Jane Austen and Her Country-house Comedy

by W. H. Helm

It is to the wonderfully true presentation of the hearts and minds of girls that these novels chiefly owe their immense power of attraction even for readers who miss the greater part of the humour. Fanny Price and Elinor Dashwood are themselves but poorly endowed with humour, and Catherine Morland only possesses it in the rudimentary way of a lively school-girl. With how much of understanding, how clearly and fully are the hopes and fears, the innocent little plans of Fanny and Catherine, the more mature and reasoned ways of Elinor shown to us, without the least apparent effort.

The trustful reader nurtured on the successful fiction of our own time, especially that of the last ten years, during which English novelists have been able to indulge themselves and their public by the introduction of incidents and types of character which up to about the commencement of that decade would have secured the ban of the circulating libraries, has been led to believe that sensual impulse plays as large a part in woman's life as in man's. That such women as Lady Bellaston in Tom Jones, Arabelle in Le Lys dans la Vallée, or the Bellona of Richard Feverel exist, and in great numbers, is certain, but they are not representative of woman. Balzac, who was not: much restrained by any fear of the libraries, knew that many faithless wives (so very common in French fiction and drama, whatever they might be in life) gave themselves to men their love for whom contained much less of sensuality than of other instincts. Esther, the unhappy Jewess of Splendeurs et Misèes de Courtisanes, loves Lucien with an affection far more chaste than that which many a correct heroine is made to display for the man with whom she goes to the altar in the last chapter. The mistresses of famous men, as known to us from memoirs and histories, have not generally been of a sensual nature. Aspasia, most distinguished of them all, was of the intellectual, not the sensual, type. Strangely indelicate as was Madame du Châtelet, her relations with Voltaire were based on affinity of literary taste and critical appreciation much more than on physical attraction. Even among the unintellectual women who have figured among the grandes amoureuses of history, the passion of the woman does not in most instances appear to have been of the coarser kind. Louise de la Vallière is at least more typical of womanhood than Barbara Villiers.

Emma Woodhouse, deeply distressed at the supposed intention of Knightley to marry Harriet Smith, feels that she cares not what may happen, if he will but remain single all his life. "Could she be secure of that, indeed, of his never marrying at all, she believed she should be perfectly satisfied. Let him but continue the same Mr. Knightley to her and her father, the same Mr. Knightley to all the world; let Donwell and Hartfield lose none of their precious intercourse of friendship and confidence, and her peace would be fully secured. Marriage, in fact, would not do for her." Marriage, we know, "did for her" very well, and not at all, so far as we have her story, in the idiomatic sense in which the words are commonly used. But in this healthy maiden, who could regard with equanimity a future wherein the man she liked best should never be more to her than a dear friend who dropped in for tea or supper, we have an effective illustration of the relative insignificance of passion in Jane Austen's view of life.

Emma Woodhouse has near relations in Elinor Dashwood and Edward Ferrars, who, after the marriage of Lucy Steele to Robert Ferrars had cleared away the only barrier to their own avowals of affection, "were neither of them quite enough in love to think that three hundred and fifty pounds a year would supply them with the comforts of life." Kitty and Lydia Bennet could simultaneously adore all the officers of a militia regiment, but there was nothing of the "all for love, and the world well lost" nonsense about any of the agreeable women of Jane Austen's creation. They were not to be captured by a man's attractions of mind and person in the way that Millamant was by Mirabell's, nor even by the art of others, as Beatrice was won for Benedick—and he for her. The names of Millamant and Beatrice were in the ancestral tree of Elizabeth Bennet, but her pulses beat more regularly than theirs.

In the effect of Mary Crawford's charms on Edmund Bertram we may see some pale suggestion of such an awakening as that of Robert Orange (in The School for Saints), who, on meeting with Brigit, "suddenly had found presented to him a mind and a nature in such complete harmony with his own that it had seemed as though he were the words and she the music, of one song." But it was only a "seeming" in Edmund's case, and while we read Jane Austen our thoughts are rarely allowed to flow into a "Romeo and Juliet" channel for more than a few moments at a time.

The re-awakening of Wentworth's dormant love for Anne Elliot would have afforded to most lady novelists an opportunity for some fine, romantic writing. Jane Austen allows herself no romance in the matter. The sea air at Lyme has heightened Anne's colour, and a passing visitor—her cousin, as it happens—is attracted by her appearance. Wentworth notices his glances of admiration and is reminded that she is charming!

"When they came to the steps leading upwards from the beach, a gentleman, at the same moment preparing to come down, politely drew back and stopped to give them way. They ascended and passed him; and as they passed, Anne's face caught his eye, and he looked at her with a degree of earnest admiration which she could not be insensible of. She was looking remarkably well; her very regular, very pretty features having the bloom and freshness of youth restored by the fine wind which had been blowing on her complexion, and by the animation of eye which it had also produced. It was evident that the gentleman (completely a gentleman in manner) admired her exceedingly. Captain Wentworth looked round at her instantly in a way which showed his noticing of it. He gave her a momentary glance—a glance of brightness which seemed to say, 'That man is struck with you'—and even I, at this moment, see something like Anne Elliot again."

This scene may be deficient in the sentiment that delights Catherine Morlands and Marianne Dashwoods, but it is a bit of true observation of a familiar phase of human folly. Archbishop Whately remarks that: "Authoresses ... can scarcely ever forget that they are authoresses. They seem to feel a sympathetic shudder at exposing naked a female mind. Elles se peignent en buste, and leave the mysteries of womanhood to be described by some interloping male, like Richardson or Marivaux, who is turned out before he has seen half the rites, and is forced to spin from his own conjectures the rest. Now from this fault Miss Austin is free. Her heroines are what one knows women must be, though one never can get them to acknowledge it." It is a striking proof of the little that was known of Jane Austen by her contemporaries that, even four years after her death, neither Whately himself, nor the editor of the Quarterly Review knew how to spell her name.