The curious case of the Austen heroine who “never danced”….because she was afraid to fall!

LOUISA DANCES DOWN THE COBB:

When I finished my post last night,  

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-curious-case-of-austen-heroine-who.html

“The curious case of the Austen heroine who ‘never danced’ because she couldn’t see where to step!”,  I was unsatisfied with the latter half of the Subject Line. It felt slightly off --- somehow it didn’t capture my essential point that Anne Elliot’s strong vision impairment was the deeper reason why she avoided the dangers of an English country dance floor.

When I awoke today, a more apt Subject Line was in my mind, and you see it now, above. I hope you’ll  agree that it’s spot-on, because it not only speaks directly to Anne’s diffident timidity, it also should bring to mind the lack of fear of falling of the secondary heroine of Persuasion:

“There was too much wind to make the high part of the new Cobb pleasant for the ladies, and they agreed to get down the steps to the lower, and all were contented to pass quietly and carefully down the steep flight, excepting Louisa; she must be jumped down them by Captain Wentworth. In all their walks, he had had to jump her from the stiles; the sensation was delightful to her. The hardness of the pavement for her feet, made him less willing upon the present occasion; he did it, however. She was safely down, and instantly, to show her enjoyment, ran up the steps to be jumped down again. He advised her against it, thought the jar too great; but no, he reasoned and talked in vain, she smiled and said, "I am determined I will:" he put out his hands; she was too precipitate by half a second, she fell on the pavement on the Lower Cobb, and was taken up lifeless! There was no wound, no blood, no visible bruise; but her eyes were closed, she breathed not, her face was like death. The horror of the moment to all who stood around!”

Reading the above passage through the lens of dance, I see now that Jane Austen, mistress of subtle nuance, planted a subliminal cue that Louisa treats the steps of the Cobb as a kind of dance floor, as she insists on Wentworth being her partner, catching her as she wildly jumps down repeatedly into his arms, until she misses her mark. I claim that the close reader is meant to hear the distinct echo of one of the passages I quoted yesterday from the Uppercross episode:

“The [Musgrove] girls were wild for dancing; and the evenings ended, occasionally, in an unpremeditated little ball.”

And then Austen applies the icing to the cake via Admiral Croft's assessment of the post-fall Louisa:
"she is altered; there is no running or jumping about, no laughing or dancing; it is quite different."

RESPONSES TO DIANE (INCLUDING THE SANDITON MIST): I also want to respond to a couple of points made by Diane in her response to my last night’s post:

Diane: “it's interesting how much emphasis Austen puts on Anne's hearing. I wonder if there are instances beyond the dim view of Bath, which could be attributed both to the weather and Anne's emotional disinclination to see it, where Austen shows her not seeing well.”

In addition to the Hennedy article, if you go back and look at my Aug-Sept. 2013 posts, I analyzed several passages in that way.

Diane: “It is interesting too that overall Austen is interrogating disability in her last three novels (including Sanditon).”

How remarkable (in a good way) that you mentioned Sanditon in that vein, because of what I found earlier today. While thinking about Anne Elliot viewing the world “through a glass darkly”, and then wondering whether Jane Austen wrote any scenes anywhere in her fiction which involved a “mist” that would be analogous to Jane Austen’s own (possible) case of cataracts, Google led me to the following discussion by David Selwyn in Jane Austen and Leisure: 

“Tantalisingly, in the last chapter that Jane Austen wrote, Charlotte’s vision is blurred, literally, by a mist, as she walks along the road to Sanditon House with Mrs. Parker. Out of the mist, in a carriage that appears ‘at different moments to be everything from a gig to a phaeton, from one horse to four’, rides Sidney Parker….A few minutes later, as they enter the grounds of the house, Charlotte sees on the other side of the paling ‘something White & Womanish’, which stepping a little nearer, as she identifies, ‘in spite of the Mist,’ as Clara Brereton in an intimate tete-a-tete with Sir Edward Denham. The mist has not only marked the first meeting between Charlotte and her possible lover, but also made her party to an intrigue that would no doubt have provided a test for both her judgment and her conscience.”

And here is the relevant verbiage in that final chapter of Jane Austen’s fragment, in more completeness:

“…Mrs. Parker was delighted at this release and set off very happy with her friend and her little girl on this walk to Sanditon House. It was a close, MISTY morning and, when they reached the brow of the hill, THEY COULD NOT FOR SOME TIME MAKE OUT what sort of carriage it was which they saw coming up. It appeared at different moments to be everything from a gig to a phaeton, from one horse to four; and just as they were concluding in favour of a tandem, little Mary's young eyes distinguished the coachman and she eagerly called out, "It is Uncle Sidney, Mama, it is indeed." And so it proved.

…The road to Sanditon House was a broad, handsome, planted approach between fields, leading at the end of a quarter of a mile through second gates into grounds which, though not extensive, had all the beauty and respectability which an abundance of very fine timber could give. These entrance gates were so much in a corner of the grounds or paddock, so near to one of its boundaries, that an outside fence was at first almost pressing on the road, till an angle here and a curve there threw them to a better distance. The fence was a proper park paling in excellent condition, with clusters of fine elms or rows of old thorns following its line almost everywhere.Almost must be stipulated, for there were vacant spaces, and through one of these, Charlotte, as soon as they entered the enclosure, caught a glimpse over the pales of something white and womanish in the field on the other side. It was something which immediately brought Miss Brereton into her head; and stepping to the pales, she saw indeed and very decidedly, IN SPITE OF THE MIST, Miss Brereton seated not far before her at the foot of the bank, which sloped down from the outside of the paling, and which a narrow path seemed to skirt along—Miss Brereton seated, apparently very composedly—and Sir Edward Denham by her side.

