As a followup to my last message in which I claimed that Jane Austen's two eldest Godmersham nieces were often convulsed with laughter while JA read aloud to them from Mansfield Park, it occurred to me to check to see if anyone else had ever connected Mansfield Park to JA's niece's recollections, and that led me right to two scholarly discussions.
First, the following discussion in A.C. Bradley's 1911 essay (written exactly one century prior to today, and nearly exactly one century _after_ JA wrote MP!) in Essays and Studies Volume 2, entitled "Jane Austen":
"...though, like all the novels, it is excellently written, MP is not written with the animation and sparkle of P&P...as regards the tone and matter themselves, we may perhaps say of MP the very opposite of what JA said of the earlier work: 'it wants shade; it wants to be stretched out here and there with a long chapter of sense.' Secondly, MP allows less scope to JA's humour than most, perhaps than any, of her other novels."
Bradley then quotes Marianne Knight's recollection about hearing her Aunt Jane "burst out laughing", and then continues:
"I doubt if this happened very frequently during the composition of MP. There is often ironic humour in the presentment of the story and in the exhibition of Edmund's feelings. Both the Crawfords have themselves a pleasant vein of humour. We smile at Dr. Grant, at Mrs. Rushworth and her son; broadly at Mr. Yates, with wry faces at Mrs. Norris. But we 'burst out laughing' only when we meet Lady Bertram. This again may be inevitable, and, because in keeping, may even be alleged as a merit; but is it not difficult to describe as JA's "best novel" one in which, for however good a reason, JA's humour fails to have full play?"
I have two comments about Bradley's comments:
1. He fails to take into account the chronology I outlined, and Marianne Knight's specific reference to JA reading aloud from her _current_ novel in progress. He is so clear in his own mind that MP could not arouse peals of laughter that he glides right past compelling evidence, right under his nose, for exactly that---an excellent example of the power of an assumption to shape perception.
2. Bradley reveals more about his own psyche as a late-Victorian man than about MP's actual humor quotient, when he identifies Lady Bertram as the one truly LOL character in MP. I find the character of Sir Thomas to be the most laughable in MP--in a negative, Molierian sense, the sense in which one may laugh_ at_ a hypocrite who believes his own b.s.---but Bradley does not even mention Sir Thomas in his essay, and I'd bet that Bradley did not see Sir Thomas in a negative light at all. And the humor I see in Lady Bertram in the novel is in her _intentionally_ playing the role of the indolent wife to a unique perfection, so as to remain safely off her husband's intrusive radar screen. I am laughing _with_ Lady Bertram, not at her.
In stark contrast to Bradley, Jill Heydt Stevenson (who, I am willing to bet, read the above portion of Bradley's essay, and had it in mind when she wrote her chapter on MP) picks up on the same recollections by Marianne Knight, and does not hesitate to strongly connect the laughter to the writing, and reading aloud, of MP, at Godmersham (at p. 137).
[And, I add, since I read JHS's book a few years ago, I realize now that I surely retained in my own memory a seed of this same idea garnered from JHS]
JHS begins her chapter on MP with "Austen found the process of writing MP immensely funny", then quotes that same passage as Bradley quoted, and then goes on:
"Neglecting her 'work', Austen runs off to write down her laughter, laughter that became MP. What was she laughing at? Of all the novels, this seems like the least funny and the most morally earnest work, a text in which self discipline, restraint, and self denial triumph. It seems likely to me that she was laughing at the novel's comic treatment of courtship and erotic material, something an emphasis on its apparent morality and endorsement of sacrifice has obscured. Nobody could argue that much of MP's content is indisputably risque..."
JHS then lists a catalogue of such risque content, segueing soon after into an extended discussion of Mary Crawford's "rears and vices" pun, etc.
I agree entirely with JHS's guess as to what JA found so funny, and I only sharpen it by emphasizing that this laughter is mostly "gallows humor" on JA's part, it is the humor of all the women of JA's era whose bodies constituted the "plantation" over which their husbands and lovers exerted hegemony. However, MP embodies the one weapon of the victim that cannot be confiscated----a satirical sense of humor to laugh _at_ the "lord and master", by depicting him in his full ridiculousness. I imagine JA laughed and laughed hard, but, as with the dark humor of her letters, it is not a light hearted laughter, it has a very sharp edge.
Cheers, ARNIE
Friday, July 8, 2011
Letter 32: "....I suppose he went to see the Cathedral, that he might know how he should like to be married in it." .....and the Sotherton Chapel
-Why did not J. d. make his proposals to you? I suppose he went to see the Cathedral, that he might know how he should like to be married in it."
It just occurred to me that JA's witty little absurdism, above, is one that JA preserved in her memory, as she recast the joke (of merely being physically present in sacred space as a prelude to taking vows in that same space) in a much subtler and brilliant form 13 years later in the following scene in Chapter 9 of Mansfield Park, in the Sotherton chapel:
"...While this was passing, the rest of the party being scattered about the chapel, Julia called Mr. Crawford's attention to her sister, by saying, "Do look at Mr. Rushworth and Maria, standing side by side, exactly as if the ceremony were going to be performed. Have not they completely the air of it?"
Mr. Crawford smiled his acquiescence, and stepping forward to Maria, said, in a voice which she only could hear, "I do not like to see Miss Bertram so near the altar."
Starting, the lady instinctively moved a step or two, but recovering herself in a moment, affected to laugh, and asked him, in a tone not much louder, "If he would give her away?"
"I am afraid I should do it very awkwardly," was his reply, with a look of meaning.
Julia, joining them at the moment, carried on the joke.
"Upon my word, it is really a pity that it should not take place directly, if we had but a proper licence, for here we are altogether, and nothing in the world could be more snug and pleasant." And she talked and laughed about it with so little caution as to catch the comprehension of Mr. Rushworth and his mother, and expose her sister to the whispered gallantries of her lover, while Mrs. Rushworth spoke with proper smiles and dignity of its being a most happy event to her whenever it took place.
"If Edmund were but in orders!" cried Julia, and running to where he stood with Miss Crawford and Fanny: "My dear Edmund, if you were but in orders now, you might perform the ceremony directly. How unlucky that you are not ordained; Mr. Rushworth and Maria are quite ready."
Julia is quite the resourceful devil in this scene, isn't she, using one gambit to stir up trouble not only for Maria in _her_ love life, but also for Edmund in _his_ !
Actually, as I reflect further, I don' t believe that JA dredged the above joke up from her memory. I see no reason not to infer that among the "extracts" which JA made and kept close at hand during the course of her writing career, as handy reference resources to be drawn upon as she wrote, there would have been one volume devoted exclusively to jokes, so that she would have a ready prompt to refer to, and to inspire her to conjure up a variation on an old joke in a new setting, such I believe she did, above.
Those notions of mine fit well with the following recollection of niece Marianne Knight:
"I remember that when Aunt Jane came to us at Godmersham she used to bring the MS. of whatever novel she was writing with her, and would shut herself up with my elder sisters in one of the bedrooms to read them aloud. I and the younger ones used to hear peals of laughter through the door, and thought it very hard that we should be shut out from what was so delightful. I also remember how Aunt Jane would sit quietly working beside the fire in the library, saying nothing for a good while, and then would suddenly burst out laughing, jump up and run across the room to a table where pens and paper were lying, write something down, and then come back to the fire and go on quietly working as before."
Marianne Knight was born in September 1801, and therefore was exactly 12 years old (and with four younger siblings) when JA visited Godmersham for 6 weeks from Sept.-Nov., 1813. During that stretch, JA wrote Letters 89 through 96, and was putting the finishing touches on the writing of MP as well.
And so I think it is a virtual certainty that the peals of laughter from Marianne's older sisters Fanny and Elizabeth (ages 20 and almost 14, respectively) that echoed through the halls of Godmersham during that visit were caused by Aunt Jane reading various passages from _Mansfield Park_ to her older Godmersham nieces, including the above-quoted passage.
I imagine many Janeites would be surprised at the idea of JA eliciting peals of laughter from teenaged nieces by reading aloud from Mansfield Park, which is surely the Austen novel that most Janeites would _least_ associate with readerly LOL reactions. However, it makes perfect sense to me, as I see humor everywhere in Mansfield Park--dark biting sarcastic humor---sometimes so dark it practically draws blood---but still very very funny, when read with one's ear attuned to an appropriately dark frequency, such as in the above quoted passage.
JA, like Shakespeare, never lost sight of the central fact that the Human Comedy and the Human Tragedy are two sides of the same Human Face.
Cheers, ARNIE
It just occurred to me that JA's witty little absurdism, above, is one that JA preserved in her memory, as she recast the joke (of merely being physically present in sacred space as a prelude to taking vows in that same space) in a much subtler and brilliant form 13 years later in the following scene in Chapter 9 of Mansfield Park, in the Sotherton chapel:
"...While this was passing, the rest of the party being scattered about the chapel, Julia called Mr. Crawford's attention to her sister, by saying, "Do look at Mr. Rushworth and Maria, standing side by side, exactly as if the ceremony were going to be performed. Have not they completely the air of it?"
Mr. Crawford smiled his acquiescence, and stepping forward to Maria, said, in a voice which she only could hear, "I do not like to see Miss Bertram so near the altar."
Starting, the lady instinctively moved a step or two, but recovering herself in a moment, affected to laugh, and asked him, in a tone not much louder, "If he would give her away?"
"I am afraid I should do it very awkwardly," was his reply, with a look of meaning.
Julia, joining them at the moment, carried on the joke.
"Upon my word, it is really a pity that it should not take place directly, if we had but a proper licence, for here we are altogether, and nothing in the world could be more snug and pleasant." And she talked and laughed about it with so little caution as to catch the comprehension of Mr. Rushworth and his mother, and expose her sister to the whispered gallantries of her lover, while Mrs. Rushworth spoke with proper smiles and dignity of its being a most happy event to her whenever it took place.
"If Edmund were but in orders!" cried Julia, and running to where he stood with Miss Crawford and Fanny: "My dear Edmund, if you were but in orders now, you might perform the ceremony directly. How unlucky that you are not ordained; Mr. Rushworth and Maria are quite ready."
Julia is quite the resourceful devil in this scene, isn't she, using one gambit to stir up trouble not only for Maria in _her_ love life, but also for Edmund in _his_ !
Actually, as I reflect further, I don' t believe that JA dredged the above joke up from her memory. I see no reason not to infer that among the "extracts" which JA made and kept close at hand during the course of her writing career, as handy reference resources to be drawn upon as she wrote, there would have been one volume devoted exclusively to jokes, so that she would have a ready prompt to refer to, and to inspire her to conjure up a variation on an old joke in a new setting, such I believe she did, above.
Those notions of mine fit well with the following recollection of niece Marianne Knight:
"I remember that when Aunt Jane came to us at Godmersham she used to bring the MS. of whatever novel she was writing with her, and would shut herself up with my elder sisters in one of the bedrooms to read them aloud. I and the younger ones used to hear peals of laughter through the door, and thought it very hard that we should be shut out from what was so delightful. I also remember how Aunt Jane would sit quietly working beside the fire in the library, saying nothing for a good while, and then would suddenly burst out laughing, jump up and run across the room to a table where pens and paper were lying, write something down, and then come back to the fire and go on quietly working as before."
Marianne Knight was born in September 1801, and therefore was exactly 12 years old (and with four younger siblings) when JA visited Godmersham for 6 weeks from Sept.-Nov., 1813. During that stretch, JA wrote Letters 89 through 96, and was putting the finishing touches on the writing of MP as well.
And so I think it is a virtual certainty that the peals of laughter from Marianne's older sisters Fanny and Elizabeth (ages 20 and almost 14, respectively) that echoed through the halls of Godmersham during that visit were caused by Aunt Jane reading various passages from _Mansfield Park_ to her older Godmersham nieces, including the above-quoted passage.
I imagine many Janeites would be surprised at the idea of JA eliciting peals of laughter from teenaged nieces by reading aloud from Mansfield Park, which is surely the Austen novel that most Janeites would _least_ associate with readerly LOL reactions. However, it makes perfect sense to me, as I see humor everywhere in Mansfield Park--dark biting sarcastic humor---sometimes so dark it practically draws blood---but still very very funny, when read with one's ear attuned to an appropriately dark frequency, such as in the above quoted passage.
JA, like Shakespeare, never lost sight of the central fact that the Human Comedy and the Human Tragedy are two sides of the same Human Face.
Cheers, ARNIE
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
"..we must be in a good situation: none of your Queen-squares for us!"--P.S.
I did a little more digging after sending my first message under the above Subject Line, and I found that Park Honan, at P. 181 in his Austen bio, _did_ address (head-on) this question about the goodness or badness of the situation of Queen Square, and more important, he opened the door to still more valuable grist for this mill:
“John Wood’s Queen Square had lost so much glamour that Msugrove girls would cry out "...none of your Queen-squares for us!". The Austens had stayed at No. 13 in the summer of 1799 and eighteen months later, Mrs. Austen still pined for it: ‘My Mother hankers after the Square dreadfully,’ "
That latter quotation is from Letter 32, which happens, by happy coincidence, to be the Letter we are already discussing this week---I missed it my first go round because JA---most unhelpfully---only referred to Queen Square as "the Square"!
Here is the full context of that quotation:
"I join with you in wishing for the Environs of Laura Place, but do not venture to expect it--My Mother hankers after the Square dreadfully, & it is but natural to suppose that my Uncle [i.e., Mr. Leigh-Perrot] will take _her_ part.--It would be very pleasant to be near Sidney Gardens!--we might go into the Labyrinth every day..."
So much there besides the reference to Queen Square to fill out the picture of the veiled autobiographical allusion in Chapter 6 of Persuasion!
First, re Queen Square. JA is talking about where the Austens will _live_ in Bath, and it is clear from what JA says that she definitely does _not_ want to live at Queen Square, I detect no irony in JA's tone! This suggests to me that perhaps Queen Square was chosen for the 1799 vacation with Edward not by Edward himself, but by Mrs. Austen--if she hankered so "dreadfully" for Queen Square in January 1801, it seems quite plausible that she hankered dreadfully for it less than two years earlier.
And it is also clear that Honan is wrong in his inference that Queen Square lost its mojo between 1799 and 1816, because JA and CEA _already_ don’t want to live there in 1801!
So, as I wrote to Diane, above, it seems clear to me that the Musgrove girls are actually representations of the _Austen_ girls in 1801! How characteristic of JA to split herself between contrasting characters. Just as I see JA splitting herself into Mary Crawford and Fanny Price in MP, and into Lizzy, Lydia, Mary _and_ Jane in P&P, I see her showing her own contrasting sides in the Musgrove girls and Anne Elliot!
And..now we have _another_ link between fiction and autobiography via the social geography of Bath. I.e., JA and CEA wish to live at Laura Place, but do not venture to expect it, because it was apparently living in a style that the Austens could not afford. And JA makes that very point, in spades, in Persuasion, Ch. 16:
"Lady Dalrymple had taken a house, for three months, in Laura Place, and would be living in style...."Our cousins in Laura Place,"--"Our cousin, Lady Dalrymple and Miss Carteret," were talked of to everybody. "
Laura Place is also mentioned in passing in Ch. 11 of NA: "They [Thorpe driving Catherine] passed briskly down Pulteney Street, and through Laura Place, without the exchange of many words."
And even that passing reference makes me wonder if the few words exchanged included Thorpe's making a wisecrack about Laura Place as a neighbourhood where Catherine would want to live with the Allens if they lived in Bath?
So, this suggests that JA and CEA would have gladly lived in a fancy area if it had been possible--no shocking surprise there, I never felt that JA wanted to live an ascetic life, but I do believe she valued intangible goods _more_ highly than tangible ones.
And finally, re Sydney Gardens and its labyrinth:
I see now that JA mentioned Sydney Gardens twice already in two of the letters she wrote while staying at Queen Square in 1799, almost two years before she revisited that topic in Letter 32: once in Letter 19 (as I myself noted two months ago but completely forgot) and once in Letter 20 (as Diane noted two months ago and I completely forgot).
Here is a link to a fantastically thorough and entertaining description of Sydney Gardens, including its labyrinth (which would have held special appeal for JA, I think, with her own love of verbal mazes):
http://austenonly.com/2009/11/26/jane-austen-and-bath-the-sydney-gardens/
That is, basically, _almost_ everything a Janeite would want to know about Sydney Gardens!
I particularly liked the following comment, which makes me feel a little better about the time JA lived in Bath:
"Luckily for her, her wish came true and from 1801-4 the Austens lived at number 4 Sydney Place."
So, whatever other angst JA felt about living in Bath, at least she had a beautiful large park that she enjoyed right outside her doorstep!
But I wrote "almost" because of the following even more intriguing comment by JA in Letter 38 (which will come up in our queue in 5 weeks, but it is fair game to anticipate this one passage now):
"I assure you [CEA] in spite of what I might chuse to insinuate in a former letter, that I have seen very little of Mr Evelyn since my coming here; I met him this morning for only the 4th time, & as to my anecdote about Sidney Gardens, I made the most of the story because it came in to advantage, but in fact he only asked me whether I were to be at Sidney Gardens in the evening or not.-There is now something like an engagement between us & the Phaeton, which to confess my frailty I have a great desire to go out in;-whether it will come to anything must remain with him.-I really beleive he is very harmless; people do not seem afraid of him here, and he gets Groundsel for his birds & all that.-My Aunt will never be easy till she visits them;-she has been repeatedly trying to fancy a necessity for it now on our accounts, but she meets with no encouragement."
Mr. Evelyn is, I have previously suggested, represented, in a somewhat disturbing way, by John Thorpe. JA's "great desire" to go out in Mr. Evelyn's Phaeton might seem to suggest that Catherine Morland was, perhaps on a subconscious level, eager to be taken for a ride by Mr. Thorpe, although a few minutes in his gig was all she needed in order for that to turn into a desperate desire to escape from him! Or maybe Mr. Evelyn has been split half into Mr. Thorpe and half into Henry Tilney....
And I am reasonably confident that Aunt Leigh Perrot is not desperate to meet Mr. Evelyn's birds, but the Evelyn _family_, which sounds a bit like Sir Walter's desperation to socialize with the Dalrymples....
But what I find most intriguing is the reference to "my anecdote about Sidney Gardens" which JA tells Mr. Evelyn--what was it? Off the top of my head, I can't think of any example of an anecdote in any of JA's novels that involves a park. Of course we very likely will never know, but I suspect that somehow it might have some resonance with what happens in the serpentine paths and puzzling ha-ha landscaping at Sotherton.....
Cheers, ARNIE
“John Wood’s Queen Square had lost so much glamour that Msugrove girls would cry out "...none of your Queen-squares for us!". The Austens had stayed at No. 13 in the summer of 1799 and eighteen months later, Mrs. Austen still pined for it: ‘My Mother hankers after the Square dreadfully,’ "
That latter quotation is from Letter 32, which happens, by happy coincidence, to be the Letter we are already discussing this week---I missed it my first go round because JA---most unhelpfully---only referred to Queen Square as "the Square"!
Here is the full context of that quotation:
"I join with you in wishing for the Environs of Laura Place, but do not venture to expect it--My Mother hankers after the Square dreadfully, & it is but natural to suppose that my Uncle [i.e., Mr. Leigh-Perrot] will take _her_ part.--It would be very pleasant to be near Sidney Gardens!--we might go into the Labyrinth every day..."
So much there besides the reference to Queen Square to fill out the picture of the veiled autobiographical allusion in Chapter 6 of Persuasion!
First, re Queen Square. JA is talking about where the Austens will _live_ in Bath, and it is clear from what JA says that she definitely does _not_ want to live at Queen Square, I detect no irony in JA's tone! This suggests to me that perhaps Queen Square was chosen for the 1799 vacation with Edward not by Edward himself, but by Mrs. Austen--if she hankered so "dreadfully" for Queen Square in January 1801, it seems quite plausible that she hankered dreadfully for it less than two years earlier.
