Part Three of the answers to my Austen-Shakespeare Quiz: Deserving Suitors in The Merchant of Venice and Pride & Prejudice

At the end of my immediately preceding post…..

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2012/07/part-two-of-answers-to-my-austen.html

…I promised one additional interpretive bonus arising out of my discovery of the veiled allusion in three of Jane Austen’s novels to the casket-choice suitors scenes in The Merchant of Venice which I outlined there. Now I will deliver on that promise.

Arragon is the suitor for Portia’s hand in marriage who chooses the silver casket, and here is how that choice plays out:

ARRAGON:

….Why, then to thee, thou silver treasure-house;
Tell me once more what title thou dost bear:
'Who chooseth me shall get as much as he DESERVES:'
And well said too; for who shall go about
To cozen fortune and be honourable
Without the stamp of merit? Let none presume
To wear an UNDESERVED dignity.
O, that estates, degrees and offices
Were not derived corruptly, and that clear honour
Were purchased by the merit of the wearer!
How many then should cover that stand bare!
How many be commanded that command!
How much low peasantry would then be glean'd
From the true seed of honour! and how much honour
Pick'd from the chaff and ruin of the times
To be new-varnish'd! Well, but to my choice:
'Who chooseth me shall get as much as he DESERVES.'
I will assume DESERT. Give me a key for this,
And instantly unlock my fortunes here.

He opens the silver casket

PORTIA

Too long a pause for that which you find there.

ARRAGON

What's here? the portrait of a blinking idiot,
Presenting me a schedule! I will read it.
How much unlike art thou to Portia!
How much unlike my hopes and my DESERVINGS!
'Who chooseth me shall have as much as he DESERVES.'
Did I DESERVE no more than a fool's head?
Is that my prize? are my DESERTS no better?

You will note from my all-caps portions that Shakespeare is having a jolly punny time with the very ambiguous word “deserve”, which can mean two opposite things, depending on the context—i.e., a worthy person can deserve some very positive outcome, whereas an unworthy person can deserve some very negative outcome. That’s what makes “Who chooseth me shall get as much as he DESERVES” such a great riddle, because the chooser will hear in that word what he wants to hear, and thereby will select himself as unworthy, which is exactly what Arragon does.

And guess what! Jane Austen played with this ambiguity of the word “deserve” in all her novels, but most of all in Pride & Prejudice! I could give you ten examples of that ambiguity in the text of P&P, but if you are curious to see them, a global word search on the word “deserve” and its variants in this online text…

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1342/1342-h/1342-h.htm

…will give you the fun of reading each such passage with new eyes, discerning how so many of them can be read in two very different ways.

I wanted to bring forward the best one, the discovery of the ambiguity of which I cannot take credit for, because I was beaten to the punch by Kishor Kale, who wrote the following several years ago in the article of his which he has written about from time to time in Janeites:

Kishor: “I now present a counterexample: a statement which, like the utterances of Mrs. Bennet, Mr. Collins, and Wickham given above, has a secondary meaning that is unintended by the speaker.  However, in this counterexample the secondary meaning cannot be understood by the reader to be an inadvertent truth.  After Darcy has proposed to Elizabeth, and Elizabeth has convinced Mr. Bennet that she really does love him, Mr Bennet says to her:  "If this be the case, he DESERVES you.  I could not have parted with you, my Lizzy, to any one less worthy" (377).   Clearly, Mr. Bennet means that nobody less worthy than Darcy would be worthy of Elizabeth.  However, his statement, like the examples given earlier, does formally have a secondary interpretation unintended by him.  The difference between this statement of Mr. Bennet's and the preceding three examples is that in this case, it is clear from the context that the secondary interpretation must also have been unintended by Austen and was caused simply by carelessness of expression on her part. Mr. Bennet's statement, taken literally, could mean that nobody more unworthy than Darcy could be found as a husband for Elizabeth, which in context is of course is a clearly preposterous interpretation.  We could simply dismiss the secondary interpretation of Mr. Bennet's statement as simply an uncharacteristic piece of careless writing on the part of Jane Austen as real author of Pride and Prejudice. However, if we introduce the notion of a constructed author who can be wiser than the fallible real author, it is possible to re-interpret this carelessness by the real author as an element of a coherent narrative strategy formulated by the constructed author.”

However, whereas Kishor believes the above ambiguity in the word “deserve” to be the result of “unintended” “carelessness of expression” on Jane Austen’s part, I believe it is 100% intentional, and is part and parcel of the allusion to the highly salient and ambiguously ironic usages of the word “desert” in the silver casket riddle and elsewhere in the text of  The Merchant of Venice!

Therefore….I believe that in one highly plausible interpretation of Pride & Prejudice, Mr. Bennet does indeed mean to say to Elizabeth that Mr. Darcy is _not_ a worthy suitor, and therefore if Lizzy really does love Darcy, then Darcy’s “deserving” Lizzy is as ironic as Arragon’s just deserts in TMOV!

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Part Two of the Answers to my Austen-Shakespeare Quiz: The Suitors of Portia and 3 Austen Heroines

And now, as promised, here are the answers to my quiz, the identity of the three Austen heroines and their respective suitors who are representations of three of Portia's undesirable suitors in The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 2, when Nerissa asks Portia for Portia's opinion about three of the suitors who have come to Meryto---I mean, Belmont---to seek Portia's hand in marriage:

NERISSA   But what warmth is there in your affection towards any of these princely suitors that are already come?

PORTIA I pray thee, over-name them; and as thou namest them, I will describe them; and, according to my description, level at my affection.

NERISSA First, there is the Neapolitan prince.

PORTIA Ay, that's a colt indeed, for he doth nothing but talk of his horse; and he makes it a great appropriation to his own good parts, that he can shoe him himself. I am much afeard my lady his mother played false with a smith.

OF COURSE, THAT IS JOHN THORPE, WHOSE EQUINE OBSESSION IS THE LEAST OF HIS UNDESIRABLE CHARACTERISTICS, AS HIS IDEA OF COURTSHIP VERGES ON ABDUCTION AND OPPRESSION, AS HE "COURTS" OUR HEROINE CATHERINE MORLAND IN NORTHANGER ABBEY.

AND...PERHAPS JANE AUSTEN MADE A SMALL ADDITIONAL WINK AT "A SMITH" IN THE ABOVE PASSAGE WHEN SHE WROTE THE FOLLOWING:

[Catherine speaking to Eleanor] "That never occurred to me; and of course, not seeing him anywhere, I thought he must be gone. Was not the young lady he danced with on Monday a MISS SMITH?"

SO THAT WAS AUSTEN SUITOR & HEROINE PAIR #1, NOW FOR PAIR #2: 

NERISSA Then there is the County Palatine.

PORTIA He doth nothing but frown, as who should say 'If you will not have me, choose:' he hears merry tales and smiles not: I fear he will prove the weeping philosopher when he grows old, being so full of unmannerly sadness in his youth. I had rather be married to a death's-head with a bone in his mouth than to either of these. God defend me from these two! 

OF COURSE, THAT IS MR. DARCY, WITH HIS FROWNS, HIS COMMENTS THAT JANE BENNET SMILES TOO MUCH, AND HE CERTAINLY GIVES THE APPEARANCE OF A DEATH'S HEAD WITH A BONE IN HIS MOUTH DURING THE FIRST HALF OF PRIDE & PREJUDICE WHEN HE FIRST COMES TO MERRY-TOWN (I.E., MERYTON) TO BEGIN HIS MERRY WAR WITH ELIZABETH BENNET!

AND THAT WAS AUSTEN SUITOR & HEROINE PAIR #2, NOW FOR THE BEST ONE, PAIR #3:

NERISSA  How say you by the French lord, Monsieur Le Bon?

PORTIA God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man. In truth, I know it is a sin to be a mocker: but, he! why, he hath a horse better than the Neapolitan's, a better bad habit of frowning than the Count Palatine; he is every man in no man; if a throstle sing, he falls straight A CAPERING: he will fence with his own shadow: if I should marry him, I should marry twenty husbands. If he would despise me I would forgive him, for if he love me to madness, I shall never requite him. 

AND OF COURSE THE PROTEAN MONSIEUR LE BON, WHO SEEMS TO CHANGE IDENTITIES AS OFTEN AS OTHER MEN CHANGE THEIR CLOTHES, IS REPRESENTED IN JANE AUSTEN'S FICTION BY THE PROTEAN HENRY CRAWFORD, WHO MAKES THE FOLLOWING COMMENT ABOUT HIMSELF:

"Oh for the Ecclesford theatre and scenery to try something with." Each sister could echo the wish; and Henry Crawford, to whom, in all the riot of his gratifications it was yet an untasted pleasure, was quite alive at the idea. "I really believe," said he, "I could be fool enough at this moment to undertake any character that ever was written, from Shylock or Richard III down to the singing hero of a farce in his scarlet coat and cocked hat. I feel as if I could be anything or everything; as if I could rant and storm, or sigh or CUT CAPERS, in any tragedy or comedy in the English language. Let us be doing something. Be it only half a play, an act, a scene; what should prevent us? Not these countenances, I am sure," looking towards the Miss Bertrams; "and for a theatre, what signifies a theatre? We shall be only amusing ourselves. Any room in this house might suffice."

DO YOU NOTICE THAT BOTH OF THESE PASSAGES (IN TMOV AND IN MP) REFER TO PLAYING MULTIPLE ROLES AND TO CAPERING? JANE AUSTEN MADE CERTAIN THAT READERS WHO COMPARED THESE PASSAGES WOULD RECOGNIZE THE BREAD CRUMBS. BUT FANNY PRICE, LIKE PORTIA, IS NOT SUFFICIENTLY ENAMORED OF PROTEAN CHARMS TO BE WILLING TO MARRY THESE SUITORS.

AND THAT WAS AUSTEN SUITOR & HEROINE PAIR #3, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. BUT...I PROMISED ONE OTHER INTERPRETIVE PAYOFF, AND I WILL PROVIDE IT SHORTLY, IN A BLOG POST OF ITS OWN---STAY TUNED! 

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Part One of the answers to my Austen-Shakespeare Quiz

"...there is another short passage---and I really mean short---it consists of less than thirty lines---in The Merchant of Venice, to which Jane Austen has, I claim, covertly alluded via not one, not two, but _three_ different characters from three _different_Austen novels!  Can you find this short passage in The Merchant of Venice? ....these three Austenian allusions...com[e] up bang, bang, bang, in rapid fire sequence in Shakespeare's text, and...the connection to the three Austen characters is salient, not obscure.  I.e., when you  spot the passage, you will know exactly what I mean, it's really hiding in plain sight, a truly bravura game of allusion played by Jane Austen. "


And here is that passage in The Merchant of Venice, in Act 1, Scene 2, when Nerissa asks Portia for Portia's opinion about three of the suitor who have come to Meryto---I mean, Belmont---to seek Portia's hand in marriage:

NERISSA   But what warmth is there in your affection towards any of these princely suitors that are already come?

PORTIA I pray thee, over-name them; and as thou namest them, I will describe them; and, according to my description, level at my affection.
NERISSA First, there is the Neapolitan prince.
PORTIA Ay, that's a colt indeed, for he doth nothing but talk of his horse; and he makes it a great appropriation to his own good parts, that he can shoe him himself. I am much afeard my lady his mother played false with a smith.
NERISSA Then there is the County Palatine.
PORTIA He doth nothing but frown, as who should say 'If you will not have me, choose:' he hears merry tales and smiles not: I fear he will prove the weeping philosopher when he grows old, being so full of unmannerly sadness in his youth. I had rather be married to a death's-head with a bone in his mouth than to either of these. God defend me from these two!
NERISSA  How say you by the French lord, Monsieur Le Bon?
PORTIA God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man. In truth, I know it is a sin to be a mocker: but, he! why, he hath a horse better than the Neapolitan's, a better bad habit of frowning than the Count Palatine; he is every man in no man; if a throstle sing, he falls straight a capering: he will fence with his own shadow: if I should marry him, I should marry twenty husbands. If he would despise me I would forgive him, for if he love me to madness, I shall never requite him.

So, now, Part Two of my quiz, which is much easier than Part One---which THREE Austen characters are based, in part, on the Neapolitan prince, the County Palatine, and Monsieur Le Bon, respectively?

If you need another hint, these three Austen characters are all suitors for the hand in marriage of three different Austen heroines!

Unless someone posts them here first, I will post the answers to Part Two tomorrow morning EST, along with a remarkable interpretive bonus payoff that relates to one of those three answers.

 

Cheers, 

Arnie

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Joe Paterno & Sir Thomas Bertram: Birds of a Feather in Mansfield Park and Happy Valley

What with this week's bombshell sickening revelations about the true extent of Joe Paterno's culpability in the overall picture of the Sandusky sexual abuse cases....

http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/8159195/report-says-penn-state-senior-officials-disregarded-children-welfare

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/sports/ncaafootball/joe-paterno-got-richer-contract-amid-jerry-sandusky-inquiry.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=sports

....and maybe we still have not heard it all......I have quickly shifted my view of Paterno from a sense of the tragedy of a great man who made one huge error of judgment that caused enormous suffering, to a sense of a profound hypocrite, a powerful man whose grandiosity made him think he was entitled to do, if not anything, at least a lot of things, in order to protect his own power and his own glory, and to hell with those victims thrown under the bus. I am finding it all too easy to revise my image of Paterno to that of  a profoundly clueless moral monster, who was capable of doing many good things in the world, but only, apparently, so long as he was very very well taken care of and his power and prestige were kept sacrosanct.

Again, unless some substantial and convincing rebuttal is made during the coming months to somehow blunt the force of Freeh's and these latest revelations about Joe Paterno, then I must forever alter my view of his legacy from what it had been just prior to the first Sandusky revelations.

And anyone who has read along in this blog over the past few years knows exactly whom Paterno, as we now begin to see his true colors, reminds me of---Sir Thomas Bertram, the closest thing in Jane Austen's moral universe to Joe Paterno.

Here is just a sampling of my prior investigations into the shadow story of Sir Thomas:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/02/sir-thomass-penetration.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/09/sir-thomas-bertram-priceless-man-of.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/02/sir-thomass-desperate-and-despotic_18.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/09/mousetrap-of-mansfield-park.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/02/sir-thomas-as-ghost-of-king-hamlet-and.html

What is most chilling is that at the base of both Sir Thomas's and Joe Paterno's twisted morality is the suppression and/or condonation of child abuse, and also monetary greed---so it seems that the old French expression, "Plus ca change..." applies here, as Jane Austen's portrait of a powerful hypocrite (tragically) still applies today as much as it ever did.

The moral rot in the "timbers" of "Mansfield Park" continues, it seems...in "Happy Valley".

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

An Austen-Shakespeare Quiz in honor of the sale of Jane Austen's Turquoise Ring

By now, every Janeite has heard about the sale at auction of Jane Austen's turquoise ring for over $236,000 (U.S.).

In honor of that fresh testament to the relentless escalation of Austenmania to even further dizzying heights, I am pulling out of my own box of "most precious treasures" a rare sleuthing jewel that I've recently salvaged from the deep, which (first hint!) has an indirect connection to Jane Austen's turquoise ring!

But, to make it more fun, I will present a quiz about it first, and then give the answer if no one gets it within a few days.

Here it is, it's very simple---not long ago, Anielka brought forward the keen observation that a turquoise ring plays a small but salient role in the action of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice (TMOV), when Jessica steals her father's turquoise ring and (by the report of Tubal) sells it in exchange for a monkey, the news of which throws her father Shylock into a rage.

And at the time, I responded as follows in Austen L (and, more recently in my blog):

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2012/07/turquoise-rings-of-jane-austen-shylock.html

In that blog post, I suggested a startling connection between Shylock's deathly rage against Jessica and Mr. Collins's deathly condolences.

But..there is another short passage---and I really mean short---it consists of less than thirty lines---in The Merchant of Venice, to which Jane Austen has, I claim, covertly alluded via not one, not two, but _three_ different characters from three _different_ Austen novels!

Can you find this short passage in The Merchant of Venice?

Before anyone says that you are not good at spotting hidden allusions, take encouragement----my considered opinion is that, in this instance, _any_ knowledgeable Janeite who reads through the text of Shakespeare's play slowly and carefully has more than a fighting chance of spotting these three Austenian allusions, because of their coming up bang, bang, bang, in rapid fire sequence in Shakespeare's text, and because the connection to the three Austen characters is salient, not obscure.  I.e., when you  spot the passage, you will know exactly what I mean, it's really hiding in plain sight, a truly bravura game of allusion played by Jane Austen.

So, good luck, and I will await any answers.....

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

The Turquoise Rings of Jane Austen & Shylock (and the allusion to Shylock hidden in plain sight in Pride & Prejudice)

A few weeks ago, Anielka Briggs wrote the following in Janeites & Austen-L about JA's turquoise ring (the one that just sold at auction for an astronomical amount):  

"Interestingly Austen is singularly restrained in the mention or description of jewellery, unlike Shakespeare who adorns his characters quite specifically with pearls, opals and rubies and even the occasional turquoise ring (Merchant of Venice)...If a turquoise ring held any significance in the long eighteenth century it was much more likely to be remembered as the ring Jessica exchanges for a monkey."

I replied as follows:

Excellent sleuthing, Anielka! I can vouch from prior research that The Merchant of Venice (TMOV) was most definitely on Jane Austen's radar screen, but I never realized that a real life turquoise ring (or at least a turquoise-colored ring) belonging to JA might be yet another link to The Merchant of Venice--one which, upon examination, leads to a remarkable allusion to Shakespeare's Shylock hidden in plain sight in Pride & Prejudice!

But first--thinking of JA's wearing a turquoise ring makes me wonder whether JA enjoyed thinking of herself as a real life Jessica, a transgressive daughter. That JA's ring might in some way be associated with Leah's ring from TMOV is particularly intriguing to me because JA made a strong veiled allusion to Shakespeare's Jessica (after she has snuck away from her father's house) in one of JA's Emma-era letters when she describes to CEA some witty sophisticated wordplay on "every sort of wickedness" with the clever apothecary Haden.

And further consideration led me to realize there was a Pride & Prejudice
connection to TMOV, mediated by Fanny Burney and her novel, Cecilia. See my previous blog post in which I wrote about Burney herself as a real life Jessica (in the eyes of Daddy Crisp, at least), and Cecilia (of course already previously well-recognized as an allusive source for P&P) as alluding to TMOV:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/12/jewish-subtext-of-burneys-cecilia-as.html

But now I can add yet another layer to the allusion to Jessica in P&P. And
I bet I can make you see it, too, without even telling you what it is:

First, look at the disturbing passage in III.1 of TMOV right before Tubal
reports to Shylock about the turquoise ring:

Shylock. How now, Tubal! what news from Genoa? hast thou found my daughter?

Tubal. I often came where I did hear of her, but cannot find her.

Shylock. Why, there, there, there, there! a diamond gone,  cost me two
thousand ducats in Frankfort! The curse never fell upon our nation till
now; I never felt it till now: two thousand ducats in that; and other
precious, precious jewels. I would my daughter were dead at my foot, and
the jewels in her ear! would she were hearsed at my foot, and the ducats
in her coffin! No news of them? Why, so: and I know not what's spent in
the search: why, thou loss upon loss! the thief gone with so much, and so
much to find the thief; and no satisfaction, no revenge: nor no in luck
stirring but what lights on my shoulders; no sighs but of my breathing; no
tears but of my shedding.

Doesn't Shylock's shocking wish for his transgressive daughter's death remind every Janeite of an equally disturbing passage in P&P? a passage (to give a hint), in which a moralistic male character passes harsh punitive moral judgment on a young woman who has run away from her father's house?

Of course, I am talking about the following infamous letter written by Mr. Collins about Lydia eloping with Wickham:

"I feel myself called upon, by our relationship, and my situation in life, to condole with you on the grievous affliction you are now suffering under, of which we were yesterday informed by a letter from Hertfordshire. Be assured, my dear sir, that Mrs. Collins and myself sincerely sympathise with you and all your respectable family, in your present distress, which must be of the bitterest kind, because proceeding from a cause which no time can remove. No arguments shall be wanting on my part that can alleviate so severe a misfortune—or that may comfort you, under a circumstance that must be of all others the most afflicting to a parent's mind......

[And here's the "tell"]

...The death of your daughter would have been a blessing in comparison of this.   [!!!]
And it is the more to be lamented, because there is reason to suppose as my dear Charlotte informs me, that this licentiousness of behaviour in your daughter has proceeded from a faulty degree of indulgence; though, at the same time, for the consolation of yourself and Mrs. Bennet, I am inclined to think that her own disposition must be naturally bad, or she could not be guilty of such an enormity, at so early an age. Howsoever that may be, you are grievously to be pitied...."

Isn't it wonderful (and thought provoking) to think outside the box in this way, to think of Mr. Collins as having a strong scent of Shylock hidden in him? Just as TMOV challenges us to think about the nature of Christian forgiveness, so too does JA, when we later hear Mr. Bennet revisit the topic _after_ Lydia's elopement has been "sanitized":

"...Mr. Collins moreover adds, 'I am truly rejoiced that my cousin Lydia's sad business has been so well hushed up, and am only concerned that their living together before the marriage took place should be so generally known. I must not, however, neglect the duties of my station, or refrain from declaring my amazement at hearing that you received the young couple into your house as soon as they were married. It was an encouragement of vice; and had I been the rector of Longbourn, I should very strenuously have opposed it. You ought certainly to forgive them, as a Christian, but never to admit them in your sight, or allow their names to be mentioned in your hearing.' That is his notion of Christian forgiveness!..."

Indeed, Mr. Bennet!

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

P.S. re Jane Bennet sings Les Miz and Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head

In Janeites, Nancy Mayer just wrote "Some very good sleuthing about word definitions" in reference to my immediately preceding post a short while ago under the above Subject Line:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2012/07/jane-bennet-sings-les-miz-and-raindrops.html

Nancy, thank you very much! It happens that I was about to post a brief followup to that post, to bring forward one additional and (I think) very compelling and validating bit of textual evidence.

To set the stage properly, for those who do not wish to refer back to that previous post, I will repeat only the last portion here:

"And by the way, if you were wondering, there are also a handful of usages of that word [misery/miserable] in JA’s _letters_, and one of them, it turns out, is startlingly and significantly altered in meaning by that same ambiguity. To wit: Letter 59, 10/14-15/08 to CEA, written upon the tragic occasion of the death in childbirth of Elizabeth Austen Knight, reads, in part, as follows: “…& poor Edward restless in MISERY going from one room to the other…perhaps not seldom upstairs to see all that remains of his Elizabeth—Dearest Fanny must now look upon herself as his prime source of comfort, his dearest friend…”
Surely all Janeites who’ve read that passage about Edward’s “misery” have interpreted that misery as describing the predictable grief of any husband upon the sudden death, in agony, of any prematurely deceased wife. But I believe, based on the ambiguous usages of “miserable” and “misery” in JA’s novels, that JA, in October 1808, intended it to also include that added layer of “repentance”. I.e., JA’s moral judgment was that Edward’s expected grief ought to have been magnified by his knowledge that Elizabeth had died because _he_ had made her pregnant for the dozenth time during her all-too-short life! This interpretation is especially likely in light of JA’s well documented hobby horse about women dying in childbirth which I have written about countless times, and which, I’ve asserted for over three years now, is the core theme of the shadow story of Northanger Abbey and its ghostly heroine, Mrs. Tilney.
And so, in a very real sense, Edward Austen was the “Mrs. Bennet” of this real life horror story, having been the reckless instigator of his wife’s premature death, and Elizabeth was the victimized “Jane”! And, as I write this, it gives me a shiver to connect the dots from this textual interpretation to another longstanding interpretation, whereby a woman getting caught in the rain was a Freudian metaphor (entirely intentional on JA’s part) for a woman getting pregnant! So, this ambiguity of the word “misery” supports the claim I made to the SW California branch of JASNA last December, which is that Jane Bennet’s “illness” was caused by “rain” which dropped from a man, not from the sky--and hence the second part of my cryptic Subject Line!"

A few moments ago, after rereading my previous post to make sure I caught any errors that might have escaped my notice while writing it, it occurred to me to do additional word searches which it had not occurred to me to do sooner----within JA's novels, I searched for any passages containing both "restless" and "misery"; then both "restless" and "miserable"; then both "restlessly" and "miserable". It turned out that the third was the lucky charm, because I was taken to the following passage in Chapter 12 of Northanger Abbey, which, because I found the above quoted passage in Letter 59 about brother Edward near the end of my earlier sleuthing, I had not realized that both such passages contained variants of those two search terms:

"On the beginning of the fifth [act of the play], however, the sudden view of Mr. Henry Tilney and his father, joining a party in the opposite box, recalled her to anxiety and distress. The stage could no longer excite genuine merriment—no longer keep her whole attention. Every other look upon an average was directed towards the opposite box; and, for the space of two entire scenes, did she thus watch Henry Tilney, without being once able to catch his eye. No longer could he be suspected of indifference for a play; his notice was never withdrawn from the stage during two whole scenes. At length, however, he did look towards her, and he bowed—but such a bow! No smile, no continued observance attended it; his eyes were immediately returned to their former direction. Catherine was RESTLESSLY MISERABLE; she could almost have run round to the box in which he sat and FORCED HIM TO HEAR HER EXPLANATION. Feelings rather natural than heroic possessed her; instead of considering her own dignity injured by this ready condemnation—instead of proudly resolving, in conscious innocence, to show her resentment towards him who could harbour a doubt of it, to leave to him all the trouble of seeking an explanation, and to enlighten him on the past only by avoiding his sight, or flirting with somebody else—she took to herself all the shame of misconduct, or at least of its appearance, and was only eager for an opportunity of explaining its cause."

So, here we have a usage of "restlessly miserable" in NA which, like "poor Edward restless in misery", is plausibly interpretable as referring to misery as repentance! However, whereas in Letter 59, the repentance is tragic, arising out of a death that occurred only because of the recklessness of the penitent, in NA the repentance is _comic_, arising out of trivial apparent “misconduct” on Catherine's behalf, which Catherine wished to explain to the Tilneys--and that trivial misconduct was that she missed their appointment the previous day because Thorpe had (basically) kidnapped her! Catherine felt guilty even though she knew she wasn’t culpable, because she was so desperate to be back in Henry's good graces, which of course she does achieve, once they speak and she melts his heart with her artless goodness and affection.

But even though the one usage from real life is tragic, and the one from fiction is comic, what does it tell us that JA used that virtually identical pairing of words---“restlessly miserable” in NA and”restless in misery” in Letter 59? I say that it's NO coincidence at all that this comic passage occurs in NA, which, as I stated at the end of my previous post, was _the_ epicenter of JA’s death in childbirth theme, which of course is exactly what JA is suggesting Edward ought to feel "miserable" (i.e., repentant) about!

Since I know I am not psychic, and I had no conscious awareness whatsoever of this parallelism until the search engine showed it to me, I find this to be rather extraordinary validation of my interpretation of JA's _intentional_ exploitation of the ambiguity of "miserable" and "misery", in particular my explosive claim that JA was making a strong, but veiled, moral condemnation of brother Edward, blaming him for the death-in-childbirth of his wife Elizabeth!

And....as I revealed in my presentation at the JASNA AGM in October 2009 in Portland, the unnamed play that Henry and Catherine are watching, which so rivets Henry's attention, is _another_ story in which a "ghost" haunts the protagonist----Hamlet!

Cheers, ARNIE
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