I’ve been
following the recent discussion in Janeites about the theme of leading apes
into hell as the proverbial punishment for women who don’t marry and bear
children.
First,
let me add in passing that in my previous research, I came across the related scholarly
suggestion of a variant on that theme—I.e., that it was also a punishment for
single women who kill their illegitimate offspring—the common denominator being that the woman must be punished for refusing
to play her appointed societal role as “breeding animal”.
Second
(and surprisingly), no one has noted the most famous literary examples other
than Dante’s (and by the way, I never could find exactly where in Dante’s
poetry that “leading apes to hell” metaphor is expressed--does anybody know?) of
this meme of “leading apes into hell”----Shakespeare!!! ---Jane, is that what
you were thinking of?
Specifically,
Shakespeare used this theme not once but twice, in passages which he clearly
treated as related, because the speakers are so very similar—the “curst”, sharp-tongued
single woman Kate in 2.1 of The Taming of
the Shrew, as she unleashes her fury at sister Bianca whom Kate sees as
being their father’s favorite….
Is
it for him you do envy me so?
Nay then you jest, and now I well perceive
You have but jested with me all this while:
I prithee, sister Kate, untie my hands.
Nay then you jest, and now I well perceive
You have but jested with me all this while:
I prithee, sister Kate, untie my hands.
KATHARINA If that be jest, then all the rest was so.
Strikes
her
Enter
BAPTISTA
Why,
how now, dame! whence grows this insolence?
Bianca, stand aside. Poor girl! she weeps.
Go ply thy needle; meddle not with her.
For shame, thou helding of a devilish spirit,
Why dost thou wrong her that did ne'er wrong thee?
When did she cross thee with a bitter word?
Bianca, stand aside. Poor girl! she weeps.
Go ply thy needle; meddle not with her.
For shame, thou helding of a devilish spirit,
Why dost thou wrong her that did ne'er wrong thee?
When did she cross thee with a bitter word?
KATHARINA Her silence flouts me, and I'll be revenged.
Flies
after BIANCA
BAPTISTA What, in my sight? Bianca, get thee in.
Exit
BIANCA
KATHARINA
What,
will you not suffer me? Nay, now I see
She is your treasure, she must have a husband;
I MUST DANCE BARE-FOOT ON HER WEDDING DAY
And for your love to her LEAD APES IN HELL.
Talk not to me: I will go sit and weep
Till I can find occasion of revenge.
She is your treasure, she must have a husband;
I MUST DANCE BARE-FOOT ON HER WEDDING DAY
And for your love to her LEAD APES IN HELL.
Talk not to me: I will go sit and weep
Till I can find occasion of revenge.
Exit
BAPTISTA
Was ever gentleman thus grieved as I?
…and the
“curst” sharp tongued single woman Beatrice (not coincidentally, the name of
Dante’s beloved) in Much Ado About
Nothing, as he resists her uncle’s jibes about her pushing suitors away
with her sharp wit:
BEATRICE Just, if he send me no husband; for the which blessing I am at him upon my knees every morning and evening. Lord, I could not endure a husband with a beard on his face: I had rather lie in the woollen.
BEATRICE What should I do with him? dress him in my
apparel and make him my waiting gentlewoman? He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no
beard is less than a man: and he that is more than a youth
is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for
him: therefore, I WILL EVEN TAKE SIXPENCE IN EARNEST OF THE BEAR-WARD, AND LEAD HIS APES INTO HELL.
BEATRICE No, but to the gate; and there will the devil
meet me, like an old cuckold, with horns on his head, and say 'Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven;
here's no place for you maids:' so DELIVER ME UP MY APES,
and away to Saint Peter for the heavens; he shows me where
the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is
long.
I now
want to turn this discussion around to Jane Austen, by picking up on the first
part of Beatrice’s sentence: “I will even take sixpence in earnest of the
bear-ward”.
Beatrice’s
witty conceit is that she’ll accept the sum of sixpence as an earnest money
deposit or down payment from the bearward (one meaning being the bear keeper
who worked in the horrible bear-baiting
trade—and who apparently sometimes kept nonhuman primates as a sideline) in
order to make delivery of the apes into hell. And then, presumably after
getting paid C.O.D. by the devil, she’ll turn around and head straight up to heaven
to make merry with the bachelors (which suggests that the apes led to hell were
the married men!).
What
I was immediately reminded of was the following passage in JA’ Letter #2 dated
Jan. 14-15, 1796, in which the 20 year old JA, sounding remarkably like Beatrice and also
Elizabeth Bennet, playfully discusses her own marital prospects:
“Tell
Mary that I make over Mr. Heartley & all his Estate to her for her sole use
and Benefit in the future, & not only him, but all my other Admirers into
the bargain wherever she can find them, even the kiss which C. Powlett wanted
to give me, as I mean to confine myself in future to Mr. Tom Lefroy, FOR WHOM I
DONOT CARE SIXPENCE. Assure [Miss C. Powlett] also as a last & indubitable
proof of Warren’s indifference to me, that he actually drew that Gentleman’s
picture for me, & delivered it to me without a Sigh.”
It is
100% clear to me that JA had Shakespeare’s Beatrice specifically in mind as she
concocted that conceit, because it’s not merely the echoing of Beatrice’s
reference to “sixpence”, which, alone, could very well be coincidence. It’s
that this echo occurs in the same, very specific context of a woman treating men
as commodities to be bought, sold, and delivered in business transactions—that’s
no coincidence!
And of
course the subversive point of this conceit in Letter #2 is that this is
exactly the way women were actually treated in both Shakespeare’s and Jane
Austen’s eras: i.e., the marriage market
was a vast slave market in which women were bought and sold as if they were
farm or performing animals, with no say whatsoever over who their “owner” would
be. That passage thus has an absurdist twelfth night sensibility —turning the
real world topsy turvy, to make the point of the truly absurd injustice of that
real world.
And
that led me to search for any other usages of “sixpence” in JA’s fiction—and wouldn’t
ya know, 5 of the 6 pertain to a woman leading a single life in a man’s world!:
First,
in The Watsons fragment, we listen in
as the single Emma Watson, single and no longer in youthful bloom, receiving Mr. Collins-esque sexist condolences
from her brother, for her having been left in spinsterhood by her financially inept
aunt, forcing Emma to return to her penurious family of origin. Note her
brother’s two references to Emma being left “without a sixpence”, the second of
which reduces her to tears!:
“Emma
was the first of the females in the parlour on entering it again; she found her
brother there alone.‐
‘So Emma’, said he, ‘you are quite the Stranger at home. It must seem odd
enough to you to be here. A pretty peice of work your Aunt Turner has made of
it! By Heaven! a woman should never be trusted with money. I always thought
said she ought to have settled something on you, as soon as her Husband died.
when she took you away.’
‘But
that would have been trusting me with money’, replied Emma smiling, ‘& I am
a woman too.’
‘It
might have been placed secured to you after future use, in Trust, without your
having any power over it now. What a blow it must have been upon you! To find
yourself, instead of being probable Heiress of 8 or 9000£, sent back a weight
upon your family, WITHOUT A SIXPENCE. I hope the old woman will smart for it.’
‘I
beg you, Do not to speak disrespectfully of my Aunt, Brother. Her ‒ She was
very good to me; & If she has made an imprudent choice, she will suffer
more from it herself, than I can possibly do.’
‘I do
not mean to distress you, but you know every body must think her an old fool. I
am just come from my Father’s room, he seems very indifferent. It will be a sad
breakup when he dies. Pity, you can none of you get married! You must come to
Croydon as well as the rest, & see what you can do there. I beleive if
Margt. Margaret had had a thousand or fifteen hundred pounds, there was a young
man who wd. would have thought of her.’
Emma
was glad when they were joined by the others; it was better to look at her
Sister in law’s finery, than listen to her brother . Robert, who had equally
mortified, irritated & greived her. Mrs. Robert exactly as smart as she had
been at her own party, came in with apologies for her dress.
‘I
would not make you wait, said she, so I put on the first thing I met with. I am
afraid I am a sad figure. My dear Mr. W. (to her husband) you have not put any
fresh powder in your hair.’
‘No, I
do not intend it. I think there is
powder enough in my hair for my wife & Sisters.’
‘Indeed
you ought to make some alteration in your dress before dinner when you are out
visitting, if though you do not at home.’
‘Nonsense.
‘
‘It
is very odd you should not like to do what other gentlemen too do.’
‘Mr..
Marshall & I thought Turner had been reckoned an extra ordinary sensible,
clever man. How the Devil came he to leave make such a will?’
‘My
Uncle’s sense is not at all impeached in my opinion, by his attachment to my
Aunt. She had been an excellent wife to him. The most Liberal & enlightened
minds are always the most confiding. The event has been unfortunate, for me,
but my Uncle’s memory is if possible endeared to me by such a proof of tender
respect for my Aunt.’
‘That’s
odd sort of Talking! ‒ He might have provided decently for his widow, without
leaving it all every thing that he had to dispose of, or any part of it at her
mercy.’
‘My
Aunt may have erred’ said Emma warmly, ‘she has erred ‐ but my Uncle’s conduct was
faultless. I was her own Neice, & he left to her self the power & the
pleasure of providing for me.’
‘But
unluckily she has left the pleasure of providing for you, to your Father, &
without the power. That’s the long & the short of the business. After
keeping you at a distance from your family for 14 years such a length of time
as must do away all natural affection among us & breeding you up (I
suppose) in a superior stile, you are returned upon their hands WITHOUT A SIXPENCE.’
‘You
know’, replied Emma struggling with her tears, ‘my Uncle’s melancholy state of
health. He was a greater Invalid than my father. He cd. could not leave home.’
‘I do
not mean to make you cry.’ said Robt….
And
then in Chapter 2 of S&S, with its famous allusion to King Lear (which I’ve also shown was also an allusion to a similar
passage in As You Like It), we have a
very similar heartlessly hypocritical discussion between Fanny and John
Dashwood about the financial needs of his (single) stepmother and stepsisters:
"It
is certainly an unpleasant thing," replied Mr. Dashwood, "to have
those kind of yearly drains on one's income. One's fortune, as your mother
justly says, is NOT one's own. To be tied down to the regular payment of such a
sum, on every rent day, is by no means desirable: it takes away one's
independence."
"Undoubtedly;
and after all you have no thanks for it. They think themselves secure, you do
no more than what is expected, and it raises no gratitude at all. If I were
you, whatever I did should be done at my own discretion entirely. I would not
bind myself to allow them any thing yearly. It may be very inconvenient some
years to spare a hundred, or even fifty pounds from our own expenses."
"I
believe you are right, my love; it will be better that there should be no
annuity in the case; whatever I may give them occasionally will be of far
greater assistance than a yearly allowance, because they would only enlarge
their style of living if they felt sure of a larger income, and WOULD NOT BE
SIXPENCE THE RICHER FOR IT at the end of the year. It will certainly be much
the best way. A present of fifty pounds, now and then, will prevent their ever
being distressed for money, and will, I think, be amply discharging my promise
to my father."
"To
be sure it will. Indeed, to say the truth, I am convinced within myself that
your father had no idea of your giving them any money at all.
And
finally, in Emma (which in a number
of ways harks back to The Watsons),
there are two references, one about Mrs. Goddard, the other about Miss Bates, representing
two versions of the older spinster:
Mrs.
Goddard's school was in high repute—and very deservedly; for Highbury was
reckoned a particularly healthy spot: she had an ample house and garden, gave
the children plenty of wholesome food, let them run about a great deal in the
summer, and in winter dressed their chilblains with her own hands. It was no
wonder that a train of twenty young couple now walked after her to church. She
was a plain, motherly kind of woman, who had worked hard in her youth, and now
thought herself entitled to the occasional holiday of a tea-visit; and having
formerly owed much to Mr. Woodhouse's kindness, felt his particular claim on
her to leave her neat parlour, hung round with fancy-work, whenever she could,
and WIN OR LOSE A FEW SIXPENCES by his fireside.
"Never
mind, Harriet, I shall not be a poor old maid; and it is poverty only which
makes celibacy contemptible to a generous public! A single woman, with a very
narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid! the proper sport of
boys and girls, but a single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and
may be as sensible and pleasant as any body else. And the distinction is not
quite so much against the candour and common sense of the world as appears at
first; for a very narrow income has a tendency to contract the mind, and sour
the temper. Those who can barely live, and who live perforce in a very small,
and generally very inferior, society, may well be illiberal and cross. This
does not apply, however, to Miss Bates; she is only too good natured and too
silly to suit me; but, in general, she is very much to the taste of every body,
though single and though poor. Poverty certainly has not contracted her mind: I
really believe, if she had only a shilling in the world, SHE WOULD BE VERY
LIKELY TO GIVE AWAY SIXPENCE OF IT; and nobody is afraid of her: that is a
great charm."
It’s
clear from all of the above examples that JA never forgot Beatrice’s witty
lines as she wrote her novels. The only one of the six usages that is not about
single women is in P&P, and it is used in reference to the next person up
from the bottom of the food chain—the poor son of a steward without an
inheritance, who becomes a fortune hunter:
"If
[Mr. Bennet] were ever able to learn what Wickham's debts have been," said
Elizabeth, "and how much is settled on his side on our sister, we shall
exactly know what Mr. Gardiner has done for them, because Wickham HAS NOT SIXPENCE
OF HIS OWN. The kindness of my uncle and aunt can never be requited….”
So, in
closing, the above suggests that the 20 year old JA’s veiled channeling of
Shakespeare’s Beatrice in Letter #2 showed both that she knew Shakespeare really
well from a young age, and also that her feminist outrage at the second class
status of women in her world, especially the parts about not having control
over money and being treated as a commodity, was always present and outfront in
her writing!
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter
