In Jane Austen's Letter 29, we read the following:
"So, Lady Bridges in the delicate language of Coulson Wallop is IN FOR IT! "
Le Faye's footnote advises the reader that Lady Bridges was pregnant, but what you have to work to find out is that Lady Bridges was the new bride of (and, at 22, eleven years younger than) the eldest Bridges son, Brook-William, and she wound up bearing him 4 children before she really _was_ "in for it", and died after giving birth to a baby girl. But then, Brook-William was not fazed, he remarried within three years, and since his "blue beard" was perhaps by then tinged with more than a touch of "grey", it took him seven years to murder his second wife in childbirth, when it only took him five years to finish off the first Lady Bridges!
So Jane Austen had this guy pegged a mile off. Add this vignette to the long list of Jane Austen's complaints about dutiful English wives being made serially pregnant by their proper English husbands until they either died or were overwhelmed with childcare.
And someone recently pointed out that Cassandra Austen spent a lot of time at Godmersham without Jane. I just did the math, and it seems to me that Cassandra was at Godmersham [the estate of brother Edward] for three months continuously between Letter 23 and Letter 33! I like to think that this was Cassandra being a very good sister to Jane, by relieving Jane of her share of being the tireless aunt to six (count 'em, six) children under the age of 8 at Godmersham. I feel confident from all the echoes of the novels in these letters that JA made the most of the time.
And there is another detail that is easily missed in the above quotation. Coulson Wallop was the younger (and presumably not disabled) brother of Lord Portsmouth (who, as I have previously claimed, is represented by Sir Walter Elliot in Persuasion), and Coulson apparently had a certain flair for telling it like it was that JA and CEA apparently felt a certain fondness for. Alas, poor Coulson died a scant 4 years after Letter 29 was written, at the tender age of 34.
Cheers, ARNIE
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Rachel Brownstein's Recantation of Feminist Reading of Jane Austen in Why Jane Austen
In Janeites and Austen L, Christy Somer brought forward the following quote from Rachel Brownstein's recent book _Why Jane Austen_:
"If Austen’s class and gender position informed her perspective as a writer -and it did- her genius made that perspective singular.The unique specificity of that genius -its distinctiveness and distinction- is what the novels most importantly convey. To read them for truths about the author's personal life and times, or wisdom about the readers own, is to read through or around or past them: the project is, finally, beside her point or mine…”
I find it fascinating that Brownstein has recanted (in the passage quoted above) her earlier feminist readings of Austen's novels, and I now suspect she might not be the only one who has done so. What will be very interesting to me will be to see the reaction of Brownstein, and of those who have followed her path, to the evidence I will bring forward in my book, to see if my argument causes any of them to recant their recantation. I look forward to that intellectual debate.
Cheers, ARNIE
"If Austen’s class and gender position informed her perspective as a writer -and it did- her genius made that perspective singular.The unique specificity of that genius -its distinctiveness and distinction- is what the novels most importantly convey. To read them for truths about the author's personal life and times, or wisdom about the readers own, is to read through or around or past them: the project is, finally, beside her point or mine…”
I find it fascinating that Brownstein has recanted (in the passage quoted above) her earlier feminist readings of Austen's novels, and I now suspect she might not be the only one who has done so. What will be very interesting to me will be to see the reaction of Brownstein, and of those who have followed her path, to the evidence I will bring forward in my book, to see if my argument causes any of them to recant their recantation. I look forward to that intellectual debate.
Cheers, ARNIE
Jane Austen's Letter 23: Heathcote & Chute forever....and the Lords of the Creation
I just came across something that relates to Letter 23, which of course we discussed in Janeites and Austen L in early May, but which was written by JA to CEA only a few months before Letter 29:
First here is the relevant passage from Letter 23 which I wish to comment on:
"This morning we called at the Harwoods', and in their dining-room found
"Heathcote and Chute forever." Mrs. William Heathcote and Mrs. Chute -- the first of whom took a long ride yesterday morning with Mrs. Harwood into Lord Carnarvon's park, and fainted away in the evening, and the second walked down from Oakley Hall attended by Mrs. Augusta Bramston; they had meant to come on to Steventon afterwards, but we knew a trick worth two of that. If I had thought of it in time, I would have said something civil to her about Edward's never having had any serious idea of calling on Mr. Chute while he was in Hampshire; but unluckily it did not occur to me."
Le Faye's footnote quotes Chapman to say that "Heathcote and Chute forever" is an election cry, and that makes sense, especially given that Mrs. Heathcote's brother in law became an MP for Hants after Mrs. Chute's husband filled that role from 1798-1806.
But...JA is referring here not to Mssrs. Heathcote and Chute, but to Mrs. Heathcote and Mrs. Chute! And the playful tone of JA's "fainted away in the evening" and "we knew a trick worth two of that" suggests to me that JA enjoyed some spirited, affectionate, and witty repartee with both of those ladies.
And I find confirmation of all of that in the following passage from Deborah Kaplan's _JA Among Women_:
"Women’s complaints about specific domestic tasks could lead them to articulate a more generalized resentment against subordination. In 1800,
Elizabeth Chute, for example, shifted her anger from the necessity of
sustaining the role of homemaker all the time to the great ‘difference between husbands& wives.’ Confiding in Elizabeth Gosling about her husband, she burst out: ‘He seems to think it strange that I should absent myself from him for four& twenty hours when he is at home, tho’ it appears in the natural order of things that he should quit me for business or pleasure, such is the difference between husbands& wives. The latter are sort of tame animals, whom the men always expect to find at home ready to receive them: the former are *lords of the creation* free to go where they please. “
It is perfectly consistent with my central claims of JA's feminism in general, and her deep resentment and antipathy toward subordination of women in English society in particular, that she would be fast friends with Mrs. Chute, who could write such passionate and sarcastic things about male chauvinism.
And it is no coincidence that Mrs. Chute refers to men as "Lords of the Creation", which of course is how I found this passage in the first place, as I investigated the use of that very same phrase in the Epilogue to Centlivre's Wonder, which I have speculated may well have been written by Jane Austen herself, perhaps even many years after the Austen amateur theatrical performance of that play in 1789.
Cheers, ARNIE
First here is the relevant passage from Letter 23 which I wish to comment on:
"This morning we called at the Harwoods', and in their dining-room found
"Heathcote and Chute forever." Mrs. William Heathcote and Mrs. Chute -- the first of whom took a long ride yesterday morning with Mrs. Harwood into Lord Carnarvon's park, and fainted away in the evening, and the second walked down from Oakley Hall attended by Mrs. Augusta Bramston; they had meant to come on to Steventon afterwards, but we knew a trick worth two of that. If I had thought of it in time, I would have said something civil to her about Edward's never having had any serious idea of calling on Mr. Chute while he was in Hampshire; but unluckily it did not occur to me."
Le Faye's footnote quotes Chapman to say that "Heathcote and Chute forever" is an election cry, and that makes sense, especially given that Mrs. Heathcote's brother in law became an MP for Hants after Mrs. Chute's husband filled that role from 1798-1806.
But...JA is referring here not to Mssrs. Heathcote and Chute, but to Mrs. Heathcote and Mrs. Chute! And the playful tone of JA's "fainted away in the evening" and "we knew a trick worth two of that" suggests to me that JA enjoyed some spirited, affectionate, and witty repartee with both of those ladies.
And I find confirmation of all of that in the following passage from Deborah Kaplan's _JA Among Women_:
"Women’s complaints about specific domestic tasks could lead them to articulate a more generalized resentment against subordination. In 1800,
Elizabeth Chute, for example, shifted her anger from the necessity of
sustaining the role of homemaker all the time to the great ‘difference between husbands& wives.’ Confiding in Elizabeth Gosling about her husband, she burst out: ‘He seems to think it strange that I should absent myself from him for four& twenty hours when he is at home, tho’ it appears in the natural order of things that he should quit me for business or pleasure, such is the difference between husbands& wives. The latter are sort of tame animals, whom the men always expect to find at home ready to receive them: the former are *lords of the creation* free to go where they please. “
It is perfectly consistent with my central claims of JA's feminism in general, and her deep resentment and antipathy toward subordination of women in English society in particular, that she would be fast friends with Mrs. Chute, who could write such passionate and sarcastic things about male chauvinism.
And it is no coincidence that Mrs. Chute refers to men as "Lords of the Creation", which of course is how I found this passage in the first place, as I investigated the use of that very same phrase in the Epilogue to Centlivre's Wonder, which I have speculated may well have been written by Jane Austen herself, perhaps even many years after the Austen amateur theatrical performance of that play in 1789.
Cheers, ARNIE
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Jane Austen the literary historical poker player
[Derrick Leigh wrote the following in response to Anielka Briggs's post in Janeites and Austen L about Jane Austen's youthful Sharade about James I's homosexuality] "It doesn't take young inquiring minds long to work out what is involved in homosexuality, even without the benefit of sex education. The Carr-pet joke is an old chestnut, and the subject is introduced much earlier in the school history curriculum in the form of Edward II, whose similar inclination towards his male favourites would have been remarked upon as being the reason for his deposition and reputed death by red hot poker, as a warning against the evils of sodomy. The gory details of that would certainly have burned an impression on young minds."
Derrick, your rapier-sharp sexual innuendo is positively Austenesque, both in its wit and also in the penetrating insight of your observations!
I had never heard that tale of Edward II before, and surely you are right in suggesting (if I read you correctly) that JA was inspired by that ribald folktale, at least in part, to write her Carr-pet Sharade. I was inspired to do a bit of followup, and what I found is strongly supportive of drawing that inference.
First here is what Wikipedia has to say:
"The popular story that the king was assassinated by having a red-hot poker thrust into his anus has no basis in accounts recorded by Edward's contemporaries. Thomas de la Moore's
account^// of Edward's murder was not written until after 1352 and is uncorroborated by other contemporary sources. Not until the relevant sections of the longer Brut chronicle were composed by an anti-Mortimer Lancastrian polemicist in the mid-1430s was the story widely circulated."
This suggests that the tale of Edward II's unfortunate end was in circulation as early as 4 centuries before JA would have read or heard about it. But here where JA's literary knowledge would have kicked in. Given that I believe (following and extending Jocelyn Harris's pioneering discoveries) that JA was very familiar with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, I also think it very likely that JA would have made the association between this tale of the macabre death of Edward II, on the one hand, and Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale", on the other. In Chaucer's famous Tale, a very blackly comic romantic quadrangle, the
parish clerk Absolon takes his revenge on Alisoun's lover the student Nicholas by delivering a similar and very uncomfortable intrusion upon the rear end of Nicholas (but, because of its short duration, nonfatal in that instance). There's no way that JA failed to see this linkage.
And, thinking about that made me quickly realize that the source for Chaucer's choice of that sort of karmic revenge on Nicholas must itself have been that very same tale about Edward II's death, given that Chaucer was born a mere 13 years after the death of Edward II, and would therefore have composed the Miller's Tale in part in reaction to that account of barbarous regicide. And a quick Google search confirmed that I am not the first to spot that ghoulish parallel:
http://www.c-s-p.org/flyers/9781847186133-sample.pdf
_The Canterbury Tales Revisited – 21st Century Interpretations_ (2008)
P. 16 et seq.: "Queer Punishments: Tragic and Comic Sodomy in the Death of Edward II and in Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale" by Kathleen A. Bishop
So what I see is Chaucer writing "The Miller's Tale" in part as a not so veiled allusion to the death of Edward II, and then I see JA reading both Chaucer and historical accounts of Edward II's death, and realizing they are the same, and then adding her own layer to this ongoing "conversation".
And then I found this:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=176011
It's interesting that the man who wrote the above debunking article is named Mortimer--hard to imagine that he would be trying to protect the family name, 700 years later!---but I mention this because I don't think it matters at all whether the story was apocryphal, in terms of JA's riffing off it--what matters is whether it was a story in circulation in JA's time, and she knew about it, and saw Chaucer's hand in the mix, and decided to join the parade.
One last point--I was curious to see if I could find any published sources contemporary with JA's life where the tale about Edward II's painful death was mentioned, and here is the only one I found:
http://books.google.com/books?id=rlQVAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA10&dq=Edward+poker&hl=en&ei=XZP3Tdi9AcLUgQejlrWRDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCwQ6AEwADgU#v=onepage&q=Edward%20poker&f=false
_An Epitome of Juridical or Forensic Medicine_ by George Edward Male (1816), at P. 10, in the midst of a rather matter-of-fact discussion of the recommended procedure for an autopsy following discovery of a corpse where nothing is known as to the cause of death:
"...The other abdominal viscera, and the whole length of the intestinal canal, should be traced, as it is possible that hernia, introsusception, or inflammation, may have been the cause of death; an empoisoned clyster may have been administered, or (as in the case of king Edward the Second) a hot poker or other instrument thrust up the rectum. ..."
Even though I did not find a published source contemporary with JA's teen years, for the reasons set forth above, I am convinced that Derrick was spot-on in connecting the dots from JA's Carr-pet Sharade to the perhaps-apocryphal tale of Edward II's painful death, it only adds to all the long list of veiled allusions to male homosexuality which populate JA's novels.
