“You cannot have been always at Longbourn…”: The Hidden “Vingt-Un” Code That Reveals the Secret of Pride & Prejudice & its Heroine/Orphan/Heiress, Elizabeth Bennet

What is today, December 16, 2013, to Janeites? Of course, as you all have probably been reminded several times already by emails, it is Jane Austen's 238th birthday, our favorite novelist having been born on December 16, 1775. And it is a special Jane Austen birthday, because it signals the impending end of the bicentennial of her most famous, most popular, most beloved novel—Pride & Prejudice.

So today, in recognition of such a portentous intersection of Jane Austen’s real life and Jane Austen’s fiction, I’d like to bring you something really special, a subtextual treat that has been brewing in my imagination for the past few days, which came to a boil this morning when I woke up, as often is the case with my adventures with the Jane Austen Code.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Theseus explains why dreaming is so integral to understanding of subtextually rich, suggestive art like Jane Austen’s fiction:

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact

Today I will share with you the result of my own seething brain’s fruitful fantasies last night!  More specifically I will show how the hidden “vingt-un” code of P&P unlocks the deepest secrets of Pride & Prejudice, and reveals that Elizabeth Bennet is much more like Fanny Burney’s Cecilia than has ever previously been understood, because Elizabeth, too, is an orphan/heiress.

I was prompted to investigate this motif by a recent thread in another online Austen venue, in which the following curious dialog between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy to Elizabeth in Chapter 32 was scrutinized:

[Elizabeth] "I do not mean to say that a woman may not be settled too near her family. The far and the near must be relative, and depend on many varying circumstances. Where there is fortune to make the expenses of travelling unimportant, distance becomes no evil. But that is not the case here. Mr. and Mrs. Collins have a comfortable income, but not such a one as will allow of frequent journeys—and I am persuaded my friend would not call herself near her family under less than half the present distance."

Mr. Darcy drew his chair a little towards her, and said, "You cannot have a right to such very strong local attachment. You cannot have been always at Longbourn."

Elizabeth looked surprised. The gentleman experienced some change of feeling ....   END QUOTE

Discussants speculated as to what Mr. Darcy meant by the second of these two sentences, which seems literally to contemplate the possibility that Lizzy has not lived her whole life at Longbourn. However, the consensus emerged that Darcy wasn’t really looking backwards asking for a literal answer about Lizzy’s  Longbourn tenure, so much as looking forward in time, as per the first sentence, seeking reassurance that Lizzy wouldn’t mind living far away from Longbourn at say….Pemberley!  I.e., Darcy’s first sentence would be the relevant one, the second one being superfluous, a wild extrapolation which Darcy’s anxious mind plucks out of the air, as a hypothetical circumstance in which Lizzy might not have formed a very strong local attachment to her current home, i.e., because she had not lived there very long.

Darcy presumably has no knowledge of Bennet family history, and therefore would not assume that Lizzy had been BORN (and therefore had not lived that LONG) at LongBOURN (and surely the name of the Bennet estate is in some way a pun on those very words cleverly designed by Jane Austen).

Perhaps the Bennets had moved into Longbourn when Lizzy was, e.g., 9 years old, exactly the way that the Dashwoods moved into Norland after the death of the unmarried cousin Mr. Dashwood, when the three Dashwood girls were between the ages of 3 and 11. Indeed, that parallel to S&S rings eerily apt, as the very event which Mrs. Bennet fears most, i.e., the death of Mr. Bennet and the resultant expulsion of herself and her five daughters from Longbourn, is exactly what does befall the Dashwood females after the death of husband/father Mr. Dashwood!

So Darcy’s hope that Lizzy was not a Longbourn resident from birth would seem to rest on a speculative but plausible extrapolation from actual family histories in JA’s era in which inheritance of estates leads to relocation of families, sometimes for serendipitously good and sometimes for calamitously bad.

And the possibility of the Bennet family having taken possession of Longbourn ten (as opposed to 20 or 25) years earlier would also go a long way toward explaining the way the five Bennet girls matured in such strikingly different ways—the two eldest, Jane and Lizzy are so different from the two youngest, Lydia and Kitty, and this would make perfect sense, from a modern psychological perspective, if one major developmental factor were very different between the two opposing groups (Mary being the transitional figure)---i.e., what if Jane and Lizzy, who have modest expectations in general, grew to their early teens in an earlier, much more humble pre-inheritance Bennet residence, while the much more entitled Kitty and Lydia grew to their early teens in a much more privileged post-inheritance environment at Longbourn.

