What’s on Fanny’s head? I’ll “Othello” you what!

This post is a followup to the part of my second, longer post in this thread begun by Diane on Monday, in which I extrapolated from MP to Shakespeare:

“My point is that Jane Austen has slyly appointed William Price as her unwitting messenger, to whisper to the sensitive reader that Fanny, by her alteration of dress and attitude, has revealed that she is now “out” and therefore in the courtship game, whether she admits it to herself or not. And so when we read, in Chapter 24, about Henry noticing “the glow of Fanny’s cheek, the brightness of her eye, the deep interest, the absorbed attention, while her brother was describing any of the imminent hazards, or terrific scenes, which such a period at sea must supply", we don’t think “demure”, we think of a striking alteration in Fanny, at least during that scene, to being expressive, alive, passionate. We think of the passionate Louisa Musgrove in the salon at Uppercross falling in love with Wentworth while he tells his war stories. And doesn’t that parallel add a decidedly incestuous whiff to William’s and Fanny’s “fearless intercourse” in the Mansfield Park salon?  But…we also think of Desdemona listening to Othello’s war stories.  Uh-oh…is this a suggestion that William might be another one of Sir Thomas’s plantation by-products? Or that Fanny is going to meet an unhappy end? Keep in mind that to the first time reader of MP, all these possibilities are in play as they go.”
END QUOTE FROM MY PRIOR POST

Apropos my comment that “we also think of Desdemona listening to Othello’s war stories”, I only realized yesterday that the most significant part about Gibraltar in particular being the place where William Price was put off by the “queer fashion” of the ladies he observed, is that it fits like a glove with the following Austen family history factoid, which I dredged up from my old files when I searched for “Gibraltar” and “Othello” together --- and which now takes on startling new significance when held up alongside that passage in MP:

"Francis Austen attended a performance of Othello by the officers of the Gibraltar garrison while he waited before Trafalgar for his ship to be provisioned, but left at the end of the first act"

(Brian Southam, Jane Austen and the Navy, 93).

In a nutshell, I am certain it is not random or coincidental that the Chapter 24 scene in MP mentions Gibraltar and also evokes Othello, given that Frank Austen (who has often been suggested by Austen scholars as a model for William Price, Fanny’s beloved sailor brother) just happened to see the first act of Othello at Gibraltar of all places! It also just so happens that the particular scene in Othello which is evoked by this scene in MP takes place in Act 1 (Scene 3), and so it would have been part of the play that Frank Austen actually witnessed before he left. For easy reference, here’s the relevant part of Shakespeare’s scene, when Othello has been accused by the racist father Brabantio of bewitching Desdemona:

FIRST SENATOR  But, Othello, speak: Did you by indirect and forced courses Subdue and poison this young maid's affections? Or came it by request and such fair question As soul to soul affordeth?

OTHELLO  I do beseech you, Send for the lady to the Sagittary, And let her speak of me before her father: If you do find me foul in her report, The trust, the office I do hold of you, Not only take away, but let your sentence Even fall upon my life.

DUKE OF VENICE  Fetch Desdemona hither.

OTHELLO Ancient, conduct them: you best know the place.

Exeunt IAGO and Attendants

And, till she come, as truly as to heaven I do confess the vices of my blood, So justly to your grave ears I'll present How I did thrive in this fair lady's love, And she in mine.

DUKE OF VENICE Say it, Othello.

OTHELLO  Her father loved me; oft invited me; Still question'd me the story of my life, From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes, That I have passed. I ran it through, even from my boyish days, To the very moment that he bade me tell it; Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances, Of moving accidents by flood and field Of hair-breadth scapes i' the imminent deadly breach, Of being taken by the insolent foe And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence And portance in my travels' history: Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle, Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven It was my hint to speak,--such was the process; And of the Cannibals that each other eat, The Anthropophagi and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders….

And now here’s the part that resonates most strongly with William telling Fanny his war stories:

OTHELLO (continued) This to hear Would Desdemona seriously incline: But still the house-affairs would draw her thence: Which ever as she could with haste dispatch, She'ld come again, and with a greedy ear Devour up my discourse: which I observing, Took once a pliant hour, and found good means To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart That I would all my pilgrimage dilate, Whereof by parcels she had something heard, But not intentively: I did consent, And often did beguile her of her tears, When I did speak of some distressful stroke That my youth suffer'd. My story being done, She gave me for my pains a world of sighs: She swore, in faith, twas strange, 'twas passing strange, 'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful: She wish'd she had not heard it, yet she wish'd That heaven had made her such a man: she thank'd me, And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her, I should but teach him how to tell my story. And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake: She loved me for the dangers I had pass'd, And I loved her that she did pity them. This only is the witchcraft I have used: Here comes the lady; let her witness it.

Enter DESDEMONA, IAGO, and Attendants

DUKE OF VENICE I think this tale would win my daughter too. Good Brabantio, Take up this mangled matter at the best: Men do their broken weapons rather use Than their bare hands….    END QUOTE

The above Shakespeare connection to MP now makes it very clear that JA alluded to this scene in Othello in both MP and Persuasion, her two naval novels. But there’s one big and obvious difference between these two Othello allusions. In Persuasion, Louisa Musgrove and Captain Wentworth are unrelated, and so the obvious romantic vibe between them fits perfectly with the obvious romantic vibe between Othello and Desdemona – it does not jar the reader, and it constitutes a kind of ironic variation on Shakespeare by Austen – i.e., in Othello, Othello and Desdemona actually do marry, but it does not end well for either of them. So the allusion seems to suggest that had Wentworth and Louisa actually gotten married, perhaps it would not have ended well either, because Wentworth would have grown jealous of Louisa’s outgoing free spirit and behavior? At any rate, the allusion doesn’t subvert what is already present in the commonly understood storyline of Persuasion.

But the parallel to Act 1, Scene 3 of Othello in MP is very different. It should raise eyebrows among Janeites, because it suggests that William Price, with his war stories, was, however unwittingly, thereby wooing his own sister Fanny! And the risqué allusion fits perfectly (and disturbingly) with that suspicious verbiage about “fearless intercourse” and in particular Fanny’s passionate emotional response (“the glow of Fanny’s cheek, the brightness of her eye, the deep interest, the absorbed attention”) which I noted in my previous post. It all points very strongly to a romantic, even sexual, mood as between brother and sister.

Very early in the novel, Sir Thomas and Mrs. Norris angst over the danger of Fanny growing up in the same house as her cousin Edmund, because it may eventually generate incestuous romantic sparks. But nobody seems terribly concerned about the other side of the coin of Fanny leaving Portsmouth and coming to Mansfield Park at age eight. I.e., when Fanny leaves her family of origin at age 8 and never returns, it means that when William shows up at Mansfield Park, she has not seen her brother for an entire decade while she has been away and he has been at sea. Therefore they are, in a real sense, like strangers meeting as adults for the first time, since they last saw each other when she was just a child, not even close to puberty. And yet they share intense early childhood memories. That seems like a potent cocktail, which to me carries at least an equal amount of risk of undesirable incestuous entanglement as between Fanny and Edmund.

But that’s just the fictional side of the ledger--- by JA’s tagging this particular scene with such incestuous overtones to her actual brother Frank, it raises the same question in real life – was JA thereby somehow pointing to strong romantic feelings that she felt as a teenager for Frank, especially if there was a similar long gap in years between when he first went out to sea at age 10 (I believe that was the age he left?) and when she next saw him in person?

Now, I don’t for a moment suggest that such feelings were ever acted on, only that JA has given a covert, but very strong, even unmistakable hint –which would only have been visible to Austen family and close friends-- in this regard. I begin to see a larger pattern with her in these covert winks at real life, because this is much the same question that circles over the concealed pregnancies and infant transfers I see in S&S, P&P, and Emma –was the Anna Weston à Ann Awe-ston àAnna Austen word game a reflection of actual Austen family history, or just a kind of wish fulfilment? As I’ve noted several times in the past few years, my thinking has evolved toward seeing them as only the latter. I would imagine JA is far from the only writer of fiction who used that fiction, in part, as a vehicle for expressing concealed wishes or fantasies.

I will note that I also recall that Ellen has previously suggested that there were strong feelings between Frank and Jane – and I myself have believed for nearly a decade now that Frank was the Austen brother with whom JA felt the strongest platonic emotional bond. And with that, I will leave off on this point for now, and cover two other points before I close.

First, a small point – my identifying the above scene as a veiled allusion by JA to Frank Austen and herself fits perfectly with previous identification of an overt allusion to her sailor brothers later in MP. I.e., when you know that brother Charles served on the Endymion, and brother Frank served on the Canopus, the passing references to both of those vessels named in MP confirm that JA meant to tip her hat to both of them. But now, with the Othello scene, we see a great deal more than a sisterly tip of the hat to the national service of her two sailor brothers.

And that leads me to my second remaining point, which also relates to Frank Austen vis a vis MP.

WHY FRANK LEFT OTHELLO EARLY

Why did Frank Austen leave that Gibraltar performance of Othello early? Here’s Frank’s own explanation in that same letter that Southam referred to:

“The last evening of our stay at Gibraltar we went, after dining with the General, to see Othello performed by some of the officers of the garrison. The theatre is small, but very neatly fitted up; the dresses and scenery appeared good, and I might say the same of the acting could I have seen or heard anything of it; but, although I was honoured with a seat in the Governor's box at the commencement of the performance, yet I did not long profit by it, for one of his aide-de-camps, happening to be married, and his lady happening also to come in during the first scene, I was obliged to resign my situation, happy to have it in my power to accommodate a fair one. The play was Othello, and by what I have been able to collect from the opinions of those who were more advantageously situated for seeing and hearing than myself, I did not experience a very severe loss from my complaisance. I believe the Admiral was not much better amused than I was, for, at the expiration of the first act, he proposed departing, which I very readily agreed to, as I had for some time found the house insufferably close and hot. I hardly need add that the evening was not quite so productive of pleasure to me as the last theatrical representation I had witnessed, which was at Covent Garden some time in the beginning of February last, when I had the honour of being seated by a fair young lady, with whom I became slightly acquainted the preceding year at Ramsgate.”

What exactly was the problem with the performance of Othello at Gibraltar? Was it dissatisfaction with the acting, or with the play itself? I cannot tell from what Frank writes, can you? However, I do suspect that Frank may have had a strong reason he was not fully self-aware of for leaving. I.e., perhaps, as with Claudius watching the play in Hamlet, what Frank saw and heard onstage sounded a chord uncomfortably close to painful real life feelings of guilt.

Frank has, by the end of Act 1, just watched the above-quoted scene in which Desdemona falls in love with Othello because of his bravery in war at sea. Frank Austen’s late October 1806 letter goes on to reveal the following regarding Frank’s feelings on another much more significant point than a play, which I’ve waited till now to surprise you with. The letter also reveals how Frank fretted at being stranded by fate so near and yet so far away from what was going on during the time period over which he wrote it --the epic, climactic, forever-famous Battle of Trafalgar:

“As a national benefit, I cannot but rejoice that our arms have been once again successful, but at the same time I cannot help feeling how very unfortunate we [meaning his ship, the Canopus] have been to be away at such a moment, and by a fatal combination of unfortunate though unavoidable events to lose all share in the glory of a day, which surpasses all which ever went before, is what I cannot think of with any degree of patience, but as I cannot write on that subject without complaining, I will drop it for the present till time and reflection have reconciled me a little more to what I know is now inevitable.”

So it seems quite plausible to me that perhaps the main reason why Frank couldn’t bear to watch more than one act of the play, was because it only reminded Frank of what he was so painfully regretting missing – how could he bear to watch, in that moment, one of his officer colleagues, playing Othello, give the above-quoted speech describing how he covered himself in war glory, and thereby won a rich beautiful heiress’s hand, when Frank was powerless to do the same. Ouch! In fact, major ouch!

And look at the ironic reversal of that reality in Mansfield Park –when we read about William Price’s account of “the imminent hazards, or terrific scenes, which such a period at sea must supply”, we must think about the contrast with Frank Austen’s relegation to the sidelines of British naval history – his being spending “a period at sea” in the Mediterranean turned out NOT to supply the opportunity for Frank to shine in that great battle .

And so it seems that JA, perhaps with a touch of added irony, put this scene in a novel that she knew Frank would of course read eight years after the Battle of Trafalgar. When Jane gave Frank his copy, was Frank reminded of what happened back then? It’s hard to tell from the reaction he gave, which JA, tellingly, placed as the very first one among all the opinions she collected about MP:

"We certainly do not think it as a whole, equal to P. & P. — but it has many & great beauties. Fanny is a delightful Character! and Aunt Norris is a great favourite of mine. The Characters are natural & well supported, & many of the Dialogues excellent. — You need not fear the publication being considered as discreditable to the talents of it's Author."  F. W. A.”

“Fanny is a delightful character?” Does Frank recognize that Fanny is Jane? Is he including that scene between William and Fanny when he refers to the excellent dialogues? Frank didn’t give away much of what he really felt--- but then, that’s par for the course, because sister Jane certainly worked in sly and mysterious ways, especially in the way she wove family and national reality together in the subtext of her fiction.

[Added at 9:47 pm the same day, showing my reply to the extraordinary reply I received from Diane Reynolds to the above post:

Diane wrote: “Arnie, An interesting post. “

Thanks!

D: “I have actually been thinking a lot about the sexual excitement Fanny shows around William--the glow in the cheek and the bright eye--but from a different angle. I don't know why I didn't see this before, but it's Henry observing Fanny's love, her deep, deep feelings, for William, that ratchets up his own passion. He was interested in Fanny before William showed up, if only because she was the only thing available, pretty and didn't like him (a challenge), but it's after he sees her and William together that he really gets interested and decides to marry her.”

I absolutely agree on all points, except I don’t believe he ever intends to marry her, he intends to make her desperate to marry him – whether he would then actually marry her, well…..

D: “This fits perfectly with Rene Girard's "mimesis of desire" theory, which says that a man or a woman falls in love with someone only AFTER they seem someone else fall in love with that person. Not only does Fanny manifest love for William but he for her and Henry watches from outside that magic circle. He envies and wants in. I would say he is in love with both William and Fanny and Fanny is, as you might say, the magic key in.”

Beautifully put! The parallel that occurred to me a long while ago was the cynical, degenerate Count Maximilian von Heune in Cabaret, who seduces Sally Bowles, only for her to be totally shocked when Brian, the young man she really cares for, subsequently reveals to her that he has already slept with the Count, too! Fosse and his collaborators memorably capture the spirit of that triangle in Two Ladies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPOiaAU_vJg

I haven’t read the Isherwood original Goodbye to Berlin, or the intermediate play I Am a Camera, but from the following, seemingly excellent synopsis of Isherwood…

https://purpleprosearchive.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/christopher-isherwood-goodbye-to-berlin-1939/

…I’d guess that the character of the Count, as he is presented in Fosse’s film musical, is an amalgam and extrapolation from a few of Isherwood’s characters. Whether Isherwood had Austen on his radar screen, it's an interesting question to pursue...

D: “Girard connects to Shakespeare too, as in his A Theater of Envy, Girard uses Shakespeare (esp MSD) to prove his "mimesis of desire" theory. I looked to see if there was a chapter on Othello in the book: there is. I haven't read it but I will.”

Let us know when you do.

D: “Henry has a great a deal of envy--meaning a strong desire to be--William. Henry wishes it wasn't all handed to him, that he could go and be a sailor like William, to have to make it on his own. He feels this longing, this lack, almost palpably, at least when William is in front of him. Helping William get his commission, independent of wooing Fanny (again, there seems to be a bit of a homoerotic thing going on there too, as perhaps there between with Edmund and Henry, Henry seems to be the erotic signifier in the novel--they are always going out shooting those pheasants together) but to get back to William, helping William is a way for Henry to live vicariously through William. Wanting to marry Fanny would also in a strong sense be becoming William: Henry wants Fanny's feelings directed at him and to be part of them.”

Such an interesting spin! In part, it sounds like you’re suggesting that, sorta like Milton’s Satan, Henry’s extraordinary power over others is a mask for his own profound insecurity and lack of self-esteem. My preliminary reaction is that your reading is very plausible and valuable, but it’s not the whole story – I believe it’s also possible that Henry has recognized long before that the most effective way to seduce others is to conform his chameleonic personality to provide the perfect complement to the fantasies and needs he wishes to seduce – he is psychological Silly Putty, with an infinite capacity to alter his apparent character --- and so, he could equally plausibly be playing that role for William, leading the young sailor to believe he wishes he were him, because that’s what it takes to make a hole in William’s heart.

D: “And, of course, what this underscores  is Henry's own love of Mary ... this is a book fraught with layer upon layer of incest themes.”

Again, 100% agree!

D: “Also, to rush on, perhaps there's a bit of Frank in Henry--or a bit of Henry Austen in Henry, if we're reading biographically? Did Henry--who of course married a cousin very similar to Mary Crawford--envy Frank his naval career as Frank might have envied Othello his exploits?”

Wonderful, creative speculations! I’ll keep them in mind, I have a hunch they’ll lead somewhere good!

D: “What's also fascinating is that the novel in this instance tracks Jameson's contention in The Political Unconscious that the vitiated upper class (Henry) feeds on the creativity and energy bubbling up from the classes below (William and Fanny (Fanny has moral energy and a rich interior life, both of which Henry seems to lack).”

Interesting yet again!

D: “That would be Othello too, I think, if I remember correctly, a person who works his way up. I wonder if there are any Othello echoes in this novel?”

You obviously mean, other than William and Fanny as Othello and Desdemona. Yes, that was exactly what I was thinking about in the aftermath of writing my post --- Henry C. is really Iago, who was one of Milton’s sources for his Satan.

D: “We know from Emma that Austen will simply weave Shakespeare into her text without necessarily pointing to it, so I wonder if that happens here?”

Of course! It’s not just Emma, it’s all the Austen novels –I’ve collected allusions to about 2/3 of Shakespeare’s plays in them, and some of the plays echo through pretty much all six! ]

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter 

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Another little Jane Austen Quiz

Below, I am going to give you a series of quotes which most of you will not recognize at all, unless you happen to be in the English Lit business, and even then, perhaps not. 

To answer the first quiz question, you’ll need to use Google, but I promise this won’t entail a lot of heavy lifting – just start Googling key phrases from each quote, and see what common pattern emerges. Once you spot the (fairly obvious) pattern, then you're ready for the second quiz question.

Now go back and reread each of these excerpts as carefully as you are inclined to, and apply to each of them your knowledge of Jane Austen’s novels. One, and only one, of the six Austen novels will at some point pop up in front of your mind's eye. Then you're ready for the third and final quiz question. 

Putting your answers to questions one and two together, what do you learn about that Austen novel from the below quotes?

As usual, I'll be back in a day or two with my answers, with accompanying explanations, but it would be lovely if I receive some answers before then.

So, here are the passages, with one caveat: in a few of the quotes, I’ve had to conceal the name of one character, whom I designate simply as “X” – my reason for doing this will also be apparent once you answer question one, and recognize what all these quotes have in common:

“Fitz-Edward, who was about five years older than Delamere, concealed, under the appearance of candour and nonchalance, the libertinism of his character. He had entered very young into the army; the younger son of an Irish peer; and had contracted his loose morals by being thrown too early into the world; for his heart was not originally bad. With a very handsome person, he had the most insinuating manners, and an address so truly that of a man of fashion, as immediately prejudiced in his favour those by whom he wished to be thought well of. Where he desired to please, he seldom failed of pleasing extremely; and his conversation was, in the general commerce of the world, elegant and attractive.”

“Fitz-Edward insisted on his being blooded and put to bed; and then went to the apothecary of the village near which the accident happened, and procuring a phial of laudanum, infused it into the wine and water which Delamere drank, and by that artifice obtained for him the repose he otherwise would not have been prevailed on to take. After having slept several hours, he desired to pursue his journey in a post chaise…”

“Yet I had no intention of terrifying you, or of abruptly rushing into the presence of Adelina. It is true, that for some nights past I have walked under the window where she and my child sleep: for I could not sleep; and it was a sort of melancholy enjoyment to me to be near the spot which held all I have dear on earth. As I pass at the ale house where I lodge as a person hiding in this island from the pursuit of creditors, my desire of concealment did not appear extraordinary. I have often lingered among the rocks and copses, and seen Adelina and my child with you. Last night I came out in the dusk, and was approaching, to conceal myself near the house, in hopes, that as you love walking late, and alone, I might have found an opportunity of speaking to you, and of concerting with you the means of introducing myself to her without too great an alarm.”

“…my father, who had been in a declining state of health ever since his second marriage, appeared to grow worse as the period of separation approached. He seemed to have waited only for this beloved son to close his eyes; for a few days before he was again to take leave, my father found his end very rapidly approaching.

'Perfectly conscious of it, he settled all his affairs; and made a provision for me and my brother William out of the money of the present Lady Westhaven, which the marriage articles gave him a right to dispose of after her Ladyship's death if he left no children by her; and recommended us both to his eldest son.

'"You will act nobly by our dear William," said he; "I have no doubt of it; but above all, remember my poor Adelina. Camilla is happily married. Tell her I die blessing her, and her children! But Adelina—my unfortunate Adelina is herself but a child, and her husband is very young and thoughtless. Watch over her honour and her repose, for the sake of your father and that dear woman she so much resembles, your sainted mother."

“She felt a pensive pleasure in retracing the lonely rambles she used to take at the same season at Mowbray Castle; and memory bringing before her the events of the two years and an half which had elapsed since she left it, offered nothing that did not renew her regret".

Notwithstanding the steadiness X had hitherto shewn in rejecting the clandestine addresses of Delamere, he still hoped they would succeed. A degree of vanity, pardonable in a young man possessing so many advantages of person and fortune, made him trust to those advantages, and to his unwearied assiduity, to conquer her reluctance. He determined therefore to persevere; and did not imagine it was likely he could again lose sight of her by a stratagem, against which he was now on his guard. As he fancied Lord Montreville and his sister designed to carry her with them when they went, he kept a constant eye on their motions, and set his own servant, and Fitz-Edward's valet, to watch the servants of Lord Montreville. Fitz-Edward, who had been so near losing the confidence of both the father and son, found it expedient to observe a neutrality, which it required all his address to support; being constantly appealed to by them both.

Mrs. Ashwood seemed very much pleased with her guest; for there was in her countenance a passport to all hearts. Mrs. Ashwood, tho' not in the bloom of life, and tho' she never had been handsome, was so unconscious of her personal disadvantages, that she imagined herself the object of admiration of one sex and of the imitation of the other. With the most perfect reliance on the graces of a figure which never struck any other person as being at all remarkable, she dressed with an exuberance of expence; and kept all the company her neighbourhood afforded. Where her ruling passions, (the love of admiration and excessive vanity) did not interfere, she was sometimes generous and sometimes friendly. But her ideas of her own perfections, both of person and mind, far exceeding the truth, she had often the mortification to find that others by no means thought of them as she did; and then her good humour was far from invincible.

Though X soon found her conversation very inferior to what she had of late been accustomed to, she thought herself fortunate in having found an asylum, the mistress of which seemed desirous of making it agreeable; and to which she was introduced by the kindness of her beloved Mrs. Stafford.

But X no sooner appeared, than one of these gentlemen renewed his visits with more than his original assiduity. The extreme beauty of her person, and the naivetè of her manners, gave her, to him, the attractive charms of novelty; while the mystery there seemed to be about her, piqued his curiosity. It was known that she was related to a noble family; but Mrs. Ashwood had been so earnestly entreated to conceal as much as possible her real history, lest Delamere should hear of and discover her, that she only told it to a few friends, and it had not yet reached the knowledge of Mr. Rochely, who had become the attendant of Mrs. Ashwood's tea table from the first introduction of X. Mr. Rochely was nearer fifty than forty. His person, heavy and badly proportioned, was not relieved by his countenance, which was dull and ill-formed. His voice, monotonous and guttural, was fatiguing to the ear; and the singularity of his manners, as well as the oddness of his figure, often excited a degree of ridicule, which the respect his riches demanded could not always stifle.

With a person so ill calculated to inspire affection, he was very desirous of being a favourite with the ladies; and extremely sensible of their attractions. In the inferior ranks of life, his money had procured him many conquests, tho' he was by no means lavish of it; and much of the early part of his time had been passed in low amours; which did not, however, impede his progress to the great wealth he possessed. He had always intended to marry: but as he required many qualifications in a wife which are hardly ever united, he had hesitated till he had long been looked upon as an old bachelor. He was determined to chuse beauty, but expected also fortune. He desired to marry a woman of family, yet feared the expensive turn of those brought up in high life; and had a great veneration for wit and accomplishments, but dreaded, lest in marrying a woman who possessed them, he should be liable to be governed by superior abilities, or be despised for the mediocrity of his own understanding.

With such ideas, his relations saw him perpetually pursuing some matrimonial project; but so easily frightened from his pursuit, that they relied on his succession with the most perfect confidence. When first he beheld X, he was charmed with her person; her conversation, at once innocent and lively, impressed him with the most favourable ideas of her heart and understanding….”

Okay, go to it, and I’ll be back (as my namesake was fond of saying) before too long, as promised!

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

What’s on (and in) Fanny Price’s head?: the hidden meaning of her “queer fashion”

Diane Reynolds just started an interesting thread in Janeites & Austen-L as follows:

"If we've discussed this before, I've forgotten, but I just read this passage in Mansfield Park and wonder what Fanny is wearing on her head. William has just come for a visit: 

“Fraternal love, sometimes almost everything, is at others worse than nothing. But with William and Fanny Price it was still a sentiment in all its prime and freshness, wounded by no opposition of interest, cooled by no separate attachment, and feeling the influence of time and absence only in its increase.

An affection so amiable was advancing each in the opinion of all who had hearts to value anything good. Henry Crawford was as much struck with it as any. He honoured the warm-hearted, blunt fondness of the young sailor, which led him to say, with his hands stretched towards Fanny’s head, “Do you know, I begin to like that queer fashion already, though when I first heard of such things being done in England, I could not believe it; and when Mrs. Brown, and the other women at the Commissioner’s at Gibraltar, appeared in the same trim, I thought they were mad; but Fanny can reconcile me to anything”; and saw, with lively admiration, the glow of Fanny’s cheek, the brightness of her eye, the deep interest, the absorbed attention, while her brother was describing any of the imminent hazards, or terrific scenes, which such a period at sea must supply.

It was a picture which Henry Crawford had moral taste enough to value. Fanny’s attractions increased—increased twofold; for the sensibility which beautified her complexion and illumined her countenance was an attraction in itself. He was no longer in doubt of the capabilities of her heart. She had feeling, genuine feeling. It would be something to be loved by such a girl, to excite the first ardours of her young unsophisticated mind! She interested him more than he had foreseen. A fortnight was not enough. His stay became indefinite.”

After I replied and pointed out five reasons why it had to be William Price, and not Henry Crawford, who stretched his hands towards Fanny’s head and commented on Fanny’s “queer fashion”, Diane both agreed and persisted:  "It makes sense that William said this [about Fanny’s ‘queer fashion’], and this is yet another example of Austen's long and ambiguous sentences, but I still wonder what is on Fanny's head. "

Good for you, Diane, for persisting, you prompted me to take a second look, and I think you’ll be pleased with my further reply today. But first my reply to Elissa (Schiff), who wrote: "Happily for us these two centuries later, it was what was *in* her female characters’ heads and not on them that JA really concerned herself with."

Indeed, Elissa, what was in their heads was what mattered most, but...here’s the catch -- I believe JA often revealed aspects of what was in their heads by means of all sorts of seemingly trivial details, such as, in this instance, what was on their heads, as you’ll see, below. Now on to my main argument.

To begin, I acknowledge that once we properly identify the speaker of “queer fashion” as William, there does not appear to be any reason to delve deeper. It seems as if JA's subtly delivered point is that ANY fashion, even fashion that would not raise any eyebrows in ordinary gentle society --- whatever particular fashion it is that Fanny and the Gibraltar ladies wore on their heads --- would have been hard for the unsophisticated, female-company-deprived William to wrap his head around, so to speak. He’s a bit of a rube, who’s been at sea too long to know any better, so what to him is a “queer fashion” is to more sophisticated eyes simply smart, admirable fashion.

But…your instincts in pushing this point were spot-on, Diane, as I said, because I now know that JA did intend to subtly remind her very alert readers of another passage --one 19 chapters earlier in the novel --- which I found by “cheating” -- I word-searched in MP for “bonnet”, and was transported as if on a magic carpet, back to the following scene in Chapter 5, shortly after the Crawfords show up:

‘And Fanny,what was she doing and thinking all this while? and what was her opinion of the newcomers? Few young ladies of eighteen could be less called on to speak their opinion than Fanny...The notice which she excited herself, was to this effect. “I begin now to understand you all, except Miss Price,” said Miss Crawford, as she was walking with the Mr. Bertrams. “Pray, is she out, or is she not? I am puzzled. She dined at the Parsonage, with the rest of you, which seemed like being out; and yet she says so little, that I can hardly suppose she is.” Edmund, to whom this was chiefly addressed, replied, “I believe I know what you mean, but I will not undertake to answer the question. My cousin is grown up. She has the age and sense of a woman, but the outs and not outs are beyond me.”

So far so good, but now we come to the point, which we find in Mary’s further reply to Edmund. When viewed through the lens of William’s comment on Fanny’s “queer fashion”, it suddenly lights up like a Christmas tree:

“And yet, in general, nothing can be more easily ascertained. The distinction is so broad. Manners as well as appearance are, generally speaking, so totally different. Till now, I could not have supposed it possible to be mistaken as to a girl’s being out or not. A girl not out has always the same sort of dress: A CLOSE BONNET, FOR INSTANCE; looks very demure, and never says a word. You may smile, but it is so, I assure you; and except that it is sometimes carried a little too far, it is all very proper. Girls should be quiet and modest.”

I suggest that it’s no coincidence that Mary speaks about “a close bonnet” while considering the puzzle of whether Fanny is “out” or not. And “looks very demure, and never says a word”—well, that describes Fanny to a tee, doesn’t it? And now, Mary’s comments become oddly prescient of what is to come in Chapter 24:

“The most objectionable part is, that the alteration of manners on being introduced into company is frequently too sudden. They sometimes pass in such very little time from reserve to quite the opposite—to confidence! That is the faulty part of the present system. One does not like to see a girl of eighteen or nineteen so immediately up to every thing—and perhaps when one has seen her hardly able to speak the year before. Mr. Bertram, I dare say you have sometimes met with such changes.”

I note in passing that I suspect Mary here of advocating for a propriety that she herself does not really subscribe to, but that is beside my point, which is that when we leap forward 19 chapters (and 4 ½ months later), we find that, surely in honor of the special occasion of William’s arrival at Mansfield Park, Fanny has indeed passed “from reserve to quite the opposite”. William’s comment alerts us that Fanny has, at least for that scene, put away her usual “close bonnet”, and is now wearing some sort of grownup lady’s head fashion, which is what William finds so queer. His memories are of Fanny looking very very different when he last saw her so long before, that is part of the “queerness” for him. But also, to his unsophisticated eyes, Fanny now queerly resembles one of those ladies whose looks made him uneasy him in Gibraltar during his stay there on his way back to England from the Mediterranean.

And, as to passing from reserve to its opposite, as I’ll show you shortly, that is also what is unleashed in Fanny by William’s arrival at Mansfield Park. But first, let’s read the rest of the general debate between Edmund and Mary in Chapter 5 about how young women display themselves, and think about it as veiled specific commentary on Fanny’s emergence—her “coming out”—as a woman in Chapter 24:

“The error is plain enough,” said the less courteous Edmund; “such girls are ill brought up. They are given wrong notions from the beginning. They are always acting upon motives of vanity, and there is no more real modesty in their behaviour before they appear in public than afterwards.”

“I do not know,” replied Miss Crawford hesitatingly. “Yes, I cannot agree with you there. It is certainly the modestest part of the business. It is much worse to have girls not out give themselves the same airs and take the same liberties as if they were, which I have seen done. That is worse than anything—quite disgusting!”

“Yes, that is very inconvenient indeed,” said Mr. Bertram. “It leads one astray; one does not know what to do. The CLOSE BONNET and DEMURE AIR you describe so well (and nothing was ever juster), tell one what is expected; but I got into a dreadful scrape last year from the want of them…”

My point is that Jane Austen has slyly appointed William Price as her unwitting messenger, to whisper to the sensitive reader that Fanny, by her alteration of dress and attitude, has revealed that she is now “out” and therefore in the courtship game, whether she admits it to herself or not. And so when we read, in Chapter 24, about Henry noticing “the glow of Fanny’s cheek, the brightness of her eye, the deep interest, the absorbed attention, while her brother was describing any of the imminent hazards, or terrific scenes, which such a period at sea must supply", we don’t think “demure”, we think of a striking alteration in Fanny, at least during that scene, to being expressive, alive, passionate.

We think of the passionate Louisa Musgrove in the salon at Uppercross falling in love with Wentworth while he tells his war stories. And doesn’t that parallel add a decidedly incestuous whiff to William’s and Fanny’s “fearless intercourse” in the Mansfield Park salon?  But…we also think of Desdemona listening to Othello’s war stories.  Uh-oh…is this a suggestion that William might be another one of Sir Thomas’s plantation by-products? Or that Fanny is going to meet an unhappy end? Keep in mind that to the first time reader of MP, all these possibilities are in play as they go.

[Added 12/13/16: I now think the most significant part about Gibraltar being the place William Price talks about is the following true-life Austen-family factoid: 
"Francis Austen attended a performance of Othello by the officers of the Gibraltar garrison while he waited before Trafalgar for his ship to be provisioned, but left at the end of the first act" (Southam, Navy, 93).
So it's not a coincidence that this scene in MP mimics the scene in Othello after all! JA clearly does mean to have her readers recall Othello, a troubling allusion]

And that leads me to my final, more speculative observation about two other curious details in that Chapter 24 passage:

In Henry Crawford’s jaded, degenerate approach to women, his vow to make a hole in Fanny’s “heart” is a thinly veiled reference to Fanny’s hymen. I now suggest that, in the same sense, when we’re told that William gestures towards Fanny’s “head”, JA is playing that same sly game of sexual innuendo, as if William were instead pointing to Fanny’s maidenhead ---which, now that Fanny has in effect come “out”, becomes vulnerable to Henry’s predation, as we will see during the next 22 chapters thereafter.

It’s as if JA saw young English gentlewomen as forest animals who hid from their predators in safe dens, but eventually were tempted to come “out”, and then were exposed to danger. As with Willoughby, it is no accident that at various times in the novel we hear about Henry Crawford’s love of the hunt. And so we can think about Henry’s idle romantic pursuit of both Maria and Julia as amusing decoy maneuvers by him, when the prey he is really focused on---because Maria and Julia are no fun and no challenge, they both get “caught” by him too easily --- is Fanny. And when it comes to stalking Fanny, Henry must play the long game, over a period of months, in order to lure his prey close enough for him to pounce.

The other curious detail I notice is in William’s referring to Fanny’s “queer fashion” – it is, I suggest, no accident that, among the only three other usages of “queer” in MP, there is one only a few paragraphs earlier than the “queer fashion” usage we’ve been discussing, in that same Chapter 5, when Mary and Henry discuss Fanny:

“Her brother gave only a smile to this accusation, and soon afterwards said, “I do not quite know what to make of Miss Fanny. I do not understand her. I could not tell what she would be at yesterday. What is her character? Is she solemn? IS SHE QUEER? Is she prudish? Why did she draw back and look so grave at me? I could hardly get her to speak. I never was so long in company with a girl in my life, trying to entertain her, and succeed so ill! Never met with a girl who looked so grave on me! I must try to get the better of this. Her looks say, ‘I will not like you, I am determined not to like you’; and I say she shall.”

Given all the gay and lesbian subtext that I and others have seen in MP, especially between Fanny and Mary on one side of the ledger, and between Henry and William (“rears and vices”) on the other, I think William’s reference to Fanny’s “queer fashion” is another ventriloquistic hint from Jane Austen the author, in that regard.

So, what’s in your heads about all of the above?

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Austen enjoys a bite of Milton, Newton & Franklin: How do you like THESE apples?

I awoke this morning and reread my last two blog posts  “Newton Priors, Dawlish & Jane Austen’s poignant bequest to literary niece Anna” http://tinyurl.com/zd44xfh   AND “Austen’s Letter 107, Ben Franklin’s twelvemonth, & the People’s (and Milton’s) eyes” http://tinyurl.com/zqolshy  as I sometimes do upon rising, and it once more proved a very fortunate decision, as I've often found that I wake up with the answer to a question I fell asleep pondering.

What I’d been pondering was Austen's very interesting, veiled juxtaposition of three great polymath geniuses (Isaac Newton, John Milton and Ben Franklin), hidden in plain sight in her epistolary praise for niece Anna's choice of the name "Newton Priors" for her first-novel-in-progress:

"The name of Newton-Priors is really invaluable!--I never met with anything superior to it.—It is delightful.—One could live upon the name of Newton-Priors for a twelvemonth...Newton Priors is really a Nonpareil.-Milton would have given his eyes to have thought of it.”

I had finished those posts with the vague sense that I hadn’t gotten to the core (so to speak) of Austen's supersubtle joke about Newtonian Nonpareil Apples and Miltonian Eyes. And what occurred to me as I awoke and reread Jane's effusive praises to Anna, was that there was a REALLY obvious additional connection between Newton and Milton which I hadn't noticed before -- i.e., just as Newton is proverbially known for having discovered the Law of Gravity when an apple supposedly fell on his head, so too is Milton universally acknowledged for having written THE most famous post-Biblical version of the story of Eve's fateful bite of the apple (although technically "fruit") from the Forbidden Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden! 

That's what's so gorgeous and satisfying about JA's sly pairing of Milton and Newton: it's about more than just apples- it's about apples which bring knowledge—one via a proverbial bonk on the head, the other via a proverbial bite! So…clearly, Jane Austen --- she who constructed charades with multiple answers, and novels with double stories --- could not resist even this small opportunity, in a letter never intended to be published, to create a small nugget of double meaning. And JA did exactly that in her praise to Anna: a private performance for a discerning audience of one, someone who would get all the layers of the joke – Anna!

But that's only 2/3 of the fruitful story in this instance. I immediately wondered about the wink at Ben Franklin's invitation to his potential contributing writers to provide enough "sence" in essays to be submitted by them to him, to sustain his readership "for a twelvemonth"- so, was there any famous proverbial connection of Ben Franklin to apples? It would be so wonderful if there were. But even as I asked myself that question, I immediately knew the answer—YES!!:

http://www.benfranklin300.org/etc_article_foods.htm   "As well as saying that 'An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away', Franklin consistently asked his wife Deborah to ship him barrels of apples while he lived abroad: 'Goodeys I now and then get a few; but roasting Apples seldom, I wish you had sent me some; and I wonder how you, that used to think of everything, came to forget it.  Newton Pippins would have been the most acceptable.' (letter from Benjamin Franklin in London, to Deborah in Philadelphia)"

I had remembered Franklin’s famous medicinal quotidian apples, but I was stunned by “Newton Pippins”. Really? As John McEnroe might say at this moment, you can't be serious! Because it’s just too good to be true – except it is true! At that instant, I knew I had bitten the apple of Austenian wit and sly erudition down to its core; because now I understood that Anna Austen Lefroy herself had a deeper meaning in mind in the first place, when she altered the name of the real Devonshire town “Newton Abbot” to “Newton Priors”.

So, yes, as Doody cleverly deduced, “Newton Priors” was an ecclesiastical joke, and a sly one indeed. But now I knew that it was also a wink by Anna at the name of the most coveted variety of apple in early 19^th century England, the American-bred Newton (or Newtown) Pippin—Ben Franklin apparently had very good taste in coveting them, as we read here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtown_Pippin   “The Newtown Pippin, also known as Albemarle Pippin, is an American apple originated in the late 17th or early 18th century and still cultivated on a small scale…. t was widely grown and praised in colonial America. Thomas Jefferson, for example, wrote from Paris that "they have no apples here to compare with our Newtown Pippin”... It came to the fore in 1838 when…the American minister to Great Britain, presented Queen Victoria with a gift basket of the apples from his wife's Albemarle County orchard.”

But back to niece Anna, who, as she wrote her novel, must have also picked up on the serendipity of the name “Newton” appearing in the name of a variety of apple, given the famous story of how Newton discovered the Law of Universal Gravitation with the help of an apple.

And then JA clearly grasped Anna’s multilayered fruitaceous “Newton Priors” pun, and communicated back to Anna that she got the pun, not by some boring explicit response, but by returning the favor in kind, via a pun on yet another variety of apple, Nonpareil – and then laying it on even thicker by bringing Milton (and, covertly, also Franklin) into their jointly prepared literary apple pie. As I said, uber-nerdosity of the literary persuasion!

And now I also wonder about all those apples in Emma, which I've long suggested was part of the code that points to Jane Fairfax having a "bun in the oven" --- since I've often suggested that niece Anna Austen was one of the real sources for Jane Fairfax, while Fanny Knight was one of the sources for Emma Woodhouse. Were those apples an extension of this same "apple-onian" conversation between Aunt Jane and Anna?  

And so I say, once and for all, to all Janeites who think I have been exaggerating Jane Austen's secret subtexts these past 14 years- how do you like THESE apples?  If what I’ve outlined in this post is not incontrovertible evidence of the obsessive love of a hidden story that fueled Jane Austen’s imagination and literary life, I don’t know what is!

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode in Twitter

P.S.: For background on the story of how Newton discovered the Law of Gravity:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-core-of-truth-behind-sir-isaac-newtons-apple-1870915.html

Austen’s Letter 107, Ben Franklin’s twelvemonth, & the People’s (and Milton’s) eyes

My post yesterday, “Newton Priors, Dawlish & J.Austen’s poignant bequest to literary niece Anna ….  http://tinyurl.com/zd44xfh  …was sparked primarily by the references to Dawlish (in Devon) in JA’s 1814 letters to literary niece Anna. In this post today, I’ll be writing about some other Austenian wordplay in Letter 107, starting with “Newton Priors is really a Nonpareil.-Milton would have given his eyes to have thought of it.”

In early 2013, I wrote the following comments Newton Priors as a “Nonpareil”:   “There are several sly learned jokes hidden in this passage, which JA was suggesting Anna embedded in this place name. First ‘nonpareil’ was a popular variety of apple. And JA as well as Anna, would've been aware of the legend of Isaac Newton's famous apple which supposedly enabled him to discover his theory of universal gravitation. In that regard, ‘priors’ sounds like ‘perry’, and Anielka has written in the past about JA engaging in wordplay associated with that popular form of alcoholic beverage made from pears. So we have apples and pears both alluded to covertly in this single place name. And finally, the word nonpareil is anagrammatically related to the name newton priors! I.e., 5 of the first 6 letters of nonpareil appear in the same order in Anna's place name. And Newton's theory was of course itself a ‘nonpareil’ in the history of science. What this all tells us is that JA was a compulsive word player. She read Anna's place name, and immediately picked up on this bit of sophisticated wordplay. It would've please Jane greatly to see her niece playing the same kind of literary word games she herself had always played.” 

Yesterday, as I wrote my previous post, I got to wondering about JA’s witty compliment in Letter 104 about living “for a twelvemonth” on Anna’s clever place name---as if an idea could be as nutritious and wholesome as food. Sounds like an ideal item for a menu at a Mr. Woodhouse-owned restaurant, right? Then I asked myself whether Jane Austen’s “for a twelvemonth” might also, like the name Newton Priors, have some intellectual history behind it?

Google quickly led me to Issue #4 (1729) of The Busy-Body, in which another genius like Newton and Milton, the enterprising 23-year old Benjamin Franklin, published an invitation to aspiring writers, encouraging them to send essays for him to include in his new periodical. The parallels of tone and circumstance, and turn of phrase between Franklin’s call for papers and Austen’s Letter 107 advice to niece Anna, are striking:

“In my first Paper I invited the Learned and the Ingenious to join with me in this Undertaking; and I now repeat that Invitation. I would have such Gentlemen take this Opportunity, (by trying their Talent in Writing) of diverting themselves and their Friends, and improving the Taste of the Town. And because I would encourage all Wit of our own Growth and Produce, I hereby promise, that whoever shall send me a little Essay on some moral or other Subject, that is fit for publick View in this Manner (and not basely borrow’d from any other Author) I shall receive it with Candour, and take Care to place it to the best Advantage. It will be hard if we cannot muster up in the whole Country, a sufficient Stock of Sence to supply the Busy-Body AT LEAST FOR A TWELVEMONTH…”   END QUOTE FROM FRANKLIN

The above parallels only reinforce my longstanding belief that Austen read and admired Franklin’s wit and style, as I’ve previously suggested that Franklin’s famous “Silence Dogood” faux letters to the editor (which play a key role in the film National Treasure) were inspirations for the 13 year old JA’s “Sophia Sentiment” (and other) secret contributions to her brothers’s periodical The Loiterer.

But that’s not all, there’s even more wit and ingenuity in Letter 107 pertaining to yet another great genius of the past:  “Milton would have given his eyes to have thought of it.”

That is of course a wink at the blindness of Milton as he dictated Paradise Lost to his scribe—and perhaps JA also had Milton’s Samson Agonistes in mind as well. Milton was 34 years older than Newton, and the two of them were among the greatest intellectual titans of Great Britain during the 17th century. So reading the name Newton may well have led JA to playfully free associate to Milton, and then she couldn't resist a final, unabashedly nerdy injoke; i.e., that Milton famously didn't need his eyes to create his greatest masterwork.

And I see another possible meaning. I believe JA knew many of Milton’s writings well, and that she therefore may’ve in mind, as the source of her bon mot about Milton giving up his eyes, a similar turn of phrase that the young, still fully sighted John Milton deployed in his impassioned condemnation of the  useless universities of England. For a description of what Milton wrote, I quote from “Milton Speaks to Academe” by Irene Samuel, Milton Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 1 (March 1970), pp. 2-4:

“Milton finds it unseemly that they who have brought a 'numb and chill stupidity of soul, an inactive BLINDNESS OF MIND upon the people by their leaden doctrine—or no doctrine at all' should object against the clamor for reform that it comes from the ignorant. It is as though 'they who have PUT OUT THE PEOPLE’S EYES [should] reproach them of their BLINDNESS.'

He found it also unseemly to argue that rebellion is the wrong time to undertake reform: ‘ ‘Tis not rebellion that ought to be the hindrance of reformation, but the want of this which is the cause of that.' For 'whence' he asks 'should we begin to extinguish a rebellion that hath his cause' from the need of reform except with needed reform? He argues it 'unreasonable . . . to defer . . . the most needful constitution of one right discipline while we stand balancing the discommodities of two corrupt ones.' But second, and more important, who is to decide what reforms are needed? It cannot be the ignorant, however little their ignorance is to be held against them. It cannot be the falsely learned, content with their false inadequate learning. It can as little be those of mere geniality who readily say yes to everything. The depth of the wound, in Milton's view, demanded a near-superhuman wisdom to find the right cure: ‘it is not for every learned or every wise man, though many of them consult in common, to invent or frame a discipline; but if it be at all the work of man, it must be of such a one as is a true knower of himself, ... in whom contemplation and practice, wit, prudence, fortitude, and eloquence must be rarely met, to comprehend the hidden causes of things .... So far is it from the ken of these wretched projectors of ours that bescrawl their pamphlets every day with new forms of government .... If it is not for every learned or even every wise man, certainly it is not for the unlearned and unwise to frame the needed discipline.” What Milton attacked was the ignorance of the supposedly learned. He did not exalt in its place the ignorance of the admittedly unlearned….”  END QUOTE FROM SAMUEL

I find Austen’s satirical irony in speculating about Milton giving up his useless eyes in payment for a brilliant name in his writing, to be curiously resonant with Milton’s own satirical irony in his early variant on the famous Yiddish definition of chutzpah – i.e., his claim that it would be arrant presumption for the English university establishment to deny the people a voice about reform of their educational system, after those people had previously been denied the education needed to understand what reform was needed.

I also see Mary Wollstonecraft in this mix. She alluded significantly to Milton’s Paradise Lost in her Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and I assert that it is well-established that JA was particularly focused on Wollstonecraft’s ideas about female education as JA wrote her novels. So, given that JA was one of history’s great autodidacts, I believe she’d have agreed with Milton’s condemnation of the academic gatekeepers who did such a poor job at educating others. I know she would’ve loved to see the kind of egalitarian and non-sexist reform of the educational system in England that Wollstonecraft advocated for.

In short, then, I believe JA, as she encouraged her aspiring writing niece Anna, was inspired by Anna’s use of the name of the great polymath Isaac Newton, to wink back to two other great polymaths, Benjamin Franklin and John Milton. This sort of injoke between proud aunt and beloved niece only adds to my sense that Jane considered Anna a “Nonpareil”: a very intelligent and learned young person, someone with whom JA could share this sort of sophisticated humor. All the more reason why I’m convinced, as I argued in my previous post, that JA was trying very hard to raise her niece’s literary game by some intensive coaching and encouragement, so that Anna might one day write fiction which the reading world could live a twelvemonth on. That this did not in fact occur would have brought tears to the eyes of Jane Austen.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter