Constantia Wine, the Eve of St. Agnes, & Sense & Sensibility

Earlier this year, I suggested here…. http://tinyurl.com/z2rzk2c  ….that the allusion to the Eve of St. Agnes hidden in the implicit calendar of Sense & Sensibility (which I noted several years ago) was also connected to the Romeo & Juliet subtext of Queen Mab the horse Willoughby offers to Marianne; in a (hazel) nutshell, both have at their core erotic/romantic dreams.

Today I take note of yet another sly hint in S&S at the Eve of St. Agnes—specifically, the ritual of the wine that a single young woman customarily drinks, so she will dream of her future husband. Here is the relevant passage (with the hint in ALL CAPS):

“…In the drawing-room, whither [Elinor] then repaired, she was soon joined by Mrs. Jennings, with a wine-glass, full of something, in her hand.

"My dear," said she, entering, "I have just recollected that I have SOME OF THE FINEST OLD CONSTANTIA WINE in the house that ever was tasted, so I have brought a glass of it for your sister. My poor husband! how fond he was of it! Whenever he had a touch of his old colicky gout, he said it did him more good than any thing else in the world. Do take it to your sister."

"Dear Ma'am," replied Elinor, smiling at the difference of the complaints for which it was recommended, "how good you are! But I have just left Marianne in bed, and, I hope, almost asleep; and as I think nothing will be of so much service to her as rest, if you will give me leave, I will drink the wine myself."

Mrs. Jennings, though regretting that she had not been five minutes earlier, was satisfied with the compromise; and Elinor, as she swallowed the chief of it, reflected, that though its effects on a colicky gout were, at present, of little importance to her, its healing powers, on a disappointed heart might be as reasonably tried on herself as on her sister.”

We all know that Elinor winds up drinking the wine that Mrs. Jennings suggested she bring to Marianne. But would you believe that Mrs. Jennnings, in her Miss Batesian way, has dropt a sly clue about the Eve of St. Agnes? It’s in the name of the variety of wine she touts so highly. I had a hunch that “Constantia” might mean something more than wine, and sure enough, when I Googled “Constantia” and “St. Agnes” together, I was first led here: http://tinyurl.com/jxf94ko  That’s an image of the 1654 painting by Pietro da Cortona entitled “Saint Constantia's Vision before the Tomb of Saints Agnes and Emerentiana”.

Never heard of it? Well, I quickly found this about Saint Constantia: “Saint Constantia, or Constance (d. 350 AD) was the daughter of the Roman emperor Constantine; after being healed miraculously (of leprosy) at the tomb of St. Agnes, she took a vow of virginity.”

That only whetted my appetite for the more complete explanation lovingly provided here:

http://www.stconstance.org/our-patron/   “Saint Constance was born in about 325 AD, as Constantine Augustus. Her father was the Emperor, Constantine the Great. She had leprosy, which made her very sad, and she cried often. Since the leprosy created ugly spots on her face, not many people could bear to look at her, or even be with her. Giving up hope at times, she wanted to wear a mask. Her father had doctors from every land searching for a cure, but it seemed hopeless. As a last resort, a friend told Constance about a young martyr named Agnes, at whose tomb cures were known to happen. On the way to the tomb of Saint Agnes, a woman overheard Constance and her friend questioning each other about what to do when they arrived at the tomb. The woman explained how God performs miracles when people pray to Him through the saints. Constance was moved by this woman’s faith and become a Christian. Upon arriving at the tomb of Saint Agnes, Constance covered her face with a scarf and knelt down to pray, as the woman had taught her. When she got up and removed the scarf, the leprosy was gone from her face, as well as from the rest of her body.
Saint Constance chose not to marry. She spent the rest of her life helping others, the way that God had helped her, working with the sick and giving them hope. She died in about 354 AD, near the Basilica of Saint Agnes, which was commissioned by Constance. This basilica was built at the site where she was cured.”

So now we can understand not only why Mrs. Jennings serves “Constantia” wine, it’s why she touts its healing properties-- but JA, with masterfully ironic understatement, has reduced leprosy to gout!: “Whenever he had a touch of his old colicky gout, he said it did him more good than any thing else in the world.” And, in that same vein, it’s also why “Elinor, as she swallowed the chief of it, reflected, that though its effects on a colicky gout were, at present, of little importance to her, its healing powers, on a disappointed heart might be as reasonably tried on herself as on her sister.” From leprosy to gout to a broken heart in three short steps!

And by the way, Wikipedia reveals that Jane Austen is not the only famous author who wove “Constantia Wine”, with special powers, into a story:

“In Charles Dickens’ last (and unfinished) novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Constantia wine is served to the Reverend Septimus by his mother. "As, whenever the Reverend Septimus fell a-musing, his good mother took it to be an infallible sign that he ‘wanted support,’ the blooming old lady made all haste to the dining-room closet, to produce from it the support embodied in a glass of Constantia and a home-made biscuit."

In Charles Baudelaire's Les fleurs du mal (poem XXVI) entitled sed non satiata, Baudelaire compares the charms of his beloved to the pleasures brought by Nuits-Saint-Georges and Constantia wine: “Even more than Constantia, than opium, than Nuits, I prefer the elixir of your mouth, where love performs its slow dance.” 

And finally, our own Diane Reynolds, recent author of her biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the women in his life, will get a kick out of this account (by the young Bonhoeffer in his diary) of a visit to certain art heritage sites in Rome with a Sense & Sensibility aura:

"Then Sant'Agnese fuori. In spite of a lot of restoration, it gives the impression of being stylistically pure. The catacombs are very interesting. Among other things, a painting of the Madonna without a halo but with a halo above her head, Santa Costanza.". The editor glosses this as follows “St. Agnes outside the walls was founded at a nearby site by Constantia, daughter of Constantine...Saint Constance is the mausoleum for the daughter of Constantine; it has mosaics from the 4th century."

So now you have yet another example of why the wise reader will pay as close attention to Mrs. Jennings’ ‘trivial’ dialog as to Miss Bates’s ‘little matters’. And you ain’t heard nothing yet—wait till my next post, when I’ll tell you how Mrs. Jennings’ glass of Constantia wine is actually the key to one of the most significant plot turns in the shadow story of Sense & Sensibility, as it helps Marianne with what really ails her!

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Shakespeare’s Richard III & Austen’s Richard Morland: Very respectable men who’d never been handsome

In Austen-L, Maria Elena Torres responded to my previous post…http://tinyurl.com/hnhhmrw

  …..as follows:   “Hi Arnie - I'm going to toss a little monkey wrench into this thoughtful post by saying that Jane was aware of the controversy surrounding Richard's true character, and seemed as open to the Walpole point of view as to Shakespeare's point of view:

"Richard the 3d: The Character of this Prince has been in general very severely treated by Historians, but as he was a *York*, I am rather inclined to suppose him a very respectable Man. It has indeed been confidently asserted that he killed his two Nephews & his Wife, but it has also been declared that he did *not* kill his two Nephews, which I am inclined to beleive true; & if this is the case, it may also be affirmed that he did not kill his Wife, for if Perkin Warbeck was really the Duke of York, why might not Lambert Simnel be the Widow of Richard. Whether innocent or guilty, he did not reign long in peace, for Henry Tudor E. of Richmond as great a villain as ever lived, made a great fuss about getting the Crown & having killed the King at the battle of Bosworth, he succeeded to it."​  

Since she displays an open hostility to Henry VII and VIII (as well as to Elizabeth I!), I would have guessed, if going by historical perspectives, that she would have disliked the name Henry much more than Richard! ​That said, taking Shakespeare's play as influential (as is certainly is), I think your suggestion has merit.”

Thanks very much, Maria Elena, for that excellent reaction! I didn’t think to look at the teenaged JA’s view of Richard III, which you quoted, above, but, as I’ll now explain, you’ve just prompted me to uncover yet another, and very crucial, piece of the puzzle, which broadens the scope of JA’s allusion to Richard III, and conclusively demystifies JA’s oft-expressed, supposed dislike of the name “Richard”!

As with many other passages in the 16 year old JA’s satirical History of England, it is very dangerous to take what JA says about Richard III at face value, as if she literally meant what she wrote. To paraphrase Darcy’s admiring comment on Elizabeth Bennet’s playful wit, I have had the pleasure of Jane Austen’s acquaintance long enough to know that she found great enjoyment in occasionally professing opinions which in fact were not her own….and nowhere more so than in her Juvenilia, and in particular her opinions about the past kings and queens of England. There could not be a closer synchronicity than between Elizabeth Bennet’s witty dialog in P&P, and JA’s witty absurdities in her History of England.

And so I suggest to you that, as with her infamous Sharade on James I’s predilection for his Carr-pet, the young author’s pronouncements are more riddles than averrals.

In that vein, my eye was particularly drawn to this line describing Richard III:

“…as he was a York, I am rather inclined to suppose him a very respectable Man.”

Richard III a very respectable man? Really??? The irony fairly drips off the page! I decided to search in JA’s novels, to get a better sense of her usage of that word “respectable” in her fiction, and that’s when I struck pure gold. The narrator’s wry description of Catherine’s father, Mr. Richard Morland, in Northanger Abbey, of which I initially only quoted a portion in my previous post, but will now present in its very revealing fullness, uses that identical phrase:   

“Her father was a clergyman, without being neglected, or poor, and a very respectable man, though his name was Richard — and he had never been handsome.”

Millions of eyes have read that passage in NA during the past two centuries, but none before mine today have ever looked at it through a special “Richard III” lens. When I did, I immediately noticed the giant hint in that post-dash afterthought --- “never been handsome”! Of course we’re right back with Richard III, whose extreme lack of handsomeness is the thread which runs through the heart of Richard III. One of the motors which drives Richard’s relentless, ruthless ambition for the kingship is the way he has been scorned all his life for his deformed hunch-backed appearance, with several characters angrily likening him to a toad, adder, spider, and other unhandsome beasts.

So, to sum up so far, when JA, seemingly as a bit of irrelevant comedy, points out that Mr. Morland had never been handsome, right after saying he was a very respectable man, despite his name being Richard, JA, at 15 already the mistress of ironic understatement, is giving THREE giant hints that all point like a laser beam to Shakespeare’s Richard III----and, as an added inside joke for her family and close friends, to her own juvenile description of him as well!

But that giant three-part wink at Shakespeare’s Richard III points to an even deeper, thematic current of evil masked by the surface of respectability in Northanger Abbey. Look at the following excerpt from Act 3, Scene 7 of Richard III, in which Richard and his co-conspirator Buckingham acts out their roles in a cynical playlet quickly improvised by Richard (called Gloucester in the play text), who briefly dons the mask of a pious hermit more interested in private prayer and contemplation of God than in assuming the throne of England, while Buckingham plays the part of the people’s earnest advocate, persuading Richard to hear a higher call, for the sake of the English people, and accept the crown. It is one of the sharpest and most cynical ironies about the power of a Big Lie, in a play filled with them—and the echoes of it are scattered throughout Northanger Abbey:

GLOUCESTER

…When holy and devout religious men
Are at their beads, 'tis hard to draw them thence,
So sweet is zealous contemplation.

Enter GLOUCESTER aloft, between two Bishops. CATESBY returns

LORD MAYOR  See, where HE STANDS BETWEEN TWO CLERGYMEN!   [Richard Morland, clergymen]

BUCKINGHAM

Two props of virtue for a Christian prince,
To stay him from the fall of vanity:
And, see, a book of prayer in his hand,
True ornaments to know a holy man.
Famous Plantagenet, most gracious prince,
Lend favourable ears to our request;
And pardon us the interruption
Of thy devotion and right Christian zeal.

GLOUCESTER

My lord, there needs no such apology:
I rather do beseech you pardon me,
Who, earnest in the service of my God,
NEGLECT the visitation of my friends.   [Richard Morland, not neglected]
But, leaving this, what is your grace's pleasure?

BUCKINGHAM

Even that, I hope, which pleaseth God above,
And all good men of this ungovern'd isle.

GLOUCESTER

I do suspect I have done some offence
That seems disgracious in the city's eyes,
And that you come to reprehend my ignorance.

BUCKINGHAM

You have, my lord: would it might please your grace,
At our entreaties, to amend that fault!

GLOUCESTER    Else wherefore breathe I in a Christian land?  [Henry Tilney’s famous rant, see below]

BUCKINGHAM

Then know, it is your fault that you resign
The supreme seat, the throne majestical,
The scepter'd office of your ancestors,
Your state of fortune and your due of birth,
The lineal glory of your royal house,
To the corruption of a blemished stock:
Whilst, in the mildness of your sleepy thoughts,
Which here we waken to our country's good,
This noble isle doth want her proper limbs…[it doesn’t take long after this for Richard to accept the crown!]

Most significantly, the Satanic Richard cynically turns truth on its head, when he speaks of breathing in “a Christian land” of England, and JA pays a subtle homage to Richard’s cynical deception, when she has Henry Tilney castigate Catherine for imagining the General to be a wife murderer:    

“If I understand you rightly, you had formed a surmise of such horror as I have hardly words to—Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open? Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting?”

As I’ve pointed out a hundred times in the past 8 years, despite the superficial appearance that Henry has corrected Catherine’s faulty perceptions, JA is really engaged in anti-parody here—she expects us to realize that Henry is actually wrong wrong wrong– English wives were actually the victims of the neglect of Law,  Church, Crown, & Society, which did look the other way as they were abused and neglected. And can you think of a better description of Richard III’s many crimes than we read in Henry’s list of horribles? Richard does commit atrocities, he does connive to twist the law of succession in his favor, he does get away with perpetrating the most outrageous frauds on all those around him in plain sight, by manipulating the perspectives of those observers.

And as a prime example of that, when Richard pulls off his remarkable seduction of Lady Anne, he does it in part with two pathetic claims of “poor” (remember,Richard Morland was not poor) lovesickness:

GLOUCESTER

Look, how this ring encompasseth finger.
Even so thy breast encloseth MY POOR HEART;
Wear both of them, for both of them are thine.
And if THY POOR DEVOTED SUPPLIANT may
But beg one favour at thy gracious hand,
Thou dost confirm his happiness for ever.

So, putting all of the above together with the evidence I presented in my first post yesterday, now I hope you’ll agree I’ve made a conclusive case that JA’s famous aversion to the name Richard was, at its base,  a covert, repeated hint at her longstanding fascination with Shakespeare’s first archvillain, Richard III. She winked at this in her letters mocking the real-life Dr. Hall and Mr. Richard Harvey; in Mrs. Musgrove’s mourning for son Richard in Persuasion; and also in the very respectable but not very handsome Richard Morland in Northanger Abbey!

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter 

The “frightening” reason for Jane Austen’s mysterious antipathy for the name Richard

Yesterday, my wife and I went to the movies with good friends to see the National Theatre Live screening of Richard III, starring Ralph Fiennes, who was magnificently, seductively vile in the title role. The equally stellar supporting cast included Vanessa Redgrave as King Henry VI’s widow, Queen Margaret, whose curses early in the play prophesy the eventual unhorsed fatal downfall of Shakespeare’s first great archvillain.

The three hour performance was emotionally challenging, especially in the aftermath of a US presidential election, which finds an uneasy half of the electorate (myself included) casting a worried collective gaze on a president-elect who was compared six weeks ago to Shakespeare’s Richard III by Stephen Greenblatt, writing with eerie prescience:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/09/opinion/sunday/shakespeare-explains-the-2016-election.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=1

“For his theatrical test case, Shakespeare chose an example closer to home: the brief, unhappy reign in 15th-century England of King Richard III. Richard, as Shakespeare conceived him, was inwardly tormented by insecurity and rage, the consequences of a miserable, unloved childhood and a twisted spine that made people recoil at the sight of him. Haunted by self-loathing and a sense of his own ugliness — he is repeatedly likened to a boar or rooting hog — he found refuge in a feeling of entitlement, blustering overconfidence, misogyny and a merciless penchant for bullying. From this psychopathology, the play suggests, emerged the character’s weird, obsessive determination to reach a goal that looked impossibly far off, a position for which he had no reasonable expectation, no proper qualification and absolutely no aptitude.” END QUOTE

The current production of Richard III also made that eerie contemporary resonance clear. It exerted a subtle, hypnotic appeal to the audience’s Schadenfreude, as Fiennes’s twisted, brilliant, exhibitionistic sociopath constantly confides in us, while he, Iago-like, orchestrates a slow motion royal trainwreck. He pulls the strings on a series of murders of every person he imagines blocks his path to the crown, and seduces women in every direction, only to find himself overwhelmed with guilty dreams once seated on the throne for a brief historical moment.

As always when I see a good production of a Shakespeare play for the first time, it brings aspects of the play to life for me in ways that I can never quite equal from a mere reading of the play, and this was no exception. And, as also regularly happens, a surprising Jane Austen connection popped up when least expected. In Act 1 Scene 2, the young, recently widowed Lady Anne, addressing the shrouded corpse of her murdered father in law (the late King Henry VI), utters a bitter string of insults and curses at the absent Richard, Duke of Gloucester (and future King Richard III), the deformed Machiavel who has recently murdered both Henry VI and his son, Lady Anne’s late husband. Near the end of her speech, she conjures up this macabre fantasy:

If ever [Richard] have child, abortive be it,
Prodigious, and untimely brought to light,
Whose ugly and unnatural aspect
May fright the hopeful mother at the view;
And that be heir to his unhappiness!
If ever he have wife, let her be made
As miserable by the death of him
As I am made by my poor lord and thee!

As I listened to those lines, for the first time I heard a distinct Austenian echo. Do any of you Janeites reading this post hear that same echo? Scroll down to see…..

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In Jane Austen’s Letter #10 dated October 27-28, 1798 to sister Cassandra, Jane infamously makes what appears to be a shocking, and –- dare I say it?---Richard the Third-like?--- heartless comment about a neighbor’s childbearing misfortune: “Mrs. Hall of Sherbourn was brought to bed yesterday of a dead child, some weeks before she expected, oweing to a fright.—I supposed she happened unawares to look at her husband.”

Think about the startlingly close parallels: in both Lady Anne’s final curse, and in Jane Austen’s tasteless joke, we have a mother giving birth to a stillborn child sired by a very ugly father; and that mother suffers a severe fright caused by her suddenly viewing an extremely ugly face (in one case the ugly face of her husband triggering the stillbirth; in the other Lady Anne describes the ugly face of Richard’s as yet imaginary infant son, who takes after his ugly father). This already is all too close for coincidence, but there is much more to this allusion by Jane Austen, once we delve more deeply.

Here’s what Le Faye has to say about Mrs. Hall and her frighteningly ugly husband: “Reverend Dr. Henry Hall was the vicar of Monk (West) Sherborne and Pamber in Hampshire. “Dr. Hall may have been ugly, but his parishioners remembered him as being ‘a man of a kindly disposition and none ever went to the rectory without being well cared for”.  “

Despite Dr. Hall’s seeming to be undeserving of JA’s bile, I recalled that I had first written about that very bad joke of JA’s more than five years ago here…  http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/02/dr-halls-stillborn-child-and-mrs.html   …a post in which I also showed that JA had revisited a variation of her bad joke on poor Dr. Hall in Letter 19, written only 6 1/2 months after Letter 10: "…at the bottom of Kingsdown Hill we met a gentleman in a buggy, who, on minute examination, turned out to be Dr. Hall — and Dr. Hall in such very deep mourning that either his mother, his wife, or himself must be dead. These are all of our acquaintance who have yet met our eyes."

Clearly, Dr. Hall triggered some pretty strong hostility from JA! And think about how that equally black humor in Letter 19 resonates with Shakespeare’s Lady Anne who, in the same speech I quoted, above, is “in such very deep mourning” because her father in law and her husband were indeed dead! And think also about how the real life Dr. Hall was in fact much older than his young wife, just as Richard III was much older than his wife-for-a-brief-time before he had her murdered, Lady Anne!

So it is pretty clear from the above two examples that Jane Austen, in writing to sister Cassandra, strongly associated the unhandsome Dr. Hall with Shakespeare’s Machiavellian deformed monster, Richard III. We may never know why this was so, but it seems sure that Cassandra was in on this literary joke. But that’s still not all.

In that above-linked post of mine five years ago, without the slightest inkling that Richard III might be involved, I wrote the following about Austen’s two epistolary swipes at Dr. Hall and their “...strong parallels to the passage about Mrs. Musgrove and her dead son [in Persuasion]….: "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."

Here we have another mother mourning a son dead far too young. But surely you now also recall the Christian name of Mrs. Musgrove’s ‘thick-headed, unfeeling, unprofitable’ son ---Richard, as in Richard III! And Anne Elliot shares the Christian name of Lady Anne in Richard III. The coincidences pile upon each other in a remarkable heap of veiled allusion on JA’s part, spread among her letters and her fiction.

So, have I just finally found the explanation to one of the great Austenian mysteries --- just as it’s not clear what was so bad about Dr. Hall, many have wondered what’s so bad about the name “Richard”? Why is it that Mr. Morland in NA is called “a very respectable man, though his name was Richard”? In Letter 6 dated Sept. 16, 1796, to CEA, JA wrote “Mr Richard Harvey’s marriage is put off, till he has got a Better Christian name”. And why was Richard Musgrove called a “troublesome, hopeless son”? 

Many Austen scholars have attempted to explain this mysterious antipathy for this very common English

surname, in both her letters and her novels, and I even wondered long ago whether it might have anything to do with Shakespeare’s arch-villain Richard III. But until today, I never had anything specific to go on beyond the name itself, and other than my knowing how deeply JA drank in general from Shakespeare’s bottomless well.

So I now see Jane Austen, barely into her twenties, seemingly deeply immersed in, and fascinated by the character of Richard III. Might Richard III have provided part of the inspiration for JA’s great female Machiavelle, Lady Susan Vernon, which was written by her during the same time period as Letters 10 and 15 containing her Dr. Hall vendetta.  

And she never lost that fascination ---look at what she famously wrote to her sister Cassandra 15 years after Letter 15, while watching a London stage performance of the Don Giovanni story:  “I have seen nobody on the stage who has been a more interesting Character than that compound of Cruelty and Lust”. I cannot imagine a better description of the character of Shakespeare’s Richard III than that, and so we see that JA’s fascination with seductive literary Machiavels never waned from one end of her writing career to the other!

So please indulge me as I conclude with “A Richard, a Richard, my kingdom for a Richard!”

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Kate Hamill's Shakespearean adaptation of Sense & Sensibility at the Folger & in NYC

In further reply to Nancy's request for tales of the recently concluded JASNA AGM in Washington DC, I will now speak about one of the two highlights for me -- seeing the stage adaptation of Sense & Sensibility at the Folger Library theatre. Here are four links describing it:

http://www.dramatists.com/cgi-bin/db/single.asp?key=5174

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/05/theater/review-a-whirlwind-of-delicious-gossip-in-sense-sensibility.html?_r=0    [Brantley’s review is particularly generous and accurate]

http://www.folger.edu/sense-and-sensibility

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/10/31/folgers-sense-and-sensibility-a-hit-thats-always-moving/

Kate Hamill’s adaptation, which originated off Broadway in NYC a couple of years ago, is firstrate in all respects. I honestly can’t think of anything I didn’t like, and that is rare. In the course of 160 minutes of decidedly unsquirmy watching, pretty much the entire story of the novel gets told, and told well. Hamill’s seamless blending of the novel’s dialog and Hamill’s own is remarkably well executed—just as with Whit Stillman’s film Love and Friendship (aka Lady Susan), excellent taste and discretion is shown in that delicate enterprise. There is a nice blend of humor, romance, and pathos in what is selected for enactment from the novel text, very much in the spirit of Emma Thompson’s iconic 1994 film version, especially in the way that the loving, contentious relationship between the elder Dashwood sisters is brought to vivid life, but this play is by no means a knockoff of Thompson.

The one surprise was the way Edward was depicted--not the endearing, quiet, sad way Hugh Grant played him, but as more of a fool and buffoon, i.e., more like his brother Robert, who is even more over the top in this production. But that was okay with me, because I am one who finds the Edward Ferrars of the novel to be an extremely compromised hero – Hugh Grant is NOT Jane Austen’s Edward---just as I see Edmund Bertram as less than an attractive marital option for Fanny in MP.

The performers were uniformly excellent, even spectacular; totally professional and often inspired, the small cast effortlessly handling the doubling of many of the roles. My special personal favorite was Caroline Stefanie Clay, who was an overpowering force of nature in the role of Mrs. Jennings.

Here’s what I wrote about Hamill’s production in February, after reading Brantley’s review and before I knew I’d get to see it at the Folger:

“While you should read Brantley’s cogent review in its entirety, I was particularly struck by vivid this description:

“And suddenly, they’re all talking at once, wildly and obsessively — to us, to one another, to themselves. What we’re hearing is a whirlwind of gossip, of voices bearing conflicting truths and falsehoods about love affairs and scandals, independent incomes and inherited real estate. Such gossip is the architect of Austen’s society. And perhaps the most ingenious element of Mr. Tucker’s production is its use of gossip as the force that shapes the destinies of Austen’s characters. No matter how private the scene, there are always eavesdroppers nearby, waiting to spread and reconfigure the latest rumors.”

That tells me that Hamill has understood just how crucial the sense of claustrophobic conversation, subject to constant risk of overhearing, is in all Jane Austen’s novels (and her letters, for that matter). It  results in one drawing-room tete-a-tete and ensemble after another, some of which are subtler versions of the famous scenes in Much Ado About Nothing, when the matchmaking pranksters stage performances of “accidental” eavesdropping, in order to gull Beatrice and Benedick into acknowledging their repressed love for each other.” END QUOTE

I can say now, after actually seeing the play, that Hamill was, to my eyes, acutely aware of the Shakespearean romantic comedy aspects of S&S, because I had a sense, as I watched, that I almost could be watching a lost Shakespeare play written in prose – it really was that good! She is a play-writing talent to be reckoned with!

My seat in the balcony, stage right along the front of the stage, looking down at the performers, was a unique, interesting perspective from which to observe the very clever staging which all the reviews have praised, involving the never ending sliding of chairs to and fro around the stage in a kaleidoscope of shifting scenes that generated a great deal of variety and nuance with minimal props.

That staging ingenuity reminded me a lot of the production of Pride & Prejudice at the Enso Theatre here in Portland that I saw and enjoyed a lot earlier this year, and now I suspect that Kate Lushington might have seen Hamill’s adaptation first, and drew wonderful inspiration from it. This is a way of updating Jane Austen without sacrificing the core novel, which is what I found unsatisfying about video adaptations like The Lizzy Bennet Diaries , which are at heart fanfic that take enormous liberties  with Austen’s story.

Hamill’s adaptation will not shed surprising light on Austen’s novel for any longtime Janeite, but it does bring the novel to life in a vibrant, entertaining, witty fashion, and that is good enough for me! So, if you get a chance to see this production anytime soon, see it! Its run has been extended till Nov. 13 at the Folger in DC (theatre capacity about 300, by my visual count), and, after a pause, it is running again in NYC, with no end in sight, which is no surprise given the universal thumbs up word of mouth (forgive my mixing metaphors) the show has so deservedly received.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode onTwitter

SHADOW ALERT: “Labours not her own”: Jane Austen’s Concealed Pregnancy in Emma

Nancy wrote: “Any one go to the [JASNA] AGM [about Emma in Wash. DC a few weeks ago]? I would love to hear about the workshops and breakout sessions you attended. Please share.”

Nancy, I did go, and had not realized that I forgot to post about it afterwards, as I had intended, so thanks for the jog to do it now! I have three separate posts to write, and this is the first.

I was happy to see Ellen there, and am grateful to her for the following generous anecdote about me that she included in her last blog post:

“A small snapshot for now: Arnie Perlstein was there and responded to the lecturer of the key note address. This lecturer (semi-famous with a book written from a post-colonial stance on Austen) asserted rather incoherently about there being so much that is invisible in Emma, but he did not go on to tell us what this was: the lecturer did take a page where servants were mentioned but he did not try to prove 18th century readers seriously read the book to find out about the Woodhouse servants. He seemed to try to make jokes, to have a jocular stance: when he would quote something the audience found funny, they did laugh, and he looked relieved. I sometimes wonder if the speakers are told to try to “lighten” it up; they tend to ride over the nebulous. Arnie got up so gratified and began to talk of Jane Fairfax’s pregnancy and some other of his favorite theories. The lecturer looked embarrassed. But it fit his thesis. Arnie was stopped. Since the academic was too cowardly or careful to say what these invisible depths were (perhaps sexual?), his lecture was to my mind exposed as having nothing in it (invisible?).”

END QUOTE FROM ELLEN’S BLOG

Let me provide some important, additional context for Ellen’s kind comments about me. The lecturer was U. of East Anglia Professor Bharat Tandon, the editor of a high profile 2012 edition of Emma, and his Introduction to that edition includes the following suspicious passage: 

"the historic ambience surrounding Austen's words came to reveal, not some secret text that ran completely against the grain of what I thought I knew--The Jane Austen Code, as it were--but resonances that only deepened my appreciation of those words, the care with which Austen's relatively few details were chosen and pitched to be suggestive to readers less distant from them then we are now."

Of course that is a major passive-aggressive, almost sarcastic swipe at me and my “shadow story” theory, in which Tandon didn’t even show me the minimal respect of naming me. Now that I think about that,  maybe that’s because then he’d have had to also provide a footnote citing my blog, and he wanted me to remain “invisible” to the wider reading world, especially that part which takes its literary wisdom only from literary academics, and who don’t read Austen blogs, or even read the posts in these groups!  Anyway, despite not naming me explicitly, Tandon unmistakably tags three key elements of my Austen scholarly persona and stump speech: “The Jane Austen Code”; “ran completely against the grain”; and “some secret text”.

Not very nice of Tandon; kinda mean, if I really think about it. But I prefer instead to reframe it as unwitting flattery. Clearly my claims about Austen’s shadow stories -- backed up by my obsessive documentation of so many textual details of the Jane Austen Code that provide substance to those shadows --- have really gotten under his skin. My ideas are like grains of sand which have gotten under the hard shell of his orthodox reading of Emma, such that he can’t put them out of his mind. They form “pearls” of inconvenient, uncomfortable wisdom, as it were. And yet, he doesn’t have a clue how to give an alternative explanation of all of Emma’s shadows that is anywhere close to mine in power. Such a quandary—or, more apt to Emma --- Poor Professor Tandon!

So, now if you reread what Ellen wrote, above, in light of that context, you’ll be ready to see the poetic justice of my comment to him as the first responder in his Q&A, which I’ll now recount. Tandon’s plenary talk…. http://jasna.org/agms/washingtondc/plenary.html    …was entitled ““Labours Not Her Own”: Emma and the Invisible World”. That quote is not from Austen, but it is from a work that Jane knew very well, so much so that she alluded to it very saliently in S&S: the “infallible” Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock. I don’t believe he ever actually made the sort of noteworthy allusive connection between Pope’s poem and Emma, which one might have expected from his title, nor in fact did he give one single original interpretation of text in Emma during the entire hour he spoke.

Speaking of Tandon’s title, I hadn’t paid attention to it before I sat down in the large ballroom audience to hear his talk, but as soon as I did focus on it, and heard him begin to speak about what is invisible in Emma, I knew in a flash what my Q&A comment would be. This is more or less what I said right after the polite applause died down:

“Professor Tandon, I agree that there is much that is invisible hidden in the shadows of Emma, but if I may pick up on your quotation from Pope, I’d suggest that the most dazzling jewel hidden just beneath the text of Emma, waiting to be fetched to the surface by the alert reader, is the “labour” endured by the shadow heroine of the novel, Jane Fairfax, about whom Emma and therefore also the reader obsesses. In other words, I am suggesting that the “labour” is Jane’s concealed pregnancy.”

Ellen is correct, I enjoyed the mixed wave of laughter and gasps that greeted my punch line, which (as Ellen also pointed out) left Tandon nearly speechless. I wish I could remember his reply, but it was not responsive. I wonder if he realized in that moment, or perhaps later, that I was that very same purveyor of “The Jane Austen Code” whom he had taken that unprovoked swipe at 4 years ago. In any event, while he was replying, the moderator made sure to snatch the mike out of my hand, no doubt out of fear I might say something else scandalous. But I had a dozen people tell me later in the conference how much they enjoyed that moment, and that was reward enough!

So thanks again, Ellen –who herself asked a couple of intelligent questions in other Q&A’s at sessions I also attended – do you recall what you asked, Ellen? Your comments about Tandon have provided me with an independent validation of my own reaction to Tandon’s talk, which I found to be 95% vague theorizing often veering away from Emma, and less than 5% actual words from Emma – and of that 5%, pretty near to 0% original insight into the shadows of Emma.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Emma’s Lenten giving-up of her presumptuous assumption of matchmaking

Among my circle of friends in college, comedy began and ended with the wacky brilliance of the Firesign Theatre: http://firesigntheatre.com/media/media.php?item=wc-rv    Among their many brilliant verbal concoctions, “the Powerhouse Church of the Presumptuous Assumption of the Blinding Light” ranks very high. I never thought I’d have a chance to connect the Firesign Theatre to Jane Austen, but today is the day it has actually happened, as you’ll see, below.

In Janeites today, Jane Fox posed another one of her excellent questions:  “On first seeing Captain Tilney, Catherine Morland thinks, "[H]is air was more assuming, and his countenance less prepossessing.” From the OED, I get that by “prepossessing” JA meant: “giving a favourable first impression; attractive, pleasing." But what did "assuming" mean? Does "taking for granted that one has a right to do so and so" fit?"

Yes, Jane, subject only to this tweak: “unjustifiably taking for granted that one has a right to do so and so”.  I find your question excellent, because it points to something noteworthy in all of JA’s writing, not just Northanger Abbey. We find further evidence for ascribing your proposed meaning of “assuming” to Catherine’s take on Captain Tilney, and much more, when we turn to Emma, which contains four of the surprisingly small total of six other usages of the word “assuming” by JA in all her novels combined (the other two are in Mansfield Park and Persuasion, respectively, and are not noteworthy).

Things get more interesting when you realize, as I will now show, that all four of those usages in Emma relate directly to the “assuming” Mr. Elton! So come with me on another tour of JA’s incredibly fine workmanship in carefully crafting, as it sometimes seems to me, every single word of this 160,460-word masterpiece!

As to the first two such usages, Emma uses “assuming” exactly as you defined it, Jane, and as we today would use it-- “presuming”: first (in Chapter 15) in a verbal, and then (in Ch. 16) in an adjectival, form:

[Mr. Elton] “…Is this fair, Mrs. Weston?—Judge between us. Have not I some right to complain? I am sure of your kind support and aid."

Emma saw Mrs. Weston's surprize, and felt that it must be great, at an address which, in words and manner, was ASSUMING TO HIMSELF THE RIGHT of first interest in her [Emma]; and as for herself, she was too much provoked and offended to have the power of directly saying any thing to the purpose. She could only give him a look; but it was such a look as she thought must restore him to his senses….”

AND

“…It was dreadfully mortifying; but Mr. Elton was proving himself, in many respects, the very reverse of what she had meant and believed him; PROUD, ASSUMING, CONCEITED; very full of his own claims, and little concerned about the feelings of others….”

So far, that’s pretty cut and dried, but now here’s where it gets much more interesting. In her latter two usages, she plays with shades of the meaning of “assuming” in the subtlest, most ironic, and highly thematic ways.

First, later in that same Ch. 16, as Emma reflects back on her Elton courtship snafu in a refreshingly self-critical mode, the word “assuming” might upon a quick reading appear to refer only to an error of interpretation on Emma’s part, by Emma having “taken as given” the apparent (but mistaken) fact that Elton was in love with Harriet:

“If she had so misinterpreted his feelings, she had little right to wonder that he, with self-interest to blind him, should have mistaken hers. The first error and the worst lay at her door. It was foolish, it was wrong, to take so active a part in bringing any two people together. It was adventuring too far, ASSUMING TOO MUCH, making light of what ought to be serious, a trick of what ought to be simple. She was quite concerned and ashamed, and resolved to do such things no more.”

However, a closer reading reveals that this phrase “assuming too much” is quite ambiguous. It is equally plausible for the alert reader to detect that Emma has, by thinking of herself as “assuming too much”, unconsciously hoist herself on her own rhetorical petard. The same derogatory meaning of “assuming” that she has just applied twice to Mr. Elton, also fits Emma’s own actions to a tee! Emma seems to me to have unconsciously portrayed herself as having proudly and conceitedly PRESUMED she had the right to run everyone else’s love lives!

And here’s where that Firesign Theatre word-concoction comes in: when it comes to presumptuous assumption, Emma is every bit as guilty, albeit in a different way, as Mr. Elton, and maybe even more guilty. Elton presumes to court a woman of a higher social status, and to the snobbish heiress Emma, that is a highly blamable “assuming” on his part. But most readers today, and many even back then, would not consider that a fault at all, if (a big “if”) he actually felt strong feelings for her, and was not just a fortune hunter. Whereas Emma presumes to run the romantic life of a woman of a lower status – and that is, to most readers both then and today, a truly blamable sort of “assuming”! So what do you think? Does Emma consciously intend to blame herself for that sort of presumptuous assumption?

In either event, isn’t that nugget of irony the essence of JA’s moral objectivity and brilliant psychological insight? JA’s usage of this single word “assuming” in the above passage conveys to us the message that Emma judges Elton for being “assuming”, in an act psychologists today would call “projection”, precisely because being “assuming” is Emma’s own worst character flaw!

And then, as we move forward in the novel, it turns out that Emma has not given it up, because, after about six weeks go by in the novel’s chronology, that just happens to take us to the fourth usage, when Emma returns to the matchmaking arena. She first lights upon the bright idea of Frank as a romantic interest for Harriet, to replace Elton, in Chapter 31:

“…It was well to have a comfort in store on Harriet's behalf, though it might be wise to let the fancy touch it seldom; for evil in that quarter was at hand. As Frank Churchill's arrival had succeeded Mr. Elton's engagement in the conversation of Highbury, as the latest interest had entirely borne down the first, so now upon Frank Churchill's disappearance, Mr. Elton's concerns were ASSUMING the most irresistible form.—His wedding-day was named. He would soon be among them again; Mr. Elton and his bride…”

At first blush, it might appear that JA is just being word-playful, associating Elton a fourth and last time with that word “assuming”, but this time with a third, neutral meaning, that of Mr. Elton’s upcoming nuptials “taking on” a strong appeal for the Highbury gossip circuit. Like Shakespeare, you might say, JA just could not resist a pun, and that’s all there is to that.

But….think about it--- maybe JA intentionally inserted another one of her rare usages of “assuming” in this particular paragraph, precisely because this passage describes the very instant when Emma, after a six week period of restraint (call it her matchmaking Lent) once again becomes “assuming” and presumes to start scheming to match Harriet with Frank! I, for one, suspect the country clergyman’s daughter of this last, sly invocation of the Christian season of giving-up.

So, even on this smallest of scales, we find Emma to be an exquisitely chiseled jewel of a novel, with even such tiny details as nuances of the word “assuming” receiving such supersubtle workmanship; tiny details which, upon closer analysis, prove to carry significant thematic weight.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Jane in Trumpland: General Tilney & John Thorpe as Austen's conjoined-twin prophetic nighmare of Donald Trump

Yesterday, Diane Reynolds wrote the following in Janeites & Austen-L:       "I saw [Michael] Moore in Trumpland via iTunes last night and thought it was excellent..there is an Austenian quality in the way he not just sides with, but deeply empathizes with, the underdog--what it feels like to be Hillary: Clinton as Fanny Price, anyone? He never evokes Austen, but shows us a woman who if she has not suffered the pains of tyranny (and perhaps she has, giving up her last name and chased back as First Lady to the tea parties) and neglect, has nonetheless been ridiculed, scorned, and misunderstood; and he casts shame on the mockers too: all done in a comic vein."

On your recommendation, Diane, I’ll see Moore’s film in the near future. I firmly believe that Hillary has had to develop layers of protective “skin” (extreme caution and calculation) to survive the furious waves of misogyny and sexism that her career of forthright, passionate expressions of feminism have long provoked. I’m reminded of how Mary Wollstonecraft’s reputation was savagely assassinated in the aftermath of her awful death in childbirth, when Godwin’s memoir revealed too much about her fearless (Sir Thomas Bertram would have called it “disgusting”) independence in her life choices.

Hillary will be as great a President as Obama, who’s been pretty great. We must however expect that her presidency will be a lightning rod nationally for an uptick of misogyny, the same way Obama's two terms led to the same vis a vis white racism. When you rip off a scab covering a deep, septic abscess on the soul of a nation that has been there infecting it for centuries, there will of necessity be more pain in the short term. But in the aftermath, we will be a significantly less racist and sexist society, as children come of age in a country where a black or female face will be all they’ve ever seen in the Oval Office.

As for Trump, I had intended to write a full reply to your excellent earlier post, Diane, about him as the doppelganger of the rich, misogynistic ogre in The Great Gatsby. However I got sidetracked by attending the 2016 JASNA AGM, and so only wrote a brief reply. I am so sick of Trump at this point, but I must now respond more fully by pointing out and showing via textual quotations, that Jane Austen accurately portrayed men just like Trump in several of her novels, but in one most of all -- Northanger Abbey. By a curious twist of historical fate, in her prophetic mode, JA split Trump into two male ogres. 

First, I see half of Trump in the following six passages describing General Tilney:

ONE: An older man with an eye for young women:       “Soon after their reaching the bottom of the set, Catherine perceived herself to be earnestly regarded by a gentleman who stood among the lookers-on, immediately behind her partner. He was a very handsome man, of a commanding aspect, past the bloom, but not past the vigour of life; and with his eye still directed towards her, she saw him presently address Mr. Tilney in a familiar whisper. Confused by his notice, and blushing from the fear of its being excited by something wrong in her appearance, she turned away her head. But while she did so, the gentleman retreated, and her partner, coming nearer, said, “I see that you guess what I have just been asked. That gentleman knows your name, and you have a right to know his. It is General Tilney, my father.”

Catherine’s answer was only “Oh!”—but it was an “Oh!” expressing everything needful: attention to his words, and perfect reliance on their truth. With real interest and strong admiration did her eye now follow the general, as he moved through the crowd, and “How handsome a family they are!” was her secret remark.   ….The general attended her himself to the street-door, saying everything gallant as they went downstairs, admiring the elasticity of her walk, which corresponded exactly with the spirit of her dancing, and making her one of the most graceful bows she had ever beheld, when they parted. Catherine, delighted by all that had passed, proceeded gaily to Pulteney Street, walking, as she concluded, with great elasticity, though she had never thought of it before.”  END QUOTE  It is truly disgusting to compare the above passages in which the General’s graying good looks and graceful manners charm the naïve young Catherine, on the one hand, to the way Donald Trump switched on a dime from his crude boasting about sexual assault to Billy Bush to his smiling flattery of the soap star he has just been ogling, on the other.

TWO: A man with lots of money, who provides employment and a high standard of living to a son:

“This is a somewhat heavy call upon your brother’s fortitude,” observed the general to Eleanor. “Woodston will make but a sombre appearance today.”  “Is it a pretty place?” asked Catherine.

“What say you, Eleanor? Speak your opinion, for ladies can best tell the taste of ladies in regard to places as well as men. I think it would be acknowledged by the most impartial eye to have many recommendations. The house stands among fine meadows facing the south-east, with an excellent kitchen-garden in the same aspect; the walls surrounding which I built and stocked myself about ten years ago, for the benefit of my son. It is a family living, Miss Morland; and the property in the place being chiefly my own, you may believe I take care that it shall not be a bad one. Did Henry’s income depend solely on this living, he would not be ill-provided for. Perhaps it may seem odd, that with only two younger children, I should think any profession necessary for him; and certainly there are moments when we could all wish him disengaged from every tie of business. But though I may not exactly make converts of you young ladies, I am sure your father, Miss Morland, would agree with me in thinking it expedient to give every young man some employment. The money is nothing, it is not an object, but employment is the thing. Even Frederick, my eldest son, you see, who will perhaps inherit as considerable a landed property as any private man in the county, has his profession.”  In the heartless cad Captain Tilney, do we not have a Regency Era version of Donald Trump’s two despicable sons?

THREE: A man with lots of money who loves showing off his YUUUGE estate to young women:

“Something had been said the evening before of her being shown over the house, and he now offered himself as her conductor; and though Catherine had hoped to explore it accompanied only by his daughter, it was a proposal of too much happiness in itself, under any circumstances, not to be gladly accepted; for she had been already eighteen hours in the abbey, and had seen only a few of its rooms. The netting-box, just leisurely drawn forth, was closed with joyful haste, and she was ready to attend him in a moment. “And when they had gone over the house, he promised himself moreover the pleasure of accompanying her into the shrubberies and garden.” She curtsied her acquiescence. “But perhaps it might be more agreeable to her to make those her first object. The weather was at present favourable, and at this time of year the uncertainty was very great of its continuing so. Which would she prefer? He was equally at her service. Which did his daughter think would most accord with her fair friend’s wishes? But he thought he could discern. Yes, he certainly read in Miss Morland’s eyes a judicious desire of making use of the present smiling weather. But when did she judge amiss? The abbey would be always safe and dry. He yielded implicitly, and would fetch his hat and attend them in a moment.” He left the room, and Catherine, with a disappointed, anxious face, began to speak of her unwillingness that he should be taking them out of doors against his own inclination, under a mistaken idea of pleasing her; but she was stopped by Miss Tilney’s saying, with a little confusion, “I believe it will be wisest to take the morning while it is so fine; and do not be uneasy on my father’s account; he always walks out at this time of day.”

Catherine did not exactly know how this was to be understood. Why was Miss Tilney embarrassed? Could there be any unwillingness on the general’s side to show her over the abbey? The proposal was his own. And was not it odd that he should always take his walk so early?...She was struck, however, beyond her expectation, by the grandeur of the abbey, as she saw it for the first time from the lawn...Catherine had seen nothing to compare with it; and her feelings of delight were so strong, that without waiting for any better authority, she boldly burst forth in wonder and praise. The general listened with assenting gratitude; and it seemed as if his own estimation of Northanger had waited unfixed till that hour.

The kitchen-garden was to be next admired, and he led the way to it across a small portion of the park.

The number of acres contained in this garden was such as Catherine could not listen to without dismay, ...The walls seemed countless in number, endless in length; a village of hot-houses seemed to arise among them, and a whole parish to be at work within the enclosure. The general was flattered by her looks of surprise, which told him almost as plainly, as he soon forced her to tell him in words, that she had never seen any gardens at all equal to them before; and he then modestly owned that, “without any ambition of that sort himself—without any solicitude about it—he did believe them to be unrivalled in the kingdom. If he had a hobby-horse, it was that. He loved a garden. Though careless enough in most matters of eating, he loved good fruit—or if he did not, his friends and children did. There were great vexations, however, attending such a garden as his. The utmost care could not always secure the most valuable fruits. The pinery had yielded only one hundred in the last year. Mr. Allen, he supposed, must feel these inconveniences as well as himself.”…Having taken her into every division, and led her under every wall, till she was heartily weary of seeing and wondering, he suffered the girls at last to seize the advantage of an outer door, and then expressing his wish to examine the effect of some recent alterations about the tea-house, proposed it as no unpleasant extension of their walk, if Miss Morland were not tired. …”

FOUR: A lecherous older man with a dangerous interest in visiting, unannounced and uninvited, the bedroom of his young female houseguest in the middle of the night:         

“Catherine walked on to her chamber…Catherine thought she heard [Eleanor’s] step in the gallery, and listened for its continuance; but all was silent. Scarcely, however, had she convicted her fancy of error, when the noise of something moving close to her door made her start; it seemed as if someone was touching the very doorway—and in another moment a slight motion of the lock proved that some hand must be on it. She trembled a little at the idea of anyone’s approaching so cautiously; but resolving not to be again overcome by trivial appearances of alarm, or misled by a raised imagination, she stepped quietly forward, and opened the door. Eleanor, and only Eleanor, stood there. Catherine’s spirits, however, were tranquillized but for an instant, for Eleanor’s cheeks were pale, and her manner greatly agitated. Though evidently intending to come in, it seemed an effort to enter the room, and a still greater to speak when there. Catherine, supposing some uneasiness on Captain Tilney’s account, could only express her concern by silent attention, obliged her to be seated, rubbed her temples with lavender-water, and hung over her with affectionate solicitude. “My dear Catherine, you must not—you must not indeed—” were Eleanor’s first connected words. “I am quite well. This kindness distracts me—I cannot bear it—I come to you on such an errand!”  “Errand! To me!”  “How shall I tell you! Oh! How shall I tell you!” END QUOTE

Has the possibility ever occurred to you that it was General Tilney’s hand on the lock of Catherine’s bedroom door, but that Eleanor arrived at that very instant to intercept her father, and then Eleanor knew that she had to send Catherine away immediately, before the General could fulfill his dark intent to have his way with Catherine while she lay sleeping in his home?

FIVE: A late night devotee of paranoid right wing conspiracy theories about the "dangerous" "unpatriotic" countrymen who don't agree with his politics:     

“After an evening, the little variety and seeming length of which made her peculiarly sensible of Henry’s importance among them, she was heartily glad to be dismissed; though it was a look from the general not designed for her observation which sent his daughter to the bell. When the butler would have lit his master’s candle, however, he was forbidden. The latter was not going to retire. “I have many pamphlets to finish,” said he to Catherine, “before I can close my eyes, and perhaps may be poring over the affairs of the nation for hours after you are asleep. Can either of us be more meetly employed? My eyes will be blinding for the good of others, and yours preparing by rest for future mischief.”

But neither the business alleged, nor the magnificent compliment, could win Catherine from thinking that some very different object must occasion so serious a delay of proper repose. To be kept up for hours, after the family were in bed, by stupid pamphlets was not very likely. There must be some deeper cause: something was to be done which could be done only while the household slept…”

Can’t you just see General Tilney Tweeting at 3 am about Jacobin conspiracies against God and England?

SIX: A husband who did not treat his wife well: 

“Catherine, at any rate, heard enough to feel that in suspecting General Tilney of either murdering or shutting up his wife, she had scarcely sinned against his character, or magnified his cruelty.

And I see the other half of Trump in John Thorpe, a man who boasts about his carriages and horses as if it would impress a young woman of taste and intelligence; a xenophobe, misogynist, anti-semite; and a sexual predator who thinks nothing of falsely imprisoning a young woman in a small space from which she cannot escape. Most Janeites can readily recall the passages in NA which illustrate each of these repellant characteristics of John Thorpe.

And guess what? General Tilney and John Thorpe do converse on at least two occasions in the novel, both of them, not coincidentally, focused on their shared, sexually predatory obsession with Catherine Morland -- so Jane Austen herself already conjoined the two of them at the hip (or some nearby, undersized part of their anatomy) as a collective portrait of the ultimate sexual predator prowling the social landscape of everyday England.

It's eerie to think about how apt these parallels are, and so it just provides me further confirmation that men like Trump were all over the place in Jane Austen's world – a world in which they did not have to worry about any legal consequences for their horrific acts against women-- it was all "normal", as is reflected ironically in Henry Tilney’s famous rant:

“If I understand you rightly, you had formed a surmise of such horror as I have hardly words to—Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open? Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting?”

In Austen’s England, domestic atrocities against women were an everyday occurrence, and what we’ve learned about Donald Trump in the past few weeks alerts us that it’s still all too common today, even in a country on the threshold of electing its first female President. I believe Jane Austen would be thrilled to see Hillary take on that awesome mantle, but she’d also be warning us all against complacency.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter