IV
ETHICS AND OPTIMISM
Dr. Whately on Jane Austen—"Moral lessons" of her novels—Charge of "Indelicacy"—Marriage as a profession—A "problem" novel—"The Nostalgia of the Infinite"—The "whitewashing" of Willoughby—Lady Susan condemned by its author—The Watsons—Change in manners—No "heroes"—Woman's love—The Prince Regent—The Quarterly Review.
"The moral lessons of this lady's novels," wrote Archbishop Whately in his Quarterly article of 1821, "though clearly and impressively conveyed, are not offensively put forward, but spring incidentally from the circumstances of the story." So inoffensively, indeed, are they offered to our notice, that Dr. Whately himself seems to have been unable to discover them at all. "On the whole," writes the Archbishop, "Miss Austin's (sic) works may safely be recommended, not only as among the most unexceptionable of their class, but as combining, in an eminent degree, instruction with amusement, though without the direct effort at the former, of which we have complained, as sometimes defeating its object."
The most obvious "moral" of Jane Austen's novels is that if you are a heroine you need not trouble yourself about your future. You are certain to marry a worthy man with an income sufficient for a comfortable existence. He may be endowed with something less than a thousand a year, like Edward Ferrars, with a couple of thousand like Captain Wentworth, or with the ten thousand a year which made Darcy appear so admirable to Mrs. Bennet. In any case you will not have to eat bread-and-scrape or go without a fire in your bedroom. The Country-house Comedy of Jane Austen is full of morals if you are in need of them, but it was not written to improve you, only to amuse you—and its maker. If you must have a clear moral for each story, after the manner of tracts, you may take them thus. Pride and Prejudice conveys the useful lesson that the person you most dislike in one month may be the one you will very sensibly give your affection to in the next; Sense and Sensibility that when the bad man falls into the pit he has dug for himself, the good man comes by his own; Emma that the man whose society is most necessary to a woman's quiet contentment is the man she ought to marry; Mansfield Park that a simple, unaffected girl who gains the second place in a man's affections may win the prize through the disqualification of her more brilliant rival; Persuasion that nothing is more likely to revive an old passion than to see its object warmly admired by some other eligible party; Northanger Abbey that a tuft-hunting father may be induced to receive a daughter-in-law of no importance by the kindly influence of a son-in-law of superior rank. As for Lady Susan, the moral of that unpleasing story is that if a worldly mater pulchra is the rival in love of an ingenuous filia pulchrior she will probably lose the battle after much suffering on either side; and from The Watsons we may see that if a girl is educated above her family she will find it hard to be happy beside the domestic hearth. All these are plain workable morals. Whether the author of the novels would have endorsed them we cannot certainly know, but it is more than probable she would not.
We need not suppose that Jane Austen was ignorant of the coarseness of conversation, the hard-drinking, the wild gambling, the moral laxity of a large section of society that are so frequently exhibited in the records of the age, in spite of the improvement in manners. But we can hardly help laughing at the objection taken to her novels even by some of her contemporaries, that they were "indelicate"! The "indelicacy" was usually found in the views of marriage held and expressed by the heroines and their families. The love-affairs of these country maidens were not often, we must admit, such as to steal away their beauty sleep or spoil their appetites for breakfast. Mrs. Jennings' kindly endeavour to cure a girl's disappointment in love by a variety of sweetmeats and olives, and a good fire, was perhaps not wholly unjustified by experience. In those days, when no profession save that of governess was open to women, when nursing the sick was regarded as an occupation specially suitable for those of a low class, when no door opened from the drawing-room on to the professional stage, and when the very idea of a "female" as secretary to a man of affairs or of business would have been condemned as "improper," marriage was undoubtedly viewed by most people as the only aim of a young woman, "the pleasantest preservative from want," as Charlotte Lucas regarded it, and, moreover, the average age of brides was much lower than it is now-a-days. To avoid being a governess by attracting the admiration of a man who could afford a wife was the hope, at least, of most poorly endowed girls, and even if matrimony is not viewed with so much sentiment and reserve by Jane Austen's heroines as by the excessively squeamish Evelina, we may be inclined to prefer the "indelicacy" of Jane Austen to the elaborate, delicacy of Fanny Burney. Scott himself, by an ingenious paradox, has been accused—as a novelist—of immorality, and Quentin Durward in particular described as "one of the most immoral novels that has even been written," because its romance expresses nothing. The interest a boy takes in its romantic passages "depends on the fact that he dreams himself to be in similar circumstances; he must treat the novel subjectively, and it is the subjective use of the imagination which does all the damage. It is in reading such books as this that a bad habit of mind is begun, and Quentin Durward is more immoral for a boy of fourteen than a translation of the most shockingly indecent French novel." Well may the anonymous writer of this unexpected criticism add: "There are paradoxes to be met everywhere, and most of all in the question of morality." This particular kind of immorality has not yet, so far as I know, been charged against Jane Austen. She cannot be justly accused of writing romance which "expresses nothing," but she certainly leaves plenty of opportunity for young readers to exercise their imaginations, and thus begin a "bad habit of mind."
The view of marriage as a profession, with or without ardent affection, is not the only thing that has shocked the delicacy of many of Jane Austen's readers. Serious objection has been taken to her introduction of episodes of an "improper" nature. How is the charge supported? Lydia Bennet, a vulgar, badly brought-up girl still in her teens, infatuated with the red coats of the militia officers, insists on going away with Wickham, and lives with him as his mistress until, by the generous aid of Darcy, and the determination of the Gardiners—her uncle and aunt—"a marriage is arranged" and does "shortly take place." This episode, say the stern critics, was (1) unnecessary to the plot, and (2) if it was necessary, it is too much insisted on and developed. That it is an essential part of the little plot, worked in to exhibit the best side of Darcy's character, which before has only been seen in its least attractive light, seems to me obvious, and I agree with Professor Saintsbury's opinion that it brings about the dénouement with complete propriety. Lydia's entire indifference to the moral aspect of her conduct is and was unusual in a girl of sixteen and of her class, but her character from first to last is consistently drawn, and the contrast between the selfishness of Wickham and Lydia, who care nothing for any one's happiness except their own, and not even for each other's, and the sympathy of heart and variety of temperament which bring Elizabeth and Darcy together is admirably drawn.
Then we are asked to be shocked at the illustration of the bad character and selfish cruelty of Willoughby given to Elinor Dashwood by the very worthy and very dull Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility. It is a painful story. Willoughby, the faithless lover of Marianne Dashwood, had seduced an impressionable girl whom Brandon, out of affection for the memory of her mother, herself ruined by a scoundrel, had practically adopted, and whom such scandal-mongers as Mrs. Jennings declared to be the Colonel's own child. "Why drag in this nasty story?" ask the objectors, and above all, "why allow the Colonel to pour it into the ears of a young girl like Elinor?" That it comes unfortunately from Brandon, who is a rival—hopeless as it had seemed—of Willoughby for Marianne's affection, and that in the middle-class society of to-day a well-bred man would not tell such a tale to a girl if he could find any other means of achieving an imperative object is undeniable.
What was Brandon to do? He knew that Marianne was pining for love of a man at least as unworthy of her as, in his worst days, was Tom Jones of Sophia, and he believed, with or without reason, that the knowledge of Willoughby's character would be a bitter but efficacious medicine for her heart-sickness. Elinor, the sensible, prudent, devoted sister, seemed the only person to whom he could tell the story with any hope that it would be discreetly used. "He had spent many hours in convincing himself that he was right," and when Elinor said, "I understand you, you have something to tell me of Mr. Willoughby that will open his character farther. Your telling it will be the greatest act of friendship that can be shown to Marianne. My gratitude will be ensured immediately by any information tending to that end, and hers must be gained by it in time. Pray, pray let me hear it," there is little reason for wonder that "upon this hint he spake," and told the story of the moral ruin of the mother and the cruel desertion of the daughter which the reader of Sense and Sensibility will recall, Elinor lost little time in retailing it to her sister, with the immediate and apparently unexpected effect of increasing the girl's unhappiness. "She felt the loss of Willoughby's character yet more heavily than she had felt the loss of his heart," though we know that she soon afterwards became as fond a wife of Colonel Brandon as she ever could have been of Willoughby.