by Jane Austen
(1972)
Notes
1. For further discussion of the influence of Sir Charles Grandison on Jane Austen, who was of course steeped in Richardson’s work which she admired so much, see Frank Bradbrook’s helpful book Jane Austen and her Predecessors.
2. It is interesting to speculate which painters Jane Austen might have been looking at in London in 1813, apart from Reynolds. The possibilities could include Gainsborough and George Romney, though more recent portraits would have been done by Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769–1825), Sir Henry Raeburn (1756–1823), John Hoppner (1758–1810), and Johan Zoffany (1723–1810). Lawrence regarded himself as a loyal adherent of Reynolds’s Discourses, though he did once say that Reynolds ‘was of a cold Temperament, a philosopher from absence of the Passions’. There is still a somewhat generalized sweetness and purity in some of Lawrence’s portraits of fashionable ladies, though it is not perhaps the true neo-classic generality. Hoppner was also popular as a painter of beautiful women and, probably more in competitive envy than genuine outrage, once made the strange declaration that ‘the ladies of Lawrence show a gaudy dissoluteness of taste, and sometimes trespass on moral, as well as professional chastity.’ Perhaps Raeburn – ‘the Scottish Velasquez’ – achieves somewhat more individuality in his portraits than Lawrence. Sir Walter Armstrong in 1901 wrote of his work: ‘His pictures are always well focused. Our eye is invariably led at once to the most worthy centre, where the sitter’s personality sits enthroned among the accidents of his condition…’ Lawrence’s beauties may have been too fashionable for Jane Austen to have found Mrs Bingley among them. Hoppner and Raeburn seem to have taken in a wider range of ladies, from a class point of view, and it is not inconceivable that in front of one of their portraits Jane Austen found a faithful image of her own created character.
3. See Jane Austen: Twentieth Century Views, edited by Ian Watt.
4. Jane Austen: A Study of her Artistic Development.
5. The work of the sociologist Erving Goffman is relevant here. See in particular his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, the first chapter of which is, indeed, headed ‘Performances’.
6. It is Lydia’s precipitous elopement, in addition to the more remote but not dissimilar marriage of her father, that provokes Jane Austen into her most direct attack on first impressions. She is justifying Elizabeth’s change of mind about Darcy.
‘If gratitude and esteem are good foundations of affection, Elizabeth’s change of sentiment will be neither improbable nor faulty. But if otherwise – if the regard springing from such sources is unreasonable or unnatural, in comparison of what is so often described as arising on a first interview with its object, and even before two words have been exchanged – nothing can be said in her defense except that she had given somewhat of a trial of the latter method in her partiality for Wickham, and that its ill success might, perhaps authorize her to seek the other less interesting mode of attachment.’
It is fairly clear here that Jane Austen is showing her particular suspicion of the pre-verbal immediacy of sexual attraction. In this area in particular, she obviously thought that to act on first impressions could only be disastrous. For some interesting observations on Jane Austen’s suspicions of sex, see Marvin Mudrick’s Jane Austen: Irony as Defense and Discovery.
7. See ‘Character and Caricature in Jane Austen’ in Critical Essays on Jane Austen, edited by B. C. Southam.
8. cf. Basil Bernstein’s work in socio-linguistics in which he differentiates between a restricted speech code and an elaborated speech code, the former determined by a person’s particular position in the social structure, while the latter is not thus restricted.
9. ‘It was the favourite wish of his mother, as well as of hers. While in their cradles, we planned the union: and now, at the moment when the wishes of both sisters would be accomplished in their marriage, to be prevented by a young woman of inferior birth, of no importance in the world, and wholly unallied to the family!’
The spectacle of Elizabeth holding out against the wishes, plans, schemes of society – positional control – is one which helps to sustain our belief in the possibility of some degree of individual autonomy. (It is a tolerably savage comment on this society’s power to enforce connections based on respectability, that it is felt to be a blessing by the Bennets when it is announced that Wickham is to marry Lydia after the elopement. ‘And they must marry! Yet he is such a man!…How strange this is! And for this we are to be thankful.’ Elizabeth’s characteristically penetrating sense of the ironies in her society sees at once the strangeness of a marriage which is at once undesirable, in view of the character of the bridegroom, and absolutely essential, in view of society’s rigid rules. Public propriety entirely pre-empts private felicity. The fact of the connection has become more important than the individuals who will compose it.)
