "unpleasantness" image is a perfect example of that, as Christy, it seems to me, noticed, when she wrote, "And as these "matters" of poor Mrs. Fowle were being empathized with, and supported by team Austen and Lloyd, perhaps Jane Austen was sensing her Tom Lefroy 'matter' as also moving in the direction of...'falling out unpleasantly'."
Indeed there are parallels between the Lefroy "matters" and the miscarriage "matters", courtship and pregnancy both being intimate matters between male and female with uncertain outcomes. And I claim that JA was well aware of those parallels, and she has deliberately highlighted them by this poetic syntactical ambiguity.
[Ellen] "Also for the first time I've begun to think perhaps the Lefroy affair
is reflected in _P&P_.....Let's remember while she writes these two letters she is writing the first version of First Impressions."
As I mentioned last week, Linda Walker's article makes a "persuasive" case for _Persuasion_ as alluding to Tom Lefroy, and I have found repeatedly that when JA alludes to an actual or fictional source in one novel, she is likely to have done so in one or more of her _other_ novels as well. I have long believed, as have several other critics over the years, that Tom Lefroy is prominent in the shadows of P&P as well.
I claim that a key connection between P&P and the Lefroy Affair is _Tom Jones_. The repeated allusions to _Tom Jones_ in JA's first two letters are explicit, whereas the extended allusion to _Tom Jones_ in P&P is covert, but pervasive, most of all in the oscillating portraits of Darcy and Wickham. In the first half of P&P, Wickham appear to be Tom, Darcy appears to be Blifil. In the second half of the novel, that portraiture "flips" 180 degrees in Lizzy's mind, and she then sees Darcy as a good
guy like Tom, and Wickham as bad news like Blifil.
This might well be a clue to how JA felt about Tom Lefroy over the period of time from 1796-1798 and beyond. If JA has cast Tom Lefroy as Tom Jones (which would also give surprising additional meaning to JA's teasing, absurdist comments about Tom Fowle's taste in names in "christening" his vessel with the name Tom in some way---there can be no doubt that JA of all people was aware of the coincidence of names among Tom Fowle, his vessel, Tom Lefroy and Tom Jones), then it's interesting
in that regard to think about Wickham's abruptly tacking away from Lizzy and nearly getting engaged to the heiress Miss King as being a representation of how JA felt when Tom Lefroy seemed to abruptly get engaged to his Irish heiress, whom he did of course marry.
But it's also interesting in that regard to think about Darcy's initial uptight, unwilling attraction to Lizzy, which sounds a lot like Tom Lefroy to me, who, it is clear from the historical record, was on a relentlessly ambitious career track to the top of his profession, and who, throughout his adult life, professed a quite severe, authoritarian sort of religious fanaticism that, in my opinion, would have been anathema to Jane Austen. But at 21, perhaps he might have seemed to JA
as having potential.
So we might see Darcy's transformation in P&P as a wish fulfilment, a sweet dream that never happened in JA's real life.
When _Becoming Jane_ came out as a movie a few years back, perhaps the most egregious and ridiculous departure from the probable, among many, was the idea that it was Tom Lefroy who turned Jane Austen on to _Tom Jones_ and not, as I believe to be the case, the reverse. JA, at age 20, had already demonstrated in her wild and wacky Juvenilia--of which the modern absurdist playwright Joe Orton was a big fan--that she was already well versed in the cutting edge of literature past and current.
And the first two letters show that, as JA and CEA must _both_ have been well versed in _Tom Jones_, in order for JA to allude to it so playfully in regard to the color of Tom's coat.
So I see JA's references to _Tom Jones_ in these letters as reflections of the irrepressible JA, like Lizzy Bennet, playfully teasing the uptight Tom Lefroy, trying to thaw him out of his stiff demeanor, and laugh a little. Even in the first half of the novel, Darcy, for all his snobbish hauteur, demonstrates a quick wit and very droll sense of humor--he responds really well to Lizzy's teasing, giving as good as he gets. That would suggest that Tom Lefroy also had a sense of humor, and
that was what prompted JA to see him as a development project worth pursuing.
All of which also tells you that Henry Austen was not being very honest when he made such a big deal in his Biographical Notice about JA really not liking Fielding at all. Yeah, right! The late convert to sanctimonious religiosity did protest too much....to be believable!
Cheers, ARNIE
[Ellen] "I read Arnie's suppositions on Eliza's miscarriage but see there is no evidence for a pregnancy in 1796. I don't "betcha" the woman had miscarriages in those years. We don't know. I agree the husband seems to be regularly inflicting her this way but it's a leap to say there were miscarriages in between with no evidence. Other letters from this era (including Austen's) are not shy to cite miscarriages."
Ellen, I am not persuaded by _your_ arguments. From my research I have found that there is a small army of references (over the entire range of JA's letters) to pregnancy and its various outcomes and effects, with a whole spectrum of ways of presenting them, ranging from the purely factual to the wildly fanciful. In that context, this one is mainstream, and shares characteristics with several of the others. So I consider my speculation an informed and strong one.
The sequence of my discovery is revealing. First, I responded to the cues in that sentence at the very end of Letter #1, standing alone. Then, I was pleasantly surprised to see them validated by an elaboration of the same theme in the very _beginning_ of Letter #2. Almost like the famous anadiplosis with "She could not forgive her" between chapters in _Emma_. Which fits with my sense that JA, in an important way, saw her letters to CEA as successive chapters in a never ending collaborative "novel" telling the story of JA's and CEA's shared journey in life.
Alas, that story was _not_ never ending, it _did_ end tragically, far too soon, in 1817--like the fragment of _Sanditon_, something recognizable as remarkable even as a fragment, but which is almost unbearably poignant, because we know that the full story would have been another immortal masterpiece.
In short, I see the very thrifty Jane Austen taking advantage of letters she was writing for mundane purposes of reporting real life events, and turning those letters into a particularly wonderful form of performance art, transforming real life into art in the moment, improvisationally. With each passing year, my appreciation for her letters has grown and grown, as I see more and more of these layers.
"If she did have a miscarriage it's another leap to say that this particular day in this year was a miscarriage day. I see the reference to "unpleasantness" (as I said) as separate from Eliza's illness. The latter comes in what would be another paragraph were Austen making separate paragraphs."
Speaking of leaps, I just saw _The Black Swan_ and recommend it highly as an extraordinary meditation on, among other things, art and creativity, which can appear very dangerous and threatening to some. But what would ballet be without leaps? I feel the same way about literary criticism, the whole point in describing works of imagination (and, as I said, above, I consider even JA's letters as composed works of imagination as much as fact) is in imaginatively making leaps based on reasonably firm foundations.
As for the separated paragraphs you mention, what I have found is almost as common in JA's letters as abrupt changes of topics, is how often JA subtly and covertly alludes _back_ to the topic just (apparently) abruptly abandoned. She does it all the time, in fact, now that I think about it, she does it all the time in her novels too. She only appears to be randomly flitting from topic to topic like a manic bumblebee, but actually some of these "flits", as in ballet, are choreographed. It is a way of writing that at times verges on poetry, of which we of course all know she, like her creatures Marianne Dashwood and Anne Elliot, was a very sophisticated reader, and of which I also claim she was also a vastly underestimated writer. Great poetry reaches for the unspoken connection between seemingly unrelated ideas via imagery.
And this "unpleasantness" image is a perfect example of that, as Christy, it seems to me, noticed, when she wrote, "And as these "matters" of poor Mrs. Fowle were being empathized with, and supported by team Austen and Lloyd, perhaps Jane Austen was sensing her Tom Lefroy 'matter' as also moving in the direction of...'falling out unpleasantly'."
Indeed there are parallels between the Lefroy "matters" and the miscarriage "matters", courtship and pregnancy both being intimate matters between male and female with uncertain outcomes. And I claim that JA was well aware of those parallels, and she has deliberately highlighted them by this poetic syntactical ambiguity.
[Ellen] "Also for the first time I've begun to think perhaps the Lefroy affair
is reflected in _P&P_.....Let's remember while she writes these two letters she is writing the first version of First Impressions."
As I mentioned last week, Linda Walker's article makes a "persuasive" case for _Persuasion_ as alluding to Tom Lefroy, and I have found repeatedly that when JA alludes to an actual or fictional source in one novel, she is likely to have done so in one or more of her _other_ novels as well. I have long believed, as have several other critics over the years, that Tom Lefroy is prominent in the shadows of P&P as well.
I claim that a key connection between P&P and the Lefroy Affair is _Tom Jones_. The repeated allusions to _Tom Jones_ in JA's first two letters are explicit, whereas the extended allusion to _Tom Jones_ in P&P is covert, but pervasive, most of all in the oscillating portraits of Darcy and Wickham. In the first half of P&P, Wickham appear to be Tom, Darcy appears to be Blifil. In the second half of the novel, that portraiture "flips" 180 degrees in Lizzy's mind, and she then sees Darcy as a good
guy like Tom, and Wickham as bad news like Blifil.
