And, most particularly, we can esteem Fanny’s resourcefulness when she is returned to her awful Portsmouth family. There she brings order where she can, assisting one of her brothers in his departure and introducing a sister, Susan, to the pleasures of literature. She saves Susan, in fact, by bringing her to Mansfield Park, where her life will be greatly improved. It is this instance of the helpless coming to the rescue of the even more tragically helpless that wins our hearts and convinces us, once again, that Austen has read all the signs and correctly apportioned the rewards.
Mansfield Park, in three volumes, selling for 18 shillings, was published in the spring of 1814, and its author was identified only as the same Lady who had written Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. Silence followed, though Jane Austen searched diligently for reviews. A parallel blow of silence came from her family, and she began to suspect they disliked the novel or else were already accustomed to her publications—there goes Aunt Jane again with one of her novels!
In fact, there were other distractions. Edward Knight was fighting a legal battle over his land holdings. And the wars in Europe had been heating up. France had been invaded by Prussia, Russia, and Austria, and the British forces under Wellington crossed the Pyrenees, heading north. A mere month or so before the publication of Mansfield Park, Napoléon was exiled to the island of Elba. Not surprisingly, the buzz of conversation at Chawton concerned events other than the publication of a maiden aunt’s third novel, which was, though no one said so directly, not quite up to the spirit of the previous two. The book was conservative in a time of reckless change, allowing the traditional values of reflection to win over the modish and stylish excitement represented by Henry and Mary Crawford. It is an awkward novel to appreciate in our own times; even in its original year of publication it must have seemed easy to overlook.
Novelists, though, tend to be solipsistic, especially in the fragile days immediately following publication. Austen decided on the somewhat humiliating idea of collecting the opinions of family and friends and copying these into a notebook titled “Opinions of Mansfield Park.”
Her brother Francis observed that “Fanny is a delightful Character!” and he very much admired his sister’s handling of the character of Aunt Norris, who is one of the evil women of literature, almost too wicked to be amusing, a bully and sycophant who is satisfyingly punished in the course of the novel. “You need not fear,” said Francis, “the publication being discreditable to the talents of it’s [sic] author.” Mrs. Austen found Fanny “insipid.” Jane’s two favorite nieces, Anna and Fanny, were divided on the subject of Fanny Price; Anna couldn’t abide her, but Fanny professed admiration. Without a doubt it was Cassandra’s opinion that mattered the most, and hers survives, on paper anyway, as rather chilly: It was “quite as clever, tho’ not so brilliant” as Pride and Prejudice. Henry resorted to the phrase that all squirming and dissatisfied readers use when speaking to an author about her work: The novel, he said, was “extremely interesting.” Even contemporary novelists feel the pain, and subtext, of that particular coded message, “extremely interesting.” Henry’s wife Eliza had died a year earlier—probably from breast cancer—and perhaps he was not in a mood to concentrate on what his sister’s book accomplishes so marvelously: the handling of its large cast of characters, its sense of theatrical expansiveness, and its brave exploration of social injustice.
Austen quotes (a little desperately) a friend, Mr. Cooke, who claims Mansfield Park to be “the most sensible Novel he ever read.” Her anxious seeking of opinions concerning her novel, and her careful recording of them, gesture toward her own uneasiness with what she had written. She had intended to write about the subject of church ordination, and yet the novel slides away from that subject more often than toward it. It is a novel about belonging and not belonging, about love between siblings, about fine gradations of morality, and, ultimately, about human noise and silence, action and stillness.
Clearly she was disappointed in its reception. But she was already doing what any discouraged novelist does: She was beginning a new novel, Emma, which was to be a master-piece.
20
READERS OF Emma like to remind themselves that this is the novel in which we hear the remarkable line: “One half of the world cannot understand the pleasure of the other.” There are readers who are unable to understand the appeal of Emma, and even its appreciators may feel trapped in a discussion in which Emma Woodhouse is declared to be a rich, rather nasty spoiled brat, Mr. Woodhouse a bit over the top, Mr. Knightley a cold potato who is not as sexy as Mr. Darcy of Pride and Prejudice, and the whole Jane Fairfax/Frank Churchill plot a rather clumsy appendage that never quite gets brought to life. All this is true, and the reader also remembers Jane Austen’s own concern about Emma herself: that no one would love this young woman the way she, Emma’s creator, loved her.
In this novel, more than any of the others, readers tend to focus on the single most important character rather than on the architecture of the novel—always a problem with Jane Austen criticism. Emma is a puzzle: rich, beautiful, and delighted to be Miss Woodhouse, the unchallenged leader of Highbury society. Other than possessing a boldness of temperament and a sanguine nature, her natural abilities are not obvious. She is not gifted musically. Her drawing, her ability to produce a likeness, is poor; she admits as much. She is not a serious or disciplined reader, even though Mr. Knightley provides her with lists of improving books he hopes she will read.
Well, what is she good at? She is good at observing the people around her, although she makes great, gulping mistakes, as we know. And she is gifted at devising other, alternate arrangements for people; she is occupied, obsessed, with rupturing and amending other people’s affection, for instance. Exuberant, ever inventive, she runs a number of plot lines simultaneously and allows them to cross and recross. Following the gypsy scene in which her friend Harriet is badly frightened, she describes herself as being an “imaginist,” a word not found in modern dictionaries, on fire with “speculation and foresight.” She is, in short, a novelist, for these interfering and manipulative acts are what novelists busy themselves with. She may not have actually sat down to write a novel, but as a character she plays up and down the novelist’s keyboard and perhaps even adds a few new notes, top and bottom.
Emma is a young twenty-one, and she is the only Austen heroine to be independently wealthy. There are those who call Emma, like Northanger Abbey, a coming-of-age novel, and it is plain that young Miss Woodhouse does experience a growth in self-awareness. Under the forgiving guidance of her surrogate mother, Mrs. Weston, and of the ever present Mr. Knightley, she comes to recognize her acts of insensitivity to Miss Bates, her coldness to Jane Fairfax, her manipulative behavior toward Harriet, and her social misjudgment concerning Robert Martin and his family. She also sees at last what we, the readers, have seen all along, that which lies just beneath her nose—that Mr. Knightley is the man, the only man, she can love and that he loves her in return. She has found her home in the world at last.
Mr. Knightley, like all Jane Austen’s heroes, is a reading man, and this alone would tip off any reader almost at once as to what his ultimate role will be. Despite knowing this, or rather because of knowing it, the reader experiences a kind of shiver every time George Knightley walks out on the page. (The deep, deep seriousness and the perfect judgment that characterize him make it seem just a little cheeky to call him George, and in fact Emma, even after accepting his marriage proposal, announces that she has no intention of doing so.)
There are those who say that Emma married the father she should have had, and it is true that most contemporary readers would find it hard to imagine the pillow talk the two of them are to enjoy in their married life. He is much older, so much wiser, and has known her since childhood. His eye for character is exact—as hers is not—and this tells us something about what Jane Austen may have felt about the novelistic eye for character, which is often misguided, more forgiving, or else more easily affron
ted than “real” appraisals. Emma was not so much attracted by Frank Churchill as distracted by him, but Mr. Knightley saw straight to the truth: that Frank was “a man who seemed to love without feeling,” a comment that at the same time throws our notions of love and feeling up into the air.
Emma’s advancement in self-understanding is accompanied by a growth of her rational side, and we see this most clearly in the moment when Mr. Knightley—George—makes his declaration of love. Listening to his ardent words, Emma becomes “almost ready to sink under the agitation of this moment.” Almost, Jane Austen writes, but not quite. We are told that “while he spoke, Emma’s mind was most busy.” Even while continuing to take in every word Mr. Knightley utters, she is at the same time rapidly inventorying the situation: one, rejoicing in her lover’s ardor; two, adding up Harriet’s disappointment; and, three, congratulating herself on not having given away Harriet’s secret. In short, she is busy as any accountant, calculating the balance of fortune and misfortune. As for Mr. Knightley, he is made happy that Emma is his “by hand and word,” a sentiment that may strike a modern reader as being decidedly more chilly than “body and soul.” But after setting aside the legalistic interpretation of “hand and word,” the two phrases may roughly correspond.
When Jane Austen wrote Emma she had already received public encouragement—and a certain measure of discouragement, too—with the reception of Mansfield Park. Emma shows a self-assuredness that comes straight at the reader’s consciousness, and we see Jane Austen’s own concentration of pleasure in her powers. The fusing of moral consideration and human drama achieves perfect pitch.
The novel is rich in comedy, too. Mrs. Elton, silly and snobbish, is captured with all her flaws when she attends a strawberry-picking party hosted by Mr. Knightley. Mrs. Elton, Jane Austen writes, appears in “all her apparatus of happiness”—and what an extraordinary phrase this is: apparatus of happiness. She leads the way with her bonnet and basket and gives voice to her exuberance. We don’t quite know to whom she is addressing her scattered, telescoped remarks—to the wind, perhaps, or to readers who can feel Jane Austen winking in their direction. “The best fruit in England—everybody’s favourite—always wholesome.—These the finest beds and finest sorts.—Delightful to gather for one’s self—the only way of really enjoying them.—Morning decidedly the best time—never tired—every sort good—hautboy infinitely superior—no comparison—the others hardly eatable—hautboys very scarce—Chili preferred—white wood finest flavour of all—price of strawberries in London—abundance about Bristol—Maple Grove—cultivation—beds when to be renewed—gardeners never to be put out of their way—delicious fruit—only too rich to be eaten much of—inferior to cherries—currants more refreshing—only objection to gathering strawberries the stooping—glaring sun—tired to death—could bear it no longer—must go and sit in the shade.”
21
BY 1815 Jane Austen’s anonymity was breaking down at last and leading to a minor degree of celebrity. A great many people now knew the name of the author of Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park. At first only a few intimates had been told the truth of authorship; after that it was not surprising that these few told a few more. Henry Austen, proud brother of the author, bursting with reflected happiness, was incapable of discretion, even though he had been cautioned more than once.
There is every indication that Jane Austen enjoyed her new fame. And the financial reward that went with it. Mansfield Park had sold out, despite its quiet reception. Pride and Prejudice, the perennial favorite, was in its third edition, and Sense and Sensibility in its second. Admirers were everywhere, including the Prince Regent, who let it be known that he would be honored if Jane Austen were to dedicate her next volume to him. Emma was published in 1816, once again anonymously, but carrying the royal dedication:
TO
HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS
THE PRINCE REGENT
Jane Austen
THIS WORK IS,
BY HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS’S PERMISSION,
MOST RESPECTFULLY
DEDICATED,
BY HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS’S
DUTIFUL
AND OBEDIENT
HUMBLE SERVANT,
THE AUTHOR.
The effusive dedication was not Jane Austen’s idea; she had something much simpler in mind, but she was advised that the correct form must be used, that there was no choice in the matter. Moreover, royal “suggestions” must be taken as seriously as commands.
The publisher, Egerton, had postponed a second edition of Mansfield Park, and the frustrated Jane Austen threw up her hands and found a new publisher, John Murray. Murray, with the encouragement of the Prince Regent’s dedication, published two thousand copies of Emma, more than Jane Austen had ever seen come off the press. She may have been embarrassed by the royal advertisement, particularly when her friend Martha Lloyd teased her about mercenary motives, but she was not at all naïve about what a royal stamp of approval would do for her. The unmarried daughter of a vicar, without money or connections, she had become linked to another world where rewards of all kinds were promised.
Once again she was anxious about how her immediate circle received the book. Charles, her youngest brother, loved Emma and read the novel three times in quick succession. Other family members, when quizzed, placed it in a limbo between the preceding novels, and Miss Anne Sharp, Jane’s schoolteacher friend, pointed out the weakness of the Jane Fairfax plot. There was a small stir of objection to her characterization of the clergy: The ridiculing of Mr. Elton was almost as objectionable as that directed at Mr. Collins. The great Walter Scott was approached by the publisher for an opinion, which he delivered without real enthusiasm. A few years later he reversed the coolness of his thoughts about the novelist Jane Austen, writing in his diary, “That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I have ever met with. The Big Bow-Wow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary common-place things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment is denied to me.”
Jane Austen had been dead for many years by the time Scott’s words were made public. But such praise, coming as it did from the great “Bow-Wow” novelist himself, guaranteed her a readership in the nineteenth century, and his praise is still called up today to demonstrate how Austen was valued in her own time, if only by a few. The words would have meant much more to her than the tenuous association with the Prince Regent; she was never, in fact, persuaded that His Highness actually read Emma or had any notion of her “exquisite touch.”
22
ANNE ELLIOT OF Persuasion is twenty-seven years old as the novel opens, making her the oldest of Jane Austen’s heroines. She has been grievously injured by a broken engagement, and she is past her “bloom”—a favorite word of Jane Austen—meaning that the blood-filled elasticity of good health has deserted her, and so has the hope of a fuller life to come. She is living, most unhappily, with her own error, her decision some years earlier to break her engagement to the naval officer Frederick Wentworth: He was poor; he would have to make his own way; he was not a good marital risk. But he has returned to the neighborhood as the novel opens. Eight and a half years have passed, and he has become successful in his career and much admired. Resentment lingers with him, until he finds Anne Elliot in a state of being only half alive. Her “mistake” in rejecting him has conferred on her the role of maiden aunt, a condition she does not relish. She is emotionally detached from everyone in her family and looking forward to a life of disappointment.
She might easily have shared the blame for her young disaster with Lady Russell, her surrogate mother, who persuaded the young Anne that Wentworth would not be an ideal husband. But Lady Russell does not fall easily into the category of the wicked stepmother, just as Anne does not belong to the company of the easily led. Persuasion may have structural faults as a novel, but it is a grow
n-up book whose characters are alive in their ambiguity. Part of Captain Wentworth’s charm—and he is a most nimble-minded, intelligent hero—is his ability to shift his perspective. Like Anne, he has been bruised by rejection, but not fatally injured or made blind. The dance between them is one of reassessment and maturity. They listen to each other’s words, observe each other’s actions, and are particularly watchful for small gestures and suggestions.
Jane Austen was forty when she was working on The Elliots, as Persuasion was initially titled. She wrote it relatively quickly and then revised the conclusion by substituting a new chapter twenty-two and twenty-three. This alteration, really a critique of her own novelistic sense, puts a torque on the whole narrative, illuminating both Anne and Captain Wentworth and the nature of their renewed love. Women have a second chance in this narrative of love everlasting; it is never too late to revise and reclaim the past.
The original ending lacks tension and drama. Anne and Wentworth are alone in a room; they refer briefly to a misunderstanding, which Anne quickly clears up, leaving an opening for Wentworth to press his suit, which she quickly accepts. The scene feels both abrupt and contrived. The amended ending, on the other hand, takes place in a crowded room, and is one of the most famous scenes in literature. In this version Anne is allowed an active rather than passive role. She enters into a spirited discussion with her friend Captain Harville about the different expectations of men and women and the tactics the two sexes must employ. Captain Harville reminds her of the inconstancy of women, how the theme of such inconstancy is so pervasive in literature that it must be true. Anne protests, refusing the wisdom of books that are of course written by men. “All the privilege I claim,” she cries, “is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.”
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