Jane Austen's dreadful Cousin Theo-Leigh Cooke as Mr. Collins in Letter 17 which will shortly be sold for big bucks!

 Just as Eleanor Tilney, in Northanger Abbey, completely misinterprets Catherine Morland's solemn comment that she has "heard that something very shocking indeed will soon come out in London", to the great amusement of brother Henry Tilney, so too news reports out of London in the past few days have surely given to most of the world (i.e. other than knowledgeable Janeites) the entirely mistaken "first impression" that a new Jane Austen letter has just been discovered:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2863601/Previously-unseen-letter-Jane-Austen-writes-Pride-Prejudice-goes-public-display-time.html#ixzz3LEvMpeIj

"A PREVIOUSLY UNSEEN LETTER BY JANE AUSTEN in which she first writes about Pride And Prejudice has gone on public display for the first time. The double folded sheet, sent by Austen to her sister Cassandra in January 1799, makes reference to the novel - 14 years before it was first published. The handwritten note, which lay undiscovered in a box file for 60 years, will be exhibited at Torquay Museum in Devon ahead of a planned auction."

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-devon-30351264
"A PREVIOUSLY UNSEEN LETTER PENNED BY JANE AUSTEN is set to be sold by Torquay Museum. The letter, from the famous author to her sister, makes a reference to her novel Pride and Prejudice - which at the time had not yet been published. The letter is part of a collection that includes
letters from Charlotte Bronte, John Keats and Abraham Lincoln given to the museum in the 1930s. Director Basil Greenwood said selling the letter could raise £200,000."


In point of fact, the letter in question has been seen by those many thousands of Janeites who have ever read Le Faye's 1995 and more recent edition of JA's letters--it is Letter 17, and it has been reproduced in
those editions in full and with its provenance vis a vis the Torquay Museum fully set forth.

So the only real news here is that the letter is about to be sold for big bucks!!!

All the same, I am glad for these misleading news reports, because they caused me to revisit the post I wrote about Letter 17 three years ago near the beginning of our very long Group Read of JA's letters in
Janeites and Austen L. Here is the link to my post:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/08/mr-collinss-nothing-meaning-harmless.html


And here is the title and beginning of my post:

"Mr. Collins’s Nothing-Meaning, Harmless, Heartless Civility"
When we discussed Letter 17 (dated Jan. 9, 1799) four months ago, Christy quoted the following passage…
“I assure You that I dread the idea of going to Bookham as much as you can do; but I am not without hopes that something may happen to prevent it; Theo’ has lost his Election at Baliol, & perhaps they may not be able to see company for some time.—They talk of going to Bath too in the Spring, & perhaps they may be overturned in their way down, & all laid up for the summer.”
….and then commented as follows:
“Here, it is obvious both sisters are not enamored with certain `plans`, and according to DLF, CEA cancelled the words, "Bookham", "Theo" and "at Baliol" as the Cooke cousins were not held in high esteem. DLF writes:
“a study of the rediscovered MS enables the three names to be deciphered beneath the cancellations.”
Today, I realized that the Austen sisters retained their strong dislike in particular for their cousin the Revd. Theo-Leigh Cooke (3 years younger than JA) over quite an extended period of time, because there
are two later passages in JA’s letters which demonstrate their continued abhorrence for his company. And once my attention was drawn to this, I realized there was a significant veiled allusion to one of JA’s real life Cooke cousins in one of JA’s most memorable characters."  END QUOTE FROM MY 2011 POST

In other words, I argued in my post that Letter 17's reference to Bookham which Cassandra Austen attempted to cover over was JA's dig at her obnoxious, Mr. Collins-like cousin the Revd. Theo-Leigh Cooke, a dig she revisited in two later letters, showing she held a long standing dislike for Theo-Leigh Cooke. He must indeed have been very much like Mr. Collins.

And that leads me to a few additional observations:

1. Is it possible that at some point the Austen family pressured JA to MARRY her cousin (who was three years younger than she)? That would fit with Cassandra's unusual attempt at very specific editorial suppression -- i.e., it would not just be a non-specific expression by JA of desire to avoid seeing her cousin in passing in the midst of a large family gathering, but it might go a few steps further and suggest that in 1799, JA, at age 24, was under pressure to marry the Revd. Theo-Leigh Cooke???

2. If that were so, then it would also fit very nicely with the other misleading headline in the recent news reports about Letter 17:

BBC: "The letter, from the famous author to her sister, makes a reference to her novel Pride and Prejudice - which at the time had not yet been published"

Daily Mail: "Previously unseen letter by Jane Austen where she first writes about Pride and Prejudice...A previously unseen letter by Jane Austen in which she first writes about Pride And Prejudice has gone on public display for the first time.The double folded sheet, sent by Austen to her sister Cassandra in January 1799, makes reference to the novel - 14 years before it was first published. In the letter, Austen writes of her upcoming novel First Impressions, later renamed and published as Pride And Prejudice in 1813.The book later became one of the most popular novels in English literature, selling more than 20 million copies worldwide.

'I do not wonder at your wanting to read first impressions again, so seldom as you have gone through it, & that so long ago,' she wrote to Cassandra."


So...putting the pieces of the puzzle together, I do NOT believe it was a coincidence that JA suspiciously mentions CEA wanting to read First Impressions again in this same Letter 17 in which JA writes a sharp dig at a close family member who was one of the models for Mr. Collins! What I actually think JA was doing was TELLING CEA to read First Impressions again--why? It was a coded way of telling CEA, "Read FIrst Impressions again so you can see on the page all the reasons why I am so glad I did have to talk to Theo-Leigh Cooke!"

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Priyanka Chopra quotes Mrs. Norris and Malala Yousafzai channels Anne Elliot: Jane Austen’s “one pen” continues to “change the world” for women

I just read an Op/Ed piece in the NY Times today…

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/opinion/priyanka-chopra-on-educating-girls.html

…by the Indian actress/singer/activist Priyanka Chopra entitled “What Jane Austen Knew: Priyanka Chopra on Educating Girls”

I urge you to read the whole column, and contribute what you can to her philanthropic cause. Today I want to focus on the part of Chopra’s piece that connects directly, in a couple of interesting and important ways, to Jane Austen:

“… That experience, and the time I spent working with my parents after that trip, are what drove me to use my name and my voice to support the education and empowerment of girls. I was a girl, from a modest background. I have two loving parents who educated me and gave me the opportunity to chase my dreams. I worked very hard, and today I am financially independent and successful in my chosen career. If I can do this, so can countless other girls! They can do it, but not alone.

…[2014] ended with a schoolgirl in the headlines for all the right reasons, being celebrated for her achievements: In October, Malala Yousafzai, a student and an education advocate, and the Indian child-rights campaigner Kailash Satyarthi were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their “struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education,” as the Nobel Committee explained. The committee noted that Malala had shown by example that children and young people can help improve their own situations. We can make 2015 a turning point for girls across the world. As Malala said: “Let us pick up our books and our pens — they are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world. Education is the only solution.”

.. The best part about all this is that no matter where I go, I always find that efforts to improve a girl’s life are rarely about just the individual — the goal is always to help her family and her community as a whole. Girls want to help themselves so they can help everyone they hold near and dear, and that’s where the positive ripple effect of change comes into play.

THIS IS NOT NEW. JANE AUSTEN KNEW IT TWO CENTURIES AGO: “Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody.”  END QUOTE

At first, I was stumped—where had Jane Austen written those quoted words about giving a girl an education? Google quickly led me to the surprising source---Mrs. Norris, not a character that most Janeites normally associate with female empowerment---in the beginning of Mansfield Park, when she convinces brother-in-law & family patriarch Sir Thomas Bertram to take their 10-year old niece Fanny Price out of the urban squalor of her overcrowded family in Portsmouth, and raise her in the rural splendor of Mansfield Park:

“My dear Sir Thomas, I perfectly comprehend you, and do justice to the generosity and delicacy of your notions, which indeed are quite of a piece with your general conduct; and I entirely agree with you in the main as to the propriety of doing everything one could by way of providing for a child one had in a manner taken into one's own hands; and I am sure I should be the last person in the world to withhold my mite upon such an occasion. Having no children of my own, who should I look to in any little matter I may ever have to bestow, but the children of my sisters?-- and I am sure Mr. Norris is too just--but you know I am a woman of few words and professions. Do not let us be frightened from a good deed by a trifle. Give a girl an education, and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without farther expense to anybody. A niece of ours, Sir Thomas, I may say, or at least of yours, would not grow up in this neighbourhood without many advantages. I don't say she would be so handsome as her cousins. I dare say she would not; but she would be introduced into the society of this country under such very favourable circumstances as, in all human probability, would get her a creditable establishment.”

Mrs. Norris goes on to reassure Sir Thomas that Fanny will never marry one of her cousins, and of course we all know that Mrs. Norris proves to be a poor prophet, as Fanny does indeed marry cousin Edmund, in no small part because Edmund becomes her mentor: “Having formed her mind and gained her affections, he had a good chance of her thinking like him…” 

So, in a way, Edmund wins Fanny’s love through education, adding irony to Mrs. Norris’s statement which Chopra quoted in support of Chopra’s worthy and important advocacy for education of girls in the 21^st century in parts of the world, like India, where female education is widely ignored, feared, and even actively condemned and forbidden.

But I hear a distinct echo of yet another, more famous line from an Austen novel in the quoted words of Malala Yousafzai, the incredibly brave young Pakistani woman who narrowly survived an assassination attempt prompted by her advocacies for women, and fearlessly returned to her extraordinary mission on behalf of women’s rights, and just won the Nobel Peace Prize:

“Let us pick up our books and OUR PENS — they are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and ONE PEN can change the world. Education is the only solution.”

Yousafzai has clearly drawn inspiration from the thrilling words at the end of Persuasion, when Anne Elliot defeats Captain Harville in their amicable debate about gender:

“…Well, Miss Elliot," (lowering his voice,) "as I was saying we shall never agree, I suppose, upon this point. No man and woman, would, probably. But let me observe that all histories are against you--all stories, prose and verse. If I had such a memory as Benwick, I could bring you fifty quotations in a moment on my side the argument, and I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men."

"Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. EDUCATION HAS BEEN THEIRS IN SO MUCH HIGHER A DEGREE; THE PEN HAS BEEN IN THEIR HANDS. I will not allow books to prove anything."

Sure enough, in a 2013 Salon.com piece about Yousafzai, we read “In her new book “I am Malala,” Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai …offers up surprising bits of information about her life in Pakistan, her recovery and her adolescence – including a liking for both Jane Austen and Stephenie Meyer.”

And I found this at the Facebook page for the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation:

https://www.facebook.com/janeaustenlf/info

“Similar to Jane Austen’s father, who was a rector and a teacher in the village of Steventon, the father of Malala Yousafzai supported his daughter’s education. He explains in this video how he encouraged his daughter to join the school he was teaching at in order to further her 'emancipation through education'.

And...I just found another quote from an article about Malala's father...
 http://www.insidetoronto.com/news-story/4425185-malala-yousafzai-s-father-ziauddin-speaks-to-students-at-secord-elementary-school/

...which shows that he and his daughter share a love of Anne Elliot's famous quote:

"He enthusiastically said he loved Canada for it had given so much love – honourary citizenship to Malala – to his family. After an uplifting greeting to the kids, calling them “diverse, beautiful flowers,” Yousafzai explained the challenges that inhibit some children in Pakistan and other countries from receiving a proper or any education.

“You can imagine how difficult it is,” he said. “They should have BOOKS IN THEIR HANDS AND PENS IN THEIR HANDS, but they don’t. They have hammers in their hands, some work in workshops, some in domestic child labour.”

So, I believe that if Jane Austen knew two centuries ago that her words would inspire extraordinary real life heroines like Yousafzai and Chopra to carry forward the cause of female education worldwide as they are now doing, she would smile with satisfaction. Why? Because I am 100% certain that Austen’s prime purpose in writing her fiction, even more than to express her creative artistic genius and make an independent living, was precisely that much larger goal—i.e., to in effect give girls and women everywhere another powerful tool for growing their minds—a novel---a tool that would not require taking those girls and women out of their homes, but would empower them to change their own living conditions.

We can see clearly that Jane Austen has inspired Yousafzai and Chopra to grab the pen, as is their right as a human being, because they can see that Jane Austen, even now, two centuries after she published her novels, remains the preeminent female holder of that “one pen” that has indeed “changed the world” -- because Jane Austen recognized that “education is the only solution” and had the vision and genius to wield her pen effectively beyond her own wildest dreams.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

“Prudence forbad the disclosure” is undercut by “Selfishness is prudence”: Elizabeth Bennet unwittingly hoists herself on her own rhetorical petard!

 In followup to my two preceding posts about Elizabeth Bennet’s selfish rationalizations for not telling sister Jane about Darcy’s interference…

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2014/11/does-lizzy-wrongly-rationalize-not.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2014/12/lizzy-bennet-selfish-being-who-never.html

…I dug around in my files and found a snippet from a 2004 law review article written by a law professor named Rosanna Cavallaro, which discussed Pride & Prejudice from the point of view of legal rules of evidence and proof. In the following two paragraphs, Cavallaro shows herself to be the only Austen scholar prior to myself to have any awareness that Elizabeth had other valid options open to her besides withholding (from Jane) Darcy’s disclosure to Elizabeth about his having interfered between Bingley and Jane:

“Austen explores the notion of privilege…when she permits Elizabeth to withhold from Jane not only Darcy’s secret regarding his sister, but also the details of Darcy’s role in thwarting Charles Bingley’s feelings for Jane….Austen does not condemn Elizabeth for withholding the ignoble role that her own lover has played in dividing Bingley from Jane. Instead, she permits the reader to approve the balancing of confidentiality against the free flow of information, facilitating the central match of this marriage comedy, even as it thwarts fulfillment of the secondary match. Jane is never permitted to learn of or to express anger about Darcy’s meddling, although Elizabeth accuses him of being “the means of ruining, perhaps for ever, the happiness of a most beloved sister.”  Instead, Austen writes of Elizabeth:  “The tumult of Elizabeth’s mind was allayed by this conversation. She had got rid of two of the secrets which had weighed on her for a fortnight, and was certain of a willing listener in Jane, whenever she might wish to talk again of either. But there was still something lurking behind, of which prudence forbad the disclosure. She dared not relate the other half of Mr Darcy’s letter, nor explain to her sister how sincerely she had been valued by his friend. Here was knowledge in which no one could partake; and she was sensible that nothing less than a perfect understanding between the parties could justify her in throwing off this last incumbrance of mystery. “And then,” said she, “if that very improbable event should ever take place, I shall merely be able to tell what Bingley may tell in a much more agreeable manner himself. The liberty of communication cannot be mine till it has lost all value!”

In ruminating over how to proceed with this important confidence, Elizabeth here overlooks a critical aspect of the “knowledge” that she withholds: It is not that Bingley indeed loves Jane, but that Darcy has persuaded him that Jane does not love him. Indeed, so far from being condemned for his meddling, Darcy himself is credited with righting things by reassuring Bingley that Jane reciprocates his feelings for her.  He does not even share the credit with Elizabeth, who had first put him on notice of his own error of judgment as to Jane’s feelings.  Nor does he thank her for keeping his “absurd and impertinent” “interference” a secret from Jane. The connection is simply reestablished, with surprise and joy on the part of both Jane and Bingley, and the novel ends with two marriages...”  END QUOTE FROM CAVALLARO ARTICLE

From my perspective, Cavallaro has opened the door wide with this brilliant analysis—and she zeroes in on that very passage in Chapter 40 which I flagged in my first post, the crucial passage in which Elizabeth rationalizes (like Perry Mason’s casuistry in representing a guilty client) that “prudence forbad the disclosure”. But Cavallaro lacked the crucial knowledge that there was a shadow story (parallel fictional universe version) of P&P in which Jane Austen meant for her knowing readers to view Elizabeth in a very negative light for this decision, and not (as has been the conventional Austen scholarly response) as evidence of Elizabeth’s admirable independence and courage.  All the same, big kudos to Cavallaro for even reaching this question in the first place a decade ago!

I was also thinking some more overnight about the theme of Elizabeth’s rationalizing selfishness in P&P, and I did a quick search of the word “selfish” in the novel, to see what else might pop up as additional ironic shadowing by JA, and I found the mother lode immediately in the following passage in Chapter 24, when Elizabeth responds with great vitriol to Aunt Gardiner about Charlotte’s decision to marry Mr. Collins, and appears particularly triggered by her aunt’s saying “Consider Mr. Collins's respectability, and Charlotte's steady, PRUDENT character.”:

"To oblige you, I would try to believe almost anything, but no one else could be benefited by such a belief as this; for were I persuaded that Charlotte had any regard for him, I should only think worse of her understanding than I now do of her heart. My dear Jane, Mr. Collins is a conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly man; you know he is, as well as I do; and you must feel, as well as I do, that the woman who married him cannot have a proper way of thinking. You shall not defend her, though it is Charlotte Lucas. You shall not, for the sake of one individual, change the meaning of principle and integrity, nor endeavour to persuade yourself or me, that SELFISHNESS IS PRUDENCE, and insensibility of danger security for happiness."

This might just be the biggest textual irony of all the ones I’ve catalogued in these three posts—why? Because, in this passage in Chapter 24, Elizabeth condemns Charlotte harshly for calling herself “prudent” as a “pretty face” to cover the ugly “selfishness” of the decision. Austen scholars and ordinary Janeites alike have long been at a loss to explain how exactly Charlotte was being “selfish” in marrying Mr. Collins.

But JA’s deeper intention in putting this speech in Elizabeth’s mouth is now clear—this speech actually functions as Lizzy’s own unwitting condemnation of her own rationalizing in Chapter 40 (when Lizzy actually thinks “PRUDENCE forbad the disclosure”), and, for that matter, of Lizzy’s decision to accept Darcy’s second proposal not long afterwards!  To demonstrate this, with a minimum of editing, I will turn that fiery little speech into what Mary Bennet (the “whisperer”  who tried in vain to warn Elizabeth to beware of Darcy’s seductive charms) might have said to Mr. Bennet at the end of the novel, if Mr. Bennet had tried to defend Lizzy’s acceptance of Darcy’s proposal:

"To oblige you, I would try to believe almost anything, but no one else could be benefited by such a belief as this; for were I persuaded that Elizabeth had any regard for him, I should only think worse of her understanding than I now do of her heart. My dear FATHER, Mr. DARCY is a conceited, SELFISH, narrow-minded, MACHIAVELLIAN man; you know he is, as well as I do; and you must feel, as well as I do, that the woman who married him cannot have a proper way of thinking. You shall not defend her, though it is YOUR BELOVED LIZZY. You shall not, for the sake of one individual, change the meaning of principle and integrity, nor endeavour to persuade yourself or me, that SELFISHNESS IS PRUDENCE, and insensibility of danger security for happiness."

That all of the textual points I’ve laid out in these three posts have never been properly understood before as a package intentionally embedded in the text of P&P by the Machiavellian art of Jane Austen, is only a sign of how brilliantly she hid it all in plain sight for two centuries!

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Lizzy Bennet the “selfish being” who (never) knows herself!

In my previous post....
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2014/11/does-lizzy-wrongly-rationalize-not.html

....I argued that Elizabeth selfishly rationalizes, not once but repeatedly, her own total and unforgiveable concealment from sister Jane, of Darcy's interference that wound up separating Jane from Bingley for several months before Darcy undid his interference.

I.e. Elizabeth, in her heart of hearts, is more concerned for her own chances with Darcy than she is for Jane's chances with Bingley. Sad but true that Lizzy puts herself ahead of Jane—and it's only because Darcy reforms that HE chooses, entirely on his own initiative (i.e., without ANY prompting whatsoever from Lizzy) to undo his interference and press the Reset Button on Bingley's head that responds only to Darcy’s fingerprint (so to speak). 

Here are two lines of followup thinking that have occurred to me, the first with respect to ironic overtones in P&P, the second with respect to another Austen novel with a parallel situation:

FURTHER IRONY IN TWO PASSAGES IN P&P:

Jane Austen’s razor-sharp irony is on full and spectacular display in the following famous passage in Chapter 36, when Lizzy is in the process of reading and rereading Darcy’s letter. Just read this passage keeping firmly in mind my claim that Lizzy has absolutely no self-awareness whatsoever as to her selfishness vis a vis Jane, as I described in my previous post, and then you will clearly see what is so devastatingly ironic about the ALL CAPS sentence:

“She grew absolutely ashamed of herself. Of neither Darcy nor Wickham could she think without feeling that she had been blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd.

   "How despicably have I acted!" she cried; "I, who have prided myself on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity in useless or blameable distrust. How humiliating is this discovery! yet, how just a humiliation! Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. TILL THIS MOMENT I NEVER KNEW MYSELF."

   From herself to Jane -- from Jane to Bingley, her thoughts were in a line which soon brought to her recollection that Mr. Darcy's explanation there had appeared very insufficient, and she read it again. Widely different was the effect of a second perusal. How could she deny that credit to his assertions, in one instance, which she had been obliged to give in the other. He declared himself to have been totally unsuspicious of her sister's attachment; and she could not help remembering what Charlotte's opinion had always been. Neither could she deny the justice of his description of Jane. She felt that Jane's feelings, though fervent, were little displayed, and that there was a constant complacency in her air and manner not often united with great sensibility. “ END QUOTE

Did you see it? Lizzy is blaming herself for having believed Wickham’s version of his history with Darcy, and for having therefore blasted Darcy about his mistreatment of Wickham when Darcy first proposed. But she doesn’t just change her mind about this point, Elizabeth goes overboard and tells herself that she has suddenly had her eyes opened, a powerful epiphany, as if Darcy were Moses who had just delivered his own autographed version of the 10 Commandments to her personally, straight from the mountaintop. Lizzy has been converted to Darcy’s way of thinking, and she believes she truly knows herself for the first time. Hmm….

And yet, Jane Austen does not waste a second in thoroughly undermining the validity of Lizzy’s “epiphany”. She does this by showing us that Elizabeth’s chain of thought moves immediately “from herself to Jane”----and what exactly does Lizzy think about Darcy’s interference in Jane’s and Bingley’s romance? That Jane was too complacent—i.e., Darcy did not do wrong after all, his interference was justified, it was all Jane’s fault! Hmm….

Talk about a monstrous self-delusion arising at the very moment when Lizzy believes she has become completely self-aware—now THAT’S major league irony, and also sound psychology! I.e., in the act of Lizzy unconsciously repressing awareness of how selfish she is being toward Jane, it is indeed the perversity of human nature that Lizzy will in that moment be extra motivated to slide her feelings of self-blame from where they belong (re Jane) to where they don’t belong (re Darcy, who actually has wronged Jane).

And the best (or worst) part of it is, that JA does not beat the reader over the head with this irony, quite the contrary—she HIDES the irony, and actually leads the passive reader down the garden path of accepting Lizzy’s twisted logic as gospel truth—so in effect, the passive reader is right there alongside Lizzy sharing in her self-delusion whole-hog! Only the reader who can peer around the wizard’s curtain, and see the machinery of self-delusion that JA subtly leaves in the lines under her words (so to speak)_can get free of the spell cast by Lizzy’s deluded reading.

This is JA’s didacticism at its most spectacular, this is how JA wished to teach her readers to read life better—but her lesson was not for all readers, only those willing to doubt their own first impressions, and to read very very closely and think about the complex motivations of the heroine, and how easily they can be misread. This is how JA teaches her readers what is worth knowing, not by preaching, but by winking.

And I also now see yet another ironic wrinkle of Elizabeth's lack of solicitude for Jane --i.e., it never even enters Elizabeth's mind after Darcy's first proposal that if Lizzy had accepted it, it would have given her a great deal of leverage to push Darcy to undo his interference that put the kibosh on Bingley's romance with Jane.

Now I am not suggesting that Elizabeth SHOULD have accepted Darcy's proposal solely for that purpose---that would have gone way beyond the call of duty of a loving sister, it would have made Elizabeth a martyr- but since we are privy to all of Elizabeth's thoughts in regard to these romances, it is striking that she never entertains that idea even for a second. Further evidence that in her heart of hearts, Elizabeth loves herself better than she loves Jane.

And here’s another textual irony—when Darcy makes his second, successful proposal to Elizabeth, he famously makes the following impassioned confession:

 “I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. As a child I was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit. Unfortunately an only son (for many years an only child), I was spoilt by my parents, who, though good themselves (my father, particularly, all that was benevolent and amiable), allowed, encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing; to care for none beyond my own family circle; to think meanly of all the rest of the world; to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own.”

The great irony here is that this very same confession is one that Lizzy could have made herself, if she were self-aware! She has been a selfish being all her life, she was not taught by either parent to correct her temper, she was left to follow her principles in pride and conceit! And, she was of course spoilt by her father, etc etc etc. Lizzy been a selfish being, and her utter passivity vis a vis Jane and Bingley is the best example of it.

ROMANTIC SELFISHNESS IN ANOTHER AUSTEN HEROINE

So much for P&P in this post---it's also been tickling my memory since I wrote my previous post, that there was SOME other parallel situation in another Austen novel, in which another Austen heroine besides Elizabeth selfishly conceals important romantic information –and it was only in writing the above portion of this post, that I suddenly remembered who that heroine was—Emma!

Here goes:  Just as Elizabeth utterly fails to lift a finger to try to arrange for Bingley to know about Jane’s strong feelings for him, so also does Emma fail to speak a single word that would alert Knightley to Harriet’s strong feelings for him! And Emma goes through exactly the same sort of pretzel logic to rationalize away any duty toward Harriet to make such a disclosure to Knightley. And in the end, Harriet winds up with Robert Martin (we are never allowed to know how Harriet feels about having to settle for him after having her sights set on Knightley), through absolutely no positive action whatsoever on Emma’s part. From Emma’s point of view, it just happens as if by magic, and she is let off the hook of her own stunted conscience, for having elbowed Harriet aside in snagging Knightley.

CONCLUSION

You can go to the bank on the assurance that not only was JA fully cognizant of this parallel to Lizzy’s selfishness when she wrote Emma, she was, she did it on purpose. In P&P we have the heroine’s romantic selfishness under the surface, but in Emma it is foregrounded. Perhaps this was in part JA’s way of saying to her readers who had missed the irony about Lizzy, “Why don’t you reread P&P and see if you see how much Lizzy really is like Emma?”

But apparently I am the first to notice these ironies and parallels, and (as Alanis Morisette said) isn’t THAT ironic?

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter