Jane Austen, the Secret Radical

by Helena Kelly

  They pass with Darcy, as well. He asks Elizabeth ‘if she would do him the honour of introducing him to her friends’. We’ll talk more in a minute about the significance of introductions. What Jane makes obvious here is that Darcy doesn’t for a moment suspect who the Gardiners are. Elizabeth, Jane explains, ‘could hardly suppress a smile at his being now seeking the acquaintance of some of those very people against whom his pride had revolted in his offer to herself.’ A few pages further on, we have the moment where Elizabeth’s heart really begins to soften towards Darcy: ‘When she saw him thus seeking the acquaintance and courting the good opinion of people with whom any intercourse a few months ago would have been a disgrace—when she saw him thus civil, not only to herself, but to the very relations whom he had openly disdained.’

  Critics queue up to accuse the heroine of Emma of being a snob, with, as we’ll discover, only partial justification. They don’t do it for Darcy, though, and his snobbery is far more overt and disruptive, for the first part of the novel at least.

  If I were to ask you when Darcy and Elizabeth are first introduced to each other I can almost guarantee that you’ll begin by visualising a scene that owes a lot to one or other of the adaptations. The Meryton assembly rooms; wood-panelled, candle-lit. Music, couples dancing in the background. In the foreground, Mrs Bennet, on the catch for rich suitors, forcing her five daughters on the notice of Mr Bingley and Mr Darcy, and practically thrusting the oldest into Mr Bingley’s arms. All very necessary, in an adaptation, and all very helpful in making sure that the viewers start getting to know the names of the characters. But that’s not what happens in the book.

  Introductions are a lot less important in English society than they used to be. Few people now care who’s meant to be introduced to whom or are troubled about getting titles exactly right. No one worries unduly about the approved way of visiting a new neighbour for the first time. Etiquette is by far more fluid. But it used to take up a lot of time and attention. And in Pride and Prejudice it’s something that, as readers, we ought to be particularly attentive to.

  Social introductions are referred to 30 times in Pride and Prejudice. To compare this to the other novels of slightly greater length, there are nineteen incidences in Mansfield Park, 23 in Emma, and fifteen in Sense and Sensibility. In several scenes, the exact form and correctness of introductions is explicitly addressed, as when Mr Collins introduces himself, very improperly, to Mr Darcy. The first two chapters of the novel are taken up with the question of whether or not Mr Bennet will ‘visit’ Mr Bingley, the rich newcomer to the neighbourhood. Mrs Bennet is very keen that he should. She has an eye to her daughters’ marriage prospects, and optimistically announces that Bingley ‘may very likely fall in love with one of them’. She tells her husband that he ‘must go, for it will be impossible for us to visit him if you do not’.

  A visit involves going to a house and sending in your card, after which you might expect to be admitted to see the master or mistress. The visit should then be returned within a few days. Fifteen minutes was the hard limit for these initial meetings, indeed for all social calls which were formal rather than genuinely friendly and relaxed – when Bingley returns Mr Bennet’s visit, he sits ‘about ten minutes with him in his library’. Visiting, as the word suggests, is all about seeing. By turning up on Mr Bingley’s doorstep, Mr Bennet is declaring his equal or roughly equivalent social status; by returning the visit, Bingley can see whether he agrees with that assessment. It’s also a way for Mr Bennet to check how the newcomer is living (the furniture, the servants, whether Bingley is dressed, or unacceptably hungover, whether he has a mistress with him). Once the visit has been paid and reciprocated, to everyone’s satisfaction, normal social intercourse can begin.

  Mrs Bennet is unable to begin the process herself – there is at this point no hostess in Bingley’s household (he collects his sisters from London only just before the Meryton assembly). Women can’t pay these first, ceremonial visits to single men, only to women. You can see why Mrs Bennet gets so frustrated when Mr Bennet keeps telling her that he won’t go.q By not visiting, Mr Bennet would be indicating either that he doesn’t consider himself to be of an equivalent social status to Bingley, or that he’s unwilling to permit his wife and daughters to socialise with him. A death-knell, either way, to Mrs Bennet’s matrimonial ambitions. The visit isn’t an empty gesture; it has a purpose. And that purpose is exactly what Mr Bennet is joking about when he tells his wife that, ‘I will send a few lines […] to assure him of my hearty consent to his marrying whichever he chooses of the girls’.

  ‘Visiting’ was one of the few occasions when it was deemed acceptable to introduce yourself to a stranger. Usually introductions required a third person, someone who was acquainted with both parties – a guarantor, if you like, of each side’s good faith and good character. Places like Bath, where it could be difficult to find someone to do this, had a Master of Ceremonies to carry out the role instead. It was all quite formalised. It also required a decision as to the relative social status of the parties, because generally the party who was lower in status was introduced to the party who was higher or who had more to lose, so young people to older people, single people to married people, untitled to titled, men to women. Once you had been introduced, you could dance, converse, and so on. It was possible, though, for either party to reject the introduction, to show their unwillingness to be acquainted.

  Look in almost any late-eighteenth- or early-nineteenth-century novel and you’ll see how introductions worked:

  Lionel eagerly begged permission to introduce his sisters and cousin to Mrs Arlbery, who readily consented to the proposal […]

  ‘Mortimer,’ said Mr Delvile, ‘I understand you have already had the pleasure of seeing this young lady?’ ‘Yes, Sir,’ he answered, ‘I have more than once had that happiness, but I have never had the honour of being introduced to her.’ […]

  Mrs Berlinton declined being introduced to that lady […]r

  In Jane’s novels, too, introductions are almost always mentioned specifically, particularly between the main characters. Emma is an exception, because Emma and Knightley have known each other all her life, they’re near-neighbours, but we’re usually shown the other heroes and heroines meeting. In Northanger Abbey we’re told of Catherine’s excitement when ‘the Master of Ceremonies introduced to her a very gentlemanlike young man as a partner; – his name was Tilney’. In Sense and Sensibility Edward Ferrars appears as ‘a gentleman-like and pleasing young man, who was introduced to their acquaintance soon after his sister’s establishment at Norland’. The peculiar circumstances of Willoughby’s meeting with Marianne mean that he has to introduce himself – a warning sign, perhaps. In the first chapter of Mansfield Park even the children (ranging in age from ten to eighteen) are formally introduced to each other, and it is formal – the entire family is assembled, and the heroine’s aunt revels ‘in the importance of leading her into the others, and recommending her to their kindness’. The hero and heroine of Persuasion, who haven’t seen each other since their engagement was broken seven years earlier, go to some trouble to avoid the embarrassment of being introduced to each other again – ‘he had inquired after her, she found, slightly, as might suit a former slight acquaintance, seeming to acknowledge such as she had acknowledged, actuated, perhaps, by the same view of escaping introduction when they were to meet’.

  Introductions were an important moment.

  Which makes it all the more remarkable – and all the more obviously deliberate – that Elizabeth and Darcy aren’t ever, so far as we can see, introduced to each other. In fact, they actively resist the efforts of other characters to make them formally acquainted.

  The first occasion is a memorable one, though we tend to miss the real significance of it. It takes place early on in the novel, at the Meryton assembly, the first occasion on which we, as readers, meet Darcy. Bingley and Darcy, we discover almost immediately, have very different personalities. While Bingley
‘had soon made himself acquainted with all the principal people in the room’, Darcy stalks about, managing to offend almost everyone. He dances twice with Bingley’s sisters and, we’re told, declines being introduced to ‘any other lady’.

  For us, Darcy’s refusal to dance – at a dance – appears socially awkward, but almost endearingly so. As we learn, he doesn’t like dancing. ‘I detest it’, says he, and later, ‘It is a compliment which I never pay to any place if I can avoid it’. Instead, he refuses to do anything that is socially expected of him. It’s hard to counter the effect of his ‘fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien’, still more of his ‘ten thousand a year’, but he manages it. He makes a spectacle of himself. Even Bingley, who rarely criticises his friend, is exasperated to see Darcy, as he says, ‘standing about by yourself in this stupid manner’.

  Is it deliberate, on Darcy’s part? Well, the indications are that, yes, it is. Bear in mind, Darcy could have stayed away, as Bingley suggests he do if he wants to avoid the Netherfield ball – ‘he may go to bed, if he chooses, before it begins’. He could have gone to the card room, with the older men. Assembly rooms almost always had one. He could have made conversation with the older, married women. Instead, we find him creating some rather unpleasant situations.s He sits ‘close’ by one lady, ‘for half-an-hour without once opening his lips’. When she, in desperation, or defiance, asks him a question, it’s reported that ‘he could not help answering […] but she said he seemed quite angry at being spoke to’. When Bingley assures Darcy that there are many ‘pleasant girls’, points out Elizabeth, and offers to arrange an introduction – ‘Do let me ask my partner to introduce you’ – Darcy ‘looked for a moment at Elizabeth, till catching her eye, he withdrew his own and coldly said: “She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me; I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.”’

  Elizabeth, we’re told, is ‘sitting down just behind’ him. Presumably he turns to look at her. He catches her eye. He means her to hear him. The consensus among the good people of Meryton is that Darcy is ‘above his company’, or, as Mrs Bennet puts it ‘eat up by pride’. What we can say for certain, at this point in the novel, is that he’s being obnoxious on purpose. Does he deserve to be treated with the ‘respect’ Burke would insist on? On this behaviour, no. It appears that he’s willing to interact with the men. They are, of course, almost all of them his social inferiors. He’s prepared to address Sir William Lucas, who has been knighted, with due respect – he calls him ‘sir’. He doesn’t encounter Mr Bennet until almost the end of the book; one rather wonders how that particular introduction would work – what’s the top trump? Age, or annual income? But by refusing to be introduced to any of the women, Darcy makes it clear not only that he doesn’t wish to dance, but that he considers them all to be his social inferiors – so much so, perhaps, that he’s unwilling to grant them the courtesy traditionally given to women, that of treating them, temporarily, as the higher-status party in an introduction.

  One person at least seems to think so. Let’s move on to talk about the scene in Chapter 6. A fortnight has gone by. Elizabeth and Darcy are still, at this point, not formally acquainted, they’ve not been introduced. We know this because Jane tells us: Darcy has been looking at Elizabeth, he’s attracted despite himself, he ‘began to wish to know more of her, and as a step towards conversing with her himself, attended to her conversation with others’. They’re not yet on speaking terms. There’s been no mutual social recognition. Elizabeth notices the eavesdropping, and declares that she ‘shall certainly let him know that I see what he is about’. Speaking to him at all, of course, without an introduction is ‘impertinent’ – Elizabeth admits as much. Her friend, Charlotte Lucas, defies her to bring the subject up with him, ‘which immediately provoking Elizabeth to do it, she turned’, and addresses a challenging remark. But even with her own determined impertinence, even with all that defying and provoking, Elizabeth manages only a few short sentences. The situation is, undoubtedly, socially uncomfortable, and Charlotte produces an easy out for her friend by insisting that Elizabeth should sit and play the piano.

  A little later in the evening, Sir William Lucas is talking – with difficulty – to Darcy. Arriving at a conversational hiatus, he notices Elizabeth, ‘at that instant moving towards them’. He is ‘struck with the action of doing a very gallant thing’ and decides, on the spur of the moment, to introduce the pair so that they can dance. He does it the wrong way round, though – ‘My dear Miss Eliza, why are you not dancing? Mr Darcy, you must allow me to present this young lady to you as a very desirable partner.’ The clear implication is that Elizabeth is the inferior one, socially. This is – surely – at least part of the reason why Darcy is ‘extremely surprised’. Sir William may have been presented at the royal court, but this introduction breaches normal etiquette.

  Elizabeth refuses the introduction – ‘she instantly drew back, and said with some discomposure to Sir William: “Indeed, sir, I have not the least intention of dancing. I entreat you not to suppose that I moved this way in order to beg for a partner.”’ She is ‘determined’. Sir William’s ‘attempt at persuasion’ and Darcy’s ‘grave propriety’ – recently acquired, one gathers – are equally ‘in vain’. It isn’t simply that Elizabeth doesn’t want to dance with Darcy; she doesn’t want to be formally acquainted with him, or at least not like this. She doesn’t once address Darcy here; she speaks through Sir William. So far as she’s concerned, the message she’s sending is clear – she isn’t prepared to acknowledge Darcy as her social superior.

  It’s a moment that radical thinkers would have recognised, a stripping back to essentials, the propounding of a problem. What happens with something as apparently everyday and straightforward as an introduction if the two parties can’t agree on their relative social status?

  Jane’s been preparing her readers for this. Not only does she open the novel with the lengthy disagreement between Mr and Mrs Bennet about visiting, but when Mrs Bennet, made almost incoherent with frustration about the whole business, cries out ‘Nonsense, nonsense!’, her husband chides her: ‘What can be the meaning of that emphatic exclamation?’ He then poses a question. It’s directed not just at his wife but I think at us, too: ‘Do you consider the forms of introduction, and the stress that is laid on them, as nonsense?’

  Well, Jane doesn’t consider them nonsense, quite, but she is interested, I think, in exploring what happens when you start examining them more closely, and in what happens when you take them away altogether.

  So she sets up a situation where, first of all, Darcy refuses to be introduced to Elizabeth, and then Elizabeth refuses to be introduced to Darcy. And she has the two of them embark on a relationship that takes place, almost entirely, outside social norms; one in which all kinds of set ideas and traditional concepts – prejudices – are uprooted.

  She puts their relationship alongside other, more traditional, socially-sanctioned arrangements. There’s the carefully sex-segregated visiting and activities that take place (the shooting, the fishing, the gentlemen going to dine with the officers). There’s the staid romance between Bingley and Elizabeth’s older sister. Bingley obtains a very proper introduction to the eldest Miss Bennet: ‘he inquired who she was, and got introduced, and asked her for the two next [dances]’. Even Bingley’s admiration is textbook. His praise of Miss Bennet is lifted straight from Burney’s Evelina. ‘She is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld!’ he declares, having known her perhaps an hour, and ‘as to Miss Bennet, he could not conceive an angel more beautiful’.t

  Jane tells us exactly what the relationship between Miss Bennet and Bingley consists of. It’s all exceedingly correct, and it doesn’t amount to very much. The two ‘meet tolerably often’, but ‘never for many hours together’ and ‘they always see each other in large mixed parties’. Miss Bennet has ‘danced four dances’ with Bingley, ‘she saw him one morning at his own house,
and has since dined with him in company four times’. Subsequently, she spends five days at Netherfield, but she’s ill in bed for most of that time and even when she’s well again, there are other people around. The pair then bump into each other very briefly in Meryton, and dance together at the Netherfield ball. At this point, Bingley leaves Hertfordshire and is persuaded, by the combined forces of his sisters and Darcy, to stay away, and that’s it. Miss Bennet doesn’t see Bingley again until the following autumn, whereupon they almost immediately get engaged. Their interactions are nothing like enough to make them understand each other’s character; it’s a shaky foundation for married life, for all its decorum.

  In comparison, Darcy and Elizabeth have, during an identical timeframe, danced once, dined together several times, argued a lot, walked alone together, sat alone in rooms together, debated, corresponded, and insulted each other’s family (him) and manners (her). Darcy has proposed and been rejected. He’s detailed the sexual peccadilloes of his younger sister. Darcy is the first person Elizabeth encounters after receiving the news of Lydia’s elopement; he’s the first person she tells about it. He rushes off to sort it out. The longest they go without seeing each other is about three and a half months. The pair of them have changed their minds, and their behaviour. They’ve acknowledged their mistakes, and even introduced their relations to each other – this last, one imagines, with a particular consciousness of the fact that, according to the social rules, they themselves aren’t formally acquainted.