And, taking that line of reasoning a plausible step further, perhaps Mrs. Bennet’s jittery “nerves” were “born” during that earlier Bennet family era, when, perhaps, the young family was living on the financial edge, waiting for an elderly relative to die in order to vest Mr. Bennet in Longbourn? And, taking that line of reasoning still further, perhaps the bitter enmity between Mr. Collins’s father and Mr. Bennet could have been the sour grapes (or olives) of the former directed at the latter, in regard to the inheritance of Longbourn, whereby Mr. Bennet’s inheritance of Longbourn was a bitter pill for Mr. Collins’s father to swallow—perhaps a preferential bequest to the former at the expense of the latter?

In any event, so many mysteries explained so well by one simple assumption—maybe it’s not so crazy a line of reasoning?  

But let’s now return to Darcy and Elizabeth at Rosings, when Darcy suddenly pulls his chair in closer to Elizabeth before asking his two questions. Why would he do this? Is it that he is so overcome with emotion that he unconsciously draws in closer to her, feeling a need for the greater intimacy of physical proximity, even perhaps invading Elizabeth’s personal space? Or maybe, reading more suspiciously, does he move in closer so that he can then speak sotto voce, out of a desire not to be overheard by one of the servants in the Collins residence, who, Darcy seems to worry, might be eavesdropping?

Either of these motivations would be consistent with his revealing by his words an interest in marrying Elizabeth, which of course, in hindsight, would fit perfectly, as he proposes to Elizabeth only three chapters later! In Chapter 35, we hear Darcy himself express his wrenching ambivalence about proposing to Lizzy, so it would fit that he would wish to be very secretive in Chapter 32, and not let the cat out of the bag to nosy third parties, while he was still, in his careful, almost lawyerly way, carefully testing the waters.

THE INTERPRETIVE ROAD LESS TRAVELED

But, even though that is certainly a plausible and satisfying explanation for Mr. Darcy’s inquiry….let’s take a second, off-center perspective on Darcy’s curiously leading question before considering the matter conclusively settled.  I say “curiously”, because his question reminds me of the kind of leading question that clever lawyers pose during cross-examination, in an effort to trip up hostile witnesses in a courtroom trial. At a climactic moment, after first softening up the hostile witness for a while, Perry Mason might suddenly spring a surprising question like, “You cannot have always been in love with the deceased…” which is designed to provoke a confession as to a key fact the witness has previously been unwilling to admit.

With Jane Austen, once one has a passage like this in mind, I’ve found that the best solution is to start by thinking about other passages in the same novel which seem resonant in some way. And that’s what happened as I was falling asleep last night, I was mulling over this particular passage, and hoping that upon rising I would find inspiration on my pillow-and luckily, so it went!

I realized that I needed to think about what comes up elsewhere in P&P when we ask whether Darcy might have had some reason—unknown to Elizabeth and therefore also unknown to the reader—for thinking that Lizzy has not lived her whole life at Longbourn. Might this seemingly significant question posed so anxiously to Elizabeth have a deeper meaning?

Thinking about how long Lizzy has lived at Longbourn led me straight to the key clue, which is that only three chapters earlier, in Chapter 29, Lizzy has been cross-examined in a more direct way by Lady Catherine, on a curiously similar topic:

"Upon my word," said her ladyship, "you give your opinion very decidedly for so young a person. Pray, WHAT IS YOUR AGE?"

"With three younger sisters grown up," replied Elizabeth, smiling, "your ladyship can hardly expect me to own it."

Lady Catherine seemed quite astonished at not receiving a direct answer; and Elizabeth suspected herself to be the first creature who had ever dared to trifle with so much dignified impertinence.

"You CANNOT BE MORE THAN TWENTY, I am sure, therefore you need not conceal your age."

"I am NOT ONE-AND-TWENTY."

While it could be that Lady Catherine really was prompted to inquire after Elizabeth’s age by Elizabeth’s brash opinion-giving, it also could be the case that Lady Catherine has some specific, but undisclosed, motivation for wanting to know exactly how old Elizabeth is, and has used Lizzy’s brashness as a “cover story” to allow Lady Catherine to persist in seeking an answer to a question that has peculiar meaning to Lady Catherine that she is not disclosing to Elizabeth.

And now, that speculation about Lady C’s concealed motivation makes me wonder--perhaps Darcy also has asked Lizzy the question about Lizzy always living at Longbourn, out of a similar curiosity born of motives also not disclosed to Lizzy?

Is it starting to sound like an Agatha Christie novel to you? I hope so, because I am convinced that this is exactly the line of inquiry that JA wished her readers to pursue, to see where else it leads!

So, the reader of P&P who has just read the above passage ought to be reminded of Lady Catherine’s question when we read Mr. Darcy’s question, also posed to Elizabeth, a short while later. And reading the above two passages in this shared light in turn got me thinking about other passages in P&P which also seem to focus on a time period of just over twenty years.

And that’s when I was reminded of the post I wrote 3 months ago…

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-twenty-clever-and-clever-twenty.html

…in which I demonstrated that the motif of the number “twenty” as an exaggerated amount is repeated early and often in both As You Like It and in P&P. (The hardcore amongst you will now want to take a pause in reading my current post to go back and read that earlier one, but it is not required to do so in order to understand my point today.)  

And that’s what made me realize that the number “twenty” is the key to solving the puzzle of Darcy’s and Lady Catherine’s cross examinations of Elizabeth about the duration of her life and of her residency at Longbourn, respectively---now I see that they are intimately connected via that number, which not only points back to similarly thematic usage in Shakespeare’s romantic comedy which provides so much allusive background to P&P, but also shines light into the shadows of the backstory (and the climax) of P&P! Read on for the payoff!

First, think back to Chapter 1:

"Mr. Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such a way? You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion for my poor nerves." "You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these last TWENTY YEARS AT LEAST."

"Ah, you do not know what I suffer."

"But I hope you will get over it, and live to see many young men of four thousand a year come into the neighbourhood."

"It will be no use to us, if TWENTY such should come, since you will not visit them."

"Depend upon it, my dear, that when there are TWENTY, I will visit them all."

Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of THREE-AND-TWENTY years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character.

So in the above passage, isn’t it interesting that Mr. Bennet chooses as the beginning of his acquaintance with Mrs. Bennet’s nerves a time period of just over twenty years, even though the narrator almost immediately informs us that they have been married 23 years? What reason could there be for this three year gap? Is Mr. Bennet being imprecise about a gap of three years, or…..was Mrs. Bennet not a nervous wreck during the first three years of their marriage? If so, why not? What changed 20 years (and a bit more) earlier? Was it Lizzy’s birth?

But there’s even more suggestive smoke in the text of P&P---now look at this passage near the end of P&P, in Chapter 58:

[Darcy] “…Unfortunately an only son (for many years an only child), I was spoilt by my parents, who, though good themselves (my father, particularly, all that was benevolent and amiable), allowed, encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing; to care for none beyond my own family

circle; to think meanly of all the rest of the world; to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own. Such I was, FROM EIGHT TO EIGHT AND TWENTY; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled.

Think about it—Darcy is 28, and for some reason he measures the commencement of his being spoiled from when he was eight years old, which just happens to be the identical starting point for (a) Lizzy’s life  and for (b) Mr. Bennet’s acquaintance with Mrs. Bennet’s nerves.

Hmmm…..

 So….just like the unexplained quadruple coincidence (or if you will, the “quadrille”) that supposedly, without any prior planning or scheming on anyone’s part, brings all four of the closely mutually interconnected Mr. Collins, Mr. Darcy, Mr. Wickham, and Mrs. Gardiner “dancing” into direct contact with Elizabeth at almost the same time, I now suggest an additional unexplained triple coincidence involving the three time periods of just over twenty years, involving Mr. & Mrs. Bennet, Elizabeth, and Mr. Darcy, which I’ve just outlined for you.

And here’s the piece de resistance in this literary game-playing on “just over twenty”---even beyond the examples of “twenty” in P&P that I discussed in my earlier blog post, now I see that JA has winked at us further with one final textual bread crumb, diabolically dropped into the reader’s unwitting mind under the disguise of another anguage, in Chapter 6:

"Yes; these four evenings have enabled them to ascertain that they both like VINGT-UN better than Commerce; but with respect to any other leading characteristic, I do not imagine that much has been unfolded."

Why diabolical? Because of the central rule of vingt-un (known today in English as twenty-one or blackjack), which is described in the following Wikipedia entry:

“Blackjack's precursor was twenty-one, a game of unknown origin. The first written reference is found in a book by...Cervantes [who] was a gambler, and the main characters of his tale Rinconete y Cortadillo, from Novelas Ejemplares, are a couple of cheats working in Seville. They are proficient at cheating at ventiuna (Spanish for twenty-one), and state that the object of the game is to reach 21 points without going over and that the ace values 1 or 11….This short story was written between 1601 and 1602, implying that ventiuna was played in Castilla since the beginning of the 17th century or earlier. Later references to this game are found in France and Spain.”  END QUOTE

So, in vingt-un the winner, as between player and house/dealer, is the one gets closest to 21 without exceeding 21, with all ties being victories for the latter. So, absent a tie, a player who actually scores 21 and no more will win.

Now…follow me in one last conceit---if we think of the action of P&P as a kind of “game” being played by many “players”, each with his or her own complex and concealed goals or ways of “winning”—and I think that JA clearly meant for us to think that—then what would constitute “winning” upon reaching 21 years of age?  

Or, to paraphrase Darcy, my inner lawyer puts it this way, in the form of a leading question:  you cannot be so wedded to the idea that there is no hidden meaning in P&P, that you cannot see how attaining the age of 21 might constitute “winning” for someone like Elizabeth Bennet.

By this devious means, I think I have already suggested to you the answer I am “fishing” for, which is that 21 was in Jane Austen’s era, as in our own, a frequently chosen age milestone, upon which an heir received his or her inheritance!  And somehow Lizzy’s inheritance could be Pemberley itself, because something happened in Darcy’s life when he was eight—and that “something” might just have been Lizzy, the true heir of Pemberley, being sent away from home in order for Darcy to remain the heir?

Think I’m completely off the wall?  Well, at the JASNA AGM I attended in late September in Minneapolis, one of the highlights for me was the presentation by my friend Prof. Elaine Bander, who spoke about parallels and contrasts between Pride & Prejudice and Fanny Burney’s Cecilia:

Here, in fact, is the link to Elaine’s paper just published today in Persuasions Online:

http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol34no1/bander.html

And here is the excerpt from Elaine’s article that is most germane to my speculations in this post:

“Apart from the common phrase, then, Cecilia and Pride and Prejudice share only two elements.  First, both heroines are courted by a man whose family pride revolts against their match, and second, both novels offer an ironic version of a moral.  So far they are equal. In Cecilia, Dr. Lyster pronounces this ironic moral to the penitent lovers.  Austen is similarly playful in uniting her lovers, although without a magisterial Dr. Lyster to negotiate a truce.  Instead, Elizabeth Bennet herself characteristically mocks conventional novel moralizing in her teasing conversation with her new fiancé, Fitzwilliam Darcy, while Darcy, like Dr. Lyster, suggests that the faulty behavior of those who had tried to separate the lovers has also served to unite them:  “‘The moral will be perfectly fair,’” he assures Elizabeth.  “‘Lady Catherine’s unjustifiable endeavours to separate us, were the means of removing all my doubts’” (423).

Apart from these two similarities, however, the differences of plot and character are striking.  Thus Cecilia is heiress to a great fortune while Elizabeth is practically portionless.  Cecilia is an orphan whereas Elizabeth is blessed with a beloved sister and burdened with a large, embarrassing family.  Elizabeth despises Darcy until at least halfway through the novel while Cecilia early on admires and loves Mortimer.  Mortimer is caught between his love for Cecilia and his duty to his parents while Darcy contends only with his own pride.  Cecilia herself is scrupulously deferential to the Mortimer family’s opposition to their marriage, extolling the virtues of filial obedience.  She is therefore vulnerable to anyone who invokes claims of duty, honor, and gratitude, and she promises Mrs. Delvile never to marry Mortimer.  Elizabeth, in contrast, wittily defies Lady Catherine’s snobbish intervention, refusing to give such a promise, declaring, “‘Neither duty, nor honour, nor gratitude . . . have any possible claim on me, in the present instance.  No principle of either, would be violated by my marriage with Mr. Darcy’” (397).”  END QUOTE

I would like to propose the following codicil to Elaine’s first-rate article, by suggesting that the “vingt-un” code in Pride & Prejudice shows us that in Austen’s shadow story, Cecilia and Elizabeth are the same, and I can best show this byrewriting one key part of Ellen’s analysis as follows:

“Apart from these two similarities, however, the differences of plot and character are striking, BUT ONLY ON THE SURFACE AS TO ONE CRUCIAL POINT.  Thus Cecilia is heiress to a great fortune while Elizabeth APPEARS TO BE practically portionless, BUT ACTUALLY IS ALSO AN HEIRESS, ATTRACTING THE SAME BUZZING BAND OF SUITORS AS CECIILIA.  Cecilia is an orphan whereas Elizabeth APPEARS TO BE blessed with a beloved sister and burdened with a large, embarrassing family, BUT ACTUALLY IS ALSO AN ORPHAN.” 

In other words, I am suggesting that, in reading the subtext of P&P, we think about Cecilia, who will inherit an income of 3,000 pounds per year, together with a lump sum payment of 10,000 pounds, upon reaching the age of 21, and realize that THIS is the explanation for why all the bees are suddenly buzzing around Elizabeth when she is approaching her 21^st birthday, and why everyone is so focused on a moment in family history a little more than 20 years ago, i.e., right around the time that Elizabeth Bennet was born! Mrs. Bennet’s nerves came to unfortunate prominence at that exact moment when the orphan Elizabeth was brought to the Bennet residence house under cover of night!  

Final Note re Mr. Darcy & Tom Lefroy:

I conclude with a final resonance of the “20 but not quite 21” code of P&P that I’ve outlined above. In real life, JA turned 21 on December 16, 1796, exactly 217 years ago today.  Interestingly, Jane Austen’s first surviving letters are from January, 1796, when JA was the very same age as Elizabeth Bennet was when she was cross examined by Lady Catherine and then Mr. Darcy at Rosings. At that time, all of the following was true of Jane Austen, just as it was true of Elizabeth Bennet:

(a) Being the age of 20 and not quite 21,

(b) Spending time dancing and sparring/flirting wittily with an ambitious young man from out of town,

And the following is also true of both Mr. Darcy and Tom Lefroy:

(c) Each is linked by JA’s writing to Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, and

(d) Each had recently arrived in the “heroine’s”  rural neighbourhood from far away (Ireland being of course much further away from Steventon than Pemberley was from Longbourn).

I am far from the first to suggest parallels between JA’s and Tom Lefroy’s mysterious romantic interlude in Steventon, and the one between Lizzy and Darcy  in Meryton. I think it fair to say that the consensus is that this parallel makes P&P a wish fulfillment, in which the marriage that JA presumably wished for with Tom Lefroy, but was cruelly denied because she was considered a poor marriage option for Tom Lefroy by his family, is enacted in the most dramatic and romantically satisfying way in P&P.

And that’s why I think it is no coincidence that JA was not quite 21 when she had her marriage chances with Tom Lefroy, and why JA memorialized that chronological fact in P&P with its literary “game” of     “vingt-un”.

Does this mean that P&P is then also a wish fulfillment fantasy of Jane Austen’s, which is that she imagined what it would be like had she been a secret heiress courted by men from all over Great Britain?

As much as I’d enjoy keeping going, I’ll leave off there!

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

P.S.: Apropos the word game on “twenty” in P&P, here’s a final gem of wit courtesy of JA--note how Mr. Bennet reflects the change in his attitude as a parent to a much sterner mode, by his in effect halving his hyperbolic assertions, from his habitual twenty in Chapter 1, down to ten by Chapter 48:

“…And you are never to stir out of doors till you can prove that you have spent TEN minutes of every day in a rational manner."

Kitty, who took all these threats in a serious light, began to cry.

"Well, well," said he, "do not make yourself unhappy. If you are a good girl for the next TEN years, I will take you to a review at the end of them."

P.P.S.: Before posting this post today, I checked in the usual places online to see whether any other Janeites might have already taken a step or two down this road I have just gone down today, and I did find a post by Anielka Briggs from 10/1/12 about mysteries and riddles scattered through all of JA’s novels which post included the following 2 questions, from among about 15 questions in total:

“…How old, then is Elizabeth Bennet who is NOT "one-and-twenty"? 

Why have Mrs. Bennet's nerves been particularly taxed for twenty years at least?...”

Anielka has ingeniously suggested that Elizabeth Bennet, by saying to Lady Catherine that she was

 “not one-and-twenty”, has left open the possibility of being any other age than 21. Today, I’ve 

taken that phrase at its more commonly attributed meaning, and still have been able to give answers

 to those 2 excellent questions of Anielka’s, answers which show those 2 questions, and their answers, 

to be connected, via the issue of Elizabeth Bennet, secret heiress, who, unbeknownst to her, will 

inherit a fortune at “one-and-twenty”! 

How Lucy Steele Schemed to Become Lucy Ferrars aka Lucifer(a) in Spenser’s Faerie Queene, and also "Queen of the Ferrars’ " in Sense & Sensibility

If you want to read a quintessential example of Jane Austen’s amazing art of covert but significant literary allusion, this is the one!

THE LUCIFER WORDGAME IN SENSE & SENSIBILITY

In 2005, I was the first to discover the hidden code in the all-caps signature in Lucy’s final letter to Edward near the end of Sense & Sensibility:

LUCY FERRARS è LUCYFER  RARS è LUCIFER

What was clear to me in 2005, and remains clear today, is that one huge implication of this word game in S&S is how perfectly it functions as a clue that goes to the heart of the story in S&S. I.e., it points unmistakably to my prior, independently arrived-at discovery that Lucy, by provoking big-mouthed sister Nancy into “blurting out” that Edward has been engaged to Lucy all along, thereby diabolically and deliberately provoked Mrs. Ferrars into a rage, during which that matriarch disinherited Edward and vested everything in Robert. And Lucy has set this all up over a period of time, such that, not coincidentally, this was the very outcome that Lucy desired, as she by then already had Robert in her complete power, unbeknownst to anyone else. That scheme is the very essence of Lucy’s Satanic indirect action, as she gets what she wants by preying on the greatest weaknesses of Mrs. Ferrars, her pride and greed, to accomplish Lucy’s goal for her, which Lucy otherwise was powerless to accomplish.

Since 2005, I’ve periodically revisited and explored the many implications of that wordgame hidden in plain sight in S&S, including looking at “Lucifer” both as an allusion by JA to prior works of literature, and also as allusions to JA in later works of literature.

I have also tried to think outside the box about tweaks of the above wordplay, that might shed further light on JA’s cryptic authorial intentions. In late 2007, when I shared this wordplay with Anielka Briggs, she cleverly asserted that “Lucifer errs” was a better solution. And in 2009, an anonymous poster at my blog had, in response to my claims about Lucy Ferrars as “Lucifer”,  suggested “Lucifer’s Arse” as another possible solution, drawing upon the long rich history of that symbol in Dante’s Inferno and elsewhere.

The above is all background to what I am writing about today, which is the great serendipity that arose at the Ft. Lauderdale/Miami-Dade JASNA event that we held three days ago at Nova Southeastern University’s Library in honor of the bicentennial of Pride & Prejudice.

Specifically, in addition to the Library’s graciously providing several expert musicians and a Regency Era dance expert to provide dancing instruction and fun for our participants, there were also two speakers on substantive Austen topics, myself and Prof. Lynne Barrett from Florida International University. Lynne gave a firstrate, engrossing talk about P&P analyzed from the perspective of a professional writer, looking at various aspects of the genius with which JA subtly organized her storytelling.

Then, after a break, it was my turn, and Lynne remained as part of my audience. When I led off with the above wordgame on “Lucifer” in S&S, Lynne popped out another possible solution which I had previously been utterly unaware of, i.e., that Jane Austen might well have also been pointing to “Lucifera” from Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene!

To make a very long story very short, I’ve since had the chance to followup on Lynne’s wonderful catch, and I want to give you now a summary of at least some of the major implications which it has led me to. At another time, I will bring forward the detailed textual evidence I’ve been assembling and organizing during the past few days, but today I will just give you an outline of some of my conclusions and inferences—and that will already be a long haul—but worth it, I hope you’ll agree!

Although I had never previously studied The Faerie Queene in any comprehensive way, I was aware that several Austen scholars (including not only Stephen Derry and Juliet McMasters, but also, in passing, myself, Anielka Briggs and Elissa Schiff in Austen L and Janeites) have at different times suggested and speculated that Jane Austen alluded to Spenser’s famous and influential epic poem in Emma and in Catherine or The Bower.

However, after diligent search, I could only find one scholar, Jocelyn Harris, who had ever connected Spenser’s epic poem to S&S. Prof. Harris did so, in passing, as follows, in the following passage in her seminal 1985 book, Jane Austen’s Art of Memory, a book which I’ve cited a hundred times, which was so crucially influential on the direction of my Austen allusion studies when I first read it in 2005:

P. 82: “When Marianne’s ‘mind’ is not to be controlled, when Willoughby proves to be everything that her ‘fancy had delineated’, when her ‘imagination’ deludes her that a tender and contrite letter will appear from Willoughby and be followed by his eager self, when ‘the same eager fancy’ which led her into an extreme of indulgence, and repining introduces excess into her scheme of self-control, S&S borrows from The Faerie Queene words and values used of [for] Marianne’s lack of moderation: fancy, imagination, excess, reason, wandering, and error. Fancy is dangerous here.”  END QUOTE

However, as a result of my research the past 3 days, I am here to present three additions to Jocelyn Harris’s lonely example of allusion to The Fairie Queene in S&S:

LUCIFERA IN BOOK I, CANTO 4 OF THE FAERIE QUEENE:

First, here, in Lynne Barrett’s own words, is her crucial extension of “Lucifer” to “Lucifera”:

“In The Faerie Queene, Lucifera is the "maiden queen" who has a Court of Pride and a dungeon full of prisoners. She is one of several figures in the allegorical poem who stand for Elizabeth I, with Gloriana being the most positive one.  And I can't resist noting that in The History of England (Henry IV-Charles I), the young Jane Austen criticizes Elizabeth I for her treatment of Mary Queen of Scots.  I think she would have known who Lucifera was.”

I could not agree more with Lynne, and now that I’ve studied the portion of Book One, Canto Four of The Faerie Queene which tells the story of Lucifera, I can confirm with high confidence that Lucifera is indeed a key source for the character of Lucy Ferrars in S&S. For those of you not familiar with The Faerie Queene, here is an excellent description of Lucifera and her House of Pride that I found here at SparkNotes:

http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/fqueen/section2.rhtml

“Meanwhile, the real Redcrosse has been led by Duessa to a wonderful palace--the House of Pride. It is beautiful and lavish, with a wide entrance, but it is built weakly on a poor foundation. Redcrosse and Duessa are brought in and marvel at the richness. They are welcomed by the whole court but especially by Lucifera, the Queen of the palace. Full of pride, Lucifera shows off for the knight by calling her coach, which is pulled by six beasts upon which ride her six counselors. They are: Idleness, Gluttony, Lechery, Avarice, Envy, and Wrath, their appearances appropriate to their names.

…The House of Pride is a collection of ancient and medieval thought about sin and evil. Christian theology holds that pride is the greatest sin, from which all other vices come. Pride was the sin of Satan, which caused his fall from Heaven; thus, the Queen of Pride is associated with Lucifer by her name. The parade of the seven major vices, each with some prop or costume to indicate their nature (Pride holds a mirror, for she is vain), was a common feature of medieval morality plays--Spenser borrows it for this scene in Canto iv. The Queen, however, is not simply an allegory for Pride; she also has a political meaning. Spenser intentionally contrasts her with the true Queen, to whom the poem is dedicated: Queen Elizabeth. The poet notes that Lucifera "made her selfe a Queene, and crowned to be, / Yet rightfull kingdome she had none at all, / Ne heritage of native soveraintie / But did USURPE with wrong and tyrannie / Upon the scepter (I.iv.12)." This is in contrast to Elizabeth, who held her power lawfully, ruled with justice and "true religion," and was descended from a noble race (as Spenser will later establish). “

While it would take pages of intricate textual analysis to illustrate, take my word that JA’s clever pervasive thematic wordplay in S&S, in particular on the words “pride” and “nobility” and “justice”, demonstrates very clearly, to those versed in the Jane Austen Code, that JA has, in S&S, given us the story of how Lucy Steele managed to usurp the “throne” of the House of Pride known as the Ferrars family, by incessant brilliant manipulation of the fatal flaws of the Ferrars family –its monstrously unjust pride and greed.  In the end, they all get exactly the karmic punishment they deserve—to be ruled by Lucy Ferrars, who will, upon the death of Mrs. Ferrars, succeed her on the “throne”! Thus, as per my Subject Line, we may fairly say that Lucy Ferrars has become the Queen of the Ferrars’!!!!

And so there is absolutely no question that JA treated the Lucifera story in Spenser’s poem as a key allusive source for this major arc of the shadow story of S&S!

But that’s only one third of the story—read on!

LUCY IN THE TALE OF AMIDAS & BRACIDAS IN BOOK V, CANTO IV:

On a hunch that proved to be spot-on, I searched the name “Lucy” in The Faerie Queene, and to my amazed delight, it brought me to a completely different section of Spenser’s poem—Book V, Canto IV, the short but famous tale of Amidas & Bracidas, as to which I am again indebted to SparkNotes for an excellent brief summary:

“Arthegall is a true knight of Justice not only for his wisdom, but for his physical strength. Justice isn’t easy to uphold. He and Talus leave the wedding and passed by the sea. There he sees a large chest, two knights, and two ladies. The ladies are trying to stop the knights from fighting. They are the sons of Milesia, masters of two nearby islands. One is large and the other is small. The elder brother, Bracidas, recounts their story: He was given an island of equal size with his younger brother Amidas’ island. He loved a lady named Philtera, who had a “goodly doure”. Amidas loved a lady named Lucy, who was poor in worldly wealth, but virtuous. Sadly, the ocean began to swallow up Bracidas’ island until he had very little land left. His girl left him and went to Amidas instead. Lucy threw herself into the sea in despair. While drowning, she caught hold of a chest that was floating and hung on until she washed ashore on Bracidas’ land. She decided to marry him. When they opened the chest, they found treasure! However, Philtera now claims it is her dowry that was lost in a shipwreck en route to Amidas. Arthegall’s judgement is that the treasure belongs to Bracidas and Lucy, since the sea had taken away what belonged to Amidas just as it had previously taken away what had belonged to Bracidas. Of course half of them are displeased with this, but Arthegall pays no mind and rides off. “  END QUOTE

Again, while I could take up several more pages of intricate textual analysis demonstrating all the ways that Jane Austen cleverly demonstrated her focus on this one short inset tale in The Faerie Queene, I will merely state my claim that Jane Austen chose the name “Lucy” for her diabolical anti-heroine, Lucy Steele Ferrars, not only because it would point to all the Lucifers of prior literature, and to Spenser’s Lucifera, as well as to some literary Lucys as well--see, e.g., Lucy in Sarah Fielding’s The Governess (as I’ve previously blogged). I am now claiming that JA chose Lucy as a Christian name for her arch-schemer, so that it would point even more directly to the lucky (or resourceful) Lucy of Spenser’s Book V, Canto IV tale-who just happens to be a Lucy who throws herself into the sea in despair (or in deception?), only to “miraculously” wind up as the wife of a different brother than her original fiancé—two brothers who also just don’t get along!---and with the windfall of a great treasure as a dowry!

And…as an uncanny footnote to the above discovery re Spenser’s Lucy washing up onshore with a treasure chest , in the Emma Thompson S&S, after Marianne survives her bout of near fatal illness, Brandon reads to Marianne from....(you guessed it!) Book V of The Faerie Queene. Does this suggest that Emma Thompson saw some resonance there, and it was not just a random choice on her part? After all, the excerpt Brandon reads to Marianne is also from Book V, although not from Canto IV. Perhaps one day I will be able to ask Emma Thompson that question myself!

Meanwhile, quickly on to my third claim!

MRS. JENNINGS, MICHAELMAS, LUCIFER, DRAGONS & THE FAERIE QUEENE

Purely by coincidence, ten weeks ago……

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2013/10/mrs-jenningss-monstrous-biblical-clue.html

….I posted at length about the allusion that I claim Mrs. Jennings kept making, repeatedly, near the end of S&S, to the Biblical St. Michael ejecting Lucifer from Heaven. I had no idea then that Lynne Barrett would suggest that JA was alluding to The Faerie Queene in S&S, but once she did, the second thing I thought of was that in the climactic battle of Book I (in Cantos 11 & 12) of The Faerie Queene,  Redcrosse slays the dragon that has laid waste to Eden.

Suffice to say that I find it very very curious that Mrs. Jennings should be making a veiled allusion to the Biblical ejection of Lucifer from Heaven, in the same novel, S&S, as JA has alluded very pointedly to Lucifera in Canto IV in Book I of The Faerie Queene, only a stone’s throw, so to speak, from Cantos XI & XII in which Spenser’s Redcrosse slays a demonic dragon.

POSTSCRIPT:

I leave you with one tantalizing question: 

Anielka Briggs and other Austen scholars have speculated about the meaning of the following allusion to Queen Mab by Willoughby in S&S:

"But, Marianne, the horse is still yours, though you cannot use it now. I shall keep it only till you can claim it. When you leave Barton to form your own establishment in a more lasting home, Queen Mab shall receive you."

Of course Queen Mab is famously referred to by Mercutio as the "fairies's midwife" in Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet.

My tantalizing question is: What connection might there be between Shakespeare’s “fairies’s midwife” and The Faerie Queene of Spenser’s eponymous poem? And, even more to a Janeite  point: Did Jane Austen mean to make a connection between Shakespeare’s Queen Mab and Spenser’s Faerie Queene, when she chose that name for Willoughby’s horse, knowing that she had already covertly alluded to The Faerie Queene all over the place in S&S, as I have described above?

This is a particularly interesting question, in light of Maurice Hunt’s fantastic scholarship in his recent book Shakespeare's As You Like It, in Chapter One entitled “Wrestling for Temperance: AYLI and TFQ, Book 2”. In that chapter, Prof. Hunt makes a powerful case for Shakespeare having extensively and significantly alluded, in As You Like It, to the theme of temperance in Book II of The Faerie Queene. Given that I have argued not long ago that Chapter 2 of S&S (when Fanny and John Dashwood whittle down the bequest to the Dashwood women to a pittance) alludes even more specifically to the confrontation between Orlando and Oliver in 1.1 of As You Like It than to the more famous scenes in King Lear when Goneril and Regan whittle down their father’s retinue, I think it quite possible that JA herself understood that Shakespeare was alluding to Spenser, as Hunt outlines.

I’ve argued that S&S’s Austen family subtext is that of the unfairness of how the Austen family wealth came to be so unevenly divided amongst the Austen siblings, with Edward Austen Knight in particular making off like a bandit, while JA and her sister lived on the uneven charity of their brothers their whole lives. Both As You Like It and The Faerie Queene are significantly concerned with those very same issues of fairness in inheritance, and on the kind of temperance that an heir who gets the shaft would have to struggle to achieve, when faced with utter unfairness.  

Anyway, I will stop now, but I’d love to hear someone take this chain of discovery one giant step further in any of the directions I’ve pointed!

Cheers, ARNIE

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