Henry Tilney's (and Jane Austen's) invitation to a metaphorical dance

I really love the following passage in Chapter 16, which is one of many in Northanger Abbey which make a mockery of the notion that NA is an "immature" work of JA's, deemed by all too many Janeites as not worthy of consideration on a par with the other 5 novels--and I want to try to explain why I love it so much, and why I think there's much more going on in it that at first meets the too-quickly moving eye.

The passage I will now quote is a discussion of judgment and charity in the moral and psychological assessment of other people, and it arises abruptly when Catherine naively assigns the best of intentions to both Isabella and Captain Tilney, unwittingly eliciting a teasing, provocative response from Henry:

“Your brother [i.e. Captain Tilney] will not mind it [Catherine's assertion that Isabella would not want to dance with him], I know,” said she, “because I heard him say before that he hated dancing; but it was very good–natured in him to think of it. I suppose he saw Isabella sitting down, and fancied she might wish for a partner; but he is quite mistaken, for she would not dance upon any account in the world.”

Henry smiled, and said, “How very little trouble it can give you to understand the motive of other people’s actions.” “Why? What do you mean?”

“With you, it is not, How is such a one likely to be influenced, What is the inducement most likely to act upon such a person’s feelings, age, situation, and probable habits of life considered — but, How should I be influenced, What would be my inducement in acting so and so?” “I do not understand you.”

“Then we are on very unequal terms, for I understand you perfectly well.” “Me? Yes; I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.”

“Bravo! An excellent satire on modern language.” “But pray tell me what you mean.”

“Shall I indeed? Do you really desire it? But you are not aware of the consequences; it will involve you in a very cruel embarrassment, and certainly bring on a disagreement between us." “No, no; it shall not do either; I am not afraid.”

“Well, then, I only meant that your attributing my brother’s wish of dancing with Miss Thorpe to good nature alone convinced me of your being superior in good nature yourself to all the rest of the world.”

Catherine blushed and disclaimed, and the gentleman’s predictions were verified. There was a something, however, in his words which repaid her for the pain of confusion; and that something occupied her mind so much that she drew back for some time, forgetting to speak or to listen, and almost forgetting where she was...." END QUOTE


I assert that there is no moment more romantic or more multilayered in all of JA's writing than this witty serving of apparently light banter, because there is so much to be gleaned from it, once you stop and take the trouble to savor its full implications.

HENRY'S INVITATION:

First we have Henry, who could have allowed Catherine's naive assessment of Isabella and Frederick to pass without comment. But instead, something---and I think that "something" is nothing less than his growing feeling of love and admiration for Catherine---leads him to teasingly but gently confront Catherine---or rather, JA brilliantly and subliminally echoes the famous earlier exchange between Henry and Catherine in Chapter 10 when he says "I consider a country-dance as an emblem of marriage"--here in Chapter 16, we have country-dance as a veiled emblem of serious conversation--i.e., JA is depicting an implied invitation by Henry to Catherine to participate in a kind of "dance" with him, a dance not involving _physical_ movement on a dance floor, but rather of _psychological_ movement during an exchange of ideas.

And what is thrilling to me is that Catherine immediately, instinctively and implicitly accepts Henry's invitation, via her direct questions and her utter lack of pretense--when she does not understand what he means, she does not pretend she does, but instead simply asks him, repeatedly and persistently, to explain what he means! This is a sign of her truly high intellect, because she intuitively grasps that he has criticized her for her kneejerk, superficial, and utterly incorrect assessment of Isabella's and Frederick's motives, and she has a deep instinctual hunger to understand human motivations. Already after her short time in Bath, at the tender age of 18, she has begun to realize that the naive trusting view of the world that seemed to work just fine at home is not quite cutting it out in the real world, and she is smart enough to want to improve her mind, and to recognize that Henry would be the perfect guide to initiate her into a world of accurate knowledge.

And how lovely it is that Henry, in turn, takes _her_ seriously, and continues to "lead" her in this little verbal "dance", by taking another "step": he answers her brilliantly and concisely, pointing out that Catherine, who is a good, well intentioned person, simply cannot imagine the motivations of people who merely pretend to be good people, but who actually are engaged in a great deal of selfish and hurtful chicanery.

But again Catherine is clueless as to his meaning, and acknowledges her lack of understanding.

And that leads Henry to his Zen-like comment about the inequality of their understanding, which in turn prompts Catherine's immortal line: "I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible".

What a brilliant way of showing us Catherine's take on the situation---she has developed a category for cryptic statements like Henry's, which is that "speaking well" means "being unintelligible"--but what still eludes her is that "speaking well" is not a mysterious perverse game in which educated people aspire to be unintelligible to uneducated people--while that might be true of some pretentious snobs, in Henry's case he is a kind of Zen master, trying to "lead" Catherine into thinking outside the box in which her mind is trapped, to begin to question other people's apparent motives, not to take things at face value.

But this is not entirely a one way street of enlightenment---the important lesson that Catherine is (unwittingly) teaching _Henry_ here is that for all his superior intellectual knowledge and understanding, it's time for him to stop his endless passive-aggressive intellectualizing of feelings, and to truly take her seriously enough to explain things to her in language that the very concrete, practical mind of Catherine can process effectively--so that she could actually understand what he meant originally about Isabella and Frederick.
And it is my interpretation of NA as a whole that this lesson that Catherine teaches Henry is every bit as important as the lesson he teaches her--which is why I have genuinely high hopes for their marriage after the novel ends, it really will be a marriage of equals by the time their first "dance" is completed!

But back to the above quoted passage. Who could not be thrilled by Catherine's brave and generous response--she is willing to hear the truth from Henry even if it is not what she wants to hear, and, as much as she already loves Henry, she is not afraid to disagree with him about something significant. No wonder Henry, who has been jaded by experience with a hundred debutantes with greater superficial "accomplishment" than Catherine, is irresistibly drawn to this diamond in the rough--a natively brilliant country girl with an utterly open mind.

And that's when Henry gives Catherine "a something" that she has so richly earned, i.e., a heartfelt beautiful compliment to her "superior" "good nature" which makes her blush and briefly transports her to another realm, as she realizes what he means, and then bathes in the glow of that compliment. Could there be anything more romantic than the thrill of being truly admired by the man who, Catherine can now have grounds to hope, really loves her?

JANE AUSTEN'S INVITATION:

And all of that would be enough, if that were all there was going on in that passage. But I assert that there is a whole additional metafictional layer implicit in this passage, in which it is Jane Austen who issues the invitation to "dance", and it is up to the reader to decide to interrogate NA and ask, "What does JA mean?"

I assert that if we read the above passage metafictionally, what quickly emerges is that JA is inviting the naive _reader_ to take the trouble, accept JA's invitation to a higher-level metafictional dance, by being willing to step outside the conventional way of reading fiction. How? By actively working to break free from the constraints of the naive, limited subjectivity of JA's clueless heroines, and to attempt, on our own, reading against the textual grain, trying to discern the motives of the other characters in her novels which are being concealed from the heroine---and therefore also from the reader! Otherwise, those concealed motives will remain forever unintelligible to the reader, and therefore, in turn, a whole layer of her novels will remain forever opaque to the trusting reader who rely entirely on the apparently "simple" superficial meaning of the narration as conclusive. Are we brave enough to accept JA's invitation to this rarefied dance?

No doubt some of you reading this will respond that I am reading way too much into this passage--and my response is to remind you that NA in particular is a novel which at a half dozen points _explicitly_ raises metafictional concerns--e.g., when JA's narrator abruptly intrudes and starts talking about novels, when Henry and Eleanor discuss concealed perspectives at Beechen Cliff, among others.....

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/01/jane-austens-excellent-satire-on.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/01/jane-austens-anamorphism.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/11/perspectives-and-shades-and-sex.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/02/jane-austens-art-of-veiled-allusion.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/12/beechen-cliff-portrait.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/12/cassandra-austens-portrait-of-mrs.html

 ...so it is entirely consistent with those other explicitly metafictional passages to read Henry's teasing about unintelligibility as being JA's very serious implicit meditations on how fiction--particularly fiction like NA---ought to be read.

So, I conclude by inviting you to take the trouble to reread the above quoted passage in Chapter 16 and to ponder the pros and cons of the argument I've made in this post, and to let me know what you think.

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Charlotte's Opinion of Matrimony Was Not Exactly Her Own

My last public formulation of my complicated thoughts about Charlotte Lucas as a closeted lesbian can be found here:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/12/ladies-of-llang-pemberley-oh-dear-one.html

I had reason yesterday to revisit the passage in which Charlotte first reveals her engagement to Mr. Collins to Elizabeth, and this time around, I saw something in it that had me shaking my head partly in admiration for JA's ability to hide stuff in plain sight, and partly in chagrin that I had overlooked that stuff the first 30 times I read that passage!

I will first make my point implicitly by means of ALL CAPS of certain key excerpts within the passage, and then state the significance I see in those excerpts if you scroll down the page, for those who wish to have a go at figuring out what I claim is there--I think the capitalizations make my interpretation clear:


Miss Lucas called soon after breakfast, and in A PRIVATE CONFERENCE WITH ELIZABETH related the event of the day before.

The possibility of Mr. Collins's fancying himself in love with her friend had once occurred to Elizabeth within the last day or two; but that Charlotte could encourage him seemed almost as far from possibility as she could encourage him herself, and her astonishment was consequently SO GREAT AS TO OVERCOME AT FIRST THE BOUNDS OF DECORUM, and SHE COULD NOT HELP CRYING OUT:

"Engaged to Mr. Collins! My dear Charlotte—impossible!"

The steady COUNTenance which Miss Lucas had commanded in telling her story, GAVE WAY TO A MOMENTARY CONFUSION here on RECEIVING SO DIRECT A rePROACH; though, as it was NO MORE THAN SHE EXPECTED, she soon REGAINED HER COMPOSURE, and calmly replied:

"Why should you be surprised, my dear Eliza? Do you think it incredible that Mr. Collins should be able to procure any woman's good opinion, because he was not so happy as to succeed with you?"

But ELIZABETH HAD NOW RECOLLECTED HERSELF, and MAKING A STRONG EFFORT FOR IT, was able to assure WITH TOLERABLE FIRMNESS that the prospect of their relationship was highly grateful to her, and that she wished her all imaginable happiness.

"I see WHAT YOU ARE FEELING," replied Charlotte. "You must be surprised, very much surprised—so lately as Mr. Collins was wishing to marry you. But when you have had time to think it over, I hope YOU WILL BE SATISFIED WITH WHAT I HAVE DONE. I am not romantic, you know; I never was. I ask only a comfortable home; and considering Mr. Collins's character, connection, and situation in life, I am convinced that my chance of happiness with him is as fair as most people can boast on entering the marriage state."


For my interpretation, scroll down....


.......



.......



.......




........


My interpretation is that the ALL CAPS portions of the above quoted passage could be transposed, without any alteration, to Cleland's Fanny Hill, a novel which I have previously claimed was not only well known to JA, but which she actually alluded to in great depth--so to speak---in _Emma_:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/12/answer-to-my-trick-question.html

Those ALL CAPS portions could be transposed without any alteration provided, of course, that the non-capitalized portions were suitably altered!

And JA's point in all this, I assert, was not to suggest that Lizzy and Charlotte were having actual physical sex during their "private conference", but rather to suggest a subliminal aura of the physical attraction that I believe _did_ exist between Charlotte and Lizzy, one which perhaps Charlotte wished to consummate but which Lizzy was not ever going to---it is as if the narrator, picking up the scent of that attraction, has herself become aroused and therefore chooses words with heavy Freudian overtones to describe the conversation.

And I also just realized, as I was writing this post, that part of the reason why I am confident that Lizzy would never have positively responded to a direct sexual APproach from Charlotte is contained in the narrative paragraph which immediately follows the above, and I have again used ALL CAPS to show the relevant clue:


"Elizabeth quietly answered "Undoubtedly;" and after an awkward pause, they returned to the rest of the family. Charlotte did not stay much longer, and Elizabeth was then left to reflect on what she had heard. It was a long time before she became at all reconciled to the idea of so unsuitable a match. The strangeness of Mr. Collins's making two offers of marriage within three days was nothing in comparison of his being now accepted. SHE HAD ALWAYS FELT THAT CHARLOTTE'S OPINION OF MATRIMONY WAS NOT EXACTLY HER OWN, but she had not supposed it to be possible that, when called into action, she would have sacrificed every better feeling to worldly advantage."

"not exactly her own" is JA's dry-as-toast understated ironic way of saying, indirectly, that Lizzy has always known that Charlotte was not heterosexual!

And this fits perfectly with my claims that Charlotte Lucas the schemer (as first articulated by Kim Damstra 13 years ago, and then unwittingly repeated without crediting by John Sutherland) knew that in the end of the day, she'd be in close proximity to Elizabeth on a permanent basis, when Darcy gives Mr. Collins a living in close proximity to Pemberley!

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Claims that Jane Austen Was Amoral

 Louise Culmer wrote the following in Janeites:

"It had never actually occured to me to consider Austen as a latter day saint, and certainly not as a champion of the underdog. She was very much a woman of her class and era, and her views are those typical of both. I think it's good that she makes fun of both men and women, it wouldn't be very pleasant if she   made fun of only one sex and not the other. She has little interest in servants, the only one ever to express an opinion in any of her books that I know of is Mrs Reynolds, in Pride and Prejudice. And real poverty is scarcely ever mentioned, only the relative poverty of the gentry, the 'poor' Dashwoods with their £500 a year, a sum most people in those days could only dream of. Wealth beyond imagining to the average servant or farm labourer. Her imagination is limited to the people of her own class, but she was brilliant at writing about them." END QUOTE 

By the same logic, we should, e.g., judge Martin Luther King and all of the civil rights pioneers of the mid-20th century in the United States as having imagination limited to poor, discriminated-against black Americans, because, when you think about it, he must have had a massive blind spot to all the people in Africa, Asia and South America who were starving to death and/or actually enslaved during the same time period--because, relatively speaking even black Americans who lived during the mid-20th century had "wealth beyond imagining" to the average person at the bottom of the pile in the Third World---because the average black American---whose life was horrible compared to the average white
American---actually had food to eat, and shelter over his head, and was not in daily danger of dying. Everything's relative.

So unless there are some genuine Mother Teresas devoting their lives to the starving billions of our world, who take time out from their crusade to be members of this group, I suspect there is not a single person reading this message to whom the same standard of moral judgment would not apply in exactly the same way that so many readers judge Jane Austen.

Except for the one in ten thousand who actually devotes their imagination, resources, and polemical skills to defending the poorest of the poor in the entire world,  we all focus on wrongdoing that affects ourselves and our peers.

To judge Jane Austen for not being an overt Mother Teresa in her writings seems absurd to me. Jane Austen, the radical feminist I have perceived, was enough of a social reformer and rabble rouser, in her own way, to set her above almost all her peers in that department in her time.

It's obvious to me from her letters that she was a compassionate person toward those less fortunate than she---but she was a pragmatist, she recognized that it was difficult enough to work toward social reform within her own milieu, without taking on the absurdly difficult task of helping the poorest of England, or the enslaved of the English colonies.

There will always be a cause more desperate than the one taken on by any
reformer, which he or she has ignored.

And in any event, when JA's novels are read with awareness that JA's central point was that point of view was decisive in perception, you realize that the servants and the very poor are invisible in her novels not because she did not care about them, but because her clueless heroines never gave a second thought to the plight of those much more unfortunate folks. That was JA's point, and that's why in particular JA has Emma making her charitable rounds in Highbury with Harriet in tow---JA is actually showing the hypocrisy of her peers who truly never gave a second thought to the those far below them in society.

JA was not Dickens, she was much subtler--there's a distinguished place for _both_ of them in the history of social reform via literature.

The causes JA took on, they're good enough for me, her morals were first rate in my book.

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

How could everyone have missed it? --- Sir Edward Denham IS James Stanier Clarke!

When I concluded my argument in my previous post......

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2012/05/james-stanier-clarke-stepford-wives-mrs.html


....with the following observation....

"I am not the first to see the obvious repeated lampooning of Clarke in the above paragraph. However, this lampooning takes on startling new significance when we think about it in light of Sanditon's initial scenes being set in Clarke's home village--what it suggests to me is that perhaps the "novel" for which JA has created this delightfully zany "plan" is none other than Sanditon, the very first novel she began after writing this "Plan of a novel"! Among other things, it makes me realize that there must have been another Mr. Collins-like clergyman in the back of JA's mind as she contemplated Volume 2 of Sanditon, a character who would have had all the deliciously foolish traits of James Stanier Clarke himself. "


....I had not stopped to think about what JA had already written in the fragment of Sanditon that survives. But once I did, I immediately realized that JA had indeed already provided us with a character who was, although disguised in the "mask" of a dissolute worthless rake, the shockingly close likeness of James Stanier Clarke himself, i.e., Sir Edward Denham!


Look at what Sir Edward has to say (colored of course by the narrator's sardonic commentary on his opinions) on James Stanier Clarke's favorite subject--the criteria for a great novel:


“The Novels which I approve are such as display Human Nature with Grandeur -- such as shew her in the Sublimities of intense Feeling -- such as exhibit the progress of strong Passion from the first Germ of incipient Susceptibility to the utmost Energies of Reason half-dethroned, -- where we see the strong spark of Woman's Captivations elicit such Fire in the Soul of Man as leads him (though at the risk of some Aberration from the strict line of Primitive Obligations) -- to hazard all, dare all, atcheive all, to obtain her. -- Such are the Works which I peruse with delight, & I hope I may say, with Amelioration. They hold forth the most splendid Portraitures of high Conceptions, Unbounded Views, illimitable Ardour, indomitible Decision -- and even when the Event is mainly anti-prosperous to the high-toned Machinations of the prime Character, the potent, pervading Hero of the Story, it leaves us full of Generous Emotions for him; -- our Hearts are paralized. -- T'were Pseudo-Philosophy to assert that we do not feel more enwrapped by the brilliancy of his Career, than by the tranquil & morbid Virtues of any opposing Character. Our approbation of the Latter is but Eleemosynary. -- These are the Novels which enlarge the primitive Capabilities of the Heart, & which it cannot impugn the Sense, or be any Dereliction of the character, of the most anti-puerile Man to be conversant with."

"If I understand you aright", said Charlotte, "our taste in Novels is not at all the same."

And here they were obliged to part -- Miss Denham being too much tired of them all to stay any longer. -- The truth was that Sir Edward, whom circumstances had confined very much to one spot, had read more sentimental Novels than agreed with him. His fancy had been early caught by all the impassioned, & most exceptionable parts of Richardson’s; & such Authors as have since appeared to tread in Richardson’s steps, so far as Man's determined pursuit of Woman in defiance of every opposition of feeling & convenience is concerned, had since occupied the greater part of his literary hours, & formed his Character. -- With a perversity of Judgement, which must be attributed to his not having by Nature a very strong head, the Graces, the Spirit, the Sagacity, & the Perseverance, of the Villain of the Story outweighed all his absurdities & all his Atrocities with Sir Edward. With him, such Conduct was Genius, Fire & Feeling. -- It interested & inflamed him; & he was always more anxious for its Success & mourned over its Discomfitures with more Tenderness than could ever have been contemplated by the Authors.

Though he owed many of his ideas to this sort of reading, it were unjust to say that he read nothing else, or that his Language were not formed on a more general Knowledge of modern Literature. -- He read all the Essays, Letters, Tours, & Criticisms of the day -- & with the same ill-luck which made him derive only false Principles from Lessons of Morality, & incentives to Vice from the History of its Overthrow, he gathered only hard words & involved sentences from the style of our most approved Writers." END QUOTE

Can there be any doubt that this was a free translation, if you will, of the pompous, overblown, narcissistic idiotic, and ultimately un-Christian literary advice which Clarke gives to JA in his letters?

And...upon further reflection, and consideration of Sir Edward Denham's impassioned defense of Robert Burns's somewhat unsavory love life, is it not highly probable that this was JA's coded way of lampooning the hypocrisy of Clarke's service as court librarian and chaplain to the Prince Regent, a man whose life of dissolution and debauchery made Robert Burns seem like an innocent schoolboy by comparison?

So, I now argue that any remaining doubt that anyone had after reading my preceding post about Clarke's being covertly depicted in Sanditon via the village name "Willingden" should, I believe, be laid to rest by the above.

And we can only wonder what it would have been like had JA finished Sanditon and had added another Clarke "doppelganger" who actually was a clergyman, and had then put Sir Edward Denham in the same room with that clergyman----it would have been like crossing the streams in Ghostbusters---very bad indeed!

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter


P.S.: By the way, I am NOT the first person to notice the parallelism between Sir Edward's polemic about grand novels and Clarke's friendly advice about the same subject--Laura Mooneyham White writes about these two passages as both being similar in their "world-making", and Juliette Wells in 2010 pointed out that the historical novelist Amanda Elyot (pseudonym for Leslie Carroll) used passages from both Sir Edward and Clarke as epigraphs for the first chapter of _By A Lady_ (a 2006 time travel pastiche about Jane Austen)---but neither White nor Carroll nor Wells apparently had the slightest clue that these passages were similar because JA intended them to be!

James Stanier Clarke & the Stepford Wives Mrs. Morland & Mrs. Heywood

Earlier this morning, Anielka Briggs wrote the following in Austen-L:

"The fictional Austen mother who holds the record for the most children is Mrs. Heywood in "Sanditon". She has fourteen children.  "They had a very pretty property; enough, had their family been of reasonable limits, to have allowed them a very gentlemanlike share of luxuries and change; enough for them to have indulged in a new carriage and better roads, an occasional month at Tunbridge Wells, and symptoms of the gout and a winter at Bath, But the maintenance, education and fitting out of fourteen children demanded a very quiet, settled, careful course of life, and obliged them to be stationary and healthy at Willingden."
 Austen even jokes that a family of fourteen is not of "reasonable limits" . Not only does Mrs. Heywood have fourteen children but she and her family are so remarkably healthy that they never need a doctor as Austen pointedly remarks on in the text. In fact Charlotte Heywood, she of the thirteen siblings, takes a rather dim view of the childless, Parker sisters imagined ill-health. This is again contrasted against Lady Denham who, also childless and aged 70 is as fit as a fiddle and a range of teenage girls (apparently childless but who knows!!) who are compelled to take sea baths and take patent medicines other than asses' milk."  END QUOTE
I replied as follows:


Yes, Mrs. Heywood is a twin sister, so to speak, of Mrs. Morland, in that both bear a Biblical number of children without the slightest ill effect to themselves. Given JA's known (from her letters) predilection to decry every instance of serial pregnancy she knows of, and in particular to express dismay at the chronic health issues of pregnant English wives of her acquaintance, a wary reader might just suspect JA of a satire, i.e., of meaning precisely the opposite of what at first appears to be a celebration of serial pregnancy.

I.e., I suggest that the Heywood "litter" is like the Morland "litter" in that both of them are JA's satirical Regency Era version of the Stepford Wives----depicting the fantastical but totally imaginary perception of the typical English gentleman as he looked at his wife's life. Whereas, to the more sober eye, this appears instead as an absurdly idealized version of real life, in that a wife who lived as a breeding cow for two decades rarely came out the other end in robust health.

If you think I'm exaggerating, just attend Dr. Cheryl Kinney's talk about health care for women in JA's time (Cheryl is not only an extraordinarily gifted and brilliant public speaker, she is also a practicing OBGYN with a passion for medical history) and you will realize just how rare that sort of pristine maternal health would have been, given all the medical dangers that wives faced in that era. Serial motherhood in JA's time was often a house of horrors, medically speaking.

And so, given this striking parallel between Mrs. Morland and Mrs. Heywood, it's obviously no accident (as in the "accident" that Mr. Parker suffers to his ankle) that both of these rustic mothers of a multitude also share with each other the curious parallel that they both cheerful send an elder daughter from among their respective broods as a companion with a childless couple on an adventure to a watering hole (Bath and Sanditon) where their wide-eyed but clear-headed daughter witnesses all manner of exotic, mysterious human behavior in the wild far from home. How sad to realize that Sanditon, had it been completed, would very likely have been as funny, and as serious, as Northanger Abbey (which by the way was, as we all know, still unpublished at the time JA was writing Sanditon).

And just as I claim we ought to stand Mrs. Morland and Mrs. Heywood on their heads in order to see them as JA really saw them, I assert that exactly the same thing is true of the Parker sisters and their "imagined ill health"--after all, to the extent that the smartest Parker sister is a veiled self portrait of JA herself--and I assert that she is---was it really "imagined ill-health" that caused JA to fall deathly ill in the late Winter of 1817, never having the strength thereafter to carry forward on the writing of Sanditon? I think it was very real ill-health indeed!


And by the way, Anielka, given your own repeatedly expressed strong interest in the personal life of Jane Austen's favorite real-life Mr. Collins, i.e., James Stanier Clarke, I am pretty sure it will interest you to note the following description in a memoir about JSC's younger brother Edward:

"Mr. Clarke left three sons and one daughter, the youngest of the family. Of these, Edward Daniel, the subject of these memoirs, was the second. He was born, as we before stated, at the vicarage-house of WILLINGDON, in SUSSEX, in the short interval which elapsed between his fathers return from Minorca, and the removal of his family to the rectory at Buxted. His elder brother, Dr. James Stanier, who is well known to the literary world by his various publications, was born at Minorca: he has had the honour to be domestic chaplain to his present Majesty, both before and since his accession to the throne, and is now a canon of Windsor, and rector of Tillington in Sussex. The younger, George, was born at WILLINGDON: he was a captain in the navy, and after many years of distinguished service, was unhappily drowned in the Thames, on a party of pleasure, in 1804. His sister Anne, married to Captain Parkinson of the navy, and now living at Ramsgate, was born after the settlement of the family at Buxted."

According to Google Maps, Willingdon is about two miles inland NW of Eastbourne, and while I know I am not the first to point out that the real life Willingdon where the Clarke brothers grew up was in some way a source for JA's fictional Willingden where the Heywoods lived, I am pretty sure I am the first to point out that the vicar of the real life Willingden during JA's childhood was the father of James Stanier Clarke.

Just a coincidence? Surely not, when we look at the chronology.

First, in late March, 1816 James Stanier Clarke suggests to her that JA write a novel extolling the wonders of the "august house of Cobourg".

Second, JA completes the writing of Persuasion a few months later, and not long afterwards, she begins a new novel, Sanditon, in which the action begins in James Stanier Clarke's childhood village.

Third, JA writes her famous "Plan of a Novel" in which we read the following initial paragraph:

SCENE to be in the Country, Heroine the Daughter of a Clergyman, one who after having lived much in the World had retired from it and settled in a Curacy, with a very small fortune of his own. -- He, the most excellent Man that can be imagined, perfect in Character, Temper, and Manners -- without the smallest drawback or peculiarity to prevent his being the most delightful companion to his Daughter from one year's end to the other. -- Heroine a faultless Character herself, -- perfectly good, with much tenderness and sentiment, and not the least Wit -- very highly accomplished, understanding modern Languages and (generally speaking) everything that the most accomplished young Women learn but particularly excelling in Music -- her favourite pursuit -- and playing equally well on the PianoForte and Harp -- and singing in the first stile. Her Person quite beautiful - dark eyes and plump cheeks. -- Book to open with the description of Father and Daughter -- who are to converse in long speeches, elegant Language -- and a tone of high serious sentiment. -- The Father to be induced, at his Daughter's earnest request, to relate to her the past events of his Life. This Narrative will reach through the greatest part of the first volume -- as besides all the circumstances of his attachment to her Mother and their Marriage, it will comprehend his going to sea as Chaplain to a distinguished naval character about the Court, his going afterwards to Court himself, which introduced him to a great variety of Characters and involved him in many interesting situations, concluding with his opinions on the Benefits to result from Tithes being done away, and his having buried his own Mother (Heroine's lamented Grandmother) in consequence of the High Priest of the Parish in which she died refusing to pay her Remains the respect due to them. The Father to be of a very literary turn, an Enthusiast in Literature, nobody’s Enemy but his own-- at the same time most zealous in discharge of his Pastoral Duties, the model of an exemplary Parish Priest. -- The heroine's friendship to be sought after by a young woman in the same Neighbourhood, of Talents and Shrewdness, with light eyes and a fair skin, but having a considerable degree of Wit, Heroine shall shrink from the acquaintance.


I am not the first to see the obvious repeated lampooning of Clarke in the above paragraph. However, this lampooning takes on startling new significance when we think about it in light of Sanditon's initial scenes being set in Clarke's home village--what it suggests to me is that perhaps the "novel" for which JA has created this delightfully zany "plan" is none other than Sanditon, the very first novel she began after writing this "Plan of a novel"! Among other things, it makes me realize that there must have been another Mr. Collins-like clergyman in the back of JA's mind as she contemplated Volume 2 of Sanditon, a character who would have had all the deliciously foolish traits of James Stanier Clarke himself.


And finally, is it also a coincidence that there is a confusion between two Willingden's in Sanditon? Does this confusion have anything to do with James Stanier Clarke having been rector of TILLINGTON also in Sussex, which is located only a few miles away from Willingdon? And, as I briefly browsed in the Google Map for Sussex, I noticed also a village named "Lillington" not far from those other two. Given JA's love of wordplay, I cannot help but think that she noticed all these confusingly similar village names in close proximity during a visit to Sussex sometime in her life, or perhaps on a map of Sussex that she studied before beginning to write Sanditon, and she chose to immortalize this confusion in her inimitably droll way, in the lengthy discussion of Mr. Parker's finding himself laid up in the wrong Willingden.

Cheers, ARNIE @JaneAustenCode on Twitter

The Date of First Composition of Elinor & Marianne

As a followup to my recent post about Jane Austen

tracking the six-month time frame of the transition

of her own real life exile from Steventon to Bath 

from November, 1800 to May, 1801, in the six month

time frame of the transition of Marianne Dashwood's

 fictional exile from Norland to Barton Cottage.... 

 http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2012/04/half-years-residence-in-her-family.html ...

I have had an interesting off-shoot discussion with 

one of the commenters at my blog (who goes by the

 moniker "Lit-Lass") about the timing of the composition

 of Sense & Sensibility, which I thought was worth its

own blog post.  

Lit-Lass wrote: "According to my notes from Tomalin's

 bio and Joan K. Ray's timeline [JA] wrote [Elinor &

 Marianne] in 1795 and Cassandra remembered it read

 to the family by '76. Of course she did a great deal of 

revising later. ] 

I then replied as follows: "...our discussion here has led

 me to an intriguing new hypothesis, i.e., that perhaps

 Cassandra was being less than honest when she reported

 those dates of earliest writing of E&M---we have

 independent third party verification of early drafts

 of P&P and Northanger Abbey (Susan, but we only

 have Cassandra's word for the early version of E&M. 

And why would Cassandra want the world to think 

that S&S was first written in the 1790's? Because then

 nobody would think that the "Massacre of Steventon"

 in 1800-1801 was being depicted!"  

Am I correct in my recollection that Cassandra's 

recollection, long after JA's death, is the only basis

 for the pre-1800 composition of S&S in epistolary

 form under title "Elinor & Marianne"?  

When you think about it, if JA really did write Elinor

 & Marianne in 1796, why didn't Revd. Austen submit

 it, along with P&P, for publication in 1798? Why was 

Elinor & Marianne kept on the shelf, never mentioned

 in any of JA's many surviving letters from 1796-1800?

 Why are there so many echoes of P&P and NA in JA's

 1796-1799 letters, but no echoes of S&S that I can recall

 in those same early surviving letters? There's something

 fishy about it all, and realizing how closely the events of 

1800-1801 are tracked in the first Volume of S&S makes

 me wonder if CEA was being a politician when she

"recollected" Elinor & Marianne's early composition, 

as a way of deflecting attention by James Austen's children

 to the disturbing innuendo of the first volume of S&S vis

 a vis James &Mary Austen.  

Cheers, ARNIE 

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

The "Wood House" that carries Emma and Pinocchio to Storybrooke

It's been nearly 2 1/2 months since some amazing Internet serendipity first prompted me to take an interest in the ABC show Once Upon A Time (OUAT), because of the mysterious character name "August Wayne Booth" appearing, in slightly different form, in a blog post of mine about Jane Austen's greatest novel, _Emma_:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2012/02/august-wayne-booth-in-once-upon-time.html

Since February 20, I have faithfully watched every one of the episodes of OUAT, and have seen, especially during the past few weeks, a ratcheting up of the role of August Wayne Booth, as we have finally learned that he is (apparently) Pinocchio from the Fairy World, trying to convince Emma Swan to believe that the Fairy World exists.

But I will confess that I've been surprised that the many hints I discerned in the episodes from the first half of the season, that, to my eyes, pointed to Jane Austen's novels, most of all _Emma_....

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2012/02/more-clues-that-once-upon-time-is-sly.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2012/03/august-wayne-booths-answers-in-literary.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2012/02/george-augustus-frederick-prince-of.html

....have not been carried further forward in the last half dozen episodes, especially the
two most recent episodes which have been August-intensive, with ONE intriguing exception:

It occurred to me as I watched the last episode, in which we learn that Gepetto is the craftsman who constructed, from the magic tree,  the "spaceship" that carried baby Emma, along with Pinocchio, to the forest outside  Storybrooke 28 years ago, that we could describe the container which carries Emma and Pinocchio as a "wood house".  Is this an intentional wink at Emma Woodhouse on the part of the writers of OUAT? I believe it is!

But I expect more to come, because the central parallel to Austen remains as strong as ever, i.e., everything that happens in Austen's _Emma_ is filtered through the eyes of the clueless heroine, Emma Woodhouse, and therefore what SHE believes she sees is what most readers of the novel believe is real, even though, when the novel is read against the grain, as I am the first to do, we find an alternative reality of which Emma does not have any conscious awareness. But...that alternative reality is just at the edge of Emma Woodhouse's consciousness, she keeps seeing pieces of it but she is so set in her worldview that she is blinded even to what is in front of her nose. 

And isn't Emma Swan so much like Emma Woodhouse in this one crucial way? What does August Wayne Booth have to do to convince her to believe? That is the central question of OUAT at this moment. And I remain firm in my expectation that somehow, some way, in the final episode of this first season coming up, there will be SOMETHING that points more definitively to Jane Austen's Emma Woodhouse, and connects her to Emma Swan.

We shall see next Sunday!

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter