What Matters in Jane Austen?_Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved

by John Mullan

  In Austen’s novels as in her family, names are often handed down to signify continuity. ‘Henry is the eldest, he was named after me,’ says Mr Woodhouse of his grandson. ‘Isabella would have him called Henry, which I thought very pretty of her’ (Emma, I. ix). In Mansfield Park, Tom Bertram, the eldest son, has been named after the pater familias, Sir Thomas. In Persuasion, Charles Musgrove’s eldest son is called Charles, while Mr Elliot carries the name Walter, which he despises (II. ix). Eldest daughters often get their mother’s names, as Cassandra Austen did: Maria Bertram and Fanny Price in Mansfield Park; Elizabeth Elliot in Persuasion. Some names peculiarly meant something to Austen. Northanger Abbey opens with a private joke about the name Richard – ‘a very respectable man, though his name was Richard’ – that the centuries of annotation have not clarified. Perhaps there are other examples of names that had some family meaning to the Austens. It is difficult not to think that the characters in Jane Austen’s fiction who shared her author’s name – Jane Bennet and Jane Fairfax – thereby acquired a special interest for knowing readers.

  As well as those married men whose forenames we never know, think of the women: Mrs Dashwood, Mrs Bennet, Mrs Allen, Mrs Norris, Mrs Grant, Mrs Dixon, Mrs Smith. The last of these is particularly significant, as she is Anne Elliot’s old and intimate friend, and the two women are usually found talking alone together. The formality perhaps tells us something of the original age gap between the friends and suggests a distance that remains. Mrs Grant’s name remains unknown because in each of several private conversations, Mary Crawford calls her ‘Mrs. Grant’ or ‘sister’, while being called ‘Mary’ – sometimes ‘dear Mary’ or ‘dearest Mary’ – in return. The women are some ten years apart in age, so Mrs Grant is a semi-maternal figure, and she is married, so Mary Crawford is speaking in a proper way. Yet the younger woman is a good deal more worldly and more penetrating than her half-sister. The asymmetry of their forms of address helps create the sense that Mrs Grant is an indulgent, fond attendant on Mary, who need not exactly requite her attentions.

  Such asymmetry is often telling. The famous example is in Emma, where Mr Knightley uses the heroine’s forename, but she never uses his. This serves the plot: his use of Emma’s forename signifies that he is an honorary family member and a kind of father figure, and therefore out of the romantic running. It helps to sustain Emma’s own failure to think of him in romantic terms. (Mr Weston – licensed by his wife’s intimacy with Emma perhaps – also uses her forename, without any suggestion of offence.) Emma, in turn, always addresses Harriet Smith as ‘Harriet’, but Harriet, with all that proper respect that Emma so enjoys, never uses her Christian name, always addressing her as ‘Miss Woodhouse’. Emma simply assumes that Harriet’s name is hers to use. It is inconceivable that Harriet would have invited Emma to use her Christian name. Here the asymmetry enacts a power difference. It also enables Emma to avoid the damning ordinariness of Harriet’s surname. (‘Mrs. Smith, such a name!’ exclaims Sir Walter Elliot in Persuasion (II. v).) But how does it feel to Mr Elton, who always calls her ‘Miss Smith’? Every time he does so he thinks of the lowness of her origins. When he proposes to Emma, who tells him that he should be addressing himself to her protégée instead, his disbelief is measured by the number of times he repeats the name ‘Miss Smith!’ How could he couple himself to someone with such a name – which, as she is illegitimate, is almost certainly not the name of her unknown father.

  Comparably, in Persuasion, Elizabeth Elliot calls Mrs Clay ‘Penelope’, but the pseudo-respectful Mrs Clay addresses her as ‘My dear Miss Elliot’ (II. x). Elizabeth’s use of Mrs Clay’s first name is evidently improper when she never calls her own sister ‘Anne’. It is doubly so when Elizabeth has extended her intimacy to a woman whose interest in her is entirely predatory. In Sense and Sensibility the Miss Steeles so wheedle their way into the John Dashwood establishment that Elinor hears ‘accounts of the favour they were in’ from Sir John Middleton. ‘Mrs. Dashwood had never been so much pleased with any young women in her life as she was with them; had given each of them a needle book, made by some emigrant; called Lucy by her Christian name; and did not know whether she should ever be able to part with them’ (II. xiv). Lucy will not be calling Mrs John Dashwood by her Christian name, but the power imbalance is not as obvious as it seems. Lucy Steele is working on her new patroness. More evidently subordinate is Fanny Price, who calls Maria Bertram ‘Miss Bertram’, while Maria Bertram calls her ‘Fanny’. More unsettling is the asymmetry by which Edmund always calls Fanny by her forename, but Fanny never calls him Edmund. In extremis, she will exclaim, ‘Oh! Cousin . . .’ (e.g. II. ix). The imbalance is calculated by the novelist. What Fanny has most to suffer is the torment of Edmund’s easy intimacy with her: ‘My dear Fanny . . .’ She preserves the possibility, unlikely though she believes it, of moving to some greater intimacy. If she ever calls him Edmund, it will only be at the moment when he ceases to be her cousin.

