Similar qualities appear in her delineation of character. Always knowing her own mind, and going straight to the point: there is no vagueness in outline, no uncertainty anywhere. Jane Bennet could never have said or done just what came most naturally from Elizabeth; Darcy shared no thought or deed with his best friend: less prominent persons are as firmly, if less fully, individualised. The incidents, moreover, however trifling, are well varied; the plot has ample movement—once those concerned in it have won our sympathies. Assuredly Miss Austen’s aim is not strenuous; but it is direct, vigorous, and clear-headed. And where she aims, she hits.
Sense and Sensibility reveals the very same method and the reappearance of many similar types, applied to an entirely new story in which no interest or situation repeats those of the earlier book. With her daring indifference to originality in the mechanical construction of a plot, Miss Austen once more centres her story round two sisters, more widely diverse in temperament, indeed, than Jane and Elizabeth, but no less everything to each other. Their mother, after the way of parents in these novels, is as foolish as Mrs. Bennet, though far more lovable. Willoughby is Wickham over again, with a fancy for accomplishments. The tragi-comedy introduced by Lucy Steele, more essentially vulgar than any of the Bennets, Mrs. Palmer’s candid frivolity, and the languid elegance of Lady Middleton (later perfected in Lady Bertram), provide abundant occasion for laughter; though no one figure of absurdity stands out so strongly as those of the earlier novel. On the other hand, Miss Austen has nowhere exposed a character more trenchantly by one short dialogue than in the discussion between Mr. and Mrs. John Dashwood about “what he could do for” his widowed mother and orphaned sisters. It were surely impossible for selfish hypocrisy to go further; and the subtle touches by which the wife reveals herself leader of the pair, must afford us the keenest enjoyment.
But this tale of Marianne and her Willoughby has one element entirely absent from Pride and Prejudice, and never again attempted by Jane Austen. It may be said to border on melodrama. The young people’s ingenuous revels in emotion, whether of joy or grief, surprise one in so balanced a writer, and reveal powers we should not otherwise have suspected. Marianne, indeed, is the very personification of that sensibility, so dear to “elegant females” of the old world, so foreign to modern ideals. Having chosen her type, Miss Austen would seem determined to show how far she could go in this direction without distorting humanity. To the more conventional Miss Burney, sensibility was a grace essential in heroines. She is its acknowledged exponent, and compels us, despite prejudice, to recognise its real charm. But neither Evelina nor Cecilia exhibits so much naïveté as Marianne, such tempestuous abandon, such a fiery glow; yet we can read of her with equal patience, we can love her no less. She is saved, for us, by her genuine affection for “sensible” Eleanor, and her unselfish devotion to a mother who seems even younger and more foolish than herself. And Willoughby’s temperament fits her like a glove. His wooing, his wickedness, and his repentance belong to a generation before Miss Austen’s. Through this couple she triumphs in otherwise unexplored regions.
Northanger Abbey has very much the appearance of juvenile effort, possibly recast in maturity. If not actually written in girlhood, it must be regarded as the flower of a true holiday spirit, blossoming in sheer fun. Fresh from the excited perusal of some novel by the terrifying Anne Radcliffe, whom I believe Miss Austen enjoyed as keenly as her own Catherine, she must have thrown herself into the composition of this delightful parody, just to renew its thrills, to linger over its absurdities. It is all pure farce, exaggeration cheerfully unrestrained. The irrepressible Arabella belongs to Miss Burney: her boasting brother should hang in the same gallery. Dear, foolish Catherine’s idle imaginings about General Tilney were never meant to resemble nature. Henry could scarcely have forgiven them, had he taken her quite seriously. Moreover, having one parody in hand, Miss Austen gaily embarks on yet another, no less irresponsible and spontaneous. Catherine is Evelina in miniature; the real ingénue whose country breeding exposes her to the most diverting distresses in a Society amazingly mixed. Hovering between Thorpes and Tilneys, like Evelina between Mirvans and Branghtons, she enters each circle with the same innocence, enthusiasm, and naïveté. Miss Austen’s sly boast of originality in allowing her heroine to fall in love without stopping to ascertain “the gentleman’s feelings,” is but gentle raillery at a similar presumption in Miss Burney. Certainly Orville, no less than Tilney, was led on to serious thoughts of matrimony by the simple-minded revelation of a pretty girl’s partiality.
Where a laugh lurks behind every sentence, we need not expect the special “studies in humour” which stand out, everywhere, in the more serious stories. Yet General Tilney (later perfected in Sir Walter Elliot) is a finished sketch: while John Thorpe, who never opens his lips without betraying himself; and Arabella, whether in pursuit of the “two young men” or quizzing the naughty Captain, were hard to beat.
Nowhere, in all her work, has Miss Austen concentrated such pungent sarcasm as in the condescending explanation of how much folly reasonable men prefer in lovely women.
“The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of a sister author; and to her treatment of the subject I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable, and too well informed themselves, to desire anything more in woman than ignorance.”
Do not the smooth words sting?
Approaching the second group, we look naturally, and not in vain, for evidence of maturity and development. Miss Austen does not, in fact, make any attempt to enlarge her sphere, to widen her outlook, to handle more strenuous emotion. But her plots, still based on parochial gossip, are more varied and complex: she works with a larger number of characters; actually perfecting some types already familiar, and introducing us to many a new acquaintance. Above all, her dramatis personæ are no longer fixed and defined at their first entrance: they grow with the story, often surprising us at last by qualities, no doubt dormant from the beginning, and never strained or inconsistent, but only possible to development through experience.
Emma obviously invites comparison with Pride and Prejudice. The two heroines have long shared almost equally the position of a most popular favourite: one or other of the two books is almost universally judged her best. The charms of Emma and Harriet are more naturally diverse because they are not sisters: yet in the accidents of intimacy, mutual confidence, and common interests they form a basis for the plot precisely similar to that of the sisters in Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility, not greatly differing from those in Mansfield Park or Persuasion. Mr. Elton, the very pink of pretentious vulgarity, recalls Lydia and Lucy Steele: her caro sposo eclipses Mr. Collins on his own ground. Miss Bates the garrulous, and Mr. Woodhouse the fussy, varied examples of the eternal bore, are formidable rivals, if not conquerors, of the inimitable Lady Catherine. Here we have “characters” in greater abundance, almost more finished in fuller detail.