This might well be a clue to how JA felt about Tom Lefroy over the period of time from 1796-1798 and beyond. If JA has cast Tom Lefroy as Tom Jones (which would also give surprising additional meaning to JA's teasing, absurdist comments about Tom Fowle's taste in names in "christening" his vessel with the name Tom in some way---there can be no doubt that JA of all people was aware of the coincidence of names among Tom Fowle, his vessel, Tom Lefroy and Tom Jones), then it's interesting
in that regard to think about Wickham's abruptly tacking away from Lizzy and nearly getting engaged to the heiress Miss King as being a representation of how JA felt when Tom Lefroy seemed to abruptly get engaged to his Irish heiress, whom he did of course marry.
But it's also interesting in that regard to think about Darcy's initial uptight, unwilling attraction to Lizzy, which sounds a lot like Tom Lefroy to me, who, it is clear from the historical record, was on a relentlessly ambitious career track to the top of his profession, and who, throughout his adult life, professed a quite severe, authoritarian sort of religious fanaticism that, in my opinion, would have been anathema to Jane Austen. But at 21, perhaps he might have seemed to JA
as having potential.
So we might see Darcy's transformation in P&P as a wish fulfilment, a sweet dream that never happened in JA's real life.
When _Becoming Jane_ came out as a movie a few years back, perhaps the most egregious and ridiculous departure from the probable, among many, was the idea that it was Tom Lefroy who turned Jane Austen on to _Tom Jones_ and not, as I believe to be the case, the reverse. JA, at age 20, had already demonstrated in her wild and wacky Juvenilia--of which the modern absurdist playwright Joe Orton was a big fan--that she was already well versed in the cutting edge of literature past and current.
And the first two letters show that, as JA and CEA must _both_ have been well versed in _Tom Jones_, in order for JA to allude to it so playfully in regard to the color of Tom's coat.
So I see JA's references to _Tom Jones_ in these letters as reflections of the irrepressible JA, like Lizzy Bennet, playfully teasing the uptight Tom Lefroy, trying to thaw him out of his stiff demeanor, and laugh a little. Even in the first half of the novel, Darcy, for all his snobbish hauteur, demonstrates a quick wit and very droll sense of humor--he responds really well to Lizzy's teasing, giving as good as he gets. That would suggest that Tom Lefroy also had a sense of humor, and
that was what prompted JA to see him as a development project worth pursuing.
All of which also tells you that Henry Austen was not being very honest when he made such a big deal in his Biographical Notice about JA really not liking Fielding at all. Yeah, right! The late convert to sanctimonious religiosity did protest too much....to be believable!
Cheers, ARNIE
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Eliza Fowle's miscarriage in Jane Austen's first two letters: "Matters have fallen out so unpleasantly"
Last Friday, in regard to Jane Austen's Letter #1, written to her sister Cassandra shortly after Jane turned 20, a letter which is very famous for its description of Jane's flirtations with Tom Lefroy (Letter #1 is readable at the following link).....
http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/brablet1.html#letter1
....I posted in Austen L and Janeites about another little-noticed passage in that same letter.....
"I condole with Miss M. on her losses and with Eliza on her gains, and am ever yours..."
The above sentence has nothing to do with Tom Lefroy, but it is, I would argue, of even greater importance in terms of understanding Jane Austen's novels, than the Tom Lefroy stuff.
Here is what I surmised about the meaning of Eliza Fowle's "gains":
Le Faye tells us that "Eliza" is Elizabeth Fowle, wife of Revd. Fulwar Craven Fowle, elder brother of Tom Fowle. It takes one minute to look at Le Faye's Bio Index and to also realize that of equal importance was that Eliza was the middle of the three Lloyd sisters, of whom Mary of course married James Austen, and Martha was Jane's closest friend. So both Jane and Cassandra each had two very close connections to this woman over a lifetime. And looking at the description of Eliza's life in the Bio Index also gives us a big hint as to what "her gains" refers to---I believe Eliza had become pregnant again--I write "again" because she was in 1796 twenty eight years old and had already borne children in 1791, 1792, 1793, and 1794 (baby born and died). That is every year for four straight years.
Le Faye's listings show the next children born to Eliza in 1798 and 1799, resuming the annual drumbeat, but I betcha that the 3-year "gap" in between serial pregnancies was itself filled by one, maybe even two, miscarriages. Somehow I doubt that the good Revd Fowle took a 3-year vacation from his Biblical "duty" to multiply as rapidly as humanly possible....I think Jane, at 20, already had a decided bent toward venting a considerable amount of anger, sarcasm and spleen when the topic of pregnancy and childbirth was extant, and it continued till the day she died."
Then, a short while ago today, I revisited this same question, because, as soon as I started reading in Letter #2, written 4-5 days after Letter #1, I was very pleased and surprised to see what I consider to be dramatic additional supporting evidence for my surmise about Eliza Lloyd Fowle having had a miscarriage, evidence which I had not previously noticed but which leapt out at me now because of what I noticed on Friday in Letter #1:
"I have just received yours and Mary's letter, and I thank you both, though _their contents_ might have been more agreeable. I do not at all expect to see you on Tuesday, since matters have fallen out so unpleasantly; and if you are not able to return till after that day, it will hardly be possible for us to send for you before Saturday, though for my own part I care so little about the ball that it would be no sacrifice to me to give it up for the sake of seeing you two days earlier. We are extremely sorry for poor Eliza's illness. I trust, however, that she has continued to recover since you wrote, and that you will none of you be the worse for your attendance on her."
In characteristically coded Austenian fashion, I claim that Jane was elliptically referring to Eliza Fowle having suffered a miscarriage, while being attended by both Cassandra (who would have been her future sister in law, had Tom Fowle returned from the West Indies) and Mary Lloyd (her actual sister). I further surmise that Cassandra and Mary Lloyd were already both there at Kintbury for an extended visit precisely because Eliza was in an advanced state of pregnancy, and probably seeming in precarious health as a result of same, as well as, surely, being overwhelmed with being very pregnant while trying to take care of four children ages 2 through 5.
There is something extremely edgy, almost shocking despite its euphemism, about Jane referring to "matters" which have "fallen out" so "unpleasantly", to refer to a miscarriage. I think this reflects JA's anger over poor Eliza Fowle having to endure a potentially fatal miscarriage in order to keep fulfilling her wifely duty to her husband. Eliza was 28 in 1796, and Le Faye's Bio Index tells us that she was to bear 2 more children within 3 years of Letter #2, and then another two children later on, before her child bearing career ended at age 39 in 1807. Fortunately for Eliza, she managed to live till 1839.
Then, an hour ago, I posted the following after Nancy Mayer raised a clarification:
[Nancy] "Others may define the word differently, but generally a miscarriage takes place before a woman is heavily pregnant. Once she is heavily pregnant and loses the baby it is premature delivery."
Nancy, thanks for clarifying the proper terminology, but my point is unchanged---regardless of the stage of the pregnancy Eliza Fowle was in when she lost her baby, I still claim this was JA speaking in her characteristically elliptical way, but with particular edginess, about a charged subject having to do with a woman suffering because of "the way things were" between male and female.
And Eliza Fowle's illness was very personal for JA and CEA, as Eliza was clearly a close friend of _both_ of them, as well as being a sister to Martha and Mary Lloyd. I checked Le Faye's Index, and there are numerous references to Eliza in JA's letters stretching over seventeen years, all of them affectionate and interested in Eliza's life and news. And as we will see as we proceed a bit further through JA's letters, I claim that the 1798 letters referring to Eliza's "illness" are _also_ about her childbirth--in that instance, to a baby who survived.
That choice of words strongly supports my claim that JA viewed serial pregnancy as an "illness" which the majority of married Englishwomen "caught" the minute they got married, and which was (like Mrs. Tilney's fever) "constitutional", i.e., chronic, because serial pregnancy was deemed, by the powers that be, to be part of the legal, moral, and religious duty of an Englishwoman. Or, to paraphrase Henry Crawford, serial pregnancy was part of an English_woman's_ constitution.
Which is precisely why I believe JA never married---she much preferred serial Shakespeare to serial pregnancy!
Cheers, Arnie
http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/brablet1.html#letter1
....I posted in Austen L and Janeites about another little-noticed passage in that same letter.....
"I condole with Miss M. on her losses and with Eliza on her gains, and am ever yours..."
The above sentence has nothing to do with Tom Lefroy, but it is, I would argue, of even greater importance in terms of understanding Jane Austen's novels, than the Tom Lefroy stuff.
Here is what I surmised about the meaning of Eliza Fowle's "gains":
Le Faye tells us that "Eliza" is Elizabeth Fowle, wife of Revd. Fulwar Craven Fowle, elder brother of Tom Fowle. It takes one minute to look at Le Faye's Bio Index and to also realize that of equal importance was that Eliza was the middle of the three Lloyd sisters, of whom Mary of course married James Austen, and Martha was Jane's closest friend. So both Jane and Cassandra each had two very close connections to this woman over a lifetime. And looking at the description of Eliza's life in the Bio Index also gives us a big hint as to what "her gains" refers to---I believe Eliza had become pregnant again--I write "again" because she was in 1796 twenty eight years old and had already borne children in 1791, 1792, 1793, and 1794 (baby born and died). That is every year for four straight years.
Le Faye's listings show the next children born to Eliza in 1798 and 1799, resuming the annual drumbeat, but I betcha that the 3-year "gap" in between serial pregnancies was itself filled by one, maybe even two, miscarriages. Somehow I doubt that the good Revd Fowle took a 3-year vacation from his Biblical "duty" to multiply as rapidly as humanly possible....I think Jane, at 20, already had a decided bent toward venting a considerable amount of anger, sarcasm and spleen when the topic of pregnancy and childbirth was extant, and it continued till the day she died."
Then, a short while ago today, I revisited this same question, because, as soon as I started reading in Letter #2, written 4-5 days after Letter #1, I was very pleased and surprised to see what I consider to be dramatic additional supporting evidence for my surmise about Eliza Lloyd Fowle having had a miscarriage, evidence which I had not previously noticed but which leapt out at me now because of what I noticed on Friday in Letter #1:
"I have just received yours and Mary's letter, and I thank you both, though _their contents_ might have been more agreeable. I do not at all expect to see you on Tuesday, since matters have fallen out so unpleasantly; and if you are not able to return till after that day, it will hardly be possible for us to send for you before Saturday, though for my own part I care so little about the ball that it would be no sacrifice to me to give it up for the sake of seeing you two days earlier. We are extremely sorry for poor Eliza's illness. I trust, however, that she has continued to recover since you wrote, and that you will none of you be the worse for your attendance on her."
In characteristically coded Austenian fashion, I claim that Jane was elliptically referring to Eliza Fowle having suffered a miscarriage, while being attended by both Cassandra (who would have been her future sister in law, had Tom Fowle returned from the West Indies) and Mary Lloyd (her actual sister). I further surmise that Cassandra and Mary Lloyd were already both there at Kintbury for an extended visit precisely because Eliza was in an advanced state of pregnancy, and probably seeming in precarious health as a result of same, as well as, surely, being overwhelmed with being very pregnant while trying to take care of four children ages 2 through 5.
There is something extremely edgy, almost shocking despite its euphemism, about Jane referring to "matters" which have "fallen out" so "unpleasantly", to refer to a miscarriage. I think this reflects JA's anger over poor Eliza Fowle having to endure a potentially fatal miscarriage in order to keep fulfilling her wifely duty to her husband. Eliza was 28 in 1796, and Le Faye's Bio Index tells us that she was to bear 2 more children within 3 years of Letter #2, and then another two children later on, before her child bearing career ended at age 39 in 1807. Fortunately for Eliza, she managed to live till 1839.
Then, an hour ago, I posted the following after Nancy Mayer raised a clarification:
[Nancy] "Others may define the word differently, but generally a miscarriage takes place before a woman is heavily pregnant. Once she is heavily pregnant and loses the baby it is premature delivery."
Nancy, thanks for clarifying the proper terminology, but my point is unchanged---regardless of the stage of the pregnancy Eliza Fowle was in when she lost her baby, I still claim this was JA speaking in her characteristically elliptical way, but with particular edginess, about a charged subject having to do with a woman suffering because of "the way things were" between male and female.
And Eliza Fowle's illness was very personal for JA and CEA, as Eliza was clearly a close friend of _both_ of them, as well as being a sister to Martha and Mary Lloyd. I checked Le Faye's Index, and there are numerous references to Eliza in JA's letters stretching over seventeen years, all of them affectionate and interested in Eliza's life and news. And as we will see as we proceed a bit further through JA's letters, I claim that the 1798 letters referring to Eliza's "illness" are _also_ about her childbirth--in that instance, to a baby who survived.
That choice of words strongly supports my claim that JA viewed serial pregnancy as an "illness" which the majority of married Englishwomen "caught" the minute they got married, and which was (like Mrs. Tilney's fever) "constitutional", i.e., chronic, because serial pregnancy was deemed, by the powers that be, to be part of the legal, moral, and religious duty of an Englishwoman. Or, to paraphrase Henry Crawford, serial pregnancy was part of an English_woman's_ constitution.
Which is precisely why I believe JA never married---she much preferred serial Shakespeare to serial pregnancy!
Cheers, Arnie
Monday, December 20, 2010
The Suspiciously Learned Mary Crawford
By chance today, I stumbled upon something very interesting and unexpected in regard to Mary Crawford's "Rears and Vices" pun, in the writings, of all places, of Hannah More!
In a 2004 book chapter by the conservative Austen scholar Alistair Duckworth, entitled "Manners in JA's Novels", Duckworth very astutely describes a covert allusion by Jane Austen to a lengthy (74 ppg) 1791 screed by Hannah More entitled "An Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World".
JA very cleverly demonstrates that Edmund has read this polemic by Hannah More very carefully, as Edmund covertly alludes to it not once but twice.
