Jane Austen

by Andrew Norman

  When Darcy writes to Elizabeth explaining the truth about Wickham – that the latter had behaved extravagantly and dissolutely, and had attempted to elope with Darcy’s sister Georgiana – she sees the error of her ways. Her behaviour, she says, has been ‘blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd. How despicably have I acted! I, who have prided myself on my discernment!’

  Elizabeth learns that her younger sister Lydia has eloped with Wickham and she feels guilty that she had been blind to the latter’s true character. Not only that, but the event has wider implications:

  Her [Elizabeth’s] power was sinking; every thing must sink under such a proof of family weakness, such an assurance of the deepest disgrace.

  And because of this disgrace, she honestly feels that even though she could have loved Darcy, in these new and tragic circumstances ‘all love must be in vain’. Mr Collins does not make matters easier when he writes to Mr Bennet about the elopement in a most unchristian way: ‘The death of your daughter would have been a blessing in comparison of this.’ When Lydia and Wickham are finally located, they consent to be married under the terms of an arrangement to be made with Mr Bennet, whereby the latter is to make a financial settlement on his daughter. It later transpires that Darcy had played a key role in persuading Wickham to marry, by purchasing for him a commission in the regular army, and also providing the sum of £1,000 for Lydia’s dowry.

  A subsequent meeting between Elizabeth and Wickham is cordial, in accordance with Jane Austen’s philosophy that there is no such thing as a permanent enemy and life must go on, wherever possible, in peaceful co-existence. Elizabeth says, ‘Come, Mr Wickham, we are brother and sister, you know. Do not let us quarrel about the past. In future, I hope we shall be always of one mind’, whereupon he kisses her proffered hand ‘with affectionate gallantry’.

  A meeting with Lady Catherine provides Elizabeth with another opportunity of demonstrating her independence of spirit. When Elizabeth is asked to promise that she will never enter into an engagement with Darcy her response is: ‘I will make no promise of the kind. I am not to be intimidated into anything so wholly unreasonable.’ Her ladyship then tells her that she is an ‘unfeeling and selfish girl’. To which Elizabeth retorts:

  I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.

  When Darcy and Elizabeth take a walk together it is he who now expresses regret. The recollection of his conduct and manners, he says:

  … has been many months, inexpressibly painful to me. Your reproof, so well applied, I shall never forget: ‘Had you behaved in a more gentleman like manner.’ Those were your words. You know not, you can scarcely conceive, how they have tortured me …

  Darcy also confesses to Elizabeth what she had already guessed: that he had interfered in the courtship of Bingley and her sister Jane; an interference which he now describes as ‘absurd and impertinent’. Darcy had, at first, thought that Jane was indifferent to Bingley. However, he later changed his mind and now, being convinced of their affection he ‘felt no doubt of their happiness together’. The story ends happily with the marriage of the two sisters: Elizabeth to Darcy, and Jane to Bingley.

  In Pride and Prejudice, the heroine Elizabeth, highly conventional in many ways, is highly avant-garde in others. She sees no reason to suppose that Darcy is in any way her superior, simply because he is an aristocratic and landed person. Neither does she consider that his aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, simply because of her status in society, has any right to make judgements about Elizabeth’s younger sisters, or to interfere in her choice of a partner. In other words, a mere difference in social status should not take precedence over the love which two people feel for one another.

  10

  Sense and Sensibility

  Sense and Sensibility, published in 1811 by Thomas Egerton, started life as Elinor and Marianne, written by Jane as a collection of letters in about 1795–96. However, the novel proper was begun in 1797 (and subsequently revised in 1811).

  It is the story of two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, and their differing reactions to love and rejection, for they are of very different natures. The book begins by describing the Dashwoods’ home in Sussex and the family’s position in society, which epitomises solidity, permanence and respectability.

  Their estate was large, and their residence was at Norland Park in the centre of their property where, for many generations, they had lived in so respectable a manner as to engage the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance.

  Alas, this happy state of affairs was not to continue. Elinor, the elder of the two (in fact, there were three sisters altogether), is described as possessing ‘a strength of understanding, and coolness of judgement’, even though she was aged only 19. ‘She had an excellent heart; – her disposition was affectionate, and her feelings were strong; but she knew how to govern them...’ Marianne, on the other hand, whose ‘abilities were, in many respects, quite equal to Elinor’s’, was:

  sensible and clever; but eager in everything; her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation. She was generous, amiable, interesting: she was everything but prudent.

  When their father Mr Henry Dashwood dies, his estate passes to John – his son by his first wife. John and his wife Fanny move into Norland Park where Fanny’s brother Edward Ferrars forms an attachment to Elinor. Elinor, for her part, declares that she thinks very highly of Edward and that she greatly esteems and likes him. Her sister Marianne, however, has reservations about him, saying that although he is very amiable, he ‘has no real taste’. He was scarcely attracted by music and, although he admired Elinor’s drawings, he failed to ‘understand their worth’.

  John fails to honour the promise which he made to his father; that he would look after his step-mother and sisters. Mrs Dashwood and her daughters, realising that they are now unwelcome in what had been their home, decide to relocate to Barton Cottage in Devonshire which is owned by their kinsman Sir John Middleton of Barton Park. When the time comes to leave, Marianne exclaims emotionally about Norland, ‘When shall I cease to regret you! – when [shall I] learn to feel a home elsewhere!’

  The sisters are introduced to Sir John’s great friend Colonel Brandon whom Marianne regards as ‘an absolute old bachelor, him being on the wrong side of five and thirty’. When the two sisters are out walking, Marianne sprains her ankle and falls to the ground, whereupon John Willoughby (described as a sportsman), who is out hunting with his gun, comes to the rescue. When Mrs Dashwood asks Sir John what kind of man Willoughby is he replies, ‘as good a kind of fellow who ever lived, I assure you. A very decent shot, and there is no bolder rider in England’. (This is Jane humorously describing how two people can visualise a third from completely different perspectives!)

  When Sir John suggests to Marianne that she will soon be setting her cap at Willoughby, Marianne scolds him saying:

  That is an expression, Sir John, which I particularly dislike. I abhor every common-place phrase by which wit is intended; and, ‘setting one’s cap at a man’, or ‘making a conquest’, are the most odious of all.

  Marianne, far from being overshadowed by her elder sister, is described as having ‘never much toleration for any thing like impertinence, vulgarity, inferiority of parts, or even difference of taste from herself …’. Here she demonstrates that although the Dashwood family are dependent on Sir John’s hospitality she, for one, does not intend to suffer the use of expressions which she considers to be both ‘gross and illiberal’.

  When Willoughby presents Marianne with a horse, Elinor expresses reservations about her sister receiving a gift from someone whom she has known for such a short time, and about whom she knows so little. To which Marianne replies haughtily:

  You are mistaken, Elinor, in supposing I know very little of Willoughby. I have not known him very long indeed, but I am better acquainted with him, than with any other creature in the wo
rld, except yourself and Mamma.

  When Willoughby suddenly announces that he is departing on business to London, and has no idea when he will return, the effect on Marianne is devastating:

  [She] came hastily out of the parlour apparently in violent affliction, with her handkerchief at her eyes … This violent oppression of spirits continued the whole evening. She was without any power, because she was without any desire of command over herself. The slightest mention of any thing relative to Willoughby overpowered her in an instant.

  When Elinor, hitherto the more sagacious one, expresses the view that wealth has much to do with happiness, Marianne disagrees. It is her view that:

  Money can only give happiness when there is nothing else to give it. Beyond a competence, it can afford no real satisfaction, as far as mere self is concerned.

  When Edward Ferrars travels from Norland to visit the Dashwoods at Barton Cottage, and then disappoints them all by declaring that he is to go away, Elinor reacts in her typically controlled way. As soon as he is out of the house she sits down at her drawing-table and:

  … busily employed herself the whole day, neither sought nor avoided the mention of his name, [and] appeared to interest herself almost as much as ever in the general concerns of the family.

  Lucy Steele and her sister Anne, distant relations of Sir John, are invited to stay with him at Barton Park. Lucy drops a bombshell when she confides to Elinor that not only is she engaged to Edward Ferrars, but that she has been so for four years. At this news Elinor manages to maintain the composure of her voice, ‘under which was concealed an emotion and distress beyond any thing she had ever felt before. She was mortified, shocked, confounded’.

  Marianne is equally disappointed with Willoughby. When she writes to him, he responds by returning her letters and the lock of hair which she had given him and tells her that he is shortly to be married to Miss Grey, an heiress with £50,000. At this Marianne exclaims: ‘Oh! How easy for those who have no sorrow of their own … Happy, happy Elinor, you cannot have an idea of what I suffer’. But when Marianne learns of Edward Ferrars’ engagement to Lucy Steele she is filled with compassion for Elinor and says to her sister, ‘What! – while attending me in all my misery, has this been on your heart? – and I have reproached you for being happy!’

  Willoughby arrives on the scene to explain to Elinor the reason for his bad behaviour towards Marianne. ‘I have been always a blockhead, I have not been always a rascal’, he says. And then he declares that notwithstanding his affection for Marianne and despite her attachment to him, these factors were:

  all insufficient to outweigh that dread of poverty, or get the better of those false ideas of the necessity of riches, which I was naturally inclined to feel, and expensive society had increased.

  In other words, for Willoughby, pecuniary considerations must take precedence over romantic feelings. Having heard how guilty and miserable Willoughby now feels about the whole business, Elinor’s heart is softened – Jane Austen could never believe that any character (even one such as Willoughby) was wholly bad; everyone has some redeeming features.

  Elinor’s hopes of Edward Ferrars are dashed when she learns that he is married to Lucy Steele. However, when she and Edward meet, he explains that it is actually his brother Robert who has married Miss Steele. He then asks Elinor to marry him. All ends happily for Marianne also; she marries Colonel Brandon, and in doing so ‘found that her own happiness in forming his, was equally the persuasion and delight of each observing friend’.

  In Sense and Sensibility the sisters Elinor and Marianne react to setbacks in their romantic aspirations in different ways: the former calmly and stoically; the latter histrionically. And yet, both these coping mechanisms are effective in seeing them through to a happy ending.

  The two sisters mirror the real life Jane and Cassandra Austen, who when they experience similar problems confide in one another and offer mutual support in precisely the same way. Also, Jane reflects the dread that insecurity can bring. She had doubtless heard how her father, the Revd Austen’s great-grandfather John (born c.1670), had bequeathed his lands and estate entirely to his eldest grandson (also John), leaving his wife Elizabeth and their six sons and one daughter penniless. Jane would also have been aware of her father’s own suffering when, as a child, he and his siblings were expelled from the family home by their step-mother Susanna Kelk.

  On 17 January 1797 James was remarried to Mary Lloyd. In that year Thomas Knight II’s widow Catherine, transferred to Jane’s brother Edward, the Knights’ adoptive son, Godmersham Park in Kent, and the estates of Steventon and Chawton in Hampshire, together with most of her late husband’s fortune. This provided the latter with an income of £5,000 per annum. Meanwhile, Catherine retired to White Friars – a house in Canterbury.

  July 1797 saw Eliza de Feullide debating with herself which of her ‘variety of rural Plans … to adopt’, one of her options being to ‘retire into the embowering shades of the Rectory [i.e. Steventon]’.1

  Jane and Cassandra visited Bath in November 1797 accompanied by their mother Mrs Cassandra Austen. Here, they stayed for about a month with Jane’s aunt and uncle, James and Jane Leigh-Perrot (James being Mrs Austen’s brother). The Leigh-Perrots were accustomed to spending about half the year in the city, where they rented a house at 1 Paragon Buildings. In the same month George Austen wrote to the London publisher Thomas Cadell, to inform them that he was in possession of a manuscript (Jane’s novel First Impressions), and to see if they might be interested in publishing it. An answer in the negative was received.

  Eliza finally accepts the hand of her cousin Henry Austen, and the couple are married on 31 December 1797. (Henry was the third of Jane’s brothers to marry).

  Notes

  1.­ Le Faye, Jane Austen’s ‘Outlandish Cousin’, p. 140.

  11

  The Reverend Samuel Blackall

  Jane Austen first met the Revd Samuel Blackall in the summer, or early autumn, of 1798 when he was staying with the Lefroys of Ashe. It is possible, in fact, that the meeting was arranged by Mrs Lefroy in an attempt to mitigate for Jane’s disappointment over Tom Lefroy.

  The Blackalls were a Devonshire family, the strangely named Offspring Blackall (1654–1716), Blackall’s great-grandfather having been Bishop of Exeter in the time of Queen Anne. Blackall himself was a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, gaining his BA in 1791 and his MA in 1794, in which year he became a fellow of the college. In June 1794 he was ordained deacon at Ely in Cambridgeshire, and in December he was ordained priest. In 1796 he became Tutor and Proctor (officer with disciplinary functions) and in 1797, Taxor (imposer of taxes) at Emmanuel College. Shortly afterwards, he became College Steward and Librarian. At Emmanuel, Blackall was described as ‘a sociable and lively member of the combination room [fellow’s common room]’.1

  Jane wrote to Cassandra on 17 November 1798 telling her of a conversation she had had with Mrs Lefroy. A few weeks previously, said Jane, Mrs Lefroy had received a letter from:

  her [Mrs Lefroy’s] friend … [the Revd Blackall, then aged 28] towards the end of which was a sentence to this effect: ‘I am very sorry to hear of Mrs Austen’s illness. [As previously mentioned, Jane’s mother Cassandra did not enjoy good health.] It would give me particular pleasure to have the opportunity of improving my acquaintance with that family – with the hope of creating to myself a nearer interest. But at present I cannot indulge any expectation of it.’

  Jane’s reaction, on hearing this from Mrs Lefroy, was as follows:

  This is rational enough; there is less love and more sense in it than sometimes appeared before, and I am very well satisfied. It will all go on exceedingly well, and decline away in a very reasonable manner. There seems no likelihood of his coming into Hampshire this Christmas, and it is therefore most probable that our indifference will soon be mutual, unless his regard, which appeared to spring from knowing nothing of me at first, is best supported by never seeing me.

  Jane c
oncludes by saying, ‘Mrs Lefroy made no remarks on the letter, nor did she indeed say anything about him [Blackall] as relative to me’.2

  From these remarks, it appears that Jane originally believed the Revd Blackall both cared about her and had regard for her. However, from his letter, she concluded that there was now ‘less love’ in their relationship, and that he was now indifferent to her. It is possible that in this she was mistaken, in that Blackall’s not being able to ‘indulge any expectation’ of a further acquaintance may have been because a) he was many miles away in Cambridge, b) he had many duties to fulfil at his col ege, as has been demonstrated, and c) he was not in a strong enough position financially to support a wife. (Blackall’s ambition, which he confided to Jane, was to acquire the ‘exceedingly good’ living of Great (North) Cadbury, in Somersetshire.3 This, in those times, was worth ‘a clear £800 per annum; he might have married on that …’).4

  Jane has, therefore, convinced herself that the Revd Blackall is indifferent to her, but has she misinterpreted the meaning of Blackall’s letter to Mrs Lefroy? After all, had he not openly affirmed his desire to improve his acquaintance with her family, in the hope of ‘creating to myself a nearer interest’? And when Jane uses the words, ‘very well satisfied’ in regard to the outcome, may this not, in reality, disguise an inner irritation and disappointment?