Cheers, ARNIE
P.S.: Now whether Mitford had any of the above in mind when she wrote the following in 1813, that remains to be seen:
"[JA]was no more regarded in society than a poker or a fire-screen, or any other thin upright piece of wood or iron that fills its corner in peace and quietness. The case is very different now; SHE IS STILL A POKER—BUT A POKER OF WHOM EVERY ONE IS AFRAID."
Derrick, your rapier-sharp sexual innuendo is positively Austenesque, both in its wit and also in the penetrating insight of your observations!
I had never heard that tale of Edward II before, and surely you are right in suggesting (if I read you correctly) that JA was inspired by that ribald folktale, at least in part, to write her Carr-pet Sharade. I was inspired to do a bit of followup, and what I found is strongly supportive of drawing that inference.
First here is what Wikipedia has to say:
"The popular story that the king was assassinated by having a red-hot poker thrust into his anus has no basis in accounts recorded by Edward's contemporaries. Thomas de la Moore's
account^/
This suggests that the tale of Edward II's unfortunate end was in circulation as early as 4 centuries before JA would have read or heard about it. But here where JA's literary knowledge would have kicked in. Given that I believe (following and extending Jocelyn Harris's pioneering discoveries) that JA was very familiar with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, I also think it very likely that JA would have made the association between this tale of the macabre death of Edward II, on the one hand, and Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale", on the other. In Chaucer's famous Tale, a very blackly comic romantic quadrangle, the
parish clerk Absolon takes his revenge on Alisoun's lover the student Nicholas by delivering a similar and very uncomfortable intrusion upon the rear end of Nicholas (but, because of its short duration, nonfatal in that instance). There's no way that JA failed to see this linkage.
And, thinking about that made me quickly realize that the source for Chaucer's choice of that sort of karmic revenge on Nicholas must itself have been that very same tale about Edward II's death, given that Chaucer was born a mere 13 years after the death of Edward II, and would therefore have composed the Miller's Tale in part in reaction to that account of barbarous regicide. And a quick Google search confirmed that I am not the first to spot that ghoulish parallel:
http://www.c-s-p.org/flyers/9781847186133-sample.pdf
_The Canterbury Tales Revisited – 21st Century Interpretations_ (2008)
P. 16 et seq.: "Queer Punishments: Tragic and Comic Sodomy in the Death of Edward II and in Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale" by Kathleen A. Bishop
So what I see is Chaucer writing "The Miller's Tale" in part as a not so veiled allusion to the death of Edward II, and then I see JA reading both Chaucer and historical accounts of Edward II's death, and realizing they are the same, and then adding her own layer to this ongoing "conversation".
And then I found this:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=176011
It's interesting that the man who wrote the above debunking article is named Mortimer--hard to imagine that he would be trying to protect the family name, 700 years later!---but I mention this because I don't think it matters at all whether the story was apocryphal, in terms of JA's riffing off it--what matters is whether it was a story in circulation in JA's time, and she knew about it, and saw Chaucer's hand in the mix, and decided to join the parade.
One last point--I was curious to see if I could find any published sources contemporary with JA's life where the tale about Edward II's painful death was mentioned, and here is the only one I found:
http://books.google.com/books?id=rlQVAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA10&dq=Edward+poker&hl=en&ei=XZP3Tdi9AcLUgQejlrWRDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCwQ6AEwADgU#v=onepage&q=Edward%20poker&f=false
_An Epitome of Juridical or Forensic Medicine_ by George Edward Male (1816), at P. 10, in the midst of a rather matter-of-fact discussion of the recommended procedure for an autopsy following discovery of a corpse where nothing is known as to the cause of death:
"...The other abdominal viscera, and the whole length of the intestinal canal, should be traced, as it is possible that hernia, introsusception, or inflammation, may have been the cause of death; an empoisoned clyster may have been administered, or (as in the case of king Edward the Second) a hot poker or other instrument thrust up the rectum. ..."
Even though I did not find a published source contemporary with JA's teen years, for the reasons set forth above, I am convinced that Derrick was spot-on in connecting the dots from JA's Carr-pet Sharade to the perhaps-apocryphal tale of Edward II's painful death, it only adds to all the long list of veiled allusions to male homosexuality which populate JA's novels.
Cheers, ARNIE
P.S.: Now whether Mitford had any of the above in mind when she wrote the following in 1813, that remains to be seen:
"[JA]was no more regarded in society than a poker or a fire-screen, or any other thin upright piece of wood or iron that fills its corner in peace and quietness. The case is very different now; SHE IS STILL A POKER—BUT A POKER OF WHOM EVERY ONE IS AFRAID."
The Biblical Influence on Austen
[In Janeites and Austen L, Anielka Briggs wrote] "Austen could have combined any number of Pride and Prejudice references to create an exegetic layer-cake of meaning."
I've been talking about JA's allusive layer cake since 2002 in Janeites, and I (and some other Austen scholars too) have also _specifically_ mentioned the title and the opening sentence of P&P as examples of those multiple layers. So I am glad--and not at all surprised---that you agree on those points, Anielka.
[Anielka also wrote] "If you want to reflect a little on the judgemental way you see her, try comparing the fifteen-year-old involved in a relationship with an older man with that of Mary, an unmarried fifteen-year-old involved in a relationship with Joseph. I think Austen meant to challenge us and make us examine the ways in which we condemn or condone social behaviour and how it aligns with the Christian message."
I am so glad you wrote that comment. That second sentence of yours (beginning with "I think Austen meant...") is exactly what I have been saying for many years in these groups, but with special emphasis in my series of posts from about 6-9 months ago, which were all about the Hebrew (but also a bit of the Christian) Biblical allusive subtext of Mansfield Park. And it is remarkable that you chose as an example Mary the 15 year old mother of Jesus. Here is a quote from me from Dec. 9, 2010, in the archives of both of these groups and in my blog, in a post about the 15-year old Philadelphia Austen, and my claims about JA having covertly represented her paternal aunt, in Emma and also in others of JA's fictions, as perhaps having been a teenaged prostitute in Covent Garden circa 1750:
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/search?q=Christian+stone
"....my sense is that JA was first and foremost an author of fictions and that was her most sacred duty, in her eyes--because she saw herself as having a great gift from God, which it was her duty to share with the world. It was not vanity for a very great genius to see herself as playing a special role in the world, it was pragmatic reality. She understood from a very young age that she was different, special, "chosen", and she struggled to come to terms with what to do with her gift. She chose a path that I celebrate, honor, enjoy and learn from every single day. She has been a great teacher for me in so many profound ways. I think she resolved that struggle on how to reconcile her role in the family with her role as an author in 1809, and decided that this was her destiny, to bring these stories to the world, including the shadow stories of women in her time. From that point forward, she was resolute in executing her plan. I have emphasized several times that JA made use of her aunt's painful early life as grist for her literary mill, not in a cynical, selfish, judgmental way, but with a combination of compassion and worldly wisdom which put her aunt's early life choices in perspective, and found useful life lessons in life. Her aunt did not live and die in vain. Her story was preserved by her loving niece. Read what Anne Elliot says in Persuasion. Read what the narrator says in Northanger Abbey. JA saw herself as telling the history of women--the HERstory of women, from a woman's perspective, something that she saw a desperate need for, a need that trumped all other considerations. You and I and others were in great dispute about Samuel Johnson recently. It is not accidental that JA alluded to Johnson's Misella, the prostitute, in her novels. Emma (with Jane Fairfax) and Mansfield Park (with Fanny Price) both have the painful shadow story of prostitutes hanging over them, that is why Fanny Hill is such an important subtext of both of those novels, and that is why Phila Hancock is there too. Despite my other complaints about Johnson, he did not write about Misella in a prurient or evil way, he was telling that untold story. And JA saw her aunt as a real life Misella. I am not saying that Phila Austen was the real life model for Fanny Hill, or the real life model for Misella, but she may as well have been, from JA's creative perspective, as she wove those fictional sources together with her own aunt's life to create her own suffering heroines."
In a nutshell, my above post shows how I see JA's deep Biblical knowledge and theoretical understanding being used by her in the service of what I claim was the bedrock of her moral agenda, i.e., to heal the injured body of English womanhood, and, on the flip side, to enable women to celebrate the wonders of their bodies, free from male oppression. And crucial to that feminist project was to educate women, not in the shallow sense of sterile "accomplishments", not even in the higher level of useful education that Wollstonecraft advocated for women, but most of all in training women to think outside the box of human subjectivity.
And this example of the young Phila Austen also illustrates that the multitude of sexual innuendoes that populate JA's novels is, to me, a reflection both of JA's depicting how a woman's sexuality can get her into trouble in a sexist world that exploits women's bodies, but also of JA's claiming a woman's right to celebrate her own sexuality, including her own (very normal and healthy) enjoyment of sexual humor. She was the greatest scholarly interpreter of Shakespeare who has ever lived, in my opinion, and part of her deep understanding of Shakespeare involved JA's enjoying ribald sexual humor, and also understanding that it was not, as Samuel Johnson so stupidly suggested, a distraction from Shakespeare's deepest meanings, but actually a royal road that led right to them.
And so, for JA to allude to Fanny Hill in Emma, as I claim she did, was not a case of JA having her mind in the gutter, but JA pointing to the social reality that undergirds Cleland's farce, in which vulnerable young women were driven into prostitution---and so it is no accident that Mrs. Elton wants to drive Jane Fairfax into "governessing". That she also finds black humor in all of this is a reflection of her genius, it is a species of "gallows humor", the freedom of the oppressed person to laugh at the oppressors.
In your last post, Anielka, you went through an exegesis of Christian Biblical themes hidden in both the second charade in Emma, and in the James I Sharade in The History of England, and I believe you have made a very good prima facie case for these Christian Biblical allusions being intentional on JA's part. I don't doubt that your full exposition of same will be even more interesting. I have no problem with that at all, it fits well with my own Biblical allusive discoveries, and it is a welcome addition to the subtextual material all Janeites so inclined have to work with.
But the one instance where I disagree with you--strongly--is in your begging what I see as the most important question of all. I.e., "What is the relationship between the different layers of subtext that JA intentionally but covertly wove into her novels?" You seem to be claiming that a Christian Biblical interpretation supersedes every other layer, and renders other layers superficial, irrelevant, or even ridiculous. I strongly disagree with that claim, and I instead see as the deepest layer JA's focus on epistemology, how we know what we know. Her novels are training manuals for thinking, directed primarily toward a contemporary female audience. That is the essence of the feminism I claim for JA, and I see nothing in what you've brought forward in your Christian exegeses which is contradictory to my claim, in fact, it only supports it all the more. It all depends, as JA herself would have pointed out, on your point of view.
Time will tell how my above-stated understanding of the relationship of your theories and mine will be received by the world of Janeites, and vice versa. I am sure it will be a very interesting era in Jane Austen scholarship.
I cliam that JA presents all these layers of covert subtext so that a (female) reader who is so inclined will be challenged to find them, and, in so doing, will develop their ability to hold contradictory ideas in their minds and to tolerate that sort of ambiguity, because the world is ambiguous, and error is most likely to arise from the craving for certainty. I claim that is the deepest purpose of the shadow stories I have excavated in her novels.
A very Buddhist/Hindu perspective actually, and I would not at all be surprised to learn one day that JA gained access, either via her world-traveller sailor brothers or from some other source, to Eastern spiritual writings at some point in her life, and that there are a few covert allusions to the Buddha or the Gita somewhere in JA's novels.
So I welcome your making your full argument whenever you get around to doing so, I am very confident that whatever interesting discoveries you bring forward will be harmonious with my interpretation of JA as a radical but covert feminist.
Cheers, ARNIE
I've been talking about JA's allusive layer cake since 2002 in Janeites, and I (and some other Austen scholars too) have also _specifically_ mentioned the title and the opening sentence of P&P as examples of those multiple layers. So I am glad--and not at all surprised---that you agree on those points, Anielka.
[Anielka also wrote] "If you want to reflect a little on the judgemental way you see her, try comparing the fifteen-year-old involved in a relationship with an older man with that of Mary, an unmarried fifteen-year-old involved in a relationship with Joseph. I think Austen meant to challenge us and make us examine the ways in which we condemn or condone social behaviour and how it aligns with the Christian message."
I am so glad you wrote that comment. That second sentence of yours (beginning with "I think Austen meant...") is exactly what I have been saying for many years in these groups, but with special emphasis in my series of posts from about 6-9 months ago, which were all about the Hebrew (but also a bit of the Christian) Biblical allusive subtext of Mansfield Park. And it is remarkable that you chose as an example Mary the 15 year old mother of Jesus. Here is a quote from me from Dec. 9, 2010, in the archives of both of these groups and in my blog, in a post about the 15-year old Philadelphia Austen, and my claims about JA having covertly represented her paternal aunt, in Emma and also in others of JA's fictions, as perhaps having been a teenaged prostitute in Covent Garden circa 1750:
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/search?q=Christian+stone
"....my sense is that JA was first and foremost an author of fictions and that was her most sacred duty, in her eyes--because she saw herself as having a great gift from God, which it was her duty to share with the world. It was not vanity for a very great genius to see herself as playing a special role in the world, it was pragmatic reality. She understood from a very young age that she was different, special, "chosen", and she struggled to come to terms with what to do with her gift. She chose a path that I celebrate, honor, enjoy and learn from every single day. She has been a great teacher for me in so many profound ways. I think she resolved that struggle on how to reconcile her role in the family with her role as an author in 1809, and decided that this was her destiny, to bring these stories to the world, including the shadow stories of women in her time. From that point forward, she was resolute in executing her plan. I have emphasized several times that JA made use of her aunt's painful early life as grist for her literary mill, not in a cynical, selfish, judgmental way, but with a combination of compassion and worldly wisdom which put her aunt's early life choices in perspective, and found useful life lessons in life. Her aunt did not live and die in vain. Her story was preserved by her loving niece. Read what Anne Elliot says in Persuasion. Read what the narrator says in Northanger Abbey. JA saw herself as telling the history of women--the HERstory of women, from a woman's perspective, something that she saw a desperate need for, a need that trumped all other considerations. You and I and others were in great dispute about Samuel Johnson recently. It is not accidental that JA alluded to Johnson's Misella, the prostitute, in her novels. Emma (with Jane Fairfax) and Mansfield Park (with Fanny Price) both have the painful shadow story of prostitutes hanging over them, that is why Fanny Hill is such an important subtext of both of those novels, and that is why Phila Hancock is there too. Despite my other complaints about Johnson, he did not write about Misella in a prurient or evil way, he was telling that untold story. And JA saw her aunt as a real life Misella. I am not saying that Phila Austen was the real life model for Fanny Hill, or the real life model for Misella, but she may as well have been, from JA's creative perspective, as she wove those fictional sources together with her own aunt's life to create her own suffering heroines."
In a nutshell, my above post shows how I see JA's deep Biblical knowledge and theoretical understanding being used by her in the service of what I claim was the bedrock of her moral agenda, i.e., to heal the injured body of English womanhood, and, on the flip side, to enable women to celebrate the wonders of their bodies, free from male oppression. And crucial to that feminist project was to educate women, not in the shallow sense of sterile "accomplishments", not even in the higher level of useful education that Wollstonecraft advocated for women, but most of all in training women to think outside the box of human subjectivity.
And this example of the young Phila Austen also illustrates that the multitude of sexual innuendoes that populate JA's novels is, to me, a reflection both of JA's depicting how a woman's sexuality can get her into trouble in a sexist world that exploits women's bodies, but also of JA's claiming a woman's right to celebrate her own sexuality, including her own (very normal and healthy) enjoyment of sexual humor. She was the greatest scholarly interpreter of Shakespeare who has ever lived, in my opinion, and part of her deep understanding of Shakespeare involved JA's enjoying ribald sexual humor, and also understanding that it was not, as Samuel Johnson so stupidly suggested, a distraction from Shakespeare's deepest meanings, but actually a royal road that led right to them.
And so, for JA to allude to Fanny Hill in Emma, as I claim she did, was not a case of JA having her mind in the gutter, but JA pointing to the social reality that undergirds Cleland's farce, in which vulnerable young women were driven into prostitution---and so it is no accident that Mrs. Elton wants to drive Jane Fairfax into "governessing". That she also finds black humor in all of this is a reflection of her genius, it is a species of "gallows humor", the freedom of the oppressed person to laugh at the oppressors.
In your last post, Anielka, you went through an exegesis of Christian Biblical themes hidden in both the second charade in Emma, and in the James I Sharade in The History of England, and I believe you have made a very good prima facie case for these Christian Biblical allusions being intentional on JA's part. I don't doubt that your full exposition of same will be even more interesting. I have no problem with that at all, it fits well with my own Biblical allusive discoveries, and it is a welcome addition to the subtextual material all Janeites so inclined have to work with.
But the one instance where I disagree with you--strongly--is in your begging what I see as the most important question of all. I.e., "What is the relationship between the different layers of subtext that JA intentionally but covertly wove into her novels?" You seem to be claiming that a Christian Biblical interpretation supersedes every other layer, and renders other layers superficial, irrelevant, or even ridiculous. I strongly disagree with that claim, and I instead see as the deepest layer JA's focus on epistemology, how we know what we know. Her novels are training manuals for thinking, directed primarily toward a contemporary female audience. That is the essence of the feminism I claim for JA, and I see nothing in what you've brought forward in your Christian exegeses which is contradictory to my claim, in fact, it only supports it all the more. It all depends, as JA herself would have pointed out, on your point of view.
Time will tell how my above-stated understanding of the relationship of your theories and mine will be received by the world of Janeites, and vice versa. I am sure it will be a very interesting era in Jane Austen scholarship.
I cliam that JA presents all these layers of covert subtext so that a (female) reader who is so inclined will be challenged to find them, and, in so doing, will develop their ability to hold contradictory ideas in their minds and to tolerate that sort of ambiguity, because the world is ambiguous, and error is most likely to arise from the craving for certainty. I claim that is the deepest purpose of the shadow stories I have excavated in her novels.
A very Buddhist/Hindu perspective actually, and I would not at all be surprised to learn one day that JA gained access, either via her world-traveller sailor brothers or from some other source, to Eastern spiritual writings at some point in her life, and that there are a few covert allusions to the Buddha or the Gita somewhere in JA's novels.
So I welcome your making your full argument whenever you get around to doing so, I am very confident that whatever interesting discoveries you bring forward will be harmonious with my interpretation of JA as a radical but covert feminist.
Cheers, ARNIE
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Avrom Fleishman the Superlative Judge of Mansfield Park
In response to a post in Austen L correctly flagging two errors in the 1967 article by Avrom Fleishman about Mansfield Park, I responded by acknowledging that these were indeed obvious errors, but I then went on as follow.
What's been overlooked, however, is that Fleishman's article was a major milestone in Austen scholarship about Mansfield Park. Here is the text of what i wrote as part of a proposed article 5 years ago that never did get published, where I sum up what I see as the huge importance of Fleishman's article:
" The pioneer who first publishes an explicit claim of slavery subtext in Mansfield Park is Avrom Fleishman. His 1967 article ends the 153-year dead silence, and initiates the process of finally answering Fanny’s question. He begins by placing Mansfield Park in the historical context of a “crisis” or “turning point in the gentry’s fortunes.” Per Fleishman, Mansfield Park depends on Antiguan income, and Sir Thomas is Antiguan. Fleishman then writes: “And if a question about off-stage action may be admitted, what does Sir Thomas do in Antigua to make secure the sources of his income?” Fleishman goes on to provide economic history and claims that Antigua was an exception to the rule of absentee ownership that prevailed elsewhere in the British West Indies, but that it had just been adversely impacted by the abolition of the slave trade. He wonders whether it is economic necessity that drives Sir Thomas “to improve conditions for the slaves,” and he believes that the “strange business. . .in America” that Tom mentions to Dr. Grant is a reference to Sir Thomas’s crisis in Antigua. Fleishman combines the best ideas of Smith, Stern and Chapman when he points out the importance of Austen’s familiarity with Clarkson’s The Abolition of the African Slave Trade. He then takes the step that Chapman did not, arguing that the Evangelically-driven abolitionist movement must have been very much in Austen’s awareness as she wrote this novel. Regarding Sir Thomas’s startling display of affection for Fanny, Fleishman writes that “it is inescapably significant that she is the only member of the family interested in hearing from him about the slave trade.” Fleishman thus presents persuasive and unequivocal advocacy for Sir Thomas as absentee plantation owner, and for Clarkson’s abolitionism on Austen’s radar screen. However, as valuable as these explicit insights are, his indirect implications are even better. His approach implies that there can be offstage, unreported action in an Austen novel worthy of serious thematic consideration. There is enormous power in this approach, and, so energized, he goes on to achieve what seem to me to be four distinct insights:
1. Sir Thomas’s “bullying” of Fanny—this is the first conceptualization, however indistinct, of the allegory of Fanny as slave and Sir Thomas as master, which Kirkham will make explicit in 1983, and is fundamental to much thinking ever since about Austen’s slavery references.
2. Sir Thomas’s children as “bitter fruit”. This is a prescient grasping of the pervasive allusive import of Paradise Lost in the novel, the image of bitter fruit being specifically and ironically tagged by Dr. Grant’s deriding Mrs. Norris’s Moor Park apricots as “insipid” and inedible.
3. “The large and airy rooms” of Mansfield Park-- the central symbolism of the magical power of English air stated in the slave-freeing 1772 Mansfield Judgment.
4. Fleishman’s quoting D.W. Harding, who in turn is clearly riffing on Mary, about Austen’s intentions as a writer: “Her object is not missionary”. Mary’s mocking portrayals of Edmund as a missionary comprise one instance among many in Austen’s novels in which Austen ventriloquistically uses a character as a mouthpiece for her reflections, in this case on her own role as a writer in morally sick Regency Era England. Does Mary speak of Austen? Harding thinks not, but others like Smith and Stern might disagree.Fleishman’s article fertilizes the examination of slavery subtext in Mansfield Park, but its gestation will be long and difficult. Despite the wealth of his radically new ideas about slavery in the novel, no commentator will, until 1982, respond positively to him....." END OF MY OWN 2006 EXCERPT
So, I suggest to you that while ordinarily mistakes such as those which were just caught would be fatal indicia of a general lack of care and insight, there are rare exceptions, and I say that Fleishman's article is one of those rare exceptions. It is a far far better thing for Austen scholarship that Fleishman published his article, even with the mistakes you caught, than that he never wrote it at all, because HE was the one who blazed the trail to the broad understanding of the slavery subtext of Mansfield Park which exists today, 44 years later. It's a darned good thing that his work was picked up and repeated, and I would bet that the errors you cited disappeared without a trace.
I am strongly reminded of the Taoist allegory told by Buddy to Zooey in JD Salinger's Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenter, about Chiu-fang Kao who is sent by the Duke to buy him a superlative horse, and then returns with the news that he has found a superlative dun-colored mare. The Duke is dismayed when he sees the horse in the flesh and sees it is really a coal black stallion, but the Duke's advisor has the opposite reaction:
"Has he really got as far as that?....Ah, then, he is worth ten thousand of me put together. There is no comparison between us. What Kao keeps in view is the spiritual mechanism. In making sure of the essential, he forgets the homely details; intent on the inward qualities, he loses sight of the external. He sees what he wants to see, and not what he does not want to see. He looks at the things he ought to look at, and neglects those that need not be looked at. So clever a judge of horses is Kao, that he has it in him to judge something better than horses."
Cheers, ARNIE
What's been overlooked, however, is that Fleishman's article was a major milestone in Austen scholarship about Mansfield Park. Here is the text of what i wrote as part of a proposed article 5 years ago that never did get published, where I sum up what I see as the huge importance of Fleishman's article:
" The pioneer who first publishes an explicit claim of slavery subtext in Mansfield Park is Avrom Fleishman. His 1967 article ends the 153-year dead silence, and initiates the process of finally answering Fanny’s question. He begins by placing Mansfield Park in the historical context of a “crisis” or “turning point in the gentry’s fortunes.” Per Fleishman, Mansfield Park depends on Antiguan income, and Sir Thomas is Antiguan. Fleishman then writes: “And if a question about off-stage action may be admitted, what does Sir Thomas do in Antigua to make secure the sources of his income?” Fleishman goes on to provide economic history and claims that Antigua was an exception to the rule of absentee ownership that prevailed elsewhere in the British West Indies, but that it had just been adversely impacted by the abolition of the slave trade. He wonders whether it is economic necessity that drives Sir Thomas “to improve conditions for the slaves,” and he believes that the “strange business. . .in America” that Tom mentions to Dr. Grant is a reference to Sir Thomas’s crisis in Antigua. Fleishman combines the best ideas of Smith, Stern and Chapman when he points out the importance of Austen’s familiarity with Clarkson’s The Abolition of the African Slave Trade. He then takes the step that Chapman did not, arguing that the Evangelically-driven abolitionist movement must have been very much in Austen’s awareness as she wrote this novel. Regarding Sir Thomas’s startling display of affection for Fanny, Fleishman writes that “it is inescapably significant that she is the only member of the family interested in hearing from him about the slave trade.” Fleishman thus presents persuasive and unequivocal advocacy for Sir Thomas as absentee plantation owner, and for Clarkson’s abolitionism on Austen’s radar screen. However, as valuable as these explicit insights are, his indirect implications are even better. His approach implies that there can be offstage, unreported action in an Austen novel worthy of serious thematic consideration. There is enormous power in this approach, and, so energized, he goes on to achieve what seem to me to be four distinct insights:
1. Sir Thomas’s “bullying” of Fanny—this is the first conceptualization, however indistinct, of the allegory of Fanny as slave and Sir Thomas as master, which Kirkham will make explicit in 1983, and is fundamental to much thinking ever since about Austen’s slavery references.
2. Sir Thomas’s children as “bitter fruit”. This is a prescient grasping of the pervasive allusive import of Paradise Lost in the novel, the image of bitter fruit being specifically and ironically tagged by Dr. Grant’s deriding Mrs. Norris’s Moor Park apricots as “insipid” and inedible.
3. “The large and airy rooms” of Mansfield Park-- the central symbolism of the magical power of English air stated in the slave-freeing 1772 Mansfield Judgment.
4. Fleishman’s quoting D.W. Harding, who in turn is clearly riffing on Mary, about Austen’s intentions as a writer: “Her object is not missionary”. Mary’s mocking portrayals of Edmund as a missionary comprise one instance among many in Austen’s novels in which Austen ventriloquistically uses a character as a mouthpiece for her reflections, in this case on her own role as a writer in morally sick Regency Era England. Does Mary speak of Austen? Harding thinks not, but others like Smith and Stern might disagree.Fleishman’s article fertilizes the examination of slavery subtext in Mansfield Park, but its gestation will be long and difficult. Despite the wealth of his radically new ideas about slavery in the novel, no commentator will, until 1982, respond positively to him....." END OF MY OWN 2006 EXCERPT
So, I suggest to you that while ordinarily mistakes such as those which were just caught would be fatal indicia of a general lack of care and insight, there are rare exceptions, and I say that Fleishman's article is one of those rare exceptions. It is a far far better thing for Austen scholarship that Fleishman published his article, even with the mistakes you caught, than that he never wrote it at all, because HE was the one who blazed the trail to the broad understanding of the slavery subtext of Mansfield Park which exists today, 44 years later. It's a darned good thing that his work was picked up and repeated, and I would bet that the errors you cited disappeared without a trace.
I am strongly reminded of the Taoist allegory told by Buddy to Zooey in JD Salinger's Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenter, about Chiu-fang Kao who is sent by the Duke to buy him a superlative horse, and then returns with the news that he has found a superlative dun-colored mare. The Duke is dismayed when he sees the horse in the flesh and sees it is really a coal black stallion, but the Duke's advisor has the opposite reaction:
"Has he really got as far as that?....Ah, then, he is worth ten thousand of me put together. There is no comparison between us. What Kao keeps in view is the spiritual mechanism. In making sure of the essential, he forgets the homely details; intent on the inward qualities, he loses sight of the external. He sees what he wants to see, and not what he does not want to see. He looks at the things he ought to look at, and neglects those that need not be looked at. So clever a judge of horses is Kao, that he has it in him to judge something better than horses."
Cheers, ARNIE
Jane Austen's Literary Espionage Using Her Own Neighbourhood Network of Voluntary Spies
In Letter 28, JA playfully refers to "my spies":
"I have charged my Myrmidons to send me an account of the Basingstoke Ball; I have placed my SPIES at different places that they may collect the more; & by so doing, by sending Miss Bigg to the Townhall itself, & posting my Mother at Steventon I hope to derive from their various observations a good general idea of the whole."
Is this merely another one of JA's playful hyperboles, casting her mother, her friend Miss Biggs and certain unnamed other friends, as a vast network of spies who will gather information about the Basingstoke Ball, as if it were a major battle taking place in a war, as to which the world held its breath awaiting an account of the outcome? As usual, I think there is much more than meets the eye at first in such games of wit as played by JA.
First, note that JA began Letter 28 with a cryptic bit of wordplay that, as has been noted previous by other Austen scholars, harks back to a very famous and important battle depicted in Shakespeare:
"I have been here ever since a quarter after three on thursday last, by the Shrewsbury Clock, which I am fortunately enabled absolutely to ascertain, because Mrs. Stent once lived at Shrewsbury, or at least at Tewksbury.-"
The allusion is to Henry IV, Part 1, Act 5, Scene, 4, in the immediate
aftermath of the Battle of Shrewsbury, when Falstaff boasts to Prince Hal that he has slain Percy, and the Prince then wryly points out to Falstaff that he (the Prince) _himself_ killed Percy. Caught in this barefaced lie, the resourceful Falstaff thinks fast:
"Didst thou? Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying! I grant you I was down and out of breath; and so was he: but we rose both at an instant and fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock. If I may be believed, so; if not, let them that should reward valour bear the sin upon their own heads. I'll take it upon my death, I gave him this wound in the thigh: if the man were alive and would deny it, 'zounds, I would make him eat a piece of my sword."
So, it's noteworthy that JA has retained in her mind the image of the Battle of Shrewsbury as she writes Letter 28, and she decides to revisit that military conceit later in the same letter, casting herself as a general deploying spies at another "skirmish" in the eternal Battle of the Sexes, fought with dance steps and witty repartee at a country town ball.
In this revisiting of a military theme, JA also may have been thinking of a line she wrote in Chapter 24 of Northanger Abbey, the one I have quoted a dozen times in the past few years, in support of my claim that the key subtext of Northanger Abbey is the theme of death in childbirth:
"Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary SPIES, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open? Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting?” "
It is interesting to look at that passage in a military light--here is yet another "battlefield" in a "war" waged in the bedroom of every family in England. Atrocities are committed in the heat of war, and so it is not surprising that we hear of "spies" in this same passage.
And let's take a second look at the above quoted passage from Letter 28--"my Myrmidons" might sound like a mere extension of the idea of "spies", but let's look at who the Myrmidons were, they were, basically, the trusted elite private army of Achilles in the Iliad. And, what's much less widely known, they play a special role in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, a play I have previously argued on several occasions was a major source for Mansfield Park. I.e., the Myrmidons, on the express order of Achilles, treacherously set upon Hector prior to the expected one-on-one combat between the two great fighting heroes, and murder him while he is still unarmed!
So, JA, by referring to Myrmidons, injects this subtle layer of darkness in Letter 28, JA's "voluntary spies" are, potentially, killers, and not merely gatherers of intelligence.
By the way, there are only two other explicit references to spying in all of JA's writings, fiction and nonfiction, and here they are:
Mansfield Park, Ch. 47:
"Susan too was a grievance [to Mrs. Norris]. She had not spirits to notice [Susan] in more than a few repulsive looks, but she felt her as a spy, and an intruder, and an indigent niece, and everything most odious. "
This one describes the dark war between women, more specifically between the "collaborator" (i.e., Mrs. Norris, who, like the death camp prisoner turned "capo", abuses the rest of the prisoners) and a fresh new victim.
Emma, Ch. 46:
"What has it been but a system of hypocrisy and deceit, ESPIONAGE, and treachery? To come among us with professions of openness and simplicity; and such a league in secret to judge us all!
And the above is Emma describing Jane and Frank's actions right after Emma learns of Jane and Frank's prior secret involvement. Note that the part that bugs Emma most of all is that from such a secret position, it has been possible for Frank especially to be a secret witness to the worst of Emma's own sins, as Frank has egged Emma on to more and more awful snobberies and errors of judgment.
This imagery of a war has its silver lining, as I see it. Yes, it is true that in the battle of the sexes in JA's England, the men were armed with the power of all the blatantly sexist laws, customs, and religious dogmas, as well as much greater physical size and strength, and also (perhaps most imporant) NOT having their bodies be those placed at risk by sexual behavior, pregnancy, childbirth and childrearing. But...women were resourceful, and JA is, by her various references to spies, pointing out that women have weapons that can greatly assist their cause---deception, covert intelligence networks--using their wits and vastly superior emotional intelligence to level the battlefield to some extent.
JA saw herself as a "General" in that war, and her weapon of choice was her fiction! And crucial to her waging that war effectively was good intelligence, the kind gathered not only by her own covert espionage, coming among the rich and powerful at places like Godmersham, where she could spy on the behavior from the vantage point of the demure spinster who yessed men to death, but also by "gossip" networks, where JA really did pay close attention to the "trivial" details she learned from (mostly) female friends and family about every aspect of social life in her world, as to which she herself was not often able to be present in body.
Cheers, ARNIE
"I have charged my Myrmidons to send me an account of the Basingstoke Ball; I have placed my SPIES at different places that they may collect the more; & by so doing, by sending Miss Bigg to the Townhall itself, & posting my Mother at Steventon I hope to derive from their various observations a good general idea of the whole."
Is this merely another one of JA's playful hyperboles, casting her mother, her friend Miss Biggs and certain unnamed other friends, as a vast network of spies who will gather information about the Basingstoke Ball, as if it were a major battle taking place in a war, as to which the world held its breath awaiting an account of the outcome? As usual, I think there is much more than meets the eye at first in such games of wit as played by JA.
First, note that JA began Letter 28 with a cryptic bit of wordplay that, as has been noted previous by other Austen scholars, harks back to a very famous and important battle depicted in Shakespeare:
"I have been here ever since a quarter after three on thursday last, by the Shrewsbury Clock, which I am fortunately enabled absolutely to ascertain, because Mrs. Stent once lived at Shrewsbury, or at least at Tewksbury.-"
The allusion is to Henry IV, Part 1, Act 5, Scene, 4, in the immediate
aftermath of the Battle of Shrewsbury, when Falstaff boasts to Prince Hal that he has slain Percy, and the Prince then wryly points out to Falstaff that he (the Prince) _himself_ killed Percy. Caught in this barefaced lie, the resourceful Falstaff thinks fast:
"Didst thou? Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying! I grant you I was down and out of breath; and so was he: but we rose both at an instant and fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock. If I may be believed, so; if not, let them that should reward valour bear the sin upon their own heads. I'll take it upon my death, I gave him this wound in the thigh: if the man were alive and would deny it, 'zounds, I would make him eat a piece of my sword."
So, it's noteworthy that JA has retained in her mind the image of the Battle of Shrewsbury as she writes Letter 28, and she decides to revisit that military conceit later in the same letter, casting herself as a general deploying spies at another "skirmish" in the eternal Battle of the Sexes, fought with dance steps and witty repartee at a country town ball.
In this revisiting of a military theme, JA also may have been thinking of a line she wrote in Chapter 24 of Northanger Abbey, the one I have quoted a dozen times in the past few years, in support of my claim that the key subtext of Northanger Abbey is the theme of death in childbirth:
"Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary SPIES, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open? Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting?” "
It is interesting to look at that passage in a military light--here is yet another "battlefield" in a "war" waged in the bedroom of every family in England. Atrocities are committed in the heat of war, and so it is not surprising that we hear of "spies" in this same passage.
And let's take a second look at the above quoted passage from Letter 28--"my Myrmidons" might sound like a mere extension of the idea of "spies", but let's look at who the Myrmidons were, they were, basically, the trusted elite private army of Achilles in the Iliad. And, what's much less widely known, they play a special role in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, a play I have previously argued on several occasions was a major source for Mansfield Park. I.e., the Myrmidons, on the express order of Achilles, treacherously set upon Hector prior to the expected one-on-one combat between the two great fighting heroes, and murder him while he is still unarmed!
So, JA, by referring to Myrmidons, injects this subtle layer of darkness in Letter 28, JA's "voluntary spies" are, potentially, killers, and not merely gatherers of intelligence.
By the way, there are only two other explicit references to spying in all of JA's writings, fiction and nonfiction, and here they are:
Mansfield Park, Ch. 47:
"Susan too was a grievance [to Mrs. Norris]. She had not spirits to notice [Susan] in more than a few repulsive looks, but she felt her as a spy, and an intruder, and an indigent niece, and everything most odious. "
This one describes the dark war between women, more specifically between the "collaborator" (i.e., Mrs. Norris, who, like the death camp prisoner turned "capo", abuses the rest of the prisoners) and a fresh new victim.
Emma, Ch. 46:
"What has it been but a system of hypocrisy and deceit, ESPIONAGE, and treachery? To come among us with professions of openness and simplicity; and such a league in secret to judge us all!
And the above is Emma describing Jane and Frank's actions right after Emma learns of Jane and Frank's prior secret involvement. Note that the part that bugs Emma most of all is that from such a secret position, it has been possible for Frank especially to be a secret witness to the worst of Emma's own sins, as Frank has egged Emma on to more and more awful snobberies and errors of judgment.
This imagery of a war has its silver lining, as I see it. Yes, it is true that in the battle of the sexes in JA's England, the men were armed with the power of all the blatantly sexist laws, customs, and religious dogmas, as well as much greater physical size and strength, and also (perhaps most imporant) NOT having their bodies be those placed at risk by sexual behavior, pregnancy, childbirth and childrearing. But...women were resourceful, and JA is, by her various references to spies, pointing out that women have weapons that can greatly assist their cause---deception, covert intelligence networks--using their wits and vastly superior emotional intelligence to level the battlefield to some extent.
JA saw herself as a "General" in that war, and her weapon of choice was her fiction! And crucial to her waging that war effectively was good intelligence, the kind gathered not only by her own covert espionage, coming among the rich and powerful at places like Godmersham, where she could spy on the behavior from the vantage point of the demure spinster who yessed men to death, but also by "gossip" networks, where JA really did pay close attention to the "trivial" details she learned from (mostly) female friends and family about every aspect of social life in her world, as to which she herself was not often able to be present in body.
Cheers, ARNIE
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