The first allusion is one that Duckworth detects, when Edmund retorts to Mary's suggestion in Chapter 7 that he give up the clergy for the law:
“Go into the law! With as much ease as I was told to go into this wilderness.”
“Now you are going to say something about law being the worst wilderness of the two, but I forestall you; remember, I have forestalled you.”
“You need not hurry when the object is only to prevent my saying a bon mot, for there is not the least wit in my nature. I am a very matter–of–fact, plain–spoken being, and may blunder on the borders of a repartee for half an hour together without striking it out.” END OF QUOTE FROM MP CHAPTER
As Duckworth points out, this is Edmund tagging the following comment by More:
"prudent skepticism has wisely studied the temper of the times, and skilfully felt
the pulse of this relaxed, and indolent, and selfish age. It prudently accommodated itself to the reigning character, when it adopted sarcasm instead of reasoning, and preferred a sneer to an argument. It discreetly judged, that, if it would now gain proselytes, it must show itself under the bewitching form of a profane bon-mot; must be interwoven in the texture of some amusing history, written with the levity of a romance, and the point and glitter of an epigram; it must embellish the ample margin
with some offensive anecdote or impure allusion, and decorate impiety with every loose and meretricious ornament which a corrupt imagination can invent. It must break up the old, flimsy system into little mischievous aphorisms, ready for practical purposes; it must divide the rope of sand into little portable parcels, which the shallowest wit can comprehend, and the shortest memory carry away." END OF QUOTE FROM MORE
Could it be more obvious that this is an intentional allusion on JA's part? It is as if the character of Mary Crawford has been crafted to fit More's description down to every detail.
Edmund's second allusion to More's polemic against what she sees as atheistic amorality is one that Duckworth misses, because it is hiding so plainly in sight, in the title of More's piece which I cited above. Edmund may as well be More herself as he says:
"I have no jealousy of any individual. It is the influence of _the fashionable world_ altogether that I am jealous of. It is the habits of wealth that I fear."
That is More's argument to a tee, wherein she sees the gravest danger of the lifestyle of the fashionable world not being an intellectual adherence to a scholarly sort of atheistic nonbelief, so much as a pragmatic, unreflective moral downfall, in which one bad behavior leads to another, in an endless slide down a slippery moral slope toward dissipation and vice.
Edmund to the end sees Mary as a reed in the wind, and not as a dogmatic skeptic about religion, conventional morality, in particular in regard to female sexuality.
However, that is precisely where i part ways with both More and Duckworth, and where I believe JA does as well, to wit: even though Mary often presents herself as if she is spontaneously spouting all sorts of irreverent aphorisms in an unreflective way, I believe JA gives us a great deal of subtle evidence supporting the notion that Mary is actually quite well-read on the topic of morality, and indeed has read More's screed herself! So that Mary at times seems to actually be consciously playing the role of the dissolute high society city jade, as a cover for some very pointed and accurate criticism of male privilege, such as, e.g., her uncle the admiral and his circle of powerful male cads (or more modernly colloquially, jerks).
And this is not, you will recall, Mary's only literary allusion. Recall that she points to the Doge of Venice, and to Browne's imitations of famous writers (and Browne by, I suggest, no coincidence, was implicitly alluded to by More in that very same 1791 polemic)--Mary is actually widely read in the free thinkers of the 18th century, and displays it subtly.
Cheers,
Arnie
In a 2004 book chapter by the conservative Austen scholar Alistair Duckworth, entitled "Manners in JA's Novels", Duckworth very astutely describes a covert allusion by Jane Austen to a lengthy (74 ppg) 1791 screed by Hannah More entitled "An Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World".
JA very cleverly demonstrates that Edmund has read this polemic by Hannah More very carefully, as Edmund covertly alludes to it not once but twice.
The first allusion is one that Duckworth detects, when Edmund retorts to Mary's suggestion in Chapter 7 that he give up the clergy for the law:
“Go into the law! With as much ease as I was told to go into this wilderness.”
“Now you are going to say something about law being the worst wilderness of the two, but I forestall you; remember, I have forestalled you.”
“You need not hurry when the object is only to prevent my saying a bon mot, for there is not the least wit in my nature. I am a very matter–of–fact, plain–spoken being, and may blunder on the borders of a repartee for half an hour together without striking it out.” END OF QUOTE FROM MP CHAPTER
As Duckworth points out, this is Edmund tagging the following comment by More:
"prudent skepticism has wisely studied the temper of the times, and skilfully felt
the pulse of this relaxed, and indolent, and selfish age. It prudently accommodated itself to the reigning character, when it adopted sarcasm instead of reasoning, and preferred a sneer to an argument. It discreetly judged, that, if it would now gain proselytes, it must show itself under the bewitching form of a profane bon-mot; must be interwoven in the texture of some amusing history, written with the levity of a romance, and the point and glitter of an epigram; it must embellish the ample margin
with some offensive anecdote or impure allusion, and decorate impiety with every loose and meretricious ornament which a corrupt imagination can invent. It must break up the old, flimsy system into little mischievous aphorisms, ready for practical purposes; it must divide the rope of sand into little portable parcels, which the shallowest wit can comprehend, and the shortest memory carry away." END OF QUOTE FROM MORE
Could it be more obvious that this is an intentional allusion on JA's part? It is as if the character of Mary Crawford has been crafted to fit More's description down to every detail.
Edmund's second allusion to More's polemic against what she sees as atheistic amorality is one that Duckworth misses, because it is hiding so plainly in sight, in the title of More's piece which I cited above. Edmund may as well be More herself as he says:
"I have no jealousy of any individual. It is the influence of _the fashionable world_ altogether that I am jealous of. It is the habits of wealth that I fear."
That is More's argument to a tee, wherein she sees the gravest danger of the lifestyle of the fashionable world not being an intellectual adherence to a scholarly sort of atheistic nonbelief, so much as a pragmatic, unreflective moral downfall, in which one bad behavior leads to another, in an endless slide down a slippery moral slope toward dissipation and vice.
Edmund to the end sees Mary as a reed in the wind, and not as a dogmatic skeptic about religion, conventional morality, in particular in regard to female sexuality.
However, that is precisely where i part ways with both More and Duckworth, and where I believe JA does as well, to wit: even though Mary often presents herself as if she is spontaneously spouting all sorts of irreverent aphorisms in an unreflective way, I believe JA gives us a great deal of subtle evidence supporting the notion that Mary is actually quite well-read on the topic of morality, and indeed has read More's screed herself! So that Mary at times seems to actually be consciously playing the role of the dissolute high society city jade, as a cover for some very pointed and accurate criticism of male privilege, such as, e.g., her uncle the admiral and his circle of powerful male cads (or more modernly colloquially, jerks).
And this is not, you will recall, Mary's only literary allusion. Recall that she points to the Doge of Venice, and to Browne's imitations of famous writers (and Browne by, I suggest, no coincidence, was implicitly alluded to by More in that very same 1791 polemic)--Mary is actually widely read in the free thinkers of the 18th century, and displays it subtly.
Cheers,
Arnie
Saturday, December 18, 2010
American Gothic: Edgar Allan Poe in the Shadows of Northanger Abbey
And here is the last of my comments today about the articles in the new Persuasions Online. I heartily recommend the article by Elsie Holzwarth (who also happens to be my friend):
http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol31no1/holzwarth.html
Elsie rivals Monsieur Dupin himself in her ingenious and bravura sleuthing and brainwork speculating about the possibility of Edgar Allan Poe having read, and been inspired by, _Northanger Abbey_ in writing his Auguste Dupin stories which many literary critics credit as giving birth to the detective story genre. She also sniffs out possible intriguing personal connections between the families of JA and Poe.
Elsie has really made me wonder whether Poe read NA, but what I already was sure about is that Poe _did_ read one of the principal, but covert, literary sources for Northanger Abbey, as I explained in my Portland talk---_Hamlet_! As I briefly discussed in my blog last month....
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/11/henry-tilney-as-henry-v-and-as-hamlet.html
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/11/henry-tilney-as-henry-v-and-hamlet.html
In my opinion, Hamlet is the common source for both Poe and Austen, and is also the modern fountainhead for the detective story.
And behind Hamlet is Sophocles's Oedipus Rex.
Cheers,
Arnie
http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol31no1/holzwarth.html
Elsie rivals Monsieur Dupin himself in her ingenious and bravura sleuthing and brainwork speculating about the possibility of Edgar Allan Poe having read, and been inspired by, _Northanger Abbey_ in writing his Auguste Dupin stories which many literary critics credit as giving birth to the detective story genre. She also sniffs out possible intriguing personal connections between the families of JA and Poe.
Elsie has really made me wonder whether Poe read NA, but what I already was sure about is that Poe _did_ read one of the principal, but covert, literary sources for Northanger Abbey, as I explained in my Portland talk---_Hamlet_! As I briefly discussed in my blog last month....
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/11/henry-tilney-as-henry-v-and-as-hamlet.html
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/11/henry-tilney-as-henry-v-and-hamlet.html
In my opinion, Hamlet is the common source for both Poe and Austen, and is also the modern fountainhead for the detective story.
And behind Hamlet is Sophocles's Oedipus Rex.
Cheers,
Arnie
More about that pesky footnote in Northanger Abbey
The following excerpt is from Susan Allen Ford's article in the new Persuasions Online, in which she discusses the footnote in Northanger Abbey to Johnson's Rambler issue #97, which footnote I claimed was inserted _after_ Jane Austen's death:
http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol31no1/ford.html
"Austen’s undermining of Richardson’s orthodoxies is evident even in her sportive narrative introduction of the essay. “Whether she thought of him so much, while she drank her warm wine and water, and prepared herself for bed, as to dream of him when there, cannot be ascertained; but I hope it was not more than in a slight slumber, or a morning doze at most” (22).
The physicality of this speculative train of thought is startling. Warm wine and water and preparations for bed set up the more problematic issue of her likelihood to “dream of him when there.” And then the narrator disclaims authority, or at least certainty. Did Catherine dream of him when in bed? It “cannot be ascertained.” But the possibility is quickly, comically, followed by a voice conscious of Richardson’s reproofs: “I hope it was no more than in a slight slumber, or a morning doze at most”. The tentative verb, from this previously self-assured narrator, and the return to her heroine’s sleeping body—the physical detail here conscientiously lightened—undercut her allegiance to the authority she’s about to cite. Following these playfully ironic speculations, the chapter ends on a practical note. After paraphrasing Richardson’s rule, the narrator shifts attention from the possibly dreaming and strongly inclining Catherine to “[h]ow proper Mr. Tilney might be as a dreamer or a lover”—and then summarily disposes of the question. Two facts, however, have been established by Mr. Allen: Henry Tilney is “a clergyman, and of a very respectable family in Gloucestershire” (22). We can feel authorized to think—or dream—of Mr. Tilney as we choose."
Ford was unaware of the Eve of St. Agnes allusion underlying the passage in NA which she quoted, which I explained in the following post at my blog, and then elaborated on in the three posts succeeding it:
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/11/answers-to-my-little-quiz-about.html
Cheers, ARNIE
http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol31no1/ford.html
"Austen’s undermining of Richardson’s orthodoxies is evident even in her sportive narrative introduction of the essay. “Whether she thought of him so much, while she drank her warm wine and water, and prepared herself for bed, as to dream of him when there, cannot be ascertained; but I hope it was not more than in a slight slumber, or a morning doze at most” (22).
The physicality of this speculative train of thought is startling. Warm wine and water and preparations for bed set up the more problematic issue of her likelihood to “dream of him when there.” And then the narrator disclaims authority, or at least certainty. Did Catherine dream of him when in bed? It “cannot be ascertained.” But the possibility is quickly, comically, followed by a voice conscious of Richardson’s reproofs: “I hope it was no more than in a slight slumber, or a morning doze at most”. The tentative verb, from this previously self-assured narrator, and the return to her heroine’s sleeping body—the physical detail here conscientiously lightened—undercut her allegiance to the authority she’s about to cite. Following these playfully ironic speculations, the chapter ends on a practical note. After paraphrasing Richardson’s rule, the narrator shifts attention from the possibly dreaming and strongly inclining Catherine to “[h]ow proper Mr. Tilney might be as a dreamer or a lover”—and then summarily disposes of the question. Two facts, however, have been established by Mr. Allen: Henry Tilney is “a clergyman, and of a very respectable family in Gloucestershire” (22). We can feel authorized to think—or dream—of Mr. Tilney as we choose."
Ford was unaware of the Eve of St. Agnes allusion underlying the passage in NA which she quoted, which I explained in the following post at my blog, and then elaborated on in the three posts succeeding it:
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/11/answers-to-my-little-quiz-about.html
Cheers, ARNIE
The Cause of Jane Austen's Death
In the new edition of Persuasions Online, I strongly recommend the article
by my good friend, Linda Robinson Walker, entitled "Jane Austen’s Death:
The Long Reach of Typhus?":
http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol31no1/walker.html
You will recall that I recommended Linda's article about Tom Lefroy and
Jane Austen last week, and this article speculating in a very informed and
insightful way about the cause of Jane's death is a worthy successor to
LInda's two prior Persuasions Online articles.
Cheers, Arnie
by my good friend, Linda Robinson Walker, entitled "Jane Austen’s Death:
The Long Reach of Typhus?":
http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol31no1/walker.html
You will recall that I recommended Linda's article about Tom Lefroy and
Jane Austen last week, and this article speculating in a very informed and
insightful way about the cause of Jane's death is a worthy successor to
LInda's two prior Persuasions Online articles.
Cheers, Arnie
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