Jane Austen & SEX

In Austen L today, Nancy Mayer disagreed with an interpretation of mine, and said that HER Jane Austen "wasn't that into salacious subjects. That she could be bawdy is evidenced by Mrs. Jennings. No intelligent female who grew up in a parsonage could be ignorant about the many ways in which men and women could sin. She also read French novels . We do not know exactly what else she read though some have offered suggestions of enough books to equal EveryMan's library or the Great Books courses. However, we do know that she had access to more books than most gently bred ladies could claim, That doesn't mean she was salacious. Just because I don't think Austen wasn't salacious or obsessed with sex, doesn't mean I consider her just sweet tea drinking Aunt Jane. The two are not always linked."

I responded as follows:

Nancy, while I completely disagree with your opinions, I believe I understand your position perfectly well. However, over the years and our countless online exchanges on this delicate topic of Jane Austen and sex, you have repeatedly shown that you make the same unjustified assumptions about my position, and that you don't really understand mine. I know you do this in good faith, and with no ill intent whatsoever, and I imagine that you speak for many who read my comments about this topic. So I will make this post just about clarifying the essence of my position about Jane Austen& sex, to the best of my ability, so that there will be no further confusion between us.

I have _never_ said, or suggested, that Jane Austen was "salacious" or "obsessed with sex". That is your characterization. What I have said, repeatedly, however, is that the thematic core of her shadow stories is female _sexuality_--i.e., Jane Austen was deeply appalled that female sexuality was handled by society in the following very important ways:

1. single gentlewomen were under constant threat of sexual predation, particularly when women were denied the kind of sexual education that would enable them to recognize predators, but also to recognize their own vulnerability to a man who would manipulate her so as to use her heart to get to her body;

2. married gentlewomen ran a perpetual gauntlet of serial pregnancy and childbirth;

3. cynical marriage customs, practices, and laws that exerted enormous pressure on gentlewomen to marry without love, in desperate search of a secure home where they would at least not be subject to predation or living in poverty;

4. there was a grotesquely hypocritical and one-sided gender double standard vis a vis sexual behavior, where a woman's sexual reputation was incredibly fragile, subject to permanent ruin at the drop of a petticoat, while a man's was made of Teflon, always winked away;

5. the literary reputation of a male author (like Shakespeare) who frequently indulged in veiled sexual innuendo was not in any way damaged thereby, whereas when a woman author (like Jane Austen) who frequently indulged in veiled sexual innuendo, raised all sorts of horrified eyebrows;

6. where alternative sexualities such as gay or lesbian orientations were treated barbarically with a primitive Taliban-like ferocity; and



The female body was, therefore, the battleground of a war of the sexes that, from the female point of view, was not very "merry" at all, because women were forced to fight it with both hands tied behind their backs!

Therefore, I claim that Jane Austen, in embedding an enormous quantity of subliminal sexual content in her novels, was demonstrating her acute feminist consciousness, and also her extraordinarily witty and profound sense of humor. Because a crucial part of her message was _also_ a meta-message---i.e., that the first act in the direction toward leveling the playing field was to assert the right of women to engage in sexual wittiness--to write sexually suggestive material like Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cleland, or Sheridan--which was both serious and funny at the same time, and not be treated as a pariah for it.

For JA to have written a dull, solemn sermon bewailing all of the above six great wrongs I outlined above would have been utterly contrary to JA's own witty, clever, profound, metaphorically rich play of mind. She was a jokester and a punster by nature, but she also was a crusader, in her own subliminal way.

So, for example, having Jane Fairfax say "It must be born(e) some time or other, and it may as well be now", with the double entendre of "borne" with "born", is the masterful production of a genius of deliberately ambiguous and tactful expression. JA would never be so obvious or vulgar, as to be explicit in pointing to Jane's imminent childbirth.

And having Mary Crawford wink about "rears and vices" is not about salaciousness--Mary is JA's mouthpiece, where JA went to the very edge of what she could get away with, in terms of exposing male hypocrisy about sexuality. Mary is not just making a random joke about anal sex in the British Navy, she is giving Fanny a hint that Fanny does not take--which is to warn Fanny that Henry's interest in William Price's promotion has its "price", and that is the _sexual_ price that William, a man from the lower social class, must pay to Henry, a man of privilege, in order to advance in the Navy.

And the following are a few examples of posts at my blog where I explore the intricacies of JA's sexual innuendoes, and show them to be intensely thematic and intellectually challenging, as well as very witty and funny:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2009/08/rears-and-vices-redux.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/11/jane-austens-great-chasms-and-dirty.html

There is no salaciousness or obsession in any of this--this is JA the Audenesque social observer, objectively depicting the enormous and pervasive influence of sex on every aspect of life in her superficially and hypocritically prim world.

I hope that helps to clarify why I write so often about Jane Austen's sexual innuendoes.

Cheers, ARNIE

My review of Paula Byrne's BBC program "Jane Austen: The Unseen Portrait"

At YouTube, the full program! (at least for now):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeV_4PthLtc

Short answer: WATCH IT!

My longer take:

The show repeatedly makes a very big deal about knowing what Jane Austen's face really looked like, which is not surprising in a show written to be shown to a wide, mostly non-Janeite audience. It was distracting, but not a problem, because there was a great deal of substance presented in a lucid flow of information.

The details of the investigation are spell-binding to watch.

I 1000% agree with Byrne, Claudia Johnson, and others quoted in the program, that JA was intensely proud of her own status as an author, and she would have wanted to have herself portrayed in this way. It's amazing that this is even a question, but then 200 years of deliberately misleading propaganda is hard to defeat--I hope this portrait will pave the way for that process to accelerate.

Byrne makes the same point I've made many times about JA at the time she was getting Emma published--how it never entered her head that she'd be dead within 2 years. This portrait was made at a moment when JA felt she had climbed within sight of the top of the literary mountain.

I didn't know that "Chute" was pronounced "CHOOT", I thought it was pronounced "SHOOT", as in "Chutes and Ladders".

I just read a tweet by Paula Byrne in which she hopes she has received a lead as to the provenance of the portrait via the name "Helen Carruthers", a governess. I think that is going to go somewhere interesting very quickly.

Whoever said that Deirdre Le Faye was misrepresented in the program is way offbase. Le Faye is definitively herself in the program--completely wrong, completely stubborn in holding to her negative response. I saw her say the same kind of thing a dozen times at the Chawton House Conference. Huge kudos to Sutherland, Johnson and Byrne that they did not in any way accede to Le Faye's ostrichism, but stuck to their guns, and pointed out the absurdity of Le Faye's lame criticisms---just watch for yourselves, you will see this happening.

It still doesn't prove that the portrait is actually one done of Jane Austen by Eliza Chute, but there's a LOT of smoke in the air, and I have hopes that the fire will be discovered soon.

Cheers, ARNIE

The CODE'S "The Thing" in Analyze This....and in Jane Austen!

Nancy Mayer wrote the following skeptical comment about claims by myself and others about the coded meaning of the word "beau" as used by Nancy Steele in Sense & Sensibility:

"As usual, assumptions made and presented as absolutes irritate me. We need at least some proof that anyone used the word beau at that time to mean a homosexual. No one would have thought it meant a person was gay. Wellington was also called Beau. The famous ones were Beau Nash of bath, Beau Brummell, and Wellington. The title didn't gain common usage because of other qualities of Wellington. No such definition of Beau is given in the Dictionary of the Vulgar tongue. Can you find references to show that someone Austen would have been acquainted with used the word beau to mean a homosexual? I don't much beleive in authors writing in a code only understood by one or two people. I admit that I generally don't go along with all the supposedly sexual connotations given to Austen's words. Not sure I would like an author with such a mind. There is something wrong with such an obsession with scatological details. However, that is just part of my dissatisfaction with some of the wide claims being made. One has to show that such a use was in circulation in large enough circles so that more than 2 people would be in on the joke."

Nancy, I was thinking about what you wrote, above, last night, and I realized that there was a much more important point about Jane Austen's writing, than whether or not there was a Regency Era subcultural slang usage of "beau" to refer to a gay or bisexual man. In fact, I will argue the opposite, i.e., that for Nancy Steele to have used a term for a gay man that was universally recognized would have defeated her (and Jane Austen's) purpose!


My Subject Line is the clue, as I begin with the following memorably hilarious dialog from the film Analyze This:

BEN [Billy Crystal's character]: ...As [the mob boss, Robert De Niro's character's] consigliere, I'm intimately involved in all aspects of the family business and I'm prepared to speak for Mr. Vitti on all matters.
SINDONE: Okay, Doctor, then let's get down to business. Everybody knows there's been this thing between me and Paul Vitti for a long time.
BEN: Which thing are you talking about? The first thing or the second thing?
SINDONE: What second thing? I only know one thing.
BEN: Well, I don't see how we can discuss the first thing without bringing up the second thing. Didn't you talk to the guy? (He tugs meaningfully on his earlobe)
SINDONE: What guy?
BEN: The guy with the thing.
SINDONE: What thing? What the ____ are you talking about?
BEN: How should I know? You brought it up. (gestures helplessly to the others) This is the whole problem. You can't have an intelligent conversation with the man.

The joke in this passage is a variation on a cliche of modern Mafia movies and TV shows, from The Godfather to Goodfellas to The Sopranos, where the Mafiosi, who know they are being wiretapped or otherwise overheard by the FBI, speak in code, using some innocuous word to describe some criminal act or another--Analyze This is a very clever parody of such genre, and the above-excerpted _shtick_ (as they used to say in the Catskills) sends up that cliche.

And my point in all of this is that JA was exploiting this very same convention, to great but covert effect, in many passages in her novels, where characters are substituting one word or theme as code for another. I have mentioned some of these in the past, such as the conversation among Wentworth, Louisa and Henrietta when they talk about ships overtly, but are talking about women's bodies covertly...

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/05/dear-old-aspgo-to-bottom-together.html

...and that is a very relevant example for the usage of "beau" in S&S, because the code word used in substitution is metaphorically related to the concealed word. In the former case, ships have always been referred to as female, as in "thar she blows!", etc. And I suggest that what Nancy Steele is doing in her perseverations on "beau" is in exactly that same vein. What better code word for a gay man than a word that is associated with fastidious dressing, sexually active, _straight_ men? When delivered with appropriate nonverbals, such as significant smiles and winks, it conveys the intended meaning to those who are aware that we are in "code mode", while remaining safely unrecognized by those who are not aware.

And so it's clear to me that Nancy Steele is making a very big deal about the sexual orientation of various men in S&S, in ways that quite intriguing, but that are beyond the scope of this post.

I conclude this post with three other passages in JA's fiction, all from _Emma_, which came to my mind as soon as I started writing this post, and thought of bringing forward the above excerpt about "the thing", "the first thing", and "the second thing", from the screenplay of Analyze This:

First we have Mr. Woodhouse expressing his grave concerns about dancing with open windows:

"The doors of the two rooms were just opposite each other. "Might not they use both rooms, and dance across the passage?" It seemed the best scheme; and yet it was not so good but that many of them wanted a better. Emma said it would be awkward; Mrs. Weston was in distress about the supper; and Mr. Woodhouse opposed it earnestly, on the score of health. It made him so very unhappy, indeed, that it could not be persevered in. "Oh! no," said he; "it would be the extreme of imprudence. I could not bear it for Emma!—Emma is not strong. She would catch a dreadful cold. So would poor little Harriet. So you would all. Mrs. Weston, you would be quite laid up; do not let them talk of such A WILD THING. Pray do not let them talk of it. That young man (speaking lower) is very thoughtless. Do not tell his father, but that young man is not quite THE THING. He has been opening the doors very often this evening, and keeping them open very inconsiderately. He does not think of the draught. I do not mean to set you against him, but indeed he is not quite THE THING!" "

Second, we have Mrs. Elton expressing her grave concerns about Jane retrieving her mail all by herself:

" "You are extremely kind," said Jane; "but I cannot give up my early walk. I am advised to be out of doors as much as I can, I must walk somewhere, and the post-office is an object; and upon my word, I have scarcely ever had a bad morning before."
[Mrs. Elton] "My dear Jane, say no more about it. THE THING is determined, that is (laughing affectedly) as far as I can presume to determine any thing without the concurrence of my lord and master. You know, Mrs. Weston, you and I must be cautious how we express ourselves. But I do flatter myself, my dear Jane, that my influence is not entirely worn out. If I meet with no insuperable difficulties therefore, consider that point as settled." "


And third and last, we have Mrs. Elton again, expressing her decided opinions about coming on donkeys (so to speak) in al fresco outings:

""I wish we had a donkey. THE THING would be for us all to come on donkeys, Jane, Miss Bates, and me—and my caro sposo walking by. I really must talk to him about purchasing a donkey. In a country life I conceive it to be a sort of necessary; for, let a woman have ever so many resources, it is not possible for her to be always shut up at home;—and very long walks, you know—in summer there is dust, and in winter there is dirt.""


In each of these cases, I suggest we have hinting and suggestion of some unspoken (or unspeakable) subject coded generically as "the thing".

And that's (only a small part of) why I entitled my subject line, "the _code's_ the thing not only in Analyze This but also in Jane Austen's writing!

Cheers, ARNIE

Jane Austen, or the Secret of Style: Jane Austen's Indirect Boasting in Pride & Prejudice and in her famous epigram about it

Apropos Diane Reynolds' having brought forward D.A. Miller's book on JA's writing style, and our focus on the word "beau" in S&S, it was suggested in another online Austen venue that the word "beau" was not understood by everyone in JA's era to be code for "gay". I responded as follows:

Why does it have to be been either universally understood to mean gay, or universally understood to mean something else? That sort of sharp dichotomy might be a necessity in computer programming, where clarity is paramount, but in human language, _especially_ slang, and even more especially, _sexual_ slang, what we find instead is a great of fluidity and ambiguity of meaning in words. And so, in such a chaotic linguistic environment, at any given moment during the Regency Era, I would guess that a linguist would have found that there was a whole spectrum of response to the word "beau", ranging from people who were certain it only meant "gay", to other people equally certain it only meant "fastidious in dress", to others who had never heard the word, to others (which last group clearly included JA herself) who understood that the word meant different things to different people in different contexts. And I suggest that JA was exactly the kind of writer who reveled in that zone of ambiguity, and seized the opportunity it presented, because it allowed her to convey multiple meanings using a single word, and it allowed her to replicate the ambiguity of actual moment-to-moment lived experience in society. And she had become, by her mid thirties, a master of this technique, in full command of the possibilities, an imaginist drunk on words, and yet--wonderful paradox of her genius!-- sober enough to control them.

The reason "first impressions" can be so misleading, is that so much of what we see in the world of people is ambiguous--not just the definitions of words, but also the motivations and intentions that people conceal from each other, and even from themselves. Life is ambiguous in every way, as philosophers, moralists, and authors have all long known.

And the key point with the word "beau" in S&S is how often it is repeated by Nancy Steele. Yes, we can understand that as JA creating a comic effect, by a stupid character engaging in a stupid repetition of a pet word. But in DA Miller's framework, there is something rather crude about that kind of humor, it does seem beneath a consummate, tasteful artist like JA to go for such a cheap laugh. That repetition becomes much more interesting, though, when we think about it as a way JA makes certain that her readers will not glide by this particular word "beau" without noticing its prominence in the text. This is a species of authorial economy that would do Mrs. Norris proud, squeezing maximum literary benefit out of the fewest words.

Which is partly why the world of P&P seems so incredibly complex and mutifarious, despite the fact that it is a _much_ shorter novel than "the Big Three"---S&S, MP & Emma. When JA talked about lopping and cropping P&P, she was, I think, playfully yet seriously making an indirect boast---she knew she had performed a miracle of condensation and compression in her editing of P&P to that much shorter length, and she was justly proud of her achievement. And the key to that complexity is the ambiguity---which is why JA added this famous caveat to that indirect boast:

"...a 'said he' or a 'said she' would sometimes make the Dialogue more immediately clear--but 'I do not write for such dull Elves As have not a great deal of Ingenuity themselves.'"

So, to apply the above dictum to S&S, she is saying that she could have clarified that she meant "beaux" to refer to fastidious but hetero dressers, or to gay men, but she preferred _not_ to "make the Dialogue more immediately clear", because she was writing for readers who would enjoy exercising some ingenuity in sorting out what that ambiguity might mean.

And, now that I think about it, I think JA was also playing with this very same indirect boast in the following passage where she allows Darcy to define.....an indirect boast, and which, I suggest to you, not only works in the wonderful repartee of the ensemble of characters gathered in the Netherfield salon, but also works as a sly meditation by JA on her own authorial artistry!:

[Caroline] "...But do you always write such charming long letters to [Georgiana], Mr. Darcy?"

[Translation: "long letters" is a nice metaphor for a novel!]

[Darcy] "They are generally long; but whether always charming it is not for me to determine."

[Translation: JA playfully not wishing to claim that her novels--her "darling children"--are charming, realizing that this determination is for her readers]

[Caroline] "It is a rule with me, that a person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill."

[Translation: Very sly self-compliment, especially given that P&P is _not_ as long a "letter" as it was before she lopped and cropped.]

[Bingley] "That will not do for a compliment to Darcy, Caroline," cried her brother, "because he does /not/ write with ease. He studies too much for words of four syllables. Do not you, Darcy?"

[Translation: Just as some of her early readers complained about JA's ambiguous pronomial references, I am certain that others were intimidated by her amazingly diverse vocabulary, which, as all Janeites know, included _many_ words of four syllables!]

[Darcy] "My style of writing is very different from yours."

[Translation: Notice that we are now _explicitly_ into D.A. Miller's zone of inquiry, that of writing _style_!]

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

[Translation: And here is a description of the careless writer---and I am reminded by this of the readiness so many Janeites show to be willing to dismiss anomalous passages in JA's novels as the result of carelessness!]

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

[Translation: This is the very antithesis of JA as a writer--she found a way to channel her abundant flow of ideas, so that they always conveyed a wealth of ideas to her readers!]

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

"Nothing is more deceitful," said Darcy, "than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast."

"And which of the two do you call /my/ little recent piece of modesty?"

"The indirect boast; for you are really proud of your defects in writing, because you consider them as proceeding from a rapidity of thought and carelessness of execution, which, if not estimable, you think at least highly interesting. The power of doing anything with quickness is always prized much by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.

[Translation: As I said at the start of my quoting of this passage, I think this is JA making a very indirect boast about the perfection of her own performance in intentionally leaving many apparent defects in her writing, which must be understood by the reader to be intentional, in order to realize that they are clues to alternative meanings which are "highly interesting"!]

Cheers, ARNIE

================================================================
Austen-l Archives: http://list2.mcgill.ca/archives/austen-l.html

Part 1.2
Subject:
JA, or the Secret of Style: JA's Indirect Boasting in P&P and in her famous epigram about it
From:
Arnie Perlstein
Date:
Mon, 02 Jan 2012 12:23:53 -0500
To:
AUSTEN-L

Apropos Diane's having brought forward D.A. Miller's book on JA's writing style, and our focus on the word "beau" in S&S, it was suggested in another online Austen venue that the word "beau" was not understood by everyone in JA's era to be code for "gay". I responded as follows:

Why does it have to be been either universally understood to mean gay, or universally understood to mean something else? That sort of sharp dichotomy might be a necessity in computer programming, where clarity is paramount, but in human language, _especially_ slang, and even more especially, _sexual_ slang, what we find instead is a great of fluidity and ambiguity of meaning in words. And so, in such a chaotic linguistic environment, at any given moment during the Regency Era, I would guess that a linguist would have found that there was a whole spectrum of response to the word "beau", ranging from people who were certain it only meant "gay", to other people equally certain it only meant "fastidious in dress", to others who had never heard the word, to others (which last group clearly included JA herself) who understood that the word meant different things to different people in different contexts. And I suggest that JA was exactly the kind of writer who reveled in that zone of ambiguity, and seized the opportunity it presented, because it allowed her to convey multiple meanings using a single word, and it allowed her to replicate the ambiguity of actual moment-to-moment lived experience in society. And she had become, by her mid thirties, a master of this technique, in full command of the possibilities, an imaginist drunk on words, and yet--wonderful paradox of her genius!-- sober enough to control them.

The reason "first impressions" can be so misleading, is that so much of what we see in the world of people is ambiguous--not just the definitions of words, but also the motivations and intentions that people conceal from each other, and even from themselves. Life is ambiguous in every way, as philosophers, moralists, and authors have all long known.

And the key point with the word "beau" in S&S is how often it is repeated by Nancy Steele. Yes, we can understand that as JA creating a comic effect, by a stupid character engaging in a stupid repetition of a pet word. But in DA Miller's framework, there is something rather crude about that kind of humor, it does seem beneath a consummate, tasteful artist like JA to go for such a cheap laugh. That repetition becomes much more interesting, though, when we think about it as a way JA makes certain that her readers will not glide by this particular word "beau" without noticing its prominence in the text. This is a species of authorial economy that would do Mrs. Norris proud, squeezing maximum literary benefit out of the fewest words.

Which is partly why the world of P&P seems so incredibly complex and mutifarious, despite the fact that it is a _much_ shorter novel than "the Big Three"---S&S, MP & Emma. When JA talked about lopping and cropping P&P, she was, I think, playfully yet seriously making an indirect boast---she knew she had performed a miracle of condensation and compression in her editing of P&P to that much shorter length, and she was justly proud of her achievement. And the key to that complexity is the ambiguity---which is why JA added this famous caveat to that indirect boast:

"...a 'said he' or a 'said she' would sometimes make the Dialogue more immediately clear--but 'I do not write for such dull Elves As have not a great deal of Ingenuity themselves.'"

So, to apply the above dictum to S&S, she is saying that she could have clarified that she meant "beaux" to refer to fastidious but hetero dressers, or to gay men, but she preferred _not_ to "make the Dialogue more immediately clear", because she was writing for readers who would enjoy exercising some ingenuity in sorting out what that ambiguity might mean.

And, now that I think about it, I think JA was also playing with this very same indirect boast in the following passage where she allows Darcy to define.....an indirect boast, and which, I suggest to you, not only works in the wonderful repartee of the ensemble of characters gathered in the Netherfield salon, but also works as a sly meditation by JA on her own authorial artistry!:

[Caroline] "...But do you always write such charming long letters to [Georgiana], Mr. Darcy?"

[Translation: "long letters" is a nice metaphor for a novel!]

[Darcy] "They are generally long; but whether always charming it is not for me to determine."

[Translation: JA playfully not wishing to claim that her novels--her "darling children"--are charming, realizing that this determination is for her readers]

[Caroline] "It is a rule with me, that a person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill."

[Translation: Very sly self-compliment, especially given that P&P is _not_ as long a "letter" as it was before she lopped and cropped.]

[Bingley] "That will not do for a compliment to Darcy, Caroline," cried her brother, "because he does /not/ write with ease. He studies too much for words of four syllables. Do not you, Darcy?"

[Translation: Just as some of her early readers complained about JA's ambiguous pronomial references, I am certain that others were intimidated by her amazingly diverse vocabulary, which, as all Janeites know, included _many_ words of four syllables!]

[Darcy] "My style of writing is very different from yours."

[Translation: Notice that we are now _explicitly_ into D.A. Miller's zone of inquiry, that of writing _style_!]

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

[Translation: And here is a description of the careless writer---and I am reminded by this of the readiness so many Janeites show to be willing to dismiss anomalous passages in JA's novels as the result of carelessness!]

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

[Translation: This is the very antithesis of JA as a writer--she found a way to channel her abundant flow of ideas, so that they always conveyed a wealth of ideas to her readers!]

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

"Nothing is more deceitful," said Darcy, "than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast."

"And which of the two do you call /my/ little recent piece of modesty?"

"The indirect boast; for you are really proud of your defects in writing, because you consider them as proceeding from a rapidity of thought and carelessness of execution, which, if not estimable, you think at least highly interesting. The power of doing anything with quickness is always prized much by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.

[Translation: As I said at the start of my quoting of this passage, I think this is JA making a very indirect boast about the perfection of her own performance in intentionally leaving many apparent defects in her writing, which must be understood by the reader to be intentional, in order to realize that they are clues to alternative meanings which are "highly interesting"!]

Cheers, ARNIE

Lucy Ferrars (Lucifer) Uses The Devil's Toothpick

Diane Reynolds wrote the following in Austen L and Janeites yesterday, about the passage in D.A. Miller's 2003 book about Jane Austen's writing style, fittingly entitled The Secret of Style, when Miller interprets Robert Ferrars's fastidious shopping for toothpick cases in a London shop as code for his being gay:

"Miller brought my attention to two places in the Robert Ferrars "saga:" in the first, Miller emphasizes that Robert Ferrars bestows on Elinor and Marianne "three or four very broad stares." Miller interprets this as angering Elinor by reducing her to insignificance in merely staring at her and offering no other notice. However, I began to wonder why he would bestow as many as "three or four" stares. The three don't, at this point , know each other--why would RF look at the women so many times? Is there a suggestion that they are familiar to him? And if so, how? Miller also reads the astonishment at Lucy marrying RF as more than simply Elinor's surprise that Lucy had not married Edward. This lends credence to the idea that JA was knowingly painting RF as gay--not only does Elinor consider the match "one of the most extraordinary and unaccountable circumstances she has ever heard" and "beyond her comprehension to make out," but "unceasing and reasonable wonder" is the general consensus. Of course, these statements can all be read on several levels--the unceasing and reasonable wonder might just be at how someone of Lucy's status nabbed RF--but Miller makes a compelling case for an alternative reading. The above are some scattered thoughts--I am wondering if Jill H-S dealt with RF's sexuality at all? " END QUOTE

Diane, here is what Jill Heydt-Stevenson wrote at P. 53 on this very topic--despite her occasional lapses into turgid academic jargon, she gets to the point, and explores it, pretty well:

"...[Nancy Steele's] comment divulges that such 'beaux,' like the Elizas in the novel, seem to be cropping up everywhere. Miss Steele herself appears rather 'nasty' when she exclaims that married men cannot be 'beaux' because 'they have something else to do." This statement humiliates Lucy, since it introduces the salacious question of what that 'something else" might be, especially since, immediately following this, Mrs. Jennings and Sir John Middleton make 'countless jokes' about the letter "f". (125).
Austen further parodies both [Steele] sisters: for the man-hungry Miss Steele to be preoccupied with beaux is nonsensical since they were associated with effeminacy, and effeminacy with homosexuality. Lucy ironically, though she believes triumphantly, propels herself into a marriage with a fop: her future husband, Robert Ferrars, is the beau who takes 'a quarter of an hour" "examining and debating....over every toothpick case in the shop" (220). Obvious of everyone in the shop, he 'seemed rather to demand than express admiration." (221). Austen's tone takes on a campy nuance in describing Robert's theatricality: ventriloquizing through his shopping that this is "the last day on which his existence could be continued without the possession of the toothpick case" (221), "the puppyism of his manner" (221) impedes his ability to 'decid[e] on all the different horrors of the different toothpick cases presented to his inspection" (221). Partridge defines the word "puppyism" as "affectation or excessive care in costume or posture" (669). When he condescends to notice Elinor's and Marianne's features, he does so "impertinent[ly]" (221), asserting his masculine power over them while flashing effeminate traits, thereby trumping them as both a 'man" and a "woman". His affected femininity and male assertion of privilege illustrate Robert Stoller's argument that "one cannot be a male transvestite without knowing, loving, and magnificently expanding the importance of one's own phallus"...The 18th century audience would have identified the transvestite as a sodomite, whether he was or not. In presenting Robert as a fop, and then marrying him to Lucy, Austen in no way backs off addressing same sex love, but in fact makes a sly joke at the ambitious Lucy's expense, marrying her to a man who might be more interested in en than in 'conjugal duties'." END QUOTE

JHS might have derived her interpretation from Miller's book (published in 2003), and I just checked further in JHS's book and see that she did include in her Bibliography Miller's 1981 book, entitled Narrative and its Discontents: Problems of Closure in the Traditional Novel. So she knew about his scholarship on JA, and therefore my guess is that JHS did also read Miller's 2003 book as well, including the passage about Robert Ferrars and his toothpick case, but simply forgot to acknowledge Miller for his priority on this interpretation about toothpicks and beaux.

But where Heydt-Stevenson (or Miller, for that matter) cannot think sufficiently outside the box to go, is to imagine what is obvious to me, i.e., that Lucy Steele is perfectly well aware of Robert Ferrars's sexual orientation, and that is precisely why she chose him in the first place! Her goal is not love, but to get to precisely the position of power within the very wealthy and influential Ferrars family that she set her sights on before the action of the novel has actually begun. Lucy is perfectly content to appear to be humiliated, as she knows what she has achieved for herself, and has demonstrated repeatedly that she could care less what some people think about her while she is getting there. Indeed, she has discovered the same kernel of wisdom that Miss Bates (and much later, Miss Marple) discovered---a position of _apparent_ weakness and humiliation is actually the _best_ position from which to operate covertly---like the spider-like Kaiser Soze in The Usual Suspects!

Exactly like her near-namesake, Charlotte Lucas (both not accidentally with last names beginning in "Luc-"), Lucy could care less which Ferrars son she winds up with, as long as it's the one who will inherit the family wealth.

And I will now unpack a key part of my additional interpretation of the symbolism of the toothpick, which I hinted at yesterday and also in my Subject Line for this post----i.e., Lucy Steele uses Robert and Edward Ferrars (_and_ her own sister) as her "toothpicks" to dislodge the wealth of the Ferrars family from between the teeth in the "jaws" of Mrs. Ferrars, jaws which have theretofore held both Edward and Robert firmly in their avaricious, vise-like grip!

Taking this piquant metaphor to its logical end, I further assert that Lucy discovers the perfect strategy to win the courtship game, which is to induce Mrs. Ferrars to do two things--to "expectorate" Edward into the "spittoon" of disinheritance, while at the same time carelessly unclenching her jaws, vesting in Robert free (and irrevocable) access to the family wealth---little realizing that Lucy already has swallowed Robert whole (metaphorically speaking), and that Robert---if Lucy allows him to survive, and not suffer an unfortunate "accident" or "fatal illness"----will be her creature, to forever do her bidding without realizing it, like a puppet on a string!

Or, to also pick up on Juliet McMaster's wonderful interpretation (expressed by her in the latest Persuasions Online)....

http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol32no1/mcmaster.html

...of Lucy and Elinor fighting a metaphorical "duel" over Edward, but to extend it in a direction Juliet did not contemplate, I would argue for the deliciously wicked symbolism of Lucy using sharp objects like needles and toothpicks to fight her own version of duels with both Mrs. Ferrars and Elinor, and ultimately prevailing against both!

There is a reason why her married name is "Lucy Ferrars" ==> "Lucifer" (as I discovered in 2005)---exactly like the Devil himself, she does not achieve her goals by her own direct action, but by taking advantage of the foibles and weaknesses of others, in order to get them to do her dirty work for her, leaving her influence invisible. She wants power, and it is perfectly clear by the end of the novel that she has achieved it, when she wraps Mrs. Ferrars around her little finger. It is easy for me to imagine the Ferrars family twenty years later, with Lucy firmly entrenched as the all-powerful Lady Catherine de Bourgh or Mrs. Churchill of the family, and perhaps having the satisfaction of promoting her own daughter's wealth and power, at the expense of any daughters of her "sister" Elinor!

Not bad for an uneducated country girl whose grammar and spelling leave a lot to be desired. But Jane Austen well understood that for women coming from such a background, nothing would be given to them, they had to grab what they could on their own resourcefulness.

And I say, what's wrong with that? JA may seem to most Janeite readers to be presenting Lucy as deserving to lose in these duels, but I think JA was saying, on a deeper level, "If the deck is stacked unfairly against women in every way, then all's fair in love and war, for women to level the playing field using their wits and ingenuity. " And one can hardly feel sorry for Mrs. Ferrars, or for Robert Ferrars, if they turn out to be flies caught in Lucy's intricate web!

Cheers, ARNIE

The Secret of....Robert Ferrars's toothpicks!

Diane Reynolds started a new thread in Austen L and Janeites today about the 2003 book about Jane Austen by Miller entitled The Secret of Style:

[Diane] "In the first chapter, Miller engages in an extended discussion of Robert Ferrars and the toothpick case, which we recently covered on the lists, though I have entirely forgotten why we were talking about it."

Diane, Aside from my own joking response about a house of toothpicks last week.....

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/search?q=toothpick

...what you're half-remembering is that the topic of Robert Ferrars's effeminacy came up last month during a discussion of "beaux" in S&S in Austen L. Miller's interpretation could not be more relevant to that discussion, thanks for bringing it forward now.


[Diane] "Miller, who begins his book with being a male reader of JA and the inherent alienation of that--and then of the attraction of JA to the gay reader--understands the toothpick case as almost too crude a symbol for
Austen of a homosexual man (RF) living outside of the economy of marriage and family that so dominates the novels. The toothpick case is perhaps the only piece of jewelry or ornament in any of the novels that isn't about cementing or signaling family or marital relationships. It's a bit of excess that underscores RF's "unheterosexual" status--perhaps a bit too crude for Austen and hence a "trace" of where author intrudes on Stylist."

I think Miller is being way too fastidious (a word that Bingley says to Darcy in a witty epigram, but that Elinor also says or thinks in relation to both Edward and Marianne, but not Robert!) in his insistence that Style not be "crude"--a point I will expand on before the end of this post, when I argue that Miller has missed the boat on JA's sly authorial gamesmanship.

I certainly agree with Miller's take on Robert Ferrars as gay, it fits Robert like one of the elegant gloves Robert would have bought in that same London shop----and JHS does indeed pick up on the gay subtext of "beaux"
and "toothpicks" on p. 53 in her book (perhaps she even got the idea from Miller, whose book came out several years before hers).


"Miller brought my attention to two places in the RF "saga:" in the first, Miller emphasizes that RF bestows on Elinor and Marianne "three or four very broad stares." Miller interprets this as angering Elinor by reducing her to insignificance in merely staring at her and offering no other notice. However, I began to wonder why he would bestow as many as "three or four" stares. The three don't, at this point , know each other--why would RF look at the women so many times? Is there a suggestion that they are familiar to him? And if so, how? Miller also reads the astonishment at Lucy marrying RF as more than simply Elinor's surprise that Lucy had not married Edward. This lends credence to the idea that JA was knowingly painting RF as gay--not only does Elinor consider the match "one of the most extraordinary and unaccountable circumstances she has ever heard" and "beyond her comprehension to make out," but "unceasing and reasonable wonder" is the general consensus. Of course, these statements can all be read on several levels--the unceasing and reasonable wonder might just be at how someone of Lucy's status nabbed RF--but Miller makes a compelling case for an alternative reading."

That is indeed excellent close reading, both with _and_ against the grain, by Miller. It is a great example of the doubleness of _all_ of JA's writing, not just that passage!

Apropos that doubleness, I actually think that the toothpick symbolism in S&S is an example of _tripleness_ in JA's writing, as I see an _additional_ very interesting symbolic level in regard to Robert Ferrars and his toothpicks, which I will address in my book. If Miller had picked up on that additional covert symbolism, he might have retracted his indictment of JA's "crudeness" in that toothpick symbolism, because that additional layer is extremely subtle, elegant, and hiding in plain sight--the very essence of JA's quicksilver mysterious Style!

Miller takes unusual risks in being so opinionated in his book, which I like a lot--no one will accuse him of being mealy-mouthed or overly careful in his aesthetic judgments, like so many scholarly books and articles written about Jane Austen, where the interpretation is ridiculously conservative, so much so that the most significant inferences raised by the discussion are left _unstated_, for fear, apparently, of "going too far"!

But when you take risks, as Miller did, sometimes you miss badly. That is what I recall from one other thing I recall from reading Miller's book a few years ago, i.e., he was_totally_ clueless about something he detected in the text of_Emma_ which he found very weird and odd, but ultimately concluded was just a mistake by Jane Austen, i.e., the fact that JA ends Chapter 20, and begins Chapter 21, with the same sentence, describing Emma's thoughts about Jane Fairfax:

"Emma could not forgive her."

Miller apparently never heard of an "anadiplosis", of which I think JA's repetition is an extension:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anadiplosis

I think it's entirely intentional on JA's part that she did this--as for what it means, well, that is not an easy question to answer--but it is a valid question that begs to be asked!

I am always amazed at how readily even close, astute readers of Jane Austen like Miller are ready to conclude that Jane Austen made a mistake when she does something in her writing that does not fit that reader's preconception of what JA would have done, instead of being ready to revise their preconception to fit the evidence in front of their eyes.

JA did not create Miss Bates as a veiled self portrait by accident---JA seduced her presumptuous readers into concluding she was less than she was, and left her deeper secrets to be decoded by those who operate on the principle that if it's there in her writing, it's there for a reason!

Cheers, ARNIE

P.S.: Did you ever wonder whether Anthony Trollope, the great Janeite, noticed that anadiplosis in _Emma_?:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Can_You_Forgive_Her%3F

If he did--and I think his choosing to entitle the first of his many Palliser novels as "Can you Forgive her?" is a huge clue to that effect--then you may be prompted to realize that the heroine Glencora is in some ways strikingly reminiscent of Emma Woodhouse--and makes you wonder if Palliser is Mr. Knightley and Burgo is Frank Churchill!

The Three Faces of Jane: An Update....and A New Perspective!

Nearly a month ago, when word of Paula Byrne bringing forward an alleged 1815 portrait of Jane Austen first spread like wildfire through the Austen online world, I expressed my strong skepticism here....

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/12/three-faces-of-jane.html

From what Byrne said publicly in early December, in particular her totally unconvincing argument that imaginary portraits were an imaginary genre, I was not impressed at all, but, being the lawyer I am, I did add this caveat/hedge at the end of my negative assessment:

"So....unless Byrne has other ammunition in her gunbelt (such as, e.g., some scientific basis for dating the portrait with precision to 1815), I am 100% skeptical that this could be the real Jane Austen in that portrait!"

Well, I _still_ have not seen the BBC2 program in which Byrne fires the remainder of her ammunition, but now I have a very different, and much more favorable, point of view about Byrne's claims, now that I have just read about them in an excellent, detailed, yet not verbose, blog post by Kelly McDonald of the JASNA Vermont chapter here:

http://smithandgosling.wordpress.com/tag/madam-lefroy/

I urge you all to read that post!

So Eliza Chute (nee Smith) was the "bullet" that Byrne had been waiting to "fire" (and as per her comment on Kelly's post, this was apparently because of a very strong nondisclosure agreement she had to sign for the BBC, which makes perfect sense)!

Based on what I read in Kelly's blog post, I now find Byrne's argument _much_ more interesting!

I first became familiar with Kelly's blog seven months ago, in June, 2011, when I wrote a post in which I wrote a great deal about the very interesting Eliza (nee Smith) Chute, and her intriguing connection to Jane Austen:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/06/jane-austens-letter-23-heathcote-chute.html

In the above post, which I also urge you to read in full, I made the argument that Eliza Chute was just the kind of proto-feminist woman whom JA would have befriended, and I argued that the reference in JA's Letter 23 (dated 10/25-27/1800) to "Heathcote and Chute forever" was not about Eliza Chute's husband the MP, but was really a joking reference to Eliza Chute and her friend Mrs. Heathcote, and their "campaign" for women's rights, not in Parliament or in a court of law, but in the bedroom or the salon of the home, where the real action was! And I have since then found other evidence to support the "portrait" of Eliza Chute as a literate, articulate, forceful woman who would have been an ardent supporter of the covert radical feminism I claim is at the heart of Jane Austen's fiction.


So....in light of all _that_, plus all the details that I gleaned from Kelly's blog post, linked above--such as the view of that church from Eliza Chute's window, her skill at portraiture, and spelling "Austen" as "Austin", etc., I am now much more interested in this Byrne portrait as possibly being the work of Eliza Chute, and also being of Jane Austen herself. That it does not look at all like the Jane Austen we see in Cassandra's 1810 watercolor, well.....I don't know what to think about that.

And, again, at least now I can understand why Byrne had to save her big gun for the TV program itself--without Eliza Chute, Byrne's argument is essentially a house of cards. With it, however, it is a viable theory, because Eliza Chute is the "glue" that holds all those cards together and keeps them from collapsing in a heap!

Now I am listening, and I can't wait to watch the BBC show when it airs in the US, or when it gets onto the Internet somewhere that I can actually watch it, as I imagine it has even more tantalizing goodies that did not make it into Kelly's blog post.

Cheers,
ARNIE