Inferring Jane Austen’s Machiavellian Textual Implications in Sense & Sensibility

The other day, I read the following very interesting Austenian discussion at an academic blog:

http://bridgingtheunbridgeable.com/2013/10/17/jane-austen-and-imply-and-infer/

Jane Austen and imply and infer  (by Ingrid Tieken):

“K.C. Phillipps, in his book Jane Austen’s English (1970), identified a usage problem in Jane Austen’s language: “The one usage to which the purist might object is INFER in the sense of ‘imply’, though the OED has several instances of this:

“…an alacrity and cheerfulness which seemed to INFER that she could taste no greater delight. (S&S).” Analysing Jane Austen’s language for my forthcoming book on the language of her letters, I learnt that her usage should never be underestimated, so I wonder if she did this deliberately. Any views on this?”

END QUOTE

As those who read my posts regularly already know, I could not agree more with Tieken (a distinguished Dutch scholar of  “sociohistorical linguistics”) in her final assertion that JA’s “usage should never been underestimated”-and, indeed, as I will show below, Tieken’s acute intuition as to JA’s “erroneous” usage of “infer” was spot-on that JA  “did this deliberately”! Turns out, upon close examination, JA really did want her readers to (1) notice the error, (2) wonder why it might have been planted in Chapter 23, and then (3) realize that this “error” actually was a giant, subliminal, and diabolically clever clue pointing to the word puzzle at the heart of S&S!

Before reading further, can you guess what it is?

Hint: It’s something a word puzzle I have written about many times.

Scroll down for my answer whenever you wish….

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In a nutshell, my explanation for the textual crux detected by Tieken in Ch. 23 of S&S is that Jane Austen deliberately used the erroneous “inFER” in that passage instead of  the  correct “imply”, so as to draw the attention of a very sharp reader (like Phillipps in 1970) to that passage, which was all about Lucy Steele, and to  plant a subliminal clue, via the syllable “FER”  to Lucy’s future married name, Lucy FERrars, which, as I have been asserting since 2005, is a word puzzle for “LUCIFER”!:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2013/08/she-smiled-and-said-how-she-had-changed.html

Think I’m reaching too far this time? Well, read on and see how this example fits perfectly into the matrix of subliminal allusion to “Lucifer” which I last summarized in the above-linked August 2013 blog post of mine.

First, here is the full context in Ch. 23, chez Middleton, which shows that it really is all about Lucy: 

“They all rose up in preparation for a round game.

“I am glad," said Lady Middleton to Lucy, "you are not going to finish poor little Annamaria's basket this evening; for I am sure it must hurt your eyes to work filigree by candlelight. And we will make the dear little love some amends for her disappointment to-morrow, and then I hope she will not much mind it."

This hint was enough, Lucy recollected herself instantly and replied, "Indeed you are very much mistaken, Lady Middleton; I am only waiting to know whether you can make your party without me, or I should have been at my filigree already. I would not disappoint the little angel for all the world: and if you want me at the card-table now, I am resolved to finish the basket after supper."

"You are very good, I hope it won't hurt your eyes—will you ring the bell for some working candles? My poor little girl would be sadly disappointed, I know, if the basket was not finished tomorrow, for though I told her it certainly would not, I am sure she depends upon having it done."

Lucy directly drew her work table near her and reseated herself with an alacrity and cheerfulness which seemed to INFER that she could taste no greater delight than in making a filigree basket for a spoilt child.”   END QUOTE

I did some quick word searching in JA’s novels, and determined that Jane Austen used “imply” correctly on over a dozen occasions, and, similarly, that she used “infer” correctly on over a dozen occasions, including a few examples of each in S&S itself. The single solitary exception was the erroneous usage identified by Phillipps in 1970.

This overwhelming pattern of correct grammatical usage makes it very improbable that Jane Austen made a grammatical error. So the only possibility other than intentional error would be an error of proofreading, in which the printer erred in transcribing JA’s manuscript, and then she failed to detect the error.

Here’s why I am convinced it was intentional and thematic.

Check out the following textual snippets from the very end of Chapter  22, and then in Chapter 23 prior to the above passage with the error:

“Marianne, who had never much toleration for any thing like impertinence, vulgarity, INFERIORITY of parts, or even difference of taste from herself, was at this time particularly ill-disposed, from the state of her spirits, to be pleased with the Miss Steeles, or to encourage their advances…

…Could he ever be tolerably happy with Lucy Steele; could he, were his affection for herself out of the question, with his integrity, his delicacy, and well-informed mind, be satisfied with a wife like her—illiterate, artful, and selfish?

The youthful infatuation of nineteen would naturally blind him to every thing but her beauty and good nature; but the four succeeding years—years, which if rationally spent, give such improvement to the understanding, must have opened his eyes to her defects of education, while the same period of time, spent on her side in INFERIOR society and more frivolous pursuits, had perhaps robbed her of that simplicity which might once have given an interesting character to her beauty.

If in the supposition of his seeking to marry herself, his difficulties from his mother had seemed great, how much greater were they now likely to be, when the object of his engagement was undoubtedly INFERIOR in connections, and probably INFERIOR in fortune to herself. These difficulties, indeed, with a heart so alienated from Lucy, might not press very hard upon his patience; but melancholy was the state of the person by whom the expectation of family opposition and unkindness, could be felt as a relief!

… Lucy directly drew her work table near her and reseated herself with an alacrity and cheerfulness which seemed to infer that she could taste no greater delight than in making a filigree basket for a spoilt child. Lucy directly drew her work table near her and reseated herself with an alacrity and cheerfulness which seemed to INFER that she could taste no greater delight than in making a filigree basket for a spoilt child.

… And so well was she able to answer her own expectations, that when she joined them at dinner only two hours after she had first sufFERed the extinction of all her dearest hopes, no one would have supposed from the appearance of the sisters, that Elinor was mourning in secret over obstacles which must divide her for ever from the object of her love, and that Marianne was internally dwelling on the perfections of a man, of whose whole heart she felt thoroughly possessed, and whom she expected to see in every carriage which drove near their house….Much as she had sufFERed from her first conversation with Lucy on the subject, she soon felt an earnest wish of renewing it; and this for more reasons than one.

My ALL CAPS references in the above passages make clear, I hope, that Jane Austen has gone out of her way to use the phoneme “fer” numerous times in a short textual interval leading up to the erroneous use of  “infer”—four references to Lucy’s being “inferior” and two references to Elinor’s “suffering” at Lucy’s hands. The subliminal message, I suggest, is that Lucy is going to be a “Ferrars” sometime soon. And what better place in the entire novel for JA to present this clue to Lucy’s future married name than right after Lucy has chosen, with Luciferian cunning, to inform Elinor about Lucy’s secret engagement to Elinor’s beloved Edward FERrars!

And, best of all, this error fits perfectly with JA’s having Lucy speak in extremely ungrammatical English! It is Lucy’s apparent poor command of English, born of a lack of education, which makes Elinor feel so intellectually superior to Lucy, and so mystified by Edward’s attraction to Lucy. Guess where the definitive narrative discussion of this point is located—in the very same passage I quoted above, which discusses Lucy’s “inferiority”!!

And so I suggest further to you that just as Harriet Smith plays dumb with Emma, and speaks ungrammatically as a key technique for triggering a snobbish elitist response from Emma, so too does Lucy Steele play dumb, and use poor grammar as a Luciferian misdirection and disguise. And, one more layer---the misdirecting wordgames played by Jane Austen are mirroring Lucy’s misdirections in courtship strategy, wheels within wheels within wheels!

In short, then, I hope I’ve convinced you of the wisdom of drawing the inference that Jane Austen intentionally misused “infer” to subliminally reveal her own “Luciferian” nature and strategic manipulation of the arc of the novel!

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Jane Austen’s Veiled Allusions to her Historically Significant Ancestors…From TWO DIFFERENT CENTURIES!

In July 2012, when Frank Austen descendant Ron Dunning unveiled his comprehensive online Austen genealogy….

http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=AHN&db=janeausten&id=I128

…I posted a reply in Austen L and in my blog…

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2012/07/pride-prejudices-astonishing-connection.html

http://listserv.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind1207d&L=austen-l&T=0&F=&S=&P=176

…in which I pointed out that I had previously (while researching a historical source for Pride & Prejudice) been led by Google to an entry in Ron’s genealogy site, while still in its “beta” stage. The entry I was led to was amazing to me, because it reflected the marriage of a real life DE BURGH to a real life DARCY in Ireland early in the 14^th century!

As I recounted in my 2012 blog post, it took me a minute to grasp the full significance of this, which is that if Ron’s genealogy was factually correct, then Jane Austen must have been aware--somehow, some way--of the genealogical linkage to herself of that couple who married 4 ½ centuries before her birth! And her lineage connection was the perfect complement to the literary allusion by Jane Austen which, as I said, I had already detected and which had led me to cross paths with Ron’s website in the first place.

Skip ahead now to a few hours ago, when I revisited this topic, as I was getting ready to post about Janine Barchas’s remarkable new book, Matters of Fact in Jane Austen. Imagine my happy surprise when I learned from Googling that Ron had actually, in March 2013, published an oblique answer to my above-described July 2012 post—here is the link to Ron’s guest post at Austen-L’s Deb Barnum’s website:

http://janeausteninvermont.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/what-jane-knew-a-1329-darcy-de-bourgh-marriage-in-jane-austens-family-tree/

The part that was Ron’s answer to my July 2012 post was as follows:

“I’m against making any assumption based on slim evidence, but I’m about to make two; first of all, concerning a great coincidence about which Jane can’t have known anything. In 1329 a marriage took place between John Darcy, 1st Lord Darcy of Knaith, and Joan de Burgh. (The spelling doesn’t matter – even up to the 18th century spellings hadn’t been fully standardised.) Joan’s father Richard de Burgh, 2nd Earl of Ulster, was a direct ancestor of Mrs Austen through her brother John. Last summer when my Akin to Jane [ www.janeaustensfamily.co.uk ] website was launched, one or two people, with admirable perseverance, trawled through my separate family tree [http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~janeausten] and on discovering this marriage, insisted that Jane must have known. I was never in any doubt that she couldn’t possibly have known. This was also the opinion of the only other person who has studied the Austen pedigree extensively, Anielka Briggs.”  END QUOTE

And now I have the opportunity to make the following belated reply to Ron:

First, I thank Ron for answering the question I wanted to know the answer to, and couldn’t quite figure out from his website, which was, “How exactly was Jane Austen descended from that 1329 marriage of a Darcy and a de Burgh?”--- From the quoted passage, above, if I understand him correctly, Ron claims that Jane Austen’s mother was descended from the 14th century Joan de Burgh’s brother John.  

Second, Ron seemed emphatic in the rest of his post in asserting that Jane Austen just couldn’t have known about that 1329 marriage, because, basically, the peerage books JA had access to did not have any de Bourghs in them, and the lineage included several “invisible” matrilineal links.

While I already had my independent reasons for being sure that JA was aware of that marriage, imagine my pleased surprise when I learned from Janine Barchas’s Matters of Fact in JA, of  a specific source from whom Jane Austen might have learnt of her lineal relation back to that significantly-named 14th century couple. Read on to find out who it was who told Jane Austen about her de Burgh ancestry.

Who Told Jane Austen About Her de Burgh Ancestry?

A week and a half ago, I had the pleasure of hearing the fantastic plenary address given by Janine Barchas at the recently concluded JASNA AGM in Minneapolis, in which Janine spoke about a variety of astonishing historical allusions in Jane Austen’s novels--which were only a taste of the numerous such connections that she drew in her recent critically acclaimed book.

The highlight of Janine’s address was the following cluster of genealogical facts, which are unpacked in more detail in her book, and which I will briefly quote here:

“The history of [the great estate] of Wentworth Woodhouse in Yorkshire…dates back to at least the 13th century, when Robert Wentworth married a rich heiress named Emma Wodehouse. Their Yorkshire family so prospered that in 1611 its senior line achieved a baronetcy under James I, while the sister of the first baronet married the heir of the wealthy D’Arcy family.  The eldest son of that same first baronet was Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, the ill fated minister of Charles I. …When Thomas Wentworth was executed,… the Wentworth Woodhouse estate was confiscated. With the Restoration, however, it was returned to his eldest son, William Wentworth,…[who] died without issue in 1695, [then it all went] to the children of his sister Anne Wentworth, wife to the head of the Watson family. In Dec. 1750, when Charles Watson, heir to these princely estates, succeeded his father as second Marquess of Rockingham, he became one of wealthiest peers in England. Charles Watson-Wentworth…was twice P.M. but died childless in 1782—[that led to a reversion to the Fitzwilliams during JA’s childhood. –Donald Greene noticed all this in 1953, but did not realize what he had found.] …Egerton Brydges himself claimed that his ‘male stock’ was ‘baronial from the Conquest; ascending…to Johannes De Burgo (Monoculu), found also of the House of De Burgh.’ Thus, Austen’s own relations claimed a kind of de Bourgh pedigree.” END QUOTE from Barchas

Did you notice that last part, about Egerton Brydges claiming descent from “the House of De Burgh”? What I infer from that juicy factoid is that JA could easily have heard about her own ancestry from a 14th century de Burgh through the Steventon gossip network! I.e., her very close older friend, Madam Lefroy, was the beloved elder sister of Egerton Brydges, a man who obviously knew that de Burgh lineage very well indeed in order to be able to claim his own descent from same! And from his lips to his sister’s ears, to Jane Austen’s ears, would have been a very short and predictable journey for information about Jane Austen’s own lineage from that same “House of de Burgh”!

But that’s only half of the Jane Austen ancestral gold I’ve mined today. Read on for the other half.

 

Who Told ME About Jane Austen’s Wentworth/Darcy Lineage?

Let’s now return to the rest of Janine Barchas’s above-quoted cluster of extraordinary historical name allusions in Jane Austen’s novels.  At the AGM, as Janine stated in response to the repeated gasps from the audience which each succeeding factoid elicited, she did not make any of this up! There really were 16th century intermarried Wentworths, Darcys, Wodehouses, and Watsons to whom JA clearly had alluded in (at least) four of her fictional works.

During the Q&A, knowing what I already knew before about the 14^th century Darcy-de Burgh marriage in Jane Austen’s lineage, as well as other relevant historical allusions I had found in JA’s novels, I posed the following logical question to Janine:

Was Janine’s wealthy D’Arcy heir who married a Wentworth heiress in Yorkshire in the 16^th century also part of the Austen family tree? Janine did not know the answer, but I knew just where to look for it.

And today, I was indeed able to answer that question myself—and I was able to do it in the blink of an eye, using… of course, Ron Dunning’s Austen genealogy!

It’s surprising that Ron himself did not connect these dots, given that he has been aware of Barchas’s book for a while. In his March 2013 post, he wrote:

“Janine Barchas, in her Matters of Fact in Jane Austen, speculates that she, in choosing the names of Darcy, Wentworth, Woodhouse, FitzWilliam, Tilney, etc., was alluding “to actual high-profile politicians and contemporary celebrities as well as to famous historical figures and landed estates.” In the words of Juliet McMaster in the blurb, she was “a confirmed name dropper who subtly manipulates the celebrity culture of her day.” END QUOTE

And yet even as Ron mentioned these names, he did not point to his own genealogy, which showed that JA was not merely a name dropper for celebrities, she was also, in this later historical marriage as with the 1329 marriage of a de Burgh and Darcy, a name dropper for celebrities…who also happened to be part of her family lineage!

In short, Ron’s website is where I found the following entry for the very same Michael Darcy who, per Barchas, had married Margaret Wentworth circa 1578:

http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=janeausten&id=I12789

But I do have one more question I would love to know the answer to, and Ron’s the one who would know it. It’s the exact same question I had about that 1329 marriage, which Barchas’s book answered for me.

I.e., how exactly does Jane Austen’s lineage trace back to Michael Darcy & Margaret Wentworth? 

Janine’s explanation for JA having alluded to this dense cluster of rich Yorkshire aristocrats was that Jane Austen was an acute observer and scholar of celebrity culture, and so her attention was drawn to those families by who they were in English society and history.

I hope you’ll agree that in my post today, I’ve added to those very strong motivations the additional personal motivation that JA was also family to them!

Note the contrast of personalities. Egerton Brydges indulged his personal genealogical obsession in a very overt manner—because he really believed he had greater value as a human being because of the accident of his birth into a particular lineage. Whereas Jane Austen, who knew Brydges’s belief system to be absurd, and knew that personal worth was a matter of the content of a person’s character, could playfully parody his obsession by playfully hiding her own aristocratic lineage in plain sight in her novels!

And the proof’s in the pudding. Jane Austen will be famous forever because of her genius at fiction writing, whereas Egerton Brydges is only remembered today as a bit player on the grand stage of Jane Austen’s biography.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

“And the Dirt Came Out”, “And Smelt So, Pah!” & “O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven” The Big Poopture on Jane Austen’s Biblical & Shakespearean “Dirt”

 Inspired by a brilliant insight by Diana Birchall two weeks ago…..

http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind1309d&L=austen-l&T=0&F=&S=&P=605

…as to the organic post-digestive origin (to put it delicately) of the “mud” on Lizzy Bennet’s petticoat after she walks through the lanes, stiles, and meadows en route ot Netherfield early in Pride & Prejudice, I, during the past two weeks, posted six variations on Diana’s theme, making a comprehensive, multi-faceted argument for Jane Austen having alluded not only in P&P, but also in Emma and Persuasion, to poop---mostly but not all of the equine variety--on both the rural paths and the urban streets where her heroines:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2013/09/jane-austens-hilarious-dirty-jokes-in.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2013/09/jane-austens-comedy-of-manures-re-odors.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2013/09/unless-you-keep-on-footpath-mr.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2013/09/mr-woodhouse-and-sir-walter-elliot.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2013/10/miss-batess-solicitude-for-their-shoes.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2013/10/jane-austen-mistress-of-poop.html

What I did not attempt till today, however, was to determine whether JA, serial alluder that she was, had any literary antecedents which inspired her to use “dirt” as code for “poop” in her writing. Given that her two most favorite literary sources were Shakespeare and the Bible, I started there, by the simple expedient of searching the word “dirt” in databases for those respective sources, and I struck gold (of the intellectual variety) in both cases, gold which, as you will see by the end of my tale, is interconnected!

BIBLICAL DIRT

Judges 3:12-30 of the Hebrew Bible, the brief tale of Ehud and Eglon, is not long, so I will reproduce it in full, here (from King James Version, the one Jane Austen would have had at hand). I have set apart in the middle of this chapter the line which uses the word “dirt” as code for “poop”:

And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the LORD: and the LORD strengthened Eglon the king of Moab against Israel, because they had done evil in the sight of the LORD. And he gathered unto him the children of Ammon and Amalek, and went and smote Israel, and possessed the city of palm trees. So the children of Israel served Eglon the king of Moab eighteen years. But when the children of Israel cried unto the LORD, the LORD raised them up a deliverer, Ehud the son of Gera, a Benjamite, a man lefthanded: and by him the children of Israel sent a present unto Eglon the king of Moab. But Ehud made him a dagger which had two edges, of a cubit length; and he did gird it under his raiment upon his right thigh. And he brought the present unto Eglon king of Moab: and Eglon was a very fat man. And when he had made an end to offer the present, he sent away the people that bare the present. But he himself turned again from the quarries that were by Gilgal, and said, I have a secret errand unto thee, O king: who said, Keep silence. And all that stood by him went out from him. And Ehud came unto him; and he was sitting in a summer parlour, which he had for himself alone. And Ehud said, I have a message from God unto thee. And he arose out of his seat. And Ehud put forth his left hand, and took the dagger from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly

And the haft also went in after the blade; and the fat closed upon the blade, so that he could not draw the dagger out of his belly; AND THE DIRT CAME OUT.

Then Ehud went forth through the porch, and shut the doors of the parlour upon him, and locked them. When he was gone out, his servants came; and when they saw that, behold, the doors of the parlour were locked, they said, Surely he covereth his feet in his summer chamber. And they tarried till they were ashamed: and, behold, he opened not the doors of the parlour; therefore they took a key, and opened them: and, behold, their lord was fallen down dead on the earth. And Ehud escaped while they tarried, and passed beyond the quarries, and escaped unto Seirath.  And it came to pass, when he was come, that he blew a trumpet in the mountain of Ephraim, and the children of Israel went down with him from the mount, and he before them. And he said unto them, Follow after me: for the LORD hath delivered your enemies the Moabites into your hand. And they went down after him, and took the fords of Jordan toward Moab, and suffered not a man to pass over. And they slew of Moab at that time about ten thousand men, all lusty, and all men of valour; and there escaped not a man. So Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel. And the land had rest fourscore years.  END QUOTE

Simply and tactfully put, the phrase “and the dirt came out” was the translator’s discreet way of saying that when Ehud stabbed Eglon to death, Eglon involuntarily defecated as he died. My point is simple—the code word for poop that the translator chose, which was the word every reader of the story of Eglon and Ehud in the King James Bible would have seen, was DIRT. 

HAMLET’S DIRT

In Act 5, Scene 1, of Hamlet, Hamlet considers human mortality very closely indeed, as he chats with Horatio, and they observe the Gravediggers (getting ready, as it turns out, for Ophelia’s interment). Hamlet reflects on the odor and the dirt of the undiscovered country we all, emperor, lawyer and common man, must eventually arrive at:

Hamlet: There's another: why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the sconce with a DIRTY shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery? Hum! This fellow might be in's time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries: is this the fine of his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have HIS FINE PATE FULL OF FINE DIRT? Will his vouchers vouch him no more of his purchases, and double ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair of indentures? The very conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in this box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?

….

Hamlet: …Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.

Horatio: What's that, my lord?

Hamlet: Dost thou think Alexander looked o' this fashion i' the earth?

Horatio: E'en so.

Hamlet: AND SMELT SO? PAH!

Puts down the skull

Horatio: E'en so, my lord.

Hamlet: To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it STOPPING A BUNG-HOLE?

Horatio: 'Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.

I always laugh out loud when reading Horatio’s marvelously understated graveside humor in that last riposte to Hamlet. It reminds me of the other line of Horatio’s that also makes me laugh every time ---his response to Hamlet’s report that “There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark But he's an arrant knave”:

“There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave To tell us this.”

But I quoted the above passage from Hamlet 5.1 not (just) to make you laugh, but to show that Hamlet uses the word “dirt” twice in Hamlet’s first quoted speech, the latter of them referring to the contents of a skull; and then, in the exchange with Horatio that follows shortly thereafter, Hamlet comments on the foul smell of a skull he is holding, and then in effect connects that smell to a graphic image of human remains as being relocated to just inside a human rear end.

So, there is, I claim, a second major, world-famous literary source and inspiration for JA to use “dirt” as code for “poop” in her novels.

CONCLUSION

Even though the above would have been probative enough, the capper of these two allusive sources is that I had already previously determined, during my extensive research on Hamlet some years ago, that Shakespeare very consciously and spectacularly alluded to this same episode of Eglon and Ehud, in Act 3, Scene 3 of Hamlet, when Hamlet contemplates Claudius alone in his “closet”, and debates whether to kill Claudius then, or to wait (and of course he makes the latter choice). 

Claudius begins his famous soliloquy with the line “O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven”—I don’t think I need to explain to anyone how that connects to the tale of Eglon and Ehud!

So, to sum up, I suggest that both Hamlet, with its full Second Quarto published in 1603, and its First Folio version in 1623, and the King James Bible published in 1611 after 7 years of work, are both using the word “dirt” to refer to poop, in a coordinated manner, and there are no two works of literature with which Jane Austen was more familiar, I assert, than those two.

But it turned out that it did  need a scholar come from the Internet to tell you all that Jane Austen used “dirt” as code for “poop” in several of her novels, but particularly in Emma and Persuasion, and she was in doing so very slyly alluding to the Bible and Shakespeare!

Which also tells you what I think about the current universal opinion that JA (or Shakespeare, for that matter) would never have engaged in such a sacrilegious enterprise! I say, she, like Shakespeare, felt it was her sacred right as an author of fine literature to appropriate what she needed from the amazing literary source known as the Bible, including its graphically profane as well as its ethereally holy content.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter