JANE AUSTEN
JANE AUSTEN
A Consideration of Her Characters
as Revealed Through Comedy
by Daniel J. Travanti
Spring 1974
for
English 542, The Nineteenth Century English Novel
It was startling to me to learn that Jane Austen wrote with so nearly perfect precision, purpose, and order. That is surprising because she wrote during the early years of the development of the English novel. That means that she had not a large body of work through which she might discern the thought and technique that give a writer of fiction the power to translate imagination so affectively to the printed page. She has no primer, no “Poetics”.
E.M. Forster, in his Aspects of the Novel, introduces these published lectures with a suggestion to the student of literature that he try to imagine writers existing together in the same time—any time—sitting at a round table and creating for a single purpose. He is saying, of course, that chronological study, category of period and meaning it in its own time, are not very helpful tools for understanding and appreciating the novel. I have to quibble with that point of view.
For me, it has been a joy to begin to learn what a novel is; what makes it satisfying or not, why, how well it realizes itself, and which ones sustain interest through time. Forster suggests that the answers to all these questions are the same for all writers. I agree, I can learn how to better understand one novelist’s work and thereby, I can have better enjoyment of all novels. I understand Jane Austen’s works better because I know now what it is in her technique that, for instance, gives her characters fullness. To know that she had the gift for delineating believable people who exist only in a book, with a completeness and in a variety never before realized, helps me to appreciate not only her success and her characters, but to read and react more discerningly; not only characters who appeared before hers, but characters in later works as well.
But even more than that, Jane Austen’s work in this aspect becomes a standard of evaluation of all novels. As F.R. Leavis puts it: “She not only makes tradition for those coming after, but her achievement has for us a retroactive effect: as we look back beyond her we see in what goes before, and see because of her, potentialities and significances brought out in such a way that, for us, she creates the tradition we see leading down to her. Her work, like the work of all great creative writers, gives a meaning to the past.” So for me, the fact that she wrote when she wrote is, if you will, a scholarly but significant one. As Forster continues in the introduction to his book: “All through history writers while writing have felt more or less the same. They have entered a common state which it is convenient to call inspiration, and having regard to that state, we may say that History develops, Art stands still.” Art is art, is art, is art: yes, I suppose so. But the art of the novel did not spring full-blown out of the head of a Muse. It developed. It is developing.
What is that Jane Austen’s inspiration and expertise succeeded in realizing fully? Among many things, she was able to write true human beings; looking, acting, feeling, and growing on a page as believably as people do in life. To some critics, that is the highest accomplishment a novelist can attain. Virginia Woolf has even gone so far to say, “I believe…that it is to express character…that the form of the novel…has been evolved.” I think that is an extreme point of view, but I shall not take time to debate it here. Jane Austen’s characters are admirable constructions, and I shall consider them here in some detail.
How did she do it? One observer puts it this way: “…such is her genius that she was able to set her characters on the stage instantly and wholly formed…” It takes talent to do that. I call it a gift. For if it were simply a matter of studying how writers who came before do it, anyone
could. So Jane Austen’s characters were set down “instantly and wholly formed.” More deeply, how, again? The same critic suggests: “Careful examination of such passages shows that they change their perspective line with every character, and that they are always in keeping with the nature of the characters concerned, as we can judge from their conduct and the more immediate revelation of the dialogue. Nothing like this has occurred in English fiction before.” More deeply, there is no way to explain logically how she did this. She just did. The most I can do is to show examples and to probe with some specificity moments, lines and threads. Through this detailed study, I expect to understand more. Through better understanding, I hope to enjoy more.
Jane Austen wrote with enjoyment, I am sure. I know that because she wrote with humor. Humor at its best is bright and clear, and Jane Austen wrote with such clarity always; even when she wasn’t being funny, that her humor sparkles with especial brightness. There are obvious examples in her works; there are subtle instances, too.
There are different kinds of comedy, and Jane Austen finds many sources of humorous effect. One classic example is irony. To be particular, there are—in turns—kinds of irony. In Emma, for instance, there is the situation of Mr. Elton’s behavior in Emma’s and Harriet’s presence. He is thrilled to be with them, Emma supposes, because he is enamored of Harriet. As Emma sees it, his behavior shows him to find Harriet physically attractive, charming in conversation, and accomplished; in short altogether suitable to him to be his wife. But Mr. Elton wants Emma, not Harriet.
The important thing about making this believable, I think, is that on the face of it Emma—in all her efforts to bring about a union between her friend and Mr. Elton—is successful. She is pleased with herself because she has, she thinks, effectively led Mr. Elton to see Harriet’s charms. And Mr. Elton reacts appropriately. He is smiling, energetic, eager in their company. Emma is proud of her match-making schemes. Mr. Elton is thoroughly delighted. But all three are in for a shock. We see it and believe it. Knowing enough to suspect Jane Austen of trying to take me in, I naturally smelled a twist. But all the details pointed to Emma’s conclusion. What was happening, however was not what it appeared. Irony.
The tables begin to turn, and up comes confusion and humor. Mr. Elton makes his first recognizable advance to Emma in the carriage. At first, she is shocked: “ am very much astonished, Mr. Elton. This to me! You forget yourself; you take me for my friend; any message to Miss Smith shall be happy to deliver; but no more of this to me, if you please.” She still doesn’t get it. Mr. Elton is confused. “Miss Smith! Message to Miss Smith! What could she possibly mean!” The incongruities continue. Emma is sure Mr. Elton is drunk. He isn’t. Mr. Elton is sure Emma has seen how much he likes her. She hasn’t. Even in the pauses, there is irony. Emma is momentarily too overpowered to speak. “Charming Miss Woodhouse! Allow me to interpret this interesting silence. It confesses that you have long understood me.” The use of the adjective “interesting” in that second sentence is—I can’t help feeling—droll and deftly chosen.
“’No, sir,’ cried Emma, ‘it confesses no such thing. So far from having long understood you, I have been in a most complete error with respect to your views till this moment.’” He persists. He has one last proof that Emma cares for him. “…and the encouragement I received—” Emma is writhing, and it’s funny.
“Encouragement! I give you encouragement! Sir, you have been entirely mistaken in supposing it. I have seen you only as the admirer of my friend.” There is self-deception in that, I think. Lying, perhaps; irony, if you will. The entire situation and consequent misunderstanding came about because Emma saw Mr. Elton as the main for Harriet. She hardly thought of him merely as the admirer of her friend. She was a huntress, and he had been the prey.
The underlying prerequisite for the success of this scene is, I think, that each character is separate and whole. Mr. Elton behaves throughout in his own consistent manner. All of his actions are bent toward one end; to please Emma. His words are sincere and direct, but all born of his private motive, though he presumes that Emma knows they are meant for her. But Emma’s mind is playing another scene. What she sees and hears she naturally applies to her own intention. Her private motive is opposite to Mr. Elton’s, but both are consistent with the circumstance. And Harriet, of course, is separate and perfect in her manipulated role. She reacts according to Emma’s script, but always in her own personal manner. Each is wholly formed, and distinct from the other two in action, emotion, and words. The irony is sure and believable.
But here is certainly more than just an awkward situation. For us, it is ultimately funny. For Jane Austen’s heroine, however, it becomes a lesson. At least, it should. She is beginning to grow, but she doesn’t know it yet. So it’s more than just fun. I see more deeply into Emma’s character. I understand better how seriously her willfulness and pride overpower her reason. She is aware that she’s blundered, but she still needs to rationalize her conduct and especially her obtuseness. “She had taken up the idea, she supposed, and made everything bend to it. His manners, however, must have been unmarked, wavering, dubious, or she could not have been so misled.” Here again I am impressed with Jane Austen’s skill.
Her taste is impressive. She doesn’t say that she herself knows that Emma has learned a lesson from the experience, nor does she even give us Emma’s direct thought. The writer gives us a surmise, that “she supposed,” which is a hedge. There is no sudden illumination. There is no miraculous change of heart. There is instead a gradual admission, reluctant and thoroughly human, of error. The reality of Emma’s condition is not disturbed by Jane Austen’s intrusion. Emma is still directly before us, the character off the page straight to the reader. A critic I have already mentioned said: “Jane’s mirror remained cold and clear. She stood aloof from it, noting every blemish which it revealed in its quicksilver reflections.”
Emma is beginning to feel remorse, but she has growing to do. Another lesson will come to her soon. It comes through humor again. This time, Jane Austen shows us another source of comedy. Miss Bates is a funny lady. She doesn’t mean to be, and that’s part of the reason she is. She’s a bit giddy and she rambles. Her speeches are full of trifles, and she strings them together interminably, at times, so that she wearies her listeners. But she amuses us. It isn’t merely that personality trait affects us, however. Miss Bates’s verbiage reveals a warm heart. She cares for other people and worries about their problems. What might be pathetic about her is that she has almost no power to help anyone, except her mother. So we sympathize with her. Once we like her, we can be interested. As soon as we attend her, we find her amusing. Jane Austen helps the humor along with some exaggeration.
Emma, Harriet, Mrs. Weston and Miss Bates are on their way to the Bates’s cottage. Miss Bates is excited about having visitors, and when she is excited she talks. For almost two pages’ length, she asks questions and either answers them herself or continues without pause; about the apples sent by Mr. Knightley; about her mother’s health; about the broken spectacles; about the piano; about Mr. Perry and Mrs. Wallis; about the apples, again. It amount to a monologue that sets the whole tone of the character. Emma’s impatience begins. “Emma wondered on what, of all the medley, she would fix.” And Miss Bates proceeds, for almost another two pages’ worth. It is comic invention of the best sort, I think. It is exasperating, but funny for us, and it is revealing.
Miss Bates is solicitous, because she is lonely. Visitors please her, and she is unabashedly thrilled. To me, that is childlike and charming. She does her best to please her guests. She moves quickly, at least that’s how I see her. Her speech style is peculiarly her own here, and the pattern conveys her agitation, her fretting, and her sometimes annoying repetition. “Pray, take care, Mrs. Weston, there is a step at the turning. Pray, take care, Miss Woodhouse, ours is rather a dark staircase—rather darker and narrower than one could wish. Miss Smith, pray take care. Miss Woodhouse, I am quite concerned, I am sure you hit your foot. Miss Smith, the step at the turning.”! She is even self-deprecatory. The sentences are tight, terse, anxious.
Later on, Miss Bates is leaning out the window shouting at Mr. Knightley. The sight is comic, I think, and the manner of communication is even funnier. She titters trifling questions at Mr. K., she begs him to enter (She can’t have too much company), she fishes for compliments from him for Emma and Frank, then she raises her voice so far that they might hear her own compliments for them. She even goes so far as to hope, out loud, for Emma’s and Frank’s approbation of her in return. Miss Bates had left the sitting-room so as not to disturb her guests while she hailed Mr. K., but all the while she was doing that, she kept raising her voice to let them hear. When she returns to the sitting-room, she is voluble as ever. “’Mr. Knightley cannot stop. He is going to Kingston. He asked me if he could do anything—’
‘Yes,’ said Jane, ‘we heard his kind offers; we heard everything.’
‘Oh, yes, my dear, I dare say you might; because, you know, the door was open, and the window was open, and Mr. Knightley spoke loud. You must have hear everything, to be sure.’” Emma, we hear, is still impatient. Miss Bates could be insufferable, but she’s a dear and she means well, so we like her. There is, in Emma and Miss Bate’s relationship, another lesson for Miss Woodhouse.
Sometime afterwards, the group is out picking strawberries. Frank announces that Miss Woodhouse demands one thing clever from each of them, or two things moderately clever, or three things, “very dull indeed.” “’Oh, very well!” exclaimed Miss Bates. ‘Then I need not be uneasy. Three things very dull indeed. That will just do for me, you know. I shall be sure to say three dull things as soon as ever I open my mouth, shan’t I?’ (looking around with the most good-humored dependence on everybody’s assent). ‘Do not you all think I shall?’
Emma could not resist.
‘Ah: ma’am, but there may be a difficulty. Pardon me, but you will be limited as to number—only three at once.’” The moment is awkward and almost vicious.
Emma, we see, can be so self-obsessed as to be cruel. Miss Bates is revealed to us further, too. She is not stupid. Her enthusiasm overpowers her, as Emma’s preoccupation dictates her own behavior. But Miss Bates knows how she strikes people. Though she diminishes herself, she has self-awareness. And she has depth of feeling. “Miss Bates, deceived by the mock ceremony of her manner, did not immediately catch her meaning; but when it burst on her, it could not anger, though a slight blush showed that it could pain her.” Emma seems not to have seen that. Miss Bates makes allowances for her. “’Ah: well—to be sure. Yes, I see what she means’ (turning to Mr. Knightley), ‘and I will try to hold my tongue. I must make myself very disagreeable, or she would not have said such a thing to an old friend.’” The stage is set, but logically and believably, for Emma to see her folly.
Mr. Knightley, her friendly conscience, expresses his displeasure. “How could you be so unfeeling to Miss Bates? How could you be so insolent in your wit to a woman of her character, age, and situation? Emma, I had not thought it possible.” Emma’s reaction is realistically defensive. “Emma recollected, blushed, was sorry, but tried to laugh it off. ‘Nay, how could I help saying what I did? Nobody could have helped it. It was not so very bad. I daresay she did not understand me.’” Mr. Knightley assures Emma that Miss Bates did understand and was hurt. But she defends herself further, exposing her snobbism. It had been the Bate’s station in life that had kept Emma from visiting them more frequently. They had wished for her courtesy and were especially pleased with her attentions. What Emma has never seen is that Miss Bates is in a particularly vulnerable position because of her social status and her spinsterhood. Mr. Knightley reminds her. “Were she your equal in situation—but, Emma, consider how far this is from being the case. She is poor; she has sunk from the comforts she was born to, and if she live to old age, must probably sink more. Her situation should secure your compassion.” Mr. K. continues, the point is made, and Emma is chastened on two scores.
“How could she have been so brutal, so cruel, to Miss Bates! How could she have exposed herself to such ill opinion in any one she valued!” There is too much pride in the second regret, I think, but it is deeply felt about Mr. K., and whether Emma knows it or not, she is beginning to be aware of how much he means to her. And that’s just it again, we learn by degrees. “Time did not compose her.” She remembers and suffers. “…Emma felt the tears running down her cheeks almost all the way home, without being at any trouble to check them, extraordinary as they were.” Ultimately, it is Emma’s growing realization of how much she cares for Mr. Knightley’s opinion of her that shows her how fond she is of him. Indeed, she is beginning to know she loves him.
Later still, at the ball supper, Miss Bates is at her vociferous peak. “Supper was announced. The move began, and Miss Bates might be heard from that moment without interruption till her being seated at the table and taking up her spoon.” There follows over a page’s length of conversation, but it is Miss Bate’s monologue. She fusses about everything and everyone. She asks questions of others and answers them herself. She wavers and quavers and flits. When she’s finally out of breath (I presume), she speaks shyly but loses no momentum. “Soup too! Bless me! I should not be helped so soon, but it smells most excellent and I cannot help beginning.” The chattering, the trifling, the manner and length of speech, and the action suggested by the dialogue, gives us a vivid character in Miss Bates, uniquely herself. And through her personality comes an important influence in Emma’s growth.
In Pride and Prejudice, of course we find irony too, and comedy of manners and personality. But for now, I want to consider Jane Austen’s wit. I should say her characters’ wit, for it is one of her admirable traits that she draws her characters so assuredly that we feel always that they do indeed speak themselves, without help from the writer. Elizabeth Bennet, besides being vivacious and intelligent, is witty. That’s not her role in life, she doesn’t work at it to find how she can be clever. She doesn’t even regard herself as a witty person, I think. Her humor is effective, partly, because it is not self-conscious. That quality in the character makes her especially believable to me, and that characteristic in the woman makes her especially appealing.
Mr. Bennet particularly likes that trait in Elizabeth. He has a sense of humor which is sometimes wry, and which escapes his wife and his other daughters. Part of the strength of his relationship with Elizabeth, however, lies in their sharing an often ready tongue. Mr. Bennet uses it sometimes with irony, to draw out the pretentious and obtuse Collins, for instance. After Collins passes presumptuous judgement and thereby pays an awkward compliment, Mr. Bennet responds. “’You judge very properly,’ said Mr. Bennet, ‘and it is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?’” The fatuous Collins is so full of himself that he answers with pleasure. “They arise chiefly from what is passing at the time, and though I sometimes amuse myself with suggesting and arranging such little elegant compliments as may be adapted to ordinary occasions, I always wish to give them as unstudied an air as possible.” Mr. Bennet wins his point, and he wins us. Finally, he shares his joke and satisfaction with the kindred spirit of Elizabeth. “Mr. Bennet’s expectations were fully answered. His cousin was as absurd as he had hoped, and he listened to him with the keenest enjoyment, maintain at the same time the most resolute composure of countenance, and except in an occasional glance at Elizabeth, requiring no partner in his pleasure.” If Mr. Bennet has failed in some judgements, he is sensible and aware in others. Here is another quality that unites father and daughter. Later, though Elizabeth has herself erred in judgement, she takes advantage of her close ties with her father to lecture and even to rebuke him.
The scene opens with Mr. Bennet’s defending Lydia’s proposed trip to Brighton. Elizabeth is heated, but her father’s humor is irrepressible. “’If you were aware,’ said Elizabeth, ‘of the very great disadvantage to us all which must arise from the public notice of Lydia’s unguarded and imprudent manner; nay, which has already arisen from it, I am sure you would judge differently in the affair.’
‘Already arisen.’’ Repeated Mr. Bennet. ‘What, has she frightened away some of your lovers? Poor little Lizzy: But do not be cast down. Absurdity are not worth a regret. Come, let me see the list of the pitiful fellows who have been kept aloof by Lydia’s folly.’” Elizabeth states her case. In her list of arguments she includes a criticism of her father’s lack of parental guidance. “If you, my dear father, will not take the trouble of checking her exuberant spirits, and of teaching her that her present pursuits are not to be the business of her life, she will soon be beyond the reach of amendment.” Mr. Bennet knows she is serious, but he closes his side of the debate on a light note. “Let us hope, therefore, that her being there may teach her her own insignificance. At any rate, she cannot grow many degrees worse, without authorizing us to lock her up for the rest of her life.” Elizabeth hasn’t change her mind, but she gives up.
She is bright and aware. She sees her sisters’ foolishness, her father’s charms, and weaknesses, too; and she marvels at Mr. Collins’s presumption and gaucherie. In drawing the character of the self-seeking and servile but arch clergyman, Jane Austen gives us a satirical representation of the snobbishness of the upper classes. Even penetrating wit can be stymied by the pomposity as full blown as the reverend’s. He proposes marriage. “’Almost as soon as I entered the house I signaled you out as the companion of my future life. But before I am run away with by my feelings on this subject, perhaps it will be advisable for me to state my reasons for marrying—and moreover coming into Hertfordshire with the design of selecting a wife, as I certainly did.’” This pompous sermonizing is a reflection, of course, of Collins’s stilted mind. He is the exaggeration product of the world of the landed aristocracy. His motives are practical, but they’re dehumanized. He gets his energy from Lady Catherine, a tyrannical, arrogant, totally self-obsessed woman of property. He is a toady to her system, and here his shortcomings are magnified, but they’re real. The speech and sentiments and the stiffness are peculiarly his. Elizabeth responds, but only in thought. “The idea of Mr. Collins, with all his solemn composure, being run away with by his feelings, made Elizabeth so near laughing that she could not use the short pause he allowed in any attempt to stop him farther, and he continued: ‘My reasons for marrying are, first, that I think it a right thing for every clergyman in easy circumstances (like myself) to set the example of matrimony in his parish. Secondly, that I am convinced it will add very greatly to my happiness; and thirdly, which perhaps I ought to have mentioned earlier, that it is the particular advice and recommendation of the very noble lady whom I have the honor of calling patroness.’”
His excesses are incredible, but they ring true because they are consistent with his nature throughout. The satire is heightened by his values, his sense of priorities. He is marrying firstly to “set the example.” That is poor enough taste. But finally, he owns that a better reason is to satisfy Lady Catherine’s wish! No wonder Elizabeth is speechless. When she can stand it no longer, she tries to convince him that she is not interested. She is convincing, but Collins is too insensitive to believe her. “You must give me leave to flatter myself, my dear cousin, that your refusal of my addresses is merely words of course.” She speaks even more plainly (as if that were possible), but he is determined. “’You are uniformly charming!’ cried he, with an air of awkward gallantry; ‘and I am persuaded that when sanctioned by the express authority of both your excellent parents, my proposals will temporarily too much for her,’” and Elizabeth leaves, confident that her father will aid her in getting through to her suitor.
Mr. Bennet does not disappoint her. Though Mrs. Bennet thinks the marriage is a good idea, Mr. Bennet’s sense and his humor won’t allow it. “’Very well. We now come to the point. Your mother insists upon your accepting it. Is it not so, Mrs. Bennet?’
‘Yes, or I will never see her again.’
‘An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents—Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.’
Elizabeth could not but smile at such a conclusion of such a beginning…” And neither can I. It is comedy, but it is drama as revealed through their dialogues, we know three people. For both father and daughter, humor is a refuge from pressing cares. It is also that playfulness keeps her sensible. Sometimes.
Elizabeth thinks she knows her own mind. She is preceptive, so she believes she knows her sister’s, for instance, as well. Earlier, she had used her wit and comic games to defend herself from Darcy. Her awakening to the facts about others and the truth about her own emotions is the central psychological drama of the story. Along the way to enlightenment, however, she can’t help imposing her confident views, usually with humor. Elizabeth is convinced that Jane is in love with Bingley. After dinner, attended by the Bennets and Bingley, the sisters talk. “’It has been a very agreeable day,’ said Miss Bennet to Elizabeth. ‘The party seemed so well selected, so suitable one with the other. I hope we may often meet again.’
Elizabeth smiled.
‘Lizzy, you must not do so. You must not suspect me. It mortifies me. I assure you that I have now learned to enjoy his conversation as an agreeable and sensible young man, without having a wish beyond it.’” She goes on to praise Bingley largely. Elizabeth teases. “’You are very cruel,’ said her sister, ‘you will not let me smile, and are provoking me to it every moment.’
‘How hard it is in some cases to be believed.’ ??
‘And how impossible in others.’ ??
‘But why should you wish to persuade me that I feel more than I acknowledge?’
‘That is a question which I hardly know how to answer. We all love to instruct, though we can teach only what is not worth knowing. Forgive me; and if you persist in indifference, do not make me your confidante.’” Here we have an example of Elizabeth’s breadth of understanding and, at the same time, of its limits. She sees her sister’s situation well enough and even goads her. Her playfulness is irrepressible. But she is kidding Jane about Jane’s lack of self-awareness, while she herself is guilty of the same shortcoming with regard to Darcy.
Later though, having grown some, Elizabeth can kid her own situation in return. Jane presses for an explanation. “’Will you tell me how long you have loved him?’
‘It had been coming on so gradually that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.’” It is her humor about herself that helps to free Elizabeth to accept more easily what might otherwise have been a hard lesson. She realizes her fault in judging Darcy too harshly. It is her strength that has been her failing. But in the end, of all her ego, her playfulness, and her wit are endearing qualities that are allowed to grow. When they finally exchange expressions of love, neither Elizabeth nor Darcy are undone.
“Elizabeth’s spirits soon rising to playfulness again, she wanted Mr. Darcy to account for his having ever fallen in love with her. ‘How could you begin?’ said she. ‘I can comprehend your going on charmingly when you had once made a beginning; but what could set you off in the first place?’
‘I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew what I had begun.’” In response, Elizabeth is charmingly self-effacing. “My beauty you had early withstood, and as for my manners—my behaviour to you was at least always boarding on the uncivil, and I never spoke to you without rather wishing to give you pain than not. Now be sincere; did you admire me for my impertinence?” Darcy is gracious in return. “For the liveliness of your mind, I did.”
Jane Austen’s liveliness and intelligence are impressive, certainly. As they are expressed in the delineation of her characters, she takes us willingly to find delight. In Northanger Abbey, for the purpose of parody, she choose to speak to us directly, sometimes. Though all of her novels deal with romance of a specific order, Jane Austen was a realist. Her emotional conflicts and their resolutions are always reasonable, as we have seen in part, from the encounters mentioned so far. She deplores insensitivity that leads to rude behavior. She spurns flighty and shallow romanticism, as well.
At the outset of her “little novel”, she debunks the traditional heroine. “No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition, were all equally against her.” Jane Austen is being more than just cute here. She doesn’t mean, on the other hand, that she is about to give us a heroine from the ranks of peasants, the simple country folk of, say, Scott or Eliot. Catherine is upper-middle class, like Elizabeth Bennet and Emma, and the daughter of a clergyman, like Jane herself. In fact, Catherine does have all the characteristics of the stock heroine save one. There is nothing dramatic in her situation. She wants her life to be “horrid” as it is in Gothic novels, but it isn’t. So she is going to make it so.
Her chief accomplice is her imagination. That is easily fed because of her naivete, and by her favorite books, especially romantic tales, and specifically Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho. What Jane Austen attacks in her story is the cult of Sensibility of the eighteenth century; that attitude of moving and responding to life almost exclusively through the senses, without much common sense. She obviously considers uncontrolled flights of fancy folly. Jane Austen is sensible, and though she regards imagination as a reasonable quality when it is used to brighten a life, she finds it regrettable in a young woman that she would rather exist in fantasy than face reality and find there the joys of existence.
The intention is parody. But the method is realism, and the motive is moral. Catherine is a real person living in recognizable circumstances, going on a familiar trip, at a well-understood time of life, there to find ordinary problems for a young lady of her class. Like all of Jane Austen’s leading ladies, Catherine Morland has lessons to learn; about friendship, selfishness, courtesy, integrity, and love.
What she hopes for are: a dramatic chance encounter signaling love at first sight; mysterious behavior; a beautiful, vivacious and devoted new friend; perfect union when James and Isabella declare for each other; unqualified acceptance and kindness from the Tilneys once she gets to know them; forbidding weather; and dank and labyrinthian old castles harboring terrible secrets in hidden rooms. Catherine comes well equipped for disappointment.
Speaking of Catherine’s early predilections, Jane Austen tells us: “…and it was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had by nature nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, baseball, riding on the horseback, and running about the country at the age of fourteen, to books…for, provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books at all. But from fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine; she read all such works heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful lives.” There is the key word, “eventful.” Catherine has already made up her mind that her life is dull. She sees “events” as dramatic and exciting occurrences. As we shall see, her mind is so often so far away from actual happenings that she fails to recognize the meaning of what is going on around her. She dreams of qualities and situations that she is sure are more interesting than her own.
As in the other novels discussed, Jane Austen is consistent in giving us believable characters “instantly and wholly formed.” And she keeps her objective distance from the reader when she thinks it necessary to present dramatic scenes in which her people reveal themselves. But she is writing here in imitation of a style in which the author typically speaks directly to the reader. In one section, Jane Austen pokes fun at the convention of the romantic novel of detailing ad nauseum a character’s past; then she uses the method herself, doubling the humor. Catherine’s past will catch up with her!
The supreme irony is that she already has all the good character traits any girl could wish for in order to help herself to a happy and satisfying life. We learn of Catherine “…that her heart was affectionate, her disposition cheerful and open, without conceit or affection of any kind—her manners just removed from the awkwardness and shyness of a girl; her person pleasing, and, when in good looks, mind at seventeen usually is.” Even ignorance, at that age, is forgivable.
In the countryside near Bath, Catherine doubts her charms. “But Catherine did not know her own advantages—did not know that a good-looking girl, with an affectionate heart and a very ignorant mind, cannot fail of attracting a clever young man, unless circumstances are particularly untoward.” There are some things about which Catherine knows not much, but she tends to equate lack of knowledge or experience with stupidity in herself. What she is sure about is she knows nothing about it landscape composition. Her friends are discussing the relative merits of the view before them. Knowing nothing of drawing (every true heroine draws), Catherine concludes she has “no taste,” that her idea of a beautiful view, since it is untutored, is questionable. She doesn’t trust her natural taste, but Henry moves to instruct her, and she is reassured that her opinion is as good as anyone’s. The scene is a swipe at the cult of the picturesque that accompanied the vogue of Sensibility. Emotional reaction to a vista is legitimate, and so is a bit of objective analysis. Since Catherine is too inexperienced to trust either faculty in herself, she is temporarily at sea. On the face of it this may seem a trivial concern, but it is a good illustration of Catherine’s naivete; of the serious lack of self-awareness in her that will later cause her serious pain.
Catherine’s parents are certainly not to blame for their daughter’s imaginative flights, nor her undervaluation of herself. The Morlands are reasonable people. Catherine is off to Bath: “Everything indeed relative to this important journey was done, on the part of the Morlands, with a degree of moderation and composure, which seemed rather consistent with the common feelings of common life, than with the refined susceptibilities, the tender emotions which the first separation of a heroine from her family ought always to excite.” Jane Austen’s tongue is in her cheek here, but the important truth of the Morlands’ existence is apparent. The way of the world is often simple and straightforward. There is a little drama in the trip itself. “Under these unpromising auspices, the parting took place, and the journey began. It was performed with suitable quietness and uneventful safety.”
What Jane Austen is getting to is that the “horridness” in Catherine’s melodramatic fantasies is nothing compared to the simple and basic human folly that wounds the normal heart. All of the difficulty, it seems, is based on appearance versus reality.
The class system under which Catherine and her friends live dictates certain behavior. Mrs. Allen, Catherine’s chaperone, is ordinarily proper. Jane Austen reassures us of the lady’s integrity by way of a pointed criticism aimed at another convention of the romantic novel. “It is now expedient to give some description of Mrs. Allen, that the reader may be able to judge, in what manner her actions will hereafter tend to promote the general distress of the work, and how she will, probably, contribute to reduce poor Catherine to all the desperate wretchedness of which is last volume is capable—whether by her imprudence, vulgarity, or jealousy—whether by intercepting her letters, ruining her character, or turning her out of doors.” With slick precision, the writer has speared a half dozen romantic conventional culprits.
Appearance, in its most obvious sense, is Mrs. Allen’s preoccupation. “Dress was her passion.” She instructs her young charge as to proper dress and latest fashion, and spends so much time at it that they are late entering the ballroom. Catherine is on her guard: “…and hence Miss Morland had a comprehensive view of all the company beneath her, and of all the dangers of her late passage through them.” The dangers anticipated may be her imagined dramas. They are certainly those apprehensions of introductions, acceptable discourse, and suitable opportunities to dance. It hurts out to be a dull evening. There were plenty of young men. “Not one, however, started with rapturous wonder on beholding her, no whispers of eager inquiry ran round the room, nor was she once called a divinity by an body.” No magic moment.
One by one, Catherine’s anticipations are frustrated. She’s learning. She is attracted to Henry Tilney, but she makes a date with John Thorpe. At the next dance, she is woeful; waiting alone for her tardy partner. But it is not loneliness that distresses her; it’s her dignity that suffers. “To be disgraced in the eye of the world, to wear the appearance of infamy while her heart is all purity, her actions all innocence, and the misconduct of another the true source of her debasement, is one of those circumstances which peculiarly belong to the heroine’s life, and her fortitude under it what particularly dignifies her character.” And so she remains calm. Catherine is a true heroine and she knows it. But there is more to suffer. John Thorpe shows up with Henry Tilney. In short, the evening is another bust. She’s learning. “…from the whole she deduced this useful lesson, that to go previously engaged to a ball, does not necessarily increase either the dignity or enjoyment of a young lady.”
Of course, Catherine’s difficulties have come of merely trying to do “the right thing.” The catch is that she must know her own heart first, and then how to act according to her honest inclinations. Her fancy overpowers her too often, however. The prospect of seeing Blaize Castle is too tempting. She can’t resist “…the happiness of a progress through a long suite of lofty rooms, exhibiting the remains of magnificent furniture, though now for many years deserted—the happiness of being stopped in their way along narrow, winding vaults, by a low, grated door; or even of having their lamp, their only lamp, extinguished by a sudden gust of wind, and of being left in total darkness.” It’s all in her hapless head. In the end of all, she never even reaches the castle. Jane Austen, gentle but still with tongue in cheek, at least gives poor Catherine solitude. “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.”
The following weeks pile injuries upon her. By now, she has realized “…that John Thorpe himself was quite disagreeable…”; that the progress of her and Henry Tilney’s relationship is openly and ordinarily slow; that the weather, except for a bit of rain, is sunny at Bath; and that if Gothic castles exist, they are not meant for her to see. But she hasn’t seen yet that certain people find it expedient to dissemble.
Isabella Thorpe has seemed a perfect friend and an honest person. Her flirtations escape Catherine’s notice, until Isabella’s inconstancy hits home. Even then, Catherine’s gullibility is boundless. She asks the advice of Henry Tilney, Jane Austen’s voice of reason. “’Is it my brother’s attentions to Miss Thorpe, or Miss Thorpe’s admission of them, that gives the pain?’
‘Is not it the same thing?’
‘I think Mr. Morland would acknowledge a difference. No man is offended by another man’s admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment.’
Catherine blushed for her friend, and said, ‘Isabella is wrong. But I am sure she cannot mean to torment, for she is very much attached to my brother. She has been in love with him ever since they first met, and while my father’s consent was uncertain, she fretted herself almost into a fever. You know she must be attached to him.’
‘I understand: she is in love with James, and flirts with Frederick.’
‘Oh: no, not flirts. A woman in love with one man cannot flirt with another.’
‘It is probable that she will neither love so well, nor first so well, as she might do either singly. The gentlemen much each give up a little.’” But Catherine is disposed to think well of everyone. “Henry Tilney must know best. She blames herself for the extent of her fears, and resolved never to think so seriously on the subject again.”
Until she can no longer deny the facts, Catherine trusts Isabella. She trusts General Tilney as implicitly. Father Tilney, usually reserved, has taken an uncommon liking to Catherine. He invites her to spend some time at the Abbey, and Catherine is overjoyed to have another go at a genuine Gothic monstrosity. But of course it turns out to be a perfectly ordinary place of perfectly pleasant appearance. And the weather is fine. While there, Catherine’s imagination flies full tilt at every possibility of mystery and horror she has stored in her mind from the books she’s read. She ransacks a promising cabinet for secret writings, she imagines voices and movements in the night, and she sneaks down to uncover the terrible secret of “the hidden room.” All she accomplishes, however, is to frighten herself half out of her wits.
Though the dramas in her mind turn out to be mere imaginings, the dramas of real life inevitably reach her. A letter from Isabella erases some illusions. “Such a strain of shallow artifice could not impose even upon Catherine. Its inconsistencies, contradictions, and falsehood, struck her from the very first. She was ashamed of Isabella, and ashamed of having ever loved her. Her professions of attachment were now as disgusting as her excuses were empty, and her demands impudent. ‘Write to James on her behalf:--No, James should never hear Isabella’s name mentioned by her again.’” Following soon comes the firmest blow. Catherine is asked to leave Northanger Abbey. The General’s solicitude, it turns out, came from his belief that her dowry was large, large enough to make her acceptable to him as a daughter-in-law. The horridness of real life. “That room, in which her disturbed imagination had tormented her on her first arrival, was again the scene of agitated spirits and inquietude from what it had been then—how mournfully superior in reality and substance:”
Facing reality, however painful, can be a growing experience, and Catherine’s maturity is near completion. “Her anxiety had foundation in fact, her fears in probability; and with a mind so occupied in the contemplation of actual and natural evil, the solicitude of her situation, the darkness of her chamber, the antiquity of the building were felt and considered without the smallest emotion; and though the wind was high, and often produced strange and sudden noises throughout the house, she heard it all as she lay awake, hour after hour, without curiosity or terror.”
David Daiches, in The Novel and the Modern World, specifies two basic techniques of character presentation. There is that character who is set down complete from the star and whom we follow through certain conditions, to see how preannounced traits serve him; how he reacts; and whether or not he responds as his personality has predicted he will. Another primary technique is to have a character reveal himself to us gradually, incident by incident, so that the delineation is complete only after he has lived through all of the conditions the author has chosen for him. Jane Austen employs both methods. I have tried to show, in limited detail, where and how some of her characters are specifically and distinctively drawn. Hers is a process of familiarization, and we know her people on sight. But of course it is more than immediately complete portraits that Jane Austen gives us.
In all three of the novels discussed here, at the end there is the completion of another process. At the star, we meet Jane Austen’s people within a circumscribed world, facing problems that could lead to tragedy. She takes them, however, along with the other way of serious concerns which is open to all of us in time of trouble. Her characters have humor, and she has a comic eye. Good natured humor can recommend almost anyone for approbation. At the least, it entertains us. At most, it is a quality that attracts attention and clarifies personality and character, and so deepens understanding. It is a process of moral growth that appeals to the serious mind, but it is never didacticism or sermonizing. Jane Austen’s characters are clearly delineated, entertainingly dressed, and always pervasively human in detail. I have deep satisfaction in getting to understand better her creations; but more than that, I am now better equipped to appreciate characters in other novels and other worlds.
References
Page 2: F.R. Leavis, The Great Tradition (N.Y. University Press, 1963), p. 5.
Page 2: Virginia Woolf, “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown”, reprinted in Approaches to the Novel, collected and edited by Robert Scholes, Chandler Publishing Company
Page 3: Richard Church, The Growth of the English Novel (University Paperbacks), ch. 8; “such is….formed”; “Careful…before.”
E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel
Jane Austen, Emma
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
Page 25: David Daiches, The Novel and the Modern World