They were sitting so near each other and appeared so closely engaged in gentle conversation that Charlotte instantly felt she had nothing to do but to step back again and say not a word. Privacy was certainly their object. It could not but strike her rather unfavourably with regard to Clara; but hers was a situation which must not be judged with severity.” END QUOTE FROM SANDITON

Now, I am NOT suggesting that we’re meant to infer that the 21 year old Charlotte Heywood has cataracts!  But…I do believe (but of course can never prove) that had JA finished Sanditon, there would have been some character in it who did at some point evidence vision problems the way Anne Elliot did, and that this passage was meant to subtly foreshadow that.

And I think you’ll agree, Diane, that your comment about “interrogating disability” in Sanditon fits perfectly with my interpretation of the mist at Sanditon. As you also said earlier, there is no aesthetic necessity that any of Austen’s characters must have exactly the same eye disability as she did, it’s the extra dimension that becomes visible to close readers who know of Austen’s vision impairment, and how she used it to provide grist for her own incredibly creative artistic mill, even to the final day of her life, when she was composing “When Winchester Races”, and relied on a loving transcriber to write down her final composed words.

CATARACTS OF BOTH VARIETIES IN PERSUASION

Which gives me a good segue to my final point in this post, which also came to my mind overnight, vis a vis the possibility that Jane Austen suffered specifically from cataracts. It is interesting that the word “cataract” has two very different meanings: a waterfall or an eye disease involving clouded vision. One online commenter suggested how this one word came to have these two seemingly unrelated meanings:   “The effect of the eye disease that in medicine is called cataract is that your sight diminishes as if a veil of water is flowing over your eyes. It is as if you would look through a waterfall.”

I don’t know if that is a valid etymology, but I do know (via Google Books) that this double meaning existed during Jane Austen’s lifetime, and it would have been exactly the sort of word that Jane Austen would pun on.  And so I thought for a moment about whether there was anything resembling a waterfall in any of JA’s infrequent landscape descriptions in her writing. And suddenly I found myself right back there at Lyme Regis:

“The scenes in its neighbourhood, Charmouth, with its high grounds and extensive sweeps of country, and still more, its sweet, retired bay, backed by dark cliffs, where fragments of low rock among the sands, make it the happiest spot for watching the flow of the tide, for sitting in unwearied contemplation; the woody varieties of the cheerful village of Up Lyme; and, above all, Pinny, with its green chasms between romantic rocks, where the scattered forest trees and orchards of luxuriant growth, declare that many a generation must have passed away since the first partial falling of the cliff prepared the ground for such a state, where a scene so wonderful and so lovely is exhibited, as may more than equal any of the resembling scenes of the far-famed Isle of Wight: these places must be visited, and visited again, to make the worth of Lyme understood.”

Austen scholars have noted the strong resonance of the above sublime passage in Persuasion with Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”, particularly the following passage:

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted 

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! 

A savage place! as holy and enchanted 

As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted 

By woman wailing for her demon-lover! 

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, 

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, 

A mighty fountain momently was forced: 

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst 

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, 

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail: 

And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever 

It flung up momently the sacred river. 

We don’t read the word “cataract” there, but I interpret the “ceaseless turmoil seething” as referring to some sort of waterfall/rapids natural omplex, And “cataract” was a word in both Coleridge’s and Wordsworth’s lexicon, and we know Benwick and Anne would have discussed their poetry. And so I’d like to think that one of the reasons why JA included that lush landscape imagery about “Pinny” at that moment, right before Louisa Musgrove’s spectacular fall, was to punnily connect both meanings of “cataract”. That connection would be highly ironic, given that I believe Anne Elliot’s ocular “cataracts” made it impossible for her to see the “cataracts” in the landscapes described in the poetry she read. And that’s why poetry meant so much to her, as it was her best option to feed her visual imagination when her clouded eyes could no longer do so.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

The curious case of the Austen heroine who “never danced”….because she couldn’t see where to step!

In further support of my claims that Anne Elliot suffered from a severe vision impairment which she did not (like her creator, Jane Austen) address by wearing super-strong eyeglasses, I now give you some relevant excerpts from “Acts of Perception in Jane Austen’s Novels” the article by Hugh L. Hennedy in Studies in the Novel (Spring 1973, Vol. 5 Issue 1, ppg 22-38), which I credit for alerting me, in August 2013, to take a closer look at Anne Elliot’s vision.

Beginning at page 30, Hennedy first defends JA’s authorial decision to present Mrs. Smith’s very long speech to Anne, and then continues as follows (I will put the auditory verbiage in ALL CAPS):

“Mrs. Smith’s story is justified in at least one other way, for, far from being something stuck into the novel at the last moment, it is a part of the novel which is very carefully prepared for…Anne throughout most of the novel is a listener, so that when towards the end of the novel she listens to Mrs. Smith’s long story, she is engaged in a characteristic action…during the novel proper, Anne is presented almost immediately as a listener…she is silent during most of the conversation between the two men…[in the whole novel] she does much listening [such as in the following scene]:

“When he talked, SHE HEARD THE SAME VOICE, and discerned the same mind…From thus LISTENING and thinking, she was ROUSED BY A WHISPER of Mrs Musgrove's who, overcome by fond regrets, could not help saying-- "Ah! Miss Anne, if it had pleased Heaven to spare my poor son, I dare say he would have been just such another by this time."

Anne suppressed a smile, and listened kindly, while Mrs Musgrove relieved her heart a little more; and for a few minutes, therefore, COULD NOT KEEP PACE WITH THE CONVERSATION of the others. When she could let her attention take its natural course again, she found the Miss Musgroves just fetching the Navy List…”

My interim reaction at this point was that throughout the rest of that scene, there is remarkably little visual description; as in a play, it’s virtually all dialog. Now back to Hennedy:

“…Anne does much listening in Persuasion…so much, in fact, that it would be tedious to try to cover all of it. …though the most important thing listened to in the novel is speech, other sounds are also important and emphasized. In the following passage, e.g., time is handled in terms of sound: “The elegant little clock on the mantle-piece had struck ‘eleven with its silver sounds’ and the watchman was beginning to be heard at a distance telling the same tale…”. And at one point in the novel, Uppercross and Bath, Mrs. Musgrove and Lady Russell, are linked and contrasted by means of sound. Mrs. Musgrove enjoys the clamor made by her active family at Uppercross, but Lady Russell does not enjoy it:  

“Everybody has their taste in noises as well as in other matters; and SOUNDS are quite innoxious, or most distressing, by their sort rather than their quantity. When Lady Russell not long afterwards, was entering Bath on a wet afternoon, and driving through the long course of streets from the Old Bridge to Camden Place, amidst the dash of other carriages, the HEAVY RUMBLE of carts and drays, the BAWLING of newspapermen, muffin-men and milkmen, and the CEASELESS CLINK of pattens, she made no complaint. No, these were NOISES which belonged to the winter pleasures; her spirits rose under their influence; and like Mrs Musgrove, she was feeling, though not saying, that after being long in the country, nothing could be so good for her as a little quiet cheerfulness.

Anne did not share these feelings. She persisted in a very determined, though very silent disinclination for Bath; caught the first DIM VIEW of the extensive buildings, smoking in rain, without any wish of seeing them better; felt their progress through the streets to be, however disagreeable, yet too rapid; for who would be glad to see her when she arrived? And looked back, with fond regret, to the bustles of Uppercross and the seclusion of Kellynch.”

Unlike Mrs. Musgrove and Lady Russell, Anne enjoys neither the sounds of Uppercross at Christmas nor the sounds of Bath. Nor can it be said that during most of the novel she enjoys listening to Wentworth speak: 

“…a thousand feelings rushed on Anne, of which this was the most consoling, that it would soon be over. And it was soon over. In two minutes after Charles's preparation, the others appeared; they were in the drawing-room. Her eye half met Captain Wentworth's, a bow, a curtsey passed; she HEARD  his VOICE; he TALKED to Mary, SAID all that was right, SAID something to the Miss Musgroves, enough to mark an easy footing; THE ROOM SEEMED FULL, FULL OF PERSONS AND VOICES, but a few minutes ended it. Charles shewed himself at the window, all was ready, their visitor had bowed and was gone, the Miss Musgroves were gone too, suddenly resolving to walk to the end of the village with the sportsmen: the room was cleared, and Anne might finish her breakfast as she could.“

Notice how much of Anne’s awareness of Wentworth during this brief scene is accomplished by means of sound. There are similar moments, moments when, though Anne’s power of sight is not totally dormant, it is not so active as her power of hearing. There is the time, for instance, when Anne is playing for the dancing at Uppercross.”

It was while rereading that last bit by Hennedy that I recalled Sherlock Holmes, who famously solved one of his mysteries via the curious case of the dog who didn’t bark (which, as has previously been noted, was Conan Doyle’s sly nod to Odysseus’s faithful old dog Argos, who revealingly didn’t bark when his master returned to Ithaca in disguise). In the same way, I find Anne to be the curious case of the Austen heroine who never danced! Yes, it’s true that she loves to play piano, but a young woman in that social circle who never dances could also be a young woman who cannot see well enough to dance, and doesn’t want to admit it (even to herself). Consider this passage:

“The [Musgrove] girls were wild for dancing; and the evenings ended, occasionally, in an unpremeditated little ball. There was a family of cousins within a walk of Uppercross, in less affluent circumstances, who depended on the Musgroves for all their pleasures: they would come at any time, and help play at anything, or dance anywhere; and Anne, very much preferring the office of musician to a more active post, played country dances to them by the hour together; a kindness which always recommended her musical powers to the notice of Mr and Mrs Musgrove more than anything else, and often drew this compliment;--"Well done, Miss Anne! very well done indeed! Lord bless me! how those little fingers of yours fly about!"

And then this one too:

“The evening ended with dancing. On its being proposed, Anne offered her services, as usual; and though her eyes would sometimes fill with tears as she sat at the instrument, she was extremely glad to be employed, and desired nothing in return but to be unobserved.”

And then this one too, that makes explicit what was implicit in the first two passages:

“These were some of the thoughts which occupied Anne, while her fingers were mechanically at work, proceeding for half an hour together, equally without error, and without consciousness. Once she felt that he was looking at herself, observing her altered features, perhaps, trying to trace in them the ruins of the face which had once charmed him; and once she knew that he must have spoken of her; she was hardly aware of it, till she heard the answer; but then she was sure of his having asked his partner whether Miss Elliot never danced? The answer was, "Oh, no; never; she has quite given up dancing. She had rather play. She is never tired of playing." Once, too, he spoke to her. She had left the instrument on the dancing being over, and he had sat down to try to make out an air which he wished to give the Miss Musgroves an idea of. Unintentionally she returned to that part of the room; he saw her, and, instantly rising, said, with studied politeness--"I beg your pardon, madam, this is your seat;" and though she immediately drew back with a decided negative, he was not to be induced to sit down again. Anne did not wish for more of such looks and speeches. His cold politeness, his ceremonious grace, were worse than anything.”

So, yes, Anne’s consistent preference of avoiding “a more active post” can be explained as part of her withdrawal from active life in general in prolonged grief over the eight years since she was persuaded to turn Wentworth down – but it also fits very plausibly with the other evidence of Anne’s vision impairment I’ve found.

Now, back again one more time to Hennedy’s article:

“And again when Wentworth takes the two year old Walter Musgrove from Anne’s back, Anne learns more from sound than from sight, though here Anne’s sense of touch is also important. If in the moments just cited, Anne’s power of sight functions only weakly, at one very important point in the novel it plays no part at all as Anne listens to Wentworth. If most of Wentworth’s speech early in the novel is not directed to Anne, so that her reception of it involves some degree of overhearing, Anne’s listening to the conversation at Winthrop between Wentworth and Louisa Musgrove is an instance of pure overhearing…

…Before the concert at Bath…Wentworth begins by speaking about Benwick but ends up by speaking about himself. That, at least, seems to be the way that Anne interprets his speech, for she ‘who, in spite of the AGITATED VOICE in which the latter part had been uttered, and in spite of all the VARIOUS NOISES in the room, the ALMOST CEASELESS SLAM of the door, and CEASELESS BUZZ of persons walking through, had distinguished every word’…Anne, then, arrives at the point at which she knows that Wentworth still loves her…” END QUOTE

Ceaseless clink of pattens, almost ceaseless slam of the door, ceaseless buzz --- that all sounds to me like the deficit in Anne Elliot’s vision is matched by an equal surfeit in her hearing.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

“Good Lord, what madness rules in brainsick men…”: The mad Henry VI as medieval Cassandra

A few months ago, I wrote a post…  “Shakespeare’s holy hilltop fool Henry VI = McCartney’s ‘Fool on the Hill’! ”  http://tinyurl.com/jaf7c44 …in which I argued that when Paul McCartney wrote “The Fool on the Hill”, he had in mind Henry VI’s speech in 2.5 of Henry VI Part 3 (spoken on a mole hill at the Battle of Towton). I included a link to David Warner in YouTube delivering that speech in the 1965 film thereof, and stated as follows regarding same:

“If you watch that video clip of Warner’s speech, I believe you’ll agree that it is clear that the director sees this scene as purely internal – i.e., the unnamed Father and unnamed Son fade in and out of Henry’s tortured consciousness, and were not meant by Shakespeare to be seen as actual combatants who just happened to wander into the King’s presence and speak these lines. And the film also makes it clear that after those other characters fade to black, Henry is suddenly brought back to real life in the midst of battle, not entirely alone as he seemed to be after the initial battle cried faded.”

Since then, after some diligent searching of the scholarly literature about Shakespeare's depiction of Henry VI, I am astonished that the scholarly consensus is directly contrary to the way Warner played that scene:

"Shakespeare's portrayal of Henry is notable in that it does not mention the King's madness. This is considered to have been a politically-advisable move so as to not risk offending Elizabeth I whose family was descended from Henry's Lancastrian family. Instead Henry is portrayed as a pious and peaceful man ill-suited to the crown. He spends most of his time in contemplation of the Bible and expressing his wish to be anyone other than a king. Shakespeare's Henry is weak-willed and easily influenced allowing his policies to be led by Margaret and her allies, and being unable to defend himself against York's claim to the throne. He only takes an act of his own volition just before his death when he curses Richard of Gloucester just before he is murdered."

In stark contrast to that prevailing view, and after some study on my own of the texts of the Henry VI trilogy, I believe that Warner’s depiction was spot-on, and that Shakespeare repeatedly hinted at the historical Henry's madness (Nigel Bark and some others have been more specific and have argued it was schizophrenia), most of all in that scene with Henry on his mole hill, when he coincidentally finds himself an eavesdropper on a parricide son and a filicide father, but which I believe Shakespeare did indeed mean to be understood by the cognoscenti to be Henry's hallucination.

The big picture I take away from the Henry VI trilogy is that while it was undeniable that the historical Henry VI was mentally ill over his entire lifetime, he couldn't help himself (since he was obviously unmedicated, and, to boot, was placed under extreme stresses that would have exacerbated his disease symptoms), and his heart was definitely in the right place (which is one reason why there was a very active cult associated with his supposed sainthood during Henry VIII's reign).

Whereas I believe Shakespeare meant for us all to note that the far greater culpability for the carnage of the Wars of the Roses lay with all the sane nobles who rushed into the vacuum of Henry’s passive reign, and, without the excuse of an actual mental illness, unleashed a long series of horrific wars on themselves and their entire country, in their collective lust for power and vengeance that consumed so many of them, as well as countless innocent commoners.

And I find the most pointed irony in a couple of speeches by Henry VI in which he, the king whom all of the cognoscenti would have known was truly mad, calls those nobles mad! I think Shakespeare expected the sharp elves among his audience and readers to recognize the irony, and also the veiled portrait of Henry VI's tragic illness ---tragic most of all because he was a kind of Cassandra, who could clearly see how people should behave, and could accurately characterize their wrong behavior, but who was utterly incapable of implementing his saintly vision. 

In that light, read the relevant part of Act 4, Scene 1 of 1 Henry VI, and ask, who does Shakespeare mean for us to see as the real madmen?

Enter VERNON and BASSET

VERNON Grant me the combat, gracious sovereign.

BASSET  And me, my lord, grant me the combat too.

YORK  This is my servant: hear him, noble prince.

SOMERSET And this is mine: sweet Henry, favour him.

KING HENRY VI

Be patient, lords; and give them leave to speak.
Say, gentlemen, what makes you thus exclaim?
And wherefore crave you combat? or with whom?

VERNON  With him, my lord; for he hath done me wrong.

BASSET   And I with him; for he hath done me wrong.

KING HENRY VI

What is that wrong whereof you both complain?
First let me know, and then I'll answer you.

BASSET

Crossing the sea from England into France,
This fellow here, with envious carping tongue,
Upbraided me about the rose I wear;
Saying, the sanguine colour of the leaves
Did represent my master's blushing cheeks,
When stubbornly he did repugn the truth
About a certain question in the law
Argued betwixt the Duke of York and him;
With other vile and ignominious terms:
In confutation of which rude reproach
And in defence of my lord's worthiness,
I crave the benefit of law of arms.

VERNON

And that is my petition, noble lord:
For though he seem with forged quaint conceit
To set a gloss upon his bold intent,
Yet know, my lord, I was provoked by him;
And he first took exceptions at this badge,
Pronouncing that the paleness of this flower
Bewray'd the faintness of my master's heart.

YORK  Will not this malice, Somerset, be left?

SOMERSET

Your private grudge, my Lord of York, will out,
Though ne'er so cunningly you smother it.

KING HENRY VI

Good Lord, what madness rules in brainsick men,
When for so slight and frivolous a cause
Such factious emulations shall arise!
Good cousins both, of York and Somerset,
Quiet yourselves, I pray, and be at peace.

YORK

Let this dissension first be tried by fight,
And then your highness shall command a peace.

SOMERSET

The quarrel toucheth none but us alone;
Betwixt ourselves let us decide it then.

YORK  There is my pledge; accept it, Somerset.

VERNON  Nay, let it rest where it began at first.

BASSET  Confirm it so, mine honourable lord.

GLOUCESTER

Confirm it so! Confounded be your strife!
And perish ye, with your audacious prate!
Presumptuous vassals, are you not ashamed
With this immodest clamorous outrage
To trouble and disturb the king and us?
And you, my lords, methinks you do not well
To bear with their perverse objections;
Much less to take occasion from their mouths
To raise a mutiny betwixt yourselves:
Let me persuade you take a better course.

EXETER   It grieves his highness: good my lords, be friends.

KING HENRY VI

Come hither, you that would be combatants:
Henceforth I charge you, as you love our favour,
Quite to forget this quarrel and the cause.
And you, my lords, remember where we are, 
In France, amongst a fickle wavering nation:
If they perceive dissension in our looks
And that within ourselves we disagree,
How will their grudging stomachs be provoked
To wilful disobedience, and rebel!
Beside, what infamy will there arise,
When foreign princes shall be certified
That for a toy, a thing of no regard,
King Henry's peers and chief nobility
Destroy'd themselves, and lost the realm of France!
O, think upon the conquest of my father,
My tender years, and let us not forego
That for a trifle that was bought with blood
Let me be umpire in this doubtful strife.
I see no reason, if I wear this rose,

Putting on a red rose

That any one should therefore be suspicious
I more incline to Somerset than York:
Both are my kinsmen, and I love them both:
As well they may upbraid me with my crown,
Because, forsooth, the king of Scots is crown'd.
But your discretions better can persuade
Than I am able to instruct or teach:
And therefore, as we hither came in peace,
So let us still continue peace and love.
Cousin of York, we institute your grace
To be our regent in these parts of France:
And, good my Lord of Somerset, unite
Your troops of horsemen with his bands of foot;
And, like true subjects, sons of your progenitors,
Go cheerfully together and digest.
Your angry choler on your enemies.
Ourself, my lord protector and the rest
After some respite will return to Calais;
From thence to England; where I hope ere long
To be presented, by your victories,
With Charles, Alencon and that traitorous rout.

Flourish. Exeunt all but YORK, WARWICK, EXETER and VERNON

So, I conclude with this question – whom among modern Shakespeare scholars has taken note of the above ironies, and/or has realized that Shakespeare did indeed depict Henry VI’s madness, hiding it in plain sight.

Cheers, ARNIE PERLSTEIN

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Surprise!: the nearly blind Jane Austen created a nearly blind last heroine, Anne Elliot in Persuasion!

I want to share with you all my great thrill this evening upon reading the following BBC news report:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hampshire-39208356?SThisFB

Author Jane Austen was virtually blind at the end of her life possibly as a result of arsenic poisoning, experts have revealed.

Tests on three pairs of glasses held at the British Library showed the author's sight deteriorated considerably. At the time, heavy metals like arsenic were used in medicines that Austen, who had rheumatism, may have taken. Library experts have suggested such poisoning may also have contributed to her early death at the age of 41. The novelist, who lived in Steventon, Hampshire, died on 18 July 1817 and the cause of her death has been the subject of much speculation.

Opinion sought: The three pairs of glasses, kept in the Pride and Prejudice author's writing desk, were examined using a portable lens meter brought to the library to determine the strength of the lenses which, despite their age, remain in good condition. Tests showed they increased in strength from +1.75 in each eye from the first pair to +4.75 and +5.0 in the final pair - meaning she would have found it very difficult to see well enough to read or write by the time she died.

British Library curator Sandra Tuppen said: "There's the possibility of her being poisoned accidentally with a heavy metal such as arsenic. We know now that arsenic poisoning can cause cataracts. Arsenic was often put into medication for other types of illness, potentially for rheumatism, which we know Jane Austen suffered from."  It is not known whether the glasses, made of real tortoiseshell and glass, were prescribed for Austen or she bought them herself. The British Library is inviting optometrists to offer their opinions on the new theory.” END QUOTE FROM BBC REPORT

I am so thrilled to read the above for two closely related reasons:

First, the above finding ---that Jane Austen became, in the last few years of her life, almost too blind to read or write by the time she died --- fits perfectly with the series of blog posts I wrote back in Aug.-Sept. 2013, beginning with the following-linked one [ http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-wild-idea-about-weakness-in-eyes-of_25.html ]. In that series of posts, I made the “wild” suggestion that Anne Elliot, the heroine of Persuasion (which Austen wrote from start to finish during the penultimate year of her too-short life), is virtually blind.

All Janeites who know Persuasion well will immediately ask: how could this possibly be, without this rather important detail being noticed by any of the novel’s two centuries worth of readers? Because, as I argued in great textual detail in that 2013 series of posts, Austen's narrative voice is so blended with the mind of her heroine, that even though the narrator never tells you this crucial fact of Anne’s severe vision impairment explicitly, it is nonetheless cleverly hidden in plain sight (so to speak) in a multitude of subtly depicted scenes. I.e., throughout the entire length of the novel, it can be discerned by close reading that Anne's acute hearing is her primary, at time almost her exclusive, modality of experiencing other people, as well as the sensory landscape of the English countryside and “the white glare of Bath”.

So it made, and still makes, perfect sense to me, that Anne Elliot, whom many Janeites believe is the one heroine most similar to Austen herself, would share her creator's enormous personal, creative challenge during the very same time period the novel Persuasion was written!

But that’s only ½ of my thrill at the above news. The other ½ is that I’m pretty sure that I was actually the catalyst behind this study of JA’s eyeglasses being done!! You can see this in my post in the Janeites group on August 23, 2013... https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Janeites/conversations/messages/48422

….when I was first delving into the question of Jane Austen’s failing eyesight, and I suspected that she mirrored that experience in Persuasion. First I quoted my friend Diana Birchall’s response to my initial ruminations:

“Diana wrote: "And now I turn to Arnie's latest discovery. A good one – the weakness of the eyes! And come to think of it, even in one of these very theatrical letters I've been looking at, she's going on about the pain in her face….But eye problems first mentioned at age 24, and then at age 37 and 38, sound pretty constant. And we know she did wear spectacles (they are kept with the desk Joan Austen-Leigh gave to the British Library). I have seen them, when Joan had them, but I hadn't the temerity to actually look
through them; wish I had! No chance of that now."

When I read Diana’s reference to the spectacles kept with the writing desk at the British Library, a light bulb immediately went on in my head, and I responded as follows to Diana:

“…[I]t is important that at some point, JA did wear spectacles. What I'd like to know is, has any optometric analysis ever been done of those spectacles, to see what Jane Austen's "prescription" was, so to speak? Was she, e.g., very near-sighted and/or astigmatic? That sort of analysis is something that could, I would imagine, be easily and non-invasively done with today's technology. Does anyone know if it's been done? If for some odd reason it has not been done, it should! I am going to email the British Library and ask!”

And I then immediately did exactly that—I wrote to the British Library in late August 2013, and asked that this analysis be done---and now, 3 ½ years later, we can now all read the result!

So, to those who in 2013 found absurd and outlandish my claims about Anne Elliot being nearly blind, I now ask you, how could I have possibly predicted, as I did, that Jane Austen’s actual real-life spectacles, revealed that she not only suffered eye ailments (as has long been known), but that she herself, by the objective evidence of her actual eyeglasses, became nearly blind at the very time when she wrote the character of Anne Elliot?

What it tells you, I suggest, is that interpreting Jane Austen’s fiction, and also, for that matter, interpreting her letters written during the last two years of her life, requires that a very special sort of interpretive “spectacles” be used by the interpreter, to make sure that (as with the hero of National Treasure who uses Ben Franklin’s special spectacles to read the back of the Declaration of Independence) you can detect the hidden message on the other side, so to speak, of the pages of Persuasion!

[Followup added on March 9, 2017 at 9:30 am PST

In response to my above post, I received a couple of excellent reactions from my friend Diane Reynolds, to which I wish to respond further:

Diane wrote: “What fascinating news! And congratulations: I imagine it indeed was your contacting the British Library that led to this overlooked test of how strong Austen's glasses were!”

Diane, I have an update on that – first, I can’t retrieve the email I sent to the British Library, and any reply I may have received at the time (I just can’t remember if one was sent to me), till I get home from a trip in a few days. In the interim, last night before I went to bed, I did email Sandra Tuppen, the British Library curator responsible for the recent testing. When I awoke, I saw that she had already very promptly and warmly replied to me! First, she guessed that my August 2013 email must’ve gone to her predecessor, so she herself was unaware of the history of the idea of the testing, beyond the fact that it had been in the works for a while.

Tuppen also gave me the link to her blog post which provided the basis for the much shorter BBC report, and so I will pass it on here:
http://blogs.bl.uk/untoldlives/2017/03/did-jane-austen-develop-cataracts-from-arsenic-poisoning.html

In regard to Ellen’s rather acerbic reaction, anyone who reads Tuppen’s blog post can immediately discern that it is quite soberly written. In no way can it be fairly construed as a “cult” response to the optometric analysis, or insensitive to the pain and disability that Jane Austen must’ve suffered through in those final years, regardless of the cause. She presents and discusses several plausible alternatives, including expert opinions, and overall does a very even handed and commendable job of reporting the findings.

And as you aptly pointed out to Ellen, the real headline is not the arsenic speculation, what matters is that Jane Austen’s vision was seriously impaired near the end of her life – and for my theory, as I said in my previous post, that is the best circumstantial evidence I can imagine for my independently arrived at interpretation of Anne Elliot’s near blindness –who else would be more likely to create such a character than a writer who was experiencing that very same challenge? But, being the sly elf that she was, Jane Austen gives us a clueless heroine who seems completely unaware of her own disability in “seeing” what is before her, on both the physiological and epistemological levels!

Diane also wrote: “As I was reading the initial article, I thought how odd it was that the JA world missed testing the strength of her glasses all these years. One couldn't come up with a better metaphor for the blindness of those who have been perhaps too close to their subject for too long and need the perspective of fresh eyes. I don't remember these initial posts of yours Arnie, except vaguely, about the importance of Anne overhearing, but will reread them. The whole subject is fascinating. I also know the lovely feeling when one's hunch, one's intuitive leap, is borne out.”

I agree that it is just another example of the extraordinary passivity of aspects of Austen scholarship which do not fit neatly within the Myth of Jane Austen – had there been some statement in Henry Austen’s Biographical Notice, or in JEAL’s Memoir, about JA being nearly blind when she wrote Persuasion, you can rest assured that her eyeglasses would have been analyzed long ago.

As to your kind comments about my hunch, many thanks!! I note in Tuppen’s blog post that Janine Barchas and Elizabeth Picherit also have more recently expressed interest in the optometry of the three pairs of glasses, and that they have an article coming out soon regarding spectacles in JA’s novels that should be interesting.

Diane: “I wonder what else hides in plain sight? I read a week or so ago of the discovery of a lost Whitman novel: I can't help but believe there is material on Austen hovering out there.”

Yes, I saw that about the Whitman novel, too, and thought the same thing. I’m always waiting for the next shoe to drop, and since I have so many aspects of my Austen shadow story theory out there, I do harbor the dream that a true smoking gun will emerge in the next few years which will dramatically validate what I’ve been claiming. But, in the interim….

Diane: “In any case, you have plenty of material to write your book if you just focus on your strongest evidence and leave out anything tenuous. (You must have enough material at this point for ten books.) “

Thanks, and yes that is true! But rest assured, I have been working on my book, even as I continue (on a lesser scale) to do fresh research – that’s the balance that feels right to me – yes it will take longer to get the (first) book done, but that’s okay with me, it makes the process tolerable for me.   ;)

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Harriet Smith, the (not so) “simple maid” who COULD, unassisted, “paint to her mind the bridal’s state”

In response to my immediately preceding post [ http://tinyurl.com/jpl4gld ] about the veiled allusion by Jane Austen in Emma to her January 1813 letter (in which JA famously wrote to her sister about not writing Pride & Prejudice for “dull elves” lacking “ingenuity”), my good friend Diane Reynolds expressed tactful skepticism about my confident claim that JA consciously intended, in having Emma say ““We are not to be addressing our conduct to fools”,  to echo her earlier letter, which in turn was a clever paraphrase from Scott’s Marmion. I initially replied to Diane in Janeites/Austen-L as follows:

“I think JA was an extremely conscious writer who echoed words a thousand times, far too often to be solely unconscious. The way I see it, JA followed a two step process ---first, write rough drafts with not too much internal censorship, and springing largely from the unconscious, without an attempt to get it right-- then she’d go back to the drafts and consciously shape and reshape what originally came into being unconsciously-- that's when JA would tweak verbiage for best echoing, alluding etc. So, I believe the echoes of "address" and “fool” within Emma, and also bouncing off Midsummer Night's Dream, are just like all the other examples I've found over 12 years - they're always thematic, and they always add some layers of depth and complexity to scenes that at first don't seem to have much of it.”

However, it occurred to me today to go back to the actual text of the first stanza of the final Canto of Scott’s Marmion, where we find the full context for the quotation which JA tweaked in her 1813 letter, in search of more evidence to support my claim that Marmion was consciously on JA’s mind as she wrote Emma. I am very glad I did, as you will see now:

I do not rhyme to that dull elf,

Who cannot image to himself,

That all through Flodden's dismal night,

Wilton was foremost in the fight;

That, when brave Surrey's steed was slain,

'Twas Wilton mounted him again;

'Twas Wilton's brand that deepest hew'd,

Amid the spearmen's stubborn wood:

Unnamed by Hollinshed or Hall,

He was the living soul of all;

That, after fight, his faith made plain,

He won his rank and lands again;

And charged his old paternal shield

With bearings won on Flodden Field.

 

So, at the start of that stanza, Scott makes it clear that what makes an elf (i.e., reader) dull is a lack of the imagination required to fill in the blanks Scott has deliberately left in the description of the hero’s bravery in the famous bloody battle of Flodden Field. But what has not been noted by other scholars is that in the second half of that same stanza, Scott repeats that same theme of readerly lack of imagination, but this time he turns his attention to the kind of female reader (whom Scott assumes are not concerned with war, but with love) he does not “sing” (i.e., write poetry) to:

Nor sing I to that simple maid,

To whom it must in terms be said,

That King and kinsmen did agree,

To bless fair Clara's constancy;

Who cannot, unless I relate,

Paint to her mind the bridal's state;

That Wolsey's voice the blessing spoke,

More, Sands, and Denny, pass'd the joke:

That bluff King Hal the curtain drew,

And Catherine's hand the stocking threw;

And afterwards, for many a day,

That it was held enough to say,

In blessing to a wedded pair,

"Love they like Wilton and like Clare!"

Now, recall that I claimed in my previous post that Jane Austen situated her veiled allusion to Marmion in the very scene in which Emma lectures Harriet about what Emma (mistaken) believes is an accurate perception and assessment of Elton as a desirable match for Harriet, and recall also Diane’s friendly challenge to me to prove that was an intentional allusion. So, if I’m correct, then JA really ought also to have picked up on Scott’s ideal female reader, because it is the “simple maid” whom Scott asserted would not be a connoisseur of subtle romantic cues in literature; and since in my earlier post I showed that Harriet was a lightning rod for this theme in Emma, might JA have winked at Scott’s “simple maid” as well?

To answer that question, please read the following passages from Emma, and then you tell me whether you think JA winked in the way I claim she did:

Emma encouraged [Harriet’s] talkativeness—amused by such a picture of another set of beings, and enjoying the youthful SIMPLICITY which could speak with so much exultation of Mrs. Martin’s ….

This was obliged to be repeated before it could be believed; and Mr. Knightley actually looked red with surprize and displeasure, as he stood up, in tall indignation, and said, “Then [Harriet] is a greater SIMPLETON than I ever believed her. What is the FOOLISH girl about?”

“…[Harriet] is not a sensible girl, nor a girl of any information. She has been taught nothing useful, and is too young and too SIMPLE to have acquired any thing herself…”

Emma was in the humour to value SIMPLICITY and modesty to the utmost; and all that was amiable, all that ought to be attaching, seemed on Harriet’s side, not her own. Harriet did not consider herself as having any thing to complain of. The affection of such a man as Mr. Elton would have been too great a distinction.—She never could have deserved him—and nobody but so partial and kind a friend as Miss Woodhouse would have thought it possible. Her tears fell abundantly—but her grief was so truly artless, that no dignity could have made it more respectable in Emma’s eyes—and she listened to her and tried to console her with all her heart and understanding—really for the time convinced that Harriet was the superior creature of the two—and that to resemble her would be more for her own welfare and happiness than all that genius or intelligence could do. It was rather too late in the day to set about being SIMPLE-minded and ignorant; but she left her with every previous resolution confirmed of being humble and discreet, and repressing imagination all the rest of her life. 

Her resolution of refusal only grew more interesting by the addition of a scheme for his subsequent consolation and happiness. [Frank’s] recollection of Harriet, and the words which clothed it, the “beautiful little friend,” suggested to her the idea of Harriet’s succeeding her in his affections. Was it impossible?—No.—Harriet undoubtedly was greatly his inferior in understanding; but he had been very much struck with the loveliness of her face and the warm SIMPLICITY of her manner; and all the probabilities of circumstance and connexion were in her favour.—For Harriet, it would be advantageous and delightful indeed.

“My poor dear Harriet! and have you actually found happiness in treasuring up these things?”

“Yes, SIMPLETON as I was!—but I am quite ashamed of it now, and wish I could forget as easily as I can burn them.

Harriet repeated expressions of approbation and praise from [Knightley]--and Emma felt them to be in the closest agreement with what she had known of his opinion of Harriet. He praised her for being without art or affectation, for having SIMPLE, honest, generous, feelings.

“…Well, now tell me every thing [re Robert Martin’s successful proposal to Harriet in London]; make this intelligible to me. How, where, when?—Let me know it all. I never was more surprized—but it does not make me unhappy, I assure you.—How—how has it been possible?”

“It is a very SIMPLE story...”        END QUOTES FROM EMMA

By the above quotations, I believe I’ve shown beyond a reasonable doubt that, by connecting Harriet Smith with the word “simple” regarding Harriet’s mental abilities a noteworthy nine times, Austen did indeed intend to point to Scott’s “simple maid” who also could not penetrate the mysteries of love.

But there’s another twist. In that very same regard, my friend Diane also responded to me by adding the following gem of a catch, in which Diane also quoted the end of that same passage in Chapter 9 of Emma:

"The line that jumped out at me this time was Harriet's: "You and Mr. Elton are one as clever as the other. " If we take them both to be fools, as I would, Harriet has made a very cutting remark, be it cluelessly in the ‘naif’ reading of her or deliberately in the ‘playing Emma’ reading of her. Bravo Jane Austen."

I initially responded: “And BRAVO to you, Diane, that is a brilliant catch!  That is nearly the same joke in P&P that Kishor Kale first pointed out in Janeites about 15 years ago, in Mrs. Bennet's saying: " My dear Mr. Bennet, you must not expect such girls to have the sense of their father and mother". And there are a few other passages in JA's novels which are not about sense and foolishness, but are analogous in being unwitting double entendres.”

Diane’ detection of Austen’s sly textual wink at Harriet’s artfully concealed intelligence fits perfectly with my longstanding claim that Harriet is neither Scott’s Marmionic “simple maid”, nor Emma’s “simple nobody”. She adds to the already exquisite irony of the scheming, savvy, manipulative Harriet of the shadow story of Emma that I’ve long argued for. I.e., in the shadow story, Harriet is a “young maid” who knows exactly how to exploit her own considerable knowledge of human nature in order to level the playing field presented to her by her patriarchal world. In this way, the shadow Harriet is very much like the shadow Charlotte Lucas in P&P, and the not-so-shadow Lucy Steele in S&S. And Harriet’s manipulations may be aptly described in terms which Jane Austen repeated with approval in both her fiction and her letters (as I’ll be explaining in my presentation at the next JASNA AGM in 10/17), by Harriet’s exerting the power of her own strong mind over the weak mind of the truly naïve young woman (i.e., Emma) Harriet has so cleverly attached herself to.

And…as I was putting the finishing touches on this post, one last possible wrinkle popped into my head – Sir Walter Scott wrote an anonymous (but long since attributed to him) famous review of Austen’s fiction in 1816, which included an excellent synopsis of Emma. On a hunch, I searched “Harriet” in the text of Scott’s review, and found that Harriet is mentioned four times by Scott. I will now quote those snippets, and challenge you to spot the two words in those quotations which bolster my claim that JA, in writing Emma’s line ““We are not to be addressing our conduct to fools”, had Scott’s Marmion in mind—and that Scott, returning the favor, showed, only months after the publication of Emma, that he recognized this very specific allusion to his own poem.  I’ll reveal the answers, below, for those who don’t figure it out:

“We are informed that [Emma] had been eminently successful [matchmaking] in the case of Mr. and Mrs. Weston; and when the novel commences she is exerting her influence in favour of Miss Harriet Smith, a boarding-school girl without family or fortune, very good humoured, very pretty, very silly, and, what suited Miss Woodhouse’s purpose best of all, very much disposed to be married.”

“...Emma, when Mr. Churchill first appears on the stage, has some thoughts of being in love with him herself; speedily, however, recovering from that dangerous propensity, she is disposed to confer him
upon her deserted friend Harriet Smith. Harriet has in the interim, fallen desperately in love with Mr. Knightley, the sturdy, advice-giving bachelor…”

“Emma lays a plan of marrying Harriet Smith to the vicar; and [--] she succeeds perfectly in diverting her simple friend’s thoughts from an honest farmer who had made her a very suitable offer, and in flattering her into a passion for Mr. Elton…”

“…the facile affections of Harriet Smith are transferred, like a bank bill by indorsation, to her former suitor, the honest farmer, who had obtained a favourable opportunity of renewing his addresses….”

I hope that many of you recognized that the clues by which I believe Scott winked back to Austen were Emma’s “SIMPLE friend’s thoughts” and Robert Martin “renewing his ADDRESSES…”

And there I conclude this not-so-simple address to my imaginative and open-minded readers.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter