Barbara Hardy-A Reading of Jane Austen-Bloomsbury Academic (2000)

A READING OF JANE AUSTEN
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Novels of George Eliot (Athlone Press)

The Appropriate form: An Essay on the Novel (Athlone Press)
The Moral Art of Dickens (Athlone Press)
The Exposure of Luxury: Radical Themes in Thackeray (Peter Owen)
Tellers and Listeners: The Narrative Imagination (Athlone Press)
The Advantage of Lyric: Essays on Feeling in Poetry (Athlone Press)
A READING OF
Jane Au£ten
Barbara Hardy
UNIVERSITY OF L O N D O N
THE ATHLONE PRESS
1979
Published by
THE ATHLONE PRESS
UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
at 4 Gower Street, London WC1
Distributed by Tiptree Book Services Ltd
Tiptree, Essex
First edition (Peter Owen Ltd) 1975

First paperback edition,
with corrections (Athtone Press) 1979
© Barbara Hardy 1975, 1979
ISBN 0485 12032 1
Reprinted by photolitho by
W H I T S T A B L E LITHO LTD
Whitstable, Kent
TO BETTY
This page intentionally left blank
CONTENTS
I The Flexible Medium 11

II The Feelings and the Passions 37
III The Storytellers 1: Continuity, Climax and
Conclusion 66
IV The Storytellers 2: Imagination and Memory 83
V Social Groups 103
VI Properties and Possessions 136
VII A Sense of the Author 166
This page intentionally left blank
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am very grateful to Jean Elliott and Barbara Pinsker for their

generous work on a difficult manuscript. Jean Elliott also gave
valuable advice and criticism. I must also thank Alasdair Aston for
his suggestions. I am indebted to students at Royal Holloway Coll-
ege, and Birkbeck College, for their listening and talking over the
past ten years. Veronica Wilson-Tagoe will find traces of conversa-
tions we had while she was working on her M.Phil, thesis. I have
profited from agreements and disagreements with many Jane
Austen scholars, but am particularly indebted to the work of R. W.
Chapman, Brian Southam, Mary Lascelles, Howard Babb, A.
Walton Litz, and Stuart Tave.
This book is a study of Jane Austen's major novels, and does not
include a discussion of the juvenilia or the unfinished works.
B.H.
The text used in this book is that of R. W. Chapman's edition of the novels,
Oxford Universiy Press, third edition, 1932-4, and his edition of the Minor
Works, Oxford University Press, 1954.
The following abbreviations are used in the text:

NA Nonhanger Abbey (Composed between 1798 and 1803; sold
to Crosby & Co. 1803; published 1817).
SS Sense and Sensibility (Composed between c. 1795 and 1811;
published 1811).
PP Pride and Prejudice (Composed between 1796 and 1813; pub-
lished 1813).
MP Mansfield Park (Published 1814).
E Emma (Published 1815).
P Persuasion (Published 1817).
MW Minor Works (Reference is made to Evelyn and
Catharine, or the Bower, composed between
c. 1788-1809, and the fragment Sanditon,
composed January-March 1817, pub-
lished 1925).
I
The Flexible Medium
Good artists work within their chosen genre, great artists transform it.
The art of fiction has been radically changed by the novels of Rich-
ardson, Sterne, Henry James, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. These
writers presented themselves as innovators. What is astonishing about
Jane Austen is that, while making no claims to innovation, she too
transformed the art of fiction.1 Indeed she may be said to have created
the modern novel. She combined what Ian Watt calls 'the internal
and the external approaches to character*, embodying her unified
sense of character and society in a flexible language* and form. Unlike
the other great experimental novelists who have changed the face of
fiction, she introduced no conspicuously new formal devices compar-
able to Richardson's introspective epistle-writing 'to the moment',
Sterne's comic dislocations of narrative time, James's concentrated
dramatic developments, and Joyce's fundamental experiments in
analogues and monologues.
Unlike these others, who were introspective about their own art
either within their novels or in literary criticism, she did not analyse,
judge, or in any way publicize her own achievement. Nor was her
slow and gradual critical reception* marked by any early elucidation
of her formal achievements, partly because the criticism of fiction
1
The revolution which Jane Austen created was described by Ian Watt in
The Rise of the Novel (London, 1957) as the combination of Defoe's and
Richardson's subjectivity with Fielding's handling of society as a whole:
'At the same time, Jane Austen varied her narrative point of view suffici-
ently to give us, not only editorial comment, but much of Defoe's and
Richardson's psychological closeness to the subjective world of the
characters.' (p. 297)
2
See particularly Mary Lascelles, Jane Austen and Her Art (London,
1939), and Howard S. Babb, Jane Austen's Novels; the Fabric of Dialogue
(Hamden, Conn., 1967).
3
See Brian Southam's excellent summary of the critical reception in his
introduction to Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage (London, 1968).
11
12 A Reading of Jane Austen
scarcely concerned itself with form before Henry James started to
mature its infantilities, and partly because her formal achievements
were muted. Jane Austen took a very long time to attract technical
analysis, though she has always been praised, in somewhat general
terms, for her artistry. Throughout the nineteenth century she was
applauded for craft, finish and neatness. These were features that
even her detractors could patronize. Even if she lacked passion, soul,
elevation and social range, she was neat, elegant, and tasteful.4 One
of her best Victorian critics, Richard Simpson, wrote in 1870 that 'She
is neat, epigrammatic and incisive, but always a lady', and 'art will
make up for want of force', adding that her art has 'all the minute
attention to detail of the most accomplished miniature-painter'.5 Her
femininity and ladylike elegance, partly inferred from her biograph-
ers, partly from her novels, tended to be associated with her finished
craft Her accomplishments as a novelist sometimes even seem to be
assimilated to her excellence as a needlewoman. Whether her novels
impressed readers or left them feeling that something was missing, her
artistry provoked admiration rather than elucidation.
It is irksome to suggest, as we must, that she brought about 'a quiet
revolution'e in fiction since her quietness has been as over-emphasized
as her neatness. Not that she was not neat, or not quiet, but she was
many other things as well. Quietness is a word commonly used of the
tenor of her life, her attitude to writing, and the novels themselves.
The impression of quietness was fixed by her brother Henry Austen,
in the 'Biographical Notice' which he published in 1818 as a preface
to the four-volume edition of Nor than ger Abbey and Persuasion, the
posthumously published novels.7 'A life of usefulness, literature and
religion, was not by any means a life of event.' He speaks of her 'quiet
and happy occupations', up to the onset of her illness in 1816, and
stresses her tranquillity and placidity. Everyone remembers the
peculiar details of her discreet and unobtrusive habits of composition.
If the woman novelist's place has commonly had to be in the home,
no other woman seems to have gone to such lengths to mask her pro-
fessional activity in the domestic setting. Her nephew James tells us
how she worked in the family sitting-room, 'careful that her occupa-
4
Southam, Critical Heritage, loc. cit.
8
Ibid., pp. 264,265,253.
6
A. Walton Litz, Jane Austen. A Study of Her Artistic Development (New
York, 1965), p. 53.
1
Reprinted by Chapman, Vol. V, pp. 3-9.
The Flexible Medium 13
tion should not be suspected by servants, or visitors, or any persons
beyond her own family party. She wrote upon small sheets of paper
which could easily be put away, or covered with a piece of blotting
paper.* *
The small pieces of paper and the covering blotting paper join with
her own metaphor of the 'little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory* * to
reinforce the ideas of littleness, neatness and modesty. Henry Austen
introduced the notion of her reluctance to publish, and the difficulty
her friends found in persuading her to face the dreaded notoriety.
When the secret of her authorship was out, she declined to be feted,
and refused an invitation to meet Madame de Stae'l - perhaps no great
loss to either when we remember that Madame de Stae'l thought her
novels 'vulgaire'. We now think of her life as more eventful and varied
than her nineteenth-century biographers suggested, but there remains
the blank created by her sister Cassandra's censorship-by burning
and cutting-of any revealing letters. The limitations and exclusions
of her novels, which are confined in class, region and event, complete
the picture of quietness. Her self-advertised refusal to 'dwell on guilt
and misery*, has joined with the biographical details to create a total
impression of a sedate and cloistered artistic virtue. The impression
has been disturbed by our growing attention to her satire, irony and
criticism,10 but it is true that her art, even as an ironist, steals upon
us gently. It is true, too, that Mansfield Park and Persuasion solicit
our interest in mildness and sweet fortitude. It is also true that her
social criticism seems compatible with a certain evasion of radically
subversive attack. The very elegance and prudence which she con-
sistently admires in her characters must still reinforce her reputation
for peace and quiet.
Her revolution was indeed a modest one. Its modesty was more
genuine and more important than any other aspect of her so-called
quiet life, unobtrusive writing habits, and restrained subject-matter.
One of her nieces, writing to tell her about someone's admiration of
her novels, said that it was sufficiently whole-hearted to please even
8
J. E. Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen (London, 1886), p. 96. First
published in 1870.
• Letters, ed. R. W. Chapman (Oxford, 1952), p. 469; hereafter referred to
as Letters.
10
See especially D. W. Harding, 'Regulated Hatred. An Aspect of the Work
of Jane Austen', Scrutiny, Vol. viii, No. 4 (March 1940), and Marvin
Mudrick, Jane Austen: Irony as Defense and Discovery (Princeton, 1952).
14 A Reading of fane Austen
Cassandra, 'nothing ever like them before or since'.11 But to say that
there was nothing like them before and nothing like them since
obscures her impact. Jane Austen created a new and flexible medium
in which the individual and society could be revealed together. The
achievement is striking when we approach it from earlier novels,
much less so when we approach her novels-as is common-after an
acquaintance with the novels of the twentieth century and the novels
of the Victorian period.
There are moments in the history of art when we find ourselves face
to face with new clearings, heights or depths, after which nothing is
quite the same again. I want to look closely at some of the ways in
which Jane Austen creates such an epoch in the history of fiction. It is
not altogether reckless to suggest that her most singular contribution
was what I shall call her flexible medium, a capacity to glide easily
from sympathy to detachment, from one mind to many minds, from
solitary scenes to social gatherings. It was this medium which she
conveyed to her successors and what was for her a triumph won over
difficulties, became the novel's stock in trade.
The flexible medium is the dominant gift of her genius. It seems to
rely on many powers, dramatic, psychological and stylistic, all of
which solve her individual imaginative needs. Her art succeeds in
moving in and out of the minds of her people, and in and out of
crowds and communities. The combination of such social notation
with such analysis of consciousness transforms our sense of what the
novel can do. The achievement would be more obvious if we were not
so accustomed to taking such a medium for granted in the novels that
came after her. We expect the novelist to be profoundly concerned
with the human mind and the society. We expect the novel to move
fluently from the extreme of inner analysis to that of public life. More-
over, we expect these extremes to meet not simply in the unity of art,
but in a pattern of cause and effect which relates the turmoils in the
psyche to the portrait of society. The novel accumulates its impress-
ions of society by noting the behaviour of people in social groups,
playing social roles, placed in social environments. But such behaviour
is made plain by contrasts with private lives.
It may also be hard to think of a picture or a drama of the indi-
vidual and society, and the individual in society, as a solution to an
artistic problem, since we all take it for granted that we have private
11
Mary Augusta Austen-Leigh, Personal Aspects of Jane Austen (London,
1920), p. 53.
and public lives. We will probably be so sophisticatedly aware of the
varied functions of our roles and registers of action, relationship and
speech, that some of Jane Austen's most original analyses may pass
without notice. Only when we go back to Scott, to Fanny Burney, and
to the great eighteenth-century novelists, Smollett, Sterne, Fielding,
Richardson and Defoe, do we come to realize that the fusion of
private and public worlds is a superb achievement. The novelists
writing before Jane Austen tend to tilt the balance toward either the
private world or the public world. The one may be made implicit in
the other, even subordinate to it. If conjunction is attempted, it is
made abruptly and jerkily. Characters tend to have either public or
private lives.
Occasionally, we meet a more modern novelist who fails to create a
balance. Virginia Woolf complained12 sharply that in their different
ways, and for their different reasons, the novels of Arnold Bennett,
John Galsworthy and H. G. Wells failed to give a sense of the indi-
vidual life, losing it in their preoccupation with the surface or the
problems of public life. She was probably unfair to Arnold Bennett,
whose ways of implying the individual life were less subtle and less
subtly fugitive than her ways; nothing is so difficult for the innovator
to appreciate as an old-fashioned version of the innovation being
attempted. She was right about Galsworthy's specifications and sur-
faces, but Wells affords a more useful instance, since his social surveys
and arguments need to sacrifice, sentimentalize, or simplify the life of
the individual. Like Wells, George Orwell may strike us as brilliant
but bizarre in his very generalization of the public world. Novelists
who fail to join the individual life with their analysis of society may
collapse in imaginative failure, like so many best-sellers, but they may
deliberately create an art of social surfaces because their concern, like
that of Wells and Orwell, is essentially polemic, using the arts of
fiction for political tracts, social studies, ideological fable and docu-
mentaries. But what we are chiefly accustomed to in the great novel-
ists who come after Jane Austen is a controlled and profound imagina-
tive grasp of the individual life and the collective life.
Those novelists who are specialists in solitude, and who move away
from the patterns of society to the isolated individual life, cannot
entirely dispense with society. There is probably no more thorough-
going and consistent essay in human isolation than Samuel Beckett's
12
'Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown', The Captain's Death Bed (London, 1950).
Reprinted in Collected Essays, Vol. I (London, 1966).
Lessness. It is a very brief novel, because Beckett is perhaps no more
capable of keeping up such moving and chilling solitude throughout
a long narrative than George Eliot and Joyce were of making whole
novels out of the limited imaginative materials analysed in the stories
of Scenes of Clerical Life and Dubliners. Lessness has to forgo the
usual time and space expected of novels for its reduction of the usual
quantity of social life to such lessness. Moreover, in this sparest of
fictions, the very absence of society relies somewhat on the expecta-
tions of its presence, as it does in Beckett's more populous novel How
It Is or in Sartre's La Nausee. In Beckett's mud or Sartre's sickness
there is a deviation from normal social life, but relationships persist,
intense, hostile, remote, mechanical, bewildered, minimal, or unreal.
The proportions of solitude and social relationship are disconcertingly
shifted, but it is hard to dispense with the public world, especially in
novels.
In modern novels before Beckett, we find the customary balance
and junction of private and public worlds. D. H. Lawrence shifts us
constantly from intense visionary moments to substantial happenings
in everyday life. At the wedding of Will and Anna Brangwen in The
Rainbow, we hear the family jokes and gossip, but we also see the
vision of Tom Brangwen's symbolic sense of himself as a diminished
figure in the immense plain of existences. Paul Morel in Sons and
Lovers burns the bread, and feels his kinship with grass and water.
Joyce deals most lavishly with inner and outer life in Dubliners and
Stephen Hero, and in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man relies
on the movements outwards and inwards, while controlling the shape
of the public world by the consciousness of his Stephen Dedalus. In
Ulysses, most private and yet most social of all novels, we sometimes
jump disconcertingly from Bloom's private fantasies and sensations
to the outer skin of streets and passers-by. Joyce seems to turn away
from smooth motion, switching from inner to outer experience in a
deliberated primitivism. Such primitive juxtapositions rely on a long
tradition of adroit joinings. Lawrence and Joyce reject the old stable
ego of the Victorian fiction, but still depend on its characteristic bird's-
eye view of society and God's-eye view of the human heart. The
dialogue of the mind with itself sounds to the novel-reader's ear
against the hubbub of social chorus. We follow the characters of
Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Meredith, Hardy and Henry
James through shifts from the lonely self to the social self, in contrasts,
ironies, contradictions, contractions, expansions, pains, pleasures,
perils, tests, causes and effects.
We take it for granted when reading George Eliot's The Mill on the
Floss that we can be one moment with Maggie Tulliver's turbulent
desolations in her attic, the next at the Easter dinner-table with the
solidarity and discord of the Tullivers, Gleggs, Pullets and Deans. We
find nothing extraordinary in going from the drama of a polite after-
noon visit to Uncle and Aunt Dean, with its substantial treats and
trials of wiped feet, housemaid, avuncular condescensions, musical-
box and cousinly relations, to Maggie's pursuits of impossible wild-
ness, freedom and power. In Middlemarch the flexible medium of
George Eliot's narrative presents the public occasion of Mr Brooke's
dinner-party at Tipton Manor, where Celia Brooke hankers mildly
after Sir James Chettam, who talks agricultural chemistry for the
benefit of Dorothea, who is impressed by Casaubon, who does his
bewildered best to be polite to his scatter-brained host. The next
episode goes deeply into Dorothea's mind, as she revises the recent
scene in the public world in accordance with the desires of her own
fertile and fervent fantasies. In Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady
we stare through Isabel Archer's eyes in Gilbert Osmond's drawing-
room, where he sits and Madame Merle stands. The public and
external position is engraved so deeply on Isabel's imagination that
she spends the night alone before the fire, stimulated by her reading
of the social scene to re-live and review her contractions of spirit. In
Bleak House Dickens moves us from Esther Summerson's bleak child-
hood, where repression and joylessness are normal, to the bleakness of
the London streets. Thackeray moves in and out of Henry Esmond's
loyalties, longings, jealousies and ambitions, to the court, the battle-
field, and the coffeehouse. And this oscillation is the rhythm we
expect, so customary that we have ceased to find it remarkable. It was
not always the customary rhythm of novels.
In her critical study, The Art of Jane Austen, Mary Lascelles makes
only one comment I find hard to accept. She suggests that Jane Austen
may have given up the epistolary form18 because it allowed for too
great a shift in viewpoint, uncongenial to Jane Austen's preference
for a steady and sustained centre of consciousness. The epistolary
novel does not have to use many correspondents, as we can see from
the first part of Pamela and from Fanny Burney's Evelina, where
infrequent interruptions show the effectiveness of keeping to a con-
centrated viewpoint. Despite the examples of Clarissa, Sir Charles
18
Op. cit., p. 203.
Grandison and Humphrey Clinker, it was certainly open to Jane
Austen to write epistolary novels, or first-person novels, like those of
Defoe, without deviating from the single centre. What Jane Austen
seems to have needed more than such concentration through one
viewpoint was the combination of extroverted and introverted actions.
Neither the epistolary nor the autobiographical forms were suffici-
ently flexible for this double emphasis. While the story of Robinson
Crusoe or Clarissa is being told, even though it includes social scenes
and dialogues, it presents all its action from single points of view.
Defoe presents and even criticizes society, showing his protagonists in
public life, in streets, shops, houses, inns, brothels and prisons. How-
ever busily his heroes and heroines move through life they remain
essentially alone, and it is through their eyes that we see society. Defoe
is in fact rather attached to Beckett-like solitudes. The prodigal son
of a tradesman, who preferred to go to sea and to leave the middle
station of life, Robinson Crusoe inhabits his desert island. What
society gradually comes into his novel and its sequel is inconsiderable
in size, interest and complexity, compared with his engrossing vitality.
Moll Flanders's husbands and lovers, and Roxana's intimates and
acquaintances are shadowy. Defoe's novels are conceived in the first
person singular, and however vivid their impressions of society, typical
or strange, their worlds are all like islands with a single inhabitant.
In the more sociable novels, Moll Flanders and Roxana, the narrator's
record of experience is the single thread which ties the individual life
to society. Moll Flanders's response to prison seems to represent what
moral Defoe needed her to feel, as she voices her shock at finding her-
self amongst the appallingly hardened crew of Newgate criminals, but
there is no attempt to go beyond her point of view, and life in the
prison is as simplified and foreshortened as the characters of Moll's
lovers, husbands and companions.
Defoe is a great social novelist, but he filters his view of society
through detailed portraits of social types. In A Journal of the Plague
Year we catch many glimpses of life in plague-stricken London, like
the episode where men disinfect an abandoned purse before they dare
open it, an action eloquent of the effects of disease and fear on the
usual appetites. But such social detail is narrated through description
and didacticism. There is nothing comparable to Jane Austen's sus-
tained drama of groups, only glimpses, anecdotes and statistics.
Defoe's people all inhabit a kind of desert; we see it through their eyes
and their solitude.
Despite her affection for Richardson, Jane Austen may have been
more influenced by Fielding. He did not call himself a 'historian' for
nothing. But Fielding's exuberant histories also illustrate the lack of
a flexible medium, capable of registering social and personal life. Here
there is social life in plenty, of all kinds and classes. Fielding animates
the drama of life in great houses and hovels, on the road, in inns,
among soldiers, gipsies, men and women of fairly easy virtue, in
country and city, lodgings, theatres and prisons. The experiences of
magistrate and dramatist fuse in a novel's full and incisive rendering
of the order and disorder of social life. But at a certain cost. In Field-
ing's novels it is the human psyche which becomes simplified and
stylized. He presents the passions, for instance, through set-pieces of
description, mock-heroic or seriously elevated. He contributes to the
novel the brilliant theatrical invention of the inner moral scene, where
aspects of mind, feeling and moral sense debate crises and conclusions
in Black George, Mrs Honour, Sophia or Tom. Such occasions are
impressive and startling because of their rarity, but are so schematic
that they reduce our sense of the individuality of inner play, and
locate particularity in moral conclusions, not in mind or sensibility.
Even in the more psychologized action of his last novel, Amelia, we
find types, not complex individual characters. As he says in Joseph
Andrews, he describes 'not men, but manners; not an individual, but
a species'. (Bk III, Chap, i)
The clear, simple outline of performers and their moral theatre fits
as effectively into his pictures of society as Hogarth's rakes and whores
into his crowded rooms and streets. The depth of mind and feeling in
Fielding belongs to one character only, the narrator. His inner life is
a complex stage for thought and impassioned reflection. In Tom Jones
he moves beneath the surfaces of life in depth and over a wide range,
fully sensitive in judgement and passion to love, art, fame and death.
The narrator of Tom Jones resembles his hero in appetite, candour
and learning, but Tom's whole range of experience has nothing to
offer which is comparable to the narrator's ironically searching
admissions of his double impulse as an artist, the love of fame and the
need of sustenance. No other character in Fielding can move us as die
narrator does in the imaginative reminder of the artist's energy and
mortality, anticipated as the common end in 'a worse-furnished box*.
Perhaps the most fully and complexly imaginative of the English
novelists before Jane Austen, the closest to George Eliot (who admired
him) and to Joyce, Fielding creates novels where there is an ironic
comic movement from author to creatures, but neither the heights nor
depths of the individual life. The action and character are extro-
verted, seen almost exclusively in the public world.
At the other extreme are the introverted worlds of Richardson and
Sterne. Their first-person narrators and writers also tell about roads,
inns, brothels, sponging-houses, churches, cottages and great houses,
but they do so from a single vision. In Richardson we build up im-
pressions through different points of view, but each view is highly
individual, even idiosyncratic, and we look at the world through
private obsessions and experiences, one eye and one mind at a time.
Even when the communal life of the family or the crowd is described,
it is to express the private vision and dilemma. This is of course a
method which is socially informative, but the social information
comes via the analysis of the individual mind.
One of the novelists we know Jane Austen greatly admired was
Fanny Burney.14 Evelina has the enclosed form of an epistolary novel,
Cecilia is a third-person narrative, but in both we see an attempt to
join social and individual life. Fanny Burney places both Evelina and
Cecilia in threatened positions. They are innocent visitors discovering
the nature of society in the company of different types and classes, at
home and abroad - in shops, theatres, masquerades, visits to town and
country houses, slums - in high life and low. Fanny Burney frequently
forges her links between the individual and the crowd through comic
contrast. The fastidious heroine of Evelina is fearfully jostled or mar-
ooned in Ranelagh or in the one-shilling gallery at the opera with
companions who are clumsy, common, riotous or depraved. Perhaps
here we begin to come closer to Jane Austen, but Fanny Burney's
social action and her ways of registering passions and intelligence are
very simple indeed compared with the imaginative chronicle of Jane
Austen's novels. Fanny Burney's heroines learn from their experience
of society, very much as Tom Jones and Partridge learn about their
own culture and sub-cultures, as they illustrate the quotation from
Horace which stands as epigraph to Tom Jones: 'Mores hominum
multorum vidit*. But Fanny Burney's habit is to set the heroine quite
apart from the social scenes in which she appears. Heroines and social
types are painted in different colours, constructed from different
materials. Her picture of society is a collage, and the joins show.
14
See Letters, pp. 9, 13, 14, 64, 180, 254, 334, 388, 438. See also Frank W.
Bradbrook, fane Austen and Her Predecessors (Cambridge, 1966), Chap.
6.
It is hard to think of a busier social world than Jane Austen's,
though she (notoriously) kept her social range much narrower than
any of the previous novelists I have mentioned. The scenes and aspects
of social life which she does show are active, crowded, and often noisy.
But as we think of the busy social life in her novels and of the fully-
occupied social lives of her characters, we also remember silence, soli-
tude, isolation and privacy. We move from the innermost recesses of
the heart and mind to the most extrovert social occasions. And we
move from one to the other with perfect ease and smoothness. It is this
formal balance, ease and harmony which is scarcely found before
Jane Austen, though frequently afterwards.
Not one of Jane Austen's heroines, who are her most interesting,
complex and important characters, lives alone. In this respect they are
quite unlike many of their predecessors, female and male.15 Moll
Flanders and Roxana make their own way. Robinson Crusoe and the
Saddler are sequestered. Pamela and Clarissa are less physically alone
than they like, but are separated from family and friends. Sophia
leaves her father's house in search of Tom Jones with only her maid
as a companion. Amelia has to fend for herself while her husband is in
prison. Cecilia endures solitude, and privation and danger among
strangers. Jane Austen's heroines are never without some friend or
relation, and their physical perils and privations are not extreme,
judged by earlier standards. They do suffer from perils, privations and
inner isolation, however, and it is often in the groups and coteries of
social life that Jane Austen locates these ordeals.
On her sensitive scales, little things weigh heavy. The weight of
social experiences in her novels is what restores reality to the trials of
being a heroine. It is embarrassing, unnerving, exciting and risky to go
to your first ball. Fanny Burney inflicts public humiliation and em-
barrassment on Evelina who is doubly impeded by ignorance and
irresistible charm; but even though her ballrooms are a long way from
Richardson's perilous great houses or houses of ill-fame, they are also
a long way from the world of Jane Austen. In some ways the problems
of etiquette and manners are common to both novelists. In Fanny
Burney's ballroom the dazzling heroine is in danger of inflicting grave
offence and receiving gross insult. In Jane Austen the worst that can
happen is overhearing a casual rude remark made by a young man
who doesn't ask you to dance, being afraid of the wrong man asking
15
Heroines of Gothic novels had a very bad time, but I confine myself to
fiction making some attempt to show character and society.
you to dance before the right one does, being the third in the company
of two who are company for each other, being taken for a wallflower
when you are merely waiting for your partner, sitting at a table with
strangers. In Northanger Abbey there is a famous scene in which
Catherine Morland and Mrs Allen are in the tea-room:
Every body was shortly in motion for tea, and they must squeeze out like
the rest. Catherine began to feel something of disappointment—she was
tired of being continually pressed against by people, the generality of
whose faces possessed nothing to interest, and with all of whom she was
so wholly unacquainted, that she could not relieve the irksomeness of
imprisonment by the exchange of a syllable with any of her fellow cap-
tives; and when at last arrived in the tea-room, she felt yet more the
awkwardness of having no party to join, no acquaintance to claim, no
gentleman to assist them.—They saw nothing of Mr. Allen; and after
looking about them in vain for a more eligible situation, were obliged to
sit down at the end of a table, at which a large party were already placed,
without having any thing to do there, or any body to speak to, except
each other.
Mrs. Allen congratulated herself, as soon as they were seated, on having
preserved her gown from injury. 'It would have been very shocking to
have it torn,' said she, 'would it not?—It is such a delicate muslin.—For
my part I have not seen any thing I like so well in the whole room, I
assure you.'
'How uncomfortable it is,' whispered Catherine, 'not to have a single
acquaintance here!'
'Yes, my dear,' replied Mrs. Allen, with perfect serenity, 'it is very un-
comfortable indeed.'
'What shall we do?—The gentlemen and ladies at this table look as if
they wondered why we came here—we seem forcing ourselves into their
party.'
'Aye, so we do.—That is very disagreeable. I wish we had a large
acquaintance here.'
'I wish we had any;—it would be somebody to go to.'
*Very true, my dear; and if we knew anybody we would join them
directly. The Skinners were here last year—I wish they were here now.'
'Had not we better go away as it is?—Here are no tea things for us, you
see.'
'No more there are, indeed.—How very provoking! But I think we had
better sit still, for one gets so tumbled in such a crowd! How is my head,
my dear?—Somebody gave me a push that has hurt it I am afraid.'
'No, indeed, it looks very nice.—But, dear Mrs. Allen, are you sure
there is nobody you know in all this multitude of people? I think you
must know somebody.'
'I don't upon my word—I wish I did. I wish I had a large acquaintance
here with all my heart, and then I should get you a partner.—I should be
so glad to have you dance. There goes a strange-looking woman! What an
odd gown she has got on!—How old fashioned it is! Look at the back!'
After some time they received an offer of tea from one of their neigh-
bours; it was thankfully accepted, and this introduced a light conversa-
tion with the gentleman who offered it, which was the only time that any
body spoke to them during the evening, till they were discovered and
joined by Mr. Allen when the dance was over. (NA, pp. 21-3)
In Cecilia, the grosser equivalent of this scene is one in which Cecilia

is trying to make tea at a crowded table in Vauxhall:
Mr. Morrice now brought intelligence that he had secured one side of
a table which would very well accommodate the ladies; and that the other
side was only occupied by one gentleman, who, as he was not drinking tea
himself, would doubtless give up his place when the party appeared.
Miss Larolles then ran back to her own set, and the rest followed Mr.
Morrice; Mrs. Harrel, Mrs. Mears and Cecilia took their places. The
gentleman opposite to them proved to be Mr. Meadows: Morrice, there-
fore, was much deceived in his expectations, for, far from giving up his
place, he had flung himself all along upon the form in such a lounging
posture, while he rested one arm upon the table, that not contented with
merely keeping his own seat, he'filled up a space meant for three.
*
The task of making tea fell upon Cecilia, who being somewhat incom-
moded by the vicinity of her neighbours, Mrs. Mears called out to Mr.
Meadows, 'Do pray, sir, be so good as to make room for one of us at your
side.'
Mr. Meadows, who was indolently picking his teeth, and examining
them with a tooth-pick-case glass, did not, at first, seem to hear her; and
when she repeated her request, he only looked at her, and said 'Umph?'
'Now really, Mr. Meadows,' said she, 'when you see any ladies in such
distress, I wonder how you can forbear helping them.'
'In distress, are you?' cried he, with a vacant smile, 'pray what's the
matter?'
'Don't you see? we are so crowded we can hardly sit.'
'Can't you?' cried he, 'upon my honour it's very shameful that these
people don't contrive some seats more convenient.'
'Yes,' said Mrs. Mears; 'but if you would be so kind as to let somebody
else sit by you we should not want any contrivance.'
Here Mr. Meadows was seized with a furious fit of yawning, which as
much diverted Cecilia and Mr. Gosport, as it offended Mrs. Mears, who
with great displeasure added, 'Indeed, Mr. Meadows, it's very strange
that you never hear what's said to you.'
'I beg your pardon,' said he, 'were you speaking to me?' and again
began picking his teeth.
Morrice, eager to contrast his civility with the inattention of Mr.
Meadows, now flew round to the other side of the table, and calling out
'let me help you, Miss Beverley, I can make tea better than anybody,' he
leant over that part of the form which Mr. Meadows had occupied with
one of his feet, in order to pour it out himself: but Mr. Meadows, by an
unfortunate removal of his foot, bringing him forwarder that he was pre-
pared to go, the tea-pot and its contents were overturned immediately
opposite to Cecilia.
Young Delvile, who saw the impending evil, from an impetuous
impulse to prevent her suffering by it, hastily drew her back, and bending
down before her, secured her preservation by receiving the mischief with
which she was threatened. (Vol. I, Bk IV, Chap, ii)
Fanny Burney's scene is at once a display of manners and a farcical

exposure of the heroine's dismay. It doesn't matter whether we like to
regard Jane Austen's version as a sensitive re-working of Fanny
Burney's scene, or an independent instance of a typical social em-
barrassment. Jane Austen is clearly using a slighter, less comic and less
violent event19 for the purposes of her realistic chronicle of inner and
outer life.
The differences in such social chronicles point to one of the chief
sources of Jane Austen's flexibility. She applies a very gentle pressure
to bring out the minute but real problems of social life. Such nuances
can equally divide the interest between the psychological response and
the social surface of conduct. In Fanny Burney, the humour and
humours of the scene are so strong and prominent — and successfully
so for her broad effects - that the heroine's responses are made
glaringly obvious. Such social suffering lies on the surface. No one
would like to have steaming tea poured over them, and neither the
threat nor the rescue conveys anything peculiar to Cecilia alone. But
Catherine Morland's diffidence and shyness, companioned by Mrs
Allen's bland indifference to anything except the crushing of her
gown, is created through small ripples in her mind and feelings. There
are no vast disappointments or triumphs, but a faithful record of
social responses in this society and for these people.
This notation of nuance is more constant and continuous than the
enlarged and emphatic scenes of farce or comedy of manners and
humours hi Evelina, Cecilia and Camilla. Jane Austen builds up her
social surface as steadily and carefully as her characters, through the
observation of many such small occasions. We get a much clearer and
truer impression of what it must have felt like to make one's debut
in Bath from the delicately amused record of Catherine's appearance
16
A similar comparison is that of John Thorpe's attentions to Catherine
with Dubster's attentions to Camilla.
in the Pump room, than from the grotesque actions in Fanny Burney.
Jane Austen's restraint allows for some rudeness and grossness, in John
Thorpe for instance, but if we compare him with Fanny Burney's
boors, we recognize Jane Austen's fainter, more muted and more
naturalistic use of similar materials. Manners are differentiated in
Northanger Abbey and Pride and Prejudice as in Evelina or Camilla.
Politeness, Courtesy, Good Manners, Flirtation, Affectation and
Indifference make their appearance in Jane Austen's Bath as in
Fanny Bumey's London and Bristol. The man who will not dance, the
harassed or neglected beauty, the unwantedly attentive gallant, the
partner one really longs for, are all present in Fanny Burney's farce
and caricatures as in Jane Austen's sensitive analysis.17 Fops, rakes,
quizzes, rattles, boors and flirts surround the superior heroine in the
action of both novelists.
D. W. Harding observes18 that Jane Austen joins caricature and
character. It is worth observing the means by which she achieves this
fusion since these are essential aspects of her skilled art of modulation.
Fanny Burney too could be described as joining caricature and
character. (So could Ben Jonson and Congreve.) Cecilia, Evelina and
Camilla are the characters in an environment of almost unrelieved
caricature. Evelina and Cecilia, though embarrassed, uncertain, fear-
ful, and at times made to look mistaken, awkward and silly, on the
whole behave reasonably and sensitively. Everyone else behaves in-
sensitively and stupidly. It is the irrationalities which are caricatured,
and the result is a gap which we cross every time we move to the broad
humours of the social group. Jane Austen consistently makes a real
relationship between her heroines and her more comic characters. The
heroine is less impeccable than Fanny Burney's, and the surrounding
characters are less grotesque.
The relationship between major and lesser characters in Jane
Austen's novels is intricate. The heroines do not stand apart from the
group in morally impressive positions, passive or commanding, but
partake of its deficiencies. In Northanger Abbey, when John Thorpe,
Isabella Thorpe and Captain Tilney variously offend against good
manners and delicacy, Catherine is brought into close connection
with their social sins. Their offences create mild or invisible disturb-
ances in the public scene. Their defections or deviations from good
taste and proper conduct weigh heavily on Jane Austen's delicate
17
Some of them are also present in the real-life anecdotes of the Letters.
18
Op. cit.
scales, but are slight compared with the violence of Fanny Barney's
aggressive attentions, assaults and duels. Catherine is amazed when
Isabella affects a fidelity to the absent lover, then immediately defects
to a new partner, and her innocence is as amusing and at least as
instructive as her friend's specious arguments and generous suscepti-
bilities. John Thorpe's assumptions that he has engaged Catherine as
a partner are no more ludicrous than her efforts not to attract his
attention in the hope that Henry Tilney will get in first. Her praise
of Henry Tilney's dancing and her questions to Eleanor Tilney about
his partner, Do you think her pretty?', are not only as comically
vulnerable as anything else that happens in this social drama, but are
brought into visible connection with the discords, fears, flirtations,
sexual vanities, predatoriness and clandestine energies of the elegant
assembly. Jane Austen's dances have been flatteringly elevated by
symbolic interpretation " but are composed of men and women more
or less gracefully chasing and hunting partners. Catherine is no more
purely interested in the dance and politeness than anyone else, but she
is less hypocritical and fresher in feeling. She even knows that she has
*no fixed opinions', but she is not noticeably less self-deceived in
practice than some of the others, and her self-deceptions are made,
however gently, the object of satire. Fielding and Fanny Burney
usually involve the heroines in the social comedy while at the same
time exempting them from strong criticism, satire, or farce. In Jane
Austen, everyone is involved and vulnerable. Even the experienced
and intelligent Henry Tilney objects to John Thorpe's distractions
and interferences and is perhaps not totally in command of himself
as he suggestively propounds the famous analogy between the dance
and marriage.
Subdued action and vulnerable characters make for flexibility.
Even more important is Jane Austen's continuity of feeling. On her
de'but Catherine responds in embarrassment, anxiety, shyness,
expectation, pleasure, mild disappointment and relief. The initial
stages of her response to Bath merge in a general sense of novelty,
enthusiasm and delight which is, as Henry Tilney approvingly
declares, the opposite of the prevailing fashionable ennui. At the same
time, therefore, we become acquainted with the manners of Bath
society and with Catherine's sensibility. Her responses are seen and
said to be genuine, fresh and unaffected. Her progress of passion
19
David Daichcs, 'Jane Austen, Karl Marx, and the Aristocratic Dance',
American Scholar, XVII (1947-48), pp. 289-96.
includes a response to social life. Moreover, her feelings are always
available, not held up, put aside or generalized while the social scene
takes place. They may not always be very strong feelings; Jane Austen
truthfully chronicles the realities of mild dismay, disappointment and
pleasure in Catherine's first assembly. But such pale feelings are made
part of an intelligible and consistent response. They have variety,
shape and likelihood. Jane Austen knew, as well as £. M. Forster,
that strong feeling is not always called for, nor always available when
called for.
There are a few social scenes where the heroine is absent, like the
Dashwoods' cupiditinous duet in Sense and Sensibility, but the
chronicle of feeling is usually a continuous sequence of the heroine's
responses in private and public life. There is a typically implicit but
emphatic analysis in Emma, which illustrates the flexible nature of
emotional continuity:
She would notice her; she would improve her; she would detach her from
her bad acquaintance, and introduce her into good society; she would
form her opinions and her manners. It would be an interesting, and cer-
tainly a very kind undertaking; highly becoming her own situation in life,
her leisure, and powers.
She was so busy in admiring those soft blue eyes, in talking and listen-
ing, and forming all these schemes in the in-betweens, that the evening
flew away at a very unusual rate; and the supper-table, which always
closed such parties, and for which she had been used to sit and watch the
due time, was all set out and ready, and moved forwards to the fire,
before she was aware. With an alacrity beyond the common impulse of a
spirit which yet was never indifferent to the credit of doing every thing
well and attentively, with the real good-will of a mind delighted with its
own ideas, did she then do all the honours of the meal. ...(£, pp. 23-4)
Emma has been talking to Harriet Smith while her father entertains
the older guests; we are deep in her excitement and pleasure as she
begins to fill the emptiness left by Miss Taylor's marriage with her
intentions of improving Harriet. She is so absorbed that for once she
forgets to notice the time. Being Emma, socially adroit and consider-
ate, she has to move swiftly out of her private fantasy and attend to
the guests. She needs all her energy and tact in order to counter her
father's valetudinarian hospitality, which is intent on discouraging
the pleasures of the traditional, attractive but perilous supper-table.
Jane Austen not only keeps up Emma's feelings of pleasure and
interest in her schemes but gives them shape in the demands of the
social scene, observing that she is especially energetic and elated as a
hostess because of the headiness of new projects. It is a quiet registra-
tion of cause and effect, beautifully characteristic of Jane Austen's
way of changing the focus. She does not switch feeling on and off, but
diverts it from private to social life, marking its course, character,
cause and effect. Her social scenes are accordingly characterized by
the private feeling, as they are linked to inner life in a real observation
of the shifts and causes of roles and responses. Jane Austen marks the
raptness of Emma's imaginative enterprise. The inner life is swept
with excitement, so she throws herself into social activity. Just as her
heroines are not exempt from the social comedy, but forced to make
their contribution to satire or humour, so they are also carefully
designed to carry the life of personal feelings into the social scene.
There are not social feelings and personal feelings, but the responses
of individual characters to social and personal relationships. Social
life is psychologized. Private life is related to environment. Implicit
in the evening party at Hartfield is the analysis of Emma's imagina-
tive history. It may seem a far cry from a scene of hospitality to fan-
tasies of power, but to connect the two is the business of Jane Austen's
imagination. Such occasions, such needs and such solutions have
helped to encourage Emma in her self-flattering energies and
creations. Virginia Woolf showed the kinship between the artist's and
the hostess's unifying powers in Mrs Dalloway's party-giving and Mrs
Ramsay's strenuously created harmony at the dinner-table. Less
inclined to flatter her heroine and the feats of hospitality, Jane Austen
draws a similar analogy and then goes beyond analogy to mark cause
and effect.
Jane Austen's profound interest in social roles and functions links
her individual portraits with her presentation of society in Mansfield
Park. We move from a clash of interests and tempers during the dis-
cussion of the Mansfield theatricals:
'Fanny,' cried Tom Bertram, from the other table, where the confer-
ence was eagerly carrying on, and the conversation incessant, 'we want
your services.'
Fanny was up in a moment, expecting some errand, for the habit of
employing her in that way was not yet overcome in spite of all that
Edmund could do.
'Oh! we do not want to disturb you from your seat. We do not want
your present services. We shall only want you in our play. You must be
Cottager's wife.'
'Me!' cried Fanny, sitting down again with a most frightened look.
'Indeed you must excuse me. I could not act any thing if you were to give
me the world. No, indeed, I cannot act.'
'Indeed but you must, for we cannot excuse you. It need not frighten
you; it is a nothing of a part, a mere nothing, not above half a dozen
speeches altogether, and it will not much signify if nobody hears a word
you say, so you may be as creepmouse as you like, but we must have you
to look at.'
'If you are afraid of half a dozen speeches,' cried Mr. Rushworth, 'what
would you do with such a part as mine? I have forty-two to learn.'
'It is not that I am afraid of learning by heart,' said Fanny, shocked to
find herself at that moment the only speaker in the room, and to feel that
almost every eye was upon her; 'but I really cannot act.' (MP, pp. 145-6)
The scene is not only a typically incisive piece of social drama and
criticism, but turns on the analysis of social roles. Mrs Norris is always
insisting that Fanny should play the role of the poor relation, humble,
grateful, helpful, obedient, even servile. On this occasion Tom more
covertly makes the same suggestion. It is a lowly role and small part
he asks Fanny to play, and it is a part of Fanny's problem that she
has been encouraged in such low expectations. She is Emma's
opposite, never flattered by her own powers and superiority, but
accepting the powers and patronage of her spoilt cousins and despotic
aunt with genuine gratitude, modesty and timidity. This occasion
presents a crisis, and involves the first conflict about her social role. To
be a creepmouse might be to obey, or to retreat from publicity. Her
diffidence makes it almost unimaginable for her to perform, com-
pounded as it is of an integrity which cannot assume roles, and a fear-
fulness which dare not act in public. But her diffidence also partakes
of her habitual gratitude and timidity. This refusal marks an import-
ant stage in her process of growing up, showing through action and
symbol that she can shed servility.
But Jane Austen makes it very difficult for us to chart her heroine's
progress. She confuses the issue, refuses to elevate Fanny and eventu-
ally shows her agreeing to act. Fanny cannot be entirely exempt from
powerful social pressures, though her author kindly rescues her from
action, contriving the arrival of Sir Thomas Bertram to make the
performance unnecessary.20 This capitulation prepares us for the
author's insistence that Fanny would have married Henry Crawford
if Edmund had married Mary. Both suggestions of social compromise
20
See Stuart M. Tave, Some Words of Jane Austen (Chicago and London,
1973), p. 192.
bring this not-too-perfect heroine into the highroad of public life.
Fanny retreats into her solitary East room, to reflect and choose, per-
haps the first21 of a long line of nineteenth-century heroines who make
such moral retreats into privacy - Jane Eyre, Lucy Snowe, Maggie
Tulliver, Dorothea Brooke and Isabel Archer. It is typical of Jane
Austen to show the call from society to solitude, where oppression is
relieved, space made for reflection and decision.
But Fanny's solitude is furnished with social symbols and is, there-
fore, no pure retreat or sanctuary. In the East room are the reminders
and relics of the family's childhood, the discarded stool, the trans-
parencies, and Tom's promiscuously generous presents - the table
covered with workboxes. Drawn up like the ranks of an opposing army
are the things that represent Fanny's independence, her books, plants
and works of charity.2* Jane Austen's flexible medium is not simply
made up of a continuous track of feeling. She shows Fanny's deep
stream of feeling in the social conflict in the warm drawing-room and
the social conflict alive in the cold East room. Her heroine cannot
retire from social pressures or dispense with social symbols.
When Marianne Dashwood breaks down at the evening party in
John Dashwood's house in Harley Street, it is because she has made a
desperate effort to come straight from her unrestrained, wretched
solitude to the social scene. She is at best disinclined to make polite
efforts in society, preferring books or music to polite conversation and
cards, and she is here at her worst, edging a little further beyond the
pale of social propriety. She had behaved badly on other social
occasions, and justified the behaviour with a mixture of valid
criticism and self-indulgent superiority. This breakdown marks the
climax of her social subversions. It is fully intelligible because we have
seen her in the strain and ease of solitude. Marianne's privacies of
grief have been no preparation for society, and collapse is inevitable.
The handling of the psychology of social response is typically com-
plex. It is Marianne's consistent refusal to control herself and com-
11
The habit of reflection begins very early, in Catharine, or the Bower,
Volume the Third, MW, ed. R. W. Chapman (Oxford, 1954): 'To this
Bower, which terminated in a very pleasant and retired walk in her
Aunt's Garden she always wandered whenever anything disturbed her,
and it possessed such a charm over her senses, as constantly to tranquillize
her mind and quiet her spirits—Solitude & reflection might perhaps have
had the same effect in her Bed Chamber, yet Habit had so strengthened
the idea which Fancy had first suggested, that such a thought never
occurred to Kitty, who was firmly persuaded that her Bower alone could
restore her to herself.' (p. 193) " See p. 154 belo
promise her romantic radicalism in society that has made self-control
impossible, in solitude or in her sister's company. We are probably
inclined to welcome the subversive scene which effectively breaks
the smooth and specious surface of decorum and falsehood. But Jane
Austen refuses to let us share Marianne's complacency. If we are
tempted to applaud her for explosively destroying polite hypocrisy
and acquisitiveness, we are held back by the knowledge that
Marianne's violence, like some of its political analogues, hurts guilty
and innocent alike.
Richard Simpson acknowledged Jane Austen's sense of the indivi-
dual as a social being:
It is her thorough consciousness that man is a social being, and that apart
from society there is not even the individual. She was too great a realist
to abstract and isolate the individual, and to give a portrait of him in the
manner of Theophrastus or La Bruyere. Even as a unit, man is only
known to her in the process of his formation by social influences.
(Critical Heritage, No. 44, p. 249)
Solitude and society are set side by side, ensuring reflection on the
response to both, and on the connections between responses. Between
the public scenes which analyse many kinds of structure and relation-
ship, Jane Austen places the conversations of kin and friendship. The
novelist's concern with the social narrative makes a strong link
between solitude, intimate conversation and the crowd.
Covert aggressions run through the conversation of the evening
party, and the confidences which Lucy Steele forces on Elinor. The
well-meaning and indiscreet outbursts of Marianne and her mother
are part of the continuity of event and argument. Flattery, gossip, idle
chat, boast, innuendo and insult mark the morality of the group or
the crowd in essentially social ways, conveniently covered by the sur-
face of pleasure and politeness, stimulated by sociability and perform-
ance. Mary Crawford is too polite to say outright that Mrs Morris is
being hostile to Fanny, so takes refuge in a euphemism which Fanny
will read as sympathetic: 'this place is too hot for me'.(A/P, p. 147)
Her social self, which can be perfectly generous when generosity costs
nothing, or self-excusingly grasping when kindness would be too
expensive, is seen as making good use of that wit which on other
occasions is cheap and insensitive, ('... my home at my uncle's
brought me acquainted with a circle of admirals. Of Rears, and Vices,
I saw enough' [AfP, p. 60]). The individual styles of feeling run
through the social and the intimate conversations. The social con-
versation may be charged with private complicity and persuasion.
Captain Wentworth asks Anne to stay behind at Lyme Regis and help
to nurse Louisa, Elizabeth Bennet and her aunt talk to the house-
keeper at Pemberley, Anne tries to draw out Admiral Croft about
Captain Wentworth's response to Louisa's engagement, Lucy Steele
listens to Sir John Middleton teasing Elinor about the beau whose
name begins with F, and Anne and Captain Wentworth talk about
music in the interval of the concert in Bath. These conversations have
the form and content of perfectly conventional gossip, chat, teasing
and news, but their discourse is charged with the private meanings the
reader has learnt to impute to these speakers and listeners.
The subtexts of social occasion were not invented by Jane Austen,
but she makes a fuller and more subtle use of them than anyone since
Shakespeare. Sometimes she draws attention to the private thoughts
and feelings, as when we are told what Anne was thinking when she
questioned Admiral Croft. Sometimes we make the inference for our-
selves. The author does not tell us what Julia Bertram was thinking
when she joked about the altar in Sotherton chapel, why Edward
Ferrars exclaimed 'Devonshire!' at the beginning of Sense and Sensi-
bility (p. 25), and why Mr Knightley was so angry with Emma's idle
expectations of Frank Churchill. Jane Austen uses explicitness and
implication, unspectacularly and quietly. We have only to compare
the thinness of the social dialogues in Fanny Burney, and even in
Richardson, to see what density she adds to the psychology of the
social scene.
The social groups are variously structured. Jane Austen restricted
her presentation and analysis of society, but her group-dramas often
make implicit analyses of social response and interaction. She com-
poses her groups of minds, feelings, morals and styles, and sets them in
action. They interact to offend, match, compromise and change each
other. The group is examined, not merely displayed, but her examina-
tion is overt and implicit. Her groups are never shaped by the simple
conflicts or convergences of humours as they are in Richardson and
Fanny Burney, and the comic drama of the eighteenth and seven-
teenth centuries. She is concerned to compare the behaviour of the
individual in the group with his behaviour when he is alone or with
his intimates. Some of Jane Austen's characters are only vital in
groups, like the simplified, almost caricatured figures of Mr and Mrs
John Dashwood, Mr and Mrs Elton, Mrs Morris and Miss Bates. We
should hesitate to call these caricatures or humours. They are
characterized by some kind of inner life and do not simply answer to
Ben Jonson's formula of 'some one peculiar quality**• which distorts
and simplifies the whole affective life. They do show a tendency to
behave in a predictable, bizarre and biased fashion, and their
behaviour is wholly public. The hollow Dashwoods, Steeles and Eltons
are happily composed in pairs. The pairing aids social generalization
but also gives them companionship in monstrosity, and an appearance
of human relationship. Jane Austen knows that Fanny Dashwood is a
'strong caricature* of her husband and so encourages him in callous-
ness and meanness. She creates a whole scene to show how this can
come about, but its ends are not totally satiric. It manages to convince
us that the 'caricatures' are wholly dynamic, made of alterable flesh
and blood, and not 'cut in marble'24 any more than the realistic
heroines and heroes. The Eltons suggest a hideous if amusing renewal
and doubling in their marital complicity, but this too is more than the
comedy of humours. They seem so very married that we have a sense
of congeniality and invigorated relationship. Both are affected,
mercenary, vulgar and aggressive. Both are proud, in different ways,
of their association with Mr Knightley. Mrs Elton's fuss about know-
ing what her 'caro sposo' and 'Knightley' are doing in their parish
meeting has the true ring of possessive, ingratiating and ambitious
wifehood. We are thus reminded that Mr Elton did have a profess-
ional life, and was different, as Mr Knightley told Emma, in the
company of men. (One supposes him to have substituted boastfulness
for the crude flattery and hypocrisy which makes Emma wince - and
makes us wince more subtly as we see what she is willing to accept for
Harriet.)25 We know what is in Emma's mind when she acutely
imagines — and she does not always misuse her imagination — what Mr
Elton will have told his bride about her and Harriet. The sense of their
marital intimacy makes them more complicated, and more deeply
and animatedly unpleasant. The social types have a fringe of life,
implicit but not shown, which trails the suggestion of complex
experience.
The same fringe of reality is trailed by more attractive and en-
gaging characters like Miss Bates. She has some kinship with Fanny
28
Everyman Out of His Humour.
24
George Eliot, Middlemarch, Chap. 72.
25
See Ronald Blythe's introduction to the Penguin edition of Emma (Har-
mondsworth, 1966), p. 20.
Price in appealing through a degree of self-knowledge: 'I am rather a
talker, you know*. After Emma's insult she reflects painfully on what
it is to be a bore; if she did not, Emma's offensiveness would not be so
serious. It is not only her kindness and good nature, but the sense that
we are given of an inner life, which makes her quite distinct from the
humours of Richardson, Fanny Burney or even Dickens. It is such
shadowed depths which make the fusion of major and minor
characters successful. These creatures of comedy or satire are a little
more than caricatures, and the surplus life makes a vast difference. It
makes for a continuity of character, even amongst those who are never
actually seen in private. We feel that they are all capable of an inner
life.
Jane Austen's analysis of the private life depends largely on the
projection of social feeling, and her presentation of the public life on
continuities and implications of analysis and presentation. But there is
another strand in the web of social and solitary life. Jane Austen's
creation of environment depends very much less than any later
novelist on description.29 The visible world is presented to us almost
exclusively through the responses of the characters, and these res-
ponses fully suggest the presence of streets, buildings, rooms and
objects. The private life, as we have seen in Fanny's retreat to the
East room, is given a social environment solidly and specifically sub-
stantiated. The environment is not made up of people alone. It is a
peopled universe, but as the narrator in Samuel Beckett's most
abstract novel, The Unnameable, knows, where there are men there
are objects. The shared environment is a set, with scenery and
properties. The dramatic analogy isn't quite good enough, since it
suggests only the common ground and things that form and link the
private person and the communal life, but not the personal penumbra.
Each private person carries with him a collection of things, his roof,
his home or homelessness, his furniture and private possessions. Each
person carries with him an implacable reminder of his social existence.
He creates personal symbols - Harriet's precious treasures of the
courtplaster and pencil stub, Fanny's geranium, Mary's harp. These
things are all commodities, even though some are purely social access-
ories, others more private symbols. This is a world of purchase. It is
also a world where the individual communicates with others, even in
2a
Her advice to her niece Anna Austen is well known,'... your descriptions
are often more minute than will be liked. You give too many particulars
of right hand & left'. (Letters, p. 401)
the most intimate relations, through manufactured things. Harriet's
treasures are filched, not given, like her love. Emma's picture of
Harriet is as imperfect in execution, as it is dubious in purpose. Frank
Churchill's present of the pianoforte is a frivolous, self-regarding
gift, like the thoughtless alibi of the London hair-cut which he manu-
factures to cover it. These things give the novel its solidity of specifica-
tion and link people through the social actions of purchase, donation,
acquisition and display. The most private relic or fetish has its social
significance.
Throughout the solitary and the social scene, the author is in
charge. She is probably the most discreet guide in the English novel.
She describes sparingly, and generalizes only on a very limited number
of topics. Such modesty seemed strange to Victorian readers accus-
tomed to the uninhibited emotional and moral flights of Thackeray,
Dickens and George Eliot, at their best and worst. A reviewer of 1866
said that she had no 'maternal love' for her characters," and Mrs
Oliphant, in 1870, suggested that 'she can scarcely be said to be sorry
for them'.28 Jane Austen's voice has a steadiness, neutrality and flexi-
bility which allows her most unobtrusively to present the private and
public world. She can say briefly, in a parenthesis and aside, where
George Eliot would give a paragraph: 'Her happiness on this occasion
was very much a-la-mortal, finely chequered.' (A/P, p. 274) The
restraint of the passing remark shows a social tact and ease in under-
statement which does not pass over the poignancy of its admission.
That poignancy, sharply observed, is not dwelt on but accepted. This
is what life is like, it says more gracefully, why expect anything differ-
ent? It goes without saying any more than five words, edged into a
sentence whose business is descriptive. The tones of this unexcited
voice are heard in some comments which are more conspicuously
placed, like the famous opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice: 'It
is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of
a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.' Here the author's voice
totally engrosses the ironic generalization. It is of that species of irony
which appears to take for granted an amusing or appalling opinion.
After she occupies a whole first sentence, the narrator quickly moves
to share the responsibility with her characters. Mr Bennet speaks for
all the irony of the admission, and his wife represents all its face-
value:
27
Southam, Critical Heritage, p. 213.
28
Ibid., p. 216.
'A single man of large fortune. . . . What a fine thing for our girls!'
'How so? how can it affect them?'
'My dear Mr. Bennet,' replied his wife» 'how can you be so tiresome!
You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them.'
'Is that his design in settling here?'
The first sentence of Mansfield Park is even quieter:
About thirty years ago, Miss Maria Ward of Huntingdon, with only seven
thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of
Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised
to the rank of a baronet's lady, with all the comforts and consequences of
an handsome house and large income.
It injects its ironic and moral viewpoint into four inserted words,
'good luck to captivate'. The narrator's responsibility is transferred
and irony deepened as the true and specious values go their all too
separate ways:
All Huntingdon exclaimed on the greatness of the match, and her uncle,
the lawyer, himself, allowed her to be at least three thousand pound short
of any equitable claim to it.
After Jane Austen, George Eliot was to develop a dramatized

version of such irony for similar purposes of generalizing and rebuking
a social response. Jane Austen criticizes society through the drama of
complex and particular types and groups, and the shy or sly irony of
her rare authorial comments helps her to state a viewpoint without
occupying too much space. Her moral comments are weighty, but
never heavy. In her narrative voice, in the free indirect style in which
she shares commentary with the characters, and in her habit of quick,
vivid summary, she moves lightly and unobtrusively from character
to group, close-up to distance. Like all the threads that join her private
and public worlds, that of her commentary is so fine that its stitches
scarcely show. But the fineness is the product of great and delicate
skill.
II
The Feelings and the Passions
The Passions are perfectly unknown to her', wrote Charlotte Bronte

to W. S. Williams, publisher's reader for Smith and Elder, in April
1850. She went on: 'she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that
stormy Sisterhood; even to the Feelings she vouchsafes no more than
an occasional graceful but distant recognition.'* George Henry Lewes
had tried in vain to convince Charlotte Bronte of her predecessor's
genius, but even he, who declared in 1847 that Fielding and Jane
Austen were our greatest novelists, and in 1852 that Jane Austen was
'the greatest artist* who had ever written, admitted that she could
only be thought of as Shakespeare's 'younger sister' if we 'set aside his
passion'.2 Throughout the nineteenth century, when passion was
assumed to be a required constituent of novels, and indeed in the
twentieth century too, we can find repeated complaints that it was not
to be found in Jane Austen. Strong feeling, emotional depth, sublim-
ity, elevation, and soul, critics objected or admitted, are absent in her
six major novels. Although recent critics have more thoughtfully
scrutinized her powers, it is her rational and intellectual genius which
has attracted most analytical attention, even in such thoroughly
argued and felt appreciations as those of D. W. Harding and Tony
Tanner.*
Jane Austen frequently laughs at the affectations of feeling, as
Dickens was to do even more loudly after her, though the attack on
protestations of Heart is scarcely a sign of heartlessness. She jokes
about the Novel of Passion through one of her most brilliantly silly
1
Southam, Critical Heritage, p. 128.
2
Ibid., pp. 124,140,130.
3
See Harding, op. cit. Also his introduction to the Penguin edition of Per-
suasion (Harmondswoith, 1965) and Tony Tanner's introduction to the
Penguin edition of Pride and Prejudice (Harmondswoith, 1972). Two
exceptions are the American critics, Howard Babb (fane Austen's Novels;
the Fabric of Dialogue, Hamden, Conn., 1967) and Stuart Tave, op. cit.
37
characters, Sir Edward Denham in Sanditon, who contrives to make
even Mr Collins of Pride and Prejudice appear capable of argument
and illustration: 'The Novels which I approve are such ... as exhibit
the progress of strong Passion from the first Germ of incipient
Susceptibility to the utmost Energies of Reason half-dethroned. . . .'
(MW, p. 403) On the only important occasion when Reason is
threatened in Jane Austen, in the almost willed and self-destructive
delirium of Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, it is most
clear that there is nothing admirable in the sickness. The common
cases of dethroned Reason are like those of Mr Collins, Mrs Bennet, or
Lady Catherine de Bourgh, whose lack of feeling is made plain by
their lack of mind. Such characters have a disguised feeling for self,
but the feelings they display are dishonest and pretentious. Jane
Austen does indeed create a progress of passion, which can be
described in a cooler version of Sir Edward's description as a develop-
ment from the first germ of sensibility to the utmost energies of feel-
ing. It is a development of passion inevitably accompanied by an
intellectual growth. Jane Austen could no more ignore passion than
any other great novelist, but she was consistently and lucidly inter-
ested in people possessed both of strong feeling and a knowledge of
their feelings. To be able to be rational and passionate, and to look
rationally at the passions, was her ideal requirement. As well as being
a stern requirement, it is a highly imaginative one. Sir Edward Den-
ham, who is as intellectually deficient as he is emotionally vacuous,
merely mimics passion, almost as funnily and feebly as Mr Collins
when he neatly rounds off his proposal to Elizabeth with the
announced intention of assuring her 'in the most animated language
of the violence of my affection'.
Dickens's criticism of affected feeling is often unfortunately self-
accusatory; his somewhat uneven powers of expressing emotional
energy, especially the sexual feelings of desire, affection and esteem,
are often all too glaringly illuminated by the piercing light of his own
satire. His ridiculous aspirants to passion, like Augustus Moddle in
Martin Chuzzlewit, or Mrs Skewton in Dombey and Son, speak an
intense, affected, and lofty language which is dangerously close to the
style of his more sincere characters, like Tom Pinch or Florence
Dombey. Jane Austen discriminates with crystalline clarity between
false and real passions. Real feeling is never unintelligent, even in
Catherine Morland or Marianne Dashwood, where it may occasion-
ally gather force from a warped or suspended judgement. The energy
The Feelings and the Passions 39
4
of feeling is always dramatized in people who have minds, even if
they may be doing their best, as Marianne does, not to use them fully,
scrupulously, and sustainedly. It is admittedly very hard to overstate
Jane Austen's emphasis on rational control: she not only anticipates
George Eliot's insistent and central concern for self-knowledge, but
also her total analysis of intelligence. But whatever the importance of
argument and idea in the novel's action, and however imperatively
argument and idea are demanded of the central character, Jane
Austen's people are always creatures of strong feeling.
The heroines and heroes are not specialists in feeling. Humours are
reserved for the irrational. Jane Austen never thinks of her heroines
as 'frail vessels', as George Eliot and Henry James did, and they are all
capable of strengths of feeling. The feeling she is most concerned with
is sexual love, but never exclusively. The course of true love defines the
course of the passions in each novel, but she takes care to diffuse her
passionate energies. The heroines and heroes are strong in family
feeling, pity, jealousy, and various other less definable elations. It is
hard to be selective when trying to illustrate the passions in Jane
Austen, as in any great novelist. The novel at its best does not turn on
the passions one at a time, like some of the more simple catalogues
allowed in drama or poetry. Collins's 'The Passions: an Ode for
Music', for instance, is an influential list of feelings - Fear, Anger,
Despair, Grief, Hope, Pleasure, Revenge, Woe, Pity, Jealousy, Love,
Melancholy, Cheerfulness, Joy - who all throng round Music:
Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting,
Possest beyond the Muse's Painting;
By turns they felt the glowing Mind,
Disturb'd, delighted, rais'd, refin'd.
The 'real' novelist, as D. H. Lawrence was to insist, educates us by

showing a life of feeling so complex that classification is defied and
denied. It may seem perverse to invoke Lawrence here, since he
notoriously thought of Jane Austen as 'that old maid ... knowing in
apartness' (A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover), but he also spoke of
her more admiringly, even going so far as to call her emotions vivid.
Jane Austen anticipates Lawrence - also John Stuart Mill, George
Eliot and E. M. Forster - in her implicit insistence that education
must attend to heart as well as head. Lawrence maintained that the
4
I hope the apparent exception of Lady Charlotte Bertram's, 'Dear Fanny,
now I shall be comfortable/ supports my argument.
likeliest vehicle for emodonal instruction was the novel - the 'real'
novel - and Jane Austen is one of the real novelists who make his
meaning clear.
'Listen in,' Lawrence advises in his essay The Novel and the Feel-
ings' (published in Phoenix, 1936), 'listen to ... the low, calling cries
of the characters, as they wander in the dark woods of their destiny.'
In the novels of Jane Austen the characters sometimes wander in dark
woods, wildernesses, shrubberies, and hedgerows, but their low calls
of feeling are often heard - low indeed - in the noise and glare of
pump rooms, drawing-rooms and dining-rooms. They call, unmis-
takably, in expressions of feeling which are diffuse, confused, bewild-
ered, generating more feeling but also generating reflection and
question. They are no doubt often too cerebral and analytic for
Lawrence's tastes, but the intensity and growing-power of their pro-
gress of passion depends on exactly that complexity which Lawrence
had in mind when he spoke of the dangers of simplifying and trying
to frame, tame, and name the passions:
We see love, like a woolly lamb; or like a decorative decadent panther in

Paris clothes: according as it is sacred or profane. We see hate, like a dog
chained to a kennel. We see fear, like a shivering monkey. We see anger,
like a bull with a ring through his nose, and greed, like a pig. Our
emotions are our domesticated animals, noble like the horse, timid like
the rabbit, but all completely at our service. The rabbit goes into the pot,
and the horse into the shafts.
Jane Austen occasionally makes unpleasant characters subject to

ruling passions or humours. Greed and Anger rule Mrs Norris, Pride
determines every act and speech of Lady Catherine de Bourgh. These
are perversions of feeling. Such caricatures of human spirit are out-
lined in terms of hardened and narrowed feeling, which impel and
imprison the human being. This hard and fast feeling usefully defines
and surrounds the more open emotional life of the other characters.
When Fanny comes up against Mrs Norris, or Elizabeth Bennet con-
fronts Lady Catherine, there is a contrast and clash of free with fixed
feelings, as well as of mind with mindlessness. More common in Jane
Austen are those characters whose feelings have been constricted or
inhibited rather than taken over by a ruling passion. Neither Mr
Bennet nor Sir Thomas Bertram is shown as a passionate man, but
rather as one who has been forced to reduce and control feeling. The
conventionality of the one, and the satirical self-indulgence of the
other, ought not to blind us to the cause and effect implicit in their
similar emotional careers. Jane Austen makes very little explicit refer-
ence to their sexual passions, but we know them both to be very
intelligent men who have married very stupid women. This tells us
something of the cause and effect of their restricted emotions. The
reign of reason in each case goes beyond the suggestions of intellectual
make-up and social background. Jane Austen knew more about her
characters than she showed explicitly. Although we should resist the
temptation to speculate too widely about the vitality of characters in
fiction, such speculation can usefully suggest the depths that lie
beneath the revealed surface. Even Jane Austen's relatively simple
characters may be created so completely that they answer to a whole
range of psychologically speculative questions. Jane Austen had
thoroughly imagined the progress of feeling that led to, and led from,
these two unfortunate and unfortunately typical marriages.
The heroines are surrounded by characters whose life of feeling is
hardened, perverted, or affected, but the effect is not simply that of
psychological contrast. The opposition of characters sets surface
against depth; it also attempts to define and display enough cases to
create a sense of social typicality. Perversions of feeling impersonate
an environment, and against it we study the hard life of true feeling.
Jane Austen, again like Dickens, shows an acquisitive, mercenary, and
socially stratified society, where feeling is a highly priced commodity,
greatly praised but not greatly valued. This commodity is almost
entirely designed for the marriage-market, but Jane Austen's portrait
of a culture goes beyond the institution of marriage. Affectations of
love go together with other affectations - in art, education, and social
intercourse. Since the world she presents is so much a woman's world,
it is tempting to see the analysis of feeling as centred in sexual feeling,
and to set all the corruptions of the heart in the context of her love-
stories, as permutations of the central theme of marriage. Although
we can know a society by its myths of love, we can only appreciate
Jane Austen's opposition to the values of her society if we look hard
at the apparent balance of cause and effect. The society that markets
sexual feeling, markets other kinds of feeling too; the feeling for
nature, for religion, for the poor, and for learning and art are all
suspect. If love is affected, so also may be pity, enthusiasm, piety, and
admiration.
Jane Austen is chiefly concerned to tell a love-story, to show the
dangers and difficulties of being a heroine. D. W. Harding praises her
success in bringing together the character and the caricature, as I
have said, and one reason for success in this hard enterprise seems to
lie in her power to suggest and sustain the course of feeling.
The so-called caricatures are analysed and dramatized so as to
suggest a potentially full emotional life which has been distorted and
restricted. At the beginning of Persuasion, for example, the sharp,
clear-outlined caricature of Sir Walter Elliot makes it very plain that
we have before us a case of the perversion of feeling, the channelling
of various emotions in one too narrow but powerfully flowing current:
Sir Walter reads his favourite book, the Baronetage, where 'he found
occupation for an idle hour'. There follows a list of his diverted
emotions:
Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who,

for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there
he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one;
there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contem-
plating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome
sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and
contempt, as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last
century—and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his
own history with an interest which never failed.... (P, p. 3)
Like the beginning of Volpone it shows a clear case of the single

passion absorbing the normal emotional energies of distress, admira-
tion, respect, pity, and contempt. The less conspicuously monstrous
case of Elizabeth, introduced three or four pages later, is also analysed
in terms of feeling:
Elizabeth did not quite equal her father in personal contentment.

Thirteen years had seen her mistress of Kellynch Hall, presiding and
directing with a self-possession and decision which could never have given
the idea of her being younger than she was. For thirteen years had she
been doing the honours, and laying down the domestic law at home, and
leading the way to the chaise and four, and walking immediately after
Lady Russell out of all the drawing-rooms and dining-rooms in the
country. Thirteen winters' revolving frosts had seen her opening every
ball of credit which a scanty neighbourhood afforded; and thirteen springs
shewn their blossoms, as she travelled up to London with her father, for a
few weeks annual enjoyment of the great world. She had the remem-
brance of all this; she had the consciousness of being nine-and-twenty,
to give her some regrets and some apprehensions. She was fully satisfied
of being still quite as handsome as ever; but she felt her approach to the
years of danger, and would have rejoiced to be certain of being properly
solicited by baronet-blood within the next twelvemonth or two. Then
might she again take up the book of books with as much enjoyment as in
her early youth; but now she liked it not. Always to be presented with the
date of her own birth, and see no marriage follow but that of a youngest
sister, made the book an evil; and more than once, when her father had
left it open on the table near her, had she closed it, with averted eyes, and
pushed it away. (P, pp. 6-7)
'Regrets', 'apprehensions', 'satisfied', 'felt her approach to the years of

danger', 'rejoiced', 'enjoyment', 'liked it not' are direct descriptions of
feeling. There is also the more subtle implicit account of feeling
through action in the 'thirteen winters' revolving frosts' which had
seen her opening local balls, and the 'averted eyes' with which she
closes the Baronetage and pushes it away. Feeling is stated and acted.
The characters who play a central part in the novels are those
whose emotional progress is shown in most detail and with most
drama. Their progress of feeling, which moves like a blood-vessel
through the novels' action, is continuous in circulation. In neither
form nor feeling do we find anything resembling Sir Edward Den-
ham's Reason half-dethroned, but in both there is strong emotion or
passion. Feelings may be private or secret but move eventually into
relationships, passion finding resonance in reciprocity. Jane Austen
is very far from 'knowing in apartness'. On the contrary, she blends
thinking with feeling, valuing the passionate mind, showing its devel-
opment as an outward movement towards outlets and unions.
Although it is true that her strongest passions are usually solitary and
private, inner and hidden, the conclusions and culminations of the
novels make it plain that emotional solitude is an undesirable and
painful deprivation. The life and progress of feelings are essentially
social in the novels of Jane Austen.
In all the novels the stream of feeling is sufficiently marked in its
private moments for us to be aware of its constant motion beneath the
formal social surfaces. In assemblies, balls, dances, dinner-parties,
suppers, parties of pleasure, visits and chance meetings, the bland and
polite conventions are threatened. Passion is subversive. Marianne
bursts into tears when Mrs Ferrars, rich old enemy of love, snubs
Elinor. The drama of strain and breakdown plays realistically into the
hands of social criticism. Jane Austen here uses a collapse of nerve and
formality to suggest, most decorously, the shams and distortions which
uphold decorum. Marianne moves half-consciously to attack the
acquisitiveness of which she is an unknowing victim:
'Hum'—said Mrs. Ferrars—'very pretty,'—and without regarding them
at all, returned them to her daughter.
Perhaps Fanny thought for a moment that her mother had been quite
rude enough,—for, colouring a little, she immediately said,
"They are very pretty, ma'am—an't they?' But then again, the dread of
having been too civil, too encouraging herself, probably came over her,
for she presently added,
'Do you not think they are something in Miss Morton's style of paint-
ing, ma'am?—She does paint most delightfully!—How beautifully her
last landscape is done!'
'Beautifully indeed! But she does every thing well.'
Marianne could not bear this.—She was already greatly displeased
with Mrs. Ferrars; and such ill-timed praise of another, at Elinor's
expense, though she had not any notion of what was principally meant by
it, provoked her immediately to say with warmth,
'This is admiration of a very particular kind!—what is Miss Morton
to us?—who knows, or who cares, for her?—it is Elinor of whom we
think and speak.'
And so saying, she took the screens out of her sister-in-law's hands, to
admire them herself as they ought to be admired.
Mrs. Ferrars looked exceedingly angry, and drawing herself up more
stiffly than ever, pronounced in retort this bitter phillippic; 'Miss Morton
is Lord Morton's daughter.'
Fanny looked very angry too, and her husband was all in a fright at his
sister's audacity. Elinor was much more hurt by Marianne's warmth, than
she had been by what produced it; but Colonel Brandon's eyes, as they
were fixed on Marianne, declared that he noticed only what was amiable
in it, the affectionate heart which could not bear to see a sister slighted in
the smallest point.
Marianne's feelings did not stop here. The cold insolence of Mrs.
Ferrars's general behaviour to her sister, seemed, to her, to foretel such
difficulties and distresses to Elinor, as her own wounded heart taught her
to think of with horror; and urged by a strong impulse of affectionate
sensibility, she moved, after a moment, to her sister's chair, and putting
one arm round her neck, and one cheek close to her's, said in a low, but
eager, voice,
'Dear, dear Elinor, don't mind them. Don't let them make you un-
happy.'
She could say no more; her spirits were quite overcome, and hiding her
face on Elinor's shoulder, she burst into tears. (SS, pp. 235-6)
Jane Fairfax turns, like other women in these novels, to Nature and
the open view of the sweet English scene, and has abruptly to leave
the party at Donwell Abbey, and run off in the heat of the day from
Mrs Elton's patronage and her own clandestine griefs and anxieties:
'Will you be so kind,' said she, 'when I am missed, as to say that I am

gone home?—I am going this moment.—My aunt is not aware how late
it is, nor how long we have been absent—but I am sure we shall be
wanted, and I am determined to go directly.—I have said nothing about
it to any body. It would only be giving trouble and distress. Some are
gone to the ponds, and some to the lime walk. Till they all come in I shall
not be missed; and when they do, will you have the goodness to say that
I am gone?'
'Certainly, if you wish it;—but you are not going to walk to Highbury
alone?'
'Yes—what should hurt me?—I walk fast. I shall be at home in twenty
minutes.'
'But it is too far, indeed it is, to be walking quite alone. Let my father's
servant go with you.—Let me order the carriage. It can be round in five
minutes.'
'Thank you, thank you—but on no account.—I would rather walk.—
And for me to be afraid of walking alone!—I, who may so soon have to
guard others!'
She spoke with great agitation; and Emma very feelingly replied, 'That
can be no reason for your being exposed to danger now. I must order the
carriage. The heat even would be danger.—You are fatigued already.'
'I am'—she answered—'I am fatigued; but it is not the sort of fatigue—
quick walking will refresh me.—Miss Woodhouse, we all know at times
what it is to be wearied in spirits. Mine, I confess, are exhausted. The
greatest kindness you can show me, will be to let me have my own way,
and only say that I am gone when it is necessary.' (E, pp. 362-3)
At Box Hill Frank Churchill's nervous innuendo and flirtation

infect Emma. One failure in control leads to another, offensiveness
and discord sadly disrupting the festive intentions of leisure, play,
harmony and exploration. Jane Austen, like that later great satirist
and social chronicler, Thackeray, knew that the heightened and
heady air of parties, even such unorgiastic ones of Highbury and Don-
well, could stimulate revulsions and revolutions of feelings. The festive
occasion gives scope to the clandestine, the artful, the over-playful
play of feeling and false feeling.
When they all sat down it was better; to her taste a great deal better,
for Frank Churchill grew talkative and gay, making her his first object.
Every distinguishing attention that could be paid, was paid to her. To
amuse her, and be agreeable in her eyes, seemed all that he cared for—
and Emma, glad to be enlivened, not sorry to be flattered, was gay and
easy too, and gave him all the friendly encouragement, the admission to
be gallant, which she had ever given in the first and most animating
period of their acquaintance; but which now, in her own estimation,
meant nothing, though in the judgment of most people looking on it must
have had such an appearance as no English word but flirtation could very
well describe. 'Mr. Frank Churchill and Miss Woodhouse flirted together
excessively.' They were laying themselves open to that very phrase - and
to having it sent off in a letter to Maple Grove by one lady, to Ireland by
another. Not that Emma was gay and thoughtless from any real felicity;
it was rather because she felt less happy than she had expected. She
laughed because she was disappointed; and though she liked him for his
attentions, and thought them all, whether in friendship, admiration, or
playfulness, extremely judicious, they were not winning back her heart.
She still intended him for her friend. (E, pp. 367-8)
Mr Weston's good wane stimulates Mr Elton, the party leaves in

disarray, and he is left alone with Emma For their disturbing home-
ward drive:
To restrain him as much as might be, by her own manners, she was
immediately preparing to speak with exquisite calmness and gravity of
the weather and the night; but scarcely had she begun, scarcely had they
passed the sweep-gate and joined the other carriage, than she found her
subject cut up—her hand seized—her attention demanded, and Mr. Elton
actually making violent love to her: availing himself of the precious
opportunity, declaring sentiments which must be already well known,
hoping—fearing—adoring—ready to die if she refused him; but flattering
himself that his ardent attachment and unequalled love and unexampled
passion could not fail of having some effect, and in short, very much
resolved on being seriously accepted as soon as possible. It really was so.
Without scruple—without apology—without much apparent diffidence,
Mr. Elton, the lover of Harriet, was professing himself her lover. She
tried to stop him; but vainly; he would go on, and say it all. Angry as she
was, the thought of the moment made her resolve to restrain herself when
she did speak. (E, p. 129)
'Good heaven!' cried Mr. Elton, 'what can be the meaning of this?—
Miss Smith!—I never thought of Miss Smith in the whole course of my
existence—never paid her any attentions, but as your friend: never cared
whether she were dead or alive, but as your friend. If she has fancied
otherwise, her own wishes have misled her, and I am very sorry—
extremely sorry—But, Miss Smith, indeed!—Oh! Miss Woodhouse! who
can think of Miss Smith, when Miss Woodhouse is near! No, upon my
honour, there is no unsteadiness of character. I have thought only of you.
I protest against having paid the smallest attention to any one else. Every
thing that I have said or done, for many weeks past, has been with the
sole view of marking my adoration of yourself. You cannot really,
seriously, doubt it. No!—(in an accent meant to be insinuating)—I am
sure you have seen and understood me.'
It would be impossible to say what Emma felt, on hearing this—which
of all her unpleasant sensations was uppermost. She was too completely
overpowered to be immediately able to reply: and two moments of silence
being ample encouragement for Mr. Elton's sanguine state of mind, he
tried to take her hand again, as he joyously exclaimed—
'Charming Miss Woodhouse! allow me to interpret this interesting
silence. It confesses that you have long understood me.'
'No, sir,' cried Emma, 'it confesses no such thing.' (£, pp. 130-1)
He was too angry to say another word; her manner too decided to
invite supplication; and in this state of swelling resentment, and mutually
deep mortification they had to continue together a few minutes longer,
for the fears of Mr. Woodhouse had confined them to a foot pace. If there
had not been so much anger, there would have been desperate awkward-
ness; but their straight-forward emotions left no room for the little zig-
zags of embarrassment. (E, p. 132)
We should not sense the underground strength of feeling which

often makes itself felt beneath the surface without breaking out, were
it not for the revelations of inner action, the moments of feeling un-
bared in privacy and solitude and silence. Elinor Dashwood's inner
life of passion is contained by her code of fortitude, self-command and
consideration, but it is marked by strength, vivacity and variety and
happily lacks the over-formal and often humourless ponderousness of
the rhetoric of her public speech. This inner life is intense and
'natural* in its longings, griefs, jealousies and curiosities, capable even
of humour and self-deprecation, as when she observes, in her talk to
herself, that the curative properties of Mrs Jennings's rare old Gon-
stantia may as well be tested on her heart as on her sister's. Indeed,
perhaps one of the difficulties of Sense and Sensibility conies from its
failure8 to move as fully into Marianne's track of feeling as it does
into Elinor's. The quality of wry rationality, the capacity to try to look
neutrally and reasonably at one's passions, even in their throes, is
expressed profoundly, humorously and realistically. There is some-
thing akin to Elinor's own rational register of feeling in the concluding
neutrality that observes Willoughby's wretchedness and his survival.
Without anterior experience of low expectations and fortitude turned
towards the self, the conclusion of the novel might seem too punitive,
too destructive of feeling, too anti-romantic:
Willoughby could not hear of her marriage without a pang; and his
punishment was soon afterwards complete in the voluntary forgiveness of
Mrs. Smith, who, by stating his marriage with a woman of character, as
5
Stuart Tave (op. cit., p. 96) insists that we see Sense and Sensibility as
Elinor's story, but even if we accept the subordination of Marianne as a
necessary part of the novel's scope and shape, it has some disadvantages.
the source of her clemency, gave him reason for believing that had he
behaved with honour towards Marianne, he might at once have been
happy and rich. That his repentance of misconduct, which thus brought
its own punishment, was sincere, need not be doubted;—nor that he long
thought of Colonel Brandon with envy, and of Marianne with regret. But
that he was for ever inconsolable, that he fled from society, or contracted
an habitual gloom of temper, or died of a broken heart, must not be
depended on—for he did neither. He lived to exert, and frequently to
enjoy himself. His wife was not always out of humour, nor his home
always uncomfortable; and in his breed of horses and dogs, and in sport -
ing of every kind, he found no inconsiderable degree of domestic felicity.
(SS, p. 379)
In Northanger Abbey Catherine is startled by meeting Henry

Tilney, crying "Good God' when she emerges from his mother's room,
not because she has been prying, but because he has broken into the
disappointment and shame of her secret fantasy. That fantasy is
revealed in inner drama, just as her more profound fears, anxieties,
suspicions and repugnance are later thrown into relief, on the night
before she has to leave Northanger, by our previous deep acquaint-
ance with the more detached, literary, and unreal rehearsals and per-
formances of Gothic feeling.
In Jane Austen's novels love tends to approach slowly and gradu-
ally. Marianne comes closer to the romantic ideal of love at first sight
than the other heroines, though Elizabeth Bennet is charmed quickly
- if more mildly - by Wickham's appearance and manner. Emma is
reckless as she cleverly perceives that Mr and Mrs Weston would
rather like to make a match for her with Frank Churchill, and hastens
to anticipate them in imagination. Her love for Mr Knightley is
perceived late, suddenly, but as an unadmitted long-standing attach-
ment. The progression of feeling in Anne Elliot is barely shown; its
beginnings are vividly but quickly summarized, lying as they do in the
novel's memory, and not its present. Elinor's feelings for Edward also
begin, in the novel's time, as well-established. The three heroines
whose progress in love we observe from the beginning to the happy
end are Catherine Morland, Elizabeth Bennet and Fanny Price.
The progress of Catherine's feelings is cleverly and conveniently
screened by two burlesques of feeling: Isabella Thorpe's vision of a
Bath full of amorous young men - with a little leftover interest to
spare for her friend - and Henry Tilney's comic affectations of novel-
istic feeling. Isabella assures Catherine that her feeling for Henry is
love at first sight, but it comes on much more slowly than that. Jane
Austen teases the reader by refusing to reveal Catherine's dreams after
that first dance, in case they might give away anything as indecorous
as night thoughts about a stranger. Jane Austen is able to be implicit
about Catherine's susceptibility to Henry, which is undoubtedly
present from the beginning, under such cover, and although the end
explicitly declares that Henry was first drawn to Catherine by her
interest in him, this judgement is too crude. He has always been shown
as encouragingly flirtatious, and moved by Catherine's fresh feelings.
Catherine and Henry are perhaps the most lightly sketched of Jane
Austen's couples, and the obstacles to their attachment are mostly
external; but they show one important thing, less analytically but as
lucidly as any of the other pairs of lovers, the generation of feeling by
feeling. No previous novelist that I can think of treated love quite like
this. Richardson's characters love each other for merit, or supposed
merit, but he doesn't show feeling responding to feeling. Clarissa feels
something like love for Lovelace, but it is not a response to his feelings.
Fanny Burney's heroines fall in love rather fixedly, with fairly static
characters, and even though time may be needed for discovery and
disclosure to be made, especially in Cecilia, where the love-story may
have suggested certain aspects of the progress of Elizabeth and Darcy,
there is no response to response.
This mutuality of feeling, in which interest, attraction and anta-
gonism have their parts to play, is best shown in Pride and Prejudice.
It is made fully, but not coldly, explicit in Elizabeth's changing feel-
ings for Darcy. The best implicit presentation of the beginnings of
love is that of Fanny in Mansfield Park. Most readers, even after
several readings, must be hard put to it to determine the moment
when Fanny is felt to love Edmund. There is no such moment. Jane
Austen apparently does not want to fix on one. Love grows from grati-
tude, esteem and proximity, as Mrs Norris, to whom esteem and
gratitude are unknown feelings, but who contemplates proximity,
assures Sir Thomas Bertram it cannot possibly do: 'It is a moral
impossibility'. It is a moral probability. Fanny's progress in feeling
makes perfect sense, if we want to analyse compatibility, dependence,
gratitude and esteem, but Jane Austen leaves us to do all that for our-
selves, contenting herself with one or two brief overt remarks deli-
cately inserted in the course of the action. When Edmund replaces the
'old grey poney* with his new mare, Jane Austen uses the convenient
device, of which Defoe was a master, of describing feelings beyond
expression:
... her delight in Edmund's mare was far beyond any former pleasure of
the sort; and the addition it was ever receiving in the consideration of that
kindness from which her pleasure sprung, was beyond all her words to
express. She regarded her cousin as an example of every thing good and
great, as possessing worth, which no one but herself could ever appreciate,
and as entitled to such gratitude from her, as no feelings could be strong
enough to pay. Her sentiments towards him were compounded of all that
was respectful, grateful, confiding, and tender. (MP, p. 37)
When Edmund plans to stay at home with Lady Bertram so that

Fanny can go on the expedition to Sotherton, her affection is described
with suitable vagueness. Once more it is fondness which is inseparable
from gratitude: 'She felt Edmund's kindness with all, and more than
all, the sensibility which he, unsuspicious of her fond attachment,
could be aware of.' (MP, p. 79) Such occasional comments are suffi-
cient, and appropriately quiet. Fanny's love is gradual, and not made
explicit for a long time, even in her reflections. She takes it for
granted, but we see it emerge from the response to Edmund's almost
consistent kindness, which she appreciates and returns, in fondness.
When the kindness stops, as it does briefly when he lends the mare to
Mary Crawford, Jane Austen makes very clear Fanny's jealousy,
depression, disapproval and distaste for her own bad feelings. One of
the necessary moments of physical jealousy in the novel occurs when
Fanny sees Edmund helping Mary on the horse, and sees him take her
hand: 'she saw it, or the imagination supplied what the eye could not
reach' (MP, p. 67).
The novels, like most great novels, are introspective. They succeed
more realistically than any previous novels in showing an introverted
passional life, at the same time being subtly self-descriptive. Jane
Austen's qualities of toughness and neutrality, which are shown in her
capacity to make comic and tough reflections on the passions, are fully
demonstrated and tested within her characters. Elizabeth Bennet6 is
engaged in the fatiguing process of thinking and re-thinking. But her
epistemological essays and discoveries are parts of the progress of her
feeling. She first begins to scrutinize these feelings, without too much
pain and unease, when her aunt suggests that she should be on guard
against being too much in love with Wickham:
'At present I am not in love with Mr. Wickham; no, I certainly am not.
But he is, beyond all comparison, the most agreeable man I ever saw—
• See Tony Tanner's introduction to the Penguin edition of Pride and
Prejudice, op. cit.
and if he becomes really attached to me—I believe it will be better that
he should not. I see the imprudence of it.—Oh! that abominable Mr.
Darcy!—My father's opinion of me does me the greatest honor; and I
should be miserable to forfeit it. My father, however, is partial to Mr.
Wickham. In short, my dear aunt I should be very sorry to be the means
of making any of you unhappy; but since we see every day that where
there is affection, young people are seldom withheld by immediate want
of fortune, from entering into engagements with each other, how can I
promise to be wiser than so many of my fellow creatures if I am tempted,
or how am I even to know that it would be wisdom to resist? All that I
can promise you, therefore, is not to be in a hurry. I will not be in a hurry
to believe myself his first object. When I am in company with him, I will
not be wishing. In short, I will do my best.' (PP, pp. 144-5)
These early reflections and observations are much more simple and
certain than her later analysis of the feeling for Darcy, and the feelings
generated by reflections are not pleasant, but perfectly bearable. With
subtlety and poignancy, we are shown the human heart trying to know
itself in all the throes of strong feeling, with all its resources of courage,
curiosity and candour; but we see it first in easy exercises. When
Elizabeth reflects on the feeling for Wickham, or when Emma
analyses the fantasy-life in which Frank Churchill is a central but
unsuccessful suitor, they analyse language, mood and conduct to draw
a simple and accurate conclusion: they cannot be much in love. When
passion is involved, there is confusion, bewilderment, fatigue, tension,
hardship. These self-possessed and poised heroines, so well-endowed,
the one with her creator's wit and satire, the other with her brilliant
imagination, each come to the fearful point of discovering that wit,
satire and imaginative penetration can disintegrate in the solvent of
strong feeling. Such is the self-analysis of Elizabeth, whose feeling for
Darcy is just beginning to look like love. The very persistence of her
reasoning shows the strength of feeling. It also shows the inadequacies
of causal analysis, definition and classification as the attempts at
naming feeling deny, frustrate, and defeat themselves. We can say
that Elizabeth reasons herself into loving, but this is too crude and not
quite accurate. In her analysis there is too little ease and command,
because the reasoning is under pressure from the feeling it tries to
analyse. Hers is a creative and passionate reflection. It borrows the
action of intellectual classification for an analysis which is imperfect
as explanation, but a valuable and liberating imaginative entertain-
ment of possibilities. Jane Austen knew very well and could show how
reason can encourage passion as well as restrain it, how the mind can
rouse as well as dampen strong feeling. She knew too, as Lawrence
knew so well, how attempts to name feeling fail. Elizabeth senses
something like the fatigue that Birkin feels when reasoning has to
stop in Women in Love. She is forced into a half-desired capitulation.
As a monument in the passionate analysis of passion, this is perfect:
As for Elizabeth, her thoughts were at Pemberley this evening more

than the last; and the evening, though as it passed it seemed long, was not
long enough to determine her feelings towards one in that mansion; and
she lay awake two whole hours, endeavouring to make them out. She cer-
tainly did not hate him. No; hatred had vanished long ago, and she had
almost as long been ashamed of ever feeling a dislike against him, that
could be so called. The respect created by the conviction of his valuable
qualities, though at first unwillingly admitted, had for some time ceased
to be repugnant to her feelings; and it was now heightened into somewhat
of a friendlier nature, by the testimony so highly in his favour, and bring-
ing forward his disposition in so amiable a light, which yesterday had pro-
duced. But above all, above respect and esteem, there was a motive within
her of good will which could not be overlooked. It was gratitude.—
Gratitude, not merely for having once loved her, but for loving her still
well enough, to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in
rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations accompanying her rejection.
He who, she had been persuaded, would avoid her as his greatest enemy,
seemed, on this accidental meeting, most eager to preserve the acquain-
tance, and without any indelicate display of regard, or any peculiarity of
of manner, where their two selves only were concerned, was soliciting the
good opinion of her friends, and bent on making her known to his sister.
Such a change in a man of so much pride, excited not only astonishment
but gratitude—for to love, ardent love, it must be attributed; and as such
its impression on her was of a sort to be encouraged, as by no means un-
pleasing, though it could not be exactly defined. She respected, she
esteemed, she was grateful to him, she felt a real interest in his welfare;
and she only wanted to know how far she wished that welfare to depend
upon herself, and how far it would be for the happiness of both that she
should employ the power, which her fancy told her she still possessed, of
bringing on the renewal of his addresses. (PP, pp. 265-6)
The analysis casts back to an earlier stage which it rejects, not

coldly, but emotionally: Elizabeth is ashamed of having felt a dislike
that could be called hating; she is no longer repelled by the respect
she first felt unwillingly, which has grown warmer than respect, 'some-
what of a friendlier nature'; esteem is slipped in, without comment,
and then joined by gratitude, with the rational explanation, an
explanation which brings in a warmer word, that of love. Not yet in
love, she sees herself as 'grateful* for his past and continued loving,
despite her conduct. His love is analysed a little, seen as forgiving her
acrimony. As she speculates about his feelings, hers change. She feels
astonished and then grateful for his forgiveness. We move into the
deliberate vagueness of impressions not to be exactly defined. There
then follows a recapitulation, and a crescendo: 'She respected, she
esteemed, she was grateful to him, she felt a real interest in his
welfare . . .'.The sentence is as elaborate and precise in refinement
and qualification as a sentence of Henry James, and for reasons he
would respect. Elizabeth is inspecting, delicately skirting and quest-
ioning, with honesty, goodwill, nuance and scruple, those feelings
which she cannot yet quite call love. The shifting of the names of feel-
ing is true not only to her bewilderment, but to the shyness both of the
recognition and the admission, and - above all - to the greater shyness
of energetic antipathy humbling itself. The chapter ends with a brief
statement of a further small movement, in her pleasure at the thought
of the morning call, a statement which still hesitates to enlarge and
explain: 'Elizabeth was pleased, though, when she asked herself the
reason, she had very little to say in reply.' This is the dialogue not
only of the mind with itself, but of the whole affective consciousness.
The successive waves of feeling and reflection on feeling are
characteristic of Jane Austen and utterly central in each novel. In
each novel there is a prevailing register of feeling, coloured by
character and theme. Elizabeth's has assurance, shyness, humour;
Anne Elliot's is brave but agitated and anxious; Elinor's is sad but
relatively serene and stable. The word 'agitation' occurs frequently in
Persuasion, where the action is one of regret, loss, deprivation, shock,
doubt and tension. There are common elements in each novel's
analysis: for Elizabeth, Emma, and Anne, the passionate declaration
of love is followed by the sense that privacy and solitude are necessary
for recovery and repose, perhaps for recognition and consolidation.
In Anne's case there is without any doubt a religious aspect in her
final meditative retreat, prayerful and graceful, an emotional con-
clusion to the long history. The stream of passion flows deep but
always moves into the public world, and in many ways. The passion-
ate inspection of the passions produces the fine inevitability of the
final reunion of Darcy and Elizabeth, Anne and Captain Wentworth.
Despite the guard kept on feeling, the characters are all surprised
and shocked by their own and other people's feeling. Elinor is alarmed
and compassionate when Willoughby bursts in to enquire about
Marianne's dangerous fever and then to unfold his story. When Darcy
startles Elizabeth Bennet, her mind and ours have been concerned
with chagrin and sympathy for Jane, and resentment of Darcy after
Fitzwilliam's innocent disclosures. Darcy is supposedly safely at
Rosings in the enclosure and formality of one of Lady Catherine's
dinner-parties, the last kind of social occasion from which one could
ever imagine anyone slipping away.
When Elizabeth is startled by Darcy's very abrupt declaration she is
overcome with mixed feelings, including some gratification and sense
of compliment and even compassion, but chiefly composed of anger,
scorn, and contempt:
In spite of her deeply-rooted dislike, she could not be insensible to the

compliment of such a man's affection, and though her intentions did not
vary for an instant, she was at first sorry for the pain he was to receive;
till, roused to resentment by his subsequent language, she lost all com-
passion in anger. She tried, however, to compose herself to answer him
with patience, when he should have done. (PP, p. 189)
When he realizes that she is really rejecting him, his feeling too gathers
itself into an equal anger, taking some of its strength from hurt and
surprise, as we see, some from love, and some from the sense of in-
justice, as we do not immediately see. Their angers clash together
promisingly:
'The feelings which, you tell me, have long prevented the acknowledg-
ment of your regard, can have little difficulty in overcoming it after this
explanation.'
Mr. Darcy, who was leaning against the mantle-piece with his eyes
fixed on her face, seemed to catch her words with no less resentment
than surprise. His complexion became pale with anger, and the disturb-
ance of his mind was visible in every feature. He was struggling for the
appearance of composure, and would not open his lips, till he believed
himself to have attained it. The pause was to Elizabeth's feelings dread-
ful. At length, in a voice of forced calmness, he said,
'And this is all the reply which I am to have the honour of expecting!
I might, perhaps, wish to be informed why, with so little endeavour at
civility, I am thus rejected. But it is of small importance.1
C
I might as well enquire,' replied she, 'why with so evident a design of
offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me against
your will, against your reason, and even against your character? Was not
this some excuse for incivility, if I was uncivil? But I have other provoca-
tions. You know I have. Had not my own feelings decided against you,
had they been indifferent, or had they even been favourable, do you think
that any consideration would tempt me to accept the man, who has been
the means of ruining, perhaps for ever, the happiness of a most beloved
sister?'
As she pronounced these words, Mr. Darcy changed colour; but the
emotion was short, and he listened without attempting to interrupt her
while she continued.
'I have every reason in the world to think ill of you. No motive can
excuse the unjust and ungenerous part you acted there. You dare not, you
cannot deny that you have been the principal, if not the only means of
dividing them from each other, of exposing one to the censure of the
world for caprice and instability, the other to its derision for disappointed
hopes, and involving them both in misery of the acutest kind.'
She paused and saw with no slight indignation that he was listening
with an air which proved him wholly unmoved by any feeling of remorse.
He even looked at her with a smile of affected incredulity. (FP, pp. 190-1)
The action of strong passion is a relationship, even an intimacy,

and of course the odi leads to amo, as in similar passionate conflicts
between Beatrice and Benedict or Mrs Gaskell's Margaret Hale and
Mr Thornton in North and South. When Elizabeth is informed and
astonished once more by Darcy's letter, the anger is modified and
changed by the sense of injustice, which is in its turn bound up with
shame, and self-reproach, not only for her mistake about Darcy, but
for her mistake about Wickham. We see the intimacy of anger and
reproach rising into that of affection. But the movement is slow and
complex, forming part of the whole chronicle of feeling which shows
the passions at play both in solitude and in public. In all these cases
physical surprise intensifies passion, the feeling coming violently upon
us. One of the best examples of this intensification in a small space is
Emma's passionate self-discovery 'darting through her with the speed
of an arrow'. Perhaps the most striking union of feelings, inevitable
rather than surprising, is that in Persuasion. Anne Elliot and Freder-
ick Wentworth are the lovers who communicate silently and painfully
throughout the novel, never once alone until the declaration is
written, in a public and crowded hotel room. The contrast between
Jane Austen's final version of this scene and the original,7 where the
public nature of the lovers' meetings is broken before the declaration,
brings out the importance of the tension and the relief of solitude and
climax. The final and superior version makes a movement from
separation to intimacy, as well as containing a much more moving and
plausible precipitation in Anne's rhapsodic defence of woman's con-
stancy, overheard by Captain Wentworth though not designed for his
ears.
7
Reprinted in the Chapman edition, pp. 253-63.
For Anne, like Elizabeth and Fanny, is capable of the rhapsodic,
even the Sublime. Rather faint in Pride and Prejudice, slightly
stronger in Emma, and at their most energetic in Mansfield Park and
Persuasion, are outbursts of feeling not directly connected with the
love-stories. Such bursts of passion are isolated, stylized, framed, and
focused. They bring us close to the romantic ode, being rhapsodies -
or almost rhapsodies - on a natural scene, marked by the conjunction
of sense and symbol, and the relation of outer and inner experience.
Jane Austen's use of sympathetic weather is conspicuous but delicate.
It is a depressingly cold and stormy July day when Emma feels sure
she has lost Knightley, but a brilliant morning that brings them
together. The capriciousness of the English spring and summer is
affectionately invoked and exploited on several occasions. The
novelist never rhapsodizes about nature, though she carefully allows
her characters to be more ecstatic. She dramatizes both the outer
world and the character's sensibility, with an explicitness of inter-
pretation which is lucid but subtle enough to leave some things unsaid.
Such rhapsodies offer the closest approach to that elevation which
some of the Victorians found lacking in Jane Austen. Jane Austen,
unlike George Eliot and Hardy, does not aspire to a numinous vision.
Although her piety is in evidence in her novels, they keep us firmly in
the phenomenal world, in which we live. Her landscape lacks those
Alpine peaks to which Dickens and George Eliot aspire and sometimes
climb, but also lacks their failures in sublimity, the mechanically con-
ceived Alps in David Copperfield, or some of the strained visions in
Romola or Daniel Deronda. Nature may have been more sublime for
Jane Austen than we can imagine, but her human passions seldom or
never go beyond the sensuous world. She keeps a tight hold on
rhapsody, as we might expect from the creator of Sir Edward Den-
ham:
'Do you remember, said he, Scott's beautiful lines on the Sea?—Oh!
what a description they convey!—They are never out of my Thoughts
when I walk here.—That Man who can read them unmoved must have
the nerves of an Assassin!—Heaven defend me from meeting such a
Man un-armed.' 'What description do you mean?—said Charlotte. I
remember none at this moment, of the Sea, in either of Scott's Poems.'
'Do you not indeed?—Nor can I exactly recall the beginning at this
moment—But—you cannot have forgotten his description of Woman!—
"Oh! Woman in our Hours of Ease—"
Delicious! Delicious! Had he written nothing more, he would have been
Immortal.' (MW, p. 396)
Jane Austen required her characters to be precise and concrete even
in the moment of rhapsody, unlike Sir Edward, but perhaps not
totally unlike Wordsworth or Keats, and very like Rousseau. She is a
novelist, not a poet, and in her rhapsodies she places the inner and
outer experience typical of the ode in character, marking the confines
of personal experience and the larger world that lies outside that
experience. There is something like an ode in Persuasion:
Anne's object was, not to be in the way of any body, and where the
narrow paths across the fields made many separations necessary, to keep
with her brother and sister. Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the
exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon
the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself
some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn, that
season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and
tenderness, that season which has drawn from every poet, worthy of being
read, some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling. She occupied
her mind as much as possible in such like musings and quotations. . . .
(P.p.-84)
Anne could not immediately fall into a quotation again. The sweet
scenes of autumn were for a while put by—unless some tender sonnet,
fraught with the apt analogy of the declining year, with declining happi-
ness, and the images of youth and hope, and spring, all gone together,
blessed her memory. She roused herself to say, as they struck by order
into another path, 'Is not this one of the ways to Winthrop?' But nobody
heard, or, at least, nobody answered her.
Winthrop, however, or its environs—for young men are, sometimes, to
be met with, strolling about near home, was their destination; and after
another half mile of gradual ascent through large enclosures, where the
ploughs at work, and the fresh-made path spoke the farmer, counter-
acting the sweets of poetical despondence, and meaning to have spring
again, they gained the summit of the most considerable hill, which parted
Uppercross and Winthrop, and soon commanded a full view of the latter,
at the foot of the hill on the other side. (P, p. 85)
We do not forget the scene, the exercise and the walk. Jane Austen
is writing about poetry instead of writing poetry, so she describes and
does not enact her effects: 'season of peculiar and inexhaustible
influence on the mind of taste and tenderness', but not 'season of mists
and mellow fruitfulness'. This is a generalization of poetic response,
precisely in accordance with the advice on dangerous and indulgent
selective reading which Anne is to give to Harville. But the response is
personal and the writing soon becomes more particular, as she hears
Louisa's enthusiastic speech 'If I loved a man', and hears it praised
and 'honoured* by Frederick Wentworth. Understandably, she pro-
ceeds to select not the poetry of autumn's sweetness but that of its
decline. The response is narrated, not lyricized, but at the end the
passage rises into a different feeling, which includes but goes beyond
Anne's chagrin, and yet is eventually and fully responsive to her
stoicism as well as to her 'second spring'. This narration of feeling
resembles an Ode to Autumn in three stanzas: the first is fraught with
sweetness, in the 'last smiles' of the year upon the leaves and hedges;
the second is a sigh for decay, with 'declining happiness, and the
images of youth and hope, and spring, all gone together'; and the
third is a recovery and an enlargement:'... after another half mile of
gradual ascent through large enclosures, where the ploughs at work,
and the fresh-made path spoke the farmer, counteracting the sweets of
poetical despondence, and meaning to have spring again....'
This nearly lyric episode is important not just as a statement of
theme, but as a reflection of feeling and a moral expansion of the
emotional state. It places Anne in relation to her as-yet-unanticipated
happy ending, but goes beyond this to bring in the world beyond
poetry, and beyond passion. It involves the larger world in which we
live and feel, not in apartness. It uses Anne's passions, then expands
to leave those passions behind. But its enlargement is responsive to the
sense of sympathy and community which Anne consistently shows,
generous, benevolent, and responsible as she is.
Mary Crawford, who is not at all like an old maid, lives in social
apartness. She is surprised not to get a horse and cart to transport her
harp in the middle of the late hay harvest, puts on an irrational
woman's charming act of intuition, insisting that furlongs are miles, or
that black clouds mean rain, because it suits her needs and desires.
'South or North, I know a black cloud when I see one', she says, echo-
ing Hamlet with a more than Hamlet-like irrationality. But Fanny
Price's vision of Nature is grounded in attentive and careful observa-
tion: 'But they are passed over... I have been watching them. This
weather is all from the south.'
Fanny is the greatest rhapsodist in Jane Austen. In Portsmouth we
see her in a rapturous natural scene where, like Anne, she is perceived
as well as perceiver. We see her with Henry Crawford by the sea, feel-
ing "many a tender reverie* (its subject is unstated, but we know it is
not Henry). Jane Austen makes clear her 'openness' to nature, her
enjoyment, physical animation, and her carelessness 'of the con-
ditions'. The 'carelessness' means she isn't worried by resting on
Henry's arm, an important carelessness for Fanny:
The day was uncommonly lovely. It was really March; but it was April
in its mild air, brisk soft wind, and bright sun, occasionally clouded for a
minute; and every thing looked so beautiful under the influence of such
a sky, the effects of the shadows pursuing each other, on the ships at Spit-
head and the island beyond, with the ever-varying hues of the sea now at
high water, dancing in its glee and dashing against the ramparts with so
fine a sound, produced altogether such a combination of charms for
Fanny, as made her gradually almost careless of the circumstances under
which she felt them.
*
The loveliness of the day, and of the view, he felt like herself. They
often stopt with the same sentiment and taste, leaning against the wall,
some minutes, to look and admire; and considering he was not Edmund,
Fanny could not but allow that he was sufficiently open to the charms of
nature, and very well able to express his admiration. She had a few
tender reveries now and then, which he could sometimes take advantage
of, to look in her face without detection.. .. (MP, p. 409)
It was sad to Fanny to lose all the pleasures of spring. She had not
known before what pleasures she had to lose in passing March and April
in a town. She had not known before, how much the beginnings and
progress of vegetation had delighted her.—What animation both of body
and mind, she had derived from watching the advance of that season
which cannot, in spite of its capriciousness, be unlovely, and seeing its
increasing beauties, from the earliest flowers, in the warmest divisions of
her aunt's garden, to the opening of leaves of her uncle's plantations, and
the glory of his woods.—To be losing such pleasures was no trifle; to be
losing them, because she was in the midst of closeness and noise, to have
confinement, bad air, bad smells, substituted for liberty, freshness,
fragrance, and verdure, was infinitely worse;—but even these incitements
to regret, were feeble, compared with what arose from the conviction of
being missed, by her best friends, and the longing to be useful to those
who were wanting her! (MP, pp. 431-2)
Fanny's attitude to nature is personal, even domestic, but her spontan-

eity and vitality are defined by it, as Henry Crawford observes.
Fanny's most elaborate rhapsody is a twofold one, on the evergreen
and the human memory. The two exclamations of wonder are linked
by her recollection of the Parsonage garden (in the old Norris days)
before its shrubbery existed, and the link is strengthened through the
quality of endurance shared by tree and mind:
... in the midst of some tender ejaculation of Fanny's, on the sweets of
so protracted an autumn, they were forced by the sudden swell of a cold
gust shaking down the last few yellow leaves about them, to jump up and
walk for warmth.
'This is pretty—very pretty,' said Fanny, looking around her as they
were thus sitting together one day: 'Every time I come into this shrubbery
I am more struck with its growth and beauty. Three years ago, this was
nothing but a rough hedgerow along the upper side of the field, never
thought of as any thing, or capable of becoming any thing; and now it is
converted into a walk, and it would be difficult to say whether most
valuable as a convenience or an ornament; and perhaps in another three
years we may be forgetting—almost forgetting what it was before. How
wonderful, how very wonderful the operations of time, and the changes
of the human mind!' And following the latter train of thought, she soon
afterwards added: 'If any one faculty of our nature may be called more
wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something
more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the
inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The
memory is sometimes so rententive, so serviceable, so obedient—at others
so bewildered and so weak—and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond
control!—We are to be sure a miracle every way—but our powers of
recollecting and of forgetting, do seem peculiarly past rinding out.'
Miss Crawford, untouched and inattentive, had nothing to say; and
Fanny, perceiving it, brought back her own mind to what she thought
must interest.
'It may seem impertinent in me to praise, but I must admire the taste
Mrs. Grant has shewn in all this. There is such a quiet simplicity in the
plan of the walk! not too much attempted!'
'Yes,' replied Miss Crawford carelessly, 'it does very well for a place
of this sort. One does not think of extent here—and between ourselves,
till I came to Mansfield, I had not imagined a country parson ever aspired
to a shrubbery or any thing of the kind.'
'I am so glad to see the evergreens thrive!' said Fanny in reply. 'My
uncle's gardener always says the soil here is better than his own, and so it
appears from the growth of the laurels and evergreens in general.—The
evergreen!—How beautiful, how welcome, how wonderful the ever-
green !—When one thinks of it, how astonishing a variety of nature!—In
some countries we know the tree that sheds its leaf is the variety, but that
does not make it less amazing, that the same soil and the same sun should
nurture plants differing in the first rule and law of their existence. You
will think me rhapsodizing; but when I am out of doors, especially when
I am sitting out of doors, I am very apt to get into this sort of wondering
strain. One cannot fix one's eyes on the commonest natural production
without finding food for a rambling fancy.'
'To say the truth,' replied Miss Crawford, 'I am something like the
famous Doge at the court of Lewis XIV; and may declare that I see no
wonder in this shrubbery equal to seeing myself in it.' (MP, pp. 206-10)
It is characteristic of Fanny to utter a double praise of the human and
the natural. She thinks of Mansfield Park as her aunt's garden and
uncle's woods, and here responds to the Parsonage shrubbery. This is
her Romanticism, grounded in sense and science,8 like her author's
insistence in Persuasion on the farmer 'meaning to have spring again*.
The rhapsody is typically prim but endearing in its pedantry, and,
most important, in its reliable sense of audience, the modesty, the
apology in *You will think me rhapsodizing'. We do. This is an open-
ness, to what is beyond the self.
Jane Austen is explicitly contrasting this openness with Mary's
apartness, her egocentric and entirely unromantic lack of intellectual
and imaginative concern for anything beyond the self. We see a closed
and an open mind, both warm, but Fanny's is the movement of
imagination - into the larger world. Not only is Fanny meditating on
the properties of mind and nature, in praise and reflective analysis,
but she is doing so in a very testing situation, where she might be for-
given for self-absorption. The modern meditation is in context not
unlike Hamlet's 'What a piece of work is man', in the moral strength
of its break from a passion which possesses and obsesses. Like Shakes-
peare, Jane Austen can demonstrate the mind's power to draw on the
strength and intensity of the private passion for an enlarged act of
sensibility and rational appraisal:
Fanny spoke her feelings. 'Here's harmony!' said she, 'Here's repose!
Here's what may leave all painting and all music behind, and what poetry
only can attempt to describe. Here's what may tranquillize every care,
and lift the heart to rapture! When I look out on such a night as this, I
feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and
there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more
attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contem-
plating such a scene.'
'I like to hear your enthusiasm, Fanny. It is a lovely night, and they
are much to be pitied who have not been taught to feel in some degree
as you do—who have not at least been given a taste for nature in early
life. They lose a great deal.'
'You taught me to think and feel on the subject, cousin.'
'I had a very apt scholar. There's Arcturus looking very bright.'
'Yes, and the bear. I wish I could see Cassiopeia.'
'We must go out on the lawn for that, Should you be afraid?'
'Not in the least. It is a great while since we have had any star-gazing.'
8
The combination is very reminiscent of Rousseau, especially in Les
reveries du promeneur solitaire. It is just possible that Jane Austen's fond-
ness for the term 'reverie' derives from Rousseau.
'Yes, I do not know how it has happened.' (MP, p. 113)
This is also in character, precise, pedantic, sententious, even slightly

priggish. Her appeal is religious, ecstatic, strong, and persuades
Edmund to look away for a moment from the pianoforte, candles and
Mary Crawford.
Mary's is the indoor world, and hers are the indoor arts and lights:
candles not stars, music not poetry. The implied disparagement of
music is also in character,* for we know that Fanny likes literature
but not music and painting, and there are moral and social implica-
tions. This novel discusses education and seems at times to criticize
music and painting as typically alluring accomplishments, while see-
ing literature, at least locally, as a serious part of moral education. Of
course Jane Austen doesn't suggest that literary taste is a guarantee
of virtue - Henry Crawford's reading is as exhibitionist and seductive
as Mary's harp-playing. Fanny's aesthetic and moved rapture at the
stars and her overt defence of the Sublime, are amorous too, though
privately and discreetly so. The amorousness is there in the *Not in the
least It is a great while since we have had any star-gazing', but also
implicit, if not conscious, in: 'if people were carried more out of them-
selves'. Edmund himself is not so carried away, but still ruled by his
present feeling for Mary, when his reply 'I like to hear your enthus-
iasm* reverts to 'they are much to be pitied ...'. He almost goes out to
look at Cassiopeia, invisible from the open window, moved by Fanny
to look with her, at the stars and at their past star-gazing. Jane Austen
underlines the amorous beauty of the scene by something very rare
in her, though common enough in other evocations of intense passion,
like the image of Ruth in The Ode to the Nightingale', in a reinforce-
ment of associations that link this rapture with another pair of lovers,
another image of harmony, on another starlit night:
The moon shines bright. In such a night as this....
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!

Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears—soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony:
Sit Jessica,—look how the floor of heaven
9
It is also a local emphasis; in other novels Jane Austen makes no attempt
to disparage music. Anne Elliot's music is quite different from Mary
Crawford's.
Is thick inlaid with patens of bright gold....
(The Merchant of Venice)
The strongest echo is not in the imagery but in the echo of Shakes-
peare's many times repeated 'in such a night'.10
Poetry and rapture are not isolated. This rhapsody is less like an
ode than a refusal to write an ode: Tanny sighed alone at the window
till scolded away by Mrs Norris's threats of catching cold.' It is a
novel, not a poem. The passions exist in intensity and strength; they
are part of the creation of character, part of the moral definition, and
part of the action. Although Jane Austen's novels do not anaesthetize
the heart, as Bergson tells us comedy must, her passions have to
inhabit the ordinary world. Their poetry - if we can ever call them
poetic - is only a transient exaltation and heightening of prose, and
lacks the isolation from character, history, judgement, which the
romantic ode delights in, and possesses. The 'Ode to the Nightingale'
can end on the modulation into doubt and question its own language
in, 'Forlorn! the word is like ...' but it cannot ever smile at its
passions.
Fanny's celebration of nature has a moral significance that is more
than a superior act of penetrating imagination. It is part of her
capacity to ask, see, and judge, to appreciate, spontaneously, crea-
tively and genuinely. Readers of Victorian novels, where the response
to nature is either less important than the response to the human
world, or closely related to that response through sensibility and
symbol, may well find a lack of social passion and elevation in Jane
Austen, think her raptures uncomfortably sealed off from the larger
world. We all know the honest - perhaps too honest - observations i
Northanger Abbey, 'from politics it was an easy step to silence' (NA, p.
Ill), a comment which is particularly resounding for being placed
after Catherine's delighted initiation into good conversation, on the
subjects of nature, painting and literature. Catherine, like Emma and
Fanny, is praised for her responsiveness and 'fresh feelings'. She is
indeed initiated into the horrors of social fact - injustice, mercenari-
ness, tyranny and duplicity - through General Tilney with his
unspecified larger duties which keep him up late studying for the good
of the nation. But there is no suggestion that Jane Austen wants to
take this heroine beyond the fresh appraisal of her immediate environ-
ment. Emma is not especially open to aesthetic rapture, and the
10
See Frank W. Bradbrook, op. cit, p. 78.
grounds of Donwell and its Abbey please her chiefly for what they
represent in social solidity of standing and possession. Nor is Emma
remarkable for her social passion, despite her goodness and sympathy
to the poor, and the candid lack of cant afterwards : '"... I hope it
may be allowed that if compassion has produced exertion and relief
to the sufferers, it has done all that is truly important If we feel for
the wretched, enough to do all we can for them, the rest is empty
sympathy, only distressing to ourselves."' (£, p. 87) This is scarcely the
full flow of social love, though a reasonable and honest attitude.11
Catherine's lack of interest and Emma's strictly practical social
sympathy highlight Fanny's sensibility. It is only a detail but eloquent
in its context, much more eloquent, for instance, than Jane Fairfax's
fuller comment on the slave-trade, for Fanny speaks as one whose flow
of passion we know. 'Did you not hear me ask him about the slave-
trade last night?' she says to Edmund soon after the return of Sir
Thomas from Antigua. Interesting too is her reason for not 'following
the question' with others, as Edmund would have liked, because it
would have looked like display and rebuke to the silently bored Maria
and Julia. Jane Austen knew that politics could be boring, and those
who think Fanny's priggishness excessive should reflect on her insight,
unusual in prigs, into the dangers of being boring and morally
superior. Her sensibility is contrasted with Maria's and Julia's early
schoolroom boasts about their useless young ladies' syllabus, as they
reel off the metals, semi-metals, planets and distinguished philoso-
phers, and with Mary Crawford's amazement that she can't get trans-
port for her harp in the middle of the late hay harvest Fanny has
not only acquired some knowledge of literature, geography, and
astronomy, but like Sissy Jupes or Dorothea Brooke, she is directed
both by imagination and a sense of local relevance. Her uncle has been
across the Atlantic and back (despite Mary's wishes for a calm), and
has had his problems in the West Indies, perhaps even arising out of
the emancipation of the slaves in 1807.12 Fanny's question is one about
the world outside Mansfield Park, but it is also a niece's question
about her uncle's world. Like her knowledge of coniferous and
deciduous trees, the constellations and Cowper, her questioning is part
of her sensibility, which harmonizes the impulses to know, to wonder,
and to love. She is a figure in Jane Austen's romantic sensibility, one
11
It is like Jane Austen's remarks on charity in the Letters, p. 295.
12
See Avrom Fleishman, A Reading of Mansfield Park (Minneapolis,
1967), pp. 36-9.
of the most complete Romantic heroines, and her social sensibility
links her with Rousseau, Wordsworth, Byron and Keats. Like the
poets, Fanny finds objects sacred, and is moved imaginatively to relate
all her sacred objects to each other and to the world outside the self.
Jane Austen's moments of deepest feeling show something strikingly
close to Shelley's thinking in The Defence of Poetry:
Man is an instrument over which a series of external and internal impress-

ions are driven, like the alternations of an ever-changing wind over an
/*Eolian lyre, which move it by their motion to ever-changing melody. But
there is a principle within all sentient beings, which acts otherwise than in
the lyre, and produces not melody alone, but harmony, by an internal
adjustment of the sounds or motions thus excited to the impressions
which excite them. It is as if the lyre could accommodate its chords to the
motions of that which strikes them, in a determined proportion of
sound....
Jane Austen is not an extroverted social novelist, interested chiefly

in the series of external impressions, but conceives her heroines as
imaginative beings, able to accommodate their responses to the move-
ments of the larger world.
Ill
The Storytellers
/: Continuity, Climax and Conclusion
Each of Jane Austen's novels has a continuity of feeling. It also has its
flow of telling and listening.1 Like all novelists writing in the third
person, Jane Austen depends on a variety of viewpoints, a number of
internal narrators who carry much of the narrative responsibility,
formally and informally.
When we contemplate the narrator in fiction, we tend to invoke the
idea of a dominant voice. This voice may present itself as engaged in
writing or editing letters, memoirs, autobiography, reminiscence or
self-proclaimed fiction, but no single narrator, real or imaginary, tells
the whole of the story. The external narrator's stance is maintained in
Jane Austen's novels, though it is neither very insistent nor very con-
spicuous, because the stories she tells are made up of many acts of
telling and listening. The passions of her people move within them
and without, and their storytelling too is both private and public. The
density and the vitality of great novels depend on the abundance of
internal narrative, which repeats and sustains the narrative activity
outside novels, and at the same time creates character, action,
dialogue and argument. Internal narrative is at once means and end.
The unit of narration is as important a unit in the structure of a novel
as an image. The large narrative that we call the novel proceeds
through inner telling and listening, in an interwoven chain of dis-
course.
Jane Austen's internal narrative sometimes takes the form of
ambitious, formal and lengthy exposition. The stories of Willoughby,
Lucy Steele, Wickham, Darcy, Frank Churchill and Captain Went-
worth are extensive, reporting their past lives, truthfully or untruth-
fully. Narratives may be fragmentary and allusive, as in the brief,
incoherent or piecemeal narratives of Marianne Dashwood, Edward
1
See my general discussion of this topic in Tellers and Listeners: The
Narrative Imagination (Athlone Press, 1975).
66
The Storytellers 1 67
Ferrars or Henry Crawford, who offer brief histories of the past or
projects for the future. At its most reduced, narrative can reside in a
few words, like Lady Bertram's effortless but unusually vivid revela-
tion to the returning Sir Thomas that they 'have been all alive with
acting'. Like this brief account it may be utterly direct, telling
explicitly and clearly what past or future events have been or may be.
It may be indirect, forming the subtext of Fanny's lyrical outburst on
the subject of the stars, or of Mary Crawford's murmur of masked wit
against the hostilities directed at Fanny in the Mansfield drawing-
room : 'this place is too hot for me'. It may be public, addressed to
willing, unwilling, eager, abstracted or uncomprehending listeners.
It may be interior and silent, like the repressed and reserved story of
Elinor Dashwood, which Marianne thinks can't exist because it
doesn't get told, or the constant play of memory and reflection in the
fine mind of Anne Elliot, who has had no one to listen to her since she
found and lost the perfect listener eight years before the novel's story
began. (She has Lady Russell, and appreciates her company, but she
cannot tell her the whole story of the past.)
From beginning to end, the novel weaves its constantly shifting
pattern of internal narrative. There is always someone telling and
someone listening. We move from the private to the public life
through the constant narrative motion, utterances are joined with
silences, and events become reflections. Within the public talk, how-
ever brilliantly extroverted the conversation may be, there are always
two sets of narration going on, for the spoken words are accompanied,
enlarged, qualified and contradicted by the words that are thought.
While Captain Wentworth talks to amuse, inform and charm the
Musgrove sisters, Anne Elliot listens, remembering how he had once
talked to her. She compares the stories of the sea he had told her then,
with those he is telling now to others, and feels the difference between
the listening of the present and that of eight years ago:
From this time Captain Wentworth and Anne Elliot were repeatedly
in the same circle. They were soon dining in company together at Mr.
Musgrove's, for the little boy's state could no longer supply his aunt with
a pretence for absenting herself; and this was but the beginning of other
dinings and other meetings.
Whether former feelings were to be renewed, must be brought to the
proof; former times must undoubtedly be brought to the recollection of
each; they could not but be reverted to; the year of their engagement
could not but be named by him, in the little narratives or descriptions
which conversation called forth. His profession qualified him, his dis-
position led him, to talk; and 'That was in the year six;' 'That happened
before I went to sea in the year six,' occurred in the course of the first
evening they spent together: and though his voice did not falter, and
though she had no reason to suppose his eye wandering towards her while
he spoke, Anne felt the utter impossibility, from her knowledge of his
mind, that he could be unvisited by remembrance any more than herself.
There must be the same immediate association of thought, though she was
very far from conceiving it to be of equal pain.
They had no conversation together, no intercourse but what the com-
monest civility required. Once so much to each other! Now nothing.
There had been a time, when of all the large party now filling the
drawing-room at Uppercross, they would have found it most difficult to
cease to speak to one another. With the exception, perhaps, of Admiral
and Mrs. Croft, who seemed particularly attached and happy, (Anne
could allow no other exception even among the married couples) there
could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings
so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay,
worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a
perpetual estrangement.
When he talked, she heard the same voice, and discerned the same
mind. There was a very general ignorance of all naval matters throughout
the party; and he was very much questioned, and especially by the two
Miss Musgroves, who seemed hardly to have any eyes but for him, as to
the manner of living on board, daily regulations, food, hours, &c.; and
their surprise at his accounts, at learning the degree of accommodation
and arrangement which was practicable, drew from him some pleasant
ridicule, which reminded Anne of the early days when she too had been
ignorant, and she too had been accused of supposing sailors to be living
on board without any thing to eat, or any cook to dress it if there were,
or any servant to wait, or any knife and fork to use. (P, pp. 63-4)
'But, Captain Wentworth,' cried Louisa, 'how vexed you must have
been when you came to the Asp, to see what an old thing they had given
you.'
'I knew pretty well what she was, before that day;' said he, smiling. 'I
had no more discoveries to make, than you would have as to the fashion
and strength of any old pelisse, which you had seen lent about among half
your acquaintance, ever since you could remember, and which at last, on
some very wet day, is lent to yourself.—Ah! she was a dear old Asp to me.
She did all that I wanted. I knew she would.—I knew that we should
either go to the bottom together, or that she would be the making of me;
and I never had two days of foul weather all the time I was at sea in her;
and after taking privateers enough to be very entertaining, I had the good
luck, in my passage home the next autumn, to fall in with the very French
frigate I wanted.—I brought her into Plymouth; and here was another
instance of luck. We had not been six hours in the Sound, when a gale
came on, which lasted four days and nights, and which would have done
for poor old Asp, in half the time; our touch with the Great Nation not
having much improved our condition. Four-and-twenty hours later, and I
should only have been a gallant Captain. Wentworth, in a small paragraph
at one corner of the newspapers; and being lost in only a sloop, nobody
would have thought about me.'
Anne's shudderings were to herself, alone: but the Miss Musgroves
could be as open as they were sincere, in their exclamations of pity and
horror. (P, pp. 65-6)
All the time her imagination is busy with what is going on in the
speaker's memory. She has to hear her old lover's new stories silently
and uncomfortably, wondering what is in his mind as he easily and
wittily adapts his style and tone for the ears of the Musgrove girls, the
conventionally good lady listeners. She reads between the lines as he
tells the story of his first command and explains that he wanted to be
away and doing, or tells of success, dangers and possible death with
no one to mourn him. Her listening is intent, agitated, regretful, as it
doubles back on the long past and probes the doubtful present.
Like Elinor Dashwood, Anne is a good listener, forced to hold back
her own story though it beats persistently inside. There is an interior
life beneath the public one. And the public storytelling sometimes tells
more than it may seem to. This dipping in and out of public and
private story goes to create the elasticity of Jane Austen's narrative
medium. The continuity and the density of the novels depend on the
constant movement of narrative.
The plot moves on many small hinges of narrative. Telling Sir
Thomas about Lovers' Vows is a matter of moment, and Tom's con-
fusion is almost a masterpiece of deflection and understatement, only
slightly too casual and throwaway. Henry Crawford's visit to Ports-
mouth gives most pleasure - as he quickly sees - because he can tell
Fanny about Mansfield Park. His narrative to her is both passionate
and manipulative, increasing intimacy by assuming it. An item in a
gossip-column in the newspaper, read out by Mr Price, excellent
commentator for the delicate purpose of breaking the news to Fanny
('by G- if she belonged to me, I'd give her the rope's end as long as I
could stand over her'), changes the fortunes of many people.
As the course of the novel welds inner and outer narration, the
fluent form is, from time to time, interrupted by strong climax or
serious crisis. One of Jane Austen's most brilliant gifts is her ability to
surprise. Though her art deals in the staple of the novel and the
drama - expectation, not surprise-she can astonish and arrest the
reader. The astonishment is always profoundly instructive as well as
thrilling. Compared with her predecessors in fiction, with the possible
exception of Richardson, whose epistolary form solves the problem
of continuity in a special way, Jane Austen creates an exceptionally
strong and cunning chain, whose firm links must sometimes be
violently broken.
The private crisis in feeling, when Elizabeth Bennet or Emma
comes to know or acknowledge the truth of the heart, is a recurring
moment of change. It has its equivalent in the public world, where
something startling is told, to burst with forceful surprise upon the
reader outside and the listener inside the novel. Surprise in Jane
Austen commonly takes the form of startling news, good or bad, true
or false. The news is unexpected. Surprises make the action of the
novel constantly interesting-varied, unpredictable and tense. But
like all the devices and conventions of a great artist, they enlarge our
knowledge as well as excite our interest. They form a part of the story
of the feelings. They are not always told lengthily or even directly.
Mrs Smith in Persuasion astonishes Anne Elliot (after having been
herself surprised by Anne's insistence that she doesn't care for her
cousin) by telling the story of Mr Elliot's true character, but the sur-
prise for the reader is muted by a detailed and thorough preparation.
Mrs Smith's is a hesitating and lengthy confidence, slow to get off the
ground, prefaced by doubts, and held up by the search for document-
ary evidence. But Jane Austen's most stunning surprises work through
sudden impassioned narratives that force themselves, unexpectedly,
into the narrative action.
In Northanger Abbey Jane Austen lightly mocks the convention of
the long narrative digression, common in Cervantes and the English
eighteenth-century novelists. She tells us that her two-sentence
summary of Mrs Thorpe and her family will do instead of 'a long and
minute detail from Mrs Thorpe herself, of her past adventures and
sufferings, which might otherwise be expected to occupy the three or
four following chapters' (NA, p. 34). Some of her predecessors, espec-
ially Fielding, knew perfectly well that a long inset narrative is best
justified by a response from the listener, and when the listeners are
Parson Adams in Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones and Partridge in Tom
Jones, and Booth in Amelia, their response is carefully characteristic,
and their attention thoroughly and effectively imagined. The stories
of Fielding's Mr Wilson, the Man of the Hill, and Miss Matthews are
not simply narrative embellishments or cadenzas, but are seen to be
told for a profound purpose. They are also told for an immediate
effect by particular tellers to particular listeners. Such elaborate
digressive stories are still and formal, however, like carefully inserted
pieces of contrasting material in a static marquetry design, when com-
pared with the confessions, confidences and revelations in Jane
Austen. Her inset stories are part of the narrative flow, arresting
action in order to thrust it into more powerful motion, buttonholing
the characters in order to shatter their feelings, overturn their ideas,
and utterly change their lives.
In each novel there comes a piece of transforming news. In Sense
and Sensibility Lucy Steele's information about her engagement to
Edward Ferrars is no less shattering for being unfolded slowly. Lucy
takes her time, first prefacing a question about Mrs Ferrars with *You
will think my question an odd one', (Elinor does), and then persisting
in spite of Elinor's politely cool refusal to satisfy 'what seemed
impertinent curiosity'. Throughout her skirting and scouting we are
aware of Lucy's look, which is as sharp, baleful and controlled as
Becky Sharp's.2 She first eyes Elinor attentively, later looks down in
amiable bashfulness 'with only one side glance at her companion to
observe its effect on her'. Just before coming to the point and
announcing her engagement to Mr Robert Ferrars's 'elder brother',
she fixes her eyes upon Elinor. But if Lucy is snakelike, Elinor is no
rabbit, and Jane Austen sets her this cruel listening test in order to
let her powers of control and reserve show the advantage of long
practice:
What felt Elinor at that moment? Astonishment, that would have been
as painful as it was strong, had not an immediate disbelief of the assertion
attended it. She turned towards Lucy in silent amazement, unable to
divine the reason or object of such a declaration, and though her com-
lexion varied, she stood firm in incredulity and felt in no danger of an
hysterical fit, or a swoon. (SS, p. 129)
What initially helps her to preserve her control is incredulity, but

this is succeeded by the desire to question. Then she is in turn shocked,
still incredulous, and unpleasantly moved by a certain measure of
plausibility in the tale. She feels 'an exertion of spirits, which increased
with her increase of emotion'. Elinor's self-command is reinforced by
various feelings and allows her to reply with calmness to Lucy's hints
2
I think it likely that Becky owes several of her features - name, eyes and
cunning - to Lucy.
at intimacy, especially to the remark that Edward is longing for her
picture, and to show no response to the tearful play with the handker-
chief. She is even given the self-possession to make the shrewd com-
ment that she is surprised by an unnecessary and unsought con-
fidence: 'You must at least have felt that my being acquainted with it
could not add to its safety.' The pointed remark - showing the victim
in the ascendant - is accompanied by her earnest look at Lucy. The
play of eyes is an important weapon in this duel of aggressive false-
hood with sincere reserve. At the end of the first confidence Elinor's
stoicism is 'almost overcome-her heart sunk within her, and she could
hardly stand', but once more she exerts herself. Despite her defences,
the totally unexpected revelation leaves her 'mortified, shocked, con-
founded*. And the reader shares the shock. Jane Austen's surprises
bring reader and character together, if not in a concurrence of feeling,
at least in an overlapping response. To say that we comprehend
Elinor's feelings is inadequate; we feel the mortification by sharing
both shock and incredulity.
Lucy's story is startling to reader and character because it comes
out of the blue, as a piece of news no one could anticipate. Even the
elder Miss Steele's hints, and Lucy's preference of Elinor, which is
innocently, naturally and acceptably interpreted by Elinor as a result
of Marianne's intolerance and coldness, cannot act as preparation for
Lucy's confidences. It is a perfect analysis of aggressive and spiteful
jealousy, emerging as it does from the assumption that Elinor has been
made a confidante because she is such a courteous listener. An
aggressive woman purrs out the lie which is strengthened by its
threads of truths - it is true that she and Edward are engaged, untrue
that they love each other; the story is designed to hurt and depress her
rival, who has to be tongue-tied. Lucy captures her by her very polite-
ness, and both surprise and submissive listening make a part of the
revenge. Jane Austen, as always, enjoys the discrimination of minds,
as she pits one intelligence against the other. Each woman knows what
is happening, speaks or hears the subtext. Lucy perhaps expects Elinor
to respond more openly or crudely — at least to give something away
under the pressure of her aggressive confidence and basilisk gaze, but
much of the satisfaction of the exchange lies in Elinor's preservation
of control, and in her subsequent powerful initiative as she returns to
to the confidence, armed with resolutions and questions. Elinor's self-
sought sequel, which gives her the advantage after recovery, develops
Lucy's suspicious jealousy and controlled curiosity of Elinor in a game
of adroit fencing. This is a perfectly contrived social set and scene:
Elinor politely collaborates with her rival in the filigree work for the
spoilt child Anna Maria, with 'working candles' to bring more light.
While the others play their game of cards, Elinor and Lucy play their
game of work. The busy kindness of the basket-making masks and
permits a tense exchange of innuendo and clash of feeling. It is an
essentially narrative conflict:
In a firm, though cautious tone, Elinor thus began.

'I should be undeserving of the confidence you have honoured me with,
if I felt no desire for its continuance, or no farther curiosity on its subject.
I will not apologize therefore for bringing it forward again.'
"Thank you,' cried Lucy warmly, 'for breaking the ice; you have set my
heart at ease by it; for I was somehow or other afraid I had offended you
by what I told you that Monday/
'Offended me! How could you suppose so? Believe me,' and Elinor
spoke it with the truest sincerity, 'nothing could be farther from my
intention, than to give you such an idea. Could you have a motive for the
trust, that was not honourable and flattering to me?'
'And yet I do assure you,' replied Lucy, her little sharp eyes full of
meaning, 'there seemed to me to be a coldness and displeasure in your
manner, that made me quite uncomfortable. I felt sure that you was
angry with me; and have been quarrelling with myself ever since, for
having took such a liberty as to trouble you with my affairs. But I am very
glad to find it was only my own fancy, and that you do not really blame
me. If you knew what a consolation it was to me to relieve my heart by
speaking to you of what I am always thinking of every moment of my life,
your compassion would make you overlook every thing else I am sure.'
'Indeed I can easily believe that it was a very great relief to you, to
acknowledge your situation to me, and be assured that you shall never
have reason to repent it. Your case is a very unfortunate one; you seem to
me to be surrounded with difficulties, and you will have need of all your
mutual affection to support you under them. Mr. Ferrars, I believe, is
entirely dependent on his mother.'
'He has only two thousand pounds of his own; it would be madness to
marry upon that, though for my own part, I could give up every prospect
of more without a sigh. I have been always used to a very small income,
and could struggle with any poverty for him; but I love him too well to
be the selfish means of robbing him, perhaps, of all that his mother might
give him if he married to please her. We must wait, it may be for many
years. With almost every other man in the world, it would be an alarming
prospect; but Edward's affection and constancy nothing can deprive me
of I know.'
'That conviction must be every thing to you; and he is undoubtedly
supported by the same trust in your's. If the strength of your reciprocal
attachment had failed, as between many people and under many circum-
stances it naturally would during a four years' engagement, your situation
would have been pitiable indeed.'
Lucy here looked up; but Elinor was careful in guarding her counten-
ance from every expression that could give her words a suspicious
tendency.
'Edward's love for me,' said Lucy, 'has been pretty well put to the test,
by our long, very long absence since we were first engaged, and it has
stood the trial so well, that I should be unpardonable to doubt it now. I
can safely say that he has never gave me one moment's alarm on that
account from the first.'
Elinor hardly knew whether to smile or sigh at this assertion.
(SS, pp. 146-7)
They were again silent for many minutes. At length Lucy exclaimed
with a deep sigh,
'I believe it would be the wisest way to put an end to the business at
once by dissolving the engagement. We seem so beset with difficulties on
every side, that though it would make us miserable for a time, we should
be happier perhaps in the end. But you will not give me your advice, Miss
Dashwood?'
'No;' answered Elinor, with a smile, which concealed very agitated
feelings, 'on such a subject I certainly will not. You know very well that
my opinion would have no weight with you, unless it were on the side of
your wishes.'
'Indeed you wrong me,' replied Lucy with great solemnity; 'I know
nobody of whose judgment I think so highly as I do of yours; and I do
really believe, that if you was to say to me, "I advise you by all means to
put an end to your engagement with Edward Ferrars, it will be more for
the happiness of both of you," I should resolve upon doing it immedi-
ately.'
Elinor blushed for the insincerity of Edward's future wife, and replied,
'This compliment would effectually frighten me from giving any opinion
on the subject had I formed one. It raises my influence much too high; the
power of dividing two people so tenderly attached is too much for an
indifferent person.'
"Tis because you are an indifferent person,' said Lucy, with some
pique, and laying a particular stress on those words, 'that your judgment
might justly have such weight with me. If you could be supposed to be
biassed in any respect by your own feelings, your opinion would not be
worth having.'
Elinor thought it wisest to make no answer to this, lest they might
provoke each other to an unsuitable increase of ease and unreserve. . . .
(SS, pp. 149-50)
As Jane Austen relieves, animates, dramatizes and deepens this long

narrative, she gives new life to the old form of the confidence. Elinor's
politeness, sympathy, reserve and intelligence doom her to be a con-
fidante in painful circumstances. Here is also the ironic position, to be
reworked in the cases of Fanny Price arid Anne Elliot, of the con-
fidante who has to listen but who has herself no one in whom to
confide. Sense and Sensibility's second astonishing story is also told to
Elinor. It is Willoughby's confession. Like Lucy's confidence, it also
has a full and fully justified emotional urgency. Willoughby bursts in
on Elinor as we have seen, when our mind and hers are elsewhere. She
is recovering from the agitating fears and hopes of Marianne's fever,
and alone at night, is waiting for the sound of her mother's carriage.
When she does hear the carriage, rather earlier than she had expected,
she looks out and, seeing that it is drawn by four horses instead of
two, immediately concludes this to be the reason for her mother's
speedy arrival:
Never in her life had Elinor found it so difficult to be calm, as at that

moment. The knowledge of what her mother must be feeling as the
carriage stopt at the door,—of her doubt—her dread—perhaps her
despair!—and of what she had to tell!—with such knowledge it was
impossible to be calm. All that remained to be done, was to be speedy;
and therefore staying only till she could leave Mrs. Jennings's maid with
her sister, she hurried down stairs.
The bustle in the vestibule, as she passed along an inner lobby, assured
her that they were already in the house. She rushed forwards towards
the drawing-room,—she entered it,—and saw only Willoughby. (SS,
p. 316)
In Willoughby's long, impassioned story, Jane Austen's art is

delicately and cunningly at work. A long story ought to be varied and
broken, so Willoughby is allowed no monolith of narrative. Before
even beginning his story he has to make his way against Elinor's
reluctance, first to receive and then to hear him. 'Such a beginning as
this', she says after hearing about his motives in engaging Marianne's
affections 'without any design of returning' them, 'cannot be followed
by any thing'. It is of course actually followed by Willoughby's version
of that rake's sentimental education which is repeated in more depth
and detail with Henry Crawford in Mansfield Park. He must tell and
she must listen. She interrupts as he claims to have 'lost everything'
that could make life a blessing, and is 'a little softened' as she half-
asks, half-understands, that he does feel a loss. But her words are
guarded, in spite of her sympathy: 'You did then ... believe yourself
at one time attached to her?' The course of her response varies with
that of the feelings and events in his story. Embarrassment succeeds
sympathy as he is forced to mention - or not mention - Eliza Williams.
Jane Austen draws attention to the constant play and change of
response during 'the course of this extraordinary conversation', and
by the time Willoughby has gone, we are not surprised that Elinor
finds herself so shaken. But she is an experienced listener, and this is
a vital listening test for both her sense and her sensibility. She is
moved, but alive to the knowledge that she is moved by meretricious
causes. During the conversation, she feels mixtures and alternations of
distaste and pity, withdrawal and approach; there are some beauti-
fully recorded moments, when sympathy is registered in silence, in-
cluding one 'pause of mutual thoughtfulness'.
The story is astonishing, but the nature of this listener's astonish-
ment is carefully scrutinized. Elinor's self-inspection is typical of her
sense and sensibility, rationality and sympathy. She is left feeling
oppressed by 'a croud of ideas, widely differing in themselves, but of
which sadness was the general result*. Before Willoughby's arrival she
and the reader were engrossed by Marianne. After it she is too
oppressed 'to think even of her sister'. But shaken and engrossed as
she is by his narrative, she is still able to allow for the influence of
'circumstances which ought not in reason to have weight; by that
person of uncommon attraction, that open, affectionate, and lively
manner which it was no merit to possess; and by that still ardent love
for Marianne, which it was not even innocent to indulge'.
Jane Austen's insistence that sense and sensibility must work
together is shown in the novel in many ways. Here it is stressed by
Elinor's inability to be moved without analysing her response and
using her reason to expose its nature, together with her equal inability
to obliterate that response. The impact of the storytelling survives
analysis and judgement: 'But she felt that it was so, long, long before
she could feel his influence less.' We are told later that the effect does
wear off, having been given enough time: 'Reflection had given calm-
ness to her judgment, and sobered her own opinion of Willoughby's
deserts.' Jane Austen does not forget the strong moments of her
emotional action, but keeps them in mind. Continuity is never lost.
The novels are full of such bursts of news, good and bad. Most
startling are such inner disclosures which have a double effect, like
that just described, within the novel itself. These surprises are almost
always narrative revelations. Catherine Morland encounters Henry
Tilney coming unexpectedly up a stairway as she is leaving his dead
mother's disappointingly well-lit room, and the physical shock is foil-
owed by Catherine's forced confession. This surprise meeting is less
startling to the reader who knows and expects all, than the later revela-
tion which, though heralded by the Gothic turning of Catherine's
doorhandle, is Eleanor's unGothic announcement that General
Tilney, a modern villain, is turning the heroine out of Northanger
Abbey. Here too there is a combination of physical and mental shock.
And here again is a brilliant sense of timing. Jane Austen surprises us
when we are looking somewhere else. She interrupts one absorbing
story with another. In Pride and Prejudice she springs the news of
Lydia and Wickham's elopement just when Elizabeth Bennet, and the
reader, are engrossed by the renewal of the acquaintance with Darcy.
In Emma there is a whole series of shocks for the heroine, though the
reader is usually prepared for most of them, but the actual news of
Emma's attachment to Knightley is an entirely inward surprise, and
slightly lowers the impact - as it should - of the startling news of Jane
Fairfax's secret engagement to Frank Churchill:
Harriet was standing at one of the windows. Emma turned round to

look at her in consternation, and hastily said,
'Have you any idea of Mr. Knightley's returning your affection?'
'Yes,' replied Harriet modestly, but not fearfully—'I must say that I
have.'
Emma's eyes were instantly withdrawn; and she sat silently meditating,
in a fixed attitude, for a few minutes. A few minutes were sufficient for
making her acquainted with her own heart. A mind like her's, once open-
ing to suspicion, made rapid progress. She touched—she admitted—she
acknowledged the whole truth. Why was it so much worse that Harriet
should be in love with Mr. Knightley, than with Frank Churchill? Why
was the evil so dreadfully increased by Harriet's having some hope of a
return? It darted through her, with the speed of an arrow, that Mr.
Knightley must marry no one but herself! (£, pp. 407-8)
'Have you indeed no idea?' said Mrs. Weston in a trembling voice.

'Cannot you, my dear Emma—cannot you form a guess as to what you are
to hear?'
'So far as that it relates to Mr. Frank Churchill, I do guess.'
'You are right. It does relate to him, and I will tell you directly;'
(resuming her work, and seeming resolved against looking up.) 'He has
been here this very morning, on a most extraordinary errand. It is imposs-
ible to express our surprise. He came to speak to his father on a subject,—
to announce an attachment—'
She stopped to breathe. Emma thought first of herself, and then of
Harriet.
'More than an attachment, indeed,' resumed Mrs. Weston; 'an engage-
ment—a positive engagement.—What will you say, Emma—what will
anybody say, when it is known that Frank Churchill and Miss Fairfax are
engaged; nay, that they have been long engaged!'
Emma even jumped with surprise;—and, horror-struck, exclaimed,
'Jane Fairfax!—Good God! You are not serious? You do not mean it?'
(E, pp. 394-5)
Anne Elliot, in Persuasion, is happily astonished at the news of

Louisa Musgrove's engagement to Captain Benwick. The news about
Mr Elliot's past, though surprising, is much less of a shock because
she has perceived his insincerity and lack of 'seriousness'. But the good
news changes her life: 'She had never in her life been more aston-
ished It was almost too wonderful for belief.' (P, p. 165)
But such disclosures depend on ignorance, mystery and secrecy.
Most of the lovers are unprepared for the final surprise, the joyful
revelation at the end, which tells all at last. Jane Austen's conclusions
are conventional in outline, but original in particularity. They are also
created out of that imaginative art which avoids the mere narration of
a story about fictional characters to a reader. Jane Austen tells a story
about telling and listening, or even writing and reading. Narrative is
made internal; both author and reader are curiously and intimately
involved. The effects of this narrative art are therefore never thinly
rhetorical, never there just to startle or satisfy us. There is nothing
between dramatist and audience, or writer and reader, in those time-
honoured and probably valuable modes of pseudo-art, melodrama
and pornography, except curious instruments devised for stimulus.
Jane Austen had herself sensed and even savoured the rhetorical
hollowness of Gothic novels, but her own effects are more profound.
She explores sensation and feeling within her characters, and moves
us by the exploration. Beginnings are beginnings for all, the author
setting out to tell, the characters initiated into new experience, and
the reader eager and willing for the journey. The turns and surprises
of action are for all. By the time we arrive at the end, we are not the
only ones to be told the end of a story.
When Elinor is told the true story (after the false impression) of
Lucy's marriage, and the true story (after her ignorance and Lucy's
lies) about Edward's past, the story of Sense and Sensibility is nearly
over. The disposal of Marianne to Colonel Brandon, presented more
summarily and remotely than Elinor's destiny, brings the whole novel
to an end. Perhaps the common feeling that there is something un-
satisfactory about Marianne's share in the conclusion owes something
to the lack of that imaginative concurrence of learning and ending for
character and reader, which is felt for Elinor and Edward. It is also
felt for Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney, Elizabeth and Darcy,
Fanny and Edmund, Emma and Knightley, and Anne and Captain
Wentworth.
The story that we all learn at the end is not a simple one. The lovers
are expected to live happily ever after, because the mysteries in the
past - and there are always mysteries about human behaviour in Jane
Austen-are so perfectly cleared up. There are no magical trans-
formations, as there are so often in Victorian novels, but there are
profound and thorough revelations. We learn what happened
between Lucy and Edward, General Tilney and John Thorpe, Darcy,
Lydia and Wickham, Maria Rushworth and Henry Crawford,
Edmund and Mary, Frank and Jane, Knightley and Harriet, Captain
Wentworth, Mr Elliot and Anne. We learn everything. The whole
truths are made available, the plot's mysteries are dispelled, events
thoroughly explained, problems solved, all looked at in the clear light
of day. If we compare such explanations and revelations with, say, the
end of a detective story, or a Victorian sensation novel, the difference
is clear. The events of Jane Austen's plots are made plain for
characters as well as reader. Emotional and intellectual difficulties are
elucidated for all who have been ignorant, puzzled or misled within
the novel. Although the best thrillers and detective stories go through
the motions of presenting the concluding revelatory narrative
dramatically, with some attention to individual motive and response,
the detective's summary is usually apparent as a device or a con-
vention. In these novels, however, it is absolutely essential for the
characters to know what has happened. The disclosures are urgently
needed within the story. Catherine is dying to know what made
General Tilney turn her out; Elinor has been patient for a long time
but desperately wants to know how Edward and Lucy ever came
together; Elizabeth Bennet, always curious, but particularly anxious
to know how Darcy could have been at her sister's wedding, has to
write and find out what has happened from her aunt, once Lydia's
inability to keep the secret has tempted and tantalized. Fanny Price
must know how Henry Crawford, her declared lover, could have run
away with Maria, for whom he had never much cared, and how they
could have sinned. She is incredulous, but heeds most, though pain-
fully and fearfully, to know what the consequences are for Edmund
and Mary, the man she loves and the woman he loves. Anne Elliot -
while needing to know less than most since her speculation and sur-
mise have always been rational and steady, never leaping ahead of
firm evidence - still needs to know, and needs to tell, what has been
happening and why, since she and Wentworth separated in 1805.
Confidences, confessions, blurted-out secrets, transient attempts to
deceive, mark the last part of a Jane Austen novel. The narrative
needs and responses are in character, in every sense of that phrase.
They depend on the novel's past, on our memory of the character's
memories which is guaranteed by the novelist's more faithful memory.
The concluding telling and listening is in character too: timid, bold,
sensible, restrained, joyful, playful, agitated, grateful. And always
loving. The story of the obscured action, the glance back at the rough
path of these true lovers, is inseparable from the final story of happy
love. The lovers' happy-ever-after is perhaps more convincing in Jane
Austen's novels than anywhere else in realistic fiction. It is something
that relies on our sense of congruity in mind and feeling. The develop-
ment of appropriate and strong conjunctions depends on the whole
of the novel's drive and action, but reaches a consummation at the
end. Love and aggression often find appropriate narrative forms in
fiction. Lucy and Elinor attack, defend and counter-attack as they tell
and listen. Elizabeth Bennet wounds Darcy as she rejects the first story
he tells her of his love, and her refusal to listen appals and insults him
as she feels appalled and insulted. But telling can join as well as
separate, through language, form and content. In each novel the
lovers end by telling each other the common, necessary and all-
engrossing story of how it all began. Tellers and listeners have their
characteristic mode of thinking and feeling, and the telling and listen-
ing generate a loving complicity. This is what each has been meaning,
thinking and feeling during the time of doubt and separation.
For Elinor there is a rational judgement, as she and Edward look
back together:
'Your behaviour was certainly very wrong,' said she, 'because—to say
nothing of my own conviction, our relations were all led away by it to
fancy and expect what, as you were then situated, could never be.'
He could only plead an ignorance of his own heart, and a mistaken
confidence in the force of his engagement.
'I was simple enough to think, that because my faith was plighted to
another, there could be no danger of my being with you; and that the
consciousness of my engagement was to keep my heart as safe and sacred
as my honour. I felt that I admired you, but I told myself it was only
friendship; and till I began to make comparisons between yourself and
Lucy, I did not know how far I was got. After that, I suppose, I was wrong
in remaining so much in Sussex, and the arguments with which I recon-
ciled myself to the expediency of it, were no better than these:—The
danger is my own; I am doing no injury to anybody but myself.'
Elinor smiled, and shook her head. (SS, p. 368)
The exchange of histories here is an exchange of mind and feeling.

It is made very implicitly. These quiet and rational lovers, distracted
though they have at times been shown to be, judge and analyse
steadily, but even Jane Austen's summaries of intimate feeling make
us aware of the deeper currents. Implicitness is warm, reticence inti-
mate, gentle or tender:
Edward was now fixed at the cottage at least for a week;—for whatever
other claims might be made on him, it was impossible that less than a
week should be given up to the enjoyment of Elinor's company, or suffice
to say half that was to be said of the past, the present, and the future;—
for though a very few hours spent in the hard labour of incessant talking
will dispatch more subjects than can really be in common between any
two rational creatures, yet with lovers it is different. Between them no
subject is finished, no communication is even made, till it has been made
at least twenty times over. (SS, pp. 363-4)
The restrained conversation sets the pattern for all the novels in its
essential exchange of events in the sentimental history, and in its
insistence, explicit or implicit, that the exchange itself, almost irres-
pective of the content, is a delight. It brings teller and listener
together, closely and congruously. The sentimental history is related
rather briefly here compared with the other novels. But the process
is plain.
One thing all the concluding stories have in common is joy.
Although Fanny and Edmund's joint declation has had to be post-
poned, when it does eventually come, Jane Austen's objective,
generalized, but delicate description of it in no way lessens its joyous
impact:
Timid, anxious, doubting as she was, it was still impossible that such
tenderness as hers should not, at times, hold out the strongest hope of
success, though it remained for a later period to tell him the whole
delightful and astonishing truth. His happiness in knowing himself to have
been so long the beloved of such a heart, must have been great enough to
warrant any strength of language in which he could cloathe it to her or to
himself; it must have been a delightful happiness! But there was
happiness elsewhere which no description can reach. Let no one presume
to give the feelings of a young woman on receiving the assurance of that
affection of which she has scarcely allowed herself to entertain a hope.
(MP,p.471)
The staider lovers like Elinor and Edward are delighted; there is a
powerful and spontaneous outpouring of feeling in Emma; Elizabeth
and Darcy are playful, easy, but also grave, beginning their life-long
exchange of temperaments; and Anne's always latent humour comes
out fully. The concluding exchange of the lovers is both a happy end-
ing and a true taste of the conjugal conversation. As with Charlotte
Bronte's re-united Jane Eyre and Rochester, who talk 'all day long',
we are made to feel that the conversation of histories is a testimony of
affection and candour, a guarantee of passion, like an embrace, and
even better than an embrace for suggesting constancy.
The uses of narrative are often joined with their abuses, and these
bright endings often have a dark lining. The outsiders and victims
have no one to talk to. Willoughby isn't always unhappy, but there
are no conversations of love and what he seems most to like to speak of
is his admiration for Mrs Brandon. There are some pairs whose
dialogue and silences are not comfortable to imagine - Mrs Norris and
Maria, for instance, or Lydia and Wickham. And it is a tribute to the
thoroughness with which Jane Austen has imagined the telling and
listening that we feel we know exactly how these other conversations
would go.
IV
The Storytellers
2: Imagination and Memory
Jane Austen's presentation of telling and listening is very much more

than a formal device; it is an analysis and an evaluation of the human
mind. Like all novelists, Jane Austen has her favourite themes and
topics, some of which are common to all literary narrative — in the
novel, drama, or poetry - and others which seem to prevail character-
istically in her individual art. It is hard to imagine a novel which
doesn't record and rely on the simplest form of narrative exchange, in
which we tell each other about ourselves. The daily telling is hardly
ever purely narrative, but it uses narrative to convey feeling as well
as information. The actual telling about deep hopes and wishes is
often redundant between intimates, yet it has to go on if intimacy is
to last, expressing and generating feeling. In the case of Marianne
Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, the story she tells her mother
can't be a new one, though it is obviously not stale. It is about the past
and about the future, it imagines and remembers:
'Nay, mama, if he is not to be animated by Cowper!—but we must

allow for difference of taste. Elinor has not my feelings, and therefore she
may overlook it, and be happy with him. But it would have broke my
heart had I loved him, to hear him read with so little sensibility. Mama,
the more I know of the world, the more am I convinced that I shall never
see a man whom I can really love. I require so much! He must have all
Edward's virtues, and his person and manners must ornament his good-
ness with every possible charm.'
'Remember, my love, that you are not seventeen. It is yet too early in
life to despair of such an happiness. Why should you be less fortunate
than your mother? In one circumstance only, my Marianne, may your
destiny be different from her's!' (SS, p. 18)
The story Elinor tells Marianne is new, because it tells about a new
acquaintance, but it is obviously part of the continuous, long-standing
telling and listening that goes on in the family:
83
'In my heart I feel little—scarcely any doubt of his preference. But
there are other points to be considered besides his inclination. He is very
far from being independent. What his mother really is we cannot know;
but, from Fanny's occasional mention of her conduct and opinions, we
have never been disposed to think her amiable; and I am very much
mistaken if Edward is not himself aware that there would be many
difficulties in his way, if he were to wish to marry a woman who had not
either a great fortune or high rank.'
Marianne was astonished to find how much the imagination of her
mother and herself had outstripped the truth.
'And you really are not engaged to him' said she. 'Yet it certainly soon
will happen. But two advantages will proceed from this delay. / shall not
lose you so soon, and Edward will have greater opportunity of improving
that natural taste for your favourite pursuit which must be so indispens-
ably necessary to your future felicity. Oh! if he should be so far stimulated
by your genius as to learn to draw himself, how delightful it would be!'
(SS, pp. 21-2)
The family narrative is not totally unreserved and open. As in all

families, even close ones, people talk to each other, about each other,
and behind each other's backs. The structure of feeling is revealed and
created in such telling. When the Dashwoods have moved to Barton,
Marianne confides in her mother a fear that Edward Ferrars is ill,
since he hasn't visited them, and her mother replies:
'I rather think you are mistaken, for when I was talking to her yester-
day of getting a new grate for the spare bedchamber, she observed that
there was no immediate hurry for it, as it was not likely that the room
would be wanted for some time.'
'How strange this is! what can be the meaning of it! But the whole of
their behaviour to each other has been unaccountable! How cold, how
composed were their last adieus! How languid their conversation the last
evening of their being together! In Edward's farewell there was no dis-
tinction between Elinor and me: it was the good wishes of an affectionate
brother to both. Twice did I leave them purposely together in the course
of the last morning, and each time did he most unaccountably follow me
out of the room. And Elinor, in quitting Norland and Edward, cried not
as I did. Even now her self-command is invariable. When is she dejected
or melancholy? When does she try to avoid society, or appear restless and
dissatisfied in it?' (SS, p. 39)
The flow of the domestic novel consists to a very large extent of

this kind of speculative exchange, intimate but also ignorant. Jane
Austen is reflecting a truth about family life in showing its constant
surmise and limited confidence, its secrets, and its isolations. She uses
such internal narrations for the purposes of her own larger narrative
tension. As the characters speculate, so does the reader. We come to be
trusted with certain secrets that members of the family don't know,
to exchange curiosity for the stimulus of ironic knowledge. Mrs Dash-
wood is rash and irrational in her affections and hopes, but has suffi-
cient tact to speak with some reserve about her hopes for Elinor's
marriage. When she says discreetly, with that blend of affectionate
and amused sharpness characteristic of the family discourse, that 'if
Elinor would ever condescend to anticipate enjoyment, she would
perhaps expect some from improving her acquaintance with her
sister-in-law's family', Elinor can't be as candid as she would like. To
tell the whole story is impossible. But she has her own characteristic
method of adapting the timing and structure of her telling to the
listener, and starts, unsuccessfully, to reveal her secret doubts. Ironic
knowledge allows us to appraise both effort and failure:
Elinor had often wished for an opportunity of attempting to weaken

her mother's dependence on the attachment of Edward and herself, that
the shock might be the less when the whole truth were revealed, and now
on this attack, though almost hopeless of success, she forced herself to
begin her design by saying, as calmly as she could, 'I like Edward Ferrars
very much, and shall always be glad to see him; but as to the rest of the
family, it is a matter of perfect indifference to me, whether I am ever
known to them or not.'
Mrs. Dashwood smiled and said nothing. Marianne lifted up her eyes
in astonishment, and Elinor conjectured that she might as well have held
her tongue. (SS, p. 157)
Jane Austen analyses the daily storytelling, but her interest in

narrative often strikes us as a particularly professional interest. It is
never merely professional. Despite the popularity of artist-novels,
novels have a tendency not to be narrowly or directly about novelists.
What every novelist knows most about is writing novels, but the
analysis of narrative imagination is usually two-headed. It looks
towards art, and towards life. We cannot always tell which is primary,
the professional or unprofessional, just as we cannot know whether
the interest in the life-narrative impels the novelist's career, or
develops with the writing. In Emma, for instance, the author
obviously has some personal and professional interest in describing a
heroine who is 'an irriaginist, on fire with zeal and speculation*. But
Jane Austen never writes a novel about a novelist. She is much more
widely concerned with human character. Emma's are the temptations
of a human being possessed of fertile narrative imagination, and they
are also the temptations of a lazy, rich, clever young woman living in
a small village, brought up by weak and amiable people who have let
her have things her own way. When Jane Austen wrote Emma she
seems to have been writing about the strengths and weaknesses of
human imagination from a sensibility alerted by professional exper-
ience. Perhaps more striking than the major events of the plot is the
occasional account of Emma's mind. On this occasion it is revealed
when idling, and off-duty. She expects little, and sees little. Both
expectation and actuality show the characteristic working of her
mind:
... Emma went to the door for amusement.—Much could not be hoped
from the traffic of even the busiest part of Highbury;—Mr. Perry walking
hastily by, Mr. William Cox letting himself in at the office door, Mr.
Cole's carriage horses returning from exercise, or a stray letter-boy on an
obstinate mule, were the liveliest objects she could presume to expect,
and when her eyes fell only on the butcher with his tray, a tidy old woman
travelling homewards from shop with her full basket, two curs quarrelling
over a dirty bone, and a string of dawdling children round the baker's
little bow-window eyeing the gingerbread, she knew she had no reason
to complain, and was amused enough; quite enough still to stand at the
door. A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see
nothing that does not answer. (E, p. 233)
Jane Austen never really suggests that the highest truth of which
the novel is capable, is the goal of most novels, and she knows how
sensational fiction can encourage us to distort the expectations of
common life. Readers of novels need to distinguish carefully and
lucidly between what happens in the novel, allowing for its genre and
its arena, and what may happen in their environment, as Henry
Tilney tells Catherine in Northanger Abbey:
'If I understand you rightly, you had formed a surmise of such horror
as I have hardly words to Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful
nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been
judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live.
Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own
understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of
what is passing around you—Does our education prepare us for such
atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated with-
out being known, in a country like this, where social and literary inter-
course is on such a footing; where every man is surrounded by a neigh-
bourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay every
thing open? Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting?'
(NA, pp. 197-8)
Catherine Morland's obstacles to using her sense of probability, and

knowing her own heart and the hearts of others, are chiefly literary,
but her problem doesn't stop with her novel. Jane Austen's presenta-
tion of character turns on the analysis of self-knowledge. Elizabeth
Bennet and Emma Woodhouse also have to progress and mature by
working through falsehood towards truth. Like Catherine's, their en-
snaring falsehoods are both of their own and other people's making.
Jane Austen constantly returns to the theme of the morally well-
meaning person whose susceptibilities are easy game for less well-
meaning storytellers. Isabella Thorpe enjoys the sham thrills of
Gothic novels, and lives through sham thrills in real life. Catherine
Morland, deluded by her friend's affectation, is taken in partly
because because she hasn't yet learnt to spot the language and logic of
truth, but she begins very early to pierce Isabella's inflations,
exaggerations and inconsistencies with her own beautiful matter-of-
factness and honesty:
They met by appointment; and as Isabella had arrived nearly five

minutes before her friend, her first address naturally was—'My dearest
creature, what can have made you so late? I have been waiting for you at
least this age! *
'Have you, indeed!—I am very sorry for it; but really I thought I was
in very good time. It is but just one. I hope you have not been here long?'
'Oh! these ten ages at least. I am sure I have been here this half hour.'
(NA, p. 39)
Isabella, on hearing the particulars of the visit, gave a different explana-

tion: 'It was all pride, pride, insufferable haughtiness and pride! She had
long suspected the family to be very high, and this made it certain. Such
insolence of behaviour as Miss Tilney's she had never heard of in her life!
Not to do the honours of her house with common good-breeding!—To
behave to her guest with such superciliousness!—Hardly even to speak
to her!'
'But it was not so bad as that, Isabella; there was no superciliousness;
she was very civil.'
'Oh! don't defend her! And then the brother, he, who had appeared
so attached to you! Good heavens! well, some people's feelings are in-
comprehensible. And so he hardly looked once at you the whole day?'
'I do not say so; but he did not seem in good spirits.'
'How contemptible! Of all things in the world inconstancy is my
aversion. Let me entreat you never to think of him again, my dear Cather-
ine; indeed he is unworthy of you.'
'Unworthy! I do not suppose he ever thinks of me.'
'That is exactly what I say; he never thinks of you.—Such fickleness!'
(NA, pp. 129-30)
She also begins very early to question John Thorpe's disorganized

boasts:
'What do you think of my gig, Miss Morland? a neat one, is it not?

Well hung; town built; I have not had it a month. It was built for a Christ-
church man, a friend of mine, a very good sort of fellow; he ran it a few
weeks, till, I believe, it was convenient to have done with it. I happened
just then to be looking out for some light thing of the kind, though I had
pretty well determined on a curricle too; but I chanced to meet him on
Magdalen Bridge, as he was driving into Oxford, last term: "Ah!
Thorpe," said he, "do you happen to want such a little thing as this? it
is a capital one of the kind, but I am cursed tired of it." "Oh! d ," said
I, "I am your man; what do you ask?" And how much do you think he
did, Miss Morland?'
'I am sure I cannot guess at all.' (NA, p. 46)
But she is also gulled for the best reasons, because she judges the world
by her own standards of honesty and fidelity. She takes General
Tilney for a murderer, but he is is only a false, cold and mercenary
man. He hasn't killed his wife but his presence in his family kills its
life. Catherine takes Isabella for someone like herself, candid,
affectionate and true, as Henry points out. But what she has to
discover, like Marianne Dashwood, is the unreliability of truths as
well as lies. To judge every one by oneself is not much safer than
judging by literature. Catherine's literal truthtelling has a moral
attraction, especially in a world of accomplished liars and foolish
rattles - 'I walk about here, and so I do there; - but here I see a varie
of people in every street, and there I can only go and call on Mrs
Allen' (NA, p. 79) - but she has to explore the human variety.
The heroines all have to learn the right use of imaginative energy,
to direct it towards the self and towards the world. To be properly
imaginative is to learn the right use of reason, to generalize and to
compare and scrutinize language, form and character in the attempt
to make out self and others. Discovering the truth is all very well, but
it doesn't solve everything. The novels also insist on the difficulty of
telling the truth, once you think you know it. Elizabeth Bennet works
painfully and scrupulously through to the admission of past delusions
and prejudices, and the knowledge of present feeling. She comes to
a sense of herself, past and present, and a sense of other people,
especially Darcy. Jane Austen's view of such .discoveries has its
simplicities, no doubt. The relationships in her novels may seem
implausibly steady and reliable, but granted this assumption, or
fiction, of stability, it remains true that she shows the grave difficulty
of telling the truth. It is very hard even for the candid and self-critical
Elizabeth. Imagination is needed to know the truth, but is scarcely a
guarantee.
In Sense and Sensibility too, Jane Austen is concerned with the
distortions and illusions created by narrative imagination, encouraged
by literary stereotype or personal fantasy. Jane Austen got over her
pleasure in burlesques of sensibility in early adolescence and her
novels are free to show subtle and realistic analyses of the illusions
created by imagination, even in good minds. Marianne is infected by
romantic stereotypes which tell the story of love and marriage along
certain easy lines: love occurs once, and only once; marriage does not
need wealth, but wealth is conveniently assumed in a reasonable
'competence'; the mind can be read in the graces of face and figure.
Such fictions contrive to be flattering and self-flattering, conferring on
the most unreasonable desires the appearance of a modest simplicity
and virtue. These romantic versions of the good life are not only false
but predatory and lazy. Marianne's intelligence and candour tell
stories interestingly fashioned out of sense and nonsense, virtuous
aspiration and greed, radical feeling and conventionality. Just as
Cervantes criticizes the follies of anachronistic chivalry and at the
same time condemns a world without chivalry, so Jane Austen sets
Marianne's romantic selections and wish-fulfilments amongst the pre-
vailing social fictions which have no ideal, no passion, no individu-
ality, nothing but a destructive, careless and materialist conformity.
Colonel Brandon draws attention to the ambivalence of the critique of
romanticism when he advises Elinor not to wish away Marianne's
'romantic refinements', for they are 'frequently... succeeded by such
opinions as are but too common, and too dangerous!' For the reader
there is the larger presence of the social versions of 'the good life',
which prevail in the novel's world, particularly as practised and
preached by John Dashwood and his wife, and other imaginative and
unimaginative spokesmen for prudence, and for materialism.
The imaginative stories people tell in Sense and Sensibility are
illustrative of extremes of sense and sensibility. Marianne's impetuous
version of the good life is, as Elinor points out, unchecked by other
stories, even that so handy as her own father's second marriage. The
most striking contrast to Marianne's storytelling is that of Lucy Steele.
Lucy's is an abuse of imagination. She tells many stories, is a good
hand at flattery, compliment and guile, but her central story,
balancing the love-stories told of and told by Elinor and Marianne, is
the story she tells about her secret engagement to Edward. As we have
seen, it is an incisive image of total self-seeking and self-possession.
Whereas Marianne gives away her limitations, her control, and her
selectivity, exposing herself in many ways, Lucy is able to be totally
on guard, quite alert in the worst way to the nature and the thoughts
of her listeners. When she goads Elinor she is committing an attack
through narrative, a marvellous aggressive move since its covertness
means that she is able to display her velvet glove, while Elinor has to
pretend that there is nothing hurtful beneath grace and smoothness.
Lucy's story is a perfect instance of the imaginative corruption of
narrative which many excellent narrative artists have liked to
imagine: Virgil's Sinon, lying his way into Troy; Satan to Eve, lying
his way into Eden; and lago to Othello, lying his way to destruction.
Lucy's style is noticeably less elegant than Sinon's, Satan's, or
lago's, but her technique is very like theirs. It relies on a sharp
perception of her listener, a histrionic ability to act out lies and a
delight in pitting an uninhibited rationality against the restrictions of
honesty. The Trojans can't resist Sinon's self-accusations, and give
him welcome and a hearing. Jane Austen's web of imaginative story-
telling, good and bad, interweaves imaginative with unimaginative
narratives. Lucy is contrasted, as a narrator, with her less adroit
sister:
'Good gracious! (giggling as she spoke) I'd lay my life I know what my
cousins will say, when they hear of it. They will tell me I should write to
the Doctor, to get Edward the curacy of his new living. I know they will;
but I am sure I would do not such a thing for all the world.—"La!" I
shall say directly, "I wonder how you could think of such a thing. / write
to the Doctor, indeed!"'(SS, p. 275)
It is the right nemesis for Lucy to be betrayed by Miss Steele's leaky-

minded stupidity. It is also one of Jane Austen's most cunning strokes
to marry her imaginative liar to the unimaginative rattle, Robert
Ferrars, whose self-admiring stories stupidly solicit admiration:
... she did not find that the emptiness and conceit of the one, put her at
all out of charity with the modesty and worth of the other....
'Upon my soul,' he added, 'I believe it is nothing more; and so I
often tell my mother, when she is grieving about it. "My dear Madam,"
I always say to her, "you must make yourself easy. The evil is now
irremediable, and it has been entirely your own doing. Why would you be
persuaded by my uncle, Sir Robert, against your own judgment, to place
Edward under private tuition, at the most critical time of his life? If you
had only sent him to Westminster as well as myself, instead of sending
him to Mr. Pratt's, all this would have been prevented." This is the way
in which I always consider the matter, and my mother is perfectly con-
vinced of her error.' (SS, pp. 250-1)
Robert Ferrars is the perfect victim of Lucy's art.

Throughout these narrative contrasts and comparisons the novel's
action is of course advanced, for the reader too is being informed and
surprised, but the dialogues show the narrative artist's profound
interest in the psychology of narrative imagination.
Like Elinor, Emma has to endure a painful, just and inactive
silence, in which her imagination plays back her errors. This is exactly
the right nemesis for her. It answers Mr Knightley's early wish to see
her 'in love and doubtful of the outcome', but also silences the talker
who has sinned against silence and wounded Miss Bates. Emma's is
the imaginist's nemesis. There is an end to her zeal and speculation
once she realizes that Harriet's story about Knightley may be true,
that this minor character in her fantasy has an independent and
threatening fantasy-life of her own, which she has unwittingly encour-
aged. Mr Knightley refuses to take up the cliche in which Mrs Weston
invites him to 'imagine any thing nearer perfect beauty than Emma',
and reads it literally: 'I do not know what I could imagine.' (E, p. 39)
The literal-mindedness is typical and valuable. Emma never refuses
such challenges, and indeed freely issues them to herself and others.
She has indulged her energies in shaping experience, and also in the
flattering sense of power and ability that goes along with the shaping.
Jane Austen doesn't keep her in silent inactivity for long, but feelings
of passive helpfulness and remorse are so unusual that their oppression
is hateful. Like Catherine, Marianne and Elizabeth, Emma has to
learn that the intelligent and imaginative mind, in spite of insight,
wit and invention, can make mistakes. Each learns a different lesson
because each of them is distinct in moral nature, personality and
mind.
Mansfield Park weighs the growth of imagination against a mere
accumulation of facts:
'How long ago it is, aunt, since we used to repeat the chronological order
of the kings of England, with the dates of their accession, and most of the
principal events of their reigns!'
'Yes,' added the other; 'and of the Roman emperors as low as Severus;
besides a great deal of the Heathen Mythology, and all the Metals, Semi-
Metals, Planets, and distinguished philosophers.' (MP, pp. 18-19)
As Fanny develops her stories show an unobtrusive growth in confi-

dence. From the very beginning she has, like Catherine Morland, the
strength of sincerity. Apart from Edmund she is the best-informed
person in the novel and her information is personally shaped and
assimilated. Unlike her accomplished and shallowly educated cousins,
whose problems are not so much unaided by other people's ideas, as
totally unformulated and ungeneralized, Fanny is properly educated.
She learns to use fact and idea for the purposes of self-understanding
and a sense of the world. Her versions of experience have certainty,
form and life. Unlike Mary Crawford, whose wit shows some accom-
plishment and reading, though her liveliness often dresses up thread-
bare and commonplace opinions, Fanny steadies her wishes and
demands by knowledge and reason — 'That weather is all from the
South'. Fanny combines a firm sense of where she is with a clear
enough sense that the world is large and unknown. She must begin,
though not stay, at home, and she comes to know that her home is in
Mansfield Park.
Fanny leams the lessons of imagination by listening - to voices in
books, drawing-rooms, on staircases, in shrubberies, wildernesses and
great houses. She listens intently to Mrs Rushworth:
. . . Mrs. Rushworth, who had been at great pains to learn all that the
housekeeper could teach, . . . was now almost equally well qualified to
shew the house. On the present occasion, she addressed herself chiefly to
Miss Crawford and Fanny, but there was no comparison in the willingness
of their attention, for Miss Crawford, who had seen scores of great houses,
and cared for none of them, had only the appearance of civilly listening,
while Fanny, to whom every thing was almost as interesting as it was new,
attended with unaffected earnestness to all that Mrs. Rushworth could
relate of the family in former tunes, its rise and grandeur, regal visits and
loyal efforts, delighted to connect any thing with history already known,
or warm her imagination with scenes of the past. (MP, p. 85)
In Edmund's presence she has confidence, even early on, and can
speak out and explain when she disagrees. Even her hesitations show
sense and delicacy, and her reasoning is careful and steady:
'No,' replied Fanny, 'but we need not give up his profession for all that;
because, whatever profession Dr. Grant had chosen, he would have taken
a not a good temper into it; and as he must either in the navy or army
have had a great many more people under his command than he has now,
I think more would have been made unhappy by him as a sailor or soldier
than as a clergyman. Besides, I cannot but suppose that whatever there
may be to wish otherwise in Dr. Grant, would have been in a greater
danger of becoming worse in a more active and worldly profession, where
he would have had less time and obligation—where he might have
escaped that knowledge of himself, the frequency, at least, of that know-
ledge which it is impossible he should escape as he is now.'
(MP, pp. 111-12)
Her attention to 'that knowledge of himself is significant, but even
more significant is her use of imaginative conjecture. As a child, she
thought she would go to Ireland via the Isle of Wight, the only island
she knew, and called 'the Island'.1 As a young woman, she knows
more, and her imaginative excursions are founded on knowledge, to
generate more inquiry. It is Fanny, not the proficient Bertram girls,
who asks Sir Thomas about the slave-trade. Her imagination begins
at home, but travels beyond. For a long time, Fanny is too little of a
teller, too much of a listener. As a fearful child and a stranger in
Mansfield Park, she is shy and diffident, as we all are on arriving in
foreign parts. She is also put down by the clever talkativeness of her
cousins and the daunting harangues of Mrs Norris, which encourage
her timidity. But she can open her heart to Edmund, until he is drawn
away to listen, charmed if doubtful, to Mary Crawford's wit and
humour. Fanny has to learn to do many things in order to make her
entrance into the world, to give as well as take, provide as well as
accept provision, teach as well as learn, tell as well as listen. She boldly
refuses to agree, when Henry Crawford assumes that she shares his
nostalgia for the good times of the Mansfield theatre, and amazes her
listener. An even greater advance is marked when she tells her sister
Susan the story of Mansfield Park, in their chilly bedroom in Ports-
mouth, thus establishing both her own ability and her favourite
theme:
Susan was growing very fond of her, and though without any of the
early delight in books, which had been so strong in Fanny, with a
1
So did her author. See Letters, passim.
disposition much less inclined to sedentary pursuits, or to information
for information's sake, she had so strong a desire of not appearing
ignorant, as with a good clear understanding, made her a most attentive,
profitable, thankful pupil. Fanny was her oracle. Fanny's explanations
and remarks were a most important addition to every essay, or every
chapter of history. What Fanny told her of former times, dwelt more on
her mind than the pages of Goldsmith; and she paid her sister the compli-
ment of preferring her style to that of any printed author. The early habit
of reading was wanting.
Their conversations, however, were not always on subjects so high as
history or morals. Others had their hour; and of lesser matters, none
returned so often, or remained so long between them, as Mansfield Park,
a description of the people, the manners, the amusements, the ways of
Mansfield Park. (MP, pp. 418-9)
Edmund needs her listening, 'Let me talk to you a little. You are
a kind, kind listener', and she says: 'If you only want me as a listener,
cousin, I will be as useful as I can. . . .' (MP, pp. 268-9) And at the
end he comes to want her for much more than a listener, because he is
'always with her, and always talking confidentially.' (MP, p. 470)
The abuses of imagination are best represented in this novel by Mrs
Norris. When she is rebuked by Sir Thomas for her part in the
Mansfield theatricals, she hastily moves away from uncomfortable
memories to brag of the marriage she has arranged. Self-indulgence
and self-love are reflected in every step of her style and her story.
Although she uses the forms of flattery and denigration, these are only
branches of her main medium, which is the boast. Her author knows
that boastful narrators diffuse their self-praise over all details, their
very language wheedling a favourable response from the listener. She
tries to placate the disapproving and exhausted Sir Thomas through
a far from unimaginative story :
'My dear Sir Thomas, if you had seen the state of the roads that day!
I thought we should never have got through them, though we had the
four horses of course; and poor old coachman would attend us, out of his
great love and kindness, though he was hardly able to sit the box on
account of the rheumatism which I had been doctoring him for, ever since
Michaelmas. I cured him at last; but he was very bad all the winter—
and this was such a day, I could not help going to him up in his room
before we set off to advise him not to venture: he was putting on his wig—
so I said, "Coachman, you had much better not go, your Lady and I shall
be very safe; you know how steady Stephen is, and Charles has been upon
the leaders so often now, that I am sure there is no fear." But, however, I
soon found it would not do; he was bent upon going, and as I hate to be
worrying and officious, I said no more; but my heart quite ached for him
at every jolt, and when we got into the rough lanes about Stoke, where
what with frost and snow upon beds of stones, it was worse than anything
you can imagine, I was quite in an agony about him. And then the poor
horses too!—To see them straining away! You know how I always feel
for the horses. And when we got to the bottom of Sandcroft Hill, what do
you think I did? You will laugh at me—but I got out and walked up. I
did indeed. It might not be saving them much, but it was something, and
I could not bear to sit at my ease, and be dragged up at the expense of
those noble animals. I caught a dreadful cold, but that I did not regard.
My object was accomplished in the visit.' (MP, pp. 189-90)
Persuasion begins with the closed imagination of Sir Walter Elliot

as he reads his own story in the Baronetage, his favourite book. One
long conversation in the novel perfectly illustrates the chain of
characteristic narrative. Sir Walter shows off and solicits admiration,
while Mr Shepherd and Mrs Clay listen and then tell in flattering
silences, smiles and stories. The obsequious but manipulative agent
and his daughter are differently and deviously ingratiating listeners.
Jane Austen can create the simple-minded and egotistical rattle, like
John Thorpe in Northanger Abbey and Robert Ferrars in Sense and
Sensibility, but she also knows that any subject can do for self-display.
Anecdotes about other people can sound detached and impersonal,
but be aggressively self-assertive, as in Sir Walter Elliot's views on the
effects of naval service on good looks. It is a perfect piece of imagin-
ative projection:
'A man is in greater danger in the navy of being insulted by the rise of
one whose father, his father might have disdained to speak to, and of
becoming prematurely an object of disgust himself, than in any other line.
One day last spring in town, I was in company with two men, striking
instances of what I am talking of, Lord St. Ives, whose father we all know
to have been a country curate, without bread to eat; I was to give place to
Lord St. Ives, and a certain Admiral Baldwin, the most deplorable look-
ing personage you can imagine, his face the colour of mahogany, rough
and rugged to the last degree, all lines and wrinkles, nine grey hairs of a
side, and nothing but a dab of powder at top.—"In the name of heaven,
who is that old fellow?" said I, to a friend of mine who was standing near,
(Sir Basil Morley.) "Old fellow!" cried Sir Basil, "it is Admiral Baldwin.
What do you take his age to be?" "Sixty," said I, "or perhaps sixty-two."
"Forty," replied Sir Basil, "forty, and no more."' (P, pp. 19-20)
Mrs Clay's rejoinder recognizes both the abstract level of talk, and its
deeper drift. Her momentary hesitation about the clergyman shows
the hard work of an impromptu narrative artist, labouring in the
medium of masked flattery, which poses its own problems. Her words
are going a little too fast for her thoughts:
'Nay, Sir Walter,' cried Mrs. Clay, 'this is being severe indeed. Have
a little mercy on the poor men. We are not all born to be handsome. The
sea is no beautifier, certainly; sailors do grow old betimes; I have often
observed it; they soon lose the look of youth. But then, is not it the same
with many other professions, perhaps most other? Soldiers, in active
service, are not at all better off: and even in the quieter professions, there
is a toil and a labour of the mind, if not of the body, which seldom leaves
a man's looks to the natural effect of time. The lawyer plods, quite care-
worn; the physician is up at all hours, and travelling in all weather; and
even the clergyman—' she stopt a moment to consider what might do for
the clergyman;—'and even the clergyman, you know, is obliged to go into
infected rooms, and expose his health and looks to all the injury of a
poisonous atmosphere. In fact, as I have long been convinced, though
every profession is necessary and honourable in its turn, it is only the lot of
those who are not obliged to follow any, who can live in a regular way,
in the country, choosing their own hours, following their own pursuits,
and living on their own property, without the torment of trying for more;
it is only their lot, I say, to hold the blessings of health and a good appear-
ance to the utmost: I know no other set of men but what lose something of
their personableness when they cease to be quite young.' (P, pp. 20-1)
The minor characters whose telling and listening form the narra-
tive web of Persuasion define Anne Elliot's search for understanding
by their negative example. Her imaginative search is made after she
has listened too long and too deferentially to other people's story of
the ways of the world, and her reappraisal involves the unsentimental
criticism of herself, and of her wise and foolish mentors. Persuasion
has the most insistently narrative theme of all the novels, except
Emma. It perfectly follows, balances, and supplements the theme of
Emma in its analysis of passive listening and silent narrative. Anne
Elliot has the painful experience of being an involuntary eavesdropper
on the conversation between Louisa and Captain Wentworth in the
hedgerow, when she hears a version of her own story and hears herself
spoken of as one still easily persuaded. There comes a time, however,
when she can listen more hopefully, and even make her own enquiries.
The last piece of startling news, told by Mrs Smith about her cousin's
intentions, and his past, is news that she can take. The final turn in her
fortunes shows Captain Wentworth as listener, in a role-reversal of
great significance in this novel. Like Fanny, Anne uses a lyrical mode
to express intense and earnest love, and to preserve a still essential
reticence. Taking Anne for the good listener she is, as most people do,
Harville tells the sad story about Benwick's portrait, which was
painted for one woman, but is now to be framed for another. This
provokes the discussion on man's and woman's constancy. The covert
story is told in Anne's style, intelligent, reasonable, and emotionally
high-pitched. She has been talking playfully, but humour gets left
behind:
'Your feelings may be the strongest,' replied Anne, 'but the same spirit
of analogy will authorise me to assert that ours are the most tender. Man
is more robust than woman, but he is not longer-lived; which exactly
explains my view of the nature of their attachments. Nay, it would be too
hard upon you, if it were otherwise. You have difficulties, and privations,
and dangers enough to struggle with. You are always labouring and toil-
ing, exposed to every risk and hardship. Your home, country, friends, all
quitted. Neither time, nor health, nor life, to be called your own. It would
be too hard indeed' (with a faltering voice) 'if woman's feelings were to be
added to all this.' (P, p. 233)
'God forbid that I should undervalue the warm and faithful feelings of
any of my fellow-creatures. I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to
suppose that true attachment and constancy were known only by woman.
No, I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic
forbearance, so long as—if I may be allowed the expression, so long as
you have an object. I mean, while the woman you love lives, and lives for
you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one,
you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when
hope is gone.' (P, p. 235)
The listening is crucial, and Captain Wentworth at last tells his

story. Jane Austen's chain goes on to the end. In her world, as in ours,
telling and listening take many shapes. Anne's imaginative reasoning
moves quickly ahead to conjecture. But it is firmly grounded in mem-
ory.
Memory is as important a mode of storytelling as imagination, and
not always separate from it. Jane Austen's people look before and
after, telling stories, more or less complete, more or less explicit, about
the past as well as the future. Sometimes they do not tell. Just as all
novelists have to show fantasy, hope, desire, plans or projection, so all
novelists have to show regret, nostalgia and revision. Characters in
novels join memory with expectation, since they have pasts as well as
futures. Though a sense of historical time was only just beginning to
get into fiction when Jane Austen was writing, a sense of personal
time is inseparable from everything we think of as novelistic, from the
Bible to Beckett. Even Odysseus's dog has a memory.
Novelists deal differently with the stories we tell as we look back
and forward. Jane Austen is particularly interested in the controls
which we exercise over our nostalgia and regret. All her novels bring
up the question of the need to use reason and to put memories in their
proper place. Marianne Dashwood has come to terms with past hope
and desire without being overwhelmed either by sourness or nostalgia.
As she recovers from her passion for Willoughby, her problem with
the past is not only that of putting feelings behind her. She has the
unpleasant experience of seeing the past destroyed, as memory recalls
mere illusion, and unreality is horridly duplicated. What is remem-
bered was never as it was imagined; Marianne 'felt the loss of
Willoughby's character yet more heavily than she had felt the loss of
his heart'. She is relieved when his confession to Elinor is told again
to her, .and explains how it really was. The story of his story fills in the
hollow places of her speculation about the past events, causes and con-
tingencies. His story creates a substance for reader and character,
different, but different sides of the same coin: Marianne asks, ration-
ally enough, for some sense of past actuality. Her imagination hopes,
though cautiously:
'As for regret,' said Marianne, 'I have done with that, as far as he is
concerned. I do not mean to talk to you of what my feelings have been for
him, but what they are now.—At present, if I could be satisfied on one
point, if I could be allowed to think that he was not always acting a part,
not always deceiving me;—but above all, if I could be assured that he
never was so very wicked as my fears have sometimes fancied him, since
the story of that unfortunate girl'—
She stopt.—Elinor joyfully treasured her words as she answered,
'If you could be assured of that, you think you should be easy.'
(SS, p. 344)
Even though Marianne's imagination has learnt caution, Jane

Austen is stern and doesn't allow her to retrieve much of the past:
In the evening, when they were all three together, Marianne began
voluntarily to speak of him again;—but that it was not without an effort,
the restless, unquiet thoughtfulness in which she had been for some time
previously sitting—her rising colour, as she spoke—and her unsteady
voice, plainly shewed.
'I wish to assure you both,' said she, 'that I see every thing—as you can
desire me to do.'
Mrs. Dashwood would have interrupted her instantly with soothing
tenderness, had not Elinor, who really wished to hear her sister's un-
biassed opinion, by an eager sign, engaged her silence. Marianne slowly
continued—
'It is a great relief to me—what Elinor told me this morning—I have
now heard exactly what I wished to hear/—For some moments her voice
was lost; but recovering herself, she added, and with greater calmness
than before—'I am now perfectly satisfied, I wish for no change. I never
could have been happy with him, after knowing, as sooner or later I must
have known, all this.—I should have had no confidence, no esteem.
Nothing could have done it away to my feelings.'
'I know it—I know it,' cried her mother. 'Happy with a man of liber-
tine practices!—With one who had so injured the peace of the dearest of
our friends, and the best of men!—No—my Marianne has not a heart to
be made happy with such a man!—Her conscience, her sensitive con-
science, would have felt all that the conscience of her husband ought to
have felt.'
Marianne sighed, and repeated—'I wish for no change.'
(SS, pp. 349-50)
Jane Austen creates this scene with her unerring sense of the
psychology of narrative discourse. She knows how difficult it is for
Marianne to tell, and registers the physical tension and effort. She
knows also that no two listeners are alike. Elinor has to hold back Mrs
Dashwood's impetuous tenderness, in order to hear the story as coolly
as possible. She herself retells it coolly, after Marianne's sigh has
shown the pain of listening to her mother's version. Her story is
imaginative and thoroughly rational:
'The whole of his behaviour,' replied Elinor, 'from the beginning to the
end of the affair, has been grounded on selfishness. It was selfishness
which first made him sport with your affections; which afterwards, when
his own were engaged, made him delay the confession of it, and which
finally carried him from Barton. His own enjoyment, or his own ease, was,
in every particular, his ruling principle.'
'It is very true. My happiness never was his object.'
'At present,' continued Elinor, 'he regrets what he has done. And why
does he regret it?—Because he finds it has not answered towards himself.
It has not made him happy. His circumstances are now unembarrassed—
he suffers from no evil of that kind; and he thinks only that he has married
a woman of a less amiable temper than yourself. But does it thence follow
that had he married you, he would have been happy?—The incon-
veniencies would have been different. He would then have suffered under
the pecuniary distresses which, because they are removed, he now reckons
as nothing.'(55, p. 351)
Elinor's rigorous imagination uses memory unnostalgically. She
refuses to cut off the past from the future it might have led to. It is an
aspect of the hardness of the novel that she should make the refusal
for Marianne. Jane Austen does not show the revisions of memory
taking place in Marianne's mind, though they are implicit in the brief
summary which tells us that 'in time' Marianne came to love her
husband as much as she had loved Willoughby. The novels coming
after Sense and Sensibility fill in this gap.
Elizabeth Bennet looks back imaginatively, vividly, fully, and with
feeling. She feels chagrin at the past blindness of her imagination, its
easy susceptibility and its determined misreadings. Emma looks back
with shame at her elations, her interpretations and her fantasies, all
grounded in selective and self-flattering speculations. Like Elizabeth,
she looks back at the stories she has told herself. Once admitted, the
acknowledgement of her love for Mr Knightley illumines a past in
which she has been only half-awake, in spite of her pride in perception
and plan:
This was the conclusion of the first series of reflection. This was the
knowledge of herself, on the first question of inquiry, which she reached;
and without being long in reaching it.—She was most sorrowfully
indignant; ashamed of every sensation but the one revealed to her—her
affection for Mr. Knightley.—Every other part of her mind was disgust-
ing.
With insufferable vanity had she believed herself in the secret of every-
body's feelings; with unpardonable arrogance proposed to arrange every-
body's destiny. She was proved to have been universally mistaken; and
she had not quite done nothing—for she had done mischief.
(E, pp. 412-3)
Anne Elliot takes the whole novel to remember. Jane Austen shows
her energetic, useful, unself-pitying. Her memory moves away from
isolated nostalgia to review the past, to understand, and to make
imaginative revisions of value. It is a part of Anne's imaginative
strength that she can accept the past without violent blame and
remorse. She can accept it as a part of herself. In her imaginative
memory she is very like Fanny Price. Anne describes her strengths of
memory to Captain Wentworth, and misleads him by her assurance
and warmth as she looks back to Lyme Regis:
The last few hours were certainly very painful,' replied Anne: 'but
when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure. One
does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been
all suffering, nothing but suffering—which was by no means the case at
Lyme. We were only in anxiety and distress during the last two hours;
and, previously, there had been a great deal of enjoyment. So much
novelty and beauty! I have travelled so little, that every fresh place would
be interesting to me—but there is real beauty at Lyme: and in short' (with
a faint blush at some recollections) 'altogether my impressions of the place
arc very agreeable.' (P, pp. 183-4)
As Jane Austen merges the everyday narratives of common life with

the larger and more crucial enterprises of imagination and memory,
she comes to show a strength of mind which reveals itself through
storytelling, public and private. As we move through our lives, we are
all engaged in making up an informal autobiography which we form
and which forms us. Jane Austen's last three novels, through their
distinct and different heroines, show the ability to tell that personal
story with all its variety and its errors, in its whole truth. Fanny Price
and Emma long to speak candidly to Edmund and Mr Knightley, as
they have been able to speak candidly to themselves. They are con-
trasted with other intelligent people who cannot so faithfully or so
toughly accept the story of the self - Sir Thomas Bertram or Jane
Fairfax. Anne Elliot is able to speak at last, after so much listening.
What she speaks about is crucial. It is in no spirit of moral pedantry
that she goes back to the past and tells Captain Wentworth that she
stands by her past persuadability. Fanny accepts the whole past,
including folly and fantasy. Anne accepts the whole past, which has
given her eight years of pain, and destroyed the sense of a future.
She takes it, without erasing anything. That final story which Jane
Austen's most rational and passionate lovers tell is more than a
declaration, it is the endorsement of the personal life. Unlike those
great chroniclers of memory and imagination, Wordsworth, Thack-
eray and Beckett, who suggest the dangers of recalling the past, Jane
Austen raises no problems about the authenticity of memory. She is
all too clearly alive to the temptations of blotting out, revising or
hating the past, and the heroines of her mature fiction stand by their
entire story.
What the critic laboriously analyses, the novelist knows. When
William Price tells his tales of adventure in the Mediterranean and
the West Indies, we see everyone's response. Fanny's 'deep interest'
and 'absorbed attention' solicit Henry Crawford's admiration for her
ardour and sensibility, but he also feels chagrin and respect, 'he
wished he had been a William Price'. Mrs Morris never listens to other
people's stories, and fidgets 'about the room', disturbing everybody
'in quest of two needlefulls of thread or a second hand shirt button in
the midst of her nephew's account of a shipwreck or an engagement'.
Even Lady Bertram occasionally looks up from her work: 'Dear me!
how disagreeable. - I wonder any body can ever go to sea.' Not the
least interesting listener is Sir Thomas, who finds the recitals 'amusing
in themselves' but whose 'chief object in seeking them, was to under-
stand the recitor, to know the young man by his histories'. Jane Austen
thoroughly understood how we come to know each other in our telling
and our listening. Her novels show a full and thorough use of this
knowledge.
V
Social Groups
If Jane Austen, like Thackeray,1 had observed that she had no head
above her eyes, instead of making her modest jokes about working on
a two-inch square of ivory, and finding three or four families in a
country village the very thing to work on,2 her powers of social
analysis might have commanded more respect. Thackeray's remark
need not be applied too literally either to his own work or to Jane
Austen's, but it may draw our attention to the power of her social
drama. Where Thackeray's descriptions of social groups are full and
lengthy, hers are spare and slight, often compressed by incisive
summary or sketch. Like him, she delineates her society but usually
avoids direct criticism, analysis and argument. She offers no far-
reaching generalizations about class, wealth, or manners, and her
dramatized spokeswomen and spokesmen make few overt attempts to
criticize society. Commentary is subordinated to drama and chronicle,
but it is neither invisible nor absent. Her sharp and profound insight
into social structures, relationships and roles creates a series of critical
scenes. Generalization emerges, quietly, but accumulating power. Her
social scenes make comparisons of interplay which have the disarming
yet provocative air of illustrating without defining. Her light, bright,
and sparkling comedy criticizes while it diverts.
Among those critics who seem restricted by her own images of limit
is Richard Simpson, who damns with faint praise the small scale on
which her imagination seems to work:
She defined her own sphere when she said that three or four families
in a country village were the thing for a novelist to work upon. Each of
these 'little social commonwealths' became a distinct entity to her
1
Said in a conversation with George William Curtis, and quoted by
Gordon Ray, Thackeray: The Age of Wisdom (1945-6), p. 119.
2
Letters, p. 401.
103
imagination, with its own range of ideas, its own subjects of discourse, its
own public opinion on all social matters. Indeed there is nothing in her
novels to prove that she had any conception of society itself, but only of
the coterie of three or four families mixing together, with differences of
intellect, wealth, or character, but without any grave social inequalities.
(Critical Heritage, No. 44, p. 250)
Bemused by the famous and fatal formula of a few families in a

village, he fails to see the expanding context in which her little
commonwealths are set. He makes an even more damaging mistake in
not perceiving that the analysis of a coterie can unfold that total social
view which he misses in her novels:
Of organized society she manifests no idea. She had no interest in the
great political and social problems which were being debated with so
much blood in her day. The social combinations which taxed the calcula-
ting powers of Adam Smith or Jeremy Bentham were above her powers.
She had no knowledge how to keep up the semblance of personality in the
representation of society reckoned by averages, and no method of imper-
sonating the people or any section of the people in the average man. (loc.
cit.)
Mary Bennet could scarcely better this absurdly irrelevant demand

on the novelist's imagination. Jane Austen, like all literary artists, is
no more concerned with the abstractions and calculations of econo-
mists and sociologists, than she is interested in that impersonation
of social particulars which makes fiction interesting to the common
reader and valuable to the historian. No one expects Adam Smith and
Jeremy Bentham to imagine the individual life of social groups.
Calculations, averages and sections of society do not form Jane
Austen's materials but her social groups are imagined models and
microcosms of social structure and organization. Her treatment of
those differences of 'intellect, wealth, and character', may not solve or
even formulate political problems of class and economic difference,
but her small-scale drama generates ideas about groups. Because 'each
of these "little social commonwealths" became a distinct personal
entity to her imagination', it does not follow that her social insights
remain artlessly, innocently, and superficially directed to small par-
ticulars. She imagines variations of social behaviour, which recur,
with different dramatis personae, to reflect and imply social insight.
Simpson is not the only critic who leans heavily on the '3 or 4
families'. The anonymous writer of a review in St. Paul's Magazine
(Critical Heritage, No. 43, p. 232) also insists on the limitations of her
Social Groups 105
scope and scale, though he attributes them to social realism in por-
traying a genuinely sequestered, contracted, and immobile village
life:
But this is probably a true picture of village life in England half-a-century

ago, and perhaps even now, though the feminine sphere of thought and
action has greatly enlarged with the progress of education, something of
the same kind of small gossip, and small agitation, and mean rivalry, and
base detraction, might go on wherever there existed a contracted
circle....
Even today, we can find the similar imputations of a lack of interest

in larger political issues.3 She has been accused of a lack of interest in
feminism, for instance, because she makes no reference to Mary
Wollstonecraft.4 But her comic portrayals of feminine company and
feminine conversation are eloquent of limitation. Within her social
groups, Jane Austen frequently shows a serious restlessness, critical
and even subversive, which looks beyond social limits. Marianne
Dashwood rudely refuses to join in empty prattle or mercenary
assumptions. Elinor Dashwood makes a courteous but qualified contri-
bution to social games of competition and aggression. Henry Tilney
and Elizabeth Bennet mock and mime routines and rituals of fashion-
able coteries. Fanny Price wants to know about the slave-trade,
though rebuked by the silence of the other ladies. Anne Elliot feels too
proud to approve coteries which pride themselves on class but not
cultivation.
Jane Austen does not speak only through those characters who can
represent something of her own insight. The comic presentation of
society includes but does not rely exclusively on such superiorities. But
before we look at the satirical self-analysis of the life of groups, it
seems essential to insist on the breadth and mobility of Jane Austen's
social imagination. While attacking Jane Austen for a lack of calcul-
ating power, her critics sometimes fail to take proper count of her
families and villages. She never limits herself to three or four families
in a village. The novels may use them as a starting-point, which is a
different matter. If the novel begins with one family - and most novels
have to start from some single point - there is invariably some
immediate precipitation of social change. Northanger Abbey begins
8
A striking exception is Avrom Fleishman, op. cit.
4
See Patricia Beer, Reader, I Married Him (London, 1974).
by taking its heroine from a small and uneventful village to a stirring
town. Sense and Sensibility begins with changes brought about in two
branches of a family by deaths and inheritances. Pride and Prejudice
introduces strangers in its third sentence. Mansfield Park summarizes
the scattered fortunes of three sisters, and then conveys its heroine
from poverty in Portsmouth to the comforts of Mansfield. Emma is
the most socially restricted of the major novels, but begins with a con-
traction and change in family life which is to bring expansion and
renewal. Persuasion begins with disruption and removals caused by
economic change and peace after a war.
There are limitations in Jane Austen's studies of social life. As
everyone knows, her chronicles exclude exclusively male company,
but there are conversations which imply some knowledge of men's
behaviour, like the off-stage manoeuvres of John Thorpe and General
Tilney, the on-stage discourse of the Knightley brothers, and Mr
Knightley's reports of men talking to men.
The society of women is wholly leisured. Except in Sanditon, where
there are several interesting exceptions, women are never shown
doing any work which is paid, and seldom any which is useful. Women
at work are shadowy; the most solid shadows are those cast by the
housekeeper at Sotherton (whose routine as a guide to the great house
has instructed her employer, Mrs Rushworth, and whose cream cheese
and pheasants' eggs are 'spunged' by Mrs Norris) and Hannah,
daughter of James the coachman at Hartfield (who is observed
approvingly by Mr Woodhouse when she turns the locks the right way
and never bangs the doors). Mrs Weston has been Emma's governess,
but is promoted to a prosperous marital state immediately before the
novel begins; Jane Fairfax is preserved from the governess-trade, as
she calls it, just before the novel ends. This professional limitation
reflects the restriction to middle-class and gentry, with the two aristo-
cratic infusions, from Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Pride and
Prejudice, and Lady Dalrymple and Miss Carteret in Persuasion.
There are also glimpses of people in trade, like the Philipses and the
Gardiners in Pride and Prejudice, and the Cole family in Emma.
The aristocrats are heavily satirized, the people in trade treated
sympathetically, harsh satire being reserved for their snobbish or
hypocritical connections, like Mrs Elton and Miss Bingley.
Jane Austen's societies are restricted in their class composition,
though the vague fringe suggests mobility, upwards and downwards.
The societies portrayed are neither small, nor enclosed, nor static.
Social Groups 107
Jane Austen's imagination could not have been confined to a few
families in a village, but demands the material of social changes and
renewals. Her conversations generally exclude politics, as in the
famous scene where the talk of Catherine Morland with Henry and
Catherine Tilney turns from nature, via enclosures, to politics, from
which it was 'an easy step to silence'. When we are brought up against
the not uncommon subjects of enclosures, war, or the slave-trade, the
conversation invariably turns back. Jane Austen's social imagination
strikes noticeably against its limits.
The bounds of her coteries and groups are constantly broken, and
their closeness challenged, by fresh arrivals and departures. Her
inhabitants are constantly on the move, entering new coteries. To
refuse to see the social intrusions and erosions in the novel is to ally
ourselves with Mrs Bennet in her quarrel with Darcy. He proposes
that the country cannot supply enough subjects for the study of
character, 'in a country neighbourhood you move in a very confined
and unvarying society'; Mrs Bennet replies that there is just as much
alteration of people 'going on in the country as the town', and Eliza-
beth, 'blushing for her mother', explains that Darcy is referring to the
relative absence of variety. Of course Darcy himself ignores the
comings and goings in which he participates, and even Mrs Bennet
cannot confine herself to the prescription of three or four families: 'I
know we dine with four and twenty families'.
Jane Austen's novels make do with fewer than four and twenty
named families, though a habit of cleverly casual name-dropping5
conveys an air of social density beyond the novel's focus. She chooses
to vary and enlarge her company. Each novel devises the action for an
expanded social experience, which tests and instructs the central
characters. Northanger Abbey ranges from the small village of
Fullerton in Wiltshire, to Bath, then to Northanger Abbey in Glouces-
tershire, and back home to Fullerton. Sense and Sensibility moves
from Norland Park in Sussex, to Barton Cottage, near Barton Park in
Devonshire, then to London, and back home by way of Cleveland in
Somerset. Pride and Prejudice begins in the village of Longboum,
near the small town of Meryton in Hertfordshire, then to London, on
the way to Hunsford near Westerham in Kent, back to Longboum,
because of events taking place in Brighton and London, then to
Derbyshire and home again. In Mansfield Park the main action takes
0
An excellent example is Miss Bates's arrival at the ball in Emma (p. 323).
place in Mansfield, during important voyages to and from Antigua, in
the West Indies, but also moves to Portsmouth, London, Twicken-
ham, Richmond, then back to Mansfield Park. Emma, most static of
the novels, brings people to Highbury from London, and the north of
England, and Bristol, and takes some of its permanent residents away
on short journeys. In Persuasion the action takes place in Kellynch,
Uppercross, Lyme Regis, and Bath.
Such moves simply describe the chief places of the action, whether
performed or reported, but beyond this map is a larger one. Before
settling in Norland, as the beginning of the novel describes, Mrs Dash-
wood, with her husband and children have come from Stanhill, as we
are casually informed (SS, pp. 13, 30), and Colonel Brandon has a
sister in Avignon. Elizabeth Bennet has hoped to go on holiday to the
Lakes, to forget the trials of human nature amongst rocks and mount-
ains, and the novel's ending moves her and Jane away from home and
shows the Wickhams on the move, 'from place to place in quest of a
cheap situation*. In Mansfield Park, William Price goes and comes
from his voyages, even stirring Henry Tilney's discontent with his
sailor's tales. Henry and Mary Crawford are a restless pair, constantly
on the move, like Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility. The confine-
ment of Emma, who has never seen the sea, is the more marked for the
busy comings and goings of other characters, some of whom have been
to Weymouth, Southend, but not Cromer or Ireland, and several of
whom go to London on business, to visit the barber and the dentist,"
to see friends and family, and on gallant adventures to buy a piano
and get a picture framed. It is perfectly fitting, though quietly
recounted, that Emma's wedding journey should take her at last to
the sea. Persuasion is played against a background of naval adventures
which we are not allowed to forget even at the end, and Mrs Croft has
shared many of her husband's voyages, crossed the Atlantic four times,
and naturally overestimates Mrs Musgrove's knowledge of geography.
Although the scale of Jane Austen's map is noticeably different
from our own, in spite of Atlantic and Mediterranean voyages, short
distances take us over a varying society. When Anne Elliot moves a
short distance from the village of Kellynch to the village of Upper-
cross, she observes the separateness and exclusiveness to be found even
in neighbouring communities. Anne's insight into a change of place
reflects her author's. Even a movement from one house to another is
• Jane Austen gives a harrowing account of three visits with her nieces to a
London dentist, Letters, pp. 322,327-8.
Social Groups 109
7
carefully observed as productive of variety and contrast. Small maps
record large tracts of imaginative distance. Our attention is drawn to
distance and movement by the characters themselves, as they com-
plain of confinement, like Catherine Morland, Mary Crawford, or
Emma, in their sharply distinct ways, or prefer to stay at home, like
Fanny Price. Some are sophisticatedly aware of environment, like
Darcy, Mary Crawford, Mrs Grant, Anne Elliot; Sir Thomas Bertram
goes so far as to conduct an experiment in environmental change, with
results which teach him as well as Fanny, and more than he antici-
pates. The novels may appear still, but the stillness is often interrupted
by a bustle of journeys. Jane Austen reverses the procedures of picar-
esque novels, for though her characters are often on the road, travel-
ling by private or public transport, their adventures never occur
during the journeys, but at home or during their visits. Journeys are
recounted briefly and quickly, through glimpses of meals, inns, pay-
ments, changes of vehicle,8 weather, wayside sights, departures and
arrivals. People move about for reasons of business, marriage, health,
visits, and holidays. Connections are lost and kept. Departures are
voluntary and enforced, happy and distressed. Journeys end in lovers'
meetings and family reunions. Societies change to suggest that society
changes. We see change through the dispersal, contraction, expansion,
and removal of families and neighbourhoods. There is a constant
change of population, for the population of small societies is seen to
alter as much as human nature. The three, four, or more families do
not stay in one place, but move house, welcome, or do not welcome,
old acquaintances and strangers, and lose their sons and daughters to
professional or married life. Jane Austen's novels turn on the dis-
covery of new places, of new people, and of oneself.
Some of the half-kept secrets of her personal life, like the legendary
meeting with the 'unnamed gentleman' at a seaside place,9 or the
acceptance and quick rejection of a proposal of marriage from Harris
Bigg-Wither,10 are associated with holidays and visits. Her surviving
letters are practical proofs of the many journeys, visits and removals
which were so important in her own life. We know how vital place and
1
The Letters are full of such observations.
8
The Letters also contain sharp and amusing comments on travel and
transport.
9
Memoir, op. cit., Chap, ii, and R. W. Chapman, Jane Austen: Facts and
Problems (Oxford, 1948), pp. 63-9.
10
Memoir, op. cit., ibid., and Chapman, op. cit., pp. 61-63.
110 A Reading of J'one Austen
change were for her, as a woman and as an artist, how she apparently
stopped writing after the family moved from Steventon to Bath and
Southampton in 1801, how she was deeply distressed by the move, how
she began to write again in 1809 when she went to settle in Chawton,
with her mother and sister.11 The letters are full of the problems of
Jane Austen's journeys, since the ladies of her family never travelled
any distance alone, as the unfortunate Catherine Morland was forced
to do. But even the confinements of family life were open to a wider
world; as Brian Southam insists: 'The family group was constantly
changing and constantly supplied with news.'" Her scene-changes,
however, are not simply reflections of personal experience, but
traditional moves in epic and novel. The writings of Homer, Virgil,
Cervantes, Dante, Swift, Voltaire, Plutarch, Samuel Johnson, Field-
ing, Sterne, Fanny Burney, Henry James, James Joyce and D. H.
Lawrence tell their stories of imaginary journeys. Novels need strange
places and strange meetings.
Jane Austen's novels rely on such meetings. Groups of mixed
acquaintance show up the forms of social rules and rituals. The facade
of public propriety is mocked, criticized and used as a screen or a
barrier. The public occasion gives Jane Austen an opportunity to
begin, retard, and confuse the development of love, to satirize social
manners and morals, and to analyse the interactions of group roles
and relationships. She seems to balance an interest in depth and
surface, manners and character, or structure and ethics, so evenly that
it is hard to say which concern is primary. The novelist only shows
social groups through the individuality of event and characters, but
such individual life establishes general social truths. Jane Austen's
constant request that her characters should know their own feelings
makes plain her preoccupation with the human heart. But she also
directs her people to look into their social behaviour. There are
characters like the mocking Henry Tilney and the didactic Mr
Knightley to be explicit within the novel about its social forms.
Festive occasions bring together social and psychological tensions,
and provide the additional treat of mingled pain and pleasure. Her
heroes and heroines have to be introduced into new societies and
groups, since the world cannot conveniently be peopled from three or
four families in a country village. Inbreeding is bad for society,
character, and plots. Parties of pleasure are arranged by society to
11
Chapman, op. cit., Chaps, iv, v, vi.
12
B. C. Southam, Jane Austen's Literary Manuscripts (London, 1964), p. 5.
Social Groups 111
bring the sexes together, and the gatherings are productive and even
instructive. Only two of the heroines, Fanny Price and Emma, marry
within their own community. Proximity's dullness is stirred by the
competition and provocation of attractive strangers like Mary Craw-
ford and Frank Churchill. Social life is even encouraged by a Mr
Collins and a Mrs Elton, the one intent on courtship and the other on
bridal celebration. The neighbourhood needs to entertain its visitors,
and the air of Jane Austen's most elegant or domestic parties and
picnics can become heady and even aphrodisiac. Love, courtship, a
knowledge of the heart and of the wide world develop best outside
Jane Austen's family circles.
Most of the heroines have to travel further than Fanny and Emma
in search of a husband, and finally leave home when they find one.
There is nobody for Catherine Morland to marry in Fullerton, so
Mrs Allen, languid chaperone though she is, has to bring her to Bath,
which teems with promise. Elinor and Marianne Dashwood meet
Edward Ferrars, Colonel Brandon, and Willoughby, through visits
and accident. Bingley and Darcy are marked down by Longbourn
and Meryton in two chapters, though victory has to wait till the end
of the story. Anne Elliot's reunion with Captain Wentworth has the
special excitement of strange familiarity after absence. All these meet-
ings rely on the entertainments of public life, in large mixed parties or
smaller domestic groups.
The stories turn on social limit and social change, so the groups
which carry on the business of introductions and interchanges reflect
intimacy and novelty. Rituals often seem to be designed or developed
in order to combine the two. It is in public that Jane Austen's men and
women have to get to know each other, and have to endure the
hazards and inconveniences of social encounters. Public life is rough
and smooth, rude and polite. It may be too polite for intimacy to
flourish quickly, as Charlotte Lucas points out in one of those indi-
vidually voiced opinions which can both hide and discover the
author's judgement. In her prudent, matter-of-fact and expert
manner, she points out the need for women to snatch every oppor-
tunity offered by dinner-parties, balls, round-games, or cards:
'But though Bingley and Jane meet tolerably often, it is never for many
hours together; and as they always see each other in large mixed parties,
it is impossible that every moment should be employed in conversing
together. Jane should therefore make the most of every half hour in which
she can command his attention.' (PP, p. 22)
Festive occasions are often clandestine. Time and privacy are in
short supply, and decorum or hypocrisy require that sexual attentions
and intentions of all sorts should be disguised. So Jane Austen's men
and women pretend to be intent on dancing, eating, exploring, paying
calls, planning improvements, rehearsing theatricals, being nice to
their parents, being polite to their acquaintance, and playing games of
all kinds. Meanwhile they make the most of all these activities and
rites to solicit, pursue and compete. As Tom Bertram watches an
impromptu dance in Mansfield Park, he says carelessly to Fanny, his
knowingness reminding us that this is Regency England: They are so
many couple of lovers - all but Yates and Mrs Grant - and, between
ourselves, she, poor woman, must want a lover as much as any of
them!' (AfP, p. 119) Lydia and Catherine Bennet chase boisterously
and openly, all the way to Meryton, and far beyond to Brighton.
Their aunt gives nice little hot suppers, with conveniently noisy games
of lottery tickets, after the officers have been well-dined. Mrs Bennet
gives substantial dinners, with good soup, haunches of venison roasted
to a turn, partridges which please even the pampered palate of Mr
Darcy, and offers the additional pleasures of Mr Bennet's covert, when
Bingley and Darcy have killed all their own birds. Each pursuit has its
own style. Miss Bingley pursues Darcy through the letters he writes
and the books he reads. Isabella Thorpe is as expert as Fanny Bumey's
Miss Larolles, in Cecilia, at placing herself modestly in conspicuous
positions. In almost every party the young ladies play, sing, and
exhibit their painting and embroidery, resting only when they are
married. The heroines convey through their genuine ability their
author's contempt for the predatory education in feminine accom-
plishment. They attract naturally, and without effort, by their beauty,
wit, liveliness, ardour, modesty, sincerity, and intelligence. Jane
Austen's heroes are intelligent men who don't make the common
mistakes of Mr Allen, Mr Bennet, and Sir Thomas Bertram, but are
captivated by the real thing. They and their less honourable fellows
pursue and solicit with presents, carriage-rides, dances, Shakespearian
readings, good works on their estate, wit and instruction. And almost
all these necessary offerings and solicitations of men and women, bent
on marriage or seduction, love or an establishment, are made in
public. Theatricals, improvements, games, dances, and music were all
deliberately noted by the novelist as emblems of such dual purpose,
long before her critics applied themselves to the study of her symbols.
All novelists love parties, for their drama, their interplay, their com-
Social Groups 113
petitiveness, and their erotic opportunities. Each novelist chooses his
parties according to his age and his taste. Jane Austen's polite
chronicles of flirtation are less sensuous, less vicious and less gorgeous
than Thackeray's, Dickens's or Scott Fitzgerald's. But a conversation
in the Assembly Rooms at Bath, in a crowded set, with chaperones
lining the walls, offers as much opportunity for stealthy seduction and
betrayal as Lord Steyn's expensive entertainments in Vanity Fair, the
artificial rites of the Veneering banquets in Our Mutual Friend, or
the magnificent sleaziness of Gatsby's parties, with jazz, flappers and
champagne. Jane Austen anticipates Henry James - who so under-
estimated her craft - in a liking for conversational exchange, some-
times astonishingly direct, sometimes highly cryptic, with space for
the revealing gesture and time for the unspoken word. But she seems
to go beyond Thackeray, Dickens, James, and Scott Fitzgerald in her
special interest in the structures of social organisms. She may scarcely
ever mention government, and show no concern for Parliament, but
her small groups have a carefully structured organization. The
structure is the effect of sharp vision, as well as dramatic art. She likes
to observe the changing behaviour of a group, to show what holds it
together, and what pulls it apart, to see how the group is led, and how
domination can shift. Of course she is a novelist, not a social psycholo-
gist,18 and her dramatic scenes of group life are joined to the total
conception of character and feeling, as they must be in all good novels.
But although social roles and dynamics are related to the larger
private lives, through distinctions of function and a sense of causality,
she is conspicuous amongst English novelists for her understanding of
the psychology of groups. Her moral analysis of character is also con-
ducted in her group-dramas.
In Emma rites and decorum are recorded, strains and responses
registered, in the exploring party in Donwell Abbey. Mr Knightley
insists on being host, having politely and effectively declined the
services of Mrs Elton, the kind of woman who presses her services on
mere unmarried men in a combination of matrimonial patronage and
residual predatoriness. Jane Austen follows the strawberry party with
the even more discordant and clandestine picnic on Box Hill, and
exacerbates public and private strains until ceremony collapses. The
quarrel of Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill begins in the heat of one
party, and continues in the next. Jane Austen amuses herself with the
18
I have avoided the use of obviously applicable modern terminology in
describing her social groups.
sober record of the ordeals of two parties with the same people, coming
one after the other. The summer heat is bad for the spirits and energies
of hosts and guests, and we are made to feel its uninterrupted oppres-
sion. More than the weather an unusual social effort is responsible for
the failures of ceremony and pleasure. The secret engagement of
Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax is causing unendurable strains,
which are felt by the innocent host, Mr Weston, and his innocent
guests who don't know what is going on, as an undercurrent of obscure
but infectious disturbance. There are other strains too, dividing the
party in spite of the gregarious host's attempts to bring people
together, to look at 'the prospects', and to enjoy the cold collation.
The beauties of Box Hill and all the pleasures of the picnic are wasted.
There is division instead of unity: Jane Fairfax avoids Frank
Churchill, and takes away her aunt with her, to find refuge in the
Eltons' company. The Eltons continue their malicious slighting
of Harriet and Emma. Mr Knightley misinterprets both Frank's
flirtatiousness and Emma's response, as well he may. Frank Churchill
finds refuge, relief, and revenge in a game of flirtation. It allows him
to speak in double meanings, which Emma will receive playfully, and
which Jane will understand only too seriously — 'I am comfortable
today' and 'I can have no self-command without a motive'. Emma's
response fluctuates. She feels mild pleasure at being entertained and
flattered, and relief after awkwardness and silence. She is aware of
her underlying detachment, certain that she doesn't care for him, but
she also feels a vague disappointment: 'Not that Emma was gay and
thoughtless from any real felicity; it was rather because she felt less
happy than she had expected.'
The others feel less happy than they expected. Jane Austen antici-
pates Thackeray in reminding us that there is nothing so dismal as a
party that turns sour or cold, to impose strains on the rituals of polite
propriety, and to frustrate the festive purpose. Frank's flirtatiousness
gets more febrile and more impudent. Emma recognizes the game,
joins in, grows uneasy, tries to cool the heat, and when he says
amorously, *You are always with me', she replies coolly, *Dating from
three o'clock yesterday'.
Jane Austen's letters record her own playful, amused, and perhaps
exaggerated chronicles of flirtation. 'They do not know how to be par-
ticular', she writes to Cassandra about a couple at the Harwoods' ball,
who may 'profit by the three successive lessons which I have given
them'.14 She describes her behaviour with Tom Lefroy, who was
14
Letters, p. 1.
Social Groups 115
'excessively laughed at* about her, - he remembered her in his old age
as the girl for whom he'd had 'a boyish love'" - and tells Cassandra
that their behaviour at a ball was 'everything most profligate and
shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together'.16 As a
novelist, she expertly records the difficulty of a public flirtation which
becomes too conspicuous and intense. Emma thinks it is only a game
on her side, but is wrong, as usual: 'Your gallantry is really unanswer-
able. But (lowering her voice) - nobody speaks except ourselves, and it
is rather too much to be talking nonsense for the entertainment of
seven silent people.' Frank Churchill's voice rises, 'Let my accents
swell to Mickleham on one side, and Dorking on the other', and his
hyperbole and wit rise also. He is 'the genius and flirt'17 of the
occasion. The seven silent people begin to get restive. Their social
genius is rebuked. Mrs Elton can't tolerate the description of Emma
'who, wherever she is, presides'; her vivacious telegraphese begins to
sound nervously rattled, 7 never was in any circle - exploring parties -
young ladies - married women -', and is scarcely to be reassured by
her 'caro sposo's' familiar 'Exactly so' and his thinly disguised
hostility, 'but some ladies say any thing'. She is later to show her
dignity by the feat of patronizing four people in one solecistic
sentence: 'Pass Mr Elton, Knightley, Jane and myself.'
Emma is indeed to say 'any thing'. She nervously affects carelessness
when Mr Knightley shows that he too can play the game of innuendo,
inquiring grimly: 'Is Miss Woodhouse sure that she would like to hear
what we are all thinking of?' Frank Churchill's punishing exhibition-
ism decides to 'attack them with more address' and introduces a new
game. It is the irresistible competition in dullness in which Emma loses
her head and does what Frank Churchill himself has once said no one
would wish to do to Miss Bates - slights her. As Mr Knightley is to
point out, when he reproaches her at the end of the picnic, it is a public
insult made in front of her niece, and fully comprehended. Miss Bates
is wounded, and behaves with restraint and decorum. Emma's
precarious and undeserved eminence collapses. But there is to be
another wound, less publicly inflicted. Frank Churchill miserably and
desperately drops the unsuccessful games and attacks Jane Fairfax
through innuendo. 'Very lucky', he observes as the Eltons walk off,
16
Chapman, op. cit., Chap. v.
" Letters, p. 2.
17
Letters, p. 43, where she describes a young man as 'altogether rather the
genius and flirt of the evening*.
Mr Elton recording his inability to entertain young ladies, and Mrs
Elton muttering about the fatigue of exploring so long on one spot,
*Very lucky - marrying as they did, upon an acquaintance formed
only in a public place!' Jane Fairfax hears out the double-tongued
speech, and replies in the same covert style, breaking her silence and
their secret engagement, with appropriate stealth. After the covert
dialogue which no one else can understand, he resorts more furiously
and furtively to flirtation with Emma, 'I shall come to you for my
wife', to signal acceptance of Jane's decision, and return Emma to her
incorrigible match-making.
The occasion is totally public, but privacy is preserved. There is no
single person who has understood all the games and double-entendres.
Harriet and Mr Weston are the most innocent, as usual. Mr Knightley
misunderstands Emma's feelings, she misunderstands Frank Church-
ill's. Jane Fairfax understands and misunderstands both, and Miss
Bates takes to herself the most cruelly legible stroke of wit, the most
aggressive turn in the game, and the gravest breach of decorum. The
Eltons understand nothing, except their own jealousy. There has been
no genius of the occasion, and the rites of hospitality have been
violently reversed.
Through ritual, structure, and character, the Box Hill picnic is
attached to the novel's past, which has been intent on the festivities
and games played in groups. We have seen Emma preside, and her
dominance has sometimes been approved, sometimes disapproved. It
has always been related to those social pressures which visibly shape
her elated sense of power and proficiency. We first see her at her best
as hostess, though there is something daunting about one so young
being so good at social manipulation even in a dinner-party in her own
home. On this occasion she is cool, not excited, and in command. Like
the Box Hill party, the occasion is a characteristic model of harmony
and disharmony. It is the family party at Highfield, when John
Knightley and Isabella come to stay, and is composed of two groups,
of kinship, interest, and mind. Mr Woodhouse is among friends, and
the host gives way to the fond father. Emma, slightly apart, is the
hostess who must not relax, alert to prevent or heal rifts. She is not
alone in the responsibility, but has the help of Mr Knightley's sense
and sensibility:
... John Knightley made his appearance, and 'How d'ye do, George?' and
'John, how are you?' succeeded in the true English style, burying under a
Social Groups 117
calmness that seemed all but indifference, the real attachment which
would have led either of them, if requisite, to do every thing for the good
of the other.
The evening was quiet and conversible, as Mr. Woodhouse declined
cards entirely for the sake of comfortable talk with his dear Isabella, and
the little party made two natural divisions; on one side he and his
daughter; on the other the two Mr. Knightleys; their subjects totally
distinct, or very rarely mixing—and Emma only occasionally joining in
one or the other.
The brothers talked of their own concerns and pursuits, but principally
of those of the elder, whose temper was by much the most communicative,
and who was always the greater talker. As a magistrate, he had generally
some point of law to consult John about, or, at least, some curious
anecdote to give; and as a farmer, as keeping in hand the home-farm at
Donwell, he had to tell what every field was to bear next year, and to give
all such local information as could not fail of being interesting to a brother
whose home it had equally been the longest part of his life, and whose
attachments were strong. The plan of a drain, the change of a fence, the
felling of a tree, and the destination of every acre for wheat, turnips, or
spring com, was entered into with as much equality of interest by John, as
his cooler manners rendered possible; and if his willing brother ever left
him any thing to inquire about, his inquiries even approached a tone of
eagerness.
While they were thus comfortably occupied, Mr. Woodhouse was en-
joying a full flow of happy regrets and fearful affection with his daughter.
'My poor dear Isabella,' said he, fondly taking her hand, and interrupt-
ing, for a few moments, her busy labours for some one of her five children
—'How long it is, how terribly long since you were here! And how tired
you must be after your journey!' (£, pp. 99-100)
Style and subject are clearly marked, but the characters reveal more
than their distinctive qualities of intellect and character. Their social
and personal relationships emerge through the hidden hostilities of
family conversation. Emma watches for discord, and hastily changes
the subject from the Southend journey to herself, dexterously pretend-
ing to find the subject painful: 'I must beg you not to talk of the sea.'
A later collision is avoided by the diversionary subject of Mrs and Miss
Bates: 'I have not heard one inquiry after them.' In a last effort of
hospitable subject-changing, she asks her brother-in-law about his
friend Mr Graham's bailiff from Scotland: 'But will it answer?'
Despite the energies of tactful, ingenious, or hypocritical hostess-skills,
a dangerous point is reached in Mr Woodhouse's vicarious arguments
about health, in which he unconsciously attributes 'many of his own
feelings and expressions' to Mr Perry, and provokes his son-in-law to
respond in a Voice of very strong displeasure'. The party is not over
yet, and Mr John Knightley's outburst is deflected by his brother,
who introduces the subject, appropriately enough, of a diverted path.
Mr Woodhouse's agitation is calmed: 'The soothing attentions of his
daughters gradually removed the present evil, and the immediate
alertness of one brother, and better recollections of the other,
prevented any renewal of it.'
A clear and amusing record of a family party, it displays the tact
and tactlessness, the social sensibility and insensibility, of guests and
hosts. But the ritual roles do not coincide with the actual perform-
ances. They depend rather on the social sense and energy of each
character. Between the awareness and the imagination of Mr Knight-
ley and Emma, who act as host and hostess, and the innocence of Mr
Woodhouse and Isabella, is Mr John Knightley, touchy son-in-law
and guest. The scene brackets family resemblances and social affinities
in the congeniality of two couples (Mr Woodhouse and Isabella, Mr
Knightley and Emma), and the complementary union of the married
couple. The group's shape is composed of several kinds of relationship,
its drama created by what the characters bring to the group in their
abilities, roles and associations. Mr Woodhouse is innocent but un-
consciously aggressive, as he plays the parental game of trying to get
his daughter back, observed by Jane Austen with shrewdness and
sympathy. Mr John Knightley plays the role of the possessive
husband, who resents his father-in-law's interference, but knows in his
heart, fitfully, that there is no sense in protesting against the gentle
selfishness or the hypochondria that father and elder daughter enjoy
in common. Emma and Mr Knightley lead, manipulate, anticipate
and divert, but they do not have the wayward group entirely in their
control. Sensitive soothing helps as well as the clever change of sub-
ject. She makes her characters aware of the weaknesses, dangers and
remedies, provides them with some art and energy, but creates the
social comedy from harmony and discord. The comedy shows her
sense of a balance, loss and recovery of power, dependent on kinship,
marriage, congeniality, complicity, intelligence and imagination.
Personal powers are exhibited in personal relations and in public life.
She frequently shows groups which are controlled or dominated by
leaders. The leaders sometimes lead by intelligence and tact, but some-
times by a brute energy. Mrs Elton is a great dominator, neither sensi-
tive nor intelligent, but intent on establishing a central role for herself
as the new bride. Far from attempting to create harmony and make
everyone happy, or at least not openly hostile, she wants only the
Social Groups 119
pleasure of domination, which she usually achieves at the expense of
the other members of the group. Her total lack of social sensibility
helps her to push people about, ignore them or rush patronizingly into
intimacy. Her modes of address reflect not only her vulgarity, but
make claims to familiarity with new acquaintances, in 'Jane Fairfax',
'Knightley', her 'old beau' Mr Woodhouse, and her 'caro sposo'. Jane
Austen takes great care to characterize Mrs Elton's style. It is not
vulgar in a stereotyped fashion, but blindly over-intimate, boastful,
self-flattering, and domineering:
In this style she ran on; never thoroughly stopped by any thing till Mr.
Woodhouse came into the room; her vanity had then a change of object,
and Emma heard her saying in the same half-whisper to Jane,
'Here comes this dear old beau of mine, I protest!—Only think of his
gallantry in coming away before the other men!—what a dear creature
he is;—I assure you I like him excessively. I admire all that quaint, old-
fashioned politeness; it is much more to my taste than modem ease;
modern ease often disgusts me. But this good old Mr. Woodhouse, I wish
you had heard his gallant speeches to me at dinner. Oh! I assure you I
began to think my caro sposa [sic] would be absolutely jealous. I fancy I
am rather a favourite; he took notice of my gown. How do you like it?—
Selina's choice—handsome, I think, but I do not know whether it is not
over-trimmed; I have the greatest dislike to the idea of being over-
trimmed—quite a horror of finery. I must put on a few ornaments now,
because it is expected of me.' (£, p. 302)
When the gentlemen join the ladies in the drawing-room, Mr

Weston walks in from his day of business in London and a late dinner
at Randalls, and the display of idiosyncrasy becomes more compli-
cated. The social mixture thickens. Mr Weston's gregarious and
friendly domination takes over from Mrs Elton's harsher powers. His
over-sociable humour is also set beside John Knightley's unsociability:
John Knightley only was in mute astonishment.—That a man who

might have spent his evening quietly at home after a day of business in
London, should set off again, and walk half-a-mile to another man's
house, for the sake of being in mixed company till bed-time, of finishing
his day in the efforts of civility and the noise of numbers, was a circum-
stance to strike him deeply. A man who had been in motion since eight
o'clock in the morning, and might now have been still, who had been long
talking, and might have been silent, who had been in more than one
crowd, and might have been alone!—Such a man, to quit the tranquillity
and independence of his own fire-side, and on the evening of a cold sleety
April day rush out again into the world!—Could he by a touch of his
finger have instantly taken back his wife, there would have been a motive;
but his coming would probably prolong rather than break up the party.
(E, pp. 302-3)
Jane Austen gets comedy out of such complex play of contrasting

attitudes. It is not a static play. She likes to show the mobility of social
occasions, and Mr Weston joins the company 'with all the right of
being principal talker, which a day spent any where from home
confers'. She knows that roles and performances are products of situa-
tion, and not of fixed characteristics. Mr Weston shows his wife the
letter from Frank, which she reads to Emma, and he then proceeds to
look around for fresh listeners, moving to Mr Woodhouse and Mr
Knightley. Taking their joy for granted, he does not notice their lack
of enthusiasm, and Jane Austen's free indirect style gently observes:
'They were the first entitled, after Mrs Weston and Emma, to be made
happy.' He moves on to share his good news with a more resistant
listener, Mrs Elton, now ready to recover her temporarily lost domin-
ance. Jane Austen devotes almost a whole chapter to the power-game
played by Mr Weston and Mrs Elton, making a brilliant comic
analysis of the manoeuvres of two egoists, jostling for the floor. Mrs
Elton first gains by interpreting Mr Weston's conventional politeness,
'I hope I shall soon have the pleasure of introducing my son to you',
as 'a particular compliment', and asserts her interests as patronizing
hostess by offering an invitation to the expected arrival, then making
an affected bridal joke about husbands opening their wives' letters,
on behalf of 'married women'. Mr Weston replies pleasantly but
briefly to the banter, before directing it firmly back again to Frank.
She takes the subject back with a skilful move; Frank's home in York-
shire, 190 miles from London, is 'Sixty-five miles farther than from
Maple Grove to London'. When she makes one loud 'call for a compli-
ment', he responds 'with a very good grace', then having 'done his
duty' he can 'return to his son'. The structure of the dialogue is a tug-
of-war between two interests, and we are pleased when the pleasanter,
warmer, and more generous egoist wins. The father defeats the bride.
Even his mode of triumphant exit is carefully noticed: 'Tea was carry-
ing round, and Mr Weston, having said all he wanted, soon took the
opportunity of walking away.' The party ends rather badly, with the
four card-players leaving the others 'to their own powers'. But their
powers are in abeyance:
Social Groups 121
... Emma doubted their getting on very well; for Mr. Knightley seemed
little disposed for conversation; Mrs. Elton was wanting notice, which
nobody had inclination to pay, and she was herself in a worry of spirits
which would have made her prefer being silent. (£, p. 311)
Mr John Knightley, in a fairly genial mood, is alert to the increased

sociability of Highbury, telling Emma *Your neighbourhood is
increasing, and you mix more with it', and Mr Knightley hastens to
agree that it is Randalls that has made the difference, silently but
jealously denying Frank Churchill's impact. Emma rejects her
brother-in-law's suggestion, that she won't have time for the children,
with an amused and amusing reference to 'uncle Knightley' at home,
and the chapter returns to Mrs Elton, in a quiet, withering insult: 'Mr
Knightley seemed to be trying not to smile, and succeeded without
difficulty, upon Mrs Elton's beginning to talk to him.'
With the dexterity of an accomplished juggler, Jane Austen begins
slowly, then increases the number of balls in the air. The social scene is
analytic and comic. It sustains a constant attention to the private
occupations that determine, interrupt, and underlie the social surface.
Each character's social response registers personal preoccupations as
well as social roles and functions. On this occasion, neither Mr
Knightley nor Emma feels up to the role of good guest or tactful host-
ess. The private life casts its shadows on the social scene, and roles
shift in obedience to personal preoccupations. Here is the art of the
surface, but its roots go deep. In the previous scene where Mr Knight-
ley and Emma led so proficiently, they were relaxed, unclouded by
personal problems. The second scene shows how the novelist qualifies
her sense of role and interaction according to time, place and feeling.
Throughout the course of Emma, which has a lavishly social action,
relationships turn on precisely that increase in sociability which Mr
John Knightley observes. Strangers come in to alter the balance of
groups and families. There are signs of larger changes too, like the
Coles' dinner-party, which heralds a new era in their social life. Yet
Jane Austen is less interested in shifts of class, however firmly she
registers them, than in pressures of personality. The two are not
always separable, so the gain to the student of the inner life need not
be a loss to the analyst of groups. Mrs Elton's snobbishness, boastful-
ness and gorgeousness are all socially significant of class, wealth, and
aspirations. But there are controls and correctives in the evaluation of
social mobility. The Coles are polite, modest, and considerate. Even
their deferential treatment of Mr Woodhouse and his daughter is not
so much the ingratiation of humility as a courteous attention to health
and habits.
In Sense and Sensibility, the portrait of the Steele sisters, whose
mode is crude and sly flattery, shows a balance of social type and pro-
founder psychology. The elder Miss Steele is a comic humour simple
enough to have come out of the world of Fanny Burney's Cecilia, like
'the inimitable Miss Larolles' comically recalled by Anne Elliot as she
observes her own jockeying for position in the concert. Miss Steele's
broader humour does not obtrude, but is kept firmly in its place, as a
crude foil for her more subtle sister, and a significant repetition of a
social type. When this pair of flatterers appear in a social group, their
role is unvaryingly performed in concert as they wheedle and toady
their way into favour. They are provided with a pair of social
superiors to flatter and are no more disapproved than those who
hungrily lap up the compliments and services, and offer hospitality to
get more. Jane Austen's dinner-parties at Hartfield show her interest
in the centrifugal strains of a group whose individual members and
sub-groups are held together with great effort, but she also turns her
attention to the more homogenous groups. She loves to create
dramatic structures with a centripetal action, organized around some
central subject. In Volume Two, Chapter Twelve, of Sense and Sensi-
bility she displays such a group in a condensed social drama composed
of three brief scenes. The first scene takes place at the dinner-table in
the Dashwoods' Very good house' in Harley Street, and is quickly
followed by two other scenes in the drawing-room, first when the
ladies are alone, and then after they are joined by the gentlemen.
Jane Austen links her scenes smoothly and tensely. The social impli-
cations are many. The Miss Steeles are strangers but are preferred to
kin because they are so good at flattery and appear to offer no threat-
ening aspiration. Elinor observes the aggression of the polite assembly
as the hostess, Fanny Dashwood, and the guest of honour, Mrs
Ferrars, pointedly slight her and behave graciously to Lucy. Like
Jane Austen's, her contempt and amusement are evenly divided
between the flattered and the flatterer. The comedy of manners
creates a neatly effective model of complementary and interdepen-
dent levels of inferiority and superiority, and also fully exploits the
comic effect of self-deception. The foolishly flattered ladies pin their
faith on the deceiving flatterer, who in her turn is blind to the true
reasons for her success, as she takes the response to flattery for an
Social Groups 123
encouragement to aspiration, whereas its tolerance depends entirely
on the assumption that she will stay in her place. Jane Austen registers
differences of intellect as well as differences of class in her analysis of
unstable hierarchy, and she doesn't fail to register the consequences of
prevailing stupidity. The grandeur of the dinner is matched by a
poverty of conversation:
... no poverty of any kind, except of conversation, appeared—but there,

the deficiency was considerable. John Dashwood had not much to say for
himself that was worth hearing, and his wife had still less. But there was
no peculiar disgrace in this, for it was very much the case with the chief
of their visitors, who almost all laboured under one or other of these dis-
qalifications for being agreeable—Want of sense, either natural or
improved—want of elegance—want of spirits—or want of temper.
(55, p. 233)
In the party at Hartfield, Mr Weston and Mrs Elton were pressing

the ever-interesting topics of paternity and marriage, but the total
lack of any subject for conversation in the very good house in Harley
Street is even more marked when the ladies are alone in the drawing-
room:
... for the gentlemen had supplied the discourse with some variety—the
variety of politics, inclosing land, and breaking horses—but then it was
all over; and one subject only engaged the ladies till coffee came in, which
was the comparative heights of Harry Dashwood, and Lady Middleton's
second son William, who were nearly of the same age. (Ibid.)
All there is to talk about is the height of the two little boys, William
not being present to obstruct conversational conjecture. The stupid-
ities and hostilities of the dinner-party continue in the round-game of
flattery:
Had both the children been there, the affair might have been deter-
mined too easily by measuring them at once; but as Harry only was
present, it was all conjectural assertion on both sides, and every body had
a right to be equally positive in their opinion, and to repeat it over and
over again as often as they liked.
The parties stood thus:
The two mothers, though each really convinced that her own son was
the tallest, politely decided in favour of the other.
The two grandmothers, with no less partiality, but more sincerity, were
equally earnest in support of their own descendant.
Lucy, who was hardly less anxious to please one parent than the other,
thought the boys were both remarkably tall for their age, and could not
conceive that there could be the smallest difference in the world between
them; and Miss Steele, with yet greater address gave it, as fast as she
could, in favour of each.
Elinor, having once delivered her opinion on William's side, by which
she offended Mrs. Ferrars and Fanny still more, did not see the necessity
of enforcing it by any farther assertion; and Marianne, when called on for
her's, offended them all, by declaring that she had no opinion to give, as
she had never thought about it. (SS, pp. 233-4)
Straight-faced comedy and elegant form are eloquent. Polite con-

versation, hospitality, rank, leisure and ladies are all censured in the
rapid, matter-of-fact summary which mocks polite nonsense in its
symmetry, and nails the social type in its duplication. (Its extreme
brevity and gracefulness put it at a great distance from Fanny
Burney's loud and lengthy scenes of conflicting humours.) The very
curtness proposes its offhand brevity as the right medium for the
absurd elaboration of polite nothings. In spite of brevity, character is
kept up. Lucy's flattery is intelligent enough to hover in compromise,
while her sister oscillates meaninglessly; Elinor is polite and honest
enough to speak her opinion; Marianne refuses to play. The social
strains of the evening mount, as Elinor compounds her unpopularity
by being sincere on the wrong side, and Marianne offends everyone by
having no opinion at all. The pattern is then repeated, with a varia-
tion, as the gentlemen return from the dining-room, to improve
neither conversations nor tempers. A new and unfortunate subject for
group discourse is discovered in Elinor's screens. Once more everyone
except Elinor, Marianne and Colonel Brandon behaves according to
type (insincerity) and ruling passion (acquisitiveness). The false cere-
mony ends in open attack, tenderness and tears. The breakdown of
nerve and politeness is the right climax to a drama in which high and
low are paraded in the vicious circle of flattery. The mercenary society
pretends it has a heart, then exposes its heartlessness to provoke
Marianne's hysterical loyalties. Miss Morton's landscape is praised
instead of Elinor's screens: 'Do you not think they are something in
Miss Morton's style of painting, ma'am? - She does paint most
delightfully! - How beautifully her last landscape is done!' Subtlety
goes beyond the social criticism which lies on the surface. Mrs Ferrars
answers Marianne's question most lucidly, with 'Miss Morton is Lord
Morton's daughter'; but Jane Austen forces us to see all the implica-
tions of the breakdown of decorum, and of decorum itself, which has
Social Groups 125
at least had the merit of saving Elinor's face. As soon as we start align-
ing our sympathy it is made hard for us to continue to do so. John
Dashwood has precipitated the conflict, because he mistakenly uses
the screens to flatter Elinor and solicit Colonel Brandon's attention.
The party ends with his misplaced ingratiating words to Colonel
Brandon as he disparages Marianne in the attempt to promote the
interests of Elinor:
'She has not such good health as her sister,—she is very nervous,—she has
not Elinor's constitution;—and one must allow that there is something
very trying to a young woman who has been a beauty, in the loss of her
personal attractions. You would not think it perhaps, but Marianne was
remarkably handsome a few months ago; quite as handsome as Elinor.—
Now you see it is all gone.' (SS, p. 237)
Jane Austen's criticism is levelled at the social structure where

flattery is endemic. The flattered become the flatterers, and gross mis-
calculations are made by the calculating.
Jane Austen's satire on vulgarity and mercenariness is not restricted
to the social climbers. The have-nots may be greedy, but the haves
behave as if they were have-nots. The aristocrats are criticized
strongly, both in the dullness of the Dalrymples in Persuasion and the
offensiveness of Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Pride and Prejudice.
Darcy's disdain has to be turned against his own aunt, as well as
against Elizabeth's mother, as she too shows off, flatters and domin-
eers. Lady Catherine's loudness is beautifully audible in the drawing-
room at Rosings, where it is encouraged by her sycophants. Decorum
is fragile and easily broken. The hearts and minds of the characters are
implicitly shown in the broad comedy of manners, and the serious
characters are involved in a complex social response, which the
novelist does not explicitly analyse. As Elizabeth is enjoying herself in
conversation with Colonel Fitzwilliam, who is talking so agreeably 'of
Kent and Hertfordshire, of travelling and staying at home, of new
books and music' that she is better entertained than she has ever been
'in that room before', her hostess is jealous and curious of the unusual
'spirit and flow'. So is Darcy. He just looks curious, but his aunt does
'not scruple to call out' with aristocratic bullying brashness:
'What is that you are saying, Fitzwilliam? What is it you are talking
of? What are you telling Miss Bennet? Let me hear what it is.'
'We are speaking of music, Madam,' said he, when no longer able to
avoid a reply.
'Of music! Then pray speak aloud. It is of all subjects my delight. I
must have my share in the conversation, if you are speaking of music.
There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoy-
ment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I
should have been a great proficient. And so would Anne, if her health had
allowed her to apply. I am confident that she would have performed
delightfully.' (PP, p. 173)
The social collision continues, with Lady Catherine snubbing Eliza-

beth:
'I have told Miss Bennet several times, that she will never play really well,
unless she practises more; and though Mrs. Collins has no instrument, she
is very welcome, as I have often told her, to come to Rosings every day,
and play on the piano forte in Mrs. Jenkinson's room. She would be in
nobody's way, you know, in that part of the house.'
Mr. Darcy looked a little ashamed of his aunt's ill breeding, and made
no answer. (Ibid.)
Mind and sensibility are discriminated, and social leadership

comically displayed. Elizabeth and Darcy talk about musical diffi-
dence as an emblem of social diffidence, to be interrupted by the rude
demands and commands of the hostess, which Elizabeth neatly foils
by returning to the piano. Lady Catherine repeats her inane flattery
of Anne, who "would have been a delightful performer, had her health
allowed her to learn', Darcy neither replies nor shows any response,
and Elizabeth receives the unqualified 'instructions on execution and
taste' with 'all the forbearance of civility'. The clash of manners and
minds is carefully patterned. Once more the group is given a central
subject, that of music. This time we have no rise into unbearable
conflict, because only one person is behaving badly, and the courtesy
of the others makes its own quiet rebuke and preserves the polite sur-
face of the evening. Not until Lady Catherine actually enters Long-
bourn, to offend as a guest just as she has offended as a host, and
threatens Elizabeth's personal life, does it become necessary to breach
decorum and make the elementary intellectual effort to defeat her.
The release of this later conflict in the shrubbery owes something to
the tension and control of the earlier scenes at Rosings. The local
scenes make it clear that decorum and courtesy are expensively
bought, and we are not surprised when the novel comes to show that
the payments cannot be kept up.
Domination and submission, flattery and condescension, rudeness
Social Groups 127
and decorum give symmetry to many groups. The comic criticism of
class and rank is crossed and controlled by a sense of character. If we
are in danger of supposing that Mrs Bennet's bad manners are
accounted for by her low origin, we see Lady Catherine's even greater
offensiveness. If we are in danger of feeling too sharply Elizabeth's
social shame at her parents' behaviour, we see Darcy put through the
same experience. If we come to criticize Darcy's diffidence, we see its
advantage over his aunt's assertiveness. In a novel where pride is a
conspicuous theme, the social groups frequently illustrate its forms
and functions.
There are some forms of social domination, however, which are
shown to be acceptable and even desirable. Jane Austen frequently
tolerates the domination of intelligence and experience. Henry Tilney
enthusiastically instructs Catherine Morland. It is a delicate relation-
ship, since Catherine is weaker in personality and mind than the
energetic and self-confident Emma, who does not easily admit Mr
Knightley's claim to have the right of experience in criticizing her.
The tutorial exchanges between Henry and Catherine are leavened
by her sincerity and his teasing, but Jane Austen is aware that there is
danger in asserting such consistent intellectual victories. Catherine is
charmed by his intelligence and his attractiveness, which are shown
through his 'spirit and flow', in its delicate flirtatiousness, personal
address and light exaggeration. He is charmed, too, by her mallea-
bility, impressionability, good looks and sincerity. The laughter
which often bursts out at her expense can be silenced as he is taken
aback by her fresh feelings. Her honesty is so unusual that her truths
have at times the weight of wit. When she tells him that all she has to
do at home in Fullerton is to go and call on Mrs Allen, 'Mr Tilney was
very much amused. "Only go and call on Mrs Allen !" he repeated.
"What a picture of intellectual poverty!"' When naive openness
neatly arrives at the declaration, 'I cannot speak well enough to be
unintelligible', he applauds her excellent unconscious 'satire on
modern language'. But the balance of power is still in danger of
tipping over too much towards Henry's masterful experience, tutorial
instructiveness and satire, so Jane Austen makes adroit use of his sister,
Eleanor Tilney. She mediates between him and Catherine, good-
humouredly criticizing the critic, *You are more nice than wise',
changing the subject as cleverly as Emma, and to a similarly tactful
end: 'Come, Miss Morland, let us leave him to meditate over our
faults in the utmost propriety of diction, while we praise Udolpho in
whatever terms we like best. It is a most interesting work. You are
fond of that kind of reading?' The dialogue is enlarged to include a
valuable third party. The disarming presence of a sisterly qualification
valuably preserves Catherine and the reader from a sense of Henry's
unrelieved superiority. But Eleanor's touch is gentle, her tone per-
missive: 'We shall get nothing more serious from him now, Miss Mor-
land. He is not in a sober mood. But I do assure you that he must be
entirely misunderstood, if he can ever appear to say an unjust thing
of any woman at all, or an unkind one of me.' Henry's niceties are at
once placed and permitted. The slightly unbalanced duet has been
replaced by a trio, which redresses the balance, through Eleanor
Tilney's not too sedate politeness, information, taste, and humour.
Moreover, the edge is taken off Jane Austen's stridently ironic com-
ments on 'the advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl'. Eleanor
and Henry are more intelligent and experienced than Catherine, but
the reliability of his admiration for Catherine's fresh and sincere feel-
ing is reinforced by his sister's recognition. When he speaks satirically
of Isabella Thorpe's qualities as a sister-in-law, 'Open, candid, artless,
guileless, with affections strong but simple, forming no pretensions,
and knowing no disguise', Eleanor responds with an innuendo that
she knows will not be picked up by Catherine's modesty and sim-
plicity: 'Such a sister-in-law, Henry, I should delight in.' The danger
of dominance passes, and a genuinely friendly group is created. Such
groups are not all that easy to find in Jane Austen's novels.
Jane Austen's heroines are intelligent women, who have to live in
the restricted families and neighbourhoods with which the novels
begin. This limited society is usually enlarged to bring in some new
life, more entertaining, experienced and intelligent. Jane Austen likes
to begin with a dearth of good company. (The only exception is Sense
and Sensibility.) In Nor than ger Abbey Catherine finds good company
in Bath. In Sense and Sensibility the Dashwood household is culti-
vated and even studious, certainly more self-sufficient than most of the
families in which the heroines are born and brought up, but the
additions of Willoughby and Colonel Brandon expand its experience.
In Pride and Prejudice, the effects of intellectual isolation leave their
marks on Mr Bennet, and through him on his daughters, and perhaps
his wife. Darcy and Bingley are valuable additions, and even before
Elizabeth sheds her prejudice against his pride, we can enjoy the con-
versation of Darcy, Bingley and Elizabeth.
Intellectual isolation is Emma's problem. She has dominated her
Social Groups 129
governess, and her father, then loses Miss Taylor's rational, if over-
tolerant, companionship. Emma and Anne Elliot draw our attention
to this form of loneliness which probably did not oppress Jane Austen
herself, living as she did among clever, cultivated, reading and writing
people. But she was not protected from the company of uncongenial
people, as her letters make plain in their many chronicles of unequal
company. This one is characteristically sharp but good tempered:
I am to take the Miss Moores back on Saturday, & when I return I shall
hope to find your pleasant, little, flowing scrawl on the Table.—It will be
a releif to me after playing at Ma'ams—for though I like Miss H. M. as
much as one can at my time of Life after a day's acquaintance, it is uphill
work to be talking to those whom one knows so little. Only one comes
back with me tomorrow, probably Miss Eliza, & I rather dread it. We
shall not have two Ideas in common. She is young, pretty, chattering, &
thinking cheifly (I presume) of Dress, Company, & Admiration.—Mr.
Sanford is to join us at dinner, which will be a comfort, and in the even'g
while your Uncle and Miss Eliza play chess, he shall tell me comical
things & I will laugh at them, which will be a pleasure to both.
(Letters, p. 419)
Like Emma, she found nothing too small to occupy her mind, the
novelist's mind to which nothing human can be alien. On the occasion
when she marks Emma's imagination idling happily on the doorstep
of the draper's shop, she perhaps forgets momentarily that her heroine
often finds life tedious and boring. When we observe Emma at home,
in the tedium of her family life, tactfully soothing her father with
patient gentle words and backgammon, we are seeing something very
important in the societies and society of Jane Austen's novels - the
strength of family life.
Family life in Jane Austen's world is 'a la mortal, finely chequered*.
Living with other people in close communities, even in large houses,
has many problems. (Jane Austen knows that it is much more difficult
in small houses. Fanny finds Portsmouth almost unbearable, and Mrs
Collins has to take great pains to see little of her husband.) Family life
is very difficult but family ties are very strong. No one lives alone. No
one leaves home, except for the navy, adoption or marriage. There is
one divorce, and a large number of incompatibilities. Jane Austen
does not write novels which simply assume and describe such diffi-
culties and such toleration. Her insight into individual character and
social codes goes beyond assumptions and descriptions to suggest
explanations. Since she presents individuals, not averages or sections,
what may seem intolerably rigid in families and marriages, contem-
plated in the gross, is imagined and so elucidated.
The restless motion of the novels makes plain the satisfactions and
restrictions of repose. Life is difficult for Elizabeth Bennet, Emma,
and Anne Elliot, who are all daughters afflicted by the difficulty of
living with mothers or fathers. (Jane Austen attends sufficiently to
heredity to describe one parent of intelligent heroines as gifted: Mr
Bennet, Emma's dead mother, and Anne's dead mother.) Jane Austen
told her family that Mr Woodhouse died two years after Emma's
marriage to Mr Knightley, but the release happened only in that
pleasant limbo beyond the novel with which Jane Austen gratified her
friends' yearnings for a fictional afterlife. Within the novel, Emma
has no choice. Elizabeth and Anne are able to leave home when they
marry, but till then they must stay with parents as uncongenial as Mrs
Bennet and Sir Walter Elliot. To generalize Jane Austen's social situa-
tions is to neglect her particularities. Emma's father, though able to
provide neither rational nor playful companionship - no wonder she
needs to make matches - is affectionate and sweet-tempered. Emma
feels no distaste for his paternal fussing. He calls her 'a fairy' and gives
her the memorable advice to warm herself thoroughly before going to
bed. It seems an anachronistic error to see him, as Ronald Blythe
does,18 as 'a menace*. He has had his own way, as Mr Blythe says, but
only in little things. Even his weaker daughter has managed not
only to get married, but to prefer her strong husband to her feeble
father. Emma is never in any real danger of giving up Mr Knightley.
On the whole, the parents in these novels are unpredatory, unpossess-
ive, even pre-Oedipal, and it is probably Mr Woodhouse's affection-
ate fussiness and hypochondria which make it tempting to exaggerate
his threat to procreation.
General Tilney, Mrs Bennet, and Sir Walter Elliot are tolerated by
their children. Eleanor and Henry Tilney are patient and compliant,
but kept so well under as to make Henry's resistance almost incredible.
Elizabeth Bennet is able to relieve her feelings and maintain decorum
because her mother doesn't understand her sometimes impatient wit.
Mrs Bennet commends Jane's charms by referring to the gentleman
who wrote some pretty verses 'on her': * "And so ended his affection,"
said Elizabeth impatiently. "There has been many a one, I fancy,
overcome in the same way, I wonder who first discovered the efficacy
18
See his introduction to the Penguin edition of Emma (Harmondsworth,
1966), p. 15.
Social Groups 131
of poetry in driving away love",' a remark which silences her mother,
and interests Darcy, who replies with a quotation from Twelfth Night
suitably adapted and assimilated. Elizabeth trembles when her mother
speaks, and again when she is silent, since she may speak again, and
wit isn't always available to cover embarrassment and silence. Like
Emma and Knightley, Elizabeth Bennet is socially proficient, but not
always in the mood or spirits to handle testing situations. Her rela-
tionship with her father, like Emma's with Mr Woodhouse, or Elinor
Dashwood's with her mother, shows Jane Austen's cool and realistic
anticipation of the grotesque parent-child reversals in Dickens's Little
Dorrit and Our Mutual Friend.
Within the drama of the social group, good talk is more common
than congenial company. Mr Elliot admits that Anne has a right to be
'nice' about the company she keeps, but protests against her high
standards when she admits to being too proud to defer to the grand
and dull Dalrymples. Her definition of a precise social ideal is
answered by his defence of the second-best, well expressed in an inter-
esting mixture of sincerity, compliment, pragmatic worldliness and
insight:
'My idea of good company, Mr. Elliot, is the company of clever, well-
informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I
call good company/
'You are mistaken,' said he gently, 'that is not good company, that is the
best. Good company requires only birth, education and manners, and with
regard to education is not very nice. Birth and good manners are essential;
but a little learning is by no means a dangerous thing in good company, on
the contrary, it will do very well.' (P, p. 150)
Most of the company in the novels of Jane Austen is merely good

company. At times it sinks below Mr Elliot's standard. But each novel
ends with a movement out of old company into new, in the best com-
pany of congenial married lovers, and this conclusion is not a facile
inflation. It depends on the foretaste of good company within the
novels. We end with a sense of renewed community, which supports
and strengthens the hope for the good marriage and the next genera-
tion. Fiction's happy endings may be inflated, as they often are in
Dickens, or invoke compromises of fable and likelihood, as in Thack-
eray's The Newcomes, or hesitate on the verge of optimism as in
Middlemarch. It is not Jane Austen's way to expand the novel's
horizons at its end, like some of her Victorian successors, with bigger
and bolder statements of vision. Her endings, however, while resting
on the invocation of the best we have seen within the novel, do stress
hope and a new order. Each ending, therefore, does do a little more
than make an end of this story. It also suggests a beginning.
Northanger Abbey ends with a joke about the reader's anticipation
'that we are all hastening to felicity together' and another about
Eleanor Tilney's husband having been earlier introduced through his
washing-bills. There is a little seriousness in each joke. Jane Austen
does not end with single instances of married felicity. And she does like
to base her hopes on truly glimpsed possibility, personal and social.
The happy couple are seen off in company. We have already seen the
good company of Eleanor, Henry and Catherine, and it is now joined,
not just by a shadowy young, rich, and noble bridegroom who faciliti-
tates the happy ending for Catherine and Henry, but with another
marriage to help on the sense of good neighbourhood. 'Everybody
smiled/ says the author, and the anonymous everyone can include not
only the stable, ordinary contentedness of Catherine's parents, but the
contemporary joys of her own generation.
At the end of Sense and Sensibility, the sisters' happy marriages are
united, as their misfortunes have always been. But Jane Austen gently
underlines the sense of community:
Between Barton and Delaford, there was that constant communication

which strong family affection would naturally dictate;—and among the
merits and the happiness of Elinor and Marianne, let it not be ranked as
the least considerable, that though sisters, and living almost within sight
of each other, they could live without disagreement between themselves,
or producing coolness between their husbands. (SS, p. 380)
It calmly glances back to a scene of action where most of the marriages

have been unhappy, tolerable, or disgracefully congenial, like the
union of John and Fanny Dashwood. Though its tones are the typi-
cally caustic tones of the most sardonic narrator of all the novels, the
cool irony is invoked in the interests of affirming harmony. The happy
ending has a stronger foundation than that of a single couple. But it
is not simply the duplicated coupling of 'an old play'. It has been laid
down in our experience of the grave and playful conversations of the
two couples.19
19
In fane Austen's Literary Manuscripts, op. cit., p. 56, Brian Southam has
suggested that the reference to the conversation Elinor missed when she
regrets Norland may be a loose end left over in revision since it is
explained by nothing in the novel. But it surely refers to Edward Ferrars.
We don't hear this conversation, but we hear about it.
Social Groups 133
These two socially hopeful endings may reflect no more than Jane
Austen's own experience of an actively congenial family life. But
the sense of social renewal and expansion grows unmistakably as
her fiction matures. Hers is not a darkening vision, even though the
three later heroines steadily contemplate solitude before they are for-
tunately allowed to deserve love. Pride and Prejudice ends with
good-tempered tolerance and reconciliation. Jane Austen expressly
disclaims revolutions and conversions. Things are a little improved in
the Bennet household, Mr Bennet is drawn to Pemberley, informally,
'when he was least expected', Catherine and Mary improve, for con-
vincingly practical reasons. The characters of Wickham and Lydia
'suffer no revolution', remain within the orbit of the Darcy and
Bingley aid, generally at a convenient distance. We can imagine the
unmiraculous reconciliations with Miss Bingley, paying off 'every
arrear of civility to Elizabeth' and being 'almost' as attentive to Darcy
as before, and Lady Catherine de Bourgh descending to test the con-
duct of Mrs Darcy and inspect the pollution of Pemberley. Threats
are banished, and when Bingley buys an estate within thirty miles of
Pemberley, there is stability and civilization in a small company of
friends. Jane Austen's last sentence quietens any discomfort at the
admission of Lady Catherine, the banishment of the Wickhams, and
the apparent neglect of Mrs Bennet. This harmony is nice but not
proud : 'With the Gardiners, they were always on the most intimate
terms. Darcy, as well as Elizabeth, really loved them; and they were
both ever sensible of the wannest gratitude towards the persons who,
by bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them.'
(PP, p. 388) The novels end with a deliberated and impartial gesture
to social tact.
The last three novels give similar support to the happy ending.
Mansfield Park cannot quite dispel the guilt and misery which other
pens are left to dwell on, but which Jane Austen's pen needs to
mention. The last pages include the marvellous detail of Sir Thomas's
relief at casting off Mrs Norris, who had begun to seem to him 'like a
part of himself, that must be borne for ever'. If we feel the ruthlessness
of Mansfield's dismissals it is not because they have not been most
thoroughly imagined. Intransigent elements are banished, but the
ending is more than just a fairy-tale. The community which Fanny
has grown to value, and love, uncritically, has been improved. Its
adoption of the little girl from Portsmouth had been condescending
and unrealistic, because Sir Thomas and Mrs Norris hoped to let her
make no difference, while herself feeling different. Rank is not allowed
to keep its circles dosed, and the novel's conclusion once more cele-
brates a refreshed and strengthened community. It owes improvement
to the heroine, and gives her the home and the good company she
deserves.
Emma's comic ending calmly permits Mr Elton to join the hands of
Mr Knightley and Emma, in an unfussed recognition of his clerical
function. Like the other weddings in the novels, and the weddings of
Jane Austen's own society, this one is so quiet that Mrs Elton has to
have the finery 'detailed by her husband'. The last quavering choric
notes of the Eltons and the never-seen Selina are overpowered by 'the
wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of
true friends who witnessed the ceremony'.
Friends surround Captain Wentworth and Anne Elliot at the end
of eight years of waiting. Brian Southam *° points out that in altering
the last page of Persuasion Jane Austen added a paragraph which
'extends the reference to Mrs Smith and links her more closely to the
fortunes of Anne and Wentworth'. His suggestion that Jane Austen
felt 'some uneasiness about Mrs Smith's place in the story' may be
right, but the extended reference is perfectly in character with her
usual sense of an ending. Here too she uses and emphasizes the sense
of community and friendship which is more strongly present in this
novel than in any other. It is felt by Anne in the happy household and
marriage of the Harvilles, in their warm and informal style of hospi-
tality, and in the signs of a group of affectionate, congenial, and
helpful people, regretted earlier by Anne, for 'these would have been
her friends'. At the end, they are to be her friends. She feels wryly that
her contribution to the new community is unequal, consisting only of
Mrs Smith and Lady Russell. Jane Austen liked to link two commun-
ities, joining the best of the old in support and renewal. The end of the
novel reaches out most imaginatively to a future. In the penultimate
chapter, the lovers have their first private talk in the novel, and look
ahead and back. Jane Austen creates an elaborate, ambitious and
moving setting for the happy couple, who are seen together amongst
the usual crowd. Their isolation and its business set them apart, as an
ideal pair standing for universal hopes of love, yet place them as real
inhabitants of the hubbub of the town. It is a quieter anticipation of
the ending of Dickens's Little Dorrit, which may have unconsciously
20
Op. cit., p. 97. Mary Lascelles earlier discussed the development of Mrs
Smith, op. cit., pp. 192-4.-4.
Social Groups 135
recollected this modest precedent. Jane Austen does not attempt the
sublime, but records happiness:
There they exchanged again those feelings and those promises which had
once before seemed to secure every thing, but which had been followed by
so many, many years of division and estrangement. There they returned
again into the past, more exquisitely happy, perhaps, in their re-union,
than when it had been first projected; more tender, more tried, more
fixed in a knowledge of each other's character, truth, and attachment;
more equal to act, more justified in acting. And there, as they slowly
paced the gradual ascent, heedless of every group around them, seeing
neither sauntering politicians, bustling house-keepers, flirting girls, nor
nursery-maids and children, they could indulge in those retrospections
and acknowledgements, and especially in those explanations of what had
directly preceded the present moment, which were so poignant and so
ceaseless in interest. All the little variations of the last week were gone
through; and of yesterday and to-day there could scarcely be an end. ,
(?, pp. 240-1)
Had Jane Austen been versed in the final resonances of Victorian

novel-endings, she might have placed this triumph at the end as a
valediction to the reader. The actual ending typically provides a
firmer, more specific sense of the good society. As Anne finds her best
company at last, the conclusion of the novel invokes a real commun-
ity, and places love and marriage, uncomplacently, in the real world:
His profession was all that could ever make her friends wish that tender-
ness less; the dread of a future war all that could dim her sunshine. She
gloried in being a sailor's wife, but she must pay the tax of quick alarm
for belonging to that profession which is, if possible, more distinguished
in its domestic virtue than in its national importance. (P, p. 252)
VI
Properties and Possessions
Ever since Fielding designed an appropriate dwelling for Mr All-

worthy in Tom Jones, the houses in fiction have been carefully
planned and furnished. Allworthy's house is the best of Gothic, and
can rival the Grecian style. Its situation is sufficiently low to be
sheltered from the north-east by an oak grove, sufficiently elevated to
yield fine prospects. Its lawns and tree-clumps are landscaped by man;
its cascades, lake and meandering river by nature. The rooms in the
front enjoy views of the park, waters, ruined abbey, villages, animals
and a cloud-topped ridge of high mountains. Its river reaches a sea,
its mountains are lost in sky. Extensive without, it is commodious
within. House and environs possess unity and variety, look out on
civilization and nature, are products of both but owe more to nature
than to art. The view was drawn, with a fine balance of sobriety and
wit, from Glastonbury Tor, near Fielding's birthplace, and the house
probably draws on features of Ralph Allen's house at Prior Park, near
Bath, and Sharpham Park, near Glastonbury, combined and varied by
the novelist's natural powers and artifice.
Jane Austen must have remembered1 these eloquent advantages
when accommodating Darcy at Pemberley, and Fielding's principles
of ironic symbolism may also have determined the choice of North-
1
The sympathetic habitat begins, amusingly, in the fragment of burlesque,
Evelyn, Volume the Third, MW, ed. R. W. Chapman (Oxford, 1954). The
Webbs' residence in the idyllic village of Evelyn is described with geo-
metrical accuracy, as being geometrically exact in its order:
It was in the exact centre of a small circular paddock, which was
enclosed by a regular paling, & bordered with a plantation of Lombardy
poplars, & Spruce firs alternatively placed in three rows. A gravel walk
ran through this beautiful Shrubbery, and as the remainder of the
paddock was unincumbered with any other Timber, the surface of it
perfectly even & smooth, and grazed by four white Cows which were
disposed at equal distances from each other, the whole appearance
was uncommonly striking, (p. 181)
136
Properties and Possessions 137
anger Abbey for General Tilney, Rosings for Lady Catherine de
Bourgh, Mansfield Park for the Bertrams and Sotherton for Mrs
Rushworth. Fielding's comic irony held Allworthy's great house and
prospects at arm's length from the reader's judgement, dangerously
grand, suspiciously eloquent, an ideal environment for an ideal or
idealizing human occupant. Jane Austen's comic imagination founded
her sympathetic habitats more firmly, more craftily, and yet more
naturally in her fictions, by using her characters as architects and
builders. It is their insight and projection which make the houses so
sympathetic. The pathetic fallacy is extended and civilized. Her
symbolic houses are conspicuous instances in an art inclined always
to merge symbol in surface, but their symbolism is an aspect of her
characters. It may well have been her assimilations and variations of
Fielding which consolidated the symbolic environment as a tradition
in the novel. Fielding's design is passed on through Jane Austen to the
architects of Thrushcross Grange, Wuthering Heights, Gateshead,
Thornfield Manor, Ferndean, Lowood, the House of Usher, Lowick,
Gardencourt, Poynton and Castle de Stancy. Throughout the nine-
teenth century houses grew more like their owners, in style and
contents.
Jane Austen placed the sympathetic habitat within the minds of her
characters but its existence is not wholly subjective. She invented the
suitably malleable material which made the house the right kind of
shell for its occupant. She saw environment as a case both forming and
formed by people. Her houses are animated, or fail to be animated, by
the life led within their walls and beneath their roofs. They are
restored, improved, or left unimproved, by likely people. Households,
as well as owners, partake of this life of houses. The houses accommo-
date guests as well as hosts. Homes are significantly commodious or
restricted, old or modern, elegant or heavy, big or small. They are
good shelters, hives with isolated cells, prisons or protections. They
stifle or facilitate life, welcome or fail to welcome the visitor. Roofs
and walls allow for growth or enclose life. Houses are beautiful or
ugly, but their beauty is more than skin-deep. In Jane Austen gardens
are the woods where destinies are found and lost, in small evergreen
shrubberies, ordered wildernesses, by dangerous ha-has and gates, in
damp grounds and old temples, by rich lawns and fertile waters.
Houses and grounds begin to be fully animated in Northanger
Abbey. It may have been the demands of a plot requiring a Gothic
abbey with an unGothic atmosphere which developed Jane Austen's
imaginative architecture. We see Northanger through Catherine
Morland's eyes and imagination. At first sight Northanger is a dis-
appointment to her, her 'passion for ruins', second only to her 'passion
for Henry Tilney', having formed great expectations from Mrs Rad-
cliffe's castles in Italy. (She has already been disappointed by not
going to Blaize Castle.) Her first impressions are obscure:
As they drew near the end of their journey, her impatience for a sight of
the abbey—for some time suspended by his conversation on subjects very
different—returned in full force, and every bend in the road was expected
with solemn awe to afford a glimpse of its massy walls of grey stone, rising
amidst a grove of ancient oaks, with the last beams of the sun playing in
beautiful splendour on its high Gothic windows. But so low did the build-
ing stand, that she found herself passing through the great gates of the
lodge into the very grounds of Northanger, without having discerned even
an antique chimney.
She knew not that she had any right to be surprized, but there was a
something in this mode of approach which she certainly had not expected.
To pass between lodges of a modern appearance, to find herself with such
ease in the very precincts of the abbey, and driven so rapidly along a
smooth, level road of fine gravel, without obstacle, alarm or solemnity
of any kind, struck her as odd and inconsistent. She was not long at
leisure however for such considerations. A sudden scud of rain driving
full in her face, made it impossible for her to observe any thing further,
and fixed all her thoughts on the welfare of her new straw bonnet:—and
she was actually under the Abbey walls, was springing, with Henry's
assistance, from the carriage, was beneath the shelter of the old porch,
and had even passed on to the hall, where her friend and the General
were waiting to welcome her, without feeling one aweful foreboding of
future misery to herself, or one moment's suspicion of any past scenes of
horror being acted within the solemn edifice. The breeze had not seemed
to waft the sighs of the murdered to her; it had wafted nothing worse than
a thick mizzling rain; and having given a good shake to her habit, she was
ready to be shewn into the common drawing-room, and capable of con-
sidering where she was.
An abbey!—yes, it was delightful to be really in an abbey!—but she
doubted, as she looked round the room, whether any thing within her
observation, would have given her the consciousness. The furniture was in
all the profusion and elegance of modern taste. The fire-place, where she
had expected the ample width and ponderous carving of former times,
was contracted to a Rumford, with slabs of plain though handsome
marble, and ornaments over it of the prettiest English china. The
windows, to which she looked with peculiar dependence, from having
heard the General talk of his preserving them in their Gothic form with
reverential care, were yet less what her fancy had portrayed. To be sure,
the pointed arch was preserved—the form of them was Gothic—they
might be even casements—but every pane was so large, so clear, so light!
To an imagination which had hoped for the smallest divisions, and the
heaviest stone-work, for painted glass, dirt and cobwebs, the difference
was very distressing. (NA, pp. 161-2)
When she finds herself inside, the furniture is too modern, the light
too bright, the walls too clean, even the authentic windows disturb-
ingly clear. She later finds the restorations too effective, and the
servants' quarters too convenient As an abbey it is lacking in mystery,
insufficiently sinister. But Catherine's passion works hard on its possi-
bilities, aided by her real insight which has already detected something
wrong in her host and his family's life. Northanger turns out after all
to be the right kind of dwelling for Jane Austen's version of Montoni,
whose modem tyrannies are every bit as bad and potent as those
imagined by Mrs Radcliffe in The Mysteries of Udolpho, and who
does bring 'misery* to the heroine. Host and guest are set at cross-
purposes in a place designed to mislead them both. What General
Tilney offers is as obscure to his guest as her expectations - in all
senses - are unknown to him. He is the owner of the Abbey, his auto-
cracy ordering his household, demanding its prompt attendance in
the elegant dining-room on the stroke of five, keeping a good table,
ingratiatingly belittling his possessions but demanding admiration for
contrivance and property, and evicting his guest the minute he
discovers her unsuitability for his purposes. Hospitality can be no
more effectively and thoroughly breached, even in the Gothic novels
where the heroines were lodged in a solitary and gloomy room. The
ironic symbolism of Jane Austen's house is a comic but bitter account
of a family and its life, a host and his predatory entertainments.
The symbolism of the house depends on its contents as well as its
structure. Northanger Abbey first provides objects for Catherine's
literary imagination to embellish. Houses are shells, but not empty
shells, and Jane Austen provides an inner coating of things which joins
people with building. She goes beyond Fielding to create a house
filled with expressive objects. The things in Northanger Abbey are set
in action as dramatic properties, but are so thoroughly imagined in
relation to the people who own and use them that they invoke a
variety of human responses, answering to human imagination, needs,
appetites and wishes. Almost everything in the Abbey carries the
imprint of the improving hand, but Jane Austen's solid sense of like-
lihood prevents her from making merely melodramatic furniture and
fittings. The improving hand isn't only the grasping hand of General
Tilney, but the neutrally recorded hand of his father. Some part is
played by the sensible housekeeping of Eleanor, who decided to keep
the old chest in Catherine's room as a useful container for 'hats and
bonnets'. But General Tilney's guardianship and responsibility are
emphasized. He shows Catherine the disappointing rooms and their
contents. Having hoped 'for the smallest divisions, and the heaviest
stone-work, for painted glass, dirt and cobwebs', she finds the un-
stained window-panes, despite their arches, too large. Her self-
deprecating host thinks she is looking for more opulence, not more
antiquity, and his promise of fine gilding elsewhere is interrupted only
by his passion for punctuality at meals. As Catherine gets ready for
dinner in her room, she is disappointed by the papered walls, antici-
pating the future fictional occasion when her fastidious descendant,
Henry James's Mrs Gereth, is kept awake by the wallpaper of Water-
bath, having been accustomed to the walls of Poynton, unsullied by
any scrap of pasted paper.
Jane Austen dramatizes her heroine's attentiveness to the first
object that catches her attention, the 'immense heavy chest' which
looks so antique:
She advanced and examined it closely: it was of cedar, curiously inlaid

with some darker wood, and raised, about a foot from the ground, on a
carved stand of the same. The lock was silver, though tarnished from age;
at each end were the imperfect remains of handles also of silver, broken
perhaps prematurely by some strange violence; and, on the centre of the
lid, was a mysterious cypher, in the same metal. Catherine bent over it
intently, but without being able to distinguish any thing with certainty.
She could not, in whatever direction she took it, believe the last letter to
be a T; and yet that it should be anything else in that house was a circum-
stance to raise no common degree of astonishment. If not originally
their's, by what strange events could it have fallen into the Tilney family?
(NA, pp. 163-4)
This is the first of Catherine's necessary object-lessons. The heavy

old chest is eloquent of ordinary life and ordinary likelihood: it opens,
after her strenuous efforts, to reveal the most innocent linen, 'a white
cotton counterpane, properly folded, reposing at one end of the chest
in undisputed possession'. The object seems to flout her by its very
blandness. In creating this sly suggestiveness, Jane Austen draws on a
mild comic animism which is found less often in the novels than in her
letters, where the play of comic imagination is free to make the non-
sensical jokes that intimacy will tolerate and even enjoy:
The Tables are come, & give general contentment. I had not expected that
they would so perfectly suit the fancy of us all three, or that we should so
well agree in the disposition of them; but nothing except their own surface
can have been smoother;—The two ends put together form our constant
Table for everything, & the centre peice stands exceedingly well under
the glass; holds a great deal most commodiously, without looking
awkwardly.—They are both covered with green baize & send their best
Love.—The Pembroke has got its destination by the sideboard, & my
mother has great delight in keeping her money & papers locked up.—
The little Table which used to stand there, has most conveniently taken
itself off into the best bed-room.... (Letters, pp. 82-3)
In Northanger Abbey Jane Austen seems to remember Don

Quixote, archetypal mis-imaginer. She makes Catherine follow up
'the adventure of the chest' with the second adventure of the 'high,
old-fashioned black cabinet'. It impresses her as having been strangely
lying in wait, unobserved in its alcove during her first inspection of
the room. It also seems mysteriously reminiscent of the ebony cabinet
in Henry Tilney's Gothic parody. It does not fit the object in Henry's
tale exactly, as Catherine's candour has to admit: 'It was not abso-
lutely ebony and gold; but it was Japan, black and yellow Japan of
the handsomest kind; and as she held her candle, the yellow had very
much the effect of gold.' She is observant, as well as honest, and this
object is also described minutely, as she examines it minutely. So also
are the all-too-clearly discriminated contents of its drawers, discovered
with chagrin in the light of day to be bills listing 'Shirts, stockings,
cravats and waistcoats', items of expenditure on 'letters, hair-powder,
shoe-string and breeches-ball', together with the larger paper enclos-
ing the rest, the farrier's bill for poulticing a chestnut mare. The
inventory of everyday life joins with the natural contents of the chest
to chasten the heroine's imagination. Catherine feels rebuked as a
corner of the chest 'catches her eye', in another mildly animistic stroke
of comic play. But a third trial by objects awaits her in the furniture
of the deceased mother's room. Instead of the Radcliffean objects of
her book-lined imagination (like the black veil which has arrested her
earlier in the novel) what shocks her is a large well-dusted room with
'a bright Bath stove, mahogany wardrobes and neatly-painted chairs,
on which the warm beams of a western sun gaily poured through two
sash windows'.
The irony makes a neat reversal, for the objects are indeed startling.
Most of the things in the Abbey are sinister too in their modern
fashion. The decaying part of the quadrangle has been pulled down to
make room for new offices without any thought of 'uniformity of
architecture'. The subdued emblem of restoration looks ahead to
George Eliot's Daniel Deronda and to Thomas Hardy's symbolism of
aesthetic unity in A Laodicean, his Victorian version of Northanger
Abbey, complete with sympathetic habitat and romantic heroine.
The General's improving hand* has made some of those changes
which cause Catherine 'almost' to 'rave'. The objects in his house are
the instruments of display and solicitation. He offers the breakfast
set:
He was enchanted by her approbation of his taste, confessed it to be neat

and simple, thought it right to encourage the manufacture of his country;
and for his part, to his uncritical palate, the tea was as well flavoured
from the clay of Staffordshire, as from that of Dresden or Seve. But this
was quite an old set, purchased two years ago. The manufacture was much
improved since that time; he had seen some beautiful specimens when last
in town, and had he not been perfectly without vanity of that kind, he
might have been tempted to order a new set. He trusted, however, that an
opportunity might ere long occur of selecting one—though not for him-
self. (NA, p. 175)
Every single word of the General's humble and pastoral apology is

false. In his own house, and in Henry's interestingly incomplete
Parsonage, he uses things and places to flatter himself and the hoped-
for heiress. If the heroine is wrong about her host, he is equally wrong
about his guest. Neither of them is, however, completely mistaken. He
is a villain, and she is the heroine. If he is proffering and praising
things for the purpose of his imaginative desires, so is she. And she is
not entirely wrong about the objects in the story. The portrait of Mrs
Tilney which hangs significantly in Eleanor's room, and not in the
drawing-room, is scarcely conspicuous on its first appearance, but that
'mild and pensive countenance' is highly expressive in retrospect. It
is unlike the mysterious painting in Henry's parody, but its echo is not
simply dissonant. The twists and turns of burlesque and bathos,
parody and surprise, are perfectly matched in the complex behaviour
of the objects.
It seems significant that the single object in the Abbey which is in
no way associated with General Tilney is a hyacinth, the only sign of
spring and natural growth at Northanger Abbey. One of those small
indexes of the advancing year which Jane Austen places so discreetly
into the action, it is mentioned briefly but is not visually present. The
hyacinth is part of Catherine's aesthetic advance in appreciation, and
is associated with Eleanor Tilney's nature. It is brought into the
breakfast conversation by Catherine's desire to change the subject:
"What beautiful hyacinths!—I have just learnt to love a hyacinth.'

'And how might you learn?—By accident or argument?'
"Your sister taught me; I cannot tell how. Mrs. Allen used to take pains,
year after year, to make me like them; but I never could, till I saw them
the other day in Milsom-street; I am naturally indifferent about flowers.'
'But now you love a hyacinth. So much the better. You have gained a
new source of enjoyment, and it is well to have as many holds upon
happiness as possible. Besides, a taste for flowers is always desirable in
your sex, as a means of getting you out of doors, and tempting you to more
frequent exercise than you would otherwise take. And though the love of a
hyacinth may be rather domestic, who can tell, the sentiment once raised,
but you may in time come to love a rose?' (NA, p. 174)
The object is embedded in the natural flow of talk. So also is the other
innocent object in Catherine's adventures with things, the fine netting
cotton to be matched by Isabella which she hopes to hear of in her
friend's letter, only to be disappointed by a grimmer tale of prices and
values.
Northanger Abbey was a splendid environment for Jane Austen's
object-making imagination. In Sense and Sensibility she continues to
play with the device of appropriate things in appropriate places,
always locating description in the mind of her characters. Places and
objects are animated as they become prominent to people, and are
proportioned by individual viewpoint. The novel begins with Nor-
land, so it is never described; its objects are invoked only as they
become subjects of conversation, as objects of individual response. In
the second chapter, the abstract nature of John and Fanny Dash-
wood's mean acquisitiveness is made plain through their duet about
money. There is a penultimate diminution as we move from the small-
est sum to 'some little present of furniture* which is made even less
by being unspecified. Even this is transformed into a minus quantity,
as Fanny reminds John that Mrs Dashwood will be taking off 'all the
china, plate, and linen' of Stanhill, her former home:
'Her house will therefore be almost completely fitted up as soon as she

takes it.'
"That is a material consideration undoubtedly. A valuable legacy
indeed! And yet some of the plate would have been a very pleasant
addition to our own stock here.'
'Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome, in my opinion,
for any place they can ever afford to live in.' (SS, p. 13)
Jane Austen's wit is never quieter in its damage than in the line
'That is a material consideration undoubtedly.' The theme of material
considerations permeates the society of the novel. It is an environment
in which sense and sensibility are formed, tested, falsified, or im-
proved.
In Marianne's enthusiastic nostalgia, Norland is curiously unspeci-
fic, invoked through its 'dead leaves', and is as vague in her raptures
as in Elinor's refusal to be moved by them. Compared with the colours
and motions of Shelley's autumnal rapture,2 the leaves are imprecisely
felt, small indexes of Marianne's unobservant and stereotyped feeling
for nature:
'Oh!' cried Marianne, 'with what transporting sensations have I
formerly seen them fall! How have I delighted, as I walked, to see them
driven in showers about me by the wind! What feelings have they, the
season, the air altogether inspired! Now there is no one to regard them.
They are seen only as a nuisance, swept hastily off, and driven as much as
possible from the sight.'
'It is not every one,' said Elinor, 'who has your passion for dead leaves.'
(SS, pp. 87-8)
Marianne's response to nature lacks both the precision and the open-
ness of the more rational romanticism of Fanny Price and Anne Elliot.
But vague though it is, Marianne's sensibility rebukes the insensibili-
ties of John and Fanny Dashwood. When John boasts about the plans
for Fanny's new greenhouse and flower-garden which are to replace
the 'old thorns' and 'old walnut trees', Elinor prudently decides not
to tell her sister. The relative lack of possessiveness and materialism
in Mrs Dashwood and her daughters is shown in the impetuous choice
of Barton Cottage. They decide to move before they have seen their
new home, sending their possessions round by sea - another small
detail which deprives John Dashwood of any opportunity to help, and
shows Jane Austen's thoroughness of imagination. No object is too
small for the author's providential care as author. When the family
arrives in Barton, there is a minutely detailed description, from which
one could draw a plan:
A small green court was the whole of its demesne in front; and a neat
wicket gate admitted them into it.
8
The Ode to the West Wind' was published in 1820.
As a house, Barton Cottage, though small, was comfortable and com-
pact; but as a cottage it was defective, for the building was regular, the
roof was tiled, the window shutters were not painted green, nor were the
walls covered with honeysuckles. A narrow passage led directly through
the house into the garden behind. On each side of the entrance was a
sitting room, about sixteen feet square; and beyond them were the offices
and the stairs. Four bed-rooms and two garrets formed the rest of the
house. It had not been built many years and was in good repair. In com-
parison of Norland, it was poor and small indeed!—but the tears which
recollection called forth as they entered the house were soon dried away.
(SS, p. 28)
The environment is important as it is received by the individual

experience. The smallness of the house invokes various responses: Mrs
Dashwood's impractical plans for improvement, Elinor's controlled
rejection of the need for a new grate in the spare bed-chamber, Mr
Palmer's rude criticism of the low-pitched roof and Willoughby's
speech about the cottage which protests a romantic disregard of great
possessions, and is typical of him in its glib and superficial reaction. He
means what he says, but his sensibility is quite as unreliable as insin-
cerity:
'You would rob it of its simplicity by imaginary improvement! and this

dear parlour, in which our acquaintance first began, and in which so many
happy hours have been since spent by us together, you would degrade to
the condition of a common entrance, and every body would be eager to
pass through the room which has hitherto contained within itself, more
real accommodation and comfort than any other apartment of the hand-
somest dimensions in the world could possibly afford.' (SS, pp. 73-4)
Even Robert Ferrars, the essential fool of the novel, makes his contri-
bution :
'For my own part,' said he, 'I am excessively fond of a cottage; there
is always so much comfort, so much elegance about them. And I protest,
if I had any money to spare, I should buy a little land and build one
myself, within a short distance of London, where I might drive myself
down at any time, and collect a few friends about me and be happy. I
advise every body who is going to build, to build a cottage. My friend
Lord Courtland came to me the other day on purpose to ask my advice,
and laid before me three different plans of Bonomi's. I was to decide on
the best of them. "My dear Courtland," said I, immediately throwing
them all into the fire, "do not adopt either of them, but by all means build
a cottage." And that, I fancy, will be the end of it.
'Some people imagine that there can be no accommodations, no space
in a cottage; but this is all a mistake. I was last month at my friend
Elliott's near Dartford. Lady Elliott wished to give a dance. "But how
can it be done?" said she; "my dear Ferrars, do tell me how it is to be
managed. There is not a room in this cottage that will hold ten couple,
and where can the supper be?" / immediately saw that there could be no
difficulty in it, so I said, "My dear Lady Elliott, do not be uneasy. The
dining parlour will admit eighteen couple with ease; card-tables may be
placed in the drawing-room; the library may be open for tea and other
refreshments; and let the supper be set out in the saloon." Lady Elliott
was delighted with the thought. We measured the dining-room, and
found it would hold exactly eighteen couple, and the affair was arranged
precisely after my plan. So that, in fact, you see, if people do but know
how to set about it, every comfort may be as well enjoyed in a cottage as
in the most spacious dwelling.' (SS, pp. 251-2)
The variants of materialism are largely demonstrated through

things of price and value. Marianne's protested disregard of wealth is
tested by Elinor's quotation of real prices and incomes, as she com-
pares her smaller Vealth' with Marianne's larger 'competence'. There
is a crucial side-scene in the jeweller's shop, Gray's, in Sackville Street.
As we are carefully told, Elinor is there to negotiate 'the exchange of
a few old-fashioned jewels of her mother' and John Dashwood 'to
bespeak Fanny a seal'. Robert Ferrars flourishes his self-regarding and
trivial materialism in his nonsensical dallyings with toothpick-cases,
chronicled by Jane Austen in appropriate pomp and circumstance:
At last the affair was decided. The ivory, the gold, and the pearls, all
received their appointment, and the gentleman having named the last
day on which his existence could be continued without the possession of
the tooth-pick case, drew on his gloves with leisurely care.... (SS, p. 221)
Miss Steele's attentiveness to objects is silly, but she is more con-

cerned than Robert Ferrars with the world outside. Her trivial-
mindedness is curious, and takes stock of Marianne's price and value.
'Minute observation and minute curiosity' are chronicled through
their inventory of dress, number of gowns, cost of washing, annual
allowance, value and make of gown, 'the colour of her shoes, and the
arrangement of her hair'. Jane Austen does not just present and
criticize sartorial passion, as George Eliot is inclined to do in Middle-
march, where to care about clothes is nearly always immoral. Jane
Austen is more tolerant and more precise. She discriminates between
feelings for dress. Miss Steele joins her crude commercial interest in
the price-tags to the smart stylishness of Willoughby's choice, Miss
Grey, the elegant propriety of Lady Middleton, and the dandyism
of Robert Ferrars. In Nor than ger Abbey the undemanding but total
sartorial energies of Mrs Allen are balanced against the acceptable
and natural vanities of Catherine Morland, and the flaunting of
Isabella Thorpe, who shares a taste for coquelicot ribbons with her
author.3 In Mansfield Park, the complacent self-regard of Lady
Bertram is roused to lend her maid to Fanny, though characteristically
too late. Fanny's own doubtful pleasure in the gown Sir Thomas gives
her for Maria's wedding, worn for that first dinner at the Parsonage
and admired by Edmund with a precise eye for its 'glossy spot* because
Miss Crawford has one 'something the same' (MP, p. 222), is beauti-
fully placed.
Jane Austen's letters to Cassandra show a constant but constantly
self-amused preoccupation with dress, and this aspect of the human
concern with things is dramatically varied and frequently tolerated.
We are made to feel that Jane Austen knows everything about her
characters. It is more than frivolous when she says she always
suspected that Mrs Darcy's favourite colour was yellow, Mrs Bingley's
green.4
Her knowledge of her characters' attitudes to houses, clothes and
accessories extends to other creature comforts. Mrs Jennings's harm-
less indulgences of the flesh show the largeness of her nature. She is
facile, generous, kind, compassionate and likes to enjoy life. She
presses old Constantia wine and dried cherries on Marianne's disapp-
ointed heart, to be astonished when they don't work. She is eager to
help other people to the pleasures of the world, and her 'ample
jointure' is described in the perfect adjective. She describes to Elinor
the joys of Colonel Brandon's place in the country with appropriate
gusto:
'Delaford is a nice place, I can tell you; exactly what I call a nice old
fashioned place, full of comforts and conveniences; quite shut in with
great garden walls that are covered with the best fruit-trees in the country:
and such a mulberry tree in one corner! Lord! how Charlotte and I did
stuff the only time we were there! Then, there is a dove-cote, some
delightful stewponds, and a very pretty canal; and every thing, in short,
that one could wish for: and, moreover, it is close to the church, and only
a quarter of a mile from the turnpike-road, so 'tis never dull, for if you
8
' I . . . shall put in the Coquelicot one, as being smarter;—& besides
Coquelicot is to be all the fashion this winter.' (Letters, pp. 37-8)
* Letters, p. 310.
only go and sit up in an old yew arbour behind the house, you may see all
the carriages that pass along. Oh! 'tis a nice place! A butcher hard by
in the village, and the parsonage-house within a stone's throw. To my
fancy, a thousand times prettier than Barton Park, where they are forced
to send three miles for their meat, and have not a neighbour nearer than
your mother.' (SS, pp. 196-7)
Unlike the Dashwoods and the Steele sisters, Mrs Jennings is a

materialist with nothing mean about her - she is a Wife of Bath whose
pleasures are of the table rather than the bed, though Jane Austen
may mean more than she finds it decorous to say. Her language is
crammed with appreciations, her very proverbs appetitive: 'One
shoulder of mutton, you know, drives another down.' The phrase may
be on the gross side, but her author comes to a not dissimilar, if more
elegantly expressed, conclusion. There is no doubt about Jane
Austen's sense of her quality as well as her limitations. She is a tolerant
character, and her fleshliness is thoroughly understood and tolerated
by her author.
When Margaret Dashwood puts in a bid for memorability by
imagining that they have all been left a fortune apiece, everyone, as
Edward Ferrars says, chooses appropriate objects. It is the individu-
ality of her people's needs and desires which shapes Jane Austen's
object-world. Like the elaborately detailed fiction of Thackeray,
Henry James, Arnold Bennett and Scott Fitzgerald, her novels estab-
lish a sense of social surfaces and manners. We can date and describe
clothes, houses, furniture, food, drink and means of transport through
the information in the novels. But in the novels of Thackeray, James,
Bennett and Scott Fitzgerald information is dispersed through gener-
alized and complete descriptions. Whenever there is a room, or a
person, we see its furniture and its clothing. This does not mean that
there is no discrimination or that objects and places are not dramati-
cally expressive. The kitchen and the factory in Bennett's Anna of the
Five Towns play an essential role in the affective life of the characters,
and Gatsby's shirts are part of his style and his imagination. But all
the rooms and clothes in these novels are solidly specified. Mrs
Lowder's plutocratically hideous drawing-room in The Wings of a
Dove and Maggie's dress in The Golden Bowl are eloquent of their
possessors in many ways, but James is visibly the describing source.
The food, drink, furniture, ornaments and service in Vanity Fair, The
Newcomes and The Virginians tell us a great deal about class, income,
households, characters and countries, but it is Thackeray who sets and
specifies the scene. Jane Austen keeps very strictly to what appears to
be her self-created rule of characteristic description. If someone in
the novel is not registering the appearance, cost or savour of things,
they are kept out. There is enough variety of materialism in all the
novels to give a full social range, but it is not her habit to describe
every house, every meal, everyone's clothes, all the furniture. Objects
come in as they strike the characters, sometimes vaguely, sometimes
clearly, sometimes lovingly, sometimes obsessionally, sometimes
stupidly. There is never a routine description of things.
We not only know what Willoughby cared for, but see how his
dress and accessories are part of his charm for Marianne. Jane
Austen's brilliant and solid chronicle of social objects goes beyond a
psychological record, which fills the world with things in order to
dramatize individual attitudes and appetites. She needs to make her
discriminations for the purpose of a moral argument. Her presenta-
tion anticipates Henry James's more explicit insistence, made through
Madame Merle's materialistic lecture to the romantic Isabel Archer,
on the subject of expressive things:
'There's no such thing as an isolated man or woman; we're each of us

made up of some cluster of appurtenances. What shall we call our "self?
Where does it begin? where does it end? It overflows into everything that
belongs to us—and then it flows back again. I know a large part of myself
is in the clothes I choose to wear. I've a great respect for things \ One's
self—for other people—is one's expression of one's self; and one's house,
one's furniture, one's garments, the books one reads, the company one
keeps—these things are all expressive.'
(The Portrait of a Lady, Vol. I, Chap, xix)
Jane Austen shows the unpleasant possibilities of becoming too

attached to things. She also knows that life in her society is inevitably
lived with and through things. The people in her novels become
restricted and even reified by living too much in the company of
objects. She shows how the object-stuff can flow back into the self or
spirit through the things people care about and demand. Perhaps it
is the moderated materialism of Mrs Jennings that allows her to put
the matter in a nut-shell. She describes Miss Grey's price and Will-
oughby's values:
'Fifty thousand pounds, my dear. Did you ever see her? a smart, stilish
girl they say, but not handsome. I remember her aunt very well, Biddy
Henshawe; she married a very wealthy man. But the family are all rich
together. Fifty thousand pounds! and by all accounts it wo'nt come before
it's wanted; for they say he is all to pieces. No wonder! dashing about with
his curricle and hunters! Well, it don't signify talking, but when a young
man, be he who he will, comes and makes love to a pretty girl, and
promises marriage, he has no business to fly off from his word only
because he grows poor, and a richer girl is ready to have him. Why don't
he, in such a case, sell his horses, let his house, turn off his servants, and
make a thorough reform at once?' (SS, p. 194)
Jane Austen's knowledge and imagination go even beyond the

assimilation of people to their properties. She shows how we relate to
people through their accessories, how we can assimilate not only both
object and person, but may attach ourselves to other people's property
and properties. Marianne pretends to make romantically low
demands, but actually wants a great deal. Her conventional and
fashionable materialism is easily compatible with a self-centred and
vague enthusiasm. Her demands pick up Willoughby's demands - as
demands will. She starts wanting 'a carriage, perhaps two, and
hunters' as well as music and books. Food for the mind mingles with
food for the fancy, and some of her desires are merely glamorous. Jane
Austen makes silly Mrs Bennet say that she still has a soft spot for a red
coat, but she knows that is is not only fools who respond to each other
in full social panoply. An eye for sexual colour and shape, for instance,
tends to take in the aids to colour and shape, and so the reifications of
love proceed. Marianne starts to fall in love with Willoughby:
His manly beauty and more than common gracefulness were instantly
the theme of general admiration, and the laugh which his gallantry raised
against Marianne, received particular spirit from his exterior attractions.
—Marianne herself had seen less of his person than the rest, for the con-
fusion which crimsoned over her face, on his lifting her up, had robbed
her of the power of regarding him after their entering the house. But she
had seen enough of him to join in all the admiration of the others, and
with an energy which always adorned her praise. His person and air were
equal to what her fancy had ever drawn for the hero of a favourite
story.... His name was good, his residence was in their favourite village,
and she soon found out that of all manly dresses a shooting-jacket was the
most becoming. (SS, p. 43)
Willoughby's shooting-jacket is the becoming aid which helps to

create his dashing 'manly' image. Like advertisers who blur the appeal
of objects in the appeals of nature, Jane Austen knows how to create
the conventional social and sexual stimulus for the weak, romantic
susceptibility. After the shooting-jacket, Colonel Brandon's flannel
waistcoat is naturally less appealing, in a society accustomed to corre-
late sex with health, sport and youth. Jane Austen's sense of the social
determinations of our affective life seizes on the irresistible blend in an
image approved by society and literature. Far from being tactless in
dwelling on Colonel Brandon's twinges of rheumatism, she is strongly
attacking the cosmetic element in sexual attraction. It might be an
exaggeration to suggest that she anticipates Beckett's geriatric love-
stories: she is scarcely marrying off Marianne to an old and impotent
husband, as we may infer from her concluding comments on Bran-
don's recovery of tone, and the information that 'in time* Marianne
came to love him as much as she had once loved Willoughby. 'In time'
is a candid and searching phrase - it has taken Marianne time to lose
the romantic image of appearance in the reality of experience. The
romantic image itself thrives on instant response. In Nonhanger
Abbey there is an analysis of materialism in which Catherine is
redeemed, but where people tend to show either a harmless or a harm-
ful attitude to the object-world, and hence to each other. Sense and
Sensibility begins to recognize a more complex interaction of things
and people. This interaction develops in Pride and Prejudice, where a
heroine more intelligent than Marianne and more fallible than Elinor
shows how wit and imagination can be entangled in appearances. In
this novel Jane Austen seems to feel freer to admit that appearances
may .not always be irrelevant Elinor and Marianne were matched
with husbands of sterling quality, designed to defeat or outlive the
dangers of charm and good looks. In Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
relaxes her rigour, admitting that outside and inside are at times
appropriately matched. Elizabeth's liveliness and Darcy's elegance are
charms which reflect mind and body. But there is enough rigour
present to keep hero and heroine apart until they come to understand
the nature of what they love. Darcy comes to admire Elizabeth, after
first feeling no attraction. He is drawn by her fine eyes and also by her
figure. But he cannot be allowed to possess her without understanding
that love is not possession, and that her outside has not revealed her
whole mind. But if he misreads, so does she. There is more to each
than meets the eye. She first admires him - as she half-seriously tells
Jane - in his image, which she first gazes at unabashed by physical
presence, on the visit to Pemberley. His image is there in more ways
than one.
Pemberley echoes the worthiness of Squire Allworthy's seat. Its
beauties and prospects are seen through Elizabeth's eyes. The houses
in Pride and Prejudice are nearly all taken for granted by the author
because they are taken for granted by the characters, though environ-
ment is given some character by objects and habits.
As soon as the characters visit a new place, it is put before the
reader. Elizabeth visits Charlotte Collins's new house and is immedi-
ately shown round. Mr Collins is a minute guide, self-gratified by
possessions, liking to show Elizabeth what she has missed, fishing for
praise, and inclined to unselective enumeration:
After sitting long enough to admire every article of furniture in the room,
from the sideboard to the fender, to give an account of their journey and
of all that had happened in London, Mr. Collins invited them to take a
stroll in the garden, which was large and well laid out, and to the cultiva-
tion of which he attended himself. To work in his garden was one of his
most respectable pleasures; and Elizabeth admired the command of
countenance with which Charlotte talked of the healthfulness of the
exercise, and owned she encouraged it as much as possible. Here, leading
the way through every walk and cross walk, and scarcely allowing them an
interval to utter the praises he asked for, every view was pointed out with
a minuteness which left beauty entirely behind. He could number the
fields in every direction, and could tell how many trees there were in the
most distant clump. (PP, p. 156)
He is the perfect cicerone for the visit to Rosings, and sense is sub-
merged in his anxiety to put the other guests at their ease: 'I would
advise you merely to put on whatever of your clothes is superior to the
rest, there is no occasion for any thing more.' His way with things
reflects Lady Catherine's more rational superiority: 'Lady Catherine
will not think the worse of you for being simply dressed. She likes to
have the distinction of rank preserved.' Rosings is introduced and
described through Mr Collins's eyes, voice and values, enumerating
'the windows in front of the house' and relating 'what the glazing
altogether had originally cost Sir Lewis De Bourgh'. The owner of
Rosings resembles General Tilney in her appreciation of her guest's
appreciation. She patronizes through servants, plate and food,
especially delighted 'when any dish on the table proved a novelty'.
Every object in the drama of Lady Catherine's hospitality, including
the fish used in the game of casino and the piano which she offers for
Elizabeth's use, is a comic counter in the game of demand-and-supply
which she plays so happily, best of all with Mr Collins, who is just the
guest the hostess requires.
When Elizabeth comes to Pemberley, we not only see it through
her eyes, but against the background of the visit to Rosings. Jane
Austen manipulates those contrasts and parallels which form all
fictions through the characters' sensibility. The plentiful and refresh-
ing luncheon, elegantly presented, 'beautiful pyramids of grapes,
nectarines, and peaches', and even the diffident and shy hospitality of
Georgiana Darcy, are contrasted with the ostentation of Rosings.
The handsome house is a sympathetic habitat in every way. Its saloon
has a northern aspect which is cool in summer - Jane Austen is always
attentive to temperature - and the sense of space is neither intimi-
dating nor lofty. Like Allworthy's house, it partakes of the handsome-
ness and honesty of its owner:
It was a large, handsome, stone building, standing well on rising ground,

and backed by a ridge of high woody hills;—and in front, a stream of
some natural importance was swelled into greater, but without any arti-
ficial appearance. Its banks were neither formal, nor falsely adorned.
Elizabeth was delighted. She had never seen a place for which nature had
done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an
awkward taste. (PP, p. 245)
Jane Austen makes her heroine appreciate the quality of the fur-
nishings too, as 'suitable to the fortune of their proprietor' and his
taste, 'neither gaudy nor uselessly fine', as she makes the contrast with
Rosings. But Jane Austen does not make Elizabeth aware only of
Darcy's property and taste. She responds also to a less definable
quality in the atmosphere of the house, suggested by the variety and
spaciousness. As Elizabeth goes over Pemberley, there is a sense of
movement and exhilaration:
Every disposition of the ground was good; and she looked on the whole
scene, the river, the trees scattered on its banks, and the winding of the
valley, as far as she could trace it, with delight. As they passed into other
rooms, these objects were taking different positions; but from every
window there were beauties to be seen. (PP, p. 246)
The vivid account of moving through a sequence of large rooms

with large windows extending over wide vistas also conveys the
heroine's elation. Outside and inside, Pemberley extends her acquaint-
ance with Darcy, and in tangible or intangible ways it offers her a
charm and a guarantee. Jane Austen is creating the spirit of a place.
Mansfield Park," like Northanger Abbey, resembles its owner. It is
grand, large and daunting, and does not make Fanny feel at home:
The grandeur of the house astonished, but could not console her. The
rooms were too large for her to move in with ease; whatever she
touched she expected to injure, and she crept about in constant terror
of something or other.* (AfP, p. 14) Unlike Northanger, Mansfield is
a neutral ground, which can be re-occupied and changed. In this
novel, Jane Austen moves away from the simple equation of possessor
and possessions to examine the home as a communal place.
As a home, Mansfield is imperfect. It does not put any of its child-
ren entirely at ease; its father is too remote and repressive, its mother
too languid, letting responsibility pass into the mean and greedy hands
of Mrs Norris, too indulgent and too harsh. (Indulgence and harsh-
ness are two sides of the same coin: Mrs Norris acts only for herself.)
It is she who proposes the adoption of Fanny, her method being to
work through the hospitality and generosity of others. She maintains
an image at very little expense. It is she who organizes the keeping-
down of Fanny, whose unlit fire is warm enough for her until Sir
Thomas comes to give her the warmth he has not known was lacking.
Maria and Julia give her unwanted sashes and toys, her cousin Tom
teases her and showers on her a profusion of workboxes, her cousin
Edmund gives her what she needs - until Mary Crawford comes to
engross the new mare and more. Fanny, called 'creepmouse' by Tom,
steals artlessly into a room of her own, and it becomes the only 'nest of
comforts' in Mansfield Park. It is a room with a view, for the outward
look of Fanny looks ahead to George Eliot's Dorothea Brooke and
E. M. Forster's Lucy Honeychurch. Fanny looks beyond the indoor
world of the drawing-room to the evening sky to gaze at those stars
that are visible from the window, and longs to see those out of sight.
We see the light infiltrating more indirectly into the East room,
through 'a gleam of sunshine* and in the air she thinks of giving to her
geraniums, while also inhaling 'a breeze of mental strength herself.
She collects the cast-off objects that can be cherished only by loving
memory, and the room becomes the archive of Mansfield Park:
The aspect was so favourable, that even without a fire it was habitable
in many an early spring, and late autumn morning, to such a willing mind
0
The following discussion of Mansfield Park draws at points upon my
essay entitled The Objects in Mansfield Park' in John Halperin (ed.),
Jane Austen: Bicentenary Essays (New York, 1975).
as Fanny's, and while there was a gleam of sunshine, she hoped not to be
driven from it entirely, even when winter came. The comfort of it in her
hours of leisure was extreme. She could go there after any thing un-
pleasant below, and find immediate consolation in some pursuit, or some
train of thought at hand.—Her plants, her books—of which she had been
a collector, from the first hour of her commanding a shilling—her writing
desk, and her works of charity and ingenuity, were all within reach;—or
if indisposed for employment, if nothing but musing would do, she could
scarcely see an object in that room which had not an interesting remem-
brance connected with it.—Every thing was a friend, or bore her thoughts
to a friend; and though there had been sometimes much of suffering to
her—though her motives had been often misunderstood, her feelings dis-
regarded, and her comprehension under-valued; though she had known
the pains of tyranny, or ridicule, and neglect, yet almost every recurrence
of either had led to something consolatory; her aunt Bertram had spoken
for her, or Miss Lee had been encouraging, or what was yet more frequent
or more dear—Edmund had been her champion and her friend;—he had
supported her cause, or explained her meaning, he had told her not to
cry, or had given her some proof of affection which made her tears
delightful—and the whole was now so blended together, so harmonized
by distance, that every former affliction had its charm. The room was
most dear to her, and she would not have changed its furniture for the
handsomest in the house, though what had been originally plain, had
suffered all the ill-usage of children—and its greatest elegancies and
ornaments were a faded footstool of Julia's work, too ill done for the
drawing-room, three transparencies, made in a rage for transparencies,
for the three lower panes of one window, where Tintem Abbey held its
station between a cave in Italy, and a moonlight lake in Cumberland; a
collection of family profiles thought unworthy of being anywhere else,
over the mantle-piece, and by their side and pinned against the wall, a
small sketch of a ship sent four years ago from the Mediterranean by
William, with H.M.S. Antwerp at the bottom, in letters as tall as the
main-mast.
To this nest of comforts Fanny now walked down to try its influence on
an agitated, doubting spirit—to see if by looking at Edmund's profile she
could catch any of his counsel, of by giving air to her geraniums she might
inhale a breeze of mental strength herself. (MP, pp. 151-2)
Every aspect of the room responds to the values of its occupant and
her occupation. Unlike the drawing-room, which Mary Crawford's
wit accurately describes as 'too hot', its low temperature rears a fragile
life and makes it strong. The things in the room are harmonized by
Fanny's capacity for love and acceptance, 'the whole . . . so blended
together, so harmonized by distance, that every former affliction had
its charm'. The ability to use memory and imagination to include, and
not exclude, is implicit in Fanny and Anne Elliot. It is an aspect of the
self-knowledge which distinguishes the rational passions of Fanny and
Anne from the dissociated feelings of the Bertrams, the Grawfords
and the Elliots. Fanny's life comes to have wholeness. Her nest of
comforts also joins together the family things, creates a small warm
space for herself at the heart of the house. Edmund's praise of her
'little establishment* is less playful and more promising than he knows.
For Mansfield Park lacks a heart and a centre. But it is not a static
habitat, and its adopted child changes its shape and its atmosphere. It
has, after all, taken her in. The spirit of the place is more susceptible
to improvement than Sotherton, and the novelist dwells on the
emblem of Sotherton to show the greater mobility of Mansfield. We
see Mansfield largely through Fanny's eyes, but we first hear the
details of Sotherton from Edmund, who describes it to Mary Craw-
ford when he sits next to her at dinner, as an Elizabethan house, 'a
large, regular, brick building - heavy, but respectable looking.... It
is ill-placed. It stands in one of the lowest spots of the park; in that
respect, unfavourable for improvement. But the woods are fine. . . .'
(MP, p. 56) Mary realizes that Edmund is making 'the best of it*. What
he says next applies to much more than his attitude to a house:
'. . . had I a place to new fashion, I should not put myself into the
hands of an improver. I would rather have an inferior degree of
beauty, of my own choice, and acquired progressively.'
On the 'improving' visit to Sotherton every aspect of house and
grounds is suggestive and the significances emerge and expand
through the viewpoints of the characters. The heavy opulence is all
too expressive of Mr Rushworth. Maria Bertram chooses him for his
property, and house and owner are almost interchangeable in their
inertness. On the visit to Sotherton Maria's elation is carefully evalu-
ated as 'a pleasure to increase with their approach to the capital free-
hold mansion, and ancient manorial residence of the family, with all
its rights of Gourt-Leet and Court-Baron'. (MP, p. 82) The cottages
are 'a disgrace' but the church is fortunately 'not so close to the Great
House as often happens in old places' where 'the annoyance of the
bells must be terrible'. Like its owner, 'it is heavy, but respectable
looking'. 'The situation of the house excluded the possibility of much
prospect from any of the rooms' and every 'room on the west front
looked across a lawn to the beginning of the avenue immediately
beyond tall iron palisades and gates.' Its chapel is elegant, but no
longer used, and makes a good set for double-entendres. The pictures
are abundant, 'and some few good, but the larger part were family
portraits, no longer any thing to any body but Mrs Rushworth*.
The family profiles in Fanny's room were thought of being unworthy
to be anywhere but in her room: Mansfield has a better curator than
Sotherton.
When the members of the Mansfield party leave the house to go
over the grounds, Jane Austen goes beyond the symbolism of place to
make a theatre for many different responses and acts. The desire to
improve Sotherton is a specious excuse, the merest of alibis. Instead
of discussing improvements, they wander after each other to suffer
what Jane Austen calls 'cross accidents'. Henry Crawford sees 'walks
of great promise'. Fanny is left alone on her bench in the wilderness,
while Mary and Edmund find their way to the avenue she has longed
to see. Maria squeezes dangerously through the gate with Henry
Crawford, unwilling to wait for Mr Rushworth, who has forgotten to
bring the key. She risks tearing her gown and falling into the ha-ha,
as warned by Fanny. Julia follows them, escaping and pursuing. As
Fanny sees Maria and Henry go off together, 'taking a circuitous, and
as it appeared to her, very unreasonable direction to the knoll, they
were soon beyond her eye', it is conspicuous as the single occasion
when Henry and Maria move out of sight of character and reader.
The house and grounds are designed for appropriate action, though
it is expressive rather than crucial. It is typical of Jane Austen's
matter-of-factness in symbolism, her merging of symbol in surface.
To call the Sotherton scene proleptic would be a tautology. What is
done in Sotherton is typically done, and the small-scale action antici-
pates the later crisis and climax, because these too are totally in
character.
The only happy person on the expedition is Mrs Norris, who
characteristically carries off the booty she has 'spunged', the cream
cheese, beautiful little heath, and the pheasant's eggs which she is
going to get hatched by one of the maids at Mansfield (like Fanny).
The things Mrs Norris takes away are not hospitably presented but
acquired by her scrounging flatteries from the gardener and the house-
keeper. The things are part of the place, though they tell us about the
guests as well as the host and hostess. Every superficial detail of the
Sotherton visit, including the journey there and back, contributes to
a realistic account of a family visit, is deeply founded in character,
and therefore forms an organic part of the total structure.
Other places and things develop in significance. Hospitality is
warmer at the Parsonage whose large round dining-table covered in
dishes is seen through the jealous disapproval of Mrs Norris. Its
hospitality is expressive of the childless Mrs Grant's spoiling of her
husband, whose good table eventually kills him. It is also, of course,
eloquent of his own indulgence, and the geese, turkeys and pheasants
play an important role in establishing character. But Mrs Grant, like
Fanny, does grow things and the evergreens in her shrubbery will last.
Fanny rhapsodizes on them, and Mary Crawford carelessly admits
that they do very well for a village parsonage.
The Parsonage contains its visitors, Mary and Henry Crawford,
and its elegance and hospitality are pressed into symbolic service as
Edmund becomes charmed by Mary:
A young woman, pretty, lively, with a harp as elegant as herself; and

both placed near a window, cut down to the ground, and opening on a
little lawn, surrounded by rich shrubs in the rich foliage of summer, was
enough to catch any man's heart. The season, the scene, the air, were all
favourable to tenderness and sentiment. Mrs. Grant and her tambour
frame were not without their use; it was all in harmony; and as every
thing will turn to account when love is once set going, even the sandwich
tray, and Dr. Grant doing the honours of it, were worth looking at.
(MP, p. 65)
There is a quiet but definite approximation of the woman to place and

object, appropriate to Mary's assimilation to a surface of richness and
ease, and to Edmund's response to appearances. As General Tilney
is assimilated to his possessions by putting too much vital energy into
them, and using them to manipulate other people until they begin to
be an inseparable aspect of self, so Mary's genuine vitality and intelli-
gence are endangered. She struggles against the assimilation by her
environment, but it has been going on for too long, and she cannot
escape. Edmund progresses to 'acquire' his 'inferior beauty', who is
superior in many ways.
Hospitality and donation become more prominent in Mansfield
Park. If Fanny brings warmth and strength to Mansfield Park, she
has also drawn warmth and strength from its hospitality, and from its
presents which she treasures as sacred objects. She has been taught
by Edmund, who first gave her the things that human beings need for
love and growth: writing materials to write to her brother, the new
mare for healthy exercise, books for the mind, wine for her aching
head, a chain for her cross. She has to learn to give as well as to
receive, and a step in her education is marked when she heals a family
wound by making Betsy a present of a silver knife. Sir Thomas is
capable of good giving too (a home, a fire and a gown), and even Lady
Bertram tries to lend her maid and offers a prospective puppy. Mrs
Norris does not give a present to her god-child, Betsy. She gives one
present, the mysterious 'something considerable' to William, which
the reader knows from internal evidence is less than the ten pounds
given him by Lady Bertram, and the exact amount of which was
revealed by Jane Austen to her family. She was as aware as Henry
James of the occasional need for not specifying things.
Mansfield Park contains enough good things given to Fanny, to be
animated by memory and love, and returned in her gratitude and
growth. For Mansfield Park does nourish its adopted child. She in her
turn adopts the East room for her own. The major act of hospitality
brings in an outsider to strengthen and sweeten the community. Jane
Austen makes it clear, however, that the good giving and good taking
are dependent on considerable purchasing-power. Fanny and Ed-
mund are not materialists, but they are fully provided with material
comforts.
In Mansfield Park, the sympathetic habitat is most developed, but
also most open. It is as if the simpler moral associations of places were
there most thoroughly expressed, and a limit reached. Sotherton and
Portsmouth are simple habitats. The rooms, food, words and gardens
of Mansfield Park, and even the exterior and interior of Mansfield
Parsonage - which is, after all, to be inherited by Fanny and Edmund
— are dramatized more variously to embody hopes for harmony and
for change. After Mansfield Park it is not surprising that Jane Austen
moves away from the houses to the significance of smaller and more
shifting things.
In Emma hospitality and donation become prominent themes.
Everyone is a guest, some are hosts and guests. Everyone either gives
or takes, some do both. Jane Austen's implicit analysis of social rela-
tionships depends on objects as on groups. Human beings create for
themselves a social case or cover composed of things, and relate to
each other through more movable objects. The prominent hosts in
the novel are Mr Woodhouse, Mr Weston and Mr Knightley. Mr
Woodhouse is generous within the bounds of his own narrow imagina-
tion, egocentrically fastidious and hypochondriacal. Mr Weston's
generosity is harmlessly over-hospitable, and his good wine does no
more than precipitate Mr Elton's proposal to Emma. Mr Knightley's
sense of propriety is entirely approved by his author, but he makes it
plain to Mrs Elton that the hospitality of Donwell Abbey cannot be
delegated.
Hospitality is a form of giving and taking, and blends with the
theme of donation. Benefactors benefit themselves and the people to
whom they give. Emma and her father give generously to Miss Bates
and Mrs Bates - 'I sent them the whole hind-quarter' - but it is easier
to give things than a proper attention. It serves Emma right when
Jane Fairfax sends back her arrowroot. Jane has had to accept too
many benefactions and it is good that she rebels. She is beset by
treacherous objects, like Frank's piano and his letters, Mr Perry's
carriage and the alphabet game. The carefully named 'Frank* has
better luck with Mrs Bates's broken spectacles, and having fastened
the rivet Svas very warmly thanked both by mother and daughter*.
Emma is a clever manipulator of objects too, and uses charades, her
picture, and a broken shoe-lace, to help on her match-making for
Harriet and Mr Elton. Mr Knightley's things are like him. The last
of the best baking apples and his strawberries are good and generously
given. Miss Bates is good at accepting presents, unlike Mrs Elton who
tires of strawberries in one half hour's talk:
—'The best fruit in England—every body's favourite—always whole-

some.—These the finest beds and finest sorts.—Delightful to gather for
one's self—the only way of really enjoying them.—Morning decidedly the
best time—never tired—every good sort—hautboy infinitely superior—no
comparison—the others hardly eatable—hautboys very scarce—Chili
preferred—white wood finest flavour of all—price of strawberries in
London—abundance about Bristol—Maple Grove—cultivation—beds
when to be renewed—gardeners thinking exactly different—no general
rule—gardeners never to be put out of their way—delicious fruit—only
too rich to be eaten much of—inferior to cherries—currants more refresh-
ing—only objection to gathering strawberries the stooping—glaring sun—
tired to death—could bear it no longer—must go and sit in the shade.'
(E, pp. 358-9)
The ordinary world animates things through people, and people

through things. Things take a hand in human destiny. Donation is
only one form of communicating feeling through objects. Mr Weston's
good wine raises Mr Elton's ardour and a secluded carriage on a
snowy night perfects the scene. Emma's reading-lists are more admir-
able than her reading, and Mr Knightley's preservation of one of
them should alert us to his feelings. Mr Woodhouse's story about his
grandson asking for a bit of string and his distress over the open air
in Harriet's portrait - despite her shawl, - are endearing indexes of
his triviality. Robert Martin's parlour, with the singing shepherd,
promises well for Harriet's marriage, as do the walnuts he picks and
the books he reads for her sake. His mother's present of the very fine
goose to Mrs Goddard adds substance to her prospects. Mrs Elton's
finery and Jane Fairfax's neat elegance are appropriate shells, the one
fussy, the other restrained. These people need their survival kits,
resembling other people inside and outside novels in needing or want-
ing to enlarge their powers, good or bad, with the aid of things.
In Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Preju-
dice there is a prevailing possessiveness. People clutch, hoard and
acquire. In Persuasion the men and women are remembered through
their possessions, but there is less emphasis on property. Dramatic
properties are vital: Sir Walter Elliot has his Baronetage, his Gow-
land, and his room full of mirrors. (Admiral Croft turns most of them
out.) The great parlour at Uppercross has the modern pianoforte
(presumably replacing a harpsichord), and a disarray of little tables
imported by the new generation, Louisa and Henrietta:
To the Great House accordingly they went, to sit the full half hour in the
old-fashioned square parlour, with a small carpet and shining floor, to
which the present daughters of the house were gradually giving the proper
air of confusion by a grand piano forte and a harp, flower-stands and little
tables placed in every direction. Oh! could the originals of the portraits
against the wainscot, could the gentlemen in brown velvet and the ladies
in blue satin have seen what was going on, have been conscious of such an
overthrow of all order and neatness! The portraits themselves seemed to
be staring in astonishment.
The Musgroves, like their houses, were in a state of alteration, perhaps
of improvement. The father and mother were in the old English style, and
the young people in the new. (P, p. 40)
Captain Wentworth has his ships, and talks about his first com-
mand, the Asp, with a fine sense of objects and audience when he
compares it with an old pelisse for the benefit of the female listeners.
We are told that Anne has loved his wit, and Jane Austen conveys this
wit through his not too serious manipulations of simile and emblem.
A wit which has been exhibitionist in Mary Crawford is given a
certain solidity in Captain Wentworth through his not too portentous
play with actual objects as sources for imagery. He has a sense of the
object, but also a sense of the artifice of using emblems. He speaks with
playful solemnity as he holds up the nut and uses it as an image for
Louisa's firmness. He is right not to sound too serious - it is an
inaccurate symbol, because he says it is unlike its 'brethren' who 'have
fallen, and been trodden underfoot*. Anne's objects are sacred ones,
like Fanny's, but presented less conspicuously. She is willing to cut
down on possessions, as her father and sister are not, finding it easier
to leave their ancestral home than to retrench. When Mary asks Anne
a resonant question which goes beyond its immediate occasion, 'Dear
me! What can you possibly have to do?', she gives a brief account of
her management of things: making a duplicate of the catalogue of
books and pictures, arranging the destination of Elizabeth's plants,
and arranging her own 'little concerns, books and music'. The impedi-
menta of a cultivated human being are modestly but clearly brought
in, as with Fanny's nest of comforts in Mansfield Park.
The course of true love is strewn with objects. In Persuasion they
are unobtrusive but numerous. At Lyme Regis, Anne's perceptive eye
registers character in the Harvilles' lodgings, 'so small as none but
those who invite from the heart could think capable of accommoda-
ting so many. Anne had a moment's astonishment on the subject her-
self. . . .' She compares their hospitality 'from the heart* with 'the
usual style of give-and-take invitations', depressed by the lost past:
These would have been all my friends.' The rooms are small, but
contain significant objects, which include 'the ingenious contrivances
and nice arrangements of Captain Harville', who is one of the very
few people in these novels who ever makes anything. Mrs Smith's
charitable knick-knacks are also exceptional. Good food is made by
servants, plants are occasionally grown, but most of the middle-class
manufacture is amateur and utterly useless needlework, like Lady
Bertram's carpetwork and endless fringe, or signs of accomplishment,
like Charlotte Palmer's landscape in coloured silks, 'proof of her
having spent seven years at a great school in town to some effect'.
(SS, p. 160) Harville's craftsmanship is characteristic of the man - he
is a sailor, ingenious and constructive, making the most of small
spaces. The things are products of his industry, and also relics of his
voyages - 'some few articles of a rare species of wood, excellently
worked up, and with something curious and valuable from all the
distant countries'.
Anne's imagination, like Fanny's, is far-ranging. She is granted a
more sophisticated sense of environment than any earlier heroine,
even participating in her author's interest in 'the effect of professional
influence on personal habits'. Anne is also moved, not altogether
pleasurably, by 'the picture of repose and domestic happiness', a
vicarious enjoyment her author had sharply imagined. Jane Austen
never shows love in a cottage, but this is the nearest we come to it.
Anne's enjoyment of the riches in the Harvilles' small room in spite
of the 'common necessaries provided by the owner, in the common
indifferent light' is a counter-balance to Fanny's distaste for the small
rooms, unkempt furniture, loud noise and indifferent food of her
parents' home in Portsmouth. Fanny comes to appreciate the
elegancies and proprieties of Mansfield even more than before, though
not quite as her uncle intends when he contrives his experiment in
environment. What she yearns for is all that may be understood by the
sense of home, including its people, 'her uncle's woods and her aunt's
gardens', and all its imperfections. It takes Portsmouth to make
Mansfield a home. Anne too has a sense of home, and like Fanny's it
is not proprietorial. Anne has to vacate her home too, and Jane Austen
draws our attention to her detachment. She shows a moment's
imaginative temptation when Lady Russell invokes the image of her
being mistress of Kellynch. She comes to admit to herself that Ttell-
ynch Hall had passed into better hands than its owners'. But she has
also glimpsed, in the Harvilles' lodgings, a life that has nothing to do
with great estates or rich possessions.
The objects in the Harvilles' room summon up a thought of an
alternative life, remote and desirable. But as her fortunes recover, and
she comes to think that Captain Wentworth 'must love her', there are
a few obstacles. On their first encounter in Bath, Captain Wentworth
offers her the hospitality of his new umbrella, but she is pre-engaged
to walk with her cousin, in her thick boots, thicker than Mrs Clay's.
In the concert hall Mr Elliot interrupts a promising conversation with
Captain Wentworth by interposing the concert bill and asking her
'to explain Italian again'. In the hotel rooms which are animated for
us by Anne's sense of comings and goings - 'a quick-changing, un-
settled scene. One five minutes brought a note, the next a parcel' -
Elizabeth Elliot 'pointedly' gives Captain Wentworth the card for her
evening party, 'Miss Elliot at home'. In the same bustle Captain
Harville shows her Captain Benwick's picture, and the ensuing debate
encourages Captain Wentworth to write his letter to Anne. The
object-filled world is all about them as Captain Wentworth pretends
to have forgotten his gloves in order to take out his letter 'from under
the scattered paper' and place it before Anne. Her agitation makes
Mrs Musgrove order a chair, but a chair will 'never do', since it will
make her 'lose the possibility of meeting Captain Wentworth'. Her
brother-in-law Charles, who has a sporting humour, sacrifices his
'engagement at a gunsmiths' to escort her home, but when they meet
Captain Wentworth he asks him to take his place so that he can go off
to see 'a capital gun' which the gunsmith is keeping unpacked 'to the
last possible moment': 'By his description it is a good deal like the
second hand double-barrel of mine which you shot with one day
round Winthrop.' Separated by so many things, the lovers are finally
brought together with the help of gloves and guns. Human beings
have to make the best of the objects to hand. Jane Austen's world is
full of small objects as well as symbols, and they are often arbitrary
and accidental.
The objects in Persuasion, as in the other novels, serve plot, animate
action, define characters and give a solid sense of the world. They also
seem to be present in greater and freer abandon in this novel, lying
around, as objects do,6 in a casual clutter as part of the ordinary scenes
and surfaces of life. Jane Austen occasionally uses objects as symbolic,
like the ha-ha in Mansfield Park, or the autumn fields in Persuasion,
but her touch with symbols is very delicate.
Accessory objects in Persuasion are often introduced with a fine
carelessness, simply to give her people things to handle or look at while
they think, feel or talk. On the occasion of the Elliot's evening party,
which is *but a card-party', the lovers, who don't play cards, meet,
part, and meet again. They are relaxed and at ease together at last,
even in the social scene. The environment seems stirred and brilliantly
lit by Anne's radiance, but there is an absence of description and all
the emphasis is placed within. As Anne and Captain Wentworth meet
for one conversation, Jane Austen gives them 'a fine display of green-
house plants' to admire. It is an occasion and a cover for the private
exchange of memories. The object itself, though fine, green and
natural, is wholly inert. When George Eliot brings Stephen Guest and
Maggie Tulliver together in a conservatory, the colours and scents
of the plants create an sensuous atmosphere and symbol. But Jane
Austen, moved less by a symbolic urge than by a sense of appropriate-
• Many of them seem to derive from actual objects, like the amber crosses,
gold chains, and silver knife Chapman mentions in his notes to the Letters.
Other conspicuous objects in the letters include good fires, sofas, a
barouche, apricots, game, arrowroot, gooseberry pie, an embroidered
stool, green baize, plants taken in from the frost, charades, whist, specula-
tion, a round table, left-behind gloves, a new piano, pictures, well-
proportioned rooms, and a shrubbery.
ness, simply chooses something which will give a sufficient sense of
place and gesture for the conversation of love.
The author's dramatic self-effacement shows itself in her handling
of things and places as much as in the handling of words. The novels7
are full of encounters with objects, significant or casual. Objects may
be present but are sparingly described. The hyacinths in Northanger
Abbey are given neither a colour nor a space; the greenhouse plants
are fine, but of no particular species. Objects may assert themselves,
if people need them, as accessories, relics or personal emblems, but are
sometimes kept in their place, as objects in a background. The reality
of her social scenes, especially in Persuasion, depends strongly on the
casual presences of objects.
Jane Austen's world is curiously lacking in a sense of an author's
descriptive and symbolic manipulation of things, but it is at the same
time a world where possessions and properties play a vivid part. Her
human beings carry their outer casing with them, and it is made of
clothes, ornaments, jewels, accessories, books, pictures, aids, furniture
and houses. The inner self is not separate from the outer case which is
slowly accreted like the encrustations on a sea-creature. The sense of
a social world depends considerably on the shell. The intimate con-
nection of things with their owners and donors is more personal in
Jane Austen than in any other novelist before her, and perhaps after
her too. People are what they possess, and carry objects with them
like limbs. In Jane Austen's social and personal dramas, still-life plays
a part.
7
I have excluded Sanditon, as too brief a fragment for formal analysis, but
it is of course crowded with places, houses, and objects. A typical instance
is the 'blue shoe* which Mr Parker spots in the window of William Heeley,
Shoemaker, as a sign of progress: 'There was no blue Shoe when we passed
this way a month ago.—Glorious indeed!' (MW, p. 383)
VII
A Sense of the Author
Our sense of the author depends upon familiarity with all she has
written and with as much biographical information and inference as
can be mustered. But there is a more limited and concrete sense of the
author which we gather from occasional or diffused pressures in the
fictions.
Northanger Abbey follows the pastiche and burlesque of the juven-
ilia with anti-burlesque. It is a literary satire which depends on
seriousness arid realism. Its events and passions are not exaggerated
but scrupulously contrasted with unreal literary example and expecta-
tion. Its method is critically comparative, depending on a clear sense
of the reader within the novel and the reader outside. Jane Austen
assembles five prominent characters who read novels. Catherine
Morland has not read many, but admires Sir Charles Grandison and is
introduced to The Mysteries of Udolpho and other 'horrid novels* by
Isabella Thorpe, a devoted fan of Gothic fiction. Eleanor Tilney
prefers history, but finds The Mysteries of Udolpho 'interesting'. John
Thorpe is one of those vague readers who aren't sure what they have
read, or by whom it was written, though he likes Tom Jones and The
Monk. Henry Tilney, assured but not supercilious, is clever and
experienced enough to know what he likes and why he likes it. Henry
is granted his author's blend of satire and enthusiasm, not to mention
her mimicry. He remonstrates with Catherine, and provides an
amusing little fragment of burlesque. He has an essential instructive
purpose within the novel, but it is the author's voice which introduces
the form of literary comparison, sustains it discreetly but clearly, and
brings it to a conclusion.
The author talks informally to the reader who is reading the novel,
fully and briefly, soberly, ironically and playfully. She reveals that
she is a woman1 by referring to 'a sister-author*. (NAy p. Ill) Her
1
Northanger Abbey, a posthumous publication, was originally intended for
anonymity.
166
A Sense of the Author 167
address is very different from the genial confidences of Fielding, which
may have helped to shape her running commentary. She confines her-
self strictly to technical guidance and discussion, creating our double
awareness of her novel, and of the kind of novel she is not writing. The
author's voice in Tom Jones speaks for the most fully human con-
sciousness in the novel, but the author's voice in Northanger Abbey
keeps within a small range of professional reference and feeling. Her
longest digression, sometimes criticized as an uncontrolled intrusion,
is part of a confidently established medium of cool, friendly and ironic
commentary, with tones variously defiant, caustic and sober. It
emerges easily out of the particularity of action, as she tells how
Isabella and Catherine shut themselves up on rainy mornings to read
novels:
Yes, novels;—for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom
so common with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous
censure the very performances, to the number of which they are them-
selves adding—joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the
harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be
read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is
sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! if the heroine of one
novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she
expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. (NA, p. 37)
Hoping for support, not only from fellow-authors but also from the
reader of the novel, she offers a brief dramatic sketch of a young lady
putting down her book in shame because it is only a novel:
'Oh! it is only a novel!' replies the young lady; while she lays down her
book with affected indifference, or momentary shame.—'It is only Cecilia,
or Camilla, or Belinda;' or, in short, only some work in which the greatest
powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge
of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest
effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen
language. (NA, p. 38)
It is an astonishingly bold defence for a young novelist. Her wit

sobers down into serious judgement just as it is in danger of becoming
too caustic, to make high claims which are neither playful nor ironic.
She dares to introduce into her own novel an ambitious defence of the
craft. Its passion is a reasonable pride, quiet but firm and confident.
Its risk seems fully justified by the brilliant virtuosity of the novel. I
cannot agree that the narrator and Henry Tilney get in each other's
way.* One speaks to the reader within, the other to the reader without.
The narrator speaks discreetly, and is often screened by the passive
voice: 'It may be stated, for the reader's more certain information'
and 'the maternal anxiety of Mrs Morland will be naturally supposed
to be most severe. A thousand alarming presentiments of evil... must
oppress her heart with sadness ... and advice ... must of course flow
from her wise lips.... Cautions... must... relieve the fulness of her
heart. Who would not think so?' (NA, p. 18) Sometimes the voice
speaks even more quietly, interpolating a short aside like the comment
on John Thorpe's critique of Camilla^ 'the justness of which was un-
fortunately lost on poor Catherine'. (NA, p. 49)
An unusual use of the authorial address, probably peculiar to
Northanger Abbey, is the brisk, businesslike commentary which un-
blushingly goes about its immediate technical functions of making
transitions, introductions, or summaries:
In addition to what has been already said of Catherine Morland's

personal and mental endowments, when about to be launched into all the
difficulties and dangers of a six weeks' residence in Bath, it may be stated,
for the reader's more certain information, lest the following pages should
otherwise fail of giving any idea of what her character is meant to be; that
her heart was affectionate. (NA, p. 18)
The following conversation, which took place between the two friends in
the Pump-room one morning, after an acquaintance of eight or nine days,
is given as a specimen of their very warm attachment, and of the delicacy,
discretion, originality of thought, and literary taste which marked the
reasonableness of that attachment. (NA, p. 39)
The progress of Catherine's unhappiness from the events of the evening,

was as follows. (NA, p. 60)
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday have now

passed in review before the reader; the events of each day, its hopes and
fears, mortifications and pleasures have been separately stated, and the
pangs of Sunday only now remain to be described, and close the week.
(NA, p. 97)
These neatly self-conscious sentences introduce chapters, but

8
Walton Litz, op. cit., pp. 68-9. Mary Lascelles also suggests that Henry
Tilney takes over the office of interpreter* but calls it 'a delightful piece
of ingenuity', op. cit., pp. 61-2.
sometimes the same device is used to dismiss and conclude:
And now I may dismiss my heroine to the sleepless couch, which is the
true heroine's portion; to a pillow strewed with thorns and wet with tears.
And lucky may she think herself, if she get another good night's rest in the
course of the next three months. (NA, p. 90)
The embraces, tears, and promises of the parting fair ones may be fancied.
(AM, p. 153)
The cumulative effect is to keep us in touch with the author. The

reminders are kept alive in the references to 'my heroine* and 'our
heroine*. Jane Austen wants to sustain the sense of a narrator and the
sense of a narrative. For her part she recognizes the existence of a
reader who is following the story and actually turning the pages of a
book. The sense of the book had of course been spiritedly alive in
Sterne's Tristram Shandy, and more obliquely in Richardson, whose
characters not only keep us aware of the acts and materials of writing
but - like Pamela - may remark on their lives as good material for
literature. Jane Austen keeps the matter-of-fact literary address alive
in brief pressures until the sense of the book's physical presence bears
in upon us strongly at the end. Even in the other novels where
authorial address is more subdued, she tends to use the valedictory
occasions for self-conscious address, perhaps inspired by the habit of
epilogues in plays.
The concluding pages of Northanger Abbey carry her special mark.
She unabashedly discusses the end of the story as the end of a book:
'The anxiety, which in this state of their attachment must be the
portion of Henry and Catherine, and of all who loved either, as to its
final event, can hardly extend, I fear, to the bosom of my readers, who
will see in the tell-tale compression * of the pages before them, that we
are all hastening together to perfect felicity.' (NA, p. 250) Feeling is
interrupted, but the effect is not one of alienation. The comic techni-
cal observation is quickly followed by an unusually personal remark.
The author claims - or seems to claim - acquaintance with the
characters in the style favoured by Thackeray in Vanity Fair and
George Eliot in Scenes of Clerical Life, who both abruptly admit that
3
By an ironic turn in bibliographical destiny, the anticipated compression
does not strike the reader who uses the first edition or the Chapman
edition, which both include Northanger Abbey and Persuasion in one
volume.
the authorial and professional voice has a personal stake in the story,
a familiar knowledge of places and people:
The marriage of Eleanor Tilney, her removal from all the evils of such
a home as Northanger had been made by Henry's banishment, to the
home of her choice and the man of her choice, is an event which I expect
to give general satisfaction among all her acquaintance. My own joy on
the occasion is very sincere. I know no one more entitled, by unpretending
merit, or better prepared by habitual suffering, to receive and enjoy
felicity. (AM, pp. 250-1)
Jane Austen's sense of words is beautifully present as she speaks of

'felicity* in these two very different sentences, moving from amuse-
ment to seriousness, recovering and savouring the word after lending
it to irony. The feeling of her commentary curves sharply; warm con-
gratulation is followed by the famous technical joke which neatly
dovetails Eleanor's charming, rich, young peer and one of Catherine's
'most alarming adventures' in order to comply with the rules of
composition. Then the last words of the novel leave a serious state-
ment of the moral for a flippant joke: 'I leave it to be settled by whom-
soever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether
to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.'
The volatile but candid commentary often combines technical
convenience and literary allusion:
Her husband was really deserving of her; independent of his peerage, his
wealth, and his attachment, being to a precision the most charming young
man in the world. Any further definition of his merits must be unnecess-
ary; the most charming young man in the world is instantly before the
imagination of us all. Concerning the one in question therefore I have
only to add—(aware that the rules of composition forbid the introduction
of a character not connected with my fable)—that this was the very
gentleman whose negligent servant left behind him that collection of
washing-bills, resulting from a long visit at Northanger, by which my
heroine was involved in one of her most alarming adventures.
(NA, p. 251)
The barefaced admission of convenience is deceptively ironic. Beneath

the declared function lies another. When she looks back to the origin
of love it is in tones which mingle seriousness and comic irony:
. . . I must confess that his affection originated in nothing better than

gratitude, or, in other words, that a persuasion of her partiality for him
had been the only cause of giving her a serious thought. It is a new circum-
stance in romance, I acknowledge, and dreadfully derogatory of an
heroine's dignity; but if it be as new in common life, the credit of a wild
imagination will at least be all my own. (NA, p. 243)
A few paragraphs later, the author explains that a long narrative

passage was not conveyed to Catherine, the heroine, in the form in
which has just been communicated to us:
I leave it to my reader's sagacity to determine how much of all this it

was possible for Henry to communicate at this tune to Catherine, how
much of it he could have learnt from his father, in what points his own
conjectures might assist him, and what portion must yet remain to be told
in a letter from James. I have united for their ease what they must divide
for mine. (AM, p. 247)
The irony of the last admission is typically two-faced, turning a

superficially convenient answer to a more important purpose. These
conspicuously authorial observations draw attention to a technical
device in order to make sure that we notice an important aspect of
the novel's realism. The origin of love and the nature of misfortune
are central to the novel's truthful and ordinary materials. The
authorial commentary provokes a comparison with other less realistic
examples of her art, and by admitting artifice proclaims reality and
offers truth.
The necessarily lavish commentary hi Northanger Abbey is almost
entirely technical, but it does include a few generalizations which
move outside the themes of novels in general and her novel in par-
ticular, though they are usually embedded in the technical comment-
ary. They broaden its scope, while lightening its tone. Playful or
ironic, they are almost always part of the comparison of 'real* and
conventional heroines, like the observation on Catherine's improve-
ment in looks: 'To look almost pretty, is an acquisition of higher
delight to a girl who has been looking plain the first fifteen years of her
life, than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.' (NA, p. 15) This
candid but friendly remark shades into the more caustic description of
her mind as 'about as ignorant and uninformed as the female mind at
seventeen usually is* and ends with the more trivial question: 'for
what young lady of common gentility will reach the age of sixteen
without altering her name as far as she can?' (NA, p. 19) These com-
ments sustain the author's presence and attractively blend truths with
satires.
They often combine more or less conspicuous allusions to other
novels. The moderate beauty of the heroine is one of this novel's
departures from fictional convention - or pretends to be. As in Mans-
field Park and Persuasion, Jane Austen manages to subdue her
heroine's physical attraction without annihilating it After her debut
in the Assembly rooms in Bath, Catherine's pleasure at hearing one
compliment is compared to the gratitude of 'a true quality heroine'.
(NA, p. 24) The observation that Catherine's entrance into the world
is not marked by 'rapturous wonder' or any "whisper of eager enquiry*,
is an obvious allusion to the eclat with which Fanny Burney's heroines
enter the world and the public rooms. What may look like a neutral
remark to the modern reader, would have been more conspicuously
satirical to her contemporaries. 'My heroine' and 'our heroine' are
clever ways of sounding conventional and at the same time making
claim to reality and originality. Jane Austen makes such claims and
comparisons delicately and sportively.
Like all the other novels after Northanger Abbeyy Sense and Sensi-
bility offers more sparing use of authorial commentary. The author
has new purposes to serve. Her address is not heard at the beginning to
introduce the characters and exerts only a very faint pressure within
the impersonal narration:'... his will was read, and like almost every
other will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure.' (SS, p. 4) It is
more ironically assertive in the description of John Dashwood's child,
who 'had so far gained on the affections of his uncle, by such attrac-
tions as are by no means unusual in children of two or three years old;
an imperfect articulation, an earnest desire of having his own way,
many cunning tricks, and a great deal of noise'. Such subdued but
sardonic generalization prevails in Sense and Sensibility. Its author's
voice is much less volatile and playful than in Northanger Abbey,
where the spiteful remark about 'imbecility in a beautiful girl* stands
out as an exception, and is immediately softened by its application to
Catherine, who gets fairly sympathetic treatment from her author.
The caustic tone continues: 'He was not an ill-disposed young man,
unless to be rather cold hearted, and rather selfish, is to be ill-
disposed' ; 'with as much kindness as he could feel towards any body'.
The harshest tones are reserved for the criticism of mercenariness, but
the novel forms a habit of rather sour generalization, as in the famous
dictum, 'On every formal visit a child ought to be of the party, byway
of provision for discourse', and in more reserved instances, such as
'Sir John was a sportsman, Lady Middleton a mother'. Jane Austen's
oblique irony is beginning to take over from the more open comment-
ary of N art hanger Abbey. Moreover, so much of the novel's action is
filtered through Elinor's consciousness that there is no position which
the author can conveniently occupy. In Northanger Abbey, Cather-
ine's mind is occasionally used as a register of events and feelings, but
neither characters nor purpose make it necessary to use a steady or
consistent internal point-of-view.
The author's voice, then, is reserved for criticism. The only occasion
of the authorial T is conspicuous but disconcertingly trivial, though
the triviality is the occasion for an ironic over-emphasis. The porten-
tous introduction, 'I come now to the relation of a misfortune which
about this time befell Mrs John Dashwood', introduces an anti-climax,
to the discredit of Fanny Dashwood. But the other surprising address,
though impersonal, is warm and emphatic: 'But Elinor - how are her
feelings to be described?' (It may have taught George Eliot the
effectiveness of a sudden interruption of open sympathy, and so lie
behind the more famous questions in Middlemarch: 'But why always
Dorothea?' or 'Poor Lydgate - or rather, poor Rosamond'.)
Elinor and Edward are the occasion of a warmer generalization, on
the subject of lovers' talk: 'Between them no subject is finished, no
communication is ever made, till it has been made at least twenty
times over.' But the prevailing coldness of the author's touch returns
to brush even these rational lovers, less criticized by their author than
any of her other created couples:
... he did not, upon the whole, expect a very cruel reception. It was his
business, however, to say that he did, and he said it very prettily. What he
might say on the subject a twelvemonth after, must be referred to the
imagination of husbands and wives. (SS, p. 366)
The generalization seems to belong more to a conventional cynicism

about courtship and marriage than to the happy ending of Elinor and
Marianne, and it is a valedictory irony which never appears after
Sense and Sensibility, so is the more conspicuous. The ironic, senten-
tious summary of Lucy's career and the hardness of the farewell to
Willoughby are more clearly appropriate. But even the final summary
of the novel is, if not quite grudging, certainly limiting:
. . . among the merits and the happiness of Elinor and Marianne, let it
not be ranked as the least considerable, that though sisters, and living
almost within sight of each other, they could live without disagreement
between themselves, or producing coolness between their husbands.
(SS, p. 380)
In Pride and Prejudice, in spite of Jane Austen's delight in her

heroine, her direct commentary is still sober and grave, though it has
lost the spite and sourness of Sense and Sensibility. Once more, the
appreciations can be made within the novel, by Elizabeth Bennet,
whose point of view prevails. It is here that we find, for the first time,
the mature development of that free indirect style which allowed Jane
Austen to use the third person as a sensitive register of her characters'
mind, feelings and personality. But much of the commentary is dry,
caustic and not playful. It is as if all the playfulness has gone into
Elizabeth Bennet, leaving none over for the narrator:
This is not the sort of happiness which a man would in general wish to
owe to his wife; but where other powers of entertainment are wanting, the
true philosopher will derive benefit from such as are given. (PP, p. 236)
Upon the whole, therefore, she found, what has sometimes been found
before, that an event to which she had looked forward with impatient
desire, did not in taking place, bring all the satisfaction she had promised
herself. (PP, p. 237)
Sometimes it is neutral, as in this curt avoidance of description:
It is not the object of this work to give a description of Derbyshire, nor

of any of the remarkable places through which their route thither lay;
Oxford, Blenheim, Warwick, Kenelworth, Birmingham, &c. are suffici-
ently known. (PP, p. 240)
At the end the author's solitary T appears: 'I wish I could say, for
the sake of her family, that the accomplishment of her earnest desire
in the establishment of so many of her children, produced so happy an
effect as to make her a sensible, amiable, well-informed woman for the
rest of her life.' (PP, p. 385) It is not, as in Sense and Sensibility, that
we feel ourselves in the presence of an occasional superfluity of irony,
but rather that the author has withdrawn as far as possible, reserving
her commentary and using her most neutral tones.
In Mansfield Park the author's ironic voice is much more pervasive;
it is much wittier here and in the last two novels. The ironic beginning
is especially satiric and generalized. Fanny Price is soon to take over
much of the point of view, but irony makes its presence felt through-
out the novel. There is also an occasional marked use of the tentative
'probably* or 'perhaps* to suggest a provisional or detached attitude
of author to character. But while the author disclaims knowledge, she
feels free to express neighbourly pity: 'Poor woman!' she says of Mrs
Price, 'she probably thought change of air might agree with many of
her children/ (MP, p. 11) The second 'probably* is rather different,
not so much admitting a lack of knowledge of the heroine as head-
aches and heartaches: 'The state of her spirits had probably had its
share in her indisposition....' The third act of dissociation is entirely
comic, a discreet 'perhaps': 'Sir Thomas, after a moment's thought,
recommended Speculation. He was a Whist player himself, and per-
haps might feel that it would not much amuse him to have her for a
partner.' (MP, p. 239) The rhetorical question about a heroine's feel-
ings appears again, offering another model for George Eliot: 'And
Fanny, what was she doing and thinking all this while? and what was
her opinion of the newcomers?' (MP, p. 48) We have left the neutral
tones of Pride and Prejudice and the sour tones of Sense and Sensi-
bility for something more like the volubility of Northanger Abbey.
There is a special warmth here for the heroine, who is - as has long
been noticed - "my Fanny*. The author's voice is exclamatory at times,
and freely personal. At the beginning of Volume Three, the author
intervenes to mark the awful occasion of Sir Thomas's return: 'How
is the consternation of the party to be described? To the greater
number it was a moment of absolute horror. Sir Thomas in the house!'
MP, p. 175) But nearly all the interesting interventions are made on
Fanny's behalf. Jane Austen feels more solicitous for her than for any
of the other heroines, because, as Mary Lascelles has sensitively
explained, Fanny begins her career in the novel as a child, but also
perhaps because of that charmlessness with which her author first
endows her and for which she may feel the responsibility of a parent
imaged in his children. The solicitude is never sentimental and it is
tempered by irony and amusement:
... for although there doubtless are such unconquerable young ladies of
eighteen (or one should not read about them) as are never to be persuaded
into love against their judgment by all that talent, manner, attention, and
flattery can do, I have no inclination to believe Fanny one of them, or to
think that with so much tenderness of disposition, and so much taste as
belonged to her, she could have escaped heart-whole from the court-
ship. ... (MP, p. 231)
She had all the heroism of principle, and was determined to do her
duty; but having also many of the feelings of youth and nature, let her not
be much wondered at if, after making all these good resolutions on the
side of self-government, she seized the scrap of paper on which Edmund
had begun writing to her, as a treasure beyond all her hopes. . . .
(MP, p. 265)
The author affectionately admits that her heroine is made of common

clay. On one occasion there is a sharp comment which intrudes its
feeling jarringly:
How much time she might, in her own fancy, allot for its dominion, is
another concern. It would not be fair to enquire into a young lady's exact
estimate of her own perfections. (MP, p. 331)
The last chapter makes the fullest use of direct commentary since
N orthanger Abbey. There is the sense of the author's self-knowledge:
'Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects
as soon as I can, impatient to restore every body, not greatly in fault
themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.'
There is also the sense of her affection, though it is expressed in a
curiously conjectural way, as if the feeling in 'my Fanny' demanded
the convention of biographical reality: 'My Fanny indeed at this very
time, I have the satisfaction of knowing, must have been happy in
spite of every thing. She must have been a happy creature in spite of
all that she felt or thought she felt, for the distress of those around
her.' The moral commentary is feeling and vigorous. The author
gravely asks of Mrs Rushworth: 'What can exceed the misery of such
a mind in such a situation?' speaking not of remorse but of Henry
Crawford's reproaches 'as the ruin of all his happiness in Fanny'. She
is harsh about Mrs Rushworth: 'The indignities of stupidity, and the
disappointments of selfish passion, can excite little pity.' Her remark
on the double standard, 'In this world, the penalty is less equal than
could be wished', probably possesses the distinction of being Jane
Austen's only direct social criticism. It is followed by the reserved
"without presuming to look forward to a juster appointment here-
after', which hints, albeit negatively, at the author's only recorded
wish in the novels for social reform. The end is playful, ironic and
evasive:
I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that every one may be
at liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable passions,
and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as to time
in different people.—I only intreat every body to believe that exactly at
the time when it was quite natural that it should be so, and not a week
earlier, Edmund did cease to care about Miss Crawford, and became as
anxious to marry Fanny, as Fanny herself could desire. (MP, p. 470)
Emma is the most self-effacing of the novels, for obvious reasons. It

has been called a detective story, and the authors of detective stories,
like their detectives, must lie low and keep secrets. The free indirect
style allows the author to register slight hints and suggestions which
the knowing reader sooner or later discovers. As we follow the track of
the author, on second and later readings, it is to find that she has
always played fair. The clues are present, but not too obtrusive until
we look for them, for example: 'She then repeated some warm
personal praise which she had drawn from Mr Elton.' There are also
pervasive pressures of irony, more subdued than in any other novel.
We are kept largely, though not entirely, within Emma's point of
view. The author even keeps out of the introduction, which is straight
and frank, presenting a striking contrast to the ironic first sentences
of Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park:
The real evils indeed of Emma's situation were the power of having
rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well
of herself; these were the disadvantages which threatened alloy to her
many enjoyments. The danger, however, was at present so unperceived,
that they did not by any means rank as misfortunes with her. (E, pp. 5-6)
The reservations of 'seemed to unite some of the best blessings' and

other similar hints are not enigmatic, since the situation is so frankly
outlined. Even Mr Woodhouse is described straightforwardly, without
ironic indirectness: 'though everywhere beloved for the friendliness of
his heart and his amiable temper, his talents could not have recom-
mended him at any time'. This is dry, but clear. Its impact is not
delayed.
Generalization is sparse, just occasionally showing through, as in
the comment that Mr Weston's feeling for Miss Taylor 'was not the
tyrannic influence of youth on youth' - which is not a very young
remark. The free indirect style is prominent, and collaborates with
plain narrative. When we are told that the privilege of exchanging any
vacant evening of his own blank solitude for the elegancies and society
of Mr Woodhouse's 'drawing-room and the smiles of his lovely
daughter, was in no danger of being thrown away' by Mr Elton, we
have the truth placed before us as it is before Emma. The juxta-
position of Mr Elton's delights, in drawing-room and daughter, un-
interrupted by even a comma, has its instructiveness. We move from
such unironic frankness to Emma's point-of-view: 'How was she to
bear the change? - It was true that her friend was going only a half
mile from them....' The sardonic tone creeps in, especially after the
factual informativeness of the first two chapters, but it is discreet:
'Altogether she was convinced of Harriet Smith's being exactly the
young friend she wanted - exactly the something which her home
required.' The free indirect style is a good medium for irony. Emma
preserves a habit of reticence after the secrets are out, and even at the
end the author never comes as far forward to claim her characters in
protectiveness or sympathy, nor does she say T. The comic solution
which unites Emma and Mr Knightley, like the happy-ever-after, is
narrated with amusement and warmth, but from a distance. In the
novel where action is most precisely and cunningly located within the
heroine's imagination, the author is at her most reserved. There is no
English novel as dramatic and self-effacing as Emma until the experi-
ments of Henry James's middle period.
In the last novel, Persuasion, the author's voice returns in a variety
of tone and function like that of Mansfield Park. Its irony is perhaps
a little more muted. The humours of Sir Walter Elliot and Elizabeth
are not introduced through loud ironies, but speak for themselves after
demure narrative: Tie could read his own history with an interest
which never failed'. This leaves us in no doubt about the author's
scorn, but it is entirely implicit.
After the third chapter has ended with Anne's musings in a favour-
ite grove, 'a few months more, and he, perhaps, may be walking here',
Jane Austen's open guidance begins. Without being a serial novelist,
Jane Austen is adept at turning corners between chapters, and she
begins the fourth chapter by giving a name to that naturally anony-
mous pronoun repeating its italic: 'He was not Mr Wentworth, the
former curate of Monkford, however suspicious appearances may be.'
This informative pronouncement is not greatly different from the
faintly amused commentary of Northanger Abbey. Persuasion con-
tinues the authorial dissociations of Mansfield Park: 'time had soft-
ened down much, perhaps nearly all of peculiar attachment to him*.
Time is allowed to tell, and the author waits, her provisional tone
refusing to make predictions about emotional survival and renewal.
The amused authorial tone is available again to observe the social
changes recorded in the old-fashioned parlour of the Great House at
Uppercross:
Oh! could the originals of the portraits against the wainscot, could the
gentlemen in brown velvet and the ladies in blue satin have seen what was
going on, have been conscious of such an overthrow of all order and neat-
ness! The portraits themselves seemed to be staring in astonishment.
(P.p. 40)
Matter-of-fact and harsh is the report on Dick Musgrove: 'The real

circumstances of this pathetic piece of family history were, that the
Musgroves had had the ill fortune of a very troublesome, hopeless son,
and the good fortune to lose him before he reached his twentieth
year.' The bluntness offends modem sensibilities, but it is in tune with
many of the harsh remarks on death, pregnancies, children and looks
in the letters to Cassandra. Jane Austen may or may not redeem this
cruelty when she later observes that 'Personal size and mental sorrow
certainly have no necessary proportions', rhetorically absolving her-
self while insisting that 'there are unbecoming conjunctions... which
ridicule will seize*. (P, p. 68) It is an interesting compromise between
coldness and a keen anticipation of the charge of coldness. However
we may judge her authorial attitude, she cannot be accused of a lack
of foresight.
The free indirect style is prominent. Anne's exclamations and
questions, while in the third person, are emphatically Anne's: 'Alas!
with all her reasonings, she found, that to retentive feelings eight years
may be little more than nothing' and *Now, how were his sentiments
to be read?' An enhancement of flexible commentary is Jane Austen's
seemingly invented device of quoted indirect style, to stylize, vary or
quicken the pulse of actual speech: ' "Charles had never seen a
pleasanter man in his life"'and '"hehad counted eighty-seven women
go by"'. Amusement sweetened by affection enters the commentary
on the heroine's feelings, in a sentence which has often been observed:
'Prettier musings of high-wrought love and eternal constancy, could
never have passed along the streets of Bath, than Anne was sporting
with from Camden-place to Westgate-buildings. It was almost
enough to spread purification and perfume all the way.' (P, p. 192)
The tone becomes a little warmer towards the end, and the final
chapter brings back the authorial 'I' which has been unheard since
Mansfield Park:
Who can be in doubt of what followed? When any two young people
take it into their heads to marry, they are pretty sure by perseverance to
carry their point, be they ever so poor, or ever so imprudent, or ever so
little likely to be necessary to each other's ultimate comfort. This may be
bad morality to conclude with, but I believe it to be truth (P, p. 248)
Generalization supports and discriminates the individual instance,

and the author's feelings towards her characters are appreciative, full
of that esteem which she likes to chronicle. The direct address starts
the last chapter, but fades out, to let a detached summary speak for
itself, with the vivacity of the last sentences supplied by the well-
wishers within the novel.
The flexible commentary adapts itself to the particular purposes
and needs of individual novels and does not change very much with
the growth of the novelist's art. There are two kinds of generalization,
comic and serious, which run right through the novels.
Trivial generalization is, as we have seen, part of the play of satire in
Nor than ger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility. Even hi the later novels
where commentary is quieter, it conveys a number of authorial
opinions on small matters. The comic opinions are largely concerned
with domestic matters, parents, children, marriage and courtship. The
author's reluctance to make us a present of her opinion is confirmed by
her occasional willingness to deliver opinions on unimportant matters
and to utter commonplaces. The opinions may be sardonically trivial,
like the suggestion that children should always be taken on visits to
provide subjects for conversation, or tolerantly amused, like the com-
ment that it is in vain for a woman to fret over clothes, since no man or
woman will think the more of her for it. They may be slight but vivid,
like a generalization in Mansfield Park about wet Sunday evenings as
'the very time of all others when if a friend is at hand the heart must
be opened and every thing told'. An observation in Persuasion about
'everyone having their taste in noises' is attached to a slightly satiric
account of Lady Russell's preference for civic bustle in Bath to the
noise of children at Uppercross. Persuasion also contains the more
sober reflection that women's beauty is often scarcely altered for the
worse at the age of twenty-nine, or the remark that it is gratifying to
a woman 'to be assured, in her eight-and-twentieth year, that she has
not lost one charm of earlier youth'. Historical change and lack of
change make some of the commonplaces dated and some fresh. We
may feel the personal significance of certain themes, such as her sense
of the pleasures and pains of children's company, which are linked
with observations in the letters. We may feel a certain biographical
weight in some opinions, especially on the subjects of age, time, and
female beauty. The opinions are never gnomic or sententious; invari-
ably attached to individual character and action, they are also
invariably brief. Jane Austen's authorial commentary hardly ever
enters into the feelings and passions of the characters, and never
solicits or encourages the reader's sympathy, pity or admiration. Her
serious generalizations are rare. Sometimes they are brief, though too
firm to be called shy. She has a habit of taking a few words to move
from the particular occasion towards an abstraction, then quickly
returning to the novel's action. She sums up Fanny's happiness on the
occasion of her coming-out ball in Mansfield in this sentence: 'Her
happiness on this occasion was very much a la mortal, finely
chequered.'
The unusual generalization is marked by the rare foreign phrase,
and the rare visual metaphor. This is not a profound observation
about the human condition, but a moving commonplace, as the
French words admit with their air of quotation. The metaphorical
phrase 'finely chequered', attaches itself equally to Fanny's happiness
and to the mortal condition. Without leaving Fanny, the author's
voice has briefly interposed, to relate the experience to other human
lives. Fanny's fluctuations of feeling are evident before and during the
dance, but the brief phrase makes us see them not just as the tremulous
feelings of this occasion, but as typical of human blessings. Jane
Austen's reserve and reticence in generalization are in marked con-
trast to the habits of her characters. They tend to be great generalizes,
exchanging commonplaces or individual opinions which are wise,
brash, amusing, ironic, or solemn. The rare occasions when the
author's voice has feeling give the sense of feeling that needs to
emerge.
In Sense and Sensibility the emergent feeling is that of an appre-
ciative, if slightly amused, acknowledgement of the sanguine tempera-
ment, through the description of Mrs Dashwood. Here too the
generalization shares a sentence with the particular comment on the
character. The author briefly emerges to dwell on the pleasures of
Mrs Dashwood's sensibility: 'that sanguine expectation of happiness
which is happiness itself. (SS, p. 8)
Similarly, she digresses briefly from the appreciation of Henry
Crawford's feeling for Fanny:
The gentleness, modesty, and sweetness of her character were warmly
expatiated on, that sweetness which makes so essential a part of every
woman's worth in the judgment of man, that though he sometimes loves
where it is not, he can never believe it absent. (MP, p. 294)
In Pride and Prejudice, when she is discussing the growth of Eliza-
beth's love for Darcy, she offers a judgement for our consideration:
If gratitude and esteem are good foundations of affection, Elizabeth's
change of sentiment will be neither improbable nor faulty. But if other-
wise, if the regard springing from such sources is unreasonable or un-
natural, 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 defence, except that she had given
somewhat of a trial to the latter method, in her partiality for Wick-
ham. ... (PP,p.279)
Here irony holds back generalization, keeping it conditional: 'If
gratitude and esteem are good foundations...'. The author does not
assert but persuades us to agree, at the same time deflating common
opinion. The irony is not sharp, but grave. We are expected to assent
to this experience of the heart.
In these instances, the author ventures to disclose her feelings. They
are generalizations of feelings that the characters, enmeshed as they
are in the act of pain, pleasure, praise, anticipation, gratitude and
esteem, could not express. The author chooses to utter her feelings
about acts of feeling, and so attaches the special cases to life in
general, approvingly and understandingly. These are rare instances,
perhaps inhibited by Jane Austen's awareness of the conventional
raptures of the novel of sensibility. But in each feeling utterance of a
truth of feeling, there is perhaps a little more than simple sympathy.
The author's observation seems to add its own experience to the
experience within the fiction. The lines of fiction and life seem to
converge.
This sense of the author's desire to comment is felt as a stronger,
more definite pressure in her observations on brothers and sisters in
Mansfield Park. Once more, her voice demands to be heard, and edges
its way into the descriptions of the character's feelings:
An advantage this, a strengthener of love, in which even the conjugal tie

is beneath the fraternal. Children of the same family, the same blood,
with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment
in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply; and it must
be by a long and unnatural estrangement, by a divorce which no subse-
quent connection can justify, if such precious remains of the earliest
attachments are ever entirely outlived. Too often, alas! it is so.—
Fraternal love, sometimes almost every thing, is at others worse than
nothing. (MP, p. 234)
Other generalizations are brief, and attached to the fiction. But here
the utterance takes several sentences to itself, and is more directly
emotional, even rising into exclamation of feeling in 'alas!'. It is still
connected to the instance of Fanny and William, enjoying the recoll-
ections of early pains and pleasures, and after it is done it returns to
them: 'But with William and Fanny Price, it was still a sentiment in
all its prime, and freshness. . .'. As with the image of Fanny's finely
chequered happiness, the generalized truth does not digress but
affirms and enlarges the fiction.
The voice of the author can sound as a personal voice, rarer, some-
times poignant, not to be wished away. Even the description of Lyme
Regis seems to belong to this category of apparent personal pressures:
. . . a very strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the
immediate environs of Lyme, to make him wish to know it better. The
scenes in its neighbourhood, Charmouth, with its high grounds and exten-
sive sweeps of country, and still more its sweet retired bay, backed by dark
cliffs, where fragments of low rock among the sands make it the happiest
spot for watching the flow of the tide, for sitting in unwearied contempla-
tion;—the woody varieties of the cheerful village of Up Lyme, and, above
all, Pinny, with its green chasms between romantic rocks (P, p. 95)
Jane Austen usually disclaims minuteness of description and the very

detail here joins with the quiet evocation of delight to give a sense of
personal experience.
Jane Austen does not imagine characters who can bear a full narra-
tive responsibility, like Robinson Crusoe, Clarissa, Jane Eyre, Lucy
Snowe, David Copperfield, or Proust's Marcel. These are fictitious
storytellers endowed with convenient powers of perception and
expression. Some of them bear a close resemblance to the author for
whom they stand, like Marcel or Lucy Snowe; some betray a fainter
resemblance, like Clarissa. Resemblance to an author is itself a
complex and fleeting notion, which can cover experiences, character,
personality, mind and fantasy, from all of which selections are
unconsciously made. Robinson Crusoe does not write the books his
author writes, but he finds a writer's satisfaction in making his
chronicle, and Defoe joins a literary energy with matter-of-factness,
industry and piety, which we may impute to the author, and find in
his other characters. Characters who are neither narrators nor even
sensitive registers of consciousness may resemble the author closely,
and affinities between character and author are variously discovered
by friends or critics. Jane Austen has been compared to her own Anne
Elliot, but this is a personal claim and perhaps a private image. The
sense of an author is diffused through all the characters.
There is perhaps some justification in looking closely at the literary
endowments of characters in fiction. Whatever we know or do not
know about the author, we know about the authorship. We may also,
as critical readers, know quite a lot about mind and style. In the novels
of Jane Austen, her own powers of wit, humour, satire, irony, fun,
playfulness, and controlled rhapsody are carefully distributed.
Like most other women novelists before this century, Jane Austen
never writes about being a novelist. She keeps to the highroad of
average experience. In one respect, her characters* society is very
much more limited than hers, which was enlarged and enlivened by
her authorship. However gifted her men and women, they are less
gifted than their author. The women are less gifted, and also less
occupied and less remarkable than their author. She stresses her
heroines' lack of occupation, usually makes them clever and imagina-
tive, but never exceptional in talent and achievement. Emma tells
Harriet Smith that being a spinster is tolerable if you are rich,
resourceful, and have some objects of affection, but she never suggests
that authorship might help. In her recent book, Reader, I Married
Him, Patricia Beer suggests that Jane Austen's refusal to make her
women talented condemns them for a personal lack of creativity. It
seems more likely that the lack of professional creativity is a deliberate
attempt to define social conditions at their most representative and
unexceptional. The exceptional woman proves nothing. So it is in the
unexceptional woman that she finds a representative image.
But she did not resist the temptation to scatter some of her powers
through her novels. As Richard Simpson 4 noticed, she liked to analyse
differences of mind. She does so more thoroughly and profoundly
than any other English novelist except George Eliot. Some novelists,
like Dickens and Henry James, excel at varying their characters while
being fairly undiscriminating about their intelligence. James may
claim that there are differences in moral and aesthetic sensibility
between Maggie Verver and Charlotte Stant, or Gilbert Osmond and
* Southam's Critical Heritage, op. cit., pp. 258-60.
Lord Warburton, but these are relatively refined differences, all
James's characters being immensely clever. Jane Austen gives each
character an almost measurable intelligence. Catherine Morland is
not brilliant, but she is honest and trusts her own judgement. So she
knows logical gibberish when she meets it in the flagrantly contra-
dictory boasts of John Thorpe. Mrs Norris, who is no fool, really
knows that Mr Rushworth 'is not a shining character', as she tells Sir
Thomas, when he begins to register his future son-in-law's abject
brainlessness. Jane Austen does one thing even better than George
Eliot, for her evaluation of mind, as these last examples show, is
usually registered through the response of her characters. Sometimes
she tells us outright what her characters' minds are like, as with Mr
Rushworth, but sometimes she leaves it to her characters. They may
be sharp and superior connoisseurs of mental folly, like Mr Bennet and
Elizabeth, or simply bright enough to register other intelligences. We
see minds through other minds, and in the encounters of intelligence,
always marked in Jane Austen's social groups, we learn about the
mind observing and the mind being observed.
Among the qualities of mind dramatically analysed in her novels
are those which convey some sense of an artist's experience. The
refusal to write about writers encourages her to present ordinary
people who possess narrative powers, wit, satire, and invention. Jane
Austen may or may not be eager to say with Carlyle that every man is
a poet and a narrator, but like Thomas Hardy or James Joyce, she
implies it. It is less admiration than criticism of imagination and
eloquence which pervades her novels. She reflects and refracts her
own reading experience, both admiring and critical, in the rational
praise of Henry Tilney, the more besotted thrills and identifications of
Isabella and Catherine, the rapturous enthusiasm of Marianne, the
indulgence of Captain Benwick and the more controlled enjoyments
of Anne Elliot. In Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility, she
includes the response to literature in a larger critique of aesthetic
feeling. Neither Catherine nor Marianne represents the perils of
strong inventiveness: they suffer rather from excessive susceptibilities,
Catherine to literature, Marianne to poetry, music and painting. They
show a certain inability to distinguish art from life; personal imagina-
tion and self-knowledge are hampered by aesthetic saturations.
Catherine's self-confessed unfixed opinions are in danger of blinding
her to the nature of her environment, so that she is particularly excited
by Gothic expectations and prevented from looking hard enough
through appearances and at probabilities. Neither Catherine nor
Marianne is in danger from free-ranging imagination but from stereo-
type and conformity. Marianne's raptures and ideals are strong but
conventional. Her fastidious sense of style is superficial. She criticizes
Sir John Middleton's cliches:
'I abhor every common-place phrase by which wit is intended; and "set-
ting one's cap at a man," or "making a conquest," are the most odious of
all. Their tendency is gross and illiberal; and if their construction could
ever be deemed clever, time has long ago destroyed all its ingenuity.'
Sir John did not much understand this reproof; but he laughed as
heartily as if he did (SS, p. 45)
Sir John comes out of this little exchange rather better than the
humourless and superior Marianne, whose distaste for gross and
illiberal words is a bad preparation for her entrance into a gross and
illiberal society. Willoughby's digression about style in the middle of
his confession to Elinor draws our attention again to the dissociation
of sensibility and a sense of style:
'... what I felt is—in the common phrase, not to be expressed; in a more
simple one—perhaps too simple to raise any emotion—my feelings were
very, very painful.—Every line, every word was—in the hackneyed
metaphor which their dear writer, were she here, would forbid—a dagger
to my heart. To know that Marianne was in town was—in the same lan-
guage—a thunderbolt.—Thunderbolts and daggers!—what a reproof
would she have given me!' (SS, p. 325)
Jane Austen dissociates herself from not only aesthetic and literary
excesses, but also from the excessive satire and criticism of superior
minds.
Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey has struck some readers as too
unassimilated, too much the author's 'spokesman* (as Walton Litz
calls him).8 He is certainly the least criticized of Jane Austen's wits
and critics, allowed to be more reliably didactic than any other
character of comparable talent. He is, however, slightly criticized by
Catherine for indulging his humour in the foibles of others, by his
sister, for over-niceness, and perhaps by the reader, for being less than
infallible in his confidence about the safety of England and the
English home. But these murmurs are faint. Perhaps the novel would
have benefited from some small indication that Henry hadn't
8
Op. cit., p. 69.
sufficiently perceived his father's modern versions of Gothic villainy,
but we should recognize that he is the most playful of Jane Austen's
characters and she was perhaps reluctant to criticize him for that fun
which Johan Huizinga has said 'resists all logical interpretation'.6 The
symmetry of Sense and Sensibility has also been criticized7 and is
certainly unrelieved by any golden mean. In the last four complete
novels, Jane Austen avoids the detached authority of Henry Tilney's
mind and the extremes of sense and sensibility. Her rule in the mature
novels is to charm and amuse by powers of wit, imagination and satire,
but at the same time to assimilate the wits, critics and satirists into the
moral action and subject them most severely to critical judgement.
Wit, imagination and satire are set free, suspected, tried, and found
wanting.
Such thorough criticism seems to be new in the English novel. There
is the long history of burlesque and criticism of sensibility, in novels
like Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote. A warning against
sensibility may even be sounded within Gothic novels, like that given
by her father to the heroine of Mrs Radcliffe's The Mysteries of
Udolpho, though the warning can't be said to go far into the action.
Further back are Sterne's travesties of fictional forms and his
'Cervantick' humour, which, like Charlotte Lennox's, remind us that
behind three centuries of English fiction looms the brilliantly comic
self-analysis of imagination in Don Quixote. Jane Austen is unusual
in her serious and fundamental criticism of the powers, not the weak-
nesses, of imagination. Only Cervantes looked as deeply into the
imagination. He looked at madness. She looks at sanity.
She looks at the sane imagination, and finds it imperfect. Every
artist knows the pleasure of confident powers. Elizabeth Bennet shares
with her father the self-indulgent joys of the comic spirit. In Mr
Bennet they are over-developed, the consolations of a disappointed
mind which falls back on superior condescension, the superiority and
complacency of the sense of humour. It seems right that Jane Austen,
whose sense of humour is always ebullient in her fiction, and also her
letters, even when she is ill and dying, should attend to the dangers
of this most flattering sense. It is not until E. M. Forster's A Room with
a View that we get such another warning against humour, once again
from a comic writer who knew all about it. In Elizabeth the self-
• Homo Ludens (London, 1949; Paladin edition, 1970), p. 21.

7
Stuart Tave has a refreshingly new interpretation, op. cit., Chap. iii.
delighting comic spirit is still young, unembittered and springy, but
the congeniality of the father and the daughter is all too clear, making
its own delicate implications about environment and heredity. In the
foreground is the analysis of the comic energy which is a reflection of
the author's mind. Mr Bennet and Elizabeth care too much for style
and intelligence and enjoy mocking its absence. (They are both
capable of laughing at themselves.) What they find most funny in Mr
Collins is the satisfaction of a style so adequate to the hollowness of the
man. Mr Bennet also finds his wife funny, though there is some sour-
ness as well as self-indulgence in the deliberately obscure irony he
addresses to her. Elizabeth, significantly, doesn't find her funny. But
the comic sense can err, and the style isn't invariably an index of the
man. Darcy, as well as Mr Collins, is pompous, but there is more to
Darcy than his social and linguistic pomposity conveys. There is less
to Wickham than meets the charmed eye and ear. Elizabeth and Mr
Bennet, satirists diverted by follies, not crimes, are subject to the perils
of satiric self-satisfaction. An eye for folly can easily be blind to crime,
which is better at hiding itself than folly. A pride in the powers of
mind and style can be deceived by mere cleverness and mere style,
whether in words, vivacity, or looks. Henry James was to snare
Strether by Parisian appearances, so alluring after the unaesthetic
dullness of Woollett, but Jane Austen was first to show that the visual
sense can run to seed. She makes one of her most perceptive links,
between a susceptibility to style and a susceptibility to personal
appearance. The novelist herself relies heavily on correlations of looks
and style, in Mr Collins, Mr Rushworth, and Mr Rushworth's great
house, and she is especially alert to the snags and traps of appearances.
The critique of a sense of style continues in Mansfield Park. Henry
and Mary Crawford are endowed with charm, wit, and vivacity.
Their charm is conventional, their wit insensitive, their vivacity self-
engrossed. Their charm, wit and vivacity are greedy and reach out for
people.. Mary's graceful ease and fluency depend almost entirely on
the assured reporting of social commonplaces; she holds what is
generally held." Her wit is superficial, and never notices its audience.
Her vivacious turns of speech may be cultivated and literary, 'North
or South, I know a black cloud when I see one', but are there to show
off and persuade. Henry is also civilized in his uses of literature: he
adroitly uses Shakespeare to draw Fanny. He knows how to vary his
8
Babb, op. cit., pp. 156-7.
bait, entertaining Julia Rushworth with amusing stories, and Maria
by flattery and double-entendre: 'I do not like to see Miss Bertram so
near the altar.' Henry Crawford anticipates Emma's imaginary
portrait of Frank Churchill, able to be all things to all men, being
enough of a chameleon to be able to adapt his playing for different
audiences. He is painfully but appropriately punished by being
required to go through with his act, as he never had to with the
amateur performance which was never staged. Henry performs his
lover's vows with a difference.
Jane Austen does not rely on these warning images, but follows
through the logic of her argument with positive illustration. Up to
now her novels have been utterly conventional, in making a correla-
tion of virtue with charm and good looks. Every eighteenth-century
novelist had done as much. (In Camilla Fanny Burney has the
virtuous Eugenia who is disfigured and deformed, though she gives
her a subordinate role.) Jane Austen manages to suggest something of
an Ugly Duckling quality in Fanny, while making her, as Mary Craw-
ford says, *pretty enough'. Before she 'comes out' her looks attract no
attention. In Persuasion Jane Austen restores Anne Elliot's bloom,
after getting something of the same filial effect of comparison with
prettier girls, but Anne's charm and elegance are felt. Fanny is not
only less beautiful than her cousins and Mary Crawford, she is less
charming. She thinks everything out earnestly and carefully, even in
public, and never says anything just for fun or playfulness. Her
rhapsodies show her fervour, but also solemnity. Jane Austen is any-
thing but committed to the absolute moral distrust of fun for fun's
sake, as her letters show on every page, but in Fanny she insists relent-
lessly that virtue need not be attractive. Mary's charm and Fanny's
charmlessness set a trap for the average sensual reader drawn to
vivacity, wit and flirtatiousness. It is a trap that many readers —
possibly more men than women - have fallen into, though some
emerge again.
Emma's elations of wit and imagination are indulged, exposed and
punished. Her wit is given its head and shows its heartlessness. It is
corrected by Mr Knightley's special form of moral chivalry, and by
Emma's own better sense. Her power is released, punished by being
mistaken, lapses, is punished again by being mistaken again, lapses,
and is punished again by remorse. Even after Mr Knightley's rebuke,
she feels chagrin at her own blindness and at seeing that she has been
the subject of somebody else's manipulative invention.
Like the novels of Richardson, Fielding, and George Eliot, Jane
Austen's novels revaluate their predecessors and influence their
successors.* Nonhanger Abbey tries out a representative of the author.
Sense and Sensibility provides no one who is at once highly rational
and highly imaginative, but the two separated extremes of reason and
enthusiasm.10 Pride and Prejudice returns to another version of the
authorial character, and subjects brilliance to error, recantation and
reform. The heroine whom her author found delightful and expected
everyone else to find delightful, as they have, is succeeded by a study
of her opposite. In Fanny Jane Austen creates a division between two
aspects of the imagination, its power to charm and play and its power
to know and feel. Emma varies the theme, to show imagination at
its most faulty, and lazy, but still capable of feeling, reason, and self-
knowledge. Then Persuasion appears, the only novel where the
theme of imagination is neither pervasive nor prominent. Perhaps it
follows the five earlier novels by turning away from the theme of a
balanced imagination. The education of Elizabeth, Fanny and Emma
shows the regulation of passion and imagination by reason and solves
the local problems of being a human being in society. For these indi-
viduals, it solves problems, but the novelist works through particular
cases, in order to conduct a more general enquiry into the nature of
human and social virtue. Jane Austen moves towards an expansion of
the more artistic theme, and in Persuasion we lose our sense of an
author's special experience. She is also pushing beyond her previous
answer, to consider the difficulties of a character whose reason and
passion are integrated. Anne Elliot is too proficient and energetic to be
a creepmouse like Fanny. When the novel begins she has long ago
made her entry into the world. Like Elizabeth and Emma she is
intelligent, but unlike them never asserts her mind in wit. She can be
amused by herself, and by other people's defects, but takes no special
pleasure in the sense of superiority. So she is not blinkered, not elated,
not drawn to styles and appearances. Her imagination is rational, her
intelligence ardent, but she is steadily at home with her powers of
mind. She has managed to grow up among folly, pride, and affecta-
tion, without being spoilt or superior, though she has been wounded
9 It is unsafe to say much about the order of the first three novels, since the
early versions of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice preceded
Nonhanger Abbey, and the revision of Sense and Sensibility seems to have
been begun before Nonhanger Abbey was drafted.
10 See Walton Lite, op. cit, pp. 78-80.
by conformity. Since leaving Captain Wentworth she has lived in
solitude, without guides and mentors, to work out regrets and re-
appraisals without violent reproach or self-pity. Her ability to say that
she would not persuade as she was persuaded, but that she thinks she
was right to be persuadable, is one of the most admirable efforts of
self-knowledge in the novels.
Such integration does not guarantee a good life, as Jane Austen may
or may not have been preserved from knowing, by her art. It is not
only a matter of finding love, for as we have seen, love depends for
Jane Austen, as for Rousseau, on some ideal of company or com-
munity.11 Anne's solitude is a solitude which makes uncongenial
demands on her, where her relatives are likely to climb on her
willingly bent back, and keep her down. She has done the right thing.
To have resisted the persuasions of prudence would have been a choice
of freedom, but also of danger. Anne does not choose freedom, but she
does not lose passion. Hers is a perfectly bearable life, even after
Captain Wentworth returns. She likes some people and tolerates
others, enjoys usefulness without martyrdom. Her life in society is life
in good company, but not in the best company. When Captain Went-
worth returns, it is to remind her most immediately of what she has
never forgotten, of that experience of his best company. Persuasion
persuades us that someone who achieves the blend of passion and
reason is still left with personal and social problems. Jane Austen
separates the problem of the good imagination from the achievement
of happiness. She presents a mind strong enough to grow and survive
with the minimal comforts and aids. The romantic novel still saves
Anne from the consequences of her choice, emphasizing not only its
own conventions, but human luck or chance. It is as if the special
problems of the creative mind had been left behind.
A sense of the author shows itself in the preoccupations with art and
its analogues, but in Persuasion it disappears. Persuasion is the last
complete novel, written in the special solitude of pain, illness and the
expectation of death, but it is always dangerous to make easy correla-
tions between life and art, and Persuasion is followed by the incom-
pleted fragment of Sanditon, high-spirited, more socially extroverted,
and returning to the burlesque of the juvenilia and Northanger
Abbey. In the case of Jane Austen, the sense of the author is most
11 Rousseau's ideal of the communion of 'dmes bien rites' in La Nouvelle

Heloise is more romantic and idealized than Jane Austen's.
prudently left on the safer side of biographical speculation. Up to
Persuasion she has been concerned with the dangers of the imagina-
tion, but Persuasion shows us the perpetual and common difficulty of
being human.

Barbara Hardy-A Reading of Jane Austen-Bloomsbury Academic (2000)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Barbara Hardy-A Reading of Jane Austen-Bloomsbury Academic (2000)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Barbara Hardy-A Reading of Jane Austen-Bloomsbury Academic (2000)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

What is the book about?

What is the book about?

What challenges does Anne Elliot face?

What challenges does Anne Elliot face?

A READING OF JANE AUSTEN

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

The Novels of George Eliot (Athlone Press)

First edition (Peter Owen Ltd) 1975

© Barbara Hardy 1975, 1979

ISBN 0485 12032 1

I The Flexible Medium 11

I am very grateful to Jean Elliott and Barbara Pinsker for their

The following abbreviations are used in the text:

The Flexible Medium

In Cecilia, the grosser equivalent of this scene is one in which Cecilia

Fanny Burney's scene is at once a display of manners and a farcical

The first sentence of Mansfield Park is even quieter:

After Jane Austen, George Eliot was to develop a dramatized

The Feelings and the Passions

The Passions are perfectly unknown to her', wrote Charlotte Bronte

The 'real' novelist, as D. H. Lawrence was to insist, educates us by

We see love, like a woolly lamb; or like a decorative decadent panther in

Jane Austen occasionally makes unpleasant characters subject to

Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who,

Like the beginning of Volpone it shows a clear case of the single

Elizabeth did not quite equal her father in personal contentment.

'Regrets', 'apprehensions', 'satisfied', 'felt her approach to the years of

'Will you be so kind,' said she, 'when I am missed, as to say that I am

At Box Hill Frank Churchill's nervous innuendo and flirtation

Mr Weston's good wane stimulates Mr Elton, the party leaves in

We should not sense the underground strength of feeling which

In Northanger Abbey Catherine is startled by meeting Henry

When Edmund plans to stay at home with Lady Bertram so that

As for Elizabeth, her thoughts were at Pemberley this evening more

The analysis casts back to an earlier stage which it rejects, not

In spite of her deeply-rooted dislike, she could not be insensible to the

The action of strong passion is a relationship, even an intimacy,

Fanny's attitude to nature is personal, even domestic, but her spontan-

This is also in character, precise, pedantic, sententious, even slightly

The moon shines bright. In such a night as this....

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!

Man is an instrument over which a series of external and internal impress-

Jane Austen is not an extroverted social novelist, interested chiefly

What initially helps her to preserve her control is incredulity, but

In a firm, though cautious tone, Elinor thus began.

As Jane Austen relieves, animates, dramatizes and deepens this long

Never in her life had Elinor found it so difficult to be calm, as at that

In Willoughby's long, impassioned story, Jane Austen's art is

Harriet was standing at one of the windows. Emma turned round to

'Have you indeed no idea?' said Mrs. Weston in a trembling voice.

Anne Elliot, in Persuasion, is happily astonished at the news of

The exchange of histories here is an exchange of mind and feeling.

Jane Austen's presentation of telling and listening is very much more

'Nay, mama, if he is not to be animated by Cowper!—but we must

The family narrative is not totally unreserved and open. As in all

The flow of the domestic novel consists to a very large extent of

Elinor had often wished for an opportunity of attempting to weaken

Jane Austen analyses the daily storytelling, but her interest in

Catherine Morland's obstacles to using her sense of probability, and

They met by appointment; and as Isabella had arrived nearly five