The surprising presence of Charlotte Smith’s Emmeline in the subtext of Austen’s Sense&Sensibility

Last week, in my latest quiz, I presented a series of quotes from a work of literature which I did not identify, but which I suggested were connected in a subtextual and significant manner to one of Austen’s novels in particular.

Today I’m back to give you the answer, which my Subject Line has already revealed – Charlotte Smith’s first novel, Emmeline, published in 1788 when Jane Austen was not quite 13 years old ---and the Austen novel which is rich in significant connection to Emmeline is Austen’s first, Sense & Sensibility, published 23 years after Smith’s debut, in 1811. In particular, certain characters and events in Emmeline shine a bright allusive light on certain events I previously determined had occurred in Sense & Sensibility.

Without further ado, here are the passages from Emmeline which I quoted, and, in each case, the detail on the allusive usage made thereof by Jane Austen:

#1: “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.”

#1 EXPLANATION: Fitz-Edward is a secondary source, along with his best bud, Delamere, for the pleasing, insinuating manners of Willoughby in S&S.

 #2: “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…”

 #2 EXPLANATION: Fitz-Edward’s strategic spiking of Delamere’s wine with laudanum, in order to put the latter out of commission for hours of deep sleep, points directly to Mrs. Jennings’s spiking of Elinor Dashwood’s wine that I described a few weeks ago here: “Wineglass full of SOMETHING: Mrs Jennings’ Constantia wine a roofie for Elinor in S&S” http://tinyurl.com/jz9p9vo

#3: “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.”

#3 EXPLANATION: The above is Delamere’s explanation as to how he obsessively stalked Adelina, exactly the way I described Willoughby stalking Marianne a few weeks ago here: “Why Austen’s Willoughby stops at MARLBOROUGH on his way to CLEVELAND in S&S” http://tinyurl.com/je2k3jq

#4: “…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."

#4 EXPLANATION: Of course, that passage is echoed by the famous deathbed scene described at the start of S&S, as further explained here: “The 2 deathbed utterances of Austen’s Sense&Sensibility: Mssrs Dashwood…& Jennings?” http://tinyurl.com/gvsj3qc

#5: “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". 

EXPLANATION #5: There we have Smith’s Emmeline as a source for Marianne Dashwood’s nostalgia about her lonely outdoor rambles. 

#6: Notwithstanding the steadiness Emmeline 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.

#6 EXPLANATION: There is more of Delamere’s persistent stalking of Emmeline, which is echoed by Willoughby’s stalking of Marianne in S&S.

#7: 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 Emmeline 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.

#7 EXPLANATION: Of course Mrs. Ashwood sounds almost identical to Mrs. Dashwood – but the above description of her shows that Austen strongly echoed her character in Mrs. Jennings.

#8: But Emmeline 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 Emmeline. 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 Emmeline, 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….”

#8 EXPLANATION: No Janeite can read the above passage without instantly thinking of Colonel Brandon’s instant attraction to Marianne.

What does this all mean? In a nutshell, it should come as no surprise to any Austen scholar that Emmeline was on Jane Austen’s radar screen in a big way– she famously explicitly alluded to Delamere at three points in her Juvenilia, two of them in her History of England, written by her only a few years after Emmeline was published. But I can tell you that there has been practically no prior scholarship that has identified Emmeline as a source for S&S, let alone a key source, that makes is echoed so many times in both the overt and the shadow story of S&S, as I have outlined, above.

Finally, and most important, I believe that the character Adelina in Emmeline, who undergoes a secret pregnancy and then gives her infant away to her close relation, is very much the literary “ancestor” of all of Jane Austen’s secondary heroines who undergo that same experience, especially Marianne Dashwood!

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

‘She did not rank any work of Fielding quite so high’ - NOT! Austen’s veiled, perfect tribute to Fielding

One of the many famous sayings we find in Jane Austen’s writing is the following one-liner she coined in one of her last surviving letters, to her heiress, eldest niece, Fanny Austen Knight:

“Pictures of perfection, as you know, make me sick and wicked.”

Many of you have seen this witty and popular bon mot before (it’s been Tweeted hundreds of times by hundreds of Tweeps), but perhaps you don’t know what Jane Austen was talking about. Today I’ll tell you, and, despite what her brother Henry (quoted in my Subject Line) and many modern Austen scholars have asserted, also show you that JA was subversively signaling how inspiring a source Henry Fielding’s “scandalous” masterpiece, Tom Jones (John Thorpe’s favorite novel) really was for her!

To begin, here is Austen’s famous quip in full context:    “I am very much obliged to you, my dearest Fanny, for sending me Mr. W[ildman]'s conversation; I had great amusement in reading it, and I hope I am not affronted, and do not think the worse of him for having a brain so very different from mine; but my strongest sensation of all is astonishment at your being able to press him on the subject so perseveringly; and I agree with your papa, that it was not fair. When he knows the truth [i.e., that Emma was written by Fanny’s own aunt] he will be uncomfortable. You are the oddest creature! Nervous enough in some respects, but in others perfectly without nerves! Quite unrepulsable, hardened, and impudent. Do not oblige him to read any more. Have mercy on him, tell him the truth, and make him an apology. He and I should not in the least agree, of course, in our ideas of novels and heroines. Pictures of perfection, as you know, make me sick and wicked, but there is some very good sense in what he says, and I particularly respect him for wishing to think well of all young ladies; it shows an amiable and a delicate mind. And he deserves better treatment than to be obliged to read any more of my works.” END QUOTE

So, it’s appears that Mr. Wildman, the serious young man who is courting Fanny, expressed stern disapproval of the way Jane Austen (whom he doesn’t know is Fanny’s aunt) presented her heroine Emma Woodhouse--- Emma is very far from the perfectly good, morally irreproachable heroine that he seems to have believed every such novel ought to have; and JA seems to be very diplomatically sticking to her authorial guns in having created a heroine who is, as all Janeites know, all too flawed.

Over the years, several Austen scholars have noticed that Jane Austen was in no small part rebutting some famously strong opinions about literary storytelling voiced by the authoritative Samuel Johnson. In Rambler No. 4 (03/31/1750), Johnson opined thusly:   “…these familiar histories may perhaps be made of greater use than the solemnities of professed morality, and convey the knowledge of vice and virtue with more efficacy than axioms and definitions. But if the power of example is so great…care ought to be taken, that, when the choice is unrestrained, the best examples only should be exhibited; and that which is likely to operate so strongly, should not be mischievous or uncertain in its effects…It is therefore not a sufficient vindication of a character, that it is drawn as it appears; for many characters ought never to be drawn: nor of a narrative, that the train of events is agreeable to observation and experience; for that observation which is called knowledge of the world, will be found much more frequently to make men cunning than good.”

As to authors who create “mixed characters” who embody both good and bad qualities, Johnson warned of the danger that the reader will "lose the abhorrence of their faults, because they do not hinder our pleasure, or, perhaps, regard them with some kindness for being united with so much merit"; and Johnson further pronounced that in "narratives where historical veracity has no place, I cannot discover why there should not be exhibited the most perfect idea of virtue; of virtue not angelical, nor above probability . . . but the highest and purest that humanity can reach”.

It has also been long recognized that Johnson was not just decrying writers of mixed characters in general. Boswell’s Life of Johnson (1791) is only part of the varied evidence that has emerged over the years, revealing that one particular author was in Johnson’s moral crosshairs—the writer who most famously created the very kind of mixed character whom Johnson deplored: Henry Fielding, with his lovable, but seriously flawed, transgressive hero Tom Jones, who gets his happy ending despite everything:

“Fielding being mentioned, Johnson exclaimed, "he was a blockhead." . . . "What I mean by his being a blockhead is that he was a barren rascal." BOSWELL. "Will you not allow, Sir, that he draws very natural pictures of human life?" JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, it is of very low life. Richardson used to say, that had he not known who Fielding was, he should have believed he was an ostler. Sir, there is more knowledge of the heart in one letter of Richardson's, than in all Tom Jones. I, indeed, never read Joseph Andrews." “

So, from all of the above it is clear that Mr. Wildman has either read Samuel Johnson himself, or is repeating the Johnson-inspired adverse verdict rendered on Emma by some friend of his who has. And of course the world of Janeites must be universally and perpetually grateful that our beloved author ignored these patriarchal dicta of the English moralist she is supposed to have admired most, and insisted on her moral duty to create her universe of mixed characters whom we all know and love so well, most of all because we see our own mixed selves, as we really are, in them.

The best summary that I’ve found, which puts all of the above in useful context, is in Margaret Kirkham’s brilliant and seminal Jane Austen, Feminism, and Fiction (1983). Kirkham, after discussing Samuel Johnson’s famous comments, insightfully writes about the feminist ripples that emanated over time from Fielding’s controversial masterpiece:

“The mid-18^th century argument about ‘mixed characters’ was expressed in quite general terms, not apparently related to specific considerations about women, yet it touched on the feminist claim to moral and educational equality in important ways. The general argument, as propounded by Johnson, was that characters in whom good and bad qualities were confused should not, in familiar histories, be sympathetically represented, nor should they be allowed to be seen to prosper….What he specifically objects to is the representation of sexual misconduct in characters who otherwise show a variety of admirable qualities. ‘Vice’ is understood specifically as sexual misconduct, ‘Virtue’ as chastity. What he is really saying, therefore, is that, in the familiar history, the morals of readers must be safeguarded by a refusal, on the part of novelists, to show sexual conduct as it is—rather than as the moralist would like it to be.…[I]t became de rigueur for male biographers to show the purity of their subjects’ minds by assuring readers that the aunt or sister of whom they wrote had not much cared for Fielding. Henry Austen’s assertion that his sister preferred Richardson should be read with this in mind. What she and Cassandra might have said, in the privacy of their dressing room at around the age of twenty, is quite another matter.

Tom Jones did precisely what Johnson feared it would do; it encouraged respectable women to discuss fairly openly ‘what passed in the world’, to laugh at its absurdity and, when the laughter had subsided, to question ‘the solemnities of professed morality’ because it made plain that they were not well-founded in knowledge of human nature. Fielding did not show a virtuous heroine with that quality of experiential virtue which he revealed in the Foundling, but some women readers, Mrs. Carter among them, judged of Tom’s virtue as though it were the virtue of generic Man, not just the male sex…she is thinking of Tom’s moral composition as representative not of one sex, but of humankind. Once women readers had begun to think in that way, they were not to be content with villainous heroes and ‘picture-of-perfection’ heroines. …The novel, which was obliged to show human nature in both men and women, did as much as, or more than, any other form of writing to expose the necessity of reassessing what ‘virtue’ ought to mean in both sexes. Fielding, perhaps as unlikely a feminist as one could hope to find, contributed to the opening up of this new moral question, although he tried to dodge it….” END QUOTE

Hmmm…if Kirkham is correct that sexual misconduct was an unspoken, but important, subtext of Johnson’s critique of mixed characters—and, after reading several other scholarly takes on the battle between Johnson and Fielding for the hearts and minds of English readers, I believe Kirkham was spot-on --- then that casts some doubt on the assumption that it was Austen’s depiction of Emma Woodhouse alone which the Mr. Collins-like Mr. Wildman disapproved of. No, the female character in Emma who Mr. Wildman most assuredly did not wish to receive a happy ending was…. Jane Fairfax! Just recall what Jane F. herself says (as reported to Emma by Mrs. Weston) at the end of the novel:

“Poor girl!” said Emma. “She thinks herself wrong, then, for having consented to a private engagement?”

“Wrong! No one, I believe, can blame her more than she is disposed to blame herself. ‘The consequence,’ said she, ‘has been a state of perpetual suffering to me; and so it ought. But after all the punishment that misconduct can bring, it is still not less misconduct. Pain is no expiation. I never can be blameless. I have been acting contrary to all my sense of right; and the fortunate turn that every thing has taken, and the kindness I am now receiving, is what my conscience tells me ought not to be.’ ‘Do not imagine, madam,’ she continued, ‘that I was taught wrong. Do not let any reflection fall on the principles or the care of the friends who brought me up. The error has been all my own; and I do assure you that, with all the excuse that present circumstances may appear to give, I shall yet dread making the story known to Colonel Campbell.’”

By Samuel Johnson’s criteria, JA has failed as an author and moralist, because she allows some of her mixed characters such as Jane Fairfax to get a fresh start after doing wrong. So, now I see that JA’s sticking to her guns in her letter to Fanny is at least half about letting Jane Fairfax (or for that matter, Marianne Dashwood or, heaven help us, Lydia Bennet and Lucy Steele!) off the hook for their wrong doing. And, in case you’re not familiar with which “male biographer” Kirkham had in mind, the following is what JA’s brother Henry Austen wrote about his recently deceased sister in that regard in his Biographical Notice (1818)

“Her reading was very extensive in history and belles lettres; and her memory extremely tenacious. Her favourite moral writers were Johnson in prose, and Cowper in verse. It is difficult to say at what age she was not intimately acquainted with the merits and defects of the best essays and novels in the English language. Richardson's power of creating, and preserving the consistency of his characters, as particularly exemplified in Sir Charles Grandison, gratified the natural discrimination of her mind, whilst her taste secured her from the errors of his prolix style and tedious narrative. She did not rank any work of Fielding quite so high. Without the slightest affectation she recoiled from every thing gross. Neither nature, wit, nor humour, could make her amends for so very low a scale of morals. Her power of inventing characters seems to have been intuitive, and almost unlimited. She drew from nature; but, whatever may have been surmised to the contrary, never from individuals….”

And that brings me to the second and crucial part of my Subject Line – the veiled, perfect tribute to Fielding that I claim Jane Austen left behind, despite Henry Austen’s protesting-too-much to the contrary. So far, what I’ve written above does not provide any clear evidence that JA, in writing of “pictures of perfection”, knew anything about the above-described controversy between Fielding and Johnson about morality in fiction-writing. Perhaps JA was only responding to Johnson and his many male followers; and in the vein of the famous Defence of the Novel in Northanger Abbey, was simply standing up for her right and duty to honestly depict the lives of women as she observed them in the real world – truth would be the best moral teacher, not unrealistic preaching-by-unrealistic-fiction.

But I’m writing this post because yesterday, I happened upon a passage in Book X of Fielding’s Tom Jones (published in 1749, one year before Johnson’s indictment of it in Rambler #4), in which we read one of Fielding’s many chatty authorial intrusions for which he is so famous. It’s right at the start of Chapter 1 of Book X and is entitled “Containing instructions very necessary to be perused by modern critics.” You should recognize immediately why it caught my eye, from the words in ALL CAPS:

“… we must admonish thee, my worthy friend (for, perhaps, thy heart may be better than thy head), not to condemn a character as a bad one, because it is not perfectly a good one. If thou dost delight in these MODELS OF PERFECTION, there are books enow written to gratify thy taste; but, as we have not, in the course of our conversation, ever happened to meet with any such person, we have not chosen to introduce any such here. To say the truth, I a little question whether mere man ever arrived at this consummate degree of excellence, as well as whether there hath ever existed a monster bad enough to verify that nulla virtute redemptum A vitiis [Whose vices are not allayed with a single virtue] in Juvenal; nor do I, indeed, conceive the good purposes served by inserting characters of such ANGELIC PERFECTION, or such diabolical depravity, in any work of invention; since, from contemplating either, the mind of man is more likely to be overwhelmed with sorrow and shame than to draw any good uses from such patterns; for in the former instance he may be both concerned and ashamed to see a pattern of excellence in his nature, which he may reasonably despair of ever arriving at; and in contemplating the latter he may be no less affected with those uneasy sensations, at seeing the nature of which he is a partaker degraded into so odious and detestable a creature.

In fact, if there be enough of goodness in a character to engage the admiration and affection of a well-disposed mind, though there should appear some of those little blemishes quas humana parum cavit natura, they will raise our compassion rather than our abhorrence. Indeed, nothing can be of more moral use than the IMPERFECTIONS which are seen in examples of this kind; since such form a kind of surprize, more apt to affect and dwell upon our minds than the faults of very vicious and WICKED persons. The foibles and VICES of men, in whom there is great mixture of good, become more glaring objects from the VIRTUES which contrast them and shew their deformity; and when we find such vices attended with their evil consequence to our favourite characters, we are not only taught to shun them for our own sake, but to hate them for the mischiefs they have already brought on those we love. And now, my friend, having given you these few admonitions, we will, if you please, once more set forward with our history.” END QUOTE FROM FIELDING

I think it should be pretty obvious to anyone who has read the first half of my above post, as to why I put the words “PERFECTION” and “WICKED” in ALL CAPS. These are the very words, I recognized, that JA plucked from Fielding’s verbose defense of mixed characters, and then memorably crystallized in her pithy, catchy witticism.

And I conclude with the observation that her one-liner becomes trebly meaningful when you connect the dots from it to another outside-the-box claim I’ve been making for many years, which is that, despite Henry Austen’s other claim (“Her power of inventing characters seems to have been intuitive, and almost unlimited. She drew from nature; but, whatever may have been surmised to the contrary, never from individuals”),  Emma Woodhouse is in key part a representation of clueless, snobbish, insensitive niece Fanny Knight; and, complementarily, Jane Fairfax is in key part a representation of vulnerable, sensitive, and creative niece Anna Austen Lefroy! I.e., one of Emma’s most serious moral “imperfections” is her long delay in showing charity and compassion toward Jane. And so, Jane Fairfax getting a happy ending (of sorts) is, in the largest moral sense, the only truly moral and just outcome JA could have given her.

So there, Samuel Johnson!

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Pride & Prejudice as doubly midrashic on Paradise Lost: if Jane Austen could tell...

One of the nicer traditions of JASNA (I don’t know how far back it dates) is the publication of the latest edition of Persuasions Online on Jane Austen’s birthday. This past Friday, # 241, was no exception, and so I eagerly skimmed through the contents for articles for the few (based on my experience with past issues) I could hope would open new Austenian vistas for me – and my wish was rapidly fulfilled, when I clicked on the link for this one: 

“If Art Could Tell”: A Miltonic Reading of Pride and Prejudice  by James M. Scott

During the weekend, I spent some very enjoyable hours reading and rereading Scott’s article, which fulfilled its title’s great promise for me, because it’s not only fantastic scholarship in its own right, it also just happens to intersect and synergize with my own research to an extraordinary degree.

Specifically, I've been blogging about the Paradise Lost subtext of Austen's novels – but especially Pride and Prejudice -- for over six years now. So I really was Scott’s ideal reader, because I could appreciate, from my own personal experience as an Austen scholar, the marvelous, systematic way he gathered his  evidence, and then laid out his arguments. And even as to the arguments he presented which were close to my own (for example, his claim that Paradise Lost was subjected to protofeminist readings during Jane Austen’s lifetime), Scott’s point of view, his starting point, was very different from mine, and therefore very interesting and fresh to me.

And by the way, it is very clear to me from reading his article that Scott was completely unaware of my research (a fact which he verified when I contacted him yesterday). He’s not really an Austen specialist at all, he’s never participated in Austen virtual community or in JASNA, and he’d have had to Google pretty persistently in order to find my relevant blog posts (which I’ve never taken particular care to make more v Google-visible). And I love what he wrote in his reply to my initial email to him: “there is comfort in knowing that your own independent research tends to confirm my approach, even though you are coming at the subject from another angle and with a different lens." I feel exactly the same about his work!

You see, when I say his point of view is very different from mine, I’m not saying that I believe any of Scott’s interpretations of Austen’s allusions to Milton are wrong. Quite the contrary, I believe they’re 100% correct and brilliant; but...they only pertain to what I call the "overt story" of Pride & Prejudice. Whereas all of my posts of the past six years that bear in some way on Paradise Lost and Pride & Prejudice, relate to what I call the "shadow story" of P&P:

[For background on what I mean by these two terms, read and/or watch these: “Austen’s 6 novels are all double stories (2 parallel fictional universes), undetected for 200 yrs,” http://tinyurl.com/onftqz7  

http://tinyurl.com/jyfet25

& “First Impressions” podcast” interview re Emma’s shadow story http://tinyurl.com/gtmr2ch ]

I will now zero in on the shadow story of P&P. As those who’ve read a lot of my posts know, in the overt story of Pride & Prejudice, the version of the novel that “everybody knows”, Darcy is a fundamentally good man who, after his botched first proposal to Elizabeth, repents his bad behavior and reforms. However, in the shadow story as I’ve sleuthed it out, Darcy is fundamentally a very BAD man who remains bad all the way through to the end of the novel, and only pretends to repent. Topsy turvy was the name of Austen’s fictional game, two stories for the price of one.

Now, in the shadow story of P&P viewed through a Miltonian lens, Darcy (not Wickham) is a great deal like Milton’s Satan, because Darcy manipulatively tempts Elizabeth to marry him, using Pemberley as bait (as with Satan tempting Jesus in Matthew 4); whereas Mary Bennet (yes, Mary!) is a good and wise Satan who whispers to Elizabeth to try to warn her elder sister about the grave danger Darcy poses to her, but Elizabeth isn’t listening, because she mistakenly believes Mary is a foolish pedant! And the members of Darcy's Satanic crew (think Moloch and Belial) include Mr. Gardiner and Mrs. Reynolds, who each play their crucial role in the complex charade that Darcy stages for Elizabeth at Pemberley. And finally there’s Charlotte, another master manipulator like Satan, who has her own very romantic reasons to work behind the scenes to bring her true love, Elizabeth, to Pemberley, where, as Charlotte plots from early on, Mr. Collins will be the local clergyman!

So, in an oversimplified way, that begins to explain why I see Jane Austen's engagement with Paradise Lost as even more radically feminist than the feminist point of view Scott so elegantly and persuasively ascribed to Jane Austen in her encounter with Milton. As thrilling as the character of Elizabeth Bennet is in her light, bright and sparkling wit and audacity in the overt story of P&P, so in the shadow story are Mary, Charlotte (and even Mrs. Bennet!) making the best of their “weak” feminine position in society.

For those who want some meat on these theoretical bones, and to end up with a rich understanding of Jane Austen’s engagement in Pride & Prejudice with Paradise Lost, I suggest you first read Scott’s article, and absorb its rich content. Then you can move on to the following sampling of my relevant blog posts, and see the other side of Eden in Meryton.

When you’ve done that, which may take some time, you’ll then really understand how Scott and I have, while unaware of each other, been tracking the same allusive literary scent for a while, but, as I said, viewing it all through the two different lens that Jane Austen thoughtfully provided to her readers.

So, without further ado, here are my relevant posts, in the order of salience:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2015/06/mr-darcy-eliza-lady-catherine-as-satan.html

Mr. Darcy, Eliza, & Lady Catherine as Satan, Eve & Raphael: the answers to my “tempting” quiz

06/02/2015

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/08/re-reading-p-mary-bennet-good-satan-of.html

Re-reading P&P: Mary Bennet the Good Satan of Longbourne     08/25/2010

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2016/07/darcys-stunning-cunning-vindication-of.html

Darcy’s stunning (& cunning) vindication of his own right…to re-educate Elizabeth!  07/05/2016

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2014/10/mary-bennet-mary-crawford-as-mary.html

MARY Bennet & MARY Crawford as MARY Wollstonecraft, the Satan who whispered to Jane Austen: Jane, the Raffish Disciple of Wollstonecraft, abhorred Polwhele’s misogynistic Unsex’d Females

10/13/2014

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-rain-falls-mainly-on-jane-colin.html

The rain falls mainly on Jane: Colin Firth as Darcy, A Single Man, ‘enry ‘iggins….& Milton’s Satan?

05/28/15

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2015/07/jane-austens-profoundly-light-bright.html

Jane Austen’s profoundly “light, bright & sparkling” (Biblical) subtext in Pride & Prejudice 07/25/2015

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2016/04/pemberley-as-elizabeth-bennets-fools.html

Pemberley as Elizabeth Bennet’s Fool’s Paradise (Hall) Lost & Regained  04/24/2016

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-notorious-3rd-duke-of-dorset-in_12.html

The Notorious 3rd Duke of Dorset in the subtext of 3 Jane Austen novels (along with Garrick's disturbing Riddle & Joshua Reynolds's disturbing "Cupid as Link-Boy")    03/12/2014

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-answer-to-my-latest-jane-austen.html

The answer to my latest Jane Austen quiz: Darcy as Jesus and Eliza as Mary Magdalene  06/15/2015

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2015/01/ill-humour-at-pemberley-with-darcys.html

Ill-Humour at Pemberley with Darcy’s Pens and Mrs. Hurst’s Singing     01/30/2015

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Henry Crawford’s Irresistible Augustinian Confessions

While following up on my recent posts about Mansfield Park alluding to Othello, and also being alluded to by Christopher Isherwood (in a couple of his novels) and Bob Fosse & Company  (in Cabaret), I happened serendipitously upon another small gem of Austenian allusion.

I found it in the following quoted excerpt from “Racial Memory and Literary History” an article by Stephen Greenblatt (the very same, universally acclaimed author of Will in the World , which of course is the litcrit best seller about Shakespeare) in PMLA Vol. 116, No. 1 (Jan., 2001), pp. 48-63:

“I want to recall a memorable scene of reading in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. The reading is not private and silent but instead a performance in public, or at least in the semipublic familial sphere defined by the drawing room of an English country house. The shy, sensitive, morally upright heroine Fanny Price has been reading aloud to Lady Bertram, but she has put the book down on hearing approaching footsteps. Edmund Bertram enters in the company of Henry Crawford, the rakish gentleman whose proposal of marriage Fanny recently refused. Fanny dislikes Henry, whose corrupt morals were revealed, in her view, by his highly improper instigation, while the master of Mansfield Park was absent, of amateur theatricals. But though he has been rejected, Henry has not given up his suit, and in the scene in question he pursues it by taking up the book and continuing where Fanny broke off.

The book is an edition of Shakespeare. "She was in the middle of a very fine speech of that man's-What's his name, Fanny?" asks the characteristically lazy-minded Lady Bertram. We might perhaps anticipate from this remark that Fanny has been reading a love scene, from As You Like It or Romeo and Juliet, for example, so that the words Henry recites will continue his courtship, or alternatively from Two Gentlemen of Verona or Cymbeline, so that he will be further exposed as a vain seducer.

But when Crawford opens the book and "by carefully giving way to the inclination of the leaves" finds the passage in question, he sees that the virtuous Fanny has been reading a speech of Cardinal Wolsey's from Henry VIII. This late historical romance is not for us the most familiar or celebrated of Shakespeare's plays, to put it mildly, but it had, in Jane Austen's time, a reputation as a vehicle for great actors. Henry Crawford rises to the occasion, and his reading is brilliant: "The King, the Queen, Buckingham, Wolsey, Cromwell, all were given in turn; for with the happiest knack, the happiest power of jumping and guessing, he could al- ways light, at will, on the best scene, or the best speeches of each; and whether it were dignity or pride, or tenderness or remorse, or whatever were to be expressed, he could do it with equal beauty."

That’s all routine background to most Austen scholars, but now comes Greenblatt’s amazing catch:

“Its effect on Fanny is, at a suitably reduced scale, a bit like the famous effect of the gladiatorial games on Augustine's friend Alypius, who began with his eyes shut and his fingers in his ears and gradually became fascinated to the point of compulsion: Fanny's studied indifference, her distaste for histrionics, her stern resolve not to pay attention break down, as the performance forces itself into her mind and sensibility:  "Not a look, or an offer of help had Fanny given; not a syllable for or against. All her attention was for her work. She seemed determined to be interested by nothing else. But taste was too strong in her. She could not abstract her mind five minutes; she was forced to listen; his reading was capital, and her pleasure in good reading extreme." After Crawford finishes, Edmund thanks him, expressing what he hopes are Fanny's "secret feelings" too: "'That play must be a favourite with you,' said he; 'You read as if you knew it well.'" “  Etc etc.  END QUOTE FROM GREENBLATT ARTICLE

I had never heard of Alypius, but I sure knew who Augustine was, and my attention was instantly riveted, because I knew from prior research of my own that there are significant intentional allusions to Augustine in at least two other Austen novels. So it was no great leap for me to quickly suspect that this was a third! I had originally learned about Austen’s interest in Augustine’s Confessions in 2011 from my brilliant Austen scholar friend and lit prof Diane Capitani, who has been working for some time on a book about Austen and Augustine, and who brings a smile to my face every time I see her at a JASNA AGM, when she calls me as a “scamp”! She persuasively argued at the 2011 AGM for the existence of an allusion by JA to Augustine in S&S, and subsequent thereto, I found one in another Austen novel (which I realize now I never publicly wrote about, but now plan to do so in the near future, to complete the picture).

And I also thought about the equally bright Austen scholar Sarah Emsley, who a few years ago wrote Jane Austen and the Philosophy of the Virtues, in which she mentioned Augustine a few times. But when I checked, I found that neither Capitani nor Emsley has ever mentioned Alypius and his “conversion” to vicarious gladiatorial bloodlust; nor could I find any other  scholarly suggestion that Augustine might be lurking in Austen’s allusive shadows in the above described scene, other than Greenblatt.

And in that regard, please note that Greenblatt didn’t actually opine that Austen had intentionally alluded to Augustine’s Confessions. He just noticed “a bit “ of a parallel, as if it were coincidental, and then, after he briefly described what he saw, he moved right along. However, knowing Austen as I do, and especially knowing about those other Augustine allusions, I recognized this as a bona fide allusion in MP that required immediately attention.

First, for some quick historical background, here’s what Wikipedia has to say about Alypius:

“Saint ALYPIUS of Thagaste was bishop of the see of Tagaste (in what is now Algeria) in 394. He is also credited with building the first monastery in Africa. He was a lifelong friend of Saint Augustine of Hippo and joined him in his conversion (in 386; Confessions 8.12.28) and life in Christianity. Most of what is known about him comes from Augustine's autobiographical Confessions. He came from an aristocratic family of Thagaste, a small town in the Roman province of Africa Proconsularis. He was a student of Augustine's in Carthage. As ALYPIUS’ friendship with Augustine began to deepen, so did his interest in Manicheism. ALYPIUS admired the Manichees’ strict decrees on chastity, and believed that marriage would interfere with the search for wisdom with his friends. He also studied law, and during his early life went to Rome, where he served as a magistrate. One commonly cited event, from the Confessions (6.8.13) concerns the young ALYPIUS, who had extremely strong moral beliefs, being taken by friends to watch violent Roman games in the arena. He initially resists this, keeping his eyes shut, but he is unable to control himself because of the sounds and eventually succumbs and opens his eyes. To his horror, he finds himself enjoying the spectacle and even invites other friends to come with him later. However, he eventually repents of this and returns to the spiritual fold. “

And now here is a translation of the actual (and apparently famous) passage described by both Greenblatt and Wikipedia:

“[Alypius], not forsaking that secular course which his parents had charmed him to pursue, had gone before me to Rome, to study law, and there he was carried away incredibly with an incredible eagerness after the shows of gladiators. For being utterly averse to and detesting spectacles, he was one day by chance met by divers of his acquaintance and fellow-students coming from dinner, and they with a familiar violence haled him, vehemently refusing and resisting, into the Amphitheatre, during these cruel and deadly shows, he thus protesting: "Though you hale my body to that place, and there set me, can you force me also to turn my mind or my eyes to those shows? I shall then be absent while present, and so shall overcome both you and them." They, hearing this, led him on nevertheless, desirous perchance to try that very thing, whether he could do as he said.

When they were come thither, and had taken their places as they could, the whole place kindled with that savage pastime. But he, closing the passage of his eyes, forbade his mind to range abroad after such evil; and would he had stopped his ears also! For in the fight, when one fell, a mighty cry of the whole people striking him strongly, overcome by curiosity, and as if prepared to despise and be superior to it what so ever it were, even when seen, he opened his eyes, and was stricken with a deeper wound in his soul than the other, whom he desired to behold, was in his body; and he fell more miserably than he upon whose fall that mighty noise was raised, which entered through his ears, and unlocked his eyes, to make way for the striking and beating down of a soul, bold rather than resolute, and the weaker, in that it had presumed on itself, which ought to have relied on Thee.

For so soon as he saw that blood, he therewith drunk down savageness; nor turned away, but fixed his eye, drinking in frenzy, unawares, and was delighted with that guilty fight, and intoxicated with the bloody pastime. Nor was he now the man he came, but one of the throng he came unto, yea, a true associate of theirs that brought him thither. Why say more? He beheld, shouted, kindled, carried thence with him the madness which should goad him to return not only with them who first drew him thither, but also before them, yea and to draw in others. Yet thence didst Thou with a most strong and most merciful hand pluck him, and taughtest him to have confidence not in himself, but in Thee. But this was after.

But this was already being laid up in his memory to be a medicine hereafter….”

And now, here is the full text of the paragraph in which Fanny undergoes that exact same involuntary seduction:

“Edmund watched the progress of her attention, and was amused and gratified by seeing how she gradually slackened in the needlework, which at the beginning seemed to occupy her totally: how it fell from her hand while she sat motionless over it, and at last, how the eyes which had appeared so studiously to avoid him throughout the day were turned and fixed on Crawford—fixed on him for minutes, fixed on him, in short, till the attraction drew Crawford’s upon her, and the book was closed, and the charm was broken. Then she was shrinking again into herself, and blushing and working as hard as ever; but it had been enough to give Edmund encouragement for his friend, and as he cordially thanked him, he hoped to be expressing Fanny’s secret feelings too.”

It then occurred to me to check to see whether and how Jane Austen used the word “confession” in MP, and whether any such usage(s) might be connected in some way to the above quoted passage in Chapter 34, in which Fanny is “converted”, in spite of her strong scruples and resistance, to what we might call “Henry Crawfordism”. And wouldn’t you know it, only a few paragraphs later, we read this:

“Edmund had already gone through the service once since his ordination; and upon this being understood, he had a variety of questions from Crawford as to his feelings and success; questions, which being made, though with the vivacity of friendly interest and quick taste, without any touch of that spirit of banter or air of levity which Edmund knew to be most offensive to Fanny, he had true pleasure in satisfying; and when Crawford proceeded to ask his opinion and give his own as to the properest manner in which particular passages in the service should be delivered, shewing it to be a subject on which he had thought before, and thought with judgment, Edmund was still more and more pleased. This would be the way to Fanny’s heart. She was not to be won by all that gallantry and wit and good-nature together could do; or, at least, she would not be won by them nearly so soon, without the assistance of sentiment and feeling, and seriousness on serious subjects.

“Our liturgy,” observed Crawford, “has beauties, which not even a careless, slovenly style of reading can destroy; but it has also redundancies and repetitions which require good reading not to be felt. For myself, at least, I must CONFESS being not always so attentive as I ought to be” (here was a glance at Fanny); “that nineteen times out of twenty I am thinking how such a prayer ought to be read, and longing to have it to read myself. Did you speak?” stepping eagerly to Fanny, and addressing her in a softened voice; and upon her saying “No,” he added, “Are you sure you did not speak? I saw your lips move. I fancied you might be going to tell me I ought to be more attentive, and not allow my thoughts to wander. Are not you going to tell me so?”

“No, indeed, you know your duty too well for me to—even supposing—”

She stopt, felt herself getting into a puzzle, and could not be prevailed on to add another word, not by dint of several minutes of supplication and waiting. He then returned to his former station, and went on as if there had been no such tender interruption…”

So here we have Henry Crawford making a second sneak attack on Fanny’s already breached defenses, moving from Shakespeare to another weak point of Fanny’s, Anglican liturgy. Now, all Janeites know Henry to be about as sincere in belief in Christianity as Milton’s Satan or Shakespeare’s Iago! And yet actually has the audacity to play the role of penitent sinner (sorta reminds us of Augustine, right?) and to  say, with perfectly simulated mock humility, “I must CONFESS being not always so attentive [to Anglican liturgy] as I ought to be”. And, master manipulator that he is, he takes a quick “glance at Fanny”, as if actually worried that he will thereby lose her good opinion which he plays as if it means the world to him to have it. And then, observing that he has successfully pulled yet another involuntary reaction from Fanny—more holes in the dike, if you will---he pounces again, but in the most delicate and smooth way, such that “she stopt, felt herself getting into a puzzle” --- or should we rather say, Henry’s velvet trap? Confess, indeed!!!!

And for today, I will stop there, so I can get this post out this evening, but I hope this will be the beginning of another interesting thread, as others hopefully react to this.

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

"t-O TELL O-f races" in Mansfield Park (and Othello)

In followup to my post yesterday....    http://tinyurl.com/jgqs7u9   ...about the allusion to Shakespeare's Othello that I see in Austen's Mansfield Park  that I've been discussing with Diane Reynolds in Austen-L, I have this to add:

Diane, I awoke today with a few more observations that occurred to me, in reply to your wonderful post yesterday evening:

First, as to the following exchange between us:

Diane: “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?”
Me: “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.”

I did a little Googling and found that Nicholas Potter, a modern editor of Othello, quoted Samuel Johnson’s reply to Boswell regarding the moral of Othello:

“JOHNSON: “In the first place, Sir, we learn from Othello this very useful moral, not to make an unequal match…” …The word Johnson uses links him directly with one of his greatest fans, JA. The dreadful consequences of ‘unequal matches’ are made evident in her novels.”

Potter then went on:

“Lieutenant Price of MP is not Othello, and Fanny’s mother is not smothered, but there is an instructive comparison to be drawn…”

At that instant, Potter was tantalizingly close to grasping the presence of Othello in MP, but he didn’t quite make it there –it did not occur to him to take a look at the unequal match that might have happened between Henry and Fanny, or the one that actually does happen between Edmund and Fanny. JA, who indisputably knew Boswell’s bio of Johnson, was surely aware of Johnson’s opinion about Othello, and I now connect those dots, and speculate that JA, in MP, did indeed intentionally address the theme of unequal marriage in several of the relationships depicted.

While it is not clear what Johnson had in mind as “unequal” about the marriage of Othello and Desdemona, at least a part of it must have been race --- Othello’s being black is, as I noted in my previous post, what the racist Brabantio luridly talks about, and also is what Iago incites Rodrigo with as well.

Now…think about how the subject of race lurks just beneath the surface of MP at several points. How Henry Crawford is described as “black”, Mary as “brown”, and we of course have Sir Thomas as the owner of a plantation in Antigua where the back-breaking, horrific labor is provided by African slaves.

When you look at the allusion to Othello through that lens, especially with William Price being strikingly paralleled to Othello, it strongly suggests that JA was bringing her sharp readers’s attention to how race played a role in MP, with Fanny’s attraction to her own brother William, but also with Fanny’s eventual attraction to the “black” Henry Crawford.

And now for a  few additional details that came to my mind:

In MP in Chapter 14, we read the following re the selection of a play for the home theatrical:

“…they wanted a piece containing very few characters in the whole, but every character first-rate, and three principal women. All the best plays were run over in vain. Neither Hamlet, nor Macbeth, nor Othello, nor Douglas, nor The Gamester, presented anything that could satisfy even the tragedians…”

As I argued in my breakout session presentation at the 2014 JASNA AGM in Montreal, the three Shakespeare plays named in that passage, seemingly in passing, all actually occupy a notable place in the allusive subtext of Mansfield Park –from the Hamletian way in which Tom Bertram stages a “mousetrap” with Lovers Vows in order to expose his father’s sordid past when Daddy returns from Antigua; to the three WARD/WEIRD sisters who orbit around the same sun, Sir Thomas; to what I’ve just been saying about William Price as Othello, Fanny as Desdemona, and Henry as Iago.

These three Shakespeare tragedies (as well as several other Shakespeare plays--Troilus & Cressida, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Titus Andronicus, Henry VIII, etc.) are not really “in passing” at all in MP –that throwaway listing of plays under consideration fit JA classic M.O. for hiding hints about her allusions in plain sight in the text of her novels!

And finally, speaking of Tom Bertram setting his father for a moral comeuppance up via home theatrical, and hints hidden in the text of MP, here’s are a couple of them, tucked away in a small passage of narration in Chapter 12:

“Sir Thomas was to return in November, and his eldest son had duties to call him earlier home. The approach of September brought tidings of Mr. Bertram, first in a letter to the gamekeeper and then in a letter to Edmund; and by the end of August he arrived himself, to be gay, agreeable, and gallant again as occasion served, or Miss Crawford demanded; tO TELL Of races and Weymouth, and parties and friends, to which she might have listened six weeks before with some interest, and altogether to give her the fullest conviction, by the power of actual comparison, of her preferring his younger brother.”

“to tell of races” ---not only is the name “Otello” (as in Verdi’s Italian spelling which matches the Italian setting) hidden in “to tell of”, I believe we’re being alerted by the pun on “races” that the brown-skinned Miss Crawford (who may be biracial) has, I believe, demanded that Tom confront Sir Thomas not only with his having sired illegitimate children in every direction on different Ward sisters, but also with having sired a couple of biracial children in Antigua—those being Henry and Mary themselves, the proverbial chickens coming home to roost --- in which case Tom is going to “tell” his father “of the “races” of two more of his children!

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Austen, Isherwood, Bowles, & Fosse: A literary chain of ambiguous sexualities

In Austen-L, Elaine Pigeon responded this morning to Diane Reynolds and myself:  "Fascinating thread on Austen, Shakespeare, and Girard."

And you just made it even more so, Elaine!  :)

Elaine: "I thought I'd point out that Jane Bowles (the wife of Paul Bowles, author of The Sheltering Sky) was also a writer and penned a novel entitled Two Serious Ladies, described in Wikipedia as following "two upper-class women, Christina Goering and Frieda Copperfield, as they descend into debauchery." "

Wow!! 

Elaine: “So Isherwood's fictional character Sally Bowles is thinly disguised. Isherwood "first met Paul Bowles in Berlin in the early 1930s and later visited Paul and Jane Bowles in Tangier in 1955." (PaulBowles.org) Isherwood's allusion is quite transparent, so I assume he wanted his readers to recognize Sally, which is not always the case. Anyway, just a tidbit I thought would be of interest, esp from the perspective of biographical readings.”

That is so interesting on multiple levels! What it suggests to me first, is that when Fosse and his  collaborators created Cabaret in the Sixties, they really did their homework, and they were well aware of both (1) Isherwood’s Sally Bowles in Goodbye Berlin (1939) as a nod to Jane Bowles,  and (2) Jane Bowles’s later (1943) novel, which I suspect may have been a nod back by Jane Bowles to the fluid sexuality in Isherwood, acknowledging her “starring role” in his earlier novel. And so that number “Two Ladies” in Cabaret, explicitly pointing to the bisexual triad of the Count, Brian and Sally, was their way of pretty explicitly winking at that entire ball of allusion!

As to my passing question about whether Isherwood had any interest in Austen, I dug the following up from my files in Christopher Isherwood as a novelist by Ranjita Coondoo Anupam (1978) at p. 132, regarding Isherwood’s 1954 novel, The World in the Evening:   “War seems to be so important to Isherwood that Stephen has to present an excuse to Gerda for Elizabeth's omission of any direct reference to war in her novels. While portraying the character of Elizabeth, Isherwood had Jane Austen as his model. Just like Stephen defending Elizabeth, Robert Liddell defends Jane Austen by saying that she did well in remembering her own range as a novelist: Jane Austen voluntarily rejected the Napoleonic Wars as unworthy to enter into her picture of contemporary life. She has often, and very foolishly, been condemned for this.”

When I found that last year, I did not pursue it, but this time I did, spurred by your wonderful reaction. First, I noted that Anupam (who I can’t locate via the Internet) must’ve had some pretty good reason to make this assertion that JA was a model for the character Elizabeth Rydal in The World in the Evening, beyond the parallel she notes in Isherwood and Austen not directly bringing the larger war picture into their stories. But what? I quickly located the text of Isherwood’s novel online, searched “Austen” and was led to the following very interesting passage, when Elizabeth Rydal invites one of her snooty, phony friends over, who has previously made Stephen feel gauche and uncomfortable:

“So Strines was invited to the flat, to tea. He arrived with flowers, a wedding present, and an obviously prepared speech….The wedding present was a china inkwell, ‘almost certainly used by Jane Austen while she was living at Chawton.’ I felt sure Strines had hastily selected it as being one of the least wanted items in his own collection. The speech began with a quotation from Doctor Johnson: ‘You remember what he once said to a Newly-Married Lady?’ I forget what Doctor Johnson said, but it was something unpleasant and dogmatic, which Strines then proceeded to twist into a long-winded compliment. There was no warmth anywhere in the whole proceedings. And I felt that Strines regarded our marriage as a sophisticated kind of joke, of which Elizabeth would soon get tired.  ‘My dear Rydal,’ he told her, ‘you’ve always been so full of surprises.’ Then, looking at me with his joyless smile, he added, ‘I hope I have your permission to continue to call your wife by the name she has made illustrious? It’s a mark of respect, really, for your private rights in her, on which we wouldn’t dream of infringing. Elizabeth Monk is entirely yours. Rydal belongs to all of us.’ ‘Really, Strines,’ Elizabeth interrupted, laughing but a little nervous, I could see, that I might take offense at his tone, ‘you talk about me as if I were Hyde Park! Do I look as if the public had trampled me flat?’ Strines didn’t succeed in making me angry: I could afford to tolerate him now, though I still didn’t like him…”

I’d call that a pretty good start at a reason! Although Austen is only mentioned in one line of dialogue, it reveals to a knowledgeable Janeite that Isherwood was aware of both small and large details in Jane Austen’s biography, and, after browsing some more through the novel, I formed the hypothesis that the marriage of the protagonist Stephen Monk to Elizabeth Rydal was a metaphorical representation of how Isherwood responded and related to Austen’s fiction and biography. I sense that he saw JA as a key influence and guide, both artistically as a writer, and also in terms of his coming to terms with his being gay, which I gather from what I’ve read about him was a lifelong process. That fits so perfectly with my own sense of JA as being attracted to women (and probably men as well) – Isherwood must’ve gotten that. And so, getting back to my speculation about Cabaret’s “Two Ladies” as having some of its roots in the ambiguous sexualities of Mansfield Park, in particular the scene with Fanny and William Diane first drew our attention to, I believe it did, albeit via a series of artistic transmissions.

I also tried to dig the quote from Samuel Johnson which Strines alluded to, and found it was not Samuel Johnson who wrote “Advice to the Newly-Married Lady”, but Samuel K. Jennings, Methodist preacher, doctor, educator and contemporary of Jane Austen … https://www.commonlit.org/texts/advice-to-the-newly-married-lady   …who gave extremely sexist advice to the new wife –basically, to do what will please her husband, and consider how lucky she is not to be alone!

But Samuel Johnson did give advice to men as to the choice of a wife, which has a strong resonance to Jennings’s advice, when Johnson warns of the fate of the gigolo (which is what Stephen believes is how Strines and that crowd all see him vis a vis Elizabeth):  

“But of the various states and conditions of humanity, [Johnson] despised none more than the man who marries for a maintenance: and of a friend who made his alliance on no higher principles, he said once, "Now has that fellow (it was a nobleman of whom they were speaking) at length obtained a certainty of three meals a day, and for that certainty, like his brother dog in the fable, he will get his neck galled for life with a collar."…”

For those who want more detail about the marriage of Stephen and Elizabeth (i.e., the supposed JA stand-in), I also mined excerpts from a synopsis of World in the Evening in the Christopher Isherwood Encyclopedia by David Garrett Izzo, at ppg. 176-7: “…begins in 1941 at a Hollywood party. Stephen Monk is 37 and rich. At the party, he discovers the infidelity of his second wife, Jane. This motivates Stephen to leave the false glitter of Hollywood. He retreats to the Monk family estate in Pennsylvania and to his Aunt Sarah, who raised him from childhood after he lost his parents. She is a Quaker who raised Stephen to be one although he has long lapsed…. Monk.. reconsiders his life, the catalyst being the reading of his first wife’s letters. 34-year old Elizabeth Rydal was a novelist and 12 years older than Stephen when they met. She was fragile physically from a weak heart. While he reads the letters, Stephen is nursed [he was injured in a car accident] by Gerda Mannheim, a young German refugee. Gerda is another ‘manageress’ dispensing wisdom. She suggests to Stephen that he should be more sensitive to the inner awareness that is latent within him. …Elizabeth’s letters prompt Monk’s retrospective evaluation of his past. He recalls his wife’s miscarriage, her failing health, his brief tryst with a homosexual friend who loved Stephen one-sidedly, an affair with Jane during Elizabeth’s last illness, Elizabeth’s death, and his second marriage.

In the last section…Monk comes to terms with himself, his past, and Elizabeth’s memory… Monk’s internal journey is Isherwood’s. Monk represents Isherwood himself in different stages of the author’s life…. Stephen…has a vision of Elizabeth: ‘Elizabeth, tell me I was crazy to come here? What I am getting into?’ She answers: ‘Don’t worry, Darling. Just be patient. You’ll find out.’ And he will—slowly ---as a Vedantic unfolding of inner truth. When Monk tells Elizabeth he is unhappy, she responds: ‘You needn’t be…Nobody need be.’…

…He begins to read Elizabeth’s letters that were written to him and to others, particularly Mary Scriven. Stephen says to Elizabeth’s aura, ‘now you’ve got me…I’ll listen to you now. I’ll try and face up to whatever you want me to know. Just tell me what I am to do next.’ Monk, through Elizabeth’s letters (and Isherwood’s diaries) reconstructs his life for examination.

Stephen recalls how he had been insecure around Elizabeth’s intellectual friends…He imagined slights and finally blew up over one. Elizabeth patiently comforted him. After this, Elizabeth and Stephen realized they were in love, and this temporarily assuaged his insecurity.

…For Stephen the vision of Elizabeth is the center of his life around which his circular path is connected continuously and contiguously….Even when Gerda and Sarah are present, Stephen feels that when he is in this morning mood of total awareness, Elizabeth is also present as his ‘manageress’, directing his re-education.

…During Elizabeth’s last illness, Stephen secretly began his affair with Jane. The guilt of his betrayal while Elizabeth was dying would follow him to the present. In the past, Elizabeth had told him that even though she was sometimes afraid, fear is unnecessary for those who live in the moment… On the same night, just after saying this, Elizabeth died. Stephen was not ready to understand her last message to him at the time she said it. Now, he is….” END QUOTE FROM IZZO

And finally, Isherwood also wrote A Single Man in 1964, as to which Colin Firth earned awards and nominations in the 2009 film version. As I first noted when I first heard that title and learned that it was based on an Isherwood novel, I suspected strongly that Isherwood chose that title as a deliberate wink at that most famous of opening lines:  “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man….”. After now learning what I have about Isherwood’s other fiction, I now believe more than before that Isherwood by that title was showing, subtly, that he recognized that Darcy was meant by JA to be interpretable as a bisexual man in need of a beard!

Cheers, ARNIE

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