What Matters in Jane Austen?_Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved

by John Mullan

  In its quiet way it is an extraordinary abandonment of her heroine. We return downstairs to see the nervous young man and awkward young woman with Mrs Morland’s eyes, and we suddenly know that betrothal is imminent. For at last Catherine has been trusted to live beyond the novelist’s monitoring of her.

  Northanger Abbey begins with Catherine – ‘No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine’ – but only one other Austen novel starts with the heroine: ‘Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.’ Emma bustles straight in to take over. All Austen’s other novels begin at a tangent to their heroines. Sense and Sensibility starts a long way away from Elinor Dashwood, the first chapter giving a family history of the Dashwoods and the extraordinary second chapter consisting almost entirely of a conversation between John Dashwood and his wife in which they agree not to give his stepmother and half-sisters any money. In the third chapter, we find out about the attachment between Elinor and Edward Ferrars, in order to hear Marianne and her mother discuss Edward in Elinor’s absence, Marianne declaring, ‘His eyes want all that spirit, that fire, which at once announce virtue and intelligence. And besides all this, I am afraid, mama, he has no real taste’ (I. iii). The novel appears to be dividing our interest between the two sisters. We accompany Marianne as she wanders around Norland saying farewell to its trees. Once arrived in Devon, we follow Marianne and Margaret on their foolish walk on the downs. Elinor is left behind as the two younger sisters relish ‘the animating gales’ and jointly pity ‘the fears which had prevented their mother and Elinor from sharing such delightful sensations’ (I. ix). Yet any impression that we are sharing our sympathies between Elinor and Marianne – between sense and sensibility – is soon corrected. Once we have tasted Marianne’s folly we abandon her point of view, slowly occupying Elinor’s pained consciousness.

  If Catherine Morland is the most present of Austen’s heroines, Fanny Price is the most absent. Mansfield Park is the one Austen novel in which conversations commonly take place without the heroine. There is a characteristic moment early in the novel when Edmund and his sister Julia arrive back, late on a summer evening, after dinner at the Parsonage with the Crawfords. They enter the drawing room, ‘glowing and cheerful, the very reverse of what they found in the three ladies sitting there’ (I. vii): Maria is reading sulkily, Lady Bertram is comatose and Mrs Norris is cross and uncommunicative. But where is Fanny? asks Edmund. Has she gone to bed? Mrs Norris does not know, but then Fanny’s ‘gentle voice’ is heard from the other end of the big room. She was there all the time; the ‘three ladies’ were in fact four. The narrative merely behaved for a little while as though Fanny were absent, picking up the habit from the Bertrams. ‘She does not fully participate in the world but as a result she sees things more clearly and accurately than those who do.’1 Her non-participation is realised by Austen in a sequence of absences. From the first chapter, where Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram discuss with Mrs Norris the scheme for taking charge of one of Mrs Price’s children, Fanny is subject to plans made in her absence. Whether Lady Bertram and Mrs Norris are deciding where she will live – ‘Good heaven! what could I do with Fanny?’ – or Sir Thomas is talking about having a ball for Fanny and her brother, she is often off stage while decisions are made on her behalf. Her fate is always to be decided by others.

  The ease with which Fanny is ignored is emphasised by the number of exchanges that take place without her. These even include some featuring only men. It is often said that women are present in every scene in Austen’s fiction, but this is not true.2 There is a fleeting example of male-only exchange in Pride and Prejudice, where Mr Bingley comes to Longbourn to shoot with Mr Bennet (but in fact to propose to his daughter).

  Bingley was punctual to his appointment; and he and Mr. Bennet spent the morning together, as had been agreed on. The latter was much more agreeable than his companion expected. There was nothing of presumption or folly in Bingley that could provoke his ridicule, or disgust him into silence; and he was more communicative, and less eccentric, than the other had ever seen him. (III. xiii).

  This hint as to Mr Bennet’s behaviour in rational male company takes us for a moment out of the world of his wife and daughters – but awkwardly, as if the author wanted to give another chance to a character whose paternal failings have been so thoroughly illuminated. In Mansfield Park the male-only scenes are much clearer and more important. The first is where Sir Thomas Bertram, unexpectedly returned from the West Indies, finds a strange young man, Mr Yates, rehearsing theatrical speeches in the billiard room of his own house (II. i). As they meet, Tom Bertram also enters the room, and attempts to appease his father’s irritated feelings. The second scene without a woman occurs in the next chapter, when Edmund seeks out his father to give an account of ‘the whole acting scheme’.

  He was anxious, while vindicating himself, to say nothing unkind of the others: but there was only one amongst them whose conduct he could mention without some necessity of defence or palliation. ‘We have all been more or less to blame,’ said he, ‘every one of us, excepting Fanny. Fanny is the only one who has judged rightly throughout; who has been consistent. Her feelings have been steadily against it from first to last. She never ceased to think of what was due to you. You will find Fanny everything you could wish.’ (II. ii)

  Much later in the novel we hear, in direct speech again, a snatch of conversation between Edmund and Sir Thomas on the subject of Fanny’s resistance to Henry Crawford’s proposal of marriage. ‘I will speak to her, Sir; I will take the first opportunity of speaking to her alone’ (III. iv). Sir Thomas responds by telling his son that Fanny is, at that moment, ‘walking alone in the shrubbery’. Here are father and son, man-to-man, conspiring together to further the match, both utterly ignorant as to the major impediment: Fanny’s love for Edmund. Later, in indirect speech, we have Edmund reporting back to his father that Mr Crawford had been ‘too hasty’ but that a ‘return of affection’ might eventually be hoped for. He believes himself ‘perfectly acquainted’ with Fanny’s ‘sentiments’, and speaks confidently to Sir Thomas. And he is as ignorant of her true feelings as ever.

  It is in Mansfield Park alone that Austen gives us these accumulated glimpses of men together, as if respecting the Bertrams’ aristocratic delusion that all important decisions are made by a father and his sons. Another kind of scene in the novel, from which the Bertrams and Fanny are absent, shows us that power lies elsewhere. There is a sequence of five conversations at the Parsonage among the Crawfords and Mrs Grant that are cumulatively perhaps the most shocking exchanges in all Austen’s fiction. The first occurs soon after the Crawfords have arrived. They have not yet met the Bertrams, but Mrs Grant has plans: ‘“Henry, you shall marry the youngest Miss Bertram, a nice, handsome, good-humoured, accomplished girl, who will make you very happy.” Henry bowed and thanked her’ (I. iv). Mary warns her sister that she is wasting her thoughts and efforts: ‘He is the most horrible flirt that can be imagined. If your Miss Bertrams do not like to have their hearts broke, let them avoid Henry.’ It is a pretty accurate prediction of what is to come. Henry assures Mrs Grant that he thinks highly of marriage, quoting Paradise Lost (the only Austen character to do so) with a mischievous emphasis: ‘“I consider the blessing of a wife as most justly described in those discreet lines of the poet—‘Heaven’s last best gift.’” “There, Mrs. Grant, you see how he dwells on one word, and only look at his smile. I assure you he is very detestable; the Admiral’s lessons have quite spoiled him.”’ There is something chilling in the jesting of brother and sister. Mary Crawford’s mock-condemnation (‘horrible’, ‘detestable’) measures her distance from any real disapproval of his habitual behaviour.

  There follow four more such exchanges, which structure the novel’s plot. Thei
r effect will be to make the Bertrams, including Fanny, seem unconscious players in the Crawfords’ amusing game. Once the Bertrams and Crawfords have met, we go to the Parsonage again for more playful private talk. Does Henry really prefer Julia, asks Mary, ‘for Miss Bertram is in general thought the handsomest’ (I. v). ‘So I should suppose. She has the advantage in every feature, and I prefer her countenance; but I like Julia best; Miss Bertram is certainly the handsomest, and I have found her the most agreeable, but I shall always like Julia best, because you order me.’ Jesting is very quickly moving into something dangerous. Henry and Mary make clear that they already see that Maria does not care ‘three straws’ for Mr Rushworth, and that she is Henry’s likely prey. Later, after the diversions of Sotherton and the negotiations over the taking of parts in the play, we go back to the Parsonage for an unmonitored conversation between Mary Crawford and Mrs Grant.

  ‘I rather wonder Julia is not in love with Henry,’ was her observation to Mary.

  ‘I dare say she is,’ replied Mary coldly. ‘I imagine both sisters are.’

  ‘Both! no, no, that must not be. Do not give him a hint of it. Think of Mr. Rushworth!’

  ‘You had better tell Miss Bertram to think of Mr. Rushworth. It may do her some good.’ (I. xvii)

  Mary has well-evidenced scorn for Mr Rushworth and knows just how well Maria has been entangled.

  ‘I would not give much for Mr. Rushworth’s chance if Henry stept in before the articles were signed.’

  ‘If you have such a suspicion, something must be done; and as soon as the play is all over, we will talk to him seriously and make him know his own mind; and if he means nothing, we will send him off, though he is Henry, for a time.’

  Sir Thomas Bertram’s return means that Mrs Grant’s assertion will never be tested, though it hardly sounds as if, without Mary’s backing, much could have come of it.

  Mary speaks to her half-sister in cold candour: Henry has caught both the Bertram girls, and has meant to do so. Mary speaks as if she has seen this kind of thing before. The exchange is shocking because it takes place in Fanny’s absence. If only she or the Bertrams could hear this! Fanny has observed Henry’s flirtations with alarm, but her suspicions hardly go far enough. Even more chilling is the next Parsonage conversation, between Henry and Mary alone. ‘Seeing the coast clear of the rest of the family’, he asks his sister with a smile, ‘And how do you think I mean to amuse myself, Mary, on the days that I do not hunt? . . . my plan is to make Fanny Price in love with me’ (II. vi). Mary’s reply is hardly good-hearted: ‘Fanny Price! Nonsense! No, no. You ought to be satisfied with her two cousins.’ To which her brother’s rejoinder is devilish. ‘But I cannot be satisfied without Fanny Price, without making a small hole in Fanny Price’s heart.’ Don’t make her ‘really unhappy,’ says Mary. He has only a fortnight, so ‘will not do her any harm’. He wants only to make her feel, when he leaves, ‘that she shall be never happy again’. ‘“Moderation itself!” said Mary.’

  Fanny’s presence turns out to be a stronger charm than is allowed in her absence. In the final Parsonage conversation Henry Crawford takes his sister’s arm and tells her that his plans have changed. ‘I am quite determined, Mary. My mind is entirely made up. Will it astonish you? No: you must be aware that I am quite determined to marry Fanny Price’ (II. xii). ‘Lucky, lucky girl!’ exclaims his sister, assuming that she will naturally comply. As ever, her fate seems to be being decided out of her hearing. Mansfield Park is a novel about its heroine’s absence. When Fanny leaves Mansfield to go to Portsmouth, everything falls apart without her. We follow her, however, and in the whole of Volume III of the novel, there is not a scene or a dialogue from which she is absent – except, as fleetingly as could be, just after she has left, when we hear Lady Bertram’s reply to Mrs Norris’s opinion that Fanny will not be ‘wanted or missed’. ‘“That may be, sister,” was all Lady Bertram’s reply. “I dare say you are very right; but I am sure I shall miss her very much”’ (III. vi). With choice narrative irony, the only moment of Fanny’s absence is an expression of sincere regret about that absence. The Bertrams have to learn what Lady Bertram, in her vapid, selfish way, has always known: that they cannot do without her.

  Emma’s brief absences let us glimpse a narrative of Mr Knightley’s feelings, unfolding all the time alongside her own preoccupations.

  In Emma, the heroine’s presence is so overweening that her absence, when it occurs, is a kind of shock. There are only four such scenes, all brief, in the whole novel. The first is in the fifth chapter, where we find Mr Knightley talking confidentially to Mrs Weston about Emma’s fate.

  ‘She always declares she will never marry, which, of course, means just nothing at all. But I have no idea that she has yet ever seen a man she cared for. It would not be a bad thing for her to be very much in love with a proper object. I should like to see Emma in love, and in some doubt of a return; it would do her good. But there is nobody hereabouts to attach her; and she goes so seldom from home.’ (I. v)

  Mrs Weston listens but conceals ‘some favourite thoughts of her own and Mr Weston’s on the subject’. Austen is inviting discerning readers to trick themselves. We can infer that the Westons have Frank Churchill in mind as a possible husband for Emma and we will care even more, as they do, about his impending appearance. Meanwhile Mr Knightley’s rumination about the likelihood of Emma falling in love is a piece of calculated misdirection. Only on re-reading will we see that ‘nobody hereabouts’ draws attention to his own obtuseness about his deeper feelings for Emma. By taking place without the heroine, the exchange acquires a certain authority, and the misleading clues as to what is to come are made the stronger.

  Emma is absent again only three times. The first of these absences is the most surprising, for it occurs when suddenly, in the third volume of the novel, the narration switches to Mr Knightley’s point of view to report his suspicions about Frank Churchill.

  Mr. Knightley began to suspect him of some inclination to trifle with Jane Fairfax. He could not understand it; but there were symptoms of intelligence between them—he thought so at least—symptoms of admiration on his side, which, having once observed, he could not persuade himself to think entirely void of meaning, however he might wish to escape any of Emma’s errors of imagination. She was not present when the suspicion first arose. He was dining with the Randalls family, and Jane, at the Eltons’; and he had seen a look, more than a single look, at Miss Fairfax, which, from the admirer of Miss Woodhouse, seemed somewhat out of place. (III.v.)

  We join him as he walks up to Hartfield and meets in the lane Emma and Harriet, and then Frank Churchill, Miss Bates, Jane Fairfax and the Westons. Emma is there, yet hardly present: as they reach the gates to Hartfield Mr Perry passes and Frank Churchill makes his blunder about knowing that Mr Perry is to set up a carriage; ‘Emma was out of hearing.’ Mr Knightley sees ‘confusion suppressed or laughed away’ in Frank Churchill’s face, but can’t catch Jane Fairfax’s response: ‘she was indeed behind, and too busy with her shawl’. For the rest of the chapter we watch Emma, Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax with Mr Knightley’s eyes. He sees them play their word game and detects ‘disingenuousness and double dealing’. In the very next chapter, Emma once more disappears, for a comic conversation between Mr Knightley and Mrs Elton in which the strawberry party at Donwell is suggested. We are again given access to Mr Knightley’s unspoken thoughts, seeing that his plans are shaped by his wish ‘to persuade Mr. Woodhouse, as well as Emma, to join the party’ (III. vi). But more than this: Emma’s absence is used to smuggle a new suggestion about Mr Knightley’s secret thoughts into the narrative. Politely deflecting Mrs Elton’s officious desires to issue the invitations, he says that only one woman will ever ‘invite what guests she pleases to Donwell’. ‘“—Mrs. Weston, I suppose,” interrupted Mrs. Elton, rather mortified. “No—Mrs. Knightley;—and, till she is in being, I will manage such matters myself.”’

  Emma’s absences are used to sho
w the true folly of her schemes: the secret understanding between Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax is not to be the complete surprise for the reader that it is for the heroine. But if this is the ostensible reason for these scenes, there is a deeper one too. Mr Knightley’s suspicions, which arose that evening at the Eltons’ when Emma ‘was not present’, have been ignited by the ‘early dislike’ that he has taken to Frank Churchill, ‘for some reason best known to himself’ (III. v). His hostile attention to Frank Churchill must be directed by jealousy. The deft irrelevance of his quip about some future ‘Mrs Knightley’ must be evidence of private thoughts about his own possible attachment. Emma’s brief absences let us glimpse a narrative of Mr Knightley’s feelings, unfolding all the time alongside her own preoccupations. There is one more such absence, a snatch of conversation when Mrs Weston, her baby on her knee, tells Mr Weston of Emma’s engagement:

  the wonder of it was very soon nothing; and by the end of an hour he was not far from believing that he had always foreseen it.

  ‘It is to be a secret, I conclude,’ said he. ‘These matters are always a secret, till it is found out that every body knows them. Only let me be told when I may speak out.—I wonder whether Jane has any suspicion.’ (III. xvii)

  It is the completion of a circle: in that first scene without Emma we glimpsed the Westons’ schemes for her marriage to Frank Churchill; in this last one they discover how much better it is that she marry Mr Knightley. In this novel of secrets, their earlier hope that Emma would marry Frank will remain a secret.