10. Gilbert Ryle points out in his interesting essay, ‘Jane Austen and the Moralists’, in which he argues that Shaftesbury’s ideas influenced Jane Austen’s ethics/aesthetics, that while she often uses the word ‘Mind’ she almost never uses the word ‘soul’.
11. It is worth noting the names of the various places which Jane Eyre goes to and leaves; they form a suggestive progression – Gateshead, Lowood, Thornfield, Moorhouse, Marshend, Ferndean, and in her flight towards Rochester she finally finds herself in a trackless forest. From an initially very repressive house, in which she shows her rebellion by losing consciousness and passing out as though her ‘head’ had been too tightly ‘gated’, she makes her way to the uncharted spaces of nature – from behind ‘gates’ to beyond social boundaries. However, is it not an unambiguous progression, and in fact Jane Eyre finally recognizes the need for boundaries – only they will be ones of her own drawing and dictating. But this is another story.
Emendations to the Text
See also Note on the Text, p. xl.
p. 8, l. 27: “When is your next ball to be, Lizzy?”: the first and subsequent editions give this speech to Kitty, but as Chapman notes,1 it clearly belongs to Mr Bennet. In the first edition, it begins a new line which should also have been indented.
p. 9, l. 34: “my dear Mr. Bennet?” 1st ed.: “my dear Mr. Bennet!” A common printer’s error. The emended text follows Chapman.
p. 45, l. 29: daughter 1st ed.: daughters follows the third edition and Chapman. Both Kitty and Lydia are present.
p. 65, l. 28: up stairs.” 1st ed.: up stairs. Though inverted commas are sometimes used for indirect speech, there is no indication here of where they should open, so it seems more likely to be a printer’s error. Not corrected in Chapman.
p. 88, l. 11: Bingley’s 1st ed.: Bingleys’ follows the second and third editions and Chapman.
p. 126, l. 10: proceeds 1st ed.: proceeded follows Chapman.
p. 143, l. 34: Lucy 1st ed.: Lucas.
p. 162, l. 31: impertinence? 1st ed.: impertinence. follows Chapman.
p. 210, ll. 14–16: “A great many…have to tell!”: printed as one speech in first edition. Emendation follows the third edition and Chapman. It is clearly Maria, not Elizabeth, who is concerned with the number of dinners.
p. 226, l. 34: her 1st ed.: his corrected in second and subsequent editions.
p. 229, l. 31: my carrying 1st ed.: by carrying follows Chapman. ‘By carrying’ seems more likely, because more elegantly concise, than ‘by my carrying’, which Chapman suggests as the probably correct reading, though he does not himself adopt it.2
p. 268, l. 11: risk? 1st ed.: risk. follows the third edition and Chapman.
p. 324, ll. 9–10: “How hard it is…impossible in others!”: printed as one paragraph in the first, second and third editions. Austen noted the error in a letter to Cassandra (4 February 1813), commenting on her copy of the first editon: ‘The greatest blunder in the Printing that I have met with is in Page 220—Vol. 3 where two speeches are made into one.’3
p. 330, l. 35: friends 1st ed.: friend follows Chapman. The context makes clear that Elizabeth can have onl
y Darcy in mind.
p. 336, l. 5: family? 1st ed: family! follows third edition and Chapman.
p. 342, l. 25: had resigned 1st ed.: has resigned it follows second and subsequent editions.
p. 351, l. 4: made her here 1st ed.: made here. I have adopted the correction from Cassandra Austen’s copy of the first edition, given the likelihood of a printer’s error due to the repetition of ‘her’ in the previous line. R. W. Chapman’s approval of the correction in his article on Cassandra Austen’s editions is also a persuasive reminder that ‘her here’ would be uncharacteristically inaccurate: ‘Darcy had done nothing so improper as to make a visit to Miss Bennett [sic] in her mother’s house.’
p. 353, l. 26: be be serious 1st ed.: be serious. The correction in Cassandra Austen’s copy of the first edition again seems right, given the likelihood of a printer’s error due to the italics, Chapman4 suggests that ‘the repetition might be intended’, but such a repetition would be atypical.
p. 359, l. 26: know 1st ed.: knew follows Chapman. The whole interchange refers to the past.
References
R. W. Chapman (ed.), Pride and Prejudice, Vol. II of The Novels of Jane Austen, 5 vols. (1923); 3rd edition (London, New York, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1965)
Jane Austen’s Letters, 3rd edition, collected and edited by Deirdre Le Faye (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995)
Also cited: R. W. Chapman, ‘Jane Austen’s text: authoritative manuscript corrections’, TLS, 13 February 1937, p. 116
Notes
1. Chapman, p. 391.
2. Ibid., p. 393.
3. Letters, p. 203.
4. Chapman, p. 373.
Notes
The previous Penguin edition of Pride and Prejudice (1972), edited with an excellent Introduction by Tony Tanner, had only four explanatory notes. Tanner argued that extensive notes were unnecessary since ‘references to topical events or other writers, are almost totally suppressed’, and that this meant that the novel achieved an ‘element of timelessness…even though it unmistakably reflects a certain kind of society at a certain historical moment’ (Pride and Prejudice, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972, p. 397). But a full enjoyment and understanding of Austen’s ‘timeless’ comedy depends on being able to understand and interpret telling social details, effortlessly familiar to a contemporary audience from that ‘certain kind of society’ – a society which is increasingly unfamiliar and alien to modern readers. The culture in which Austen’s heroines make their choices is one of social aspiration and consumerism, and in which social aspiration and consumerism are themselves live moral and political issues – particularly for women. Reading that culture, and those debates, depends on an alertness to significant details: of language, of behaviour, of dress, of ‘lifestyle’. I have therefore made the explanatory notes to this edition as full as possible in an attempt to give modern readers the opportunity to ‘read’ Austen’s characters and social fabric in the way that (often without realizing it) we are constantly engaged in reading our own social environment.
I should like to acknowledge The Jane Austen Handbook, edited by J. David Grey (London: The Athlone Press, 1986), which has been invaluable in preparing the Notes.
GENERAL NOTES
1. Social Class
It is accurate to describe Jane Austen as writing about the gentry only if that term is being used very loosely. If the term ‘gentry’ is used more precisely, to refer to the class of established, landowning families, then Austen’s main characters come mainly from the very bottom rungs of that class or from its margins. Various commentators have coined terms to refer to this more marginal, heterogeneous group. Nancy Armstrong, for example, writes of a ‘middle-class aristocracy’1; and David Spring adopts Alan Everitt’s useful term ‘pseudo-gentry’2 to describe a group comprising trade and professions, who aspired to the lifestyle of the traditional rural gentry, and whose growing incomes often meant that they could afford to buy into it by acquiring property – as the Bingleys are seeking to do at the beginning of the novel. As Edward Copeland points out, Austen quotes even land-based wealth such as Darcy’s in terms of annual income: a symptom of a class intensely interested in income as a means to, and sign of, status – and survival. For women, of course, upward social mobility could be achieved only through marriage.
Contemporary commentators were very much aware of shifts in the definitions of the social order, an awareness often made evident through anxious attempts to define a status quo rather than by welcoming change. Clara Reeve, for example, in her Plans of Education, published in 1792, described the following hierarchy, arguing that ‘the gradations of rank and fortune’ should be observed in educating children:
The nobility of this land are rich and powerful, but there is a distinction between the different degrees and titles, and also between the old and new nobility, which the old families well understand.
The next order, are the old families of wealth and consequence; some of whom have refused titles that they thought it beneath them to accept; whose families are older, and their fortunes superior to many of the nobility.
In the third class, I would place those who have acquired great wealth by any profession or calling, and whose wealth, however gained, stands in lieu of birth, merit, and accomplishments, to the world, and also to themselves. I mean only those overgrown and enormous fortunes which we have seen in our days;…
Fourthly, I would reckon the inferior gentry, who can only count hundreds, where the above classes number thousands a year. In this class every real blessing and comfort of life is to be found, and those who know how to enjoy them, with virtue and moderation, are the wisest and happiest of mankind. – But there is a canker-worm which too frequently destroys their fortunes and their happiness; a foolish ambition to imitate their superiors, in manners, in vanity, in experience.
But, fifthly, the men of genteel professions, law, physic, and divinity; to these may be added, those employed in the public offices under government, and the officers of the army and navy. In this class I would include all merchants of eminence. The character of a British merchant, is one of the most respectable of any in the world…
There are many of this honourable profession who can afford to spend with any of the classes abovementioned; but they are the best and wisest men, who provide for their families, and avoid all useless and impertinent display of their wealth.3
Austen’s novels are interventions, from a comparable point of view, in this situation of upward mobility and contested hierarchy and, like Reeve, Austen is particularly interested in the responsible professional and merchant class – the new meritocracy represented in Pride and Prejudice by the Gardiners.
References
Armstrong, Nancy, Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987)
Butler, Marilyn, ‘History, Politics, and Religion’, in Grey, pp. 190–208
Copeland, Edward, ‘Jane Austen and the Consumer Revolution’, in Grey, pp. 77–92
Reeve, Clara, Plans of Education; with Remarks on the Systems of Other Writers (London, 1792)
Spring, David, ‘Interpreters of Jane Austen’s Social World: Literary Critics and Historians’, in Janet Todd (ed.), Jane Austen: New Perspectives, Women and Literature 3 (New York and London: Holmes and Meier, 1983), pp. 53–72
Notes
1. Armstrong, p. 160.
2. Spring, p. 60.
3. Reeve, pp. 64–7.
2. Literary Allusions
The relationship between Pride and Prejudice and other literary texts is broadly, rather than specifically, allusive, so it seems more appropriate to deal with it in a general note (and see also the Introduction on the political resonance of women’s fiction in the period).
Austen wrote to Cassandra in 1798: ‘our family…are great Novel-readers & not ashamed of being so’ (18 December 1798),1 and, as other letters show, Austen read and re-read a huge amount of contemporary fiction. So
although, as Tanner pointed out, Austen does not refer explicitly to other writers in Pride and Prejudice (with one exception: see note I, xiv: 5), the novel is steeped in the characters, situations and plot structures of contemporary fiction – particularly the novels of Samuel Richardson and post-Richardsonian fiction by women. The most direct allusion is the title itself, clearly taken from the end of Frances Burney’s Cecilia (1782), and Darcy’s first proposal recalls Mortimer Delville’s proposal to the heroine in that novel. Darcy can also be seen as a version of the reformable Mr B. in Richardson’s Pamela (1740), as well as being a much more attractive rewriting of the ideal hero in Sir Charles Grandison (1753–4) – one of Austen’s favourite novels.
See
Butler, Marilyn, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (1975; repr. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987)
Doody, Margaret Anne, ‘Jane Austen’s Reading’, in Grey, pp. 347–63
Harris, Jocelyn, Jane Austen’s Art of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)
Johnson, Claudia, Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1988)
Kelly, Gary, ‘Jane Austen and the English Novel of the 1790s’, in Mary Anne Schofield and Cecilia Macheski (eds.), Fetter’d or Free? British Women Novelists 1670–1815 (Athens, Ohio and London: Ohio University Press, 1986), pp. 285–306
Lascelles, Mary, ‘Reading and Response’, in Jane Austen and Her Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939), pp. 41–83
Moler, Kenneth L., Jane Austen’s Art of Allusion (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1968)
Notes
1. Letters, p. 26.
3. Language
Shifts in the meanings of words can be one of the main difficulties for a modern reader of Austen. Where changes in meaning made it seem particularly necessary, I have given eighteenth-century definitions of individual words in the notes.
