Jane Austen
III
MISS AUSTEN
Jane Austen lived her brief life in two or three quiet English towns. She had no adventures, no experiences, no great fortunes or misfortunes. She began to do her best writing when she was little more than a girl. She left a few immortal works, surpassed by no others in the painting of the human heart. What sort of woman was she herself? Not very remarkable to look at, it appears. Round, full cheeks—“for the most part, they are foolish that are so,” Cleopatra tells us—bright, hazel eyes, brown curls about her face. No doubt, in every point a lady. But her soul?
At first sight, it seems that she laughed, mocked, at all things, very gently and decorously, but still mocked. “I dearly love a laugh,” says the heroine who surely most resembles her creatress. And again it is said of this same Elizabeth Bennett: “She had a lively, playful disposition which delighted in anything ridiculous.”
Those who love Miss Austen best will recognize, far beyond any testimony of quoted instances, this incessant, pervading spirit of gentle mockery which appears in all her books, courteous, infinitely well-bred, but sometimes very far from amiable.
That she should mock at woman’s education was, perhaps, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, natural enough. But it would be hard to find any one in any century who has mocked at it more cruelly. “Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well-informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.” Which was also the opinion of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, considered one of the most learned women of her time. Now we have changed all that.
But if you suppose that Miss Austen wishes to contrast with learning the sweets of domesticity, you are far astray indeed. I do not know whether she read La Rochefoucauld. She hardly needed to. In any case, she well supports his dictum that there are comfortable marriages, but no delicious ones. The motive of most she lashes with her whip of silken scorn. “His temper might perhaps be a little soured by finding, like many others of his sex, that through some unaccountable bias in favor of beauty, he was the husband of a very silly woman.” Though she had a sister whom she loved better than anything on earth, the kindest thing she could find to say of two most affectionate sisters was: “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.”
Nor is she much more enthusiastic about the charms of society. Her heroines do, indeed, love an outing or a ball; but much more stress is laid on untoward accidents that blight enjoyment than on its rapturous completeness. And this is life, as we all know. Only—As for the little distresses of social converse, who has ever depicted them more subtly? “To Elizabeth it appeared, that had her family made an agreement to expose themselves as much as they could during the evening, it would have been impossible for them to play their parts with more spirit, or finer success.”