And it is also clear that Honan is wrong in his inference that Queen Square lost its mojo between 1799 and 1816, because JA and CEA _already_ don’t want to live there in 1801!
So, as I wrote to Diane, above, it seems clear to me that the Musgrove girls are actually representations of the _Austen_ girls in 1801! How characteristic of JA to split herself between contrasting characters. Just as I see JA splitting herself into Mary Crawford and Fanny Price in MP, and into Lizzy, Lydia, Mary _and_ Jane in P&P, I see her showing her own contrasting sides in the Musgrove girls and Anne Elliot!
And..now we have _another_ link between fiction and autobiography via the social geography of Bath. I.e., JA and CEA wish to live at Laura Place, but do not venture to expect it, because it was apparently living in a style that the Austens could not afford. And JA makes that very point, in spades, in Persuasion, Ch. 16:
"Lady Dalrymple had taken a house, for three months, in Laura Place, and would be living in style...."Our cousins in Laura Place,"--"Our cousin, Lady Dalrymple and Miss Carteret," were talked of to everybody. "
Laura Place is also mentioned in passing in Ch. 11 of NA: "They [Thorpe driving Catherine] passed briskly down Pulteney Street, and through Laura Place, without the exchange of many words."
And even that passing reference makes me wonder if the few words exchanged included Thorpe's making a wisecrack about Laura Place as a neighbourhood where Catherine would want to live with the Allens if they lived in Bath?
So, this suggests that JA and CEA would have gladly lived in a fancy area if it had been possible--no shocking surprise there, I never felt that JA wanted to live an ascetic life, but I do believe she valued intangible goods _more_ highly than tangible ones.
And finally, re Sydney Gardens and its labyrinth:
I see now that JA mentioned Sydney Gardens twice already in two of the letters she wrote while staying at Queen Square in 1799, almost two years before she revisited that topic in Letter 32: once in Letter 19 (as I myself noted two months ago but completely forgot) and once in Letter 20 (as Diane noted two months ago and I completely forgot).
Here is a link to a fantastically thorough and entertaining description of Sydney Gardens, including its labyrinth (which would have held special appeal for JA, I think, with her own love of verbal mazes):
http://austenonly.com/2009/11/26/jane-austen-and-bath-the-sydney-gardens/
That is, basically, _almost_ everything a Janeite would want to know about Sydney Gardens!
I particularly liked the following comment, which makes me feel a little better about the time JA lived in Bath:
"Luckily for her, her wish came true and from 1801-4 the Austens lived at number 4 Sydney Place."
So, whatever other angst JA felt about living in Bath, at least she had a beautiful large park that she enjoyed right outside her doorstep!
But I wrote "almost" because of the following even more intriguing comment by JA in Letter 38 (which will come up in our queue in 5 weeks, but it is fair game to anticipate this one passage now):
"I assure you [CEA] in spite of what I might chuse to insinuate in a former letter, that I have seen very little of Mr Evelyn since my coming here; I met him this morning for only the 4th time, & as to my anecdote about Sidney Gardens, I made the most of the story because it came in to advantage, but in fact he only asked me whether I were to be at Sidney Gardens in the evening or not.-There is now something like an engagement between us & the Phaeton, which to confess my frailty I have a great desire to go out in;-whether it will come to anything must remain with him.-I really beleive he is very harmless; people do not seem afraid of him here, and he gets Groundsel for his birds & all that.-My Aunt will never be easy till she visits them;-she has been repeatedly trying to fancy a necessity for it now on our accounts, but she meets with no encouragement."
Mr. Evelyn is, I have previously suggested, represented, in a somewhat disturbing way, by John Thorpe. JA's "great desire" to go out in Mr. Evelyn's Phaeton might seem to suggest that Catherine Morland was, perhaps on a subconscious level, eager to be taken for a ride by Mr. Thorpe, although a few minutes in his gig was all she needed in order for that to turn into a desperate desire to escape from him! Or maybe Mr. Evelyn has been split half into Mr. Thorpe and half into Henry Tilney....
And I am reasonably confident that Aunt Leigh Perrot is not desperate to meet Mr. Evelyn's birds, but the Evelyn _family_, which sounds a bit like Sir Walter's desperation to socialize with the Dalrymples....
But what I find most intriguing is the reference to "my anecdote about Sidney Gardens" which JA tells Mr. Evelyn--what was it? Off the top of my head, I can't think of any example of an anecdote in any of JA's novels that involves a park. Of course we very likely will never know, but I suspect that somehow it might have some resonance with what happens in the serpentine paths and puzzling ha-ha landscaping at Sotherton.....
Cheers, ARNIE
"..we must be in a good situation: none of your Queen-squares for us!"
I just noticed something curious in Chapter 6 of Persuasion that relates to our ongoing group read of JA's letters:
"Anne had not wanted this visit to Uppercross, to learn that a removal from one set of people to another, though at a distance of only three miles, will often include a total change of conversation, opinion, and idea. She had never been staying there before, without being struck by it, or without wishing that other Elliots could have her advantage in seeing how unknown, or unconsidered there, were the affairs which at Kellynch Hall were treated as of such general publicity and pervading interest; yet, with all this experience, she believed she must now submit to feel that another lesson, in the art of knowing our own nothingness beyond our own circle, was become necessary for her; for certainly, coming as she did, with a heart full of the subject which had been completely occupying both houses in Kellynch for many weeks, she had expected rather more curiosity and sympathy than she found in the separate, but very similar remark of Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove: "So, Miss Anne, Sir Walter and your sister are gone; and what part of Bath do you think they will settle in?" and this, without much waiting for an answer; or in the young ladies' addition of, "I hope _we_ shall be in Bath in the winter; but remember, papa, if we do go, we must be in a good situation: none of your Queen-squares for us!" or in the anxious supplement from Mary, of "Upon my word, I shall be pretty well off, when you are all gone away to be happy at Bath!"
This paragraph is wonderfully ironic in at least two ways.
First, Anne revels in being at Uppercross, where the glare from Sir Walter and Elizabeth, the twin "suns" of Kellynch, which has oppressed her for years, is only the dim flicker of a distant star, not even perceptible. However, the irony kicks in when Anne, being herself an Elliot in spite of herself, cannot help but feel injured at the _completeness_ of the oblivion that Kellynch occupies in the Uppercross cosmos, as the Musgroves demonstrate a disconcerting utter lack of empathy for the dislocation engendered in Anne's heart at being uprooted from Kellynch to Bath. It's a little _too_ unconsidered for Anne's _own_ Elliot-esque desire for attention!
And Anne's feeling injured seems to me to have a direct biographical relevance to our discussions during our group read of JA's letters of the seismic shift wrought by the move of the Austens to Bath in 1801. Just as we have read JA's sarcastic accounts of the carving up of her Steventon life and selling it for pennies on a dollar to human vultures, and the ladies of the neighbourhood insensitively flitting over for a festive day at the Steventon "flea market", I hear a distinct echo of those sentiments in the above passage in Persuasion, written 15 years later--JA, like an elephant, apparently never forgot how that felt!
And I also see a _ second_ and closely related biographical irony in the above passage in Persuasion, as follows:
Letters 19-22 were written by JA to CEA while staying at No. 13 _Queen Square_ in Bath with Edward, her mother and other family members. In Letter 19, she speaks in satirical, but, on balance, generally positive terms about their lodgings there.
Letters 35-39, which we will be discussing during the next month, were written by JA to CEA while staying in the Paragon in Bath with her mother and father. In the interim between these two short series of letters written from Bath, we had the seismic shift, because Bath became not a vacation destination, as it was in 1799, but, as for Anne Elliot, a kind of Georgian "Siberia" JA was forced to move to against her own desire.
So why would JA put the words "remember, papa, if we do go, we must be in a good situation: none of your _Queen-squares_ for us!" into the mouths of the Musgrove girls? Louisa and Henrietta apparently believe that Queen-square is a bad situation in Bath. Is JA broadly hinting that brother Edward ought to have chosen a better place for the Austens to stay in 1799? Or is this evidence that Louisa and Henrietta are foolish country snobs, who don't really have any accurate sense as to the best situations in Bath?
The only scholarly discussion I have found online on this topic is in _Jane Austen: A Companion_, where Josephine Ross writes, at P. 162 about JA's enjoyment of her lodgings at No. 13 Queen Square, and then attempts to explain the above, by arguing that NA reflects Bath in the 1790's when JA happily and willingly visited as a tourist, but that Persuasion reflects the Bath of the early 1800's when JA was stuck there as a resident. As I have written above, that is in accord with my own sense of JA's altered feelings about Bath in general, but it begs the question of the _specific_ dig directed at Queen Square. I.e., if you were going to stay in Bath, was Queen Square in particular, as opposed to other places to stay in Bath, a "good situation" or not?
The Musgrove girls are not complaining about going to Bath, quite the contrary, it's a vacation for them, and so of course they are very excited about it! They just want to stay in a really nice place when they are there!
So..unless someone brings forward evidence that Queen Square went from being a great place to stay in 1799 to being a crumby place to stay in 1816, which I would find very surprising, this suggests to me that JA was taking a gratuitous potshot, seventeen years later, at Edward Austen's choice of lodgings in 1799.
Seems to me that JA held grudges a _long_ time--in my opinion, justifiably so, as I am sure she never received anything resembling an acknowledgment of the injuries done to her as a powerless single female in the Austen family--and she made damned sure to get them all into the mix in her novels, regardless of the passage of time.
Cheers, ARNIE
"Anne had not wanted this visit to Uppercross, to learn that a removal from one set of people to another, though at a distance of only three miles, will often include a total change of conversation, opinion, and idea. She had never been staying there before, without being struck by it, or without wishing that other Elliots could have her advantage in seeing how unknown, or unconsidered there, were the affairs which at Kellynch Hall were treated as of such general publicity and pervading interest; yet, with all this experience, she believed she must now submit to feel that another lesson, in the art of knowing our own nothingness beyond our own circle, was become necessary for her; for certainly, coming as she did, with a heart full of the subject which had been completely occupying both houses in Kellynch for many weeks, she had expected rather more curiosity and sympathy than she found in the separate, but very similar remark of Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove: "So, Miss Anne, Sir Walter and your sister are gone; and what part of Bath do you think they will settle in?" and this, without much waiting for an answer; or in the young ladies' addition of, "I hope _we_ shall be in Bath in the winter; but remember, papa, if we do go, we must be in a good situation: none of your Queen-squares for us!" or in the anxious supplement from Mary, of "Upon my word, I shall be pretty well off, when you are all gone away to be happy at Bath!"
This paragraph is wonderfully ironic in at least two ways.
First, Anne revels in being at Uppercross, where the glare from Sir Walter and Elizabeth, the twin "suns" of Kellynch, which has oppressed her for years, is only the dim flicker of a distant star, not even perceptible. However, the irony kicks in when Anne, being herself an Elliot in spite of herself, cannot help but feel injured at the _completeness_ of the oblivion that Kellynch occupies in the Uppercross cosmos, as the Musgroves demonstrate a disconcerting utter lack of empathy for the dislocation engendered in Anne's heart at being uprooted from Kellynch to Bath. It's a little _too_ unconsidered for Anne's _own_ Elliot-esque desire for attention!
And Anne's feeling injured seems to me to have a direct biographical relevance to our discussions during our group read of JA's letters of the seismic shift wrought by the move of the Austens to Bath in 1801. Just as we have read JA's sarcastic accounts of the carving up of her Steventon life and selling it for pennies on a dollar to human vultures, and the ladies of the neighbourhood insensitively flitting over for a festive day at the Steventon "flea market", I hear a distinct echo of those sentiments in the above passage in Persuasion, written 15 years later--JA, like an elephant, apparently never forgot how that felt!
And I also see a _ second_ and closely related biographical irony in the above passage in Persuasion, as follows:
Letters 19-22 were written by JA to CEA while staying at No. 13 _Queen Square_ in Bath with Edward, her mother and other family members. In Letter 19, she speaks in satirical, but, on balance, generally positive terms about their lodgings there.
Letters 35-39, which we will be discussing during the next month, were written by JA to CEA while staying in the Paragon in Bath with her mother and father. In the interim between these two short series of letters written from Bath, we had the seismic shift, because Bath became not a vacation destination, as it was in 1799, but, as for Anne Elliot, a kind of Georgian "Siberia" JA was forced to move to against her own desire.
So why would JA put the words "remember, papa, if we do go, we must be in a good situation: none of your _Queen-squares_ for us!" into the mouths of the Musgrove girls? Louisa and Henrietta apparently believe that Queen-square is a bad situation in Bath. Is JA broadly hinting that brother Edward ought to have chosen a better place for the Austens to stay in 1799? Or is this evidence that Louisa and Henrietta are foolish country snobs, who don't really have any accurate sense as to the best situations in Bath?
The only scholarly discussion I have found online on this topic is in _Jane Austen: A Companion_, where Josephine Ross writes, at P. 162 about JA's enjoyment of her lodgings at No. 13 Queen Square, and then attempts to explain the above, by arguing that NA reflects Bath in the 1790's when JA happily and willingly visited as a tourist, but that Persuasion reflects the Bath of the early 1800's when JA was stuck there as a resident. As I have written above, that is in accord with my own sense of JA's altered feelings about Bath in general, but it begs the question of the _specific_ dig directed at Queen Square. I.e., if you were going to stay in Bath, was Queen Square in particular, as opposed to other places to stay in Bath, a "good situation" or not?
The Musgrove girls are not complaining about going to Bath, quite the contrary, it's a vacation for them, and so of course they are very excited about it! They just want to stay in a really nice place when they are there!
So..unless someone brings forward evidence that Queen Square went from being a great place to stay in 1799 to being a crumby place to stay in 1816, which I would find very surprising, this suggests to me that JA was taking a gratuitous potshot, seventeen years later, at Edward Austen's choice of lodgings in 1799.
Seems to me that JA held grudges a _long_ time--in my opinion, justifiably so, as I am sure she never received anything resembling an acknowledgment of the injuries done to her as a powerless single female in the Austen family--and she made damned sure to get them all into the mix in her novels, regardless of the passage of time.
Cheers, ARNIE
Monday, July 4, 2011
Miss Elizabeth Bennet Regrets: a web of subtly linked passages in P&P around the word "regret"
"She read over her aunt's commendation of him again and again. It was hardly enough; but it pleased her. She was even sensible of some pleasure, though mixed with _regret_, on finding how steadfastly both she and her uncle had been persuaded that affection and confidence subsisted between Mr. Darcy and herself."
As I read the above passage in Chapter 52 of P&P this morning, describing Lizzy's reaction upon reading her Aunt Gardiner's long letter which detailed Darcy's intervention to resolve the Wickham/Lydia fracas, at first I was confused, not being clear (and not remembering if I was ever _previously_ clear) as to the meaning of the phrase "though mixed with regret". That intrigued me, and prompted me to go through a chain of analysis to try to suss it out. I have now done so, and, as you will read below, I have concluded that there is not one, but there are actually _two_ equally plausible interpretations, which interact with each other in an exquisitely synergistic way. And it turns out that Lizzy's "regrets" are a leitmotif that JA, like Mozart developing a theme in one of his piano pieces that JA loved, skillfully develops during the second half of P&P, as I will show, below.
As I turned those sentences from Ch. 52 over in my mind a few times, my first hypothesis was that Lizzy in this train of thought was looking back on her past public behavior toward Darcy with the same sort of censorious gaze that Elinor directed at Marianne's overly free expression of affection toward Willoughby, and also the censorious gaze that Lizzy herself had directed at Lydia's previous unrestrained and licentious public behavior around young men.
From that sort of humbled (Lizzy actually thinks herself "humbled" in the previous sentence) perspective, Lizzy is feeling regret that she had somehow, in spite of herself---indeed _against_ her own conscious intentions---given the impression to observers in general, and her aunt and uncle Gardiner in particular, that she and Darcy were romantically involved. What irony, given how she has seen Lydia in exactly that light all along!
But Lizzy is by Ch. 52 more self aware, and therefore chagrined to find herself resembling Lydia more than she ever realized, and as a result she is no longer unconcerned about how her sharp and quick tongue might lead her to be seen by others as being flirtatious and seductive toward Darcy (think about what Lady Catherine says to her about her "allurements" in their confrontation in the wilderness of Longbourn). In short, LIzzy has come to realize that she _did_ indeed play a not insignificant role in creating that impression in others.
That interpretation is a solid one, I claim, but I was still left with the nagging feeling that there was more in that passage, something else _important_ I was missing. And that is when a _second_ meaning popped out at me, the one that, I now suspect, in hindsight, is the one that most Janeites who have given that passage any thought would ascribe to it, i.e., that at the moment when Lizzy feels pleasure reading her aunt's effusive praise of Darcy, because Lizzy is now besotted with Darcy--that is precisely when Lizzy feels yet a pang of regret. Why? Because her aunt and uncle's belief that she and Darcy were engaged _would_ have been accurate, had Lizzy not rejected Darcy's proposal in Chapter 35! And how much sharper is the pang she feels, because Lizzy did not merely reject Darcy proposal, she threw it on the ground and stomped it to smithereens!
And surely that is _also_ a valid interpretation of the meaning of Lizzy's "regret" in Chapter 52.
So, how do we choose between them? I say, as with all of JA's multiple meanings, we should not choose between them, because JA intended _both_ of them to be valid! I.e., JA was constructing a complex psychological portrait of her greatest heroine, who has mixed feelings about Darcy from the minute she lays eyes on him, in all sorts of ways. And now I see this _regret_ in Chapter 52 as yet another layer of those mixed feelings, welling up in a chaotic swirl just before the romantic climax of the novel!
I did not know if any Janeite had previously looked at the word "regret" in these two ambiguous passages in this way, but I do know that it is a subject of eternal fascination to ponder the ambiguities of Lizzy's feelings and thoughts about Darcy in a more general way, and so I offer the above as another window into that eternally fascinating question of Lizzy's mixed feelings toward Darcy.
And the topic got more interesting still, when I searched the word "regret" to see where _else_ it appeared in P&P, and that's when I found a whole series of "bookends" to the above quoted passage in Chapter 52.
First, in Chapter 37, we read of Lizzy's reaction to another letter, Darcy's letter of self justification:
"In her own past behaviour, there was a constant source of vexation and regret...".
If you read the whole passage where that line appears, you will recall that it is a reflection of the chaotically mixed feelings that Lizzy is feeling overwhelmed by in the aftermath of reading Darcy's letter. And, just as in Chapter 52, I believe it is not possible to pin down what Lizzy regrets about "her own past behaviour". It could be that she regrets having been nasty to Darcy, but it could also be regret that she inadvertently led him on. Precisely the same ambiguity in Chapter 52 that I analyzed, above.
And Lizzy has in the interim added a bit of evidence on the subject of her "regret" over Darcy, when she glibly responds as follows to Jane's expression of pity for Darcy in Chapter 40:
""Oh! no, my _regret_ and compassion [for Darcy] are all done away by seeing you so full of both. I know you will do him such ample justice, that I am growing every moment more unconcerned and indifferent. Your profusion makes me saving; and if you lament over him much longer, my heart will be as light as a feather."
The narration at the end of that extended scene consisting almost entirely of dialogue does not shed any light on why Lizzy adopts such a flip, what-me-worry attitude toward Darcy for Jane's consumption, nor does it tell us which _regret_ Lizzy is feeling vis a vis Darcy--once again, it could be either of the two forms of regret I have outlined, above.
But then we have a series of usages of "regret" in regard to Lizzy's feelings about Darcy, which are all _unambiguous_, i.e., they seem to refer only to the regret of losing Darcy:
In Chapter 41, Mr. Bennet jokes about JA's regretting having lost Darcy (as Mr. Bennet is, as he himself tells Lizzy and us, not the kind of man to long be plagued by regrets over his own misjudgments and misbehaviors), without realizing that he has touched a raw nerve in that regard:
"Such squeamish youths as cannot bear to be connected with a little absurdity are not worth a _regret_. "
And then in Chapters 43 & 46, we again get only the _regret_ of losing Darcy:
"And of this place," thought she, "I might have been mistress! With these rooms I might now have been familiarly acquainted! Instead of viewing them as a stranger, I might have rejoiced in them as my own, and welcomed to them as visitors my uncle and aunt. But no,"—recollecting herself—"that could never be; my uncle and aunt would have been lost to me; I should not have been allowed to invite them." This was a lucky recollection—it saved her from something very like _regret_.
&
"Be that as it may, she saw [Darcy] go with _regret_; and in this early example of what Lydia's infamy must produce, found additional anguish as she reflected on that wretched business...."
And then, after the ambiguity of Chapter 52 (as described at the beginning of this messag) we are bombarded with a crescendo of Lizzy's "regrets" over the possibility of losing Darcy in Chapter 57:
"If, therefore, an excuse for not keeping his promise should come to his friend within a few days," she added, "I shall know how to understand it. I shall then give over every expectation, every wish of his constancy. If he is satisfied with only _regretting_ me, when he might have obtained my affections and hand, I shall soon cease to _regret_ him at all."
So, all in all, it seems like the regret of losing Darcy carries the day with Elizabeth, and whatever regrets she initially felt about the propriety of her public behavior around Darcy have all vanished from her mind without any apparent trace. This is not surprising, given that Lizzy issues the following famous edict about memory:
"You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure."
The above is, I think , a quintessential example of why P&P is a candidate for the title of "world's favorite novel"--like a Hegelian thesis/antithesis pairing, ambiguity that cannot be reduced, but that leads instead to a synthesis; the truest of depictions of human thought and feeling, all without any authorial intrusion--we are given Lizzy's thoughts and it is up to us to sort them out, to figure out what they mean; and we are _never_ allowed to be secure in a single meaning of what we have read, we are forced to struggle to reconcile ambiguities, and to recognize perhaps that the human heart and mind can never be reduced to a simple answer.
Cheers, ARNIE
As I read the above passage in Chapter 52 of P&P this morning, describing Lizzy's reaction upon reading her Aunt Gardiner's long letter which detailed Darcy's intervention to resolve the Wickham/Lydia fracas, at first I was confused, not being clear (and not remembering if I was ever _previously_ clear) as to the meaning of the phrase "though mixed with regret". That intrigued me, and prompted me to go through a chain of analysis to try to suss it out. I have now done so, and, as you will read below, I have concluded that there is not one, but there are actually _two_ equally plausible interpretations, which interact with each other in an exquisitely synergistic way. And it turns out that Lizzy's "regrets" are a leitmotif that JA, like Mozart developing a theme in one of his piano pieces that JA loved, skillfully develops during the second half of P&P, as I will show, below.
As I turned those sentences from Ch. 52 over in my mind a few times, my first hypothesis was that Lizzy in this train of thought was looking back on her past public behavior toward Darcy with the same sort of censorious gaze that Elinor directed at Marianne's overly free expression of affection toward Willoughby, and also the censorious gaze that Lizzy herself had directed at Lydia's previous unrestrained and licentious public behavior around young men.
From that sort of humbled (Lizzy actually thinks herself "humbled" in the previous sentence) perspective, Lizzy is feeling regret that she had somehow, in spite of herself---indeed _against_ her own conscious intentions---given the impression to observers in general, and her aunt and uncle Gardiner in particular, that she and Darcy were romantically involved. What irony, given how she has seen Lydia in exactly that light all along!
But Lizzy is by Ch. 52 more self aware, and therefore chagrined to find herself resembling Lydia more than she ever realized, and as a result she is no longer unconcerned about how her sharp and quick tongue might lead her to be seen by others as being flirtatious and seductive toward Darcy (think about what Lady Catherine says to her about her "allurements" in their confrontation in the wilderness of Longbourn). In short, LIzzy has come to realize that she _did_ indeed play a not insignificant role in creating that impression in others.
That interpretation is a solid one, I claim, but I was still left with the nagging feeling that there was more in that passage, something else _important_ I was missing. And that is when a _second_ meaning popped out at me, the one that, I now suspect, in hindsight, is the one that most Janeites who have given that passage any thought would ascribe to it, i.e., that at the moment when Lizzy feels pleasure reading her aunt's effusive praise of Darcy, because Lizzy is now besotted with Darcy--that is precisely when Lizzy feels yet a pang of regret. Why? Because her aunt and uncle's belief that she and Darcy were engaged _would_ have been accurate, had Lizzy not rejected Darcy's proposal in Chapter 35! And how much sharper is the pang she feels, because Lizzy did not merely reject Darcy proposal, she threw it on the ground and stomped it to smithereens!
And surely that is _also_ a valid interpretation of the meaning of Lizzy's "regret" in Chapter 52.
So, how do we choose between them? I say, as with all of JA's multiple meanings, we should not choose between them, because JA intended _both_ of them to be valid! I.e., JA was constructing a complex psychological portrait of her greatest heroine, who has mixed feelings about Darcy from the minute she lays eyes on him, in all sorts of ways. And now I see this _regret_ in Chapter 52 as yet another layer of those mixed feelings, welling up in a chaotic swirl just before the romantic climax of the novel!
I did not know if any Janeite had previously looked at the word "regret" in these two ambiguous passages in this way, but I do know that it is a subject of eternal fascination to ponder the ambiguities of Lizzy's feelings and thoughts about Darcy in a more general way, and so I offer the above as another window into that eternally fascinating question of Lizzy's mixed feelings toward Darcy.
And the topic got more interesting still, when I searched the word "regret" to see where _else_ it appeared in P&P, and that's when I found a whole series of "bookends" to the above quoted passage in Chapter 52.
First, in Chapter 37, we read of Lizzy's reaction to another letter, Darcy's letter of self justification:
"In her own past behaviour, there was a constant source of vexation and regret...".
If you read the whole passage where that line appears, you will recall that it is a reflection of the chaotically mixed feelings that Lizzy is feeling overwhelmed by in the aftermath of reading Darcy's letter. And, just as in Chapter 52, I believe it is not possible to pin down what Lizzy regrets about "her own past behaviour". It could be that she regrets having been nasty to Darcy, but it could also be regret that she inadvertently led him on. Precisely the same ambiguity in Chapter 52 that I analyzed, above.
And Lizzy has in the interim added a bit of evidence on the subject of her "regret" over Darcy, when she glibly responds as follows to Jane's expression of pity for Darcy in Chapter 40:
""Oh! no, my _regret_ and compassion [for Darcy] are all done away by seeing you so full of both. I know you will do him such ample justice, that I am growing every moment more unconcerned and indifferent. Your profusion makes me saving; and if you lament over him much longer, my heart will be as light as a feather."
The narration at the end of that extended scene consisting almost entirely of dialogue does not shed any light on why Lizzy adopts such a flip, what-me-worry attitude toward Darcy for Jane's consumption, nor does it tell us which _regret_ Lizzy is feeling vis a vis Darcy--once again, it could be either of the two forms of regret I have outlined, above.
But then we have a series of usages of "regret" in regard to Lizzy's feelings about Darcy, which are all _unambiguous_, i.e., they seem to refer only to the regret of losing Darcy:
In Chapter 41, Mr. Bennet jokes about JA's regretting having lost Darcy (as Mr. Bennet is, as he himself tells Lizzy and us, not the kind of man to long be plagued by regrets over his own misjudgments and misbehaviors), without realizing that he has touched a raw nerve in that regard:
"Such squeamish youths as cannot bear to be connected with a little absurdity are not worth a _regret_. "
And then in Chapters 43 & 46, we again get only the _regret_ of losing Darcy:
"And of this place," thought she, "I might have been mistress! With these rooms I might now have been familiarly acquainted! Instead of viewing them as a stranger, I might have rejoiced in them as my own, and welcomed to them as visitors my uncle and aunt. But no,"—recollecting herself—"that could never be; my uncle and aunt would have been lost to me; I should not have been allowed to invite them." This was a lucky recollection—it saved her from something very like _regret_.
&
"Be that as it may, she saw [Darcy] go with _regret_; and in this early example of what Lydia's infamy must produce, found additional anguish as she reflected on that wretched business...."
And then, after the ambiguity of Chapter 52 (as described at the beginning of this messag) we are bombarded with a crescendo of Lizzy's "regrets" over the possibility of losing Darcy in Chapter 57:
"If, therefore, an excuse for not keeping his promise should come to his friend within a few days," she added, "I shall know how to understand it. I shall then give over every expectation, every wish of his constancy. If he is satisfied with only _regretting_ me, when he might have obtained my affections and hand, I shall soon cease to _regret_ him at all."
So, all in all, it seems like the regret of losing Darcy carries the day with Elizabeth, and whatever regrets she initially felt about the propriety of her public behavior around Darcy have all vanished from her mind without any apparent trace. This is not surprising, given that Lizzy issues the following famous edict about memory:
"You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure."
The above is, I think , a quintessential example of why P&P is a candidate for the title of "world's favorite novel"--like a Hegelian thesis/antithesis pairing, ambiguity that cannot be reduced, but that leads instead to a synthesis; the truest of depictions of human thought and feeling, all without any authorial intrusion--we are given Lizzy's thoughts and it is up to us to sort them out, to figure out what they mean; and we are _never_ allowed to be secure in a single meaning of what we have read, we are forced to struggle to reconcile ambiguities, and to recognize perhaps that the human heart and mind can never be reduced to a simple answer.
Cheers, ARNIE
Jane Austen's Declarations of Independence
I watched the film version of one of my favorite Broadway shows on TV this afternoon--1776, which of course was on TCM to celebrate July 4.
As I watched, I decided to revisit the question of whether JA made any oblique references to the American Revolution in any of her novels, a question that goes back a long way, as scholars in the Seventies first wondered what that "strange business in America" was that Tom Bertram mentions to Dr. Grant. Knowing JA, it has been impossible for me to believe this was "background noise", but I've never before found or heard a compelling claim for a specific discovery in this regard.....till today.
We've had some discussion of the foundational documents of the United States here in the past, beginning, as far as I can tell, with the following in 2005...
Elissa: "Does anyone (hint, perhaps a person surrounded by gently swaying palm trees rather than the frigid blasts of windy snow currently whirling around my backyard) see any connection between the Christian name of the third US President Jefferson (President 1801-1809) and that of Sir Thomas?"
....and most recently last year when the following exchange occurred as an outgrowth of a thread about possible allusive sources of the famous beginning of P&P: "It is a truth universally acknowledged":
Elissa: "Interesting that the words "It is a truth universally acknowledged" are really a more formal way of saying the more blunt and direct "We hold these truths to be self-evident ..."
My response: "Yes, indeed, Elissa, and you also know as surely as I do that the author of Mansfield Park, with its shadowy colonial slave plantation, was fully aware of the sad irony that the document which in the year following her birth changed the world for the better, because it voiced such a noble truth so emphatically, nonetheless contained within it the unintended and tragic irony that the laws of half of those 13 colonies did not match the noble rhetoric in regard to the treatment of black people, and the laws of ALL of those colonies did not match the rhetoric in regard to the treatment of women of all colors. As JA was acutely aware of, and emphasized in her novels, words were very important, especially definitions, such as the definition of "man" in that opening phrase of the Declaration of Independence!"
Well, watching 1776 today inspired me to have another go at JA's novels, to see if I could spot any echoes of the Declaration of Independence in JA's novels, and here is the result, which I think is most apt to be brought forward on July 4:
First, here are the beginning and ending paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence, with certain words in all caps:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are CREATED EQUAL, that they are endowed by their CREATOR with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of HAPPINESS. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these STATES. To PROVE this, let facts be SUBMITTED to a candid WORLD.
…We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of THE WORLD for the rectitude of our INTENTIONS, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and DECLARE, that these UNITED colonies are, and of right ought to be free and INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political CONNECTION between them and the STATE of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and INDEPENDENT STATES, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract ALLIANCES, establish commerce, and to do all other ACTS and things which independent STATES may of right do. And for the support of this DECLARATION, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
I have put those particular words in all caps so as to make possible connections to capitalized words in the following passage readily visible.
In Chapter 9 of _Emma_, the following is the key portion of Emma's commentary to Harriet on the significance of the "courtship" charade which Mr. Elton brought to them....
"There is so pointed, and so particular a meaning in this compliment," said she, "that I cannot have a moment's doubt as to Mr. Elton's INTENTIONS. You are his object -- and you will soon receive the completest PROOF of it. I thought it must be so. I thought I could not be so deceived; but now, it is clear; the STATE of his mind is as clear and decided, as my wishes on the subject have been ever since I knew you. Yes, Harriet, just so long have I been wanting the very circumstance to happen which has happened. I could never tell whether an attachment between you and Mr. Elton were most desirable or most natural. Its probability and its eligibility have really so EQUALLED each other! I am very HAPPY. I congratulate you, my dear Harriet, with all my heart. This is an attachment which a woman may well feel pride in CREATING. This is a CONNECTION which offers nothing but good. It will give you every thing that you want -- consideration, INDEPENDENCE, a proper home -- it will fix you in the centre of all your real friends, close to Hartfield and to me, and confirm our intimacy for ever. This, Harriet, is an ALLIANCE which can never raise a blush in either of us."
...and then this description of Harriet's reaction:
"Harriet SUBMITTED, though her mind could hardly separate the parts, so as to feel quite sure that her friend were not writing down a DECLARATION OF. It seemed too precious an offering for any degree of publicity."
I do not believe that this dense cluster of verbal echoes of the Declaration of Independence in a single speech in Emma, together with a short sentence directly connected to it, is coincidental, and my interpretation is that the "courtship" charade is in fact a _parody_ of the Declaration of Independence! Whereas Emma is rhapsodizing to Harriet how great it will be for her to marry Mr. Elton, the reader may well wonder whether Harriet's life with Mr. Elton would have been the paradise that Emma predicts, or more likely the sobering reality of actual English marriage, which in most ways was a subjugation of women, making them wholly dependent on their husbands for every good in their lives--and for a woman like Emma, marriage would literally and legally be a radical shift from total independence to total dependence!
And, to take it one step further, I think JA wanted to hammer home the point that the charade was a parody of Jefferson's (edited) masterpiece, and so she added a wink in the charade itself, to wit, _another_ answer to the charade itself!:
First, for most of recorded human history, a "Declaration" was something _intangible_ that displayed the wealth and pomp of kings as much or more as _tangible_ riches like palaces, crowns, and armies---that's what kings _did_, they issued declarations telling the people what's what---at least, that is, until 1776, when the people of America threw off the yoke of tyranny and _reversed_ that age-old pattern, issuing a declaration _to_ the King of England, telling him that they were no longer taking "whats whats" from him.
And....as to the "monarch of the seas", well, take a look at this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Independence_%281814%29
Although we've all heard of the USS Constitution which defended our country during the War of 1812 and earned the famous name "Ol' Ironsides", apparently the USS _Independence_, constructed in 1812 and deployed to Algiers in 1814, was the _first_ ship of the line in the US Navy, and from what I gather, it played a significant role in projecting American naval power out into the wider world---and therefore it was, in 1814-5, as JA was writing _Emma_ literally (from an American perspective) the "Monarch of the Seas"!
And when these two words are "united" (as in the _United _States!), we have the Declaration of Independence!---and indeed the American _Revolution_ was the mother of all _reversals_ of the status quo in the history of the world!
But...even though I believe the above demonstrates JA's sympathy with the American cause, I believe even more strongly that this is (like the slavery subtext in MP) a metaphor that is subordinated to the fundamental metaphor of the charade, which is the quiet _reversal_ that JA depicted in _Emma_, in which woman declares _her_ independence and freedom from oppression by man, and "woman lovely woman", following the example of the rebellious American colonies, reigns over her own life, alone.
Cheers, ARNIE
P.S. There are, by the way, two other passages in JA's novels which I believe are also veiled echoes of the Declaration of Independence, which I will very briefly touch upon now:
1. Lizzy's revolt against the tyranny of Lady Catherine in the Longbourne wilderness (and wasn't a great deal of America still mostly a _wilderness_ in 1814-5, especially after the addition of the Louisiana Purchase?), in which Lizzy famously says, "
"I am only RESOLVED to ACT in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, CONSTITUTE my HAPPINESS, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly UNCONNECTED with me."
If the American Revolution were going to be summarized in one sentence spoken by all the American colonists to King George III, that sentence would be perfect!
2. Emma's and Knightley's argument about Frank Churchill's _dependency_ on Mrs. Churchill and whether he has the power to do his duty and visit his father in Highbury, including Emma's passionate assertion:
"You are the worst JUDGE IN THE WORLD, Mr. Knightley, of the difficulties of DEPENDENCE. "
P.P.S: None of the above has anything to do with the connection between JA and the United States which I mentioned earlier today which I am trying to get published in the near future--it just happens that these two discoveries came within a few days of each other.
As I watched, I decided to revisit the question of whether JA made any oblique references to the American Revolution in any of her novels, a question that goes back a long way, as scholars in the Seventies first wondered what that "strange business in America" was that Tom Bertram mentions to Dr. Grant. Knowing JA, it has been impossible for me to believe this was "background noise", but I've never before found or heard a compelling claim for a specific discovery in this regard.....till today.
We've had some discussion of the foundational documents of the United States here in the past, beginning, as far as I can tell, with the following in 2005...
Elissa: "Does anyone (hint, perhaps a person surrounded by gently swaying palm trees rather than the frigid blasts of windy snow currently whirling around my backyard) see any connection between the Christian name of the third US President Jefferson (President 1801-1809) and that of Sir Thomas?"
....and most recently last year when the following exchange occurred as an outgrowth of a thread about possible allusive sources of the famous beginning of P&P: "It is a truth universally acknowledged":
Elissa: "Interesting that the words "It is a truth universally acknowledged" are really a more formal way of saying the more blunt and direct "We hold these truths to be self-evident ..."
My response: "Yes, indeed, Elissa, and you also know as surely as I do that the author of Mansfield Park, with its shadowy colonial slave plantation, was fully aware of the sad irony that the document which in the year following her birth changed the world for the better, because it voiced such a noble truth so emphatically, nonetheless contained within it the unintended and tragic irony that the laws of half of those 13 colonies did not match the noble rhetoric in regard to the treatment of black people, and the laws of ALL of those colonies did not match the rhetoric in regard to the treatment of women of all colors. As JA was acutely aware of, and emphasized in her novels, words were very important, especially definitions, such as the definition of "man" in that opening phrase of the Declaration of Independence!"
Well, watching 1776 today inspired me to have another go at JA's novels, to see if I could spot any echoes of the Declaration of Independence in JA's novels, and here is the result, which I think is most apt to be brought forward on July 4:
First, here are the beginning and ending paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence, with certain words in all caps:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are CREATED EQUAL, that they are endowed by their CREATOR with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of HAPPINESS. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these STATES. To PROVE this, let facts be SUBMITTED to a candid WORLD.
…We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of THE WORLD for the rectitude of our INTENTIONS, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and DECLARE, that these UNITED colonies are, and of right ought to be free and INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political CONNECTION between them and the STATE of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and INDEPENDENT STATES, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract ALLIANCES, establish commerce, and to do all other ACTS and things which independent STATES may of right do. And for the support of this DECLARATION, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
I have put those particular words in all caps so as to make possible connections to capitalized words in the following passage readily visible.
In Chapter 9 of _Emma_, the following is the key portion of Emma's commentary to Harriet on the significance of the "courtship" charade which Mr. Elton brought to them....
"There is so pointed, and so particular a meaning in this compliment," said she, "that I cannot have a moment's doubt as to Mr. Elton's INTENTIONS. You are his object -- and you will soon receive the completest PROOF of it. I thought it must be so. I thought I could not be so deceived; but now, it is clear; the STATE of his mind is as clear and decided, as my wishes on the subject have been ever since I knew you. Yes, Harriet, just so long have I been wanting the very circumstance to happen which has happened. I could never tell whether an attachment between you and Mr. Elton were most desirable or most natural. Its probability and its eligibility have really so EQUALLED each other! I am very HAPPY. I congratulate you, my dear Harriet, with all my heart. This is an attachment which a woman may well feel pride in CREATING. This is a CONNECTION which offers nothing but good. It will give you every thing that you want -- consideration, INDEPENDENCE, a proper home -- it will fix you in the centre of all your real friends, close to Hartfield and to me, and confirm our intimacy for ever. This, Harriet, is an ALLIANCE which can never raise a blush in either of us."
...and then this description of Harriet's reaction:
"Harriet SUBMITTED, though her mind could hardly separate the parts, so as to feel quite sure that her friend were not writing down a DECLARATION OF. It seemed too precious an offering for any degree of publicity."
I do not believe that this dense cluster of verbal echoes of the Declaration of Independence in a single speech in Emma, together with a short sentence directly connected to it, is coincidental, and my interpretation is that the "courtship" charade is in fact a _parody_ of the Declaration of Independence! Whereas Emma is rhapsodizing to Harriet how great it will be for her to marry Mr. Elton, the reader may well wonder whether Harriet's life with Mr. Elton would have been the paradise that Emma predicts, or more likely the sobering reality of actual English marriage, which in most ways was a subjugation of women, making them wholly dependent on their husbands for every good in their lives--and for a woman like Emma, marriage would literally and legally be a radical shift from total independence to total dependence!
And, to take it one step further, I think JA wanted to hammer home the point that the charade was a parody of Jefferson's (edited) masterpiece, and so she added a wink in the charade itself, to wit, _another_ answer to the charade itself!:
First, for most of recorded human history, a "Declaration" was something _intangible_ that displayed the wealth and pomp of kings as much or more as _tangible_ riches like palaces, crowns, and armies---that's what kings _did_, they issued declarations telling the people what's what---at least, that is, until 1776, when the people of America threw off the yoke of tyranny and _reversed_ that age-old pattern, issuing a declaration _to_ the King of England, telling him that they were no longer taking "whats whats" from him.
And....as to the "monarch of the seas", well, take a look at this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Independence_%281814%29
Although we've all heard of the USS Constitution which defended our country during the War of 1812 and earned the famous name "Ol' Ironsides", apparently the USS _Independence_, constructed in 1812 and deployed to Algiers in 1814, was the _first_ ship of the line in the US Navy, and from what I gather, it played a significant role in projecting American naval power out into the wider world---and therefore it was, in 1814-5, as JA was writing _Emma_ literally (from an American perspective) the "Monarch of the Seas"!
And when these two words are "united" (as in the _United _States!), we have the Declaration of Independence!---and indeed the American _Revolution_ was the mother of all _reversals_ of the status quo in the history of the world!
But...even though I believe the above demonstrates JA's sympathy with the American cause, I believe even more strongly that this is (like the slavery subtext in MP) a metaphor that is subordinated to the fundamental metaphor of the charade, which is the quiet _reversal_ that JA depicted in _Emma_, in which woman declares _her_ independence and freedom from oppression by man, and "woman lovely woman", following the example of the rebellious American colonies, reigns over her own life, alone.
Cheers, ARNIE
P.S. There are, by the way, two other passages in JA's novels which I believe are also veiled echoes of the Declaration of Independence, which I will very briefly touch upon now:
1. Lizzy's revolt against the tyranny of Lady Catherine in the Longbourne wilderness (and wasn't a great deal of America still mostly a _wilderness_ in 1814-5, especially after the addition of the Louisiana Purchase?), in which Lizzy famously says, "
"I am only RESOLVED to ACT in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, CONSTITUTE my HAPPINESS, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly UNCONNECTED with me."
If the American Revolution were going to be summarized in one sentence spoken by all the American colonists to King George III, that sentence would be perfect!
2. Emma's and Knightley's argument about Frank Churchill's _dependency_ on Mrs. Churchill and whether he has the power to do his duty and visit his father in Highbury, including Emma's passionate assertion:
"You are the worst JUDGE IN THE WORLD, Mr. Knightley, of the difficulties of DEPENDENCE. "
P.P.S: None of the above has anything to do with the connection between JA and the United States which I mentioned earlier today which I am trying to get published in the near future--it just happens that these two discoveries came within a few days of each other.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Jane Austen's Letter 32 Potpourri
"Expect a most agreeable letter, for not being overburdened with subject (having nothing at all to say), I shall have no check to my genius from beginning to end. "
I've now learned that whenever JA claims to have "nothing at all to say", I immediately suspect her of having a great deal to say, but covertly. And Letter 33 certainly fits that description, as it is filled with all sorts of veiled anger at the fate of married Englishwomen.
But JA starts out comically. After speaking at length about the letter CEA has recently received from brother Frank about various important events in his naval career, JA then writes:
"Eliza talks of having read in a Newspaper that all the 1st Lieut[enant]s of the Frigates whose captains were to be sent into line-of-battle ships were to be promoted to the rank of commanders. If it be true, Mr. Valentine may afford himself a fine Valentine's knot..."
Don't be confused, that was not Eliza Hancock Austen who read the Newspaper, it was Eliza Lloyd Fowle. The Hubback _Sailor Brothers_ book states that "The "promotion" spoken of in this letter was extensive, and took place on January 1, 1801, on the occasion of the union of Great Britain and Ireland." What caught my eye was JA's reference to "a fine Valentine's knot". I could find no other reference to a "Valentine knot" anywhere in Google Books, but I suspect that JA is referring to something along the lines of the following:
http://books.google.com/books?id=GSQ6HJPncA8C&pg=PA33&dq=Valentine+%22Love+knot%22&hl=en&ei=mVAPTqnGI4fPgAfvntz9DQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Valentine%20%22Love%20knot%22&f=false
But what does JA mean by such a reference? Is it that Lieutenant Valentine, upon being promoted to the rank of Commander (which actually did not occur for him, per Le Faye, until 1806), will be a little less poor, and therefore might, as in the case of Captain Wentworth, become a more eligible bachelor capable of attracting a bride to tie a love-know with? Or is there some other plausible meaning that is eluding me?
" We played at vingt-un, which, as Fulwar was unsuccessful, gave him an opportunity of exposing himself as usual."
Even I do not read this passage as suggesting that Fulwar Fowle was a flasher (I defy anyone to repeat that aloud three times very fast without stumbling over a consonant or two!), but JA seems instead to be rather straightforwardly saying something along the lines of "Fulwar Fowle felt foolish after flaring off at his friends." ;)
Then JA gets down to the "nothing" she really has to say:
"Eliza says she is quite well, but she is thinner than when we saw her last, and not in very good looks. I suppose she has not recovered from the effects of her illness in December. She cuts her hair too short over her forehead, and does not wear her cap far enough upon her head; in spite of these many disadvantages, however, I can still admire her beauty."
In December 1800, my guess is that Eliza Lloyd Fowle, then 32, would have just endured perhaps the tenth pregnancy of her 12 year marriage (Le Faye lists 6 births, one stillborn, but there is a 3 year gap in births from 1795-7, which gap, I strongly and sadly suspect, was not due to separate beds, but to miscarriages, and I suspect the same occurred again in 1800--'illness" indeed!). JA's sadness (and resigned anger) over the way this stoical friend is being worn out physically but this gauntlet of pregnancies is visible to me, just under the surface.
And the death of women is the theme of the next bit as well:
"The neighbourhood have quite recovered the death of Mrs. Rider; so much so, that I think they are rather rejoiced at it now; her things were so very dear! and Mrs. Rogers is to be all that is desirable. Not even death itself can fix the friendship of the world."
Le Faye's footnote identifies Mrs. Rider as the old haberdasher in the neighborhood, and Mrs. Rogers as her successor. There is JA's black humor instantly seizing upon this death, wickedly suggesting that Mrs. Rider is paying a big postmortem price for her having charged too much while alive! And that ironic tone fits hand in glove with the irony of the following much more famous paragraph, which, upon my rereading it now, has me genuinely LOL as if I had never read it before:
"[Mrs. Churchill's sudden death] was felt as such things must be felt. Every body had a degree of gravity and sorrow; tenderness towards the departed, solicitude for the surviving friends; and, in a reasonable time, curiosity to know where she would be buried. Goldsmith tells us, that when lovely woman stoops to folly, she has nothing to do but to die; and when she stoops to be disagreeable, it is equally to be recommended as a clearer of ill-fame. Mrs. Churchill, after being disliked at least twenty-five years, was now spoken of with compassionate allowances. In one point she was fully justified. She had never been admitted before to be seriously ill. The event acquitted her of all the fancifulness, and all the selfishness of imaginary complaints. "
I just love the addition of the totally subversive afterthought to all the initial pieties: "...and in a reasonable time, curiosity to know where she would be buried". And I love the way JA tweaks Goldsmith for a sardonic laugh. And I love even more the irony which JA enjoys so much, that she actually writes dialog to follow it, which is the way that Mrs. Churchill, in death, earns a reversal of her longstanding "conviction" of having imagined all her illnesses. And the best irony of all is the hidden one, which is that if Frank murdered her, then that would be his perfect revenge on her for all the years she pretended to be sick in order to control his life!
And I see the seeds of all of that in the tale of Mrs. Rider in Letter 33.
Then we come to this whopper:
"I am happy to hear of Mrs. Knight's amendment, whatever might be her complaint. I cannot think so ill of her however, in spite of your insinuations, as to suspect her of having lain-in -- I do not think she would be betrayed beyond an /accident/ at the utmost."
The above is (to paraphrase Saddam Hussein) the mother of all inappropriate jokes in JA's letters, which I have written several times in the past, and which I mention in my JASNA talk, a little fantasy on the theme of the 47 year old Mrs. Knight, adoptive mother of Edward Austen, somehow getting knocked up--but it's okay, because it must have happened by accident!
I think JA is in a particularly free flow of uninhibited spirits as she writes this letter, because she has been away from CEA's restraining influence for several months, _plus_ JA has just enjoyed an evening at Deane where she and Martha, as well as Mr. Holder (he who tells infamous puns), have probably all been egging each other on to more and more outrageous verbalizations. I would not be surprised if the joke about Mrs. Knight arose as part of the general hiliarity of the evening at Deane.
"The Wylmots being robbed must be an amusing thing to their acquaintance, and I hope it is as much their pleasure as it seems their avocation to be subjects of general entertainment."
And, without taking a refill of ink for her quill, there are the sarcasm-filled seeds of Mr. Bennet's famous comments about schadenfreude!
And the last item in my little potpourri of excerpts from Letter 33 is the following, yet _another_ "paean" to serial pregnancy and childbirth:
"Caroline was only brought to bed on the 7th of this month, so that her recovery does seem pretty rapid. I have heard twice from Edward on the occasion, and his letters have each been exactly what they ought to be -- cheerful and amusing. He dares not write otherwise to /me/, but perhaps he might be obliged to purge himself from the guilt of writing nonsense by filling his shoes with whole peas for a week afterwards. Mrs. G. has left him 100/l./, his wife and son 500/l./ each."
The "Edward" who writes to JA is cousin Edward Cooper, the clergyman whom (according to Annette Upfal, and I believe her to be 100% correct) JA and CEA mercilessly satirized in Jane's 1793 History of England, first using a portrait of Edward Cooper's own ugly face to represent Edward IV, and then describing Edward IV in a similarly unflattering way:
http://www.janeausten.ac.uk/manuscripts/blvolsecond/158.html
And Caroline Powys Cooper, in strikingly similar and dire circumstances like Elizabeth Lloyd Fowle, has just given birth to her fifth child in seven years of marriage (she too had a few more to go before her career as "breeding animal" ended). JA's sarcasm is overt here. Edward Cooper is "cheerful and amusing" because he is not the spouse who is bearing and then caring for this large litter of small children, and so JA thinks of a fairy tale sort of karmic punishment for his utter cluelessness and disregard for his wife's well being.
Cheers, ARNIE
I've now learned that whenever JA claims to have "nothing at all to say", I immediately suspect her of having a great deal to say, but covertly. And Letter 33 certainly fits that description, as it is filled with all sorts of veiled anger at the fate of married Englishwomen.
But JA starts out comically. After speaking at length about the letter CEA has recently received from brother Frank about various important events in his naval career, JA then writes:
"Eliza talks of having read in a Newspaper that all the 1st Lieut[enant]s of the Frigates whose captains were to be sent into line-of-battle ships were to be promoted to the rank of commanders. If it be true, Mr. Valentine may afford himself a fine Valentine's knot..."
Don't be confused, that was not Eliza Hancock Austen who read the Newspaper, it was Eliza Lloyd Fowle. The Hubback _Sailor Brothers_ book states that "The "promotion" spoken of in this letter was extensive, and took place on January 1, 1801, on the occasion of the union of Great Britain and Ireland." What caught my eye was JA's reference to "a fine Valentine's knot". I could find no other reference to a "Valentine knot" anywhere in Google Books, but I suspect that JA is referring to something along the lines of the following:
http://books.google.com/books?id=GSQ6HJPncA8C&pg=PA33&dq=Valentine+%22Love+knot%22&hl=en&ei=mVAPTqnGI4fPgAfvntz9DQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Valentine%20%22Love%20knot%22&f=false
But what does JA mean by such a reference? Is it that Lieutenant Valentine, upon being promoted to the rank of Commander (which actually did not occur for him, per Le Faye, until 1806), will be a little less poor, and therefore might, as in the case of Captain Wentworth, become a more eligible bachelor capable of attracting a bride to tie a love-know with? Or is there some other plausible meaning that is eluding me?
" We played at vingt-un, which, as Fulwar was unsuccessful, gave him an opportunity of exposing himself as usual."
Even I do not read this passage as suggesting that Fulwar Fowle was a flasher (I defy anyone to repeat that aloud three times very fast without stumbling over a consonant or two!), but JA seems instead to be rather straightforwardly saying something along the lines of "Fulwar Fowle felt foolish after flaring off at his friends." ;)
Then JA gets down to the "nothing" she really has to say:
"Eliza says she is quite well, but she is thinner than when we saw her last, and not in very good looks. I suppose she has not recovered from the effects of her illness in December. She cuts her hair too short over her forehead, and does not wear her cap far enough upon her head; in spite of these many disadvantages, however, I can still admire her beauty."
In December 1800, my guess is that Eliza Lloyd Fowle, then 32, would have just endured perhaps the tenth pregnancy of her 12 year marriage (Le Faye lists 6 births, one stillborn, but there is a 3 year gap in births from 1795-7, which gap, I strongly and sadly suspect, was not due to separate beds, but to miscarriages, and I suspect the same occurred again in 1800--'illness" indeed!). JA's sadness (and resigned anger) over the way this stoical friend is being worn out physically but this gauntlet of pregnancies is visible to me, just under the surface.
And the death of women is the theme of the next bit as well:
"The neighbourhood have quite recovered the death of Mrs. Rider; so much so, that I think they are rather rejoiced at it now; her things were so very dear! and Mrs. Rogers is to be all that is desirable. Not even death itself can fix the friendship of the world."
Le Faye's footnote identifies Mrs. Rider as the old haberdasher in the neighborhood, and Mrs. Rogers as her successor. There is JA's black humor instantly seizing upon this death, wickedly suggesting that Mrs. Rider is paying a big postmortem price for her having charged too much while alive! And that ironic tone fits hand in glove with the irony of the following much more famous paragraph, which, upon my rereading it now, has me genuinely LOL as if I had never read it before:
"[Mrs. Churchill's sudden death] was felt as such things must be felt. Every body had a degree of gravity and sorrow; tenderness towards the departed, solicitude for the surviving friends; and, in a reasonable time, curiosity to know where she would be buried. Goldsmith tells us, that when lovely woman stoops to folly, she has nothing to do but to die; and when she stoops to be disagreeable, it is equally to be recommended as a clearer of ill-fame. Mrs. Churchill, after being disliked at least twenty-five years, was now spoken of with compassionate allowances. In one point she was fully justified. She had never been admitted before to be seriously ill. The event acquitted her of all the fancifulness, and all the selfishness of imaginary complaints. "
I just love the addition of the totally subversive afterthought to all the initial pieties: "...and in a reasonable time, curiosity to know where she would be buried". And I love the way JA tweaks Goldsmith for a sardonic laugh. And I love even more the irony which JA enjoys so much, that she actually writes dialog to follow it, which is the way that Mrs. Churchill, in death, earns a reversal of her longstanding "conviction" of having imagined all her illnesses. And the best irony of all is the hidden one, which is that if Frank murdered her, then that would be his perfect revenge on her for all the years she pretended to be sick in order to control his life!
And I see the seeds of all of that in the tale of Mrs. Rider in Letter 33.
Then we come to this whopper:
"I am happy to hear of Mrs. Knight's amendment, whatever might be her complaint. I cannot think so ill of her however, in spite of your insinuations, as to suspect her of having lain-in -- I do not think she would be betrayed beyond an /accident/ at the utmost."
The above is (to paraphrase Saddam Hussein) the mother of all inappropriate jokes in JA's letters, which I have written several times in the past, and which I mention in my JASNA talk, a little fantasy on the theme of the 47 year old Mrs. Knight, adoptive mother of Edward Austen, somehow getting knocked up--but it's okay, because it must have happened by accident!
I think JA is in a particularly free flow of uninhibited spirits as she writes this letter, because she has been away from CEA's restraining influence for several months, _plus_ JA has just enjoyed an evening at Deane where she and Martha, as well as Mr. Holder (he who tells infamous puns), have probably all been egging each other on to more and more outrageous verbalizations. I would not be surprised if the joke about Mrs. Knight arose as part of the general hiliarity of the evening at Deane.
"The Wylmots being robbed must be an amusing thing to their acquaintance, and I hope it is as much their pleasure as it seems their avocation to be subjects of general entertainment."
And, without taking a refill of ink for her quill, there are the sarcasm-filled seeds of Mr. Bennet's famous comments about schadenfreude!
And the last item in my little potpourri of excerpts from Letter 33 is the following, yet _another_ "paean" to serial pregnancy and childbirth:
"Caroline was only brought to bed on the 7th of this month, so that her recovery does seem pretty rapid. I have heard twice from Edward on the occasion, and his letters have each been exactly what they ought to be -- cheerful and amusing. He dares not write otherwise to /me/, but perhaps he might be obliged to purge himself from the guilt of writing nonsense by filling his shoes with whole peas for a week afterwards. Mrs. G. has left him 100/l./, his wife and son 500/l./ each."
The "Edward" who writes to JA is cousin Edward Cooper, the clergyman whom (according to Annette Upfal, and I believe her to be 100% correct) JA and CEA mercilessly satirized in Jane's 1793 History of England, first using a portrait of Edward Cooper's own ugly face to represent Edward IV, and then describing Edward IV in a similarly unflattering way:
http://www.janeausten.ac.uk/manuscripts/blvolsecond/158.html
And Caroline Powys Cooper, in strikingly similar and dire circumstances like Elizabeth Lloyd Fowle, has just given birth to her fifth child in seven years of marriage (she too had a few more to go before her career as "breeding animal" ended). JA's sarcasm is overt here. Edward Cooper is "cheerful and amusing" because he is not the spouse who is bearing and then caring for this large litter of small children, and so JA thinks of a fairy tale sort of karmic punishment for his utter cluelessness and disregard for his wife's well being.
Cheers, ARNIE
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