You Tread on my Whole: the Sixteen Year old Jane Austen’s Unassailably Sexual Sharade

Me before in Janeites: 'I've written many times before about the graphic sexual meaning of the Sharade Jane Austen wrote about James I and his favourite "carpet" in her  History of England…”

Rita Lamb in Janeites: “Arnie, did you mean to write: 'I've written many times before about' (WHAT I ARGUE TO BE) 'the graphic sexual meaning of the Sharade Jane Austen wrote about James I and his favourite "carpet" in her History of England...' - because a questionable interpretation unshared by many others should not be asserted as if it were unassailable fact.”

Rita, again, I think you’re putting me on--as John McEnroe famously said, you can’t be serious!

Nonetheless, just for fun, I gathered together all the scholarly reactions to the carpet Sharade I could find on the Internet, and every single one of the eight I found, from Elfrida Vipont (1977), David Nokes (1998), Christopher Nugent Lawrence Brooke (2000), Clara Tuite (2002), Claire Tomalin (2007), Mary Spongberg (2011), and Laura Mooneyham White (2013), to Paula Byrne (2013), asserts, albeit with varying degrees of emphasis and explicitness, that this is an innuendo on male-male sex between James I and his ‘pets’. Not a single one even tries to argue that it’s not sexual (and the most thorough and best analysis of the lot is Tuite's).

So, Rita, I invite you to show me the ‘many others’ who (so you say) dispute the sexual reading that  is so obvious  to the rest of the world.

And, again, I claim the sexual interpretation would unassailable even if all we had to go on was JA’s Sharade itself, and there was nothing known to the world about James I’s sexual preferences and partners. But what makes it doubly unassailable—like two infinities in mathematics—is that the main reason why Carr and Buckingham are remembered today by historians has nothing to do with JA’s Sharade, and everything to do with the overwhelming and uncontroverted historical documentation, from a variety of contemporary sources, that James’s relationship with these two young men was (as Tuite put it) an “open secret” among the British elite living under James’s….rule.

I will add now that I am also convinced, upon further study, that Jane Austen was, by her particular references to the words “tread” and “carpet”, demonstrating--again unassailably--her love of, and influence by, (i) the ribald sexual innuendoes of Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and (ii) the elegant pornographic euphemisms of Cleland’s Fanny Hill, among other allusive sources. 

Just as I demonstrated a few years ago that the 25-year old JA’s letter to Martha Lloyd in 1800, with its memorable sentence referring both to French grammar and to Mrs. Stent’s ejaculations about cocks and hens, is also an unassailable homage to Tristram Shandy.

So we see that JA at 25 had not given up the very vulgar sexual innuendoes of 16, but had learnt to disguise them just enough to be deniable, in a way that the allusion to James I’s sexual proclivities was not deniable. And I’d like to bring forward two later examples to show the further refinement of JA’s art of sexual innuendo by the time she became a published novelist.

The sexual “You tread on my whole” clearly gave rise to an offshoot (a reading I’ve been making since 2005) in the form of the first charade that we read in Chapter 9 of Emma, which, we now know, JA took from a popular riddle book and adapted:

“Mr. Elton was the only one whose assistance she asked. He was invited to contribute any really good enigmas, charades, or conundrums that he might recollect; and she had the pleasure of seeing him most intently at work with his recollections; and at the same time, as she could perceive, most earnestly careful that nothing ungallant, nothing that did not breathe a compliment to the sex should pass his lips. They owed to him their two or three politest puzzles; and the joy and exultation with which at last he recalled, and rather sentimentally recited, that well-known charade,

    My first doth affliction denote,

      Which my second is destin'd to feel

    And my whole is the best antidote

      That affliction to soften and heal.—

I believe  that JA tweaked the charade she found in the riddle book such that “my first” can be read to refer to an erection,  “my second” to the male sexual organ, and then “my whole”  refers to the female sexual organ which indeed softens and heals that very “affliction”.

And finally, the example that comes to mind that best exemplifies JA’s highest subtlety of sexual innuendo comes  in P&P, when Lizzy’s piano playing is discussed by her, Lady Catherine, and Darcy, such that Lizzy is utterly unaware that Darcy is inferring a sexual innuendo that Lizzy does not intend!:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2013/01/darcys-we-neither-of-us-perform-to.html

Here’s the “punch line” of that earlier post of mine:

“At this point, Darcy is no longer puzzled at Lizzy’s seeming deep ambivalence about him. He flashes on the notion that Lizzy is intentionally engaging in very audacious sexual repartee, and is strongly implying to him that she is not going to explicitly tell him how much she desires him sexually, so she is taking the next best step, and intentionally hinting at it repeatedly.

And that’s what he means by “we neither perform to strangers”---i.e., he smiles  because he gives her exactly what he believes she wants to hear, a coded acknowledgment that he  “gets” her coded sexual messages!  Their mutual coded exchange of sexual messages is for their mutual ears only, and is not intended to be understood by anyone else present, most of all the nosy matchmaking wannabe “stranger “ Lady Catherine, seated a dozen feet away.

And, final inspired touch, “No one admitted to the privilege of hearing you can think anything wanting” is a coded version of  “I, Darcy, by virtue of having finally taken all your hints, have now been admitted to the privilege of really hearing what your coded  innuendoes are saying to me, and now I know that I no longer  think anything wanting in terms of the sexual partner I want—you!  “

What a long way JA had come in twenty years, from the obvious, even heavy-handed (so to speak) sexual innuendo of The History of England to the infinitely subtle and crucially thematic sexual innuendo of Pride & Prejudice, and then revisiting her childhood love of risqué charades with extraordinary complexity and elegance in Emma.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

“Strange alteration in me, to degree of reason in my inward powers…” : Caesar as Simian Satan -- Milton’s Paradise Lost & Behn's Oroonoko as the original sources for (The Rise & Dawn of) The Planet of the Apes

Before you go to the multiplex next weekend to catch Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, those of you with a literary inclination may want to read this post first—it may just add an extra portion of viewing pleasure to learn about its surprising literary pedigree.

In Book 9 of Paradise Lost by John Milton, Eve quizzically responds to Satan, who has taken the shape of a serpent and has astonished her by speaking (flatteringly) to her:

Thee, Serpent, subtlest beast of all the field
I knew, but not with human voice endued;
Redouble then this miracle, and say,
How camest thou speakable of mute, and how
To me so friendly grown above the rest
Of brutal kind, that daily are in sight?
Say, for such wonder claims attention due.
To whom the guileful Tempter thus replied.
Empress of this fair world, resplendent Eve!
Easy to me it is to tell thee all
What thou commandest; and right thou shouldst be obeyed:
I was at first as other beasts that graze
The trodden herb, of abject thoughts and low,
As was my food; nor aught but food discerned
Or sex, and apprehended nothing high:
Till, on a day roving the field, I chanced
A goodly tree far distant to behold
Loaden with fruit of fairest colours mixed,
Ruddy and gold: I nearer drew to gaze;
When from the boughs a savoury odour blown,
Grateful to appetite, more pleased my sense
Than smell of sweetest fennel, or the teats
Of ewe or goat dropping with milk at even,
Unsucked of lamb or kid, that tend their play.
To satisfy the sharp desire I had
Of tasting those fair apples, I resolved
Not to defer; hunger and thirst at once,
Powerful persuaders, quickened at the scent
Of that alluring fruit, urged me so keen.
About the mossy trunk I wound me soon;
For, high from ground, the branches would require
Thy utmost reach or Adam's: Round the tree
All other beasts that saw, with like desire
Longing and envying stood, but could not reach.
Amid the tree now got, where plenty hung
Tempting so nigh, to pluck and eat my fill
I spared not; for, such pleasure till that hour,
At feed or fountain, never had I found.
Sated at length, ere long I might perceive
Strange alteration in me, to degree
Of reason in my inward powers; and speech
Wanted not long; though to this shape retained.
Thenceforth to speculations high or deep
I turned my thoughts, and with capacious mind
Considered all things visible in Heaven,
Or Earth, or Middle…

While rereading the above passage (for another reason entirely) earlier today, I was struck for the first time by the extremely strong thematic parallel--- a nonhuman animal’s intelligence suddenly raised to a human level by ingestion of a mind-enhancing substance ---- between Milton’s 17^th century Biblically-inspired epic poem, and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the 2011 high-concept resurrection of the 1968-75 film series.  Like many of the newer film’s fans, I found the character, and the performance, of Caesar particularly compelling, and have been looking forward to seeing the sequel, but I had never previously imagined that the simian Caesar has a very surprising literary “ancestor”.

I quickly confirmed my hunch that this parallelism was not a coincidence, when I read the following Wikipedia summary & synopsis of the 1963 novel from which all the films are derived:

“Pierre Boulle (1912 – 1994) was a French novelist best known for two works, The Bridge over the River Kwai (1952) and Planet of the Apes (1963)….In a frame story, a frivolous couple sailing alone in space, Jinn and Phyllis, rescue and translate a manuscript from a floating bottle. The manuscript was written by journalist Ulysse Mérou, who in the year 2500 was invited by wealthy Professor Antelle to accompany him and his disciple, physician Arthur Levain, to Betelgeuse. Because they travel close to the speed of light, time dilation causes centuries to pass on Earth during their two years in transit. They reach orbit around a temperate, lushly forested planet they name Soror (Latin for sister). They launch a shuttle to land on the surface. They can breathe the air, drink the water, and eat the fruit. Attracted by a lovely golden naked woman they call Nova, they swim below a scenic waterfall. She is frightened by their pet chimpanzee, Hector, and she strangles it. Her tribe, who comport themselves as dumb animals, wreck the newcomers' clothing and shuttle [etc.]….”  END QUOTE

As soon as I read about space travelers  “attracted by a lovely golden naked woman” “below a scenic waterfall”, it was obvious that Boulle really did have Satan (who, in Milton’s proto-scifi epic, does travel a long way through space to reach Earth, where he zeroes in on the naked Eve in Eden as the target of his diabolical seduction) and Eve very specifically in mind. 

It also appears to me from the rest of the Wikipedia synopsis of Boulle’s novel that he was a very sly and serial alluder to English literature, in that he did not stop at Milton, but also stole a page out of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, by reversing the intelligence hierarchy of species, i.e., by having the apes (like Swift’s cultured equine Houyhnhnms) be civilized from the get-go, while in Boulle, as in Swift, it is the humans who are primitive beasts under “animal” control.  In a nutshell, Boulle’s novel , pitched by Bowfinger, would be “Paradise Lost meets Gulliver’s Travels with space instead of ocean travel, and with chimps instead of horses or serpents”.

Now, since the story line of Boulle’s novel is very likely unknown to virtually all of those who saw the 2011 film, and since the first generation of Planet of the Apes movies share with Boulle’s novel the feature that neither presents the superiority of the apes  over humans as the result of the apes having ingested any sort of mind-enhancing substance—they just are that way---it’s hardly surprising that (apparently) nobody before myself has ever connected the dots from it to Paradise Lost.

I have gone to the trouble of outlining all of the above, because I want you to really be struck by the striking contrast between the novel and the earlier films, on the one hand,  and what I find very interesting about the current rebooted Planet of the Apes series. I.e., in one crucial sense the new films bypass Boulle’s novel, and the first generation of Planet of the Apes films, and go back to the earliest source, Milton, and his great anti-hero,  Satan from Paradise Lost—but with a wonderful twist.

In Milton’s midrash on the Garden of Eden, Satan is a fallen angel, brilliantly gifted from birth (or however angels were supposed to come into existence), who only pretends to be a serpent who achieves human intelligence and speech by eating the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Whereas Boulle’s Caesar, the chimpanzee hero of the new films, actually achieves his high intelligence from a human-created drug, whereupon he then spreads the intellectual wealth among his simian allies, so that  he will have an army worthy of his command, in the rebellion  against human inter-species tyranny. And naming him “Caesar”, when the murdered pet chimp in Boulle’s novel was named “Hector”, is a nice added nod to ancient (human) history.

And there’s a final irony involved here, which I believe was in the back of Boulle’s mind when he wrote his novel a half century ago, and I also strongly suspect was part of the thinking of the rebooters in 2011 and 2014. I.e., that Paradise Lost is, in part, a 17^th century action movie in poetry on a cosmic scale—that part being the great rebellion led by Satan when he and his diabolical army storm the very gates of Heaven before all being cast down to Hell by God, the Son, and the righteous  angels. To invoke Bowfinger again, it’s like Marvel Comics meets the Bible-with battle scenes you just won’t believe a blind guy made up 350 years ago.  

But you may fairly ask at this point, given that the apes in the current movie and its prequel are the “good guys”, whose revolt seems justified by the horrific abuse they have suffered at the hands of the human race, why would the filmmakers choose to invoke Satan and his legion of devils as sources for “good guys”?  

I can’t wait to see the new film to find out how the rebellion turns out, but as I watch, I will for  sure be recalling the famous words of  another storyteller with a wildly fantastical imagination, William Blake, who spoke for many of his Romantic colleagues, in his description of the seeming paradox of Milton having made Satan far and away the central, most interesting, compelling, and in some ways sympathetic character in Paradise Lost:

"The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it."

Thinking about Caesar the leader of the simian rebellion, I have a feeling that this will be a fruitful line of speculation after I walk out of the multiplex. I promise to return to give you any further thoughts I may have about the above at that time.

ADDED 7/4/14:

I did some more digging and see now that (i) Aphra Behn's 1688 seminal anti-slavery novel Oroonoko had a slave hero named Caesar, and (ii) The Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972), the third film in the original iteration of the film series, ALSO has the character of Caesar in very similar circumstances.

Therefore it is possible that the current films don’t hark back to Oroonoko, but only to the 1972 film, which itself was based in part on Oroonoko.

So it’s possible that the current film's creative team may (ironically) be unaware of the Milton, Swift and Behn sources, which have become  obscured over recent decades, just as the humans in the novel and films don’t realize that they are actually on Earth! Lost history all the way down!

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

How Le Faye put the kibosh on Jane Austen's Scathing Satire, in Sense & Sensibility, of Austen Family History

A small group of intrepid Janeites, including myself, have begun a group read of The Austen Papers, published in 1942 by Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh (RAAL).  Why? Because this book is the only published source extant that provides the text of a number of letters written by members of the Austen family other than JA herself. And so it is a perfect followup to the group read of JA’s letters that we are just winding up in Janeites and Austen-L very shortly, as we approach the 197^th anniversary of JA’s sadly premature death at age 41 in 1817.

RAAL was a descendant of JA’s eldest brother, James Austen, and the co-author with his nephew William Austen-Leigh, in 1913, of JA’s Life & Letters: A Family Record. You may recall that I very recently strongly praised RAAL and WAL for their discreet but clear correction of one of the most egregious editorial frauds by JEAL in his 1870 Memoir, when JEAL deliberately altered JA’s explicit attribution of blame for her own serious health crisis several months before her eventual death from the disinheritance of the Austen women by Uncle Leigh Perrot to Henry Austen’s bankruptcy.

Well, today, in reading the beginning of The Austen Papers, and revisiting the poignant memorandum left behind by Elizabeth Weller, a matriarch in Austen family history, I understood, for the first time, yet another irony in the long serpentine history of Austen biography. And the irony that came into focus for me today also involves RAAL (with WAL), this time as tellers of another significant and (from the perspective of the Myth of Jane Austen that JEAL created, and Le Faye still seeks to keep in place) inconvenient truth about JA’s life and novels.

The irony, as you will see very shortly, is that this time around RAAL and WAL played the reverse role they played re the aggravation of JA’s serious illness. I.e., whereas in 1913, they corrected an editorial fraud by JEAL, the most influential earlier misleading Austen biographer, this time around, in 1989, it was the most influential later misleading biographer, Deirdre Le Faye, who did her best to UNDO RAAL's & WAL’s truthtelling!

I believe I’ve caught Le Faye red-handed (or should I say, red-penciled), and I think it’s not even close to being ambiguous—read on and see if you agree.

The first section of The Austen Papers presents in full a lengthy memorandum written by Elizabeth Austen (nee Weller), who was JA’s great grandmother on JA’s father’s side. No further set-up is required, it’s all provided in the following excerpt from the 1913 JA’s Life & Letters, describing what happened after Elizabeth’s husband John Austen died unexpectedly:

“This last John settled at Broadford (while his father remained at Grovehurst), and, when quite young, married Elizabeth Weller. He seems to have been a careless, easy-going man, who thought frugality unnecessary, as he would succeed to the estate on his father's death; but he died of consumption in 1704, a year before that event took place. One of his sisters married into the family of the Stringers (neighbours engaged in the same trade as the Austens), and numbered among her descendants the Knights of Godmersham--a circumstance which exercised an important influence over the subsequent fortunes of the Austen family.

Elizabeth Weller, a woman happily cast in a different mould from her husband, was an ancestress of Jane Austen who deserves commemoration. Thrifty, energetic, a careful mother, and a prudent housewife, she managed, though receiving only grudging assistance from the Austen family, to pay off her husband's debts, and to give to all her younger children a decent education at a school at Sevenoaks; the eldest boy (the future squire) being taken off her hands by his grandfather. [This almost exclusive care of the old man for his eldest grandson may possibly have been the model for the action of old Mr. Dashwood at the beginning of Sense and Sensibility.]”

END QUOTE

When I wrote my post in Oct 2011 entitled “ "The Whole World is in a conspiracy to enrich one part of our family at the expence of another": ONE Interesting  Answer Solves TWO Austen Puzzles"....

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/10/whole-world-is-in-conspiracy-to-enrich.html

….and I presented detailed textual evidence to support my argument that the disinheritance of the Dashwood women at the very beginning of S&S, as well as all the “Johns” of S&S, were nothing less than an uncannily close rewriting by JA of that real Austen family history, I had no idea that RAAL and WAL had gotten there first exactly one century earlier (albeit it in a passing, hedged suggestion)—so I am glad, first of all, to give them proper credit as the originators of this major discovery.

As soon as I read the above passage from the 1913 book, and after I registered a major increase in my admiration for RAAL and WAL’s late Victorian moral courage in telling the truth  about their own family heritage, I recalled that Le Faye’s 1989 Family Record was an expansion of the 1913 Life & Letters incorporating ¾ of a century’s additional data and insight. That it is literally an expansion is readily apparent from any reading of the two side by side—you can see that Le Faye incorporates the 1913 book, and frequently preserves the identical verbiage thereof, but also edits it throughout, with un-noted deletions and additions all over the place.  

So, I wondered, is it possible that Le Faye would have left that explosive footnote in her 1989 magnum opus? And that is what led me to catch Le Faye ‘red-penciled’!

First, please take careful note of that last footnote, in which RAAL and WAL in 1913 suggest that JA may well have had in mind her great grandmother’s lengthy account of her lifelong, titanic, but successful, financial struggles to keep herself and her children from dire poverty, when JA wrote her devastating satire of greed in the realm of inheritance in Chapter 2 of S&S. For those, like me, for whom connections between Austen’s novels and Austen’s life and family are paramount in interest, the footnote was far and away the most significant aspect of the story of Elizabeth Weller—it is the “punchline” that matters most.

Now, take a look at the parallel passage in Le Faye’s 1989 Family Record (actually, in the 2003 second  edition of same). I’ve put in ALL CAPS the verbiage LeFaye used to add to or replace the 1913 language, and carets to show deletions. Notice what’s missing from the end of Le Faye’s version:

“This YOUNGER John seems to have been a careless, easy-going man, who thought frugality unnecessary, as he would succeed to the estate on his father's death; but he died of TUBERCULOSIS in 1704, PREDECEASING HIS FATHER BY MORE THAN a year LEAVING SEVEN YOUNG CHILDREN AS WELL AS DEBTS UNSUSPECTED BY HIS WIFE.

Elizabeth Weller, a woman happily cast in a different mould from her husband, was an ancestress of Jane Austen who deserves commemoration. THOUGH RECEIVING ONLY GRUDGING ASSISTANCE FROM HER MISERLY FATHER-IN-LAW BEFORE HE DIED TOO SUDDENLY IN 1705, OF AN ILLNESS THAT ‘SEIZ’D HIS BRAINS’, SHE PROVED HERSELF [T]hrifty, energetic, a careful mother, and a prudent housewife, AND managed BOTH to pay off her husband's debts, and to give to all her younger SONS a decent education. [followed by additional details re the education of Elizabeth Weller’s younger sons].”  END QUOTE

My point being, as you have already no doubt discerned, is that Le Faye took it upon herself to add all sorts of extraneous details that could only be of interest to extremely hardcore Austen scholars focused on the minutiae of the history of the Austen family, but she COMPLETELY DELETED, without so much as a by-your-leave, RAAL’s and WAL’s 1913 footnote!!!

Now, it is not rocket science to infer why Le Faye would have done this—it is her M.O., visible in dozens of instances I have documented over the past 8 years, to do her best to put the kibosh on anything in JA’s biography that would seem to suggest anything Le Faye, in her imperial judgment, finds inappropriate or disturbing.

And the idea in that 1913 footnote, written by a highly reputable male Austen descendant (and so not dismissable as “anachronistic, irresponsible, modern, ideology–driven ravings”) that clearly appalled Le Faye was that JA, in what were literally JA’s first published words, i.e., in Chapters 1 & 2 of her first published novel, S&S, would take on, full-on, a foundational aspect of her family heritage. How could Le Faye allow to go out under her name a suggestion, no matter how mildly presented, that JA had made it her highest and most pressing authorial priority to expose a grotesquely unjust financial abuse of her great grandmother by her great-great-grandfather, via the most withering satire in all of JA’s novels. In addition to which, Chapter 2 of S&S has also been cited by hundreds of commentators, professional and amateur alike, as the most famous Shakespearean allusion in all of JA’s novels. So there is no more signature and high profile  passage in an Austen novel.

Clearly, Le Faye could not abide even the careful suggestion of such a damning veiled allusion by JA in such a passage. Because that would expose, in the most sensational way possible, the Biggest of the Big Lies perpetrated by Henry Austen, JEAL, and other conservative Austen biographers, i.e., that JA did not write about real people in her novels.

And so, what better way to put the kibosh on that very inconvenient suggestion by RAAL and WAL (of whom I am now a major fan!) than to take possession of the 1913 text, incorporate it whole, and then simply delete the offending footnote, knowing that very few scholars would find any reason to go back and read the 1913 work. Because, after all, Le Faye was making the clear representation to the Janeite world that her 1989 bio would give us everything good from the 1913 bio, plus a lot more good stuff. So why look behind her?

And that, more than any special insightfulness on my part, is why no Austen scholar I can detect online ever mentioned the Elizabeth Weller connection to S&S between 1989 and 2010 (when it was mentioned in passing in a JASA article here…

http://jasa.com.au/jane-austens-family/  Joanna Penglase 3/1/10

….and also why I was the first person, in 2013, to rediscover the allusion, and then to really take the idea seriously, and dive deeply into the texts of both S&S and the Austen family papers to more fully document the full scope of that allusion, including in particular the reason for all the “Johns’ in S&S, which arises, I argued in my 2013 post, from all the Johns in Jane Austen paternal family lineage!

Just ask yourself if that two-decades-long invisibility would have occurred, during the spike of Austenmania, had Le Faye, from her dominating perch of decades-long influence over Austen biographical studies, made the editorial choice NOT to delete that suggestion.

Badly done, Deirdre, as Knightley would have said!

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter