The elementary truth which the women novelists revealed (and for which they were censured by masculine critics) was that women do fall in love without waiting to be wooed. George Eliot develops this into a declaration of feminine judgment on life and character. Woman is no longer man-made, man-taught, or man-led. The door is opened for her independence.
Finally, it must not be forgotten that—whether intentionally or by instinct concerned with the revelation of their own nature—the great women-writers have been always awake to the humour of life. One says continually that women have no sense of humour; but this mistake arises from generalisings, where the true test can only be applied by discrimination. Nothing differs so widely between individuals as the appreciation of humour; though it is true that much masculine wit, tending towards farce, appeals to few women.
In our “leading ladies” (here scarcely including Charlotte Brontë) we find peculiar power and extensive variety. Fanny Burney depends on an eye for comedy, Jane Austen on the humorous phrase, George Eliot on the study of wit.
In Evelina and Cecilia the comic effects are mostly produced by the sudden meeting of opposites; the gay, irresponsible exaggeration of types; the clash of circumstances. Dickens, consciously or unconsciously, borrowed much of his method from Fanny Burney. The characters of each have their allotted foible, their catch phrase, their moral label, which somehow delights and surprises us afresh, however expected, at each repetition. Those inherently uncongenial are forced into close contact, one exposing the other. Speaking roughly, this is the stage manner. Could we not fancy the speakers confronted, and imagine their expressions of mutual astonishment, there would be little fun in them. They are not always quite so comic to our eyes as in each other’s. Captain Mirvan needs Madame Duval as a foil; that egregious fop Lovel is always playing up to Mrs. Selwyn; and, if Miss Branghton does not herself see the humour of the inimitable Smith, she brings it out. In Cecilia, again, the guardians produce each other; the “Larolles” is never so happy as when expounding Mr. Meadows; Mr. Gosport requires an audience.
Miss Burney’s wit is the child of Society generated in a crowd; it savours of repartee. Although spontaneous and true to life, it does not flash out from the nature of things, but from deliberate arrangement. It has been sought and is found. The material is well chosen. The people are “put together” for our amusement.
Jane Austen has used, and refined, this method—as she has adapted everything from Miss Burney—in her earlier work. The titles—Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility—and the ideas behind them betray their own inspiration. Elizabeth Bennet, clearly, is intended to strike fire from Mr. Collins and Lady Catherine; Mrs. Bennet would scarcely have seemed so funny to another husband. The “Burney” innocence of Catherine Morland tempts Isabella to extremes in knowing vulgarity; Mrs. Jennings cannot ruffle Lady Middleton.
But on her own account, and in her best moments, Miss Austen is far more subtle. Hers is an intimate humour, dependent on shades, not contrasts, of character. Even the more boisterous figures of fun, even Catherine’s ridiculous applications of Udolpho, are complete in themselves, needing no foil. Miss Austen possesses a humorous imagination, where Miss Burney could only observe. A mere list of her quaint characters would fill a chapter, and no one of them is only comic. They are human beings, not mere puppets set up to laugh at. Moreover, the humour of them is derived from the polished phrase. Generally a few words suffice, fit though few.
Most assuredly, on the other hand, Miss Austen does not depend for her humour upon her comic characters. To begin with, these are never dragged in for “relief,” they “belong to” the plotting; and in the second place, much of her most perfect satire arises from scenes in which they have no part. We have, for example, the dialogue on generosity between Mr. and Mrs. John Dashwood; the paragraph about “natural folly in a beautiful girl”; Miss Bingley’s ideal for a ball; Harriet’s “most precious treasures”; Sir Thomas Bertram’s complacent pride in Fanny; Mary Musgrave’s anxiety about “the precedence that was her due”; with other incidents too numerous to mention.
The fact is that almost every sentence of Miss Austen’s is pointed with humour; the finished phrasing of her narrative and her descriptions are unrivalled in wit. There is no strain or distortion, no laboured antithesis or uncouth dialect: merely the light touch, the unerring instinct for the happy phrase. At times we can detect indignation behind the laughter: her scorn is often most biting, she indulges in cynicism. But, in the main, her object is plainly derisive: the sheer joy of merriment, the consolation of meeting folly with a gay heart. And analysis will prove that, in her opinion, hypocrisy and pose are the sins unforgivable, the only legitimate occasion of joy to the jester. Elizabeth may turn off her discomfiture with a joke, but in reality she is honest, and wise enough to know that Darcy is unassailable by reason of his good qualities.
The attributes Miss Austen ridicules are those she seriously despises or dislikes, however generously she often secures our affection for their possessors. Her “figures of fun” are not wholly despicable.