The Four Deadly Serious Allusive Sources Underlying Jane Austen’s Anything-But-Silly Dying Poem

When Winchester Races first took their beginning
It is said the good people forgot their old Saint
Not applying at all for the leave of SAINT SWITHIN
And that WILLIAM OF WYKEHAM’s approval was faint.

The Races however were fixed and determined
The company came and the Weather was charming
The Lords and the Ladies were SATIN’D AND ERMINED 
And nobody saw any future alarming.--

But when the old Saint was informed of these doings
He made but one Spring from his Shrine to the Roof
Of the Palace which now lies so sadly in ruins
And then he addressed them all standing aloof.

'OH! SUBJECTS REBELLIOUS! OH VENTA DEPRAVED
When once we are buried you think we are gone
But behold me immortal! By vice you're enslaved
You have sinned and must suffer, then farther he said

These races and revels and dissolute measures
With which you're DEBASING A NEIGHBORING PLAIN
Let them stand--You shall meet with your curse in your pleasures
Set off for your course, I'll pursue with my rain.

Ye cannot but know my command o'er July
Henceforward I'll triumph in shewing my powers
Shift your race as you will it shall never be dry
The curse upon Venta is July in showers--'.

I’ve previously written posts in which I’ve made the argument, in various ways, that Jane Austen’s last poem, “Winchester Races”, reproduced above, is anything but a silly joke, and in particular that it had at least two significant literary/historical subtexts:

FIRST: GOD PUNISHES SODOM & GOMORRAH

The Biblical story of Sodom & Gomorrah, with St. Swithin replacing the Hebrew God in the role of vengeful, punishing supernatural being; and

SECOND: WILLIAM OF WYKEHAM CONDEMNS SELBORNE PRIORY

Gilbert White’s account, in his very famous book that JA knew well, of the 1367 visit by the Bishop of Winchester, William of Wykeham, to the priory at Selborne, in which the self-righteous Bishop (whose crypt is extremely close to Jane Austen’s burial spot) sternly rebuked that priory for so-called widespread licentiousness, included hunting parties and also “garments edged with costly furs, with fringed gloves, and silken girdles trimmed with gold and silver. "

It is beyond coincidence that, in addition to the principal St. Swithin motif, JA also mentions William of Wykeham’s “faint approval” of the Winchester Races, and then just happens to mention leisure activities involving horseback riding and frivolous people fashionably dressed (“The Lords and the Ladies were satin’d and ermined “), the very things that good Bishop condemned so strongly.

For more detail, here are link to my two most relevant posts on those first two allusions:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/07/rain-of-jane-falls-mainly-on.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2013/08/winchester-races-gilbert-whiteand-sigh.html

Today, I want to bring forward, in observance of the recent anniversary of JA’s death (and also the coincidentally fitting end of our long group read of JA’s letters in Janeites & Austen-L)  two more deadly serious allusive sources I now also see in JA’s last poem:

THIRD: JESUS CONDEMNS THOSE OF LITTLE FAITH

When I first picked up on the first-above allusion in JA’s last poem to Genesis 13, the story of God raining fire and brimstone down on Sodom and Gomorrah, it never dawned on me that the Hebrew Bible’s Genesis 13 was also a source for Matthew 11:19-30, obviously a much later Christian Biblical passage (which Google Books indicates was actually been read in some English churches the Sunday before JA died, as part of the cyclical liturgical calendar), on or about the same time as the Feast of St. Swithin! Which suggests to me that perhaps the Feast of St. Swithin over time took on the idea of a punitive rain from the contemporaneous Gospel lectionaries.

Specifically, Matthew’s Jesus seems to be channeling Genesis 13, with his fire-and-brimstone imprecations against the unrepentant towns of Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum:

Matthew 11: 19-27

The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children. Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not: WOE UNTO THEE, Chorazin! WOE UNTO THEE, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.  But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you.  And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee.

At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes….

Indeed, JA was the greatest proficient at hiding things from the so-called wise and prudent, while revealing them to so-called babes.

 

And for that matter Matthew also has Jesus distinctly channeling remembering Genesis 13 four chapters earlier in 7:24-26 from the Sermon on the Mount:

Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.  And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:  And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.

How resonant both of these passages are to JA’s last poem, and how much more likely that this resonance was intentional on JA’s part, given that these passages were probably read aloud in sermons in churches in Winchester not long before JA’s death!

But that’s not all. As I should have realized much sooner, especially given the Shakespearean subtext of Cassandra Austen’s first letter to niece Fanny after JA died, there just had to be some Shakespeare hidden in JA’s poem, given that he was surely part of her constitution till the day she died:

FOURTH: ROMEO & JULIET DIED ON ST. SWITHIN’S DAY

You may be surprised to learn that JA may have been inspired to develop all of her elaborate hidden calendars for all six of her novels by Shakespeare himself! I.e., it appears clear to me that Shakespeare went to some trouble to arrange a hidden calendar in Romeo & Juliet , such that the tragic young lovers Romeo and Juliet just happen to die on July 15, St. Swithin’s Day!! For this calendrical insight, I am indebted to scholar Demitra Papadinis, who in her recent annotated edition of the Bard’s early tragedy worked out that hidden calendar hidden in plain sight in Shakespeare’s play.  

How in plain sight? Because her inference is based in part on the various references in the play to other dates in the liturgical calendar (such as St. Lammas Day), and in part on what the Prince says at the end of the play, as he surveys the carnage in the sepulcher:

A GLOOMING peace this morning with it brings;
THE SUN, FOR SORROW, WILL NOT SHOW HIS HEAD
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished:
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

It was also a dark and stormy night on July 18,  1817, and ever since, for all Janeites, the premature death of Jane Austen has always been “a story of more woe.”

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

“Elinor could not find herself…”: the carriage rides of Mrs. Jennings, Mrs. Musgrove, and Queen Mab

On countless occasions, among both serious Austen scholars and non-academic Janeites, the controversial passage in Chapter 8 of Persuasion when Anne is sitting on the same sofa with the corpulent Mrs. Musgrove in between Anne and Wentworth, has been passionately debated: 

“They were actually on the same sofa, for Mrs Musgrove had most readily made room for him; they were divided only by Mrs Musgrove. It was no insignificant barrier, indeed. Mrs Musgrove was of a comfortable, substantial size, infinitely more fitted by nature to express good cheer and good humour, than tenderness and sentiment; and while the agitations of Anne's slender form, and pensive face, may be considered as very completely screened, Captain Wentworth should be allowed some credit for the self-command with which he attended to her large fat sighings over the destiny of a son, whom alive nobody had cared for.

Personal size and mental sorrow have certainly no necessary proportions. A large bulky figure has as good a right to be in deep affliction, as the most graceful set of limbs in the world. But, fair or not fair, there are unbecoming conjunctions, which reason will patronize in vain--which taste cannot tolerate--which ridicule will seize.”

Many take the position that it must be Jane Austen-- a slender person all her life, by all accounts --- who personally felt surprisingly judgmental feelings toward those less svelte, and that this passage was the most overt expression of those feelings, which we also find traces of in JA’s letters.

I tend to think that Jane Austen the person did harbor unkindly thoughts toward heavy people, but it has been several years since I realized that, regardless of Jane Austen’s personal feelings, the phrase “large fat sighings” was intended by Jane Austen to reflect Anne Elliot’s subjective perceptions. In JA’s masterful psychological portraiture, they arise from Anne’s strong, repressed anger over being blocked from Wentworth’s line of sight, and vice versa, by Mrs. Musgrove’s formidable bulk seated in the middle of the sofa between them.

And that second quoted paragraph reflects the struggle in Anne’s mind, as first she finds Mrs. Musgrove’s histrionic grieving ridiculous, but then her reason/conscience argues that heavy people can also feel deep affliction--but then, Anne’s anger fuels her finding some irrational justification for sticking to her initial harsh judgment—sometimes, she decides, appearances do trump substance, when ridiculous is just too ridiculous.

And, if we dig a little deeper in Persuasion, we find out that Anne does not make this harsh judgment out of the blue, it has been set up by comments made to Anne by sister Mary three chapters earlier, in Chapter 5, as Mary describes a dinner out with her inlaws:

"Nothing remarkable. One always knows beforehand what the dinner will be, and who will be there; and it is so very uncomfortable not having a carriage of one's own. Mr and Mrs Musgrove took me, and we were so crowded! They are both so very large, and take up so much room; and Mr Musgrove always sits forward. So, there was I, crowded into the back seat with Henrietta and Louise; and I think it very likely that my illness to-day may be owing to it."

Mary has no qualms about being explicit about the cause of her discomfort. And if you think about it, it makes perfect sense that both Anne and Mary should be judgmental, each in their own way, of the appearance of other people less blessed than the Elliots with good looks and a nice figure. After all, they both grew up in a household headed by Sir Walter, the world’s leading authority (or so he thinks himself) on good looks, and on the great, even decisive, importance of those good looks in judging the value of a person, second only perhaps to that person’s social status.

So we can also see that Anne, for all she thinks herself superior to, and different from, Mary and her father, and above their petty, small-minded, un-Christian  complaints, resentments, and judgments, is a whole lot more like them than she would ever want to admit.

I mention all of the above, because of something I noticed for the first time in Sense & Sensibility, which, upon examination, I realized, and will explain, below, is the covert forerunner of Mrs. Musgrove’s fat sighings—between 1811 and 1816, Jane Austen grew bolder in her depiction of uncharitable impulses in her virtuous heroines.

More than a few Janeites have over the years noticed the similarity between the personalities of Mrs. Jennings and Mrs. Musgrove—jolly, expansive mother-figures who dote on their families and are not shy about expressing their  feelings in company, often to the chagrin of the restrained, discreet young heroines through whose eyes we see those matrons.

But how many Janeites have also noticed the strong physical similarity between Mrs. Jennings and Mrs. Musgrove?  What I realized today is that Mary Musgrove’s report of the carriage ride with her in-laws the Musgroves that made her ill, and Anne Elliot’s frustration sitting on the sofa with Mrs. Musgrove and Wentworth, are actually not only connected to each other, but are also both echoes of a much earlier uncomfortable carriage ride described in Chapter 26 of S&S, when the narrator recounts the beginning of the long trip from Barton Cottage to London, with Elinor, Marianne, and Mrs. Jennings sharing some tight traveling accommodations:

"ELINOR COULD NOT FIND HERSELF in the carriage with Mrs. Jennings, and beginning a journey to London under her protection, and as her guest, without wondering at her own situation, so short had their acquaintance with that lady been, so wholly unsuited were they in age and DISPOSITION, and so many had been her objections against such a measure only a few days before!”

I’ve read that passage many times over the past 20 years, but for some reason this time, for the first time, I did a doubletake at the phrase “Elinor could not find herself”—was I just imagining it, or was this the prototype for Anne Elliot sitting on the sofa with Mrs. Musgrove?  I.e., taken out of context from the rest of that compound sentence, those first five words almost sound like Elinor literally could not find or locate her own body, because she was sitting next to, and to some extent under, the body of Mrs. Jennings, squeezed into tight quarters in the carriage!

Of course, upon further parsing of the entire sentence, the normative meaning becomes clear, i.e., “Elinor could not find, i.e., think of, herself in the carriage …without wondering, etc.”. However, knowing Jane Austen’s love of having it both ways as an author, I think it a compelling secondary interpretation that Mrs. Jennings, sitting next to Elinor, is also partially sitting on Elinor!---in the same way that a heavy person sitting next to a slim person on a modern airliner, where everyone is squeezed in like sardines from the getgo, cannot help but infringe on the personal space of the neighboring passenger.

Sound like a reach on my part? Well, consider how this seemingly wacky alternative reading fits remarkably well with other textual evidence in S&S. First and foremost, we all know that Mrs. Jennings is not petite:  “Mrs. Jennings, Lady Middleton's mother, was a goodhumoured, merry, fat, elderly woman, who talked a great deal, seemed very happy, and rather vulgar.”

Mrs. Jennings’s bulk is part of what could almost be a caricature of the merry older widow. Could this have anything to do with Elinor’s negative thoughts in the carriage?  Turns out that JA very quietly set up the idea of a physically uncomfortable carriage ride to London in the immediately preceding Chapter 25, when we learn a crucial detail indicating that Mrs. Jennings is going to be squeezing Elinor and Marianne into her carriage with her:

“It will only be sending Betty by the coach, and I hope I can afford THAT. We three shall be able to go very well in my chaise…”

                           

So per Mrs. Jennings there would not be room in the carriage for herself, Marianne, Elinor, AND Betty. But, while Mrs. Jennings may very well believe that with Betty removed from the carriage, there will be plenty of room for the Dashwood sisters and Mrs. Jennings, I believe JA is giving us a very strong hint –via her ambiguous sentence structure--that Elinor would strenuously but silently, disagree vehemently on that point.

And note that JA, the mistress of literary economy, only needs five words to convey all of this extra meaning, and these five words, read against the grain as I suggest, are also true to Elinor’s character—she is not her sister Marianne, and she is not Mary Elliot either, in that she does not say what she really feels, everything is guarded, coded, and careful—and so “Elinor could not find herself” is the perfect expression of both her character and her feelings.

I Googled to see whether I was the first scholar to ever address this question, and I find that my young friend Ophelia Murphy (who was one of the two grad students who, along with their supervising professor, Fiona Stafford, invited me to give my first public talk about Jane Austen, at the Oxford Romantic Realignments Seminar, in June 2007), in her recent, erudite and thought provoking book, Jane Austen The Reader, quoted  that very passage in S&S Chapter 26, and then wrote about it from a different angle:

“Part of the reason for the disparate opinions of Elinor and her mother arises from their  different understandings of the Dashwood sisters’ position in society. A winter excursion to London was in many respects an important signifier of wealth during Austen’s lifetime. …This is the ‘condition of life’ in which Mrs. Dashwood mentally places her daughters, a sharp contrast to the ‘situation’ in which Elinor finds herself in Mrs. Jennings’s carriage, where she and her sister literally take the place of the maid Betty. Unlike her mother and younger sister, Elinor understands only too well her diminished status in a society in which wealth is the paramount signifier of personal importance. Her sensitivity to the ways in which she and her sister are likely to be perceived and judged by others may be seen as the source of her unease. Her response is to curtail her expectations….” END QUOTE FROM MURPHY BOOK

Here we see Jane Austen’s genius in full flower, because I believe Olivia is 100% correct, and onto something very important, in her explanation for how the carriage ride to London is a metaphor for the living situation of Elinor and Marianne—surely Jane Austen did indeed intend that interpretation.  But…when you layer on the covert depiction of Mrs. Jennings literally sitting on top of Elinor, such that Elinor cannot even see or feel the rest of her own body as she sits, it dovetails perfectly with Olivia’s metaphorical interpretation—the carriage ride is a kind of physical oppression which Elinor mightily seeks to stoically endure, but, because she is even more tightly wound than Anne Elliot, no “fat sighing” thought bubbles up from her subconscious, it only comes out muted, hidden beneath a benign meaning.

The metaphor Olivia sees is extended by realizing that Elinor is a lightweight not only in body but  also in finances and social status, and since her father’s death she has increasingly spent her life being pushed around, oppressed, and given no space, by those around her, even nice, kind people like Mrs. Jennings.

So, in those five words, we get a poetic encapsulation of Elinor’s life as she experiences it at that moment—she could not FIND herself—and it also seems to me  that Jane Austen was 150 years ahead of her time in using this expression as well. It of course became a cliché of the Sixties (the 1960s, that is) for young people to go off on adventures of various kinds, outside-the-box (or perhaps, outside-the-carriage?) attempts to achieve some mysterious alchemy, whereby they would suddenly have an epiphany and “find themselves”, i.e., find their true selves.

And when we look at Elinor Dashwood at that crucial juncture of the action in S&S, as she sits under Mrs. Jennings and ruminates with trepidation and doubt on what will happen in London, we may fairly say that she is a young person experiencing an identity crisis, as all the things she loved have been taken away from her, and she sees her sister having the same experience, and Elinor sees little hope for the future at that instant.

This is truly the prose poetry of Jane Austen at its most perfect---beneath the words of ordinary mundane life, which seem to be merely practical, we find, just under the surface, and putting on our double-take spectacles as readers, some very deep metaphysical angst.

And speaking of poetry, in this post I will only mention in passing the connections between this literal carriage ride to London and the metaphorical, carnal “carriage ride” that some “Queen Mab” (like, say, Mrs. Jennings, a very droll Queen Mab, given the grotesque contrast between her and Shakespeare’s tiny Queen!) would try to take Marianne (and perhaps Elinor too?) on, leading to a true “vortex of dissipation”, as the young JA described London.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Jane Austen’s Brokeback Mountain: Cassandra’s poignantly jealous letter to Anne Sharp re: Anne’s “ardent” “sensibility” for the recently deceased Jane

“My dear Miss Sharp, I have great pleasure in sending you the lock of hair you wish for, & I add one pair of clasps which she sometimes wore & a small bodkin which she had had in constant use for more than twenty years. I know how these articles, trifling as they are, will be valued by you & I am very sure that if she is now conscious of what is passing on earth it gives her pleasure they should be so disposed of. - I am quite well in health & my Mother is very tolerable so & I am much more tranquil than with your ardent feelings you could suppose possible. What I have lost, non one but myself can know, you are not ignorant of her merits, but who can judge how I estimated them? - God's will be done, I have been able to say so all along, I thank God that I have. - If any thing should ever bring you into attainable distance from me we must meet my dear Miss Sharp. - Beleive me very truly Y^r affect^te friend Cass. Elizth Austen (CEA)“

Diane Reynolds’s and Ellen Moody’s comments in Janeites & Austen-L are both very insightful about the above letter, I would like to add my own usual allusively-tinged twist on it.

First, this letter clearly is CEA’s response to a letter from Anne Sharp written right after JA’s death, in which Anne requested a lock of JA’s hair as well as any other personal items that CEA could spare. I don’t know whether locks of hair were normally passed between heterosexual women in such instances, but it sounds like a very intimate request to me. And I have long believed, and am not alone in this, that Anne and Jane in fact had an intimate romantic relationship going back at least a decade to when Anne was a governess at Godmersham, just as Jane and Martha had an even longer intimate relationship.

Two scenes from literature come immediately to my mind, which I think uncannily echo this emotionally charged exchange between CEA and Anne Sharp---and, ironically, both of them were powerfully captured on film by Ang Lee (he who, as I recall, inexplicably opined that he did not actually enjoy reading JA’s novels, or something like that). Irony within irony!

First, I see CEA, in writing testily to Anne about their opposite ways of grieving, as very consciously echoing the dramatic exchange between Elinor and Marianne in Chapter 37 of S&S, when Elinor for the first time shares with Marianne her long-concealed, tormenting secret about Lucy and Edward:

“…And after all, Marianne, after all that is bewitching in the idea of a single and constant attachment, and all that can be said of one's happiness depending entirely on any particular person, it is not meant—it is not fit—it is not possible that it should be so.— Edward will marry Lucy; he will marry a woman superior in person and understanding to half her sex; and time and habit will teach him to forget that he ever thought another superior to HER."—

"If such is your way of thinking," said Marianne, "if the loss of what is most valued is so easily to be made up by something else, your resolution, your self-command, are, perhaps, a little less to be wondered at.—They are brought more within my comprehension."

"I understand you.—You do not suppose that I have ever felt much.—For four months, Marianne, I have had all this hanging on my mind, without being at liberty to speak of it to a single creature; knowing that it would make you and my mother most unhappy whenever it were explained to you, yet unable to prepare you for it in the least.— It was told me,—it was in a manner forced on me by the very person herself, whose prior engagement ruined all my prospects; and told me, as I thought, with triumph.— This person's suspicions, therefore, I have had to oppose, by endeavouring to appear indifferent where I have been most deeply interested;—and it has not been only once;—I have had her hopes and exultation to listen to again and again.— I have known myself to be divided from Edward for ever, without hearing one circumstance that could make me less desire the connection.—Nothing has proved him unworthy; nor has anything declared him indifferent to me.— I have had to contend against the unkindness of his sister, and the insolence of his mother; and have suffered the punishment of an attachment, without enjoying its advantages.— And all this has been going on at a time, when, as you know too well, it has not been my only unhappiness.— If you can think me capable of ever feeling—surely you may suppose that I have suffered NOW. The composure of mind with which I have brought myself at present to consider the matter, the consolation that I have been willing to admit, have been the effect of constant and painful exertion;—they did not spring up of themselves;—they did not occur to relieve my spirits at first.— No, Marianne.—THEN, if I had not been bound to silence, perhaps nothing could have kept me entirely—not even what I owed to my dearest friends—from openly shewing that I was VERY unhappy."—

Marianne was quite subdued.— "Oh! Elinor," she cried, "you have made me hate myself for ever.—How barbarous have I been to you!—you, who have been my only comfort, who have borne with me in all my misery, who have seemed to be only suffering for me!—Is this my gratitude?—Is this the only return I can make you?—Because your merit cries out upon myself, I have been trying to do it away."

The tenderest caresses followed this confession.”

CEA casts herself as Elinor, and Anne Sharp as Marianne. I think the parallels are obvious to any Janeite, as CEA channels Elinor’s eloquent defense of restrained sensibility, justifying (or rationalizing?) how she came to terms with an irreparable loss.

But I also think the edginess bubbling under the surface of this letter is much more than just testiness about different styles of grieving---it’s more about deep, heart-wrenching jealousy---and as I pondered that, an even more perfect literary analogy came to mind, in the form of the unbearably poignant scene near the end of Brokeback Mountain, when Ennis Del Mar calls Lureen (the widow of Jack Twist, Ennis’s longtime secret gay lover, who Jack has just learned, via a letter he wrote to Jack which was returned to him marked “DECEASED”):

(short story by Annie Proulx, closely adapted in this scene by Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana)

ENNIS: Uh, hello, this is Ennis Del Mar, I, uh…

LUREEN: Who is this?

ENNIS: Ennis  Del Mar. I ‘m an old buddy of Jack’s, I…

LUREEN: Jack used to mention you. You’re the fishing buddy or the hunting buddy, I know that. Would have let you know, but wasn’t sure about your name and address. Jack kept his friends’ addresses in his head.

ENNIS: Why I was callin’, to see what happened…

LUREEN: Oh yeah, Jack was pumping up a flat on the truck out on a back  road when the tire  blew up. The rim slammed into his face and broke his nose and jaw, knocked him unconscious on his back. By the time somebody came along, he had drowned in his own blood. Terrible thing. He was only thirty nine years old.

[Ennis can’t answer right away. He wonders, suddenly, if it was the tire iron – imagines Jack being beaten to death by homophobic brutes]

LUREEN: …Hello?

ENNIS: He buried down there?

LUREEN: We put a stone  up. He was cremated, like he wanted, and half his ashes was interred here. The rest I sent up to his folks. He use to say he wanted his ashes scattered on Brokeback Mountain, but I didn’t know where that was. I thought Brokeback Mountain was around where he grew up. But knowing Jack, it might be some pretend place where the bluebirds  sing and there’s a whiskey spring.

ENNIS: ..We herded sheep up on Brokeback one summer…

LUREEN: Well, he said it was his favorite plaace. I thought he meant to get drunk. He drank a lot.

ENNIS: His folks still up in Lightnin’Flat?

LUREEN: They’ll be there till the day they die. They couldn’t come down for the funeral.

ENNIS: Thanks for your time, then…I sure am sorry…we was good friends…

LUREEN:  Get in touch with his folks. I suppose they’d appreciate it if his wishes was carried out. About the ashes, I mean.

[Although she is polite, her little voice is as cold as ice. Ennis hangs up. Looks like death.]  

Channeling the best Austenesque tradition, in that telephone conversation it’s the words and feelings left unspoken and between the lines that matter most---most of all the sharp jealousy that Lureen feels, but will never state openly, as she finally connects all the dots she’s long been wondering about, for the first time. She realizes with a painful shock what Ennis and Jack have been to each other, how much these two “friends” have unofficially been “married”, during the entirety of her official (and in many ways sham) marriage to Jack. And she is not kind to Ennis for these reasons.

And there could not, I claim, be a closer parallel to the triad of Jane, Cassandra, and Anne at the moment  just after Jane’s death. Perhaps Jane and Anne, neither of whom had the wherewithal to visit each other whenever they liked, also shared their own “Brokeback Mountain”---a treasured memory of a brief interlude or two, years earlier at Godmersham during one of JA’s visits while Anne was still there.  And in the end, Anne seeks out relics of her dead lover to treasure the rest of her life, in the form of the few of  JA’s letters to her that Anne saved, and also the lock of hair and the other trifles CEA sent her—and of course the precious  autographed first edition of Emma. Just as Ennis will forever treasure Jack’s blood-stained flannel shirt, Anne had her “precious treasures” of her beloved Jane as well.  

And those observations almost make me wonder whether Annie Proulx and/or Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana actually had S&S, and also JA’s death, in mind when they wrote this magnificent modern tragedy. And perhaps that was one reason why they sought out Ang Lee to direct it, recalling his masterful work on Sense & Sensibility.

All lovely and poignant thoughts to ponder today, the day after the 197^th anniversary of Jane Austen’s death.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode onTwitter