  Familiarity can be contemptuous. When Miss Bingley tells Elizabeth Bennet at a ball that she is foolish to be charmed by Mr Wickham, she refers to him as ‘George Wickham’ three times in one short paragraph, and the very use of his forename is scornful. Names are used by Austen, as well as by her characters, as though they are precious material, so we sometimes hear only once, glancingly, what someone’s name is. Thus the label on the trunk seen by Harriet Smith, directed to Mr Elton at his hotel in Bath, which names him as Philip (II. v). Or the signature on Mr Collins’s letter to Mr Bennet that shows him, for the only time in Pride and Prejudice, to be called William. There is the signature ‘John Willoughby’ at the foot of the letter that cruelly disclaims any attachment between himself and Marianne Dashwood (II. vii). Or the one passing endearment from Mr to Mrs Weston that reveals her to be called Anne. We only find out Captain Benwick’s Christian name for the first time late in Persuasion, when Admiral Croft refers to him as ‘James Benwick’ (II. vi). Is this the privilege of seniority? Or a further example of the Admiral’s bracing informality? What about Mr Elliot? Eventually we read the letter where, for the only time, we see he is called William – and hear him say that he hates the Elliot name (II.ix). (William Walter Elliot is the only character in Austen’s completed fiction to be given two forenames, burdening him with the reminder of his lineage.)

  As narrator, Austen shares the sensitivities of her characters in the matter of names.

  The mere use of a person’s Christian name is a rare privilege and can carry great weight. The famous example is in Sense and Sensibility, where Elinor overhears Willoughby discussing the gift of a horse with her sister and saying, ‘Marianne, the horse is still yours’ (I. xii). Elinor knows what to think: ‘in the whole of the sentence, in his manner of pronouncing it, and in his addressing her sister by her Christian name alone, she instantly saw an intimacy so decided, a meaning so direct, as marked a perfect agreement between them. From that moment she doubted not of their being engaged to each other.’ A woman who lets a man speak her name has given him a special power. We hear Willoughby’s loss of this privilege when he turns up at Cleveland to explain himself to Elinor. He declares that his purpose is ‘to obtain something like forgiveness from Ma—from your sister’ (III. viii). He used to call her ‘Marianne’, an acknowledgement of intimacy, and now – married to another woman – he has forfeited the right to do so.

  Between two young women, the habit is easier. The ‘quick’ progress of the friendship between Catherine and Isabella in Northanger Abbey means that, on their second meeting, ‘They called each other by their Christian name’ (I. v). But the quickness is suspect. Isabella is interested in Catherine as a way to her brother, and all her warmth is feigned. In contrast, it is a long time before Catherine calls Eleanor Tilney by her Christian name. Although we may not realise it until we search the text, ‘it is not until the very night of the General’s barbarously turning Catherine out of doors that we hear Eleanor and Catherine use each other’s Christian names’.5 The sense of dec
orum with which Henry Tilney’s sister is addressed is emphasised by the the narrator’s habit of calling her ‘Miss Tilney’. It is a long time before even the novelist can dare to use Miss Tilney’s forename, well into the second volume of the novel, when Catherine hears Captain Tilney ‘whisper to Eleanor’ (II. v). Catherine waits even longer before using Eleanor’s name. After their acquaintance in Bath and four weeks’ stay at Northanger Abbey, the first occasion recorded by the novel is one of high feeling. Eleanor has come to Catherine to tell her that her father has decreed that she must leave. Eleanor begins her mortifying announcement, ‘My dear Catherine . . .’ (II. xiii). Catherine responds with the same, new informality. ‘“My dear Eleanor,” cried Catherine . . .’ (II. xiii). Now the intimacy has been hazarded, and Catherine can have confidence in it. ‘Do not be distressed, Eleanor . . .’ A crisis has pushed them to this closeness. ‘You must write to me, Catherine’ . . . ‘Oh, Eleanor, I will write to you indeed.’ Few readers will be conscious that the two women are now naming each other in a new way. The novels employ nuances such as this that shape any sensitive reader’s understanding, but that only text-searching can reveal.

  In Mansfield Park Mary Crawford calls Fanny by her Christian name for the first time in a note, written with the (false) assurance that Fanny is about to become engaged to her brother (II. xiii). Though Mary Crawford may be expert at infiltrating people’s affections, she is clever enough to know when she is risking familiarity, and explicitly draws attention to her new assumption of intimacy. ‘My Dear Fanny, for so I may now always call you, to the infinite relief of a tongue that has been stumbling at Miss Price for the last six weeks’. ‘Stumbling’ because it is a formality, she implies, that hinders confidence and affection. From here on, her use of Fanny’s name is a constant assault on her defences, often in phrases such as ‘dear Fanny’ or ‘Good, gentle Fanny’ (III. v). Mary Crawford is herself called ‘Mary’ by the narrator in scenes with only her brother or Mrs Grant, who both use her Christian name, but is called ‘Miss Crawford’ by the narrator in scenes with Fanny. Fanny is resolute against her blandishments and the novelist is with her. This just begins to change in the third volume, in a scene where Miss Crawford is reminding Fanny that her brother has helped William Price gain promotion. ‘“I cannot imagine Henry ever to have been happier,” continued Mary presently, “than when he had succeeded in getting your brother’s commission.” She had made a sure push at Fanny’s feelings here’ (III. v).

  If familiarity is noticeable, nicknames and shortenings are potentially jarring. Some can be disdainful. Sir Thomas Bertram’s son becomes ‘Tom’ to everyone because he is himself no respecter of tradition or obligation. When the Musgrove sisters start lamenting ‘poor Richard’ the author informs us that they are in fact referring to ‘a thick-headed, unfeeling, unprofitable Dick Musgrove’ (Persuasion, I. vi). In fact he ‘had never done any thing to entitle himself to more than the abbreviation of his name’. ‘Richard’ is respectful; ‘Dick’ dismissive. Fanny Price’s father calls her ‘Fan’, a rough informality that is all the more striking as she addresses him as ‘Sir’ in reply (Mansfield Park, III. xv). She seems to be trying to tug him back to a gentility that he has forgotten.

  Men in Austen use each other’s surnames for informality. In Sense and Sensibility, Sir John Middleton calls his brother-in-law ‘Palmer’, at least in company (I. xix). In Mansfield Park, Henry Crawford calls Edmund ‘Bertram’ and Edmund calls Henry Crawford ‘Crawford’. In Emma, Mr Knightley refers to Mr Weston as ‘Weston’ when he talks to Mrs Weston. It is a form of familiarity in which Austen joins. In Sense and Sensibility, the narrator from the first refers to ‘Willoughby’, not ‘Mr Willoughby’. Soon Elinor, Marianne and Mrs Dashwood are also calling him this. After he has jilted Marianne and his history as a seducer has been revealed, he arrives for a confrontation with Elinor who, for the first time, resolutely addresses him as ‘Mr. Willoughby’: his privilege has been withdrawn. In Pride and Prejudice Mr Darcy is ‘Darcy’ to his friend Mr Bingley, but soon to the narrator as well. He is later called ‘Darcy’ by his cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam and his aunt Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Wickham refers to him as ‘Darcy’ in a dialogue with Elizabeth late in the novel, when he comes to Longbourn as Lydia’s husband. We can take the familiarity as further evidence of Wickham’s untrustworthiness. Elizabeth calls her future husband ‘Darcy’ just once in the whole novel, in confidential conversation with Jane, as she reveals his proposal (and Wickham’s nefariousness). ‘There is but such a quantity of merit between them; just enough to make one good sort of man . . . For my part, I am inclined to believe it all Darcy’s’ (II. xvii). Her informal use of his name is a stronger sign of her good will towards him than the judgement she is passing. Wickham, in contrast, is first called by his surname by the narrator, the sign of an impending familiarity (I. xvi). The first character who refers to him in this way is Mr Bennet, who jestingly and improperly tells Elizabeth, ‘Let Wickham be your man. He is a pleasant fellow, and would jilt you creditably’ (II. i). The next to do so is, tellingly, Lydia, who refers to ‘dear Wickham’ when she is reporting to Elizabeth that he is not, after all, to marry the heiress Mary King. ‘There is no danger of Wickham’s marrying Mary King . . . Wickham is safe.’ It is a clue to Lydia’s later attachment to him. And once the truth about him has been revealed, he becomes ‘Wickham’ to Elizabeth and Jane too (II. xvii).

  In the fullest treatment of names in Austen, Maggie Lane suggests that this familiar use of men’s surnames was a fashion left over from the 1790s, when early versions of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice were first composed. ‘We would never speak of Churchill or Elliot,’ she observes.6 The former is indeed always ‘Frank Churchill’, but surely for special reasons: not just because his adoptive father, Mr Churchill, is still alive, but also because the two elements of his social being – the name his father has given him and the name he has taken from his adoptive parents – have to be equally stated. He will never be ‘Churchill’ because it is not his true name. Meanwhile we know that Mr Elliot called Mrs Smith’s husband ‘Smith’, so presumably did get called ‘Elliot’ in return. The issue is really whether women might use men’s surnames, and is brought alive by Mrs Elton’s evident impertinence in Emma. Who arrived when she was meeting the Westons for the first time? she asks Emma. ‘“Knightley!” continued Mrs. Elton; “Knightley himself!—Was not it lucky?”’ (II. xiv) We do not need a social historian to explain why Emma is silently indignant. ‘Absolutely insufferable! Knightley!—I could not have believed it. Knightley!—never seen him in her life before, and call him Knightley!’ Mrs Elton does not only continue to talk of ‘Knightley’, she addresses him as such. ‘“Is not this most vexatious, Knightley?” . . . “Pray be sincere, Knightley” . . . “Yes, believe me, Knightley”’ (III. vi). The convention of this familiarity has not changed; what is novel is Mrs Elton’s singular presumptuousness in adopting it.

  Unlike those much younger men from the earlier novels, Mr Knightley is always called ‘Mr’ by the narrator. He famously tires of the formality.

  ‘“Mr. Knightley.”—You always called me, “Mr. Knightley;” and, from habit, it has not so very formal a sound.—And yet it is formal. I want you to call me something else, but I do not know what.’

  ‘I remember once calling you “George,” in one of my amiable fits, about ten years ago. I did it because I thought it would offend you; but, as you made no objection, I never did it again.’

  ‘And cannot you call me “George” now?’

  ‘Impossible!—I never can call you any thing but “Mr. Knightley.” I will not promise even to equal the elegant terseness of Mrs. Elton, by calling you Mr. K.’ (III. xvii)

  Even being in love does not let you use a man’s Christian name. Thus an added reason for Catherine Morland’s distress as she is about to leave Northanger Abbey. Parting from Eleanor Tilney, she wants to mention ‘one whose name had not yet been spoken by either’ (II. xiv). She asks to
be remembered to ‘her absent friend’, but at ‘this approach to his name’ she is overcome by emotion. The impossibility of Henry’s name is all the greater as she has never used it, even to Eleanor.

  To use a Christian name with amorous intent is hazardous indeed. The climax of the after-dinner evening at Mansfield Park, where Mr Crawford shows off his reading skills to Fanny and tries to pressure her into conversational exchange, is his first ever use of her Christian name. Expressing his ‘warmest hopes’ of some eventual return of his professed affection, he exclaims ‘Yes, dearest, sweetest Fanny—Nay—(seeing her draw back displeased) forgive me.’ He knows that she has been offended not by the endearments but by the use of her name. ‘Perhaps I have as yet no right—but by what other name can I call you?’ Austen does not need to describe Fanny’s feelings; we are to sense vividly her embarrassment and displeasure when he goes on to tell her, ‘it is “Fanny” that I think of all day, and dream of all night’ (III. iii). What we perhaps hardly notice is the amorous hyperbole of his finding in her ‘some touches of the angel’ earlier in his speech. But we should, for we have heard Mrs Norris thinking Julia ‘an angel’ much earlier on in the novel. Mr Crawford is not so completely wrong as her, but is falling back on the same cliché. He talks as if modesty and principle were more than human. He never addresses her as ‘Fanny’ again.

  A more subtle impertinence is his sister’s addressing Fanny as ‘my dear child’; it is a form of would-be endearment that is precisely calculated by the author. It catches Mary Crawford’s fundamentally condescending attachment to Fanny, but it also shows us how unaware she is of Fanny’s feelings. Fanny has grown into a womanly rival for Edmund’s affections, no child any longer. The impertinent endearment is only used elsewhere in Austen by one other character, Mrs Elton, who addresses the powerless and humiliated Jane Fairfax as ‘my dear child’. She takes possession of Jane Fairfax by calling her ‘Jane’, to Frank Churchill’s evident surprise and distaste (II. ii). When he writes his long letter explaining his actions to Mrs Weston – and thus to Emma too – he expresses his anger at Mrs Elton’s ‘system of . . . treatment’ of Jane Fairfax, and his protest focuses on her use of his fiancée’s Christian name. ‘“Jane,” indeed!—You will observe that I have not yet indulged myself in calling her by that name, even to you’ (III. xiv). ‘Think, then, what I must have endured in hearing it bandied between the Eltons with all the vulgarity of needless repetition, and all the insolence of imaginary superiority.’ And this is the point: Jane Fairfax is certainly not going to call Mrs Elton ‘Augusta’.