Lesbian Anna Howe loves clueless Clarissa just as lesbian Charlotte loves clueless Elizabeth

In my post several days ago…    http://tinyurl.com/psmzb5k    … I wrote about some disturbing and surprising parallels I recently discovered between, on the one hand, the hardened rake/villain Lovelace and the object of his desire, Clarissa Harlowe, in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, and, on the other hand, the hero Darcy and the object of his desire, Elizabeth Bennet, in Pride & Prejudice. What I found most disturbing in this startling parallel was that Jane Austen had intentionally and unmistakably, but covertly, tagged Darcy to Lovelace via hidden-in-plain-sight allusions in two salient scenes in P&P (the discussion of handwriting at Netherfield, and Eliza’s piano-playing at Rosings) to the following sexually saturated passage in a letter that best friend Anna Howe writes to Clarissa about Lovelace early (Volume 1, Letter 12) in Richardson’s novel (the ALL CAPS are, again, the sexual puns that also appear in similar context in those two P&P scenes):

“[Lovelace] DELIGHTS in WRITING. Whether at Lord M.'s, or at Lady Betty's, or Lady Sarah's, he has always a PEN in his FINGERS when he retires. One of HIS COMPANIONS (confirming his love of WRITING) has told [Mrs. Fortescue], that his thoughts FLOW RAPIDLY to his PEN: And you and I, my dear, have observed, on more occasions than one, that though he WRITES EVEN a fine HAND, he is one of the readiest and quickest of writers.”

[Lovelace] must indeed have had early a very docile genius; since a person of his pleasurable turn and active spirit, could never have submitted TO TAKE LONG OR GREAT PAINS in attaining the qualifications he is MASTER of; qualifications so seldom attained by youth of quality and fortune; by such especially of those of either, who, like him, have never known what it was to be controuled.”

Yesterday, it occurred to me to check in JA’s letters, to see if she ever indulged in this sexual punning there, and I found a very curious passage in her Jan. 24, 1809 letter to Cassandra--the moment in Jane’s life when she was exhilarated at the prospect of the imminent move to Chawton Cottage, where, as we all know, her writing career came back to life with a vengeance. The topic in this letter is, as you will readily discern, Jane’s mock concern about the critical reaction of moralistic, clueless 16 year old niece Fanny Austen to reading some of JA’s writing:

“I am gratified by [Fanny] having pleasure in what I write, but I wish the knowledge of my being exposed to her discerning criticism may not hurt my style, by inducing too great a solicitude. I begin already to weigh my words and sentences more than I did, and am looking about for a sentiment, an illustration or a metaphor in every corner of the room. Could my IDEAS FLOW AS FAST as the rain in the Store closet it would be CHARMING.”

This is exactly the satirical tone of JA’s much later “concern” about matching pretentious, narcissistic nephew JEAL’s “manly sketches”.  So, which of Aunt Jane’s writings is she referring to in January 1809 vis a vis Fanny’s “discerning” criticism? I believe that Jane has recently loaned Fanny the first volume of First Impressions (remember, this is about 4 years before JA famously “lopt and cropt” P&P—which all knowledgeable Janeites know was in its original epistolary form called First Impressions), and Jane was winking to Cassandra about the very same sexual puns (“metaphors”) lurking “in every corner of” the exchange between Mr. Bingley and his sister Caroline, which, I suggest, was already there in First Impressions by Jan. 1809:

"Oh!" cried Miss Bingley, "Charles writes in the most careless way imaginable. He leaves out half his words, and blots the rest."

"My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express them—by which means my letters sometimes convey no ideas at all to my correspondents."

"Your humility, Mr. Bingley," said Elizabeth, "must disarm reproof."

As I reflected further yesterday on the three disturbing parallelisms I had found (Lovelace/Darcy, Elizabeth/Clarissa, and Collins/ Solmes), and on that remarkably eroticized passage written by Anna to Clarissa about Lovelace, it made me pause, step back, and take a closer look at the relationship between Clarissa and Anna.

And as soon as I did that, the thought popped into my head that JA’s veiled allusion to Clarissa extended even further --i.e., the character of Charlotte Lucas in P&P surely was patterned after that of Anna Howe as well—meaning, most significantly, that Austen’s shadowy depiction of Charlotte’s lesbian love for Eliza (which I’ve long been writing about---see my latest post on that topic: http://tinyurl.com/q5fm6yb  ) has ALSO been sparked by a comparable subliminal lesbian love story in Clarissa!  It didn’t take very long to verify that my hunch was correct, as I’ll now explain!

First, my search in scholarly databases revealed that a handful of Richardson scholars have identified and described a strong lesbian vibe between Anna and Clarissa that lasts from the very beginning to the very end of Clarissa (when the dying Clarissa bequeaths a large portrait of herself to Anna, which the latter can privately enjoy the rest of her married life to Mr. Hickman, whom she has finally relented to marry—just like Charlotte marrying Mr. Collins). If anyone is interested, I can give you citations to those scholars who’ve  collectively already made that case pretty strongly. I.e., this is no modernist anachronist reading of Clarissa, it’s clear that Richardson was pursuing an ironic authorial strategy, subliminally depicting Anna as a third tempting “Satan” whispering in Clarissa’s ear (besides the toad-like Solmes, and the alluring Lovelace).

As another unexpected bonus in terms of my own interpretation of Charlotte as lesbian, as I was reading one of those scholarly takes on Anna Howe as lesbian, I read, in passing, the assertion (which I then verified to my satisfaction) that the word “unaccountable” was 18^th century punning code for “lesbian” . I immediately recalled Elizabeth’s grumbling world-weary comments to sister Jane about Charlotte’s marriage to Mr. Collins:

“There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense. I have met with two instances lately, one I will not mention; the other is Charlotte's marriage. It is UNACCOUNTABLE! In every view it is UNACCOUNTABLE!...were I persuaded that Charlotte had any regard for him, I should only think worse of her understanding than I now do of her heart. My dear Jane, Mr. Collins is a conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly man; you know he is, as well as I do; and you must feel, as well as I do, that the woman who married him cannot have a proper way of thinking. You shall not defend her, though it is Charlotte Lucas. You shall not, for the sake of one individual, change the meaning of principle and integrity, nor endeavour to persuade yourself or me, that selfishness is prudence, and insensibility of danger security for happiness."

It’s now obvious to me that this speech, which I already interpreted as Eliza venting her unconscious jealousy of Charlotte---who not only married an absurd husband, but also moved far away from Eliza--- also reflects that JA, from her extensive readings of 18^th century novels, understood that code of “unaccountable” as “lesbian” very well indeed, and that’s why she has Eliza exclaim that word not once but twice about Charlotte!  And I think JA also picked up on the following passage in Vol 1, Letter 25, when Clarissa, writing to Anna, quotes from her mother’s (i.e., Mrs. Harlowe’s) letter: 

“I charge you, let not this letter be found. Burn it. There is too much of the mother in it, to A DAUGHTER SO UNACCOUNTABLY OBSTINATE.”

The sexual pun works perfectly here, as it is Clarissa’s “unaccountable” and “obstinate”  lesbian love for Anna which, in part, motivates Clarissa to reject both the loathsome Solmes AND the attractive Lovelace.

And, thinking a little further outside the box….all knowledgeable Janeites are aware that First Impressions, was epistolary, and so, I ask, who were Elizabeth Bennet’s principal correspondents?  Two candidates top the list: Eliza’s aunt Mrs. Gardiner and…Eliza’s BFF Charlotte! Of course, that would only be during the second half of the novel, after Charlotte’s relocation to Hunsford after marrying Mr. Collins. And those letters passing between Eliza and Charlotte would have been the very ones that Jane Austen cut out, since none survive in P&P as published—and I suggest that they’re still “there”, but now only in the shadow  story of P&P.

Thinking of JA’s love of wordplay, I then wondered, might the title of First Impressions been inspired by a passage in Clarissa? Acting on that hunch, I searched in Clarissa, and—BINGO!--I found a discussion of first impressions, as well as a great deal of obvious resonance to Eliza’s feeling torn between Darcy and Wickham, in Letter 40 of Volume 1, when Clarissa writes to Anna:

“…I resume, to give you my opinion of the force which figure or person ought to have upon our sex: and this I shall do both generally as to the other sex, and particularly as to this man; whence you will be able to collect how far my friends are in the right, or in the wrong, when they attribute a good deal of PREJUDICE in favour of one man, and in disfavour of the other, on the score of figure. But, first, let me observe, that they see abundant reason, on comparing Mr. Lovelace and Mr. Solmes together, to believe that this may be a consideration with me; and therefore they believe it is. There is certainly something very plausible and attractive, as well as creditable to a woman’s choice, in figure. It gives a favourable IMPRESSION AT FIRST SIGHT, in which we wish to be confirmed: and if, upon further acquaintance, we find reason to be so, we are pleased with our judgment, and like the person the better, for having given us cause to compliment our own sagacity, in our FIRST-SIGHTED IMPRESSIONS…..”

And that might have been the end of this particular sleuthing trail….but as I reflected on the lesbian subtext of Clarissa, my analysis still felt incomplete. I’d been disappointed at one aspect of the prior scholarly sightings of Clarissa‘s lesbian subtext, which was that the earlier scholars brought forward no specific passages from Richardson’s gargantuan tome in which either Clarissa or Anna had indulged in the same sort of sexual innuendo as Anna had indulged in in Volume 1, Letter 12, about Lovelace’s sexualized penmanship and letter writing. And I felt strongly that it had to be there somewhere, so I went looking for it.

Using word searches for the same sorts of sexually suggestive words and imagery, it took me a very short time to find a couple more, as follows:

First, this short excerpt in Letter 11 of Volume 1, from Clarissa to Anna (being the letter immediately preceding the one I quoted initially):    “I do so; and cannot own any of the glow, any of the THROBS you mention. — Upon my word I will repeat, I cannot. And yet the passages in my letter, upon which you are so humourously severe, LAY ME FAIRLY OPEN TO YOUR AGREEABLE raillery. I own they do. And I cannot tell what turn my mind had taken to dictate SO ODDLY TO MY PEN…

And then, this passage, actually earlier in that same Letter 12 containing that sexualized passage I originally found: “But were he DEEP, and ever so DEEP, you would soon PENETRATE him, if they would leave you to yourself..”

And then I found this cluster of phallic puns about Lovelace in Volume 1, Letter 2, from Clarissa to Anna (i.e., the second letter in the entire novel!):    “…But my sister it seems had not considered the matter well. This was not the way, as it proved, to be taken for matters of mere OMISSION, with a man of Mr. Lovelace’s PENETRATION. Nor with any man; since if love has not taken root DEEP ENOUGH to cause it to SHOOT OUT into declaration, if an opportunity be fairly given for it, there is LITTLE ROOM to expect, that the blighting winds of anger or resentment will bring it forward.”

So Volume 1 seemed to be teeming with all sorts of male-female sexual innuendoes between Clarissa and Anna—but nothing quite prepared me for the passage I then found in Letter 25 in Volume 2, by Clarissa to Anna, when Clarissa veers into the charged subject of Clarissa’s own feelings for Anna. It begins with Clarissa responding to Anna’s breaking her epistolary silence which had worried Clarissa, with the excuse of Anna’s angst about being pressured by her mother to marry Mr. Hickman:

[Clarissa] “You have very kindly accounted for your silence. People in misfortune are always in doubt. They are too apt to turn even unavoidable accidents into slights and neglects; especially in those whose favourable opinion they wish to preserve. I am sure I ought evermore to exempt my Anna Howe from the supposed possibility of her becoming one of those who bask only in the sun-shine of a friend: but nevertheless her friendship is too precious to me, not to doubt my own merits on the one hand, and not to be anxious for the preservation of it, on the other. You so generously gave me liberty to chide you, that I am afraid of taking it, because I could sooner mistrust my own judgment, than that of a beloved friend, whose ingenuousness in acknowledging an imputed error seems to set her above the commission of a wilful one. This makes me half-afraid to ask you, if you think you are not too cruel, too ungenerous shall I say? in your behaviour to a man who loves you so dearly, and is so worthy and so sincere a man?”

So far, nothing but very straightforward G-rated expression of loving sentiments of one dear female friend for another. But now observe the dramatic escalation---from 0 to 60 in two seconds, as it were---of subliminal female-centric erotic imagery in the continuation of that passage:

“Only it is by YOU, or I should be ashamed to be outdone in that true magnanimity, which makes one thankful for THE WOUNDS GIVEN by a true friend. I believe I was guilty of a petulance, which nothing but my uneasy situation can excuse; if that can. I am but almost afraid to beg of you, and yet I repeatedly do, to give way to that CHARMING SPIRIT, whenever IT RISES TO YOUR PEN, which smiles, yet goes TO THE QUICK OF MY FAULT. What patient shall be AFRAID OF A PROBE IN SO DELICATE A HAND? — I say, I am almost afraid to pray you to give way to it, for fear you should, for that very reason, restrain it. For the edge may be taken off, if it does not make the subject of its raillery WINCE A LITTLE. Permitted or desired satire may be apt, in a generous satirist, MENDING as it rallies, to turn too soon into panegyric. Yours is intended to instruct; and though IT BITES, it pleases at the same time: NO FEAR OF A WOUND’S RANKLING or festering by SO DELICATE A POINT as you carry; not envenomed by personality, not intending to expose, or ridicule, or exasperate. The most admired of our moderns know nothing of this art: Why? Because it must be founded in good nature, and directed by a right heart. The man, NOT THE FAULT, is generally THE SUBJECT OF THEIR SATIRE: and were it to be just, how should it be useful; how should it answer any good purpose; when EVERY GASH (for their WEAPON is a BROAD SWORD, not a LANCET) LETS IN THE AIR OF PUBLIC ridicule, and exasperates where it should HEAL? SPARE me not therefore because I am your friend. For that very reason spare me not. I may FEEL THE EDGE, FINE AS IT IS. I MAY BE PAINED: you would LOSE YOUR END if I were not: but after THE FIRST SENSIBILITY (as I have said more than once before) I will LOVE YOU THE BETTER, and MY AMENDED HEART shall be all yours; and it will then be more worthy to be yours.”

I leave it to you to count up the numerous lesbian innuendoes in that passage, and leave it at that.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

The numerous intentional distortions in James Edward Austen Leigh's 1870 Memoir

[the following post is an excerpt from a longer 2013 post of mine in which I argued that the image of Jane Austen on the 2017 British 10 pound note should be the authentic one sketched by her sister Cassandra and on display in the National Portrait Gallery and not the phony placid bovine version that Jane's nephew James Edward Austen Leigh (JEAL) commissioned for his 1870 Memoir of his long deceased Aunt Jane]

 I have previously blogged on several occasions about the clearly intentional editorial distortions and outright lies that JEAL promulgated in the Memoir, such as these…

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/01/news-that-really-made-jane-austen_21.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/03/truth-will-out-shining-light-on-some.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2013/04/james-edward-austen-leighs-hyper.html

And that’s only skimming the surface. I want to conclude by bringing to your attention what I believe to be the best treatment out there in print on the subject of JEAL’s deceptions in the Memoir--- Searching for Jane Austen (2004), by Emily Auerbach.

My source for what follows is Chapter 1 of her book, entitled “Dear Aunt Jane: Putting Her Down and Touching Her Up”, but you will find much of that same material in the 2005 print Persuasions, under the title "Searching for Jane Austen: restoring the 'fleas' and 'bad breath'.":

 

http://jasna.org/persuasions/printed/number27/auerbach.pdf

Here are some excerpts from Auerbach’s first chapter, which perfectly sum up why the Bank of England should change everything in their planned 10-pound note (while keeping Jane Austen, of course!). Tell me if you don’t get M.A.D. just reading what JEAL did!:

“Book jackets of new Austen studies sport prettified images of her face surrounded with flowers and lace, and comedians joke about men dragged to Austen movies against their wills. Old attitudes die hard. Old texts die hard, too…Internet users [and here I would add, the Bank of England] priding themselves on their state-of-the-art technology unknowingly download not only distorted representations of Austen’s face, but also incomplete or altered versions of her writing. As we will see, Austen’s relatives and early editors would be pleased to know this: they worked hard to sweeten her image, weaken her words, and soften her bite. Paradoxically, JA nowadays seems everywhere yet still hard to find. Hence my title: Searching for Jane Austen.”

And then this about JEAL’s techniques for deception and distortion:

“Like his brother Henry, James Austen emphasized his sister’s mild and traditional feminine nature….His sister did not let her writing inflame her vanity or pride or distract her from completing useful chores, James insisted. James’s son, JEAL, continued this verbal softening in his 1870 Memoir…We are still feeling the effects of the JA myth constructed in 1870 for public consumption ….Noting that her nephews and nieces ‘did not think of  her as being clever’….JEAL emphasizes those qualities considered ladylike …JEAL presents his modest aunt’s occupation as a little hobby for her own amusement and claims she felt no mortification about her lack of early success…”

Then, after detailing the cynical, calculating and unacknowledged editing of the first JA letter JEAL refers to in the Memoir, Auerbach brilliantly concludes:

“In effect, JEAL creates a brilliant Catch-22. After removing references to politics and literature from the letters, he then observes that his songbird-like aunt takes ‘no notice of politics or public events’ and avoids ‘discussions of literature.’ This pattern continues throughout the Memoir…”

And that's not the half of it.

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

How always UNknown….till now…the proof that Jane Austen really meant to write “How always known no principle…”

As I wrote 10 months ago, one of the most interesting sessions at the 2014 JASNA AGM in Montreal was Peter Sabor’s presentation, “Textual Controversies: Editing Mansfield Park”. Today I will address one of those  controversies, and present what I believe to be persuasive proof  to definitively resolve the apparent crux, which has drawn the close attention of every modern editor of MP.

Here is what Prof. Sabor wrote in this regard in his Persuasions Vol. 36 article: 

“…The most famous textual crux in Mansfield Park, and perhaps in all of Austen’s novels, concerns another sentence that remains unchanged between the 1814 and 1816 editions. It occurs in a passage in the final volume in which Fanny is assessing Henry Crawford’s character unfavorably:

“How evidently was there a gross want of feeling and humanity where his own pleasure was concerned—And, alas! how always known no principle to supply as a duty what the heart was deficient in”.

Chapman declared that the text was “certainly corrupt,” and suggested a revision proposed by Henry Jackson: “And, alas! now all was known, no principle . . .”. E. M. Forster was enthralled by this emendation, declaring that with it “the sentence not only makes sense but illumines its surroundings”. Nevertheless, as Mary Lascelles notes, it is “at variance with the tenor of the whole passage,” and

Chapman himself, she writes, “became dissatisfied with it.” She also proposes an emendation of her own: “And, alas! now as always no known principle . . .”.

Several other emendations have been proposed, all, in my view, unsatisfactory. The best solution, I believe, is to leave the sentence unchanged, as it might well have been what Austen wrote. This is the path followed by Sutherland, Johnson, Sturrock, and Wiltshire. Sutherland, who devotes an extensive note to the passage, rightly terms the emendation proposed by Lascelles “unnecessarily fussy,” and remarks that in retaining the readings of the 1814 and 1816 editions, “we are accepting a form of words that carried at the least Austen’s tacit approval, and a form of words that does make sense”. Johnson likewise believes that the “sentence, while difficult, is not unintelligible”. For Wiltshire, the sentence is “a rendering of feeling rather than a grammatically correct statement”, and as such it captures Fanny’s troubled state of mind at the time. Kinsley, however, goes further than Chapman in not only suggesting an emendation but actually inserting it into his text. Thus Fanny, in the World’s Classics edition, regrets that Crawford had “always no known principle”. Readers beware: this is not a phrase that Austen wrote or saw into print.” END QUOTE

Not knowing that editorial history until last year’s AGM, what has always struck me about Fanny’s exclamation “And, alas! How always known no principle…” ever since I first stumbled over  it a few years ago, and parsed it out for myself, was how this was the quintessential example of Fanny’s poetic thought-language. I.e., the narration of her thoughts was not infrequently phrased in elevated and poetic, rather than prose, diction. I was also reminded of how Darcy, in his first proposal, takes his game up a couple of rhetorical levels when he utters the poetic “In vain have I struggled” instead of the prosaic “I have struggled in vain”.  Fanny---and perhaps also Darcy, who after all also defends poetry as the food of love----is a Romantic, steeped in Wordsworth (as we also know from her Tintern Abbey transparencies).

Anyway, it occurred to me to go to Google Books and see whether I might just find some published allusive source—preferably a Wordsworth poem Fanny might have read---in which “How always…” began a line of poetry. I did the search, and I scored an unexpected direct hit—not on a Wordsworth poem, but, even more interestingly, on a prose allusive source that was first recognized nearly 30 years ago as a source for Mansfield Park---I’m talking about Fanny Burney’s Camilla.

Specifically, in Judy Simon’s 1987 book Fanny Burney, she wrote the following about MP and Camilla:

“Numerous parallels can be drawn between the two books, with their emphasis on the family situation, their analyses of moral education and their theme of spiritual inheritance. The sober Edgar Mandelbert closely anticipates Edmund Bertram, ...”

And that immediately reminded me that I was the first, about five years ago, to point out the marvelous name game that Jane Austen played in MP, so as to subliminally underscore the parallel between Edgar and Edmund (in addition to the obvious King Lear wink). I.e., as between the 15 letters of “Edgar Mandelbert” and 13 letters of “Edmund Bertram”,  it turns out, not coincidentally, that eleven of the thirteen letters in the latter also appear in the former----but much more tellingly, the same syllables are used in both—just shuffled a bit, like a deck of cards. I.e., “Ed-Mand” from Burney’s hero becomes “Edmund” in Austen’s, and similarly “Bert-rag” from Burney becomes “Bertram” in Austen!

So, with what Simon said, and I added, how much more interesting that makes the parallelism I have now discovered between Fanny Price’s poetic soliloquy about Henry Crawford….

“How evidently was there a gross want of feeling and humanity where his own pleasure was concerned—And, alas! how always known no principle to supply as a duty what the heart was deficient in”

and  Camilla’s impassioned retort, in Chapter 10 of Camilla, to her selfish, immature brother Lionel’s whining, after his mother has “sentenced” him to resume his studies after a careless “joke” on his part has caused harm in their family:

'And enough too,' cried [Lionel], reddening: 'I am a very wretch!—I believe that—though I am sure I can't tell how; for I never intend any harm, never think, never dream of hurting any mortal! But as to study—I must own to you, I hate it most deucedly. Anything else—if my mother had but exacted any thing else—with what joy I would have shewn my obedience!—If she had ordered me to be horse-ponded, I do protest to you, I would not have demurred.'

'How always you run into the ridiculous!' cried Camilla.

I must emphasize that it’s not just the repetition of “How always” that seals the deal for me on Fanny’s poetic rumination being an intentional allusion by Jane Austen to this Burney novel she knew so well, and indeed mentioned twice, very favorably and famously, in Northanger Abbey. It’s also that in each case the poetic rumination reflects the virtuous heroine expressing her deep disappointment and upset at the selfish, reckless behavior of an idle, pleasure-seeking young man close to her and the rest of her family, who wreaks havoc in the heroine’s family.

That’s WAY WAY too many significant points of correspondence between the two passages to be coincidental or unconscious.

I suggest further that this ought to alert both Austen and Burney scholars to take a closer look for other, even more substantive parallels between the characters of Henry Crawford and Lionel Tyrold, as I’d bet a great deal that there’s much more to their mutual resemblance than just being the target of a “How always”!

Plus….circling back to the beginning of this post, there is the added bonus that this now establishes beyond all reasonable doubt that Jane Austen’s original “awkward” phraseology, which Chapman and some other presumptuous editors felt so justified in altering, is indeed exactly what Jane Austen intended to write!

If Peter Sabor is correct in his assertion that this has been the most famous textual crux in all of Jane Austen novels, then I think it’s noteworthy that I have finally laid it to rest, two centuries after it first arose.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Fanny Price the guilty eavesdropper: Pollock's Law is still (arguably) universally valid!

 Much has been made over the years about Pollock's Law, which was described several years ago as follows:

"One of the most often cited memes in the history of Austen scholarship was first stated in 1860 by Sir William Frederick Pollock (2d Bart.), a passionate Janeite whose grandfather was saddler to King George III, and whose writer brother Walter Herries Pollock was a close friend of Wilde, Kipling, Stevenson, and other famous authors. Pollock’s article published in Fraser’s Magazine included this influential praise of JA’s authorial scruples:  

“Miss Austen never attempts to describe a scene or a class of society with which she was not herself thoroughly acquainted. The conversations of ladies with ladies, or of ladies and gentlemen together, are given, but no instance occurs of a scene in which men only are present.”

I've previously argued that the principal reason for Pollock's Law is not the commonly accepted one (that Jane Austen did not wish to write what she had never witnessed, i.e., men talking alone), but that over 90% of her dramatized scenes in all six novels involve the heroine--and this near universal principal of limiting dramatized scenes to those in which the heroine is right there observing and listening, was JA's way of preserving ambiguity in two key aspects:

1. Ambiguity as to what is reported (via letters written, or speeches spoken, by characters other than the heroine) to have happened outside the heroine's presence, so as to admit of more than one plausible
interpretation thereof. Frank Churchill's long letter near the end of Emma, which constitutes the entirety of Chapter 50, is the quintessential example of a report by a character other than the heroine, which may or may not be accurate as to its various reported offstage events.
AND
2. Ambiguity as to what is narrated while the heroine is present, insofar as the same question is repeatedly raised as to the narration in such scenes--are we reading an OBJECTIVE report of what is really happening, or a SUBJECTIVE report of what the heroine believes is happening?

That's all background to what I want to say today, which has to do with the one clear exception to Pollock's Law that I am aware of having ever been identified (the earliest such catch I see online being
by Ellen Moody, in Janeites, in 1999). It is the scene in Chapter 3 of Mansfield Park when Sir Thomas chastises Tom for his profligacy, resulting in Edmund having to wait to get a living.

I now believe that a plausible case can be made that even that dramatized scene involving only Sir Thomas and Tom does not violate Pollock's Law after all! And I get to that inference, via resonance from  two other scenes in MP, as I will now unfold to you.

The first such later scene I now bring forward, in Chapter 34, is undramatized but is summarized in narration, and it involves Sir Thomas ostensibly alone with one of his sons---but this time, it's Edmund, not Tom, right after Edmund has returned to Mansfield Park after a stint away at school:

"...After dinner, when [Edmund] and his father were alone, [Edmund] had Fanny's history; and then all the great events of the last fortnight, and the present situation of matters at Mansfield were known to him.
Fanny suspected what was going on. They sat so much longer than usual in the dining-parlour, that she was sure they must be talking of her; and when tea at last brought them away, and she was to be seen by Edmund again, she felt dreadfully guilty. He came to her, sat down by her, took her hand, and pressed it kindly; and at that moment she thought that, but for the occupation and the scene which the tea-things afforded, she must have betrayed her emotion in some unpardonable excess...."

What dawned on me for the first time today, after reading that scene countless times before, is that Fanny has very likely been eavesdropping during the latter half of Sir Thomas's lengthy tete a tete with Edmund!
As usual, having had this outside-the-box thought, as I read the above quoted dialog, I found the "bread crumb" that supports it----"...she felt dreadfully guilty...." 

The question is, what does Fanny feel dreadfully guilty about? Most readers just assume that she feels
dreadfully guilty about her taking up too much of Edmund's and Sir Thomas's valuable time, because Fanny sees herself as being unworthy of  that attention. And that is certainly a plausible inference, because it fits nicely with our being shown in a variety of ways that Fanny is horrified at receiving attention, in part because she feels herself unworthy of it.

But an equally, and I think much more interesting possibility, is that Fanny, having grown very nervous and impatient waiting ("They sat so much longer than usual in the dining parlour, that she was sure they
must be talking of her"), cannot help herself, and so she goes to the door of the dining parlour and eavesdrops until "tea at last brought them away, and she was to be seen by Edmund again..." If she had
eavesdropped, that would certainly account for her feeling "dreadfully guilty" two minutes later when Edmund came out and spoke to her. And the freshness of her "crime" would also account for her fear that she might "betray her emotion in some unpardonable excess" when Edmund then spoke to her, and told her all about his conversation with his father. We’ve all been there in our own lives, having to pretend that we have not heard something which we actually just heard shortly before! And so, in this alternative reading, the task Fanny would then have would be to conceal that she already had heard many of the things he was reporting to her of his meeting with his father, and act as if she had no idea what he was going to tell her!

And...that brings me back to that original dramatized scene in Chapter 3, when Sir Thomas speaks to Tom, in a scene which the narrator takes pains to alert us is occurring when Fanny is 15, and therefore JA inobtrusively conveys the crucial data to us that Fanny is at that moment a young lady fully capable of understanding adult conversations, rather than the girl of eight whose arrival at Mansfield Park is described in the previous chapter:

"...There was another family living actually held for Edmund; but though this circumstance had made the arrangement somewhat easier to Sir Thomas's conscience, he could not but feel it to be an act of injustice,
and he earnestly tried to impress his eldest son with the same conviction, in the hope of its producing a better effect than anything he had yet been able to say or do.
"I blush for you, Tom," said he, in his most dignified manner; "I blush for the expedient which I am driven on, and I trust I may pity your feelings as a brother on the occasion. You have robbed Edmund for ten, twenty, thirty years, perhaps for life, of more than half the income which ought to be his. It may hereafter be in my power, or in yours (I hope it will), to procure him better preferment; but it must not be
forgotten that no benefit of that sort would have been beyond his natural claims on us, and that nothing can, in fact, be an equivalent for the certain advantage which he is now obliged to forego through the
urgency of your debts."
Tom listened with some shame and some sorrow; but escaping as quickly as possible, could soon with cheerful selfishness reflect, firstly, that he had not been half so much in debt as some of his friends; secondly, that his father had made a most tiresome piece of work of it; and, thirdly, that the future incumbent, whoever he might be, would, in all probability, die very soon."

So I now think that Jane Austen very deliberately hinted at the 18-year old Fanny's eavesdropping in Chapter 34, so as to eventually cause some REreaders of MP to pause while reading the above passage in Chapter 3, and to wonder whether the 15 year old Fanny has been eavesdropping on Sir Thomas's stern lecturing of Tom! One might call this a basic survival strategy on Fanny’s part, using her invisibility to covertly gather intelligence of family matters of great personal interest to Fanny, which otherwise might never be (accurately) disclosed to her.

And one other final bit of evidence I discern is that last sentence, describing Tom's state of mind right after he has escaped "as quickly as possible". The word "reflect" normally would refer to what Tom THINKS to himself about his father's criticisms, but it also can quite plausibly refer to what Tom may have SPOKEN to Fanny right afterwards--especially if he had come upon her outside Sir Thomas's room!

Think I am reaching too far? Well, then, finally, consider yet one scene other than the above one in Chapter 3, in which Tom is similarly subjected to what he experiences as unjust parental pressure,
and how he handles that. It is at the end of Chapter 12:

"Fanny could listen no farther. Listening and wondering were all suspended for a time, for Mr. Bertram was in the room again; and though feeling it would be a great honour to be asked by him, she thought it
must happen. He came towards their little circle; but instead of asking her to dance, drew a chair near her, and gave her an account of the present state of a sick horse, and the opinion of the groom, from whom
he had just parted. Fanny found that it was not to be, and in the modesty of her nature immediately felt that she had been unreasonable in expecting it. When he had told of his horse, he took a newspaper from
the table, and looking over it, said in a languid way, "If you want to dance, Fanny, I will stand up with you." With more than equal civility the offer was declined; she did not wish to dance. "I am glad of it,"
said he, in a much brisker tone, and throwing down the newspaper again, "for I am tired to death. I only wonder how the good people can keep it up so long. They had need be all in love, to find any amusement in such folly; and so they are, I fancy. If you look at them you may see they are so many couple of lovers—all but Yates and Mrs. Grant—and, between ourselves, she, poor woman, must want a lover as much as any one of them. A desperate dull life hers must be with the doctor," making a sly face as he spoke towards the chair of the latter, who proving, however, to be close at his elbow, made so instantaneous a change of expression and subject necessary, as Fanny, in spite of everything, could hardly help laughing at. "A strange business this in America, Dr. Grant! What is your opinion? I always come to you to know what I am to think of public matters."
"My dear Tom," cried his aunt soon afterwards, "as you are not dancing, I dare say you will have no objection to join us in a rubber; shall you?" Then leaving her seat, and coming to him to enforce the proposal, added in a whisper, "We want to make a table for Mrs. Rushworth, you know. Your mother is quite anxious about it, but cannot very well spare time to sit down herself, because of her fringe. Now, you and I and Dr. Grant will just do; and though we play but half-crowns, you know, you may bet half-guineas with him."
"I should be most happy," replied he aloud, and jumping up with alacrity, "it would give me the greatest pleasure; but that I am this moment going to dance." Come, Fanny, taking her hand, "do not be dawdling any longer, or the dance will be over."
Fanny was led off very willingly, though it was impossible for her to feel much gratitude towards her cousin, or distinguish, as he certainly did, between the selfishness of another person and his own.
"A pretty modest request upon my word," he indignantly exclaimed as they walked away. "To want to nail me to a card-table for the next two hours with herself and Dr. Grant, who are always quarrelling, and that poking old woman, who knows no more of whist than of algebra. I wish my good aunt would be a little less busy! And to ask me in such a way too! without ceremony, before them all, so as to leave me no possibility of refusing. That is what I dislike most particularly. It raises my spleen more than anything, to have the pretence of being asked, of being given a choice, and at the same time addressed in such a way as to oblige one to do the very thing, whatever it be! If I had not luckily thought of standing up with you I could not have got out of it. It is a great deal too bad. But when my aunt has got a fancy in her head,
nothing can stop her." "

What we see in this scene is Tom feeling grievously put upon by Aunt Norris's urging him to play cards with her, Mrs. Rushworth, and Dr. Grant for two interminable hours----and how does he respond? He turns to Fanny, both as an escape valve to get away from the dreaded card game, and also to vent his spleen to his cousin, who happens to be the greatest of listeners. And his vented spleen in Chapter 12 sounds A LOT like his spleen in Chapter 3, doesn’t it, especially the part about his being “tired to death”, which is pretty much what he “reflects” about his father making “so tiresome a piece of work of it”.

And it is for all these reasons, then, that I now assert that Pollock's Law is still (arguably) universally valid after all!!

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitte