CHAPTER 11 Who can be in doubt of what followed?—When any two Young Peo-

CHAPTER 11 Who can be in doubt of what followed?—When any two Young Peo- ple take it into their heads to marry, they are pretty sure by perseverance to carry their point—be they ever so poor, or ever so imprudent, or ever so little likely to be necessary to each other's ultimate comfort. This may be bad Morality to conclude with, but I beleive it to be Truth—and if such parties succeed, how should a Capt. W— and an Anne E — , with the advantage of maturity of Mind, consciousness of Right, and one Indépendant Fortune between them, fail of bearing down every opposi- tion? They might in fact, have born down a great deal more than they met with, for there was little to distress them beyond the want of Gra- ciousness and Warmth. Sir W. made no objection, and Elizth did noth- ing worse than look cold and unconcerned.—Capt. W — with £25,000—and as high in his Profession as Merit & Activity could place him, was no longer nobody. He was now esteemed quite worthy to address the Daughter of a foolish spendthrift Baronet, who had not had Principle or sense enough to maintain himself in the Situation in which Providence had placed him, and who could give his Daughter but a small part of the share of ten Thousand pounds which must be her's hereafter.—Sir Walter indeed tho' he had no affection for his Daughter and no vanity flattered to make him really happy on the occasion, was very far from thinking it a bad match for her.—On the contrary when he saw more of Capt. W.— and eyed him well, he was very much struck by his personal claims and felt that his superiority of appearance might be not unfairly balanced against her superiority of Rank;—and all this, together with his well-sounding name, enabled Sir W. at last to prepare his pen with a very good grace for the insertion of the Marriage in the volume of Honour.—The only person among them whose opposition of feelings could excite any serious anxiety, was Lady Russel.—Anne knew that Lady R— must be suffering some pain in understanding and relinquishing Mr E — and be making some struggles to become truly acquainted with and do justice to Capt. W.—This however, was what Lady R— had now to do. She must learn to feel that she had been mistaken with regard to both—that she had been unfairly influenced by appearances in each—that, because Capt. W.'s manners had not suited her own ideas, she had been too quick in suspecting them to indicate a Character of dangerous Impetuosity, and that because Mr Elliot's man- ners had precisely pleased her in their propriety and correctness, their general politeness and suavity, she had been too quick in receiving them as the certain result of the most correct opinions and well regulated Mind.—There was nothing less for Lady R. to do than to admit that she had been pretty completely wrong, and to take up a new set of opinions and hopes.—There is a quickness of perception in some, a nicety in the discernment of character—a natural Penetration in short which no

176 [THE ORIGINAL ENDING OF PERSUASION] Experience in others can equal—and Lady R. had been less girted in this part of Understanding than her young friend;—but she was a very good Woman; and if her second object was to be sensible and well judg­ ing, her first was to see Anne happy. She loved Anne better than she loved her own abilities—and when the awkwardness of the Beginning was over, found little hardship in attaching herself as a Mother to the Man who was securing the happiness of her Child. Of all the family, Mary was probably the one most immediately gratified by the circum­ stance. It was creditable to have a Sister married, and she might flatter herself that she had been greatly instrumental to the connection, by having Anne staying with her in the Autumn; and as her own Sister must be better than her Husbands Sisters, it was very agréable that Captn W — should be a richer Man than either Capt. B. or Charles Hayter.— She had something to suffer perhaps when they came into contact again, in seeing Anne restored to the rights of Seniority and the Mistress of a very pretty Landaulet—but she had a future to look forward to, of power­ ful consolation—Anne had no Uppercross Hall before her, no Landed Estate, no Headship of a family, and if they could but keep Capt. W— from being made a Baronet, she would not change situations with Anne.—It would be well for the Eldest Sister if she were equally satisfied with her situation, for a change is not very probable there.—She had soon the mortification of seeing Mr E. withdraw, and no one of proper condition has since presented himself to raise even the unfounded hopes which sunk with him. The news of his Cousin Anne's engagement burst on Mr Elliot most unexpectedly. It deranged his best plan of domestic Happiness, his best hopes of keeping Sir Walter single by the watch­ fulness which a son in law's rights would have given—But tho' discom­ fited and disappointed, he could still do something for his own interest and his own enjoyment. He soon quitted Bath and on Mrs Clay's quit­ ting it likewise soon afterwards and being next heard of, as established under his Protection in London, it was evident how double a Game he had been playing, and how determined he was to save himself from being cut out by one artful woman at least.—Mrs Clay's affections had overpowered her Interest, and she had sacrificed for the Young Man's sake, the possibility of scheming longer for Sir Walter;—she has Abilities however as well as Affections, and it is now a doubtful point whether his cunning or hers may finally carry the day, whether, after preventing her from being the wife of Sir Walter, he may not be wheedled and caressed at last into making her the wife of Sir William.— It cannot be doubted that Sir Walter and Eliz: were shocked and mor­ tified by the loss of their companion and the discovery of their deception in her. They had their great cousins to be sure, to resort to for comfort— but they must long feel that to flatter and follow others, without being flattered and followed themselves is but a state of half enjoyment. Anne, satisfied at a very early period, of Lady Russel's meaning to

[THE ORIGINAL ENDING OF PERSUASION] 177 July 18.—1816. love Capt. W— as she ought, had no other alloy to the happiness of her prospects, than what arose from the consciousness of having no relations to bestow on him which a Man of Sense could value.—There, she felt her own Inferiority keenly.—The disproportion in their fortunes was nothing;—it did not give her a moment's regret;—but to have no Family to receive and estimate him properly, nothing of respectability, of Har­ mony, of Goodwill to offer in return for all the Worth and all the prompt welcome which met her in his Brothers and Sisters, was a source of as lively pain, as her Mind could well be sensible of, under circum­ stances of otherwise strong felicity.—She had but two friends in the World, to add to his List, Lady R. and Mrs Smith.—To those however, he was very well-disposed to attach himself. Lady R— inspite of all her former transgressions, he could now value from his heart;—while he was not obliged to say that he beleived her to have been right in origi­ nally dividing them, he was ready to say almost anything else in her favour;—and as for Mrs Smith, she had claims of various kinds to rec­ ommend her quickly and permanently.—Her recent good offices by Anne had been enough in themselves—and their marriage, instead of depriving her of one friend secured her two. She was one of their first visitors in their settled Life—and Capt. Wentworth, by putting her in the way of recovering her Husband's property in the W. Indies, by writ­ ing for her, and acting for her, and seeing her through all the petty Difficulties of the case, with the activity and exertion of a fearless Man, and a determined friend, fully requited the services she had rendered, or had ever meant to render, to his Wife. Mrs Smith's enjoyments were not spoiled by this improvement of Income, with some improvement of health, and the acquisition of such friends to be often with, for her chearfulness and mental Activity did not fail her, and while those prime supplies of Good remained, she might have bid defiance even to greater accessions of worldly Prosperity. She might have been absolutely rich and perfectly healthy, and yet be happy.—Her spring of Felicity was in the glow of her Spirits—as her friend Anne's was in the warmth of her Heart.—Anne was Tenderness itself;—and she had the full worth of it in Captn Wentworth's affection. His Profession was all that could ever make her friends wish that Tenderness less; the dread of a future War, all that could dim her Sunshine.—She gloried in being a Sailor's wife, but she must pay the tax of quick alarm, for belonging to that Profession which is—if possible—more distinguished in it's Domestic Virtues, than in it's National Importance.— FINIS

BACKGROUNDS AND CONTEXTS

[On Old Maids] t [This passage from the third volume of William Hayley's anonymously pub­ lished treatise on old maids belongs to an extended fantasy: the narrator's dream-vision. It consists mainly of an oration delivered by a speaker at an imagined banquet. The previous speaker (referred to in the his of the first sentence) has presented the claims of widows. ] * * * When his peroration was ended, which, being tender and pathetic, formed a pleasing contrast to the humorous arguments of his predecessor, a gentleman arose, who possessed, with a very graceful person, an uncommon archness of countenance; and in a voice peculiarly melodious, he delivered the following oration: Mr. President, Though I was aware that a very formidable majority of speakers would appear against me, it is yet with confidence that I engage on the unpopu­ lar side of the present question; a question upon which the prejudices, the passions, and the practice of mankind, are in direct opposition to the clearest dictates of reason and of justice! Yes! Sir, I will be so bold as to affirm, that if the conduct and the opinions of men were under the steady guidance of equity, this question could not remain doubtful for a single minute, in the mind of any man; it must be decided, without a moment's hesitation, in favour of that injured, that derided being, the involuntary Old Maid, whose advocate I profess myself: nor would such a decision depend on any prior sentiments, which the arbiter might form, to the discredit, or to the glory, of wedlock; for, whether we con­ sider marriage as a burthen or as an enjoyment, it is equally unjust that any female should twice suffer that burthen, or be twice indulged in that enjoyment, while another, at the same period of life, is kept an utter stranger to the cares or to the delights of an important office, which she is equally ready to assume, and equally able to support. This position is, I trust, so evident, that, if I could convert this assembly into the supreme court of judicature, and bring to its bar both the Widow and the Old Maid, as rival claimants of the nuptial coronet, on the mere principles of right, I am persuaded the integrity of this audience would soon termi­ nate the contest, and ratify the title of my client by an unanimous decree. But alas! in this point there is no tribunal on earth, to which the disconsolate Old Maiden can successfully apply for substantial justice. t From [William Hayley], A Philosophical, Historical, and Moral Essay on Old Maids, 3 vols. (London, 1785), 3: 176-196. All notes are by the editor of this Norton Critical Edition. 181

182 The clamour of prejudice is against her, and her pretensions are derided; while custom and commodity, That smooth-facd gentleman, tickling commodity, are such active and prosperous agents for her antagonist, the Widow, that she, this insidious antagonist! is admitted, perhaps, three, four, or even five times to the recent altar of Hymen, 1 while my unfortunate client, the neglected Old Maid, however wishfully she may look towards the portal, is not allowed to find even a temporary shelter within a por­ tico of the temple.—Can this, Sir, be called equity? Is it not injustice? Is it not barbarity?—But I may be told, that in the common occurrences of life, in a transaction such as marriage, peculiarly subject to fancy and caprice, we must not expect, we must not require men to observe the nicer dictates of strict equity, and a speculative rule of right.—Be it so!— I will not, therefore, on this important question, appeal solely to the consciences of men; I will appeal to their interests. I will prove to them, that he who marries an Old Maid, has a much greater chance of being invariably beloved by his wife, or, in other words, of being happy in wedlock, than he has, who rashly throws himself into the open arms of a Widow.—Sir, I flatter myself, it will require no long chain of argu­ ments to establish and fortify, on the most solid ground, this momentous position. I trust, that I shall be able to accomplish it, merely by reminding this audience of a propensity in the human mind, which cannot be called in question; I mean the propensity to exalt in our esti­ mation those possessions of which we are deprived, and to sink the value of what is actually in our hands.—Sir, the first part of this propensity is so general, and it operates with such amazing force on the character to whom I wish to apply it, that I remember the admirable Fielding, 2 with a most happy coincidence of humour and of truth, calls the death of an husband 'an infallible recipe to recover the lost affections of a wife.' Let me, Sir, entreat this assembly to retain in their thoughts the pro­ pensity I have mentioned, and then to contemplate with me the feelings of the late Widow towards her second or third husband, and the feelings of the quondam Old Maid, now joyfully united to her first and only love.—Sir, the affection of the re-married Widow is a pocket telescope; she directs the magnifying end of it towards her good man in the grave, and it enlarges to a marvellous degree all the mental and all the personal endowments of the dear departed. She then turns the inverted glass to his diminishing successor, and, whatever his proportion of excellence may be, the poor luckless living mortal soon dwindles in her sight to a comparative pigmy. But, Sir, this is not the case with our quondam Old Maid. No! Sir—her affection is a portable microscope, which magnifies 1. God of marriage. 2. Henry Fielding (1707-1754), author of Tom Jones. The quoted phrase occurs in a chapter title (bk. 2, chap. 8).

[ON OLD MAIDS] 183 in a stupendous manner all the attractive merits and powers of pleasing, however inconsiderable they may be, in the favourite creature upon whom she gazes. Like an inexperienced but a passionate naturalist, she continues to survey the new and sole object of her contemplation, not only with unremitted assiduity, but with increasing amazement and delight. He fills her eye; he occupies her mind; he engrosses her heart. But it may be said in reply, If the man who marries an Old Maid has this superior chance of being uniformly beloved by his wife, since it is certainly the wish of every man who marries to be so, how happens it that men decide so preposterously against themselves, and perpetually prefer the Widow to the Old Maid? Is not this constant preference a very strong argument in favour of the character so preferred? Does it not prove, that the Widow has acquired the art, or the power, of conferring more happiness on her second husband than the Old Maid is able to bestow upon her first? for can we suppose that men, instructed by the experience of ages, would continue to act in constant opposition to their own domestic happiness, in the most important article of human life? Alas! Sir, I fear there are more articles than one, in which we incon­ siderate mortals may be frequently observed to act against experience, against our reason, and against our felicity. That the Widow is con­ stantly preferred to the Old Maid, I most readily admit; nay, I complain of it as an inveterate grievance; but I trust, Sir, that I can account for this unreasonable preference, without adding a single grain to the weight, or rather to the empty scale, of the Widow. I believe, Sir, a very simple metaphor will illustrate the whole affair on both sides. The Widow is an experienced and a skilful angler, who has acquired patience to wait for the favourable minute, and rapidity to strike in the very instant when the fish has fairly risen to the hook. By this double excellence her success is ensured. But alas! Sir, the Old Maid is an angler, whom fruitless expectation has rendered both impatient and unskilful; she is thrown into trepidation by the first appearance of a nibble, and by making a too hasty movement at that critical juncture, she too often renders her bait, however sweet it may be, an object of terror, instead of allurement, to what she wishes to catch. Though my allusion may sound a little coarsely, let me entreat you, Sir, not to imagine that I mean to express any degree of disrespect to my honest and worthy client, the unprosperous Old Maid. Allow me, Sir, to remind you, that ingenuous and unhacknied spirits, though actively inclined, are often reduced to do nothing, by their too eager desire to do well; and this is frequently the case of the good and delicate Old Maid, in her laudable project of securing a husband: so that even when she is herself the cause of her own failure in this worthy purpose; she deserves not our censure but our compassion. Yes! Sir, the partizans of the Widow may smile, if they please, at my assertion; but I scruple not

1 8 4 to affirm, that the solitary, neglected Old Maid is more truly entitled to pity, that soft harbinger of love, than the weeping Widow herself. Much has been said, and, I confess, with great eloquence, on the Widow's attractive sorrow. It is, indeed, attractive; and so attractive, that it has frequendy recalled to my imagination the moan of the hyaena, that art­ ful, destructive, and insatiable creature, who is said by the ancient natu­ ralists to lure into her den, by a treacherous cry of distress, the unwary traveller whom she intends to devour. This insidious behaviour of the hyaena is a questionable fact, that no one, perhaps, can fully prove or refute; but all persons of any experience in the world have seen instances of men, who have been allured into the snare of the Widow, and have lamented, when it was too late to retreat, that they fell the victims of their own generous, but misplaced compassion. The habit of changing is very apt to produce a passion for novelty; and the wife, who has buried one or two husbands, on a slight disagree­ ment with her second or third, will soon wish him to sleep in peace with his departed predecessor, from her hope of being more lucky in her next adventure. You may remember, Sir, that our old poet Chaucer, that admirable and exact painter of life and manners! has very happily marked this prevalent disposition of the re-married Widow, in the long prologue which he assigns to his Wife of Bath. That good lady glories in having already buried four husbands, and expresses a perfect readiness, whenever Heaven may give her the opportunity, to engage with a sixth. Let it not be said, that this character is a mere phantom, created by the lively imagination of a satirical and facetious poet! No! Sir, this venera­ ble, though sportive old bard, copied nature most faithfully: and, as a proof that he did so in the present case, I will mention a more marvel­ lous example of this passion in the re-marrying Widow for an unlimited succession of novelties. Sir, the example I mean, is recorded in an eccle­ siastical writer of great authority, whose name I cannot in this moment recollect; but I remember he mentions it as a fact, which happened at Rome, and to which he was himself an eye-witness. This fact, Sir, was the marriage of a widow to her twenty-second husband. The man also had buried twenty wives; and all the eyes of Rome were fixed on this singular pair, as on a couple of gladiators, anxious to see which would conduct the other to the grave. If I remember right, the woman, after all her funeral triumphs, was the victim in this wonderful conflict: but the story, however it might terminate, sufficiently proves the passion for novelty, which I have ascribed to the Widow. Now, Sir, if the second or third husband of a Widow may have frequent cause to imagine, that his lady's transferrable affections are veering toward his probable succes­ sor, he cannot surely be so happy, or secure, as the man who has more wisely united himself to a worthy Old Maid. She, good soul! remember­ ing how long she waited for her first husband, instead of hastily looking forward to a second, will direct all her attention to cherish and preserve

[ON OLD MAIDS] 185 the dear creature, whom she at last acquired after tedious expectation. Her good man has no rival to fear, either among the living or the dead, and may securely enjoy the delightful prerogative of believing himself the absolute master of his wife's affections. I entreat you, Sir, to observe how very different the case is with the inconsiderate man, who rashly married a Widow! He has not only to apprehend, that the changeable tenderness of his lady may take a sudden turn towards his probable suc­ cessor, but, if her thoughts are too faithful, and too virtuous, to wander towards the living, even then, Sir, after all his endeavours to take full possession of her heart, though he may delude himself with the vain idea of being its sole proprietor, he will frequently find, that he has only entered into partnership with a ghost. Yes! Sir, though my opponents may treat the expression as ludicrous, I will maintain that it is literally just. I repeat, he has entered into partnership with a ghost, and I will add, Sir, the very probable consequence of such a partnership; he will soon find, that by the subtle illusions of his invisible partner, he has lost even his poor moiety in that precarious possession, the heart of a remar­ ried Widow! and will find himself, at the same time, a real bankrupt in happiness. Since my antagonists have been pleased to smile at my expression, as the language rather of fancy than of truth, suffer me, Mr. President, to quote a case, in which this dead, this derided partner made his actual appearance, and was bold enough to urge an exclusive claim. Sir, I trust the case I allude to is a case directly in point; it is quoted, indeed, on a different occasion, by the admirable Addison, 3 from the seventeenth book of the Jewish historian, Josephus. I mean the case of the Widow Glaphyra, who, having been twice a Widow, took for her third husband Archelaus. You may remember, Sir, that the thoughts of this lady, after her third adventure, ran so much on her first lord, that she saw the good man in a vision—'Glaphyra,' said the phantom, 'thou hast made good the old saying, that women are not to be trusted. Was not I the husband of thy virginity? Have I not children by thee? How couldst thou forget our loves so far, as to enter into a second marriage, and after that into a third?—But for our passed loves I will free thee from thy present reproach, and make thee mine for ever. '—Glaphyra related her dream, and died soon after. This, Sir, is a serious and tragical proof, how dangerous it is to marry a Widow. Surely no considerate man would chuse to incur the hazard of having his bride thus torn from his embraces by so arrogant a phantom.—Allow me, Sir, to relate a story of a comic cast, which will equally prove the secret perils of such a mar­ riage. I received it from a very worthy old gentleman, not unknown to this assembly. He was acquainted, in his youth, with a famous mimic of the last century, who was the principal actor in this comic or rather farcical scene, and related it circumstantially to my friend. This mimic, 3. Joseph Addison (1672-1719), essayist, founder (with Richard Steele) of The Spectator, a popu­ lar weekly periodical.

186 Sir, a man of pleasantry and adventure, courted, in the early part of his life, a very handsome and opulent Widow; she gave him the highest encouragement; but, as avarice was her foible, she at last jilted him for a wealthy suitor, who, though of a very timid constitution, was rash enough to marry this very tempting Widow. The discarded mimic was inflamed with a variety of passions, and determined to take some very signal revenge. An opportunity of vengeance occurred to him, which, as he knew the extreme timidity of his fortunate rival, he seized without the pause of apprehension. His valet had intrigued with the favourite abigâil 4 of the Widow, and by her assistance the mimic commanded 5 the nuptial chamber of the bride. He had known the person of her first husband, and, having concealed himself under a toilet, 6 till the hour of consummation, he then made his appearance, assuming the most exact similitude, both in figure and voice, to the dear departed. He had hardly undrawn the curtain, when the affrighted bride fell into a fit. The bride­ groom, who had also known his deceased predecessor, was seized with a panic still worse, and his trembling body soon diffused so powerful an effluvia, that although it contributed nothing to his own relief, it recov­ ered the lady from her swoon. She revived in perfect possession of her senses, and, finding the dead husband vanished, and the living one unfit for a companion, she hastily arose. As she loved money, she had taken the prudent precaution of securing to herself the enjoyment of her own fortune, and, having some suspicion of the trick which had been played against her, she resolved to make a wise use of it, and declared, that she would never proceed to consummate her marriage with a man, who had not resolution enough to protect her from a ghost. She persisted in this conduct, and the luckless derided bridegroom remained, through life, a melancholy example to confirm the wisdom of that adage, which says, that he should, indeed, be a bold man, who enters into the service of a Widow. Sir, I should entreat your pardon for having trespassed on the patience of this assembly by the recital of so long a story, did I not flatter myself that it will have a happy tendency to guard the single gentlemen, who hear me, from the iniquitous temerity of preferring a Widow to an Old Maid. I might alledge, Sir, many arguments which I have not hitherto touched upon, in favour of my client. I might shew of what infinite importance it is to matrimonial felicity, that the husband should receive into his arms a partner for life, whose disposition and habits, instead of being fixed already by a former lord, are yet to be moulded according to the will and abilities of her first and only director. Sir, in this point, the Widow is a piece of warped wood, which the most skilful workman may 4. Maidservant. 5. Took possession of. 6. Dressing table.

LETTERS ABOUT 187 find himself unable to shape as he wishes; but the Old Maid, Sir, is the pliant virgin wax, which follows, with the most happy ductility, every serious design, every ingenious device, every sportive whim, of the mod­ eller. But I will relinquish the innumerable arguments that I might yet adduce in support of the Old Maid; I will rest her cause on that solid rock, which I have endeavoured, Sir, to exhibit in different points of view, I mean the superior security with which her husband may depend on the stability of her affection. I will conclude by conjuring every gen­ tleman, who may happen to hesitate between a Widow and an Old Maid, to remember, that reason and experience, that equity and the general interest of mankind, all loudly plead for his preferring the latter: I will conjure him to recollect, that the man who marries a Widow has great cause to apprehend unreasonable expectations, unpleasant com­ parisons, and variable affection; while he, who marries an Old Maid, may with confidence prepare to meet unexacting tenderness, increasing gratitude, and perpetual endearments. Letters about Persuasion t To Fanny Knight Chawton, Thursday March 13. [1817] As to making any adequate return for such a Letter as yours my dearest Fanny, it is absolutely impossible; if I were to labour at it all the rest of my Life and live to the age of Methuselah, I could never accom­ plish anything so long and so perfect; but I cannot let William go with­ out a few Lines of acknowledgement and reply. I have pretty well done with Mr. Wildman. By your description he cannof be in love with you, however he may try at it, and I could not wish the match unless there were a great deal of Love on his side. I do not know what to do about Jemima Branfill. What does her dancing away with so much spirit, mean? that she does not care for him, or only wishes to appear not to care for him?—Who can understand a young Lady?—Poor Mrs. C. Milles, that she should die on a wrong day at last, after being about it so long!—It was unlucky that the Goodnestone Party could not meet you, and I hope her friendly, obliging, social Spirit, which delighted in draw­ ing People together, was not conscious of the division and disappoint- t From Jane Austen's Letters, edited by R. W. Chapman, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford UP, 1959), letters 141 and 142. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press. All notes are by the editor of this Norton Critical Edition.

188 ment she was occasioning. I am sorry and surprised that you speak of her as having little to leave, and must feel for Miss Milles, though she is Molly, if a material loss of Income is to attend her other loss.—Single Women have a dreadful propensity for being poor—which is one very strong argument in favour of Matrimony, but I need not dwell on such arguments with you, pretty Dear, you do not want inclination.—Well, I shall say, as I have often said before, Do not be in a hurry; depend upon it, the right Man will come at last; you will in the course of the next two or three years, meet with somebody more generally unexcep­ tionable than anyone you have yet known, who will love you as warmly as ever He did, and who will so completely attach you, that you will feel you never really loved before.—And then, by not beginning the business of Mothering quite so early in life, you will be young in Constitution, spirits, figure and countenance, while Mrs Wm Hammond is growing old by confinements and nursing. Do none of the Plumtres ever come to Balls now?—You have never mentioned them as being at any?—And what do you hear of the Gipps or of Fanny and her Husband?—Mrs F. 1 is to be confined the middle of April, and is by no means remarkably Large for her.—Aunt Cassandra walked to Wyards yesterday with Mrs. Digweed. Anna has had a bad cold, looks pale, and we fear something else. She has just weaned Julia.—How soon, the difference of temper in Children appears!—Jemima has a very irritable bad Temper (her Mother says so)—and Julia a very sweet one, always pleased and happy.—I hope as Anna is so early sensible of it's defects, that she will give Jemima's disposition the early and steady attention it must require.—I have also heard lately from your Aunt Harriot, and cannot understand their plans in parting with Miss S—whom she seems very much to value, now that Harriot and Eleanor are both of an age for a Governess to be so useful to;—especially as when Caroline was sent to School some years, Miss Bell was still retained, though the others were then mere Nursery Children.—They have some good reason I dare say, though I cannot penetrate it, and till I know what it is I shall invent a bad one, and amuse myself with accounting for the difference of mea­ sures by supposing Miss S. to be a superior sort of Woman, who has never stooped to recommend herself to the Master of the family by Flat­ tery, as Miss Bell did.—I will answer your kind questions more than you expect. Miss Catherine 2 is put upon the Shelve for the present, and I do not know that she will ever come out;—but I have a something ready for Publication, which may perhaps appear about a twelvemonth hence. It is short, about the length of Catherine.—This is for yourself alone. Neither Mr. Salusbury nor Mr. Wildman are to know of it. I am got tolerably well again, quite equal to walking about and enjoying the Air; and by sitting down and resting a good while between 1. Mrs. Frederick Austen, her sister-in-law. "Confined" means confined for childbirth. 2. Presumably Northanger Abbey, whose heroine is Catherine Morland.

LETTERS ABOUT PERSUASION 189 my Walks, I get exercise enough. I have a scheme however for accom­ plishing more, as the weather grows springlike. I mean to take to riding the Donkey. It will be more indépendant & less troublesome than the use of the carriage, & I shall be able to go about with At Cassandra in her walks to Alton and Wyards.—I hope you will think Wm. looking well. He was bilious the other day, and Aunt Cass: supplied him with a Dose at his own request, which seemed to have good effect.—I was sure you would have approved it. Wm. and I are the best of friends. I love him very much. Everything is so natural about him, his affections, his Manners and his Drollery. He entertains and interests us extremely.— Max: Hammond and A. M. Shaw are people whom I cannot care for, in themselves, but I enter into their situation and am glad they are so happy.—If I were the Duchess of Richmond, I should be very miserable about my son's choice. What can be expected from a Paget, born and brought up in the centre of conjugal Infidelity & Divorces?—I will not be interested about Lady Caroline. I abhor all the race of Pagets.—Our fears increase for poor little Harriet; the latest account is that Sir Ev: Home is confirmed in his opinion of there being water on the brain.— I hope Heaven in its mercy will take her soon. Her poor Father will be quite worn out by his feelings for her.—He cannot spare Cassy at pres­ ent, she is an occupation and a comfort to him. Adieu my dearest Fanny. Nothing could be more delicious than your Letter; and the assurance of your feeling releived by writing it, made the pleasure perfect.—But how could it possibly be any new idea to you that you have a great deal of Imagination?—You are all over Imagination.— The most astonishing part of your Character is, that with so much Imag­ ination, so much flight of Mind, such unbounded Fancies, you should have such excellent Judgement in what you do!—Religious Principle I fancy must explain it.—Well, good bye and God bless you. Yrs very affecly J. Austen To Fanny Knight Chawton, Sunday March 23. [1817] I am very much obliged to you my dearest Fanny for sending me Mr. Wildman's conversation, I had great amusement in reading it, and I hope I am not affronted and do not think the worse of him for having a Brain so very different from mine, but my strongest sensation of all is astonishment at your being able to press him on the subject so persever- ingly—and I agree with your Papa, that it was not fair. When he knows the truth he will be uncomfortable.—You are the oddest Creature!— Nervous enough in some respects, but in others perfectly without nerves!—Quite unrepulsible, hardened and impudent. Do not oblige him to read any more.—Have mercy on him, tell him the truth and

190 make him an apology. He and I should not in the least agree of course, in our ideas of Novels and Heroines;—pictures of perfection as you know make me sick and wicked—but there is some very good sense in what he says, and I particularly respect him for wishing to think well of all young Ladies; it shews an amiable and a delicate Mind.—And he deserves better treatment than to be obliged to read any more of my Works.—Do not be surprised at finding Uncle Henry acquainted with my having another ready for publication. I could not say No when he asked me, but he knows nothing more of it.—You will not like it, so you need not be impatient. You may perhaps like the Heroine, as she is almost too good for me.—Many thanks for your kind care for my health; I certainly have not been well for many weeks, and about a week ago I was very poorly, I have had a good deal of fever at times and indifferent nights, but am considerably better now, and recovering my Looks a little, which have been bad enough, black and white and every wrong colour. I must not depend upon being ever very blooming again. Sick­ ness is a dangerous Indulgence at my time of Life. Thank you for every­ thing you tell me;—I do not feel worthy of it by anything I can say in return, but I assure you my pleasure in your Letters is quite as great as ever, and I am interested and amused just as you could wish me. If there is a Miss Marsden, I perceive whom she will marry. Eveng.—I was languid and dull and very bad company when I wrote the above; I am better now—to my own feelings at least—and wish I may be more agréable. We are going to have Rain, and after that, very pleasant genial weather, which will exactly do for me, as my Saddle will then be completed—and air and exercise is what I want. Indeed I shall be very glad when the event at Scarlets 3 is over, the expectation of it keeps us in a worry, your Grandmama especially; she sits brooding over Evils which cannot be remedied and Conduct impossible to be under­ stood.—Now, the reports from Keppel St. are rather better, little Har­ riet's headaches are abated, and Sir Evd: is satisfied with the effect of the Mercury, and does not despair of a Cure. The Complaint I find is not considered Incurable nowadays, provided the Patient be young enough not to have the Head hardened. The Water in that case may be drawn off by Mercury. But though this is a new idea to us, perhaps it may have been long familiar to you, through your friend Mr. Scud:—I hope his high renown is maintained by driving away William's cough. Tell Wil­ liam that Triggs is as beautiful and condescending as ever, and was so good as to dine with us today, and tell him that I often play at Nines and think of him.—Anna has not a chance of escape; her husband called here the other day, and said she was pretty well but not equal to so long a walk; she must come in her Donkey Carriage.—Poor Animal, she will be worn out before she is thirty.—I am very sorry for her.—Mrs Clem- 3. Home of Mr. and Mrs. James Leigh Perrot, Austen's uncle and aunt.

191 ent too is in that way again. I am quite tired of so many Children.— Mrs Benn has a 13th.—The Papillons came back on friday night, but I have not seen them yet, as I do not venture to Church. I cannot hear however, but that they are the same Mr. P. and his sister they used to be. She has engaged a new Maidservant in Mrs. Calker's room, whom she means to make also Housekeeper under herself.—Old Philmore was buried yesterday, and I, by way of saying something to Triggs, observed that it had been a very handsome Funeral, but his manner of reply made me suppose that it was not generally esteemed so. I can only be sure of one part being very handsome, Triggs himself, walking behind in his Green Coat.—Mrs. Philmore attended as chief Mourner, in Bombasin, made very short, and flounced with Crape. Tuesday.—I have had various plans as to this Letter, but at last I have determined that Un: Henry shall forward it from London. I want to see how Canterbury looks in the direction.—When once Une. H. has left us I shall wish him with you. London is become a hateful place to him, and he is always depressed by the idea of it.—I hope he will be in time for your sick. I am sure he must do that part of his Duty as excellently as all the rest. He returned yesterday from Steventon, & was with us by breakfast, bringing Edward with him, only that Edwd staid to breakfast at Wyards. We had a pleasant family-day, for the Altons dined with us;—the last visit of the kind probably, which she will be able to pay us for many a month;—Very well, to be able to do it so long, for she expects much about this day three weeks, and is generally very exact.—I hope your own Henry is in France and that you have heard from him. The Passage once over, he will feel all Happiness.—I took my 1st ride yester­ day and liked it very much. I went up Mounters Lane, and round by where the new Cottages are to be, and found the exercise and everything very pleasant, and I had the advantage of agréable companions, as At Cass: and Edward walked by my side.—At Cass, is such an excellent Nurse, so assiduous and unwearied!—But you know all that already.— Very affecly Yours J. Austen Biographical Notice of the Author t The following pages are the production of a pen which has already contributed in no small degree to the entertainment of the public. And when the public, which has not been insensible to the merits of "Sense and Sensibility," "Pride and Prejudice," "Mansfield Park," and t Preface to Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, London, 1818. All notes are by the editor of this Norton Critical Edition.

192 "Emma," shall be informed that the hand which guided that pen is now mouldering in the grave, perhaps a brief account of Jane Austen will be read with a kindlier sentiment than simple curiosity. Short and easy will be the task of the mere biographer. A life of use­ fulness, literature, and religion, was not by any means a life of event. To those who lament their irreparable loss, it is consolatory to think that, as she never deserved disapprobation, so, in the circle of her family and friends, she never met reproof; that her wishes were not only reason­ able, but gratified; and that to the little disappointments incidental to human life was never added, even for a moment, an abatement of good­ will from any who knew her. Jane Austen was born on the 16th of December, 1775, at Steventon, in the county of Hants. 1 Her father was Rector of that parish upwards of forty years. There he resided, in the conscientious and unassisted dis­ charge of his ministerial duties, until he was turned of seventy years. Then he retired with his wife, our authoress, and her sister, to Bath, for the remainder of his life, a period of about four years. Being not only a profound scholar, but possessing a most exquisite taste in every species of literature, it is not wonderful that his daughter Jane should, at a very early age, have become sensible to the charms of style, and enthusiastic in the/fultivation of her own language. On the death of her father she removed, with her mother and sister, for a short time, to Southampton, and finally, in 1809, to the pleasant village of Chawton, in the same county. From this place she sent into the world those novels, which by many have been placed on the same shelf as the works of a D'Arblay and an Edgeworth. 2 Some of these novels had been the gradual perfor­ mances of her previous life. For though in composition she was equally rapid and correct, yet an invincible distrust of her own judgement induced her to withhold her works from the public, till time and many perusals had satisfied her that the charm of recent composition was dis­ solved. The natural constitution, the regular habits, the quiet and happy occupations of our authoress, seemed to promise a long succession of amusement to the public, and a gradual increase of reputation to her­ self. But the symptoms of a decay, deep and incurable, began to shew themselves in the commencement of 1816. Her decline was at first deceitfully slow; and until the spring of this present year, those who knew their happiness to be involved in her existence could not endure to despair. But in the month of May, 1817, it was found advisable that she should be removed to Winchester for the benefit of constant medical aid, which none even then dared to hope would be permanently bene­ ficial. She supported, during two months, all the varying pain, irk- someness, and tedium, attendant on decaying nature, with more than 1. Hampshire. 2. Frances Bumey (1752-1840), whose married name was D'Arblay, and Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849), both popular novelists.

193 resignation, with a truly elastic cheerfulness. She retained her faculties, her memory, her fancy, her temper, and her affections, warm, clear, and unimpaired, to the last. Neither her love of God, nor of her fellow creatures flagged for a moment. She made a point of receiving the sacra­ ment before excessive bodily weakness might have rendered her percep­ tion unequal to her wishes. She wrote whilst she could hold a pen, and with a pencil when a pen was become too laborious. The day preceding her death she composed some stanzas replete with fancy and vigour. Her last voluntary speech conveyed thanks to her medical attendant; and to the final question asked of her, purporting to know her wants, she replied, "I want nothing but death." She expired shortly after, on Friday the 18th of July, 1817, in the arms of her sister, who, as well as the relator of these events, feels too surely that they shall never look upon her like again. Jane Austen was buried on the 24th of July, 1817, in the cathedral church of Winchester, which, in the whole catalogue of its mighty dead, does not contain the ashes of a brighter genius or a sincerer Christian. Of personal attractions she possessed a considerable share. Her stature was that of true elegance. It could not have been increased without exceeding the middle height. Her carriage and deportment were quiet, yet graceful. Her features were separately good. Their assemblage pro­ duced an unrivalled expression of that cheerfulness, sensibility, and benevolence, which were her real characteristics. Her complexion was of the finest texture. It might with truth be said, that her eloquent blood spoke through her modest cheek. Her voice was extremely sweet. She delivered herself with fluency and precision. Indeed she was formed for elegant and rational society, excelling in conversation as much as in composition. In the present age it is hazardous to mention accomplish­ ments. Our authoress would, probably, have been inferior to few in such acquirements, had she not been so superior to most in higher things. She had not only an excellent taste for drawing, but, in her earlier days, evinced great power of hand in the management of the pencil. 3 Her own musical attainments she held very cheap. Twenty years ago they would have been thought more of, and twenty years hence many a parent will expect their daughters to be applauded for meaner performances. She was fond of dancing, and excelled in it. It remains now to add a few observations on that which her friends deemed more important, on those endowments which sweetened every hour of their lives. If there be an opinion current in the world, that perfect placidity of temper is not reconcileable to the most lively imagination, and the keen­ est relish for wit, such an opinion will be rejected for ever by those who 3. For drawing.

194 have had the happiness of knowing the authoress of the following works. Though the frailties, foibles, and follies of others could not escape her immediate detection, yet even on their vices did she never trust herself to comment with unkindness. The affectation of candour 4 is not uncommon; but she had no affectation. Faultless herself, as nearly as human nature can be, she always sought, in the faults of others, some- thing to excuse, to forgive or forget. Where extenuation was impossible, she had a sure refuge in silence. She never uttered either a hasty, a silly, or a severe expression. In short, her temper was as polished as her wit. Nor were her manners inferior to her temper. They were of the happiest kind. No one could be often in her company without feeling a strong desire of obtaining her friendship, and cherishing a hope of having obtained it. She was tranquil without reserve or stiffness; and communi- cative without intrusion or self-sufficiency. She became an authoress entirely from taste and inclination. Neither the hope of fame nor profit mixed with her early motives. Most of her works, as before observed, were composed many years previous to their publication. It was with extreme difficulty that her friends, whose partiality she suspected whilst she honoured their judgement, could prevail on her to publish her first work. Nay, so persuaded was she that its sale would not repay the expense of publication, that she actually made a reserve from her very moderate income to meet the expected loss. She could scarcely believe what she termed her great good fortune when "Sense and Sensibility" produced a clear profit of about £150. Few so gifted were so truly unpre- tending. She regarded the above sum as a prodigious recompense for that which had cost her nothing. Her readers, perhaps, will wonder that such a work produced so little at a time when some authors have received more guineas than they have written lines. The works of our authoress, however, may live as long as those which have burst on the world with more éclat. 5 But the public has not been unjust; and our authoress was far from thinking it so. Most gratifying to her was the applause which from time to time reached her ears from those who were competent to discriminate. Still, in spite of such applause, so much did she shrink from notoriety, that no accumulation of fame would have induced her, had she lived, to affix her name to any productions of her pen. In the bosom of her own family she talked of them freely, thankful for praise, open to remark, and submissive to criticism. But in public she turned away from any allusion to the character of an authoress. She read aloud with very great taste and effect. Her own works, probably, were never heard to so much advantage as from her own mouth; for she partook largely in all the best gifts of the comic muse. She was a warm and judicious admirer of landscape, both in nature and on canvass. At 4. Generosity. 5. Brilliance, dazzling effect.

195 a very early age she was enamoured of Gilpin

6 on the Picturesque; and she seldom changed her opinions either on books or men. Her reading was very extensive in history and belles lettres; and her memory extremely tenacious. Her favourite moral writers were Johnson in prose, and Cowper in verse. 7 It is difficult to say at what age she was not intimately acquainted with the merits and defects of the best essays and novels in the English language. Richardson's 8 power of creating, and preserving the consistency of his characters, as particularly exempli­ fied in "Sir Charles Grandison," gratified the natural discrimination of her mind, whilst her taste secured her from the errors of his prolix style and tedious narrative. She did not rank any work of Fielding 9 quite so high. Without the slightest affectation she recoiled from every thing gross. Neither nature, wit, nor humour, could make her amends for so very low a scale of morals. Her power of inventing characters seems to have been intuitive, and almost unlimited. She drew from nature; but, whatever may have been surmised to the contrary, never from individuals. The style of her familiar correspondence was in all respects the same as that of her novels. Every thing came finished from her pen; for on all subjects she had ideas as clear as her expressions were well chosen. It is not hazarding too much to say that she never dispatched a note or letter unworthy of publication. One trait only remains to be touched on. It makes all others unim­ portant. She was thoroughly religious and devout; fearful of giving offence to God, and incapable of feeling it towards any fellow creature. On serious subjects she was well-instructed, both by reading and medita­ tion, and her opinions accorded strictly with those of our Established Church. London, Dec. 13, 1817. POSTSCRIPT Since concluding the above remarks, the writer of them has been put in possession of some extracts from the private correspondence of the authoress. They are few and short; but are submitted to the public with­ out apology, as being more truly descriptive of her temper, taste, feel­ ings, and principles than any thing which the pen of a biographer can produce. The first extract is a playful defence of herself from a mock charge of 6. William Gilpin (1724-1804) articulated a theory of the picturesque in Three Essays: On Pic­ turesque Beauty, On Picturesque Travel, and On Sketching Landscape (1792). 7. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), essayist and author of the moral tale Rasselas; William Cowper (1731-1800), poet, author of ThfTask* 8. Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), didactic novelist, who published Sir Charles Grandison in 1753. 9. Henry Fielding (1707-1754), whose best-known novel was Tom Jones.

196 having pilfered the manuscripts of a young relation. "What should I do, my dearest E. with your manly, vigorous sketches, so full of life and spirit? How could I possibly join them on to a little bit of ivory, two inches wide, on which I work with a brush so fine as to produce little effect after much labour?" The remaining extracts are from various parts of a letter written a few weeks before her death. "My attendant is encouraging, and talks of making me quite well. I live chiefly on the sofa, but am allowed to walk from one room to the other. I have been out once in a sedan-chair, and am to repeat it, and be promoted to a wheel-chair as the weather serves. On this subject I will only say further that my dearest sister, my tender, watchful, indefat­ igable nurse, has not been made ill by her exertions. As to what I owe to her, and to the anxious affection of all my beloved family on this occasion, I can only cry over it, and pray to God to bless them more and more." She next touches with just and gentle animadversion on a subject of domestic disappointment. Of this the particulars do not concern the public. Yet in justice to her characteristic sweetness and resignation, the concluding observation of our authoress thereon must not be sup­ pressed. "But I am getting too near complaint. It has been the appointment of God, however secondary causes may have operated." The following and final extract will prove the facility with which she could correct every impatient thought, and turn from complaint to cheerfulness. "You will find Captain a very respectable, well-meaning man, without much manner, his wife and sister all good humour and obligingness, and I hope (since the fashion allows it) with rather longer petticoats than last year." London, Dec. 20, 1817. [A New Style of Novel] t The times seem to be past when an apology was requisite from review­ ers for condescending to notice a novel; when they felt themselves bound in dignity to deprecate the suspicion of paying much regard to such trifles, and pleaded the necessity of occasionally stooping to humour the taste of their fair readers. The delights of fiction, if not t From [Richard Whateley], Review of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, Quarterly Review 24(1821): 352-75. All notes are by the editor of this Norton Critical Edition.

197 more keenly or more generally relished, are at least more readily acknowledged by men of sense and taste; and we have lived to hear the merits of the best of this class of writings earnestly discussed by some of the ablest scholars and soundest reasoners of the present day. We are inclined to attribute this change, not so much to an alteration in the public taste, as in the character of the productions in question. Novels may not, perhaps, display more genius now than formerly, but they contain more solid sense; they may not afford higher gratification, but it is of a nature which men are less disposed to be ashamed of avow­ ing. We remarked, in a former Number, in reviewing a work of the author now before us, that 'a new style of novel has arisen, within the last fifteen or twenty years, differing from the former in the points upon which the interest hinges; neither alarming our credulity nor amusing our imagination by wild variety of incident, or by those pictures of romantic affection and sensibility, which were formerly as certain attri­ butes of fictitious characters as they are of rare occurrence among those who actually live and die. The substitute for these excitements, which had lost much of their poignancy by the repeated and injudicious use of them, was the art of copying from nature as she really exists in the common walks of life, and presenting to the reader, instead of the splen­ did scenes of an imaginary world, a correct and striking representation of that which is daily taking place around him.' Now, though the origin of this new school of fiction may probably be traced, as we there suggested, to the exhaustion of the mines from which materials for entertainment had been hitherto extracted, and the neces­ sity of gratifying the natural craving of the reader for variety, by striking into an untrodden path; the consequences resulting from this change have been far greater than the mere supply of this demand. When this Flemish painting, as it were, is introduced—this accurate and unexag- gerated delineation of events and characters—it necessarily follows, that a novel, which makes good its pretensions of giving a perfectly correct picture of common life, becomes a far more instructive work than one of equal or superior merit of the other class; it guides the judgment, and supplies a kind of artificial experience. It is a remark of the great father of criticism, 1 that poetry (i.e., narrative, and dramatic poetry) is of a more philosophical character than history; inasmuch as the latter details what has actually happened, of which many parts may chance to be exceptions to the general rules of probability, and consequently illustrate no general principles; whereas the former shews us what must naturally, or would probably, happen under given circumstances; and thus displays to us a comprehensive view of human nature, and furnishes general rules of practical wisdom. It is evident, that this will apply only to such fictions as are quite perfect in respect of the probability of their story; and 1. Aristotle.

198 that he, therefore, who resorts to the fabulist rather than the historian, for instruction in human character and conduct, must throw himself entirely on the judgment and skill of his teacher, and give him credit for talents much more rare than the accuracy and veracity which are the chief requisites in history. We fear, therefore, that the exultation which we can conceive some of our gentle readers to feel, at having Aristotle's warrant for (what probably they had never dreamed of) the philosophical character of their studies, must, in practice, be somewhat qualified, by those sundry little violations of probability which are to be met with in most novels; and which so far lower their value, as models of real life, that a person who had no other preparation for the world than is afforded by them, would form, probably, a less accurate idea of things as they are, than he would of a lion from studying merely the representations on China tea-pots. Accordingly, a heavy complaint has long lain against works of fiction, as giving a false picture of what they profess to imitate, and disqualifying their readers for the ordinary scenes and everyday duties of life. And this charge applies, we apprehend, to the generality of what are strictly called novels, with even more justice than to romances. When all the charac­ ters and events are very far removed from what we see around us,— when, perhaps, even supernatural agents are introduced, the reader may indulge, indeed, in occasional day-dreams, but will be so little reminded of what he has been reading, by any thing that occurs in actual life, that though he may perhaps feel some disrelish for the tameness of the scene before him, compared with the fairy-land he has been visiting, yet at least his judgment will not be depraved, nor his expectations misled; he will not apprehend a meeting with Algerine

2 banditti on English shores, nor regard the old woman who shews him about an antique country seat, as either an enchantress or the keeper of an imprisoned damsel. But it is otherwise with those fictions which differ from common life in little or nothing but the improbability of the occurrences: the reader is insensibly led to calculate upon some of those lucky incidents and opportune coincidences of which he has been so much accustomed to read, and which, it is undeniable, may take place in real life; and to feel a sort of confidence, that however romantic his conduct may be, and in whatever difficulties it may involve him, all will be sure to come right at last, as is invariably the case with the hero of a novel. On the other hand, so far as these pernicious effects fail to be pro­ duced, so far does the example lose its influence, and the exercise of poetical justice is rendered vain. The reward of virtuous conduct being brought about by fortunate accidents, he who abstains (taught, perhaps, by bitter disappointments) from reckoning on such accidents, wants that encouragement to virtue, which alone has been held out to him. 'If I 2. Algerian.

199 were a man in a novel,' we remember to have heard an ingenious friend observe, 'I should certainly act so and so, because I should be sure of being no loser by the most heroic self-devotion, and of ultimately suc­ ceeding in the most daring enterprises. ' When, therefore, the generality, even of the most approved novels, were of this character, (to say nothing of the heavier charges brought, of inflaming the passions of young persons by warm descriptions, weaken­ ing their abhorrence of profligacy by exhibiting it in combination with the most engaging qualities, and presenting vice in all its allurements, while setting forth the triumphs of virtue rewarded') it is not to be won­ dered that the grave guardians of youth should have generally stigma­ tized the whole class, as 'serving only to fill young people's heads with romantic love-stories, and rendering them unfit to mind any thing else.' That this censure and caution should in many instances be indiscrimi­ nate, can surprize no one, who recollects how rare a quality discrimina­ tion is; and how much better it suits indolence, as well as ignorance, to lay down a rule, than to ascertain the exceptions to it: we are acquainted with a careful mother whose daughters, while they never in their lives read a novel of any kind, are permitted to peruse, without reserve, any plays that happen to fall in their way; and with another, from whom no lessons, however excellent, of wisdom and piety, contained in a prose- fiction, can obtain quarter; but who, on the other hand, is no less indis­ criminately indulgent to her children in the article of tales in verse, of whatever character. The change, however, which we have already noticed, as having taken place in the character of several modern novels, has operated in a considerable degree to do away this prejudice; and has elevated this spe­ cies of composition, in some respects at least, into a much higher class. For most of that instruction which used to be presented to the world in the shape of formal dissertations, or shorter and more desultory moral essays, such as those of the Spectator and Rambler, 3 we may now resort to the pages of the acute and judicious, but not less amusing, novelists who have lately appeared. If their views of men and manners are no less just than those of the essayists who preceded them, are they to be rated lower because they present to us these views, not in the language of general description, but in the form of well-constructed fictitious narra­ tive? If the practical lessons they inculcate are no less sound and useful, it is surely no diminution of their merit that they are conveyed by exam­ ple instead of precept: nor, if their remarks are neither less wise nor less important, are they the less valuable for being represented as thrown out 3. The Spectator, the work of Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, appeared daily from March 1711 to December 1712; The Rambler, by Samuel Johnson, was published from 1750 to 1752. Both periodicals consisted of short essays, often with moral emphasis.

200 in the course of conversations suggested by the circumstances of the speakers, and perfectly in character. The praise and blame of the moral- ist are surely not the less effectual for being bestowed, not in general declamation, on classes of men, but on individuals representing those classes, who are so clearly delineated and brought into action before us, that we seem to be acquainted with them, and feel an interest in their fate. Biography is allowed, on all hands, to be one of the most attractive and profitable kinds of reading: now such novels as we have been speak- ing of, being a kind of fictitious biography, bear the same relation to the real, that epic and tragic poetry, according to Àristode, bear to history: they present us (supposing, of course, each perfect in its kind) with the general, instead of the particular,—the probable, instead of the true; and, by leaving out those accidental irregularities, and exceptions to general rules, which constitute the many improbabilities of real narra- tive, present us with a clear and abstracted view of the general rules themselves; and thus concentrate, as it were, into a small compass, the net result of wide experience. Among the authors of this school there is no one superior, if equal, to the lady whose last production is now before us, and whom we have much regret in finally taking leave of: her death (in the prime of life, considered as a writer) being announced in this the first publication to which her name is prefixed. We regret the failure not only of a source of innocent amusement, but also of that supply of practical good sense and instructive example, which she would probably have continued to furnish better than any of her contemporaries. Miss Austen has the merit (in our judgment most essential) of being evidentiy a Christian writer: a merit which is much enhanced, both on the score of good taste, and of practical utility, by her religion being not at all obtrusive. She might defy the most fastidious critic to call any of her novels, (as Cœlebs 4 was designated, we will not say altogether with- out reason,) a 'dramatic sermon.' The subject is rather alluded to, and that incidentally, than studiously brought forward and dwelt upon. In fact she is more sparing of it than would be thought desirable by some persons; perhaps even by herself, had she consulted merely her own sentiments; but she probably introduced it as far as she thought would be generally acceptable and profitable: for when the purpose of inculca- ting a religious principle is made too palpably prominent, many readers, if they do not throw aside the book with disgust, are apt to fortify them- selves with that respectful kind of apathy with which they undergo a 4. Cœlebs in Search of a Wife ( 1809), a highly didactic novel—with considerably more instruction than fiction—by Hannah More.

201 regular sermon, and prepare themselves as they do to swallow a dose of medicine, endeavouring to get it down in large gulps, without tasting it more than is necessary. The moral lessons also of this lady's novels, though clearly and impressively conveyed, are not offensively put forward, but spring inci­ dentally from the circumstances of the story; they are not forced upon the reader, but he is left to collect them (though without any difficulty) for himself: her's is that unpretending kind of instruction which is fur­ nished by real life; and certainly no author has ever conformed more closely to real life, as well in the incidents, as in the characters and descriptions. Her fables appear to us to be, in their own way, nearly faultless; they do not consist (like those of some of the writers who have attempted this kind of common-life novel writing) of a string of uncon­ nected events which have little or no bearing on one main plot, and are introduced evidently for the sole purpose of bringing in characters and conversations; but have all that compactness of plan and unity of action which is generally produced by a sacrifice of probability: yet they have little or nothing that is not probable; the story proceeds without the aid of extraordinary accidents; the events which take place are the necessary or natural consequences of what has preceded; and yet (which is a very rare merit indeed) the final catastrophe is scarcely ever clearly foreseen from the beginning, and very often comes, upon the generality of read­ ers at least, quite unexpected. We know not whether Miss Austin ever had access to the precepts of Aristotle; but there are few, if any, writers of fiction who have illustrated them more successfully. The vivid distinctness of description, the minute fidelity of detail, and air of unstudied ease in the scenes represented, which are no less neces­ sary than probability of incident, to carry the reader's imagination along with the story, and give fiction the perfect appearance of reality, she possesses in a high degree; and the object is accomplished with­ out resorting to those deviations from the ordinary plan of narrative in the third person, which have been patronized by some eminent masters. Miss Austin, though she has in a few places introduced letters with great effect, has on the whole conducted her novels on the ordinary plan, describing, without scruple, private conversations and uncommunicated feelings: but she has not been forgetful of the important maxim, so long ago illustrated by Homer, and afterwards enforced by Aristotle, of saying as little as possible in her own person, and giving a dramatic air to the narrative, by introducing frequent conversations; which she conducts with a regard to character hardly exceeded even by Shakspeare himself. Like him, she shows as admirable a discrimination in the characters of

202 fools as of people of sense; a merit which is far from common. To invent, indeed, a conversation full of wisdom or of wit, requires that the writer should himself possess ability; but the converse does not hold good: it is no fool that can describe fools well; and many who have succeeded pretty well in painting superior characters, have failed in giving individuality to those weaker ones, which it is necessary to introduce in order to give a faithful representation of real life: they exhibit to us mere folly in the abstract, forgetting that to the eye of a skilful naturalist the insects on a leaf present as wide differences as exist between the elephant and the lion. Slender, and Shallow, and Aguecheek, as Shakspeare has painted them, though equally fools, resemble one another no more than Rich­ ard, and Macbeth, and Julius Caesar; and Miss Austin's Mrs. Bennet, Mr. Rushworth, and Miss Bates, are no more alike than her Darcy, Knightley, and Edmund Bertram. 5 Some have complained, indeed, of finding her fools too much like nature, and consequently tiresome; there is no disputing about tastes; all we can say is, that such critics must (what­ ever deference they may outwardly pay to received opinions) find the Merry Wives of Windsor and Twelfth Night very tiresome; and that those who look with pleasure at Wilkie's pictures, 6 or those of the Dutch school, must admit that excellence of imitation may confer attraction on that which would be insipid or disagreeable in the reality. Her minuteness of detail has also been found fault with; but even where it produces, at the time, a degree of tediousness, we know not whether that can justly be reckoned a blemish, which is absolutely essential to a very high excellence. Now, it is absolutely impossible, without this, to produce that thorough acquaintance with the charac­ ters, which is necessary to make the reader heartily interested in them. Let any one cut out from the Iliad or from Shakspeare's plays every thing (we are far from saying that either might not lose some parts with advantage, but let him reject every thing) which is absolutely devoid of importance and of interest in itself; and he will find that what is left will have lost more than half its charms. We are convinced that some writers have diminished the effect of their works by being scrupulous to admit nothing into them which had not some absolute, intrinsic, and indepen­ dent merit. They have acted like those who strip off the leaves of a fruit tree, as being of themselves good for nothing, with the view of securing more nourishment to the fruit, which in fact cannot attain its full matu­ rity and flavour without them. 5. Mrs. Bennet belongs to Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Rushworth to Mansfield Park, Miss Bates to Emma. The last three characters named come respectively from Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Mansfield Park. 6. David Wilkie (1785-1841) often painted such conventionally unpleasant realistic situations as "The Rent Day." The Dutch School is known for extremely realistic detail.

203 But we must proceed to the publication of which the title is prefixed to this article. It contains, it seems, the earliest and the latest produc­ tions of the author; the first of them having been purchased, we are told, many years back by a bookseller, who, for some reason unexplained, thought proper to alter his mind and withhold it. We do not much applaud his taste; for though it is decidedly inferior to her other works, having less plot, and what there is, less artificially wrought up, and also less exquisite nicety of moral painting; yet the same kind of excellences which characterise the other novels may be perceived in this, in a degree which would have been highly creditable to most other writers of the same school, and which would have entitled the author to considerable praise, had she written nothing better. We already begin to fear, that we have indulged too much in extracts, and we must save some room for 'Persuasion' or we could not resist giving a specimen of John Thorpe, 7 with his horse that cannot go less than 10 miles an hour, his refusal to drive his sister 'because she has such thick ankles,' and his sober consumption of five pints of port a day; altogether the best portrait of a species, which, though almost extinct, cannot yet be quite classed among the Palaeotheria, the Bang-up Oxo­ nian. 8 Miss Thorpe, the jilt of middling life, is, in her way, quite as good, though she has not the advantage of being the representative of a rare or a diminishing species. We fear few of our readers, however they may admire the naivete, will admit the truth of poor John Morland's postscript, 'I can never expect to know such another woman.' The latter of these novels, however, 'Persuasion,' which is more strictly to be considered as a posthumous work, possesses that superiority which might be expected from the more mature age at which it was written, and is second, we think, to none of the former ones, if not superior to all. In the humorous delineation of character it does not abound quite so much as some of the others, though it has great merit even on that score; but it has more of that tender and yet elevated kind of interest which is aimed at by the generality of novels, and in pursuit of which they seldom fail of running into romantic extravagance: on the whole, it is one of the most elegant fictions of common life we ever remember to have met with. Sir Walter Elliot, a silly and conceited baronet, has three daughters, the eldest two, unmarried, and the third, Mary, the wife of a neighbour­ ing gentleman, Mr. Charles Musgrove, heir to a considerable fortune, and living in a genteel cottage in the neighbourhood of the Great house which he is hereafter to inherit. The second daughter, Anne, who is the 7. A minor character in Northanger Abbey. 8. Palaeotheria is an extinct species of mammal. Whateley is saying that the perfect representation of the Oxford man (a role to which John Thorpe aspires) is almost but not quite extinct. Miss Thorpe and John Morland both belong to Northanger Abbey.

204 heroine, and the only one of the family possessed of good sense, (a quality which Miss Austin is as sparing of in her novels, as we fear her great mistress, Nature, has been in real life,) when on a visit to her sister, is, by that sort of instinct which generally points out to all parties the person on whose judgment and temper they may rely, appealed to in all the little family differences which arise, and which are described with infinite spirit and detail. We ventured, in a former article, to remonstrate against the dethrone­ ment of the once powerful God of Love, in his own most especial domain, the novel; and to suggest that, in shunning the ordinary fault of recommending by examples a romantic and uncalculating extrava­ gance of passion, Miss Austin had rather fallen into the opposite extreme of exclusively patronizing what are called prudent matches, and too much disparaging sentimental enthusiasm. We urged, that, mischie­ vous as is the extreme on this side, it is not the one into which the young folks of the present day are the most likely to run: the prevailing fault is not now, whatever it may have been, to sacrifice all for love. We may now, without retracting our opinion, bestow unqualified approbation; for the distresses of the present heroine all arise from her prudent refusal to listen to the suggestions of her heart. The catastrophe however is happy, and we are left in doubt whether it would have been better for her or not, to accept the first proposal; and this we conceive is precisely the proper medium; for, though we would not have prudential calculations the sole principle to be regarded in marriage, we are far from advocating their exclusion. To disregard the advice of sober- minded friends on an important point of conduct, is an imprudence we would by no means recommend; indeed, it is a species of selfishness, if, in listening only to the dictates of passion, a man sacrifices to its gratifi­ cation the happiness of those most dear to him as well as his own; though it is not now-a-days the most prevalent form of selfishness. But it is no condemnation of a sentiment to say, that it becomes blameable when it interferes with duty, and is uncontrouled by conscience: the desire of riches, power, or distinction,—the taste for ease and com­ fort,—are to be condemned when they transgress these bounds; and love, if it keep within them, even though it be somewhat tinged with enthusiasm, and a little at variance with what the worldly call prudence, i.e., regard for pecuniary advantage, may afford a better moral discipline to the mind than most other passions. It will not at least be denied, that it has often proved a powerful stimulus to exertion where others have failed, and has called forth talents unknown before even to the possessor. What, though the pursuit may be fruitiess, and the hopes visionary?

205 The result may be a real and substantial benefit, though of another kind; the vineyard may have been cultivated by digging in it for the treasure which is never to be found. What, though the perfections with which imagination has decorated the beloved object, may, in fact, exist but in a slender degree? still they are believed in and admired as real; if not, the love is such as does not merit the name; and it is proverbially true that men become assimilated to the character (i.e., what they think the character) of the being they fervently adore: thus, as in the noblest exhi­ bitions of the stage, though that which is contemplated be but a fiction, it may be realized in the mind of the beholder; and, though grasping at a cloud, he may become worthy of possessing a real goddess. Many a generous sentiment, and many a virtuous resolution, have been called forth and matured by admiration of one, who may herself perhaps have been incapable of either. It matters not what the object is that a man aspires to be worthy of, and proposes as a model for imitation, if he does but believe it to be excellent. Moreover, all doubts of success (and they are seldom, if ever, entirely wanting) must either produce or exercise humility; and the endeavour to study another's interests and inclina­ tions, and prefer them to one's own, may promote a habit of general benevolence which may outlast the present occasion. Every thing, in short, which tends to abstract a man in any degree, or in any way, from self,—from self-admiration and self-interest, has, so far at least, a beneficial influence in forming the character. On the whole, Miss Austin's works may safely be recommended, not only as among the most unexceptionable of their class, but as combin­ ing, in an eminent degree, instruction with amusement, though without the direct effort at the former, of which we have complained, as some­ times defeating its object. For those who cannot, or will not, learn any thing from productions of this kind, she has provided entertainment which entitles her to thanks; for mere innocent amusement is in itself a good, when it interferes with no greater; especially as it may occupy the place of some other that may not be innocent. The Eastern monarch who proclaimed a reward to him who should discover a new pleasure, would have deserved well of mankind had he stipulated that it should be blameless. Those, again, who delight in the study of human nature, may improve in the knowledge of it, and in the profitable application of that knowledge, by the perusal of such fictions as those before us.

206 ANONYMOUS Anonymous [Austen's Characters] t * * * Without any wish to surprise us into attention, by strangeness of incident, or complication of adventure,—with no great ambition of being amazingly facetious, or remarkably brilliant,—laboriously witty, or profoundly sentimental,—of dealing out wise saws and deep reflec­ tions, or keeping us on the broad grin, and killing us with laughter;— the stream of [Austen's] Tale flows on in an easy, natural, but spring tide, which carries us out of ourselves, and bears our feelings, affections, and deepest interest, irresistably along with it. She has not been at the trouble to look out for subjects for her pencil of a peculiar and eccentric cast, nor cared to outstep the modesty of nature, by spicing with a too rich vein of humour, such as fell in her way in the ordinary intercourse of life. The people with whom her works bring us acquainted were, we feel certain, like those among whom she herself shared the good and ill of life,—with whom she thought and talked—danced and sung— laughed and wept—joked and reasoned. They are not the productions of an ingenious fancy, but beings instinct with life;—they breathe and move, and think and speak, and act, before our mind's eye, with a dis­ tinctness, that rivals the pictures we see in memory of scenes we our­ selves have beheld, and upon the recollections of which we love to dwell. They mingle in our remembrances with those, whom we our­ selves have known and loved, but whom accident, or coldness, or death, have separated from us before the end of our pilgrimage. Into those of her characters in particular, who engage our best affections, and with whom we sympathise most deeply, she seems to have transfused the very essence of life. These are, doubtless, the finest of her compositions, and with reason; for she had only, on any supposed interesting occurrence of life, to set her own kind and amiable feelings in motion, and the tide sprang up from the heart to the pen, and flowed in a rich stream of nature and truth over the page. Into one particular character, indeed, she has breathed her whole soul and being; and in this we please ourselves with thinking, we see and know herself. And what is this character?—A mind beautifully framed, graceful, imaginative, and feminine, but penetrating, sagacious, and profound.— A soul harmonious, gentle, and most sweetly attuned,—susceptible of all that is beautiful in nature, pure in morals, sublime in religion;—a soul—on which, if, by any accidental contact with the vulgar, or the t From anonymous review of Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, Retrospective Review 7 ( 1823): 131-35.

[AUSTEN'S CHARACTERS] 207 vicious, the slightest shade of impurity was ever thrown, it vanished instantaneously, like man's breath from the polished mirror; and, retreating, left it in undiminished lustre.—A heart large and expansive, the seat of deep, kind, honest, and benevolent feelings.—A bosom capa­ cious of universal love, but through which there flowed a deeper stream of domestic and holy affections,—as a river through the lake's broad expanse, whose basin it supplies with its overflowing waters, and through which its course is marked only by a stronger current.—A tem­ per even, cheerful, gladdening, and serene as the mild evening of sum­ mer's loveliest day, in which the very insect that lives but an hour, doth desport and enjoy existence.—Feelings generous and candid,—quick, but not irritable,—sensitive to the slightest degree of coolness in friend or lover, but not easily damped;—or, if overwhelmed by any heart-rend­ ing affliction, rallying, collecting, settling into repose again, like some still and deep waters disturbed by the fall of an impending rock.—Mod­ est in hope, sober in joy, gay in innocence,—sweet soother of others' affliction,—most resigned and patient bearer of her own. With a sunny eye to reflect the glad smiles of happy friends,—dim and cloudy at the sight of others' grief; but not revealing the deep seated woes of the remote chambers of her own breast, by aught but that wild, pensive, regardful, profound expression, which tells nothing to a stranger or acquaintance, but, if a parent or friend, might break your heart but to look upon.— The beloved confidante of the young and infantine—at once playmate and preceptress;—the patient nurser of their little fretful ailments;—the more patient bearer of their rude and noisy mirth, in her own moments of illness or dejection;—exchanging smiles, that would arrest an angel on his winged way, for obstreperous laughs;—and sweet low accents, for shrill treble screams. The friend of the humble, lowly, and indigent; respecting in them, as much as in those of highest degree and lordliest bearing, the image of their common Maker. Easy, pleasant, amusing, playful, and kind in the intercourse of equals—an attentive hearer, con­ siderate, patient, cheerfully sedate, and affectionate in that of elders. In scenes of distress or difficulty, self-dependent, collected, deliberate, and provident,—the one to whom all instinctively turned for counsel, sym­ pathy, and consolation. Strong in innocence as a tower, with a face of serenity, and a collectedness of demeanour, from which danger and misery—the very tawny lion in his rage—might flee discomfited,—a fragile, delicate, feeble, and most feminine woman! Whether, in this enumeration of female excellencies, one of those deeply attached friends, of whom she was sure to have had many, might recognize some, or most of the admirable qualities of JANE AUSTEN, we cannot say;—but sure we are, if our memory have not failed us, or our fancy deceived us, or our hearts betrayed us, such, or nearly such, are those of which she has herself compounded one of the most beautiful female characters ever drawn;—we mean, the heroine of

208 But we have digressed farther than we intended.—Indeed, so fast and thick do recollections of what is beautiful and good in the works of this admirable woman, throng into our mind, that we are borne away invol­ untarily and irresistibly. They stole into the world without noise,—they circulated in quiet,—they were far from being much extolled,—and very seldom noticed in the journals of the day,—they came into our hands, as nothing different from ordinary novels,—and they have enshrined themselves in the heart, and live for ever in the thoughts,— along with the recollections of all that is best and purest in our own experience of life. Their author we, ourselves, had not the happiness of knowing,—a scanty and insufficient memoir, 1 prefixed to her posthu­ mous work, not written in the best taste, is all the history of her life, that we or the world have before us; but, perhaps, that history is not wanted,—her own works furnish that history. Those imaginary people, to whom she gave their most beautiful ideal existence, survive to speak for her, now that she herself is gone. The mention of her works happened to fall in our way as the noblest illustration we could give of that improvement in this department of literature, which we are fond to believe in; but we frankly confess, we would, at any time, have travelled far out of it to pay our humble tribute of respect to the memory of Jane Austen. Nor is it so foreign to our regular speculations, as the reader may be apt to imagine. Our conversa­ tion, as one of our own number has well observed, is among the tombs and there dwells all that once enshrined in a form of beauty a soul of exceeding and surpassing brightness.—O lost too soon to us!—but our loss has been thy immortal gain. [The Language of Feeling] t Beyond any other of Miss Austen's tales, Persuasion shows us the phase of her literary character which she chose to keep most in the shade: the tender and the sad. In this work, as in Sense and Sensibility, and in Mansfield Park, but with more power than in either, she showed what can be the feelings of a woman compelled to see the love she most longs for, leaving her day by day. The judicious Elinor 1 is, indeed, 1. The memoir printed above, pp. 191-96 [Editor]. t From Julia Kavanagh, English Women of Letters, 1862, 251-74. All notes are by the editor of this Norton Critical Edition. 1. A central character in Sense and Sensibility.

[THE LANGUAGE OF FEELING] 209 conscious that she is beloved; but her lover is not free, and she long thinks him lost. Fanny 2 is her lover's confidante, and must be miserable when he is blest, or happy when he is wretched. The position of Anne Elliot has something more desolate still. The opposition of her relatives, and the advice of friends, induce her to break with a young naval officer, Captain Frederick Wentworth, to whom she is engaged, and the only man whom she can love. They part, he in anger, she in sorrow; he to rise in his profession, become a rich man, and outlive his grief; she to pine at home, and lose youth and beauty in unavailing regret. Years have passed when they meet again. Captain Wentworth is still young, still handsome and agreeable. He wishes to marry, and is looking for a wife. Anne Elliot, pale, faded, and sad, knows it, and sees it—she sees the looks, the smiles of fresher and younger beauties seeking him, and apparently not seeking him in vain. Here we see the first genuine picture of that silent torture of an unloved woman, condemned to suffer thus because she is a woman and must not speak, and which, many years later, was wakened into such passionate eloquence by the author of Jane Eyre. Subdued though the picture is in Miss Austen's pages, it is not the less keen, not the less painful. The tale ends happily. Captain Wentworth's coldness yields to old love, Anne's beauty returns, they are married, yet the sorrowful tone of the tale is not effaced by that happy close. The shadow of a long disappointment, of secret grief, and ill-repressed jealousy will ever hang over Anne Elliot. This melancholy cast, the result, perhaps, of some secret personal disappointment, distinguishes Persuasion from Miss Austen's other tales. They were never cheerful, for even the gentlest of satire precludes cheerfulness; but this is sad. Of the popularity of Miss Austen's six novels, of the estimation in which they are held, we need not speak. It is honourable to the public that she should be so thoroughly appreciated, not merely by men like Sir Walter Scott and Lord Macaulay, 3 but by all who take up her books for mere amusement. Wonderful, indeed, is the power that out of mate­ rials so slender, out of characters so imperfectly marked, could fashion a story. This is her great, her prevailing merit, and yet, it cannot be denied, it is one that injures her with many readers. It seems so natural that she should have told things and painted people as they are, so natu­ ral and so easy, that we are apt to forget the performance in the sense of its reality. The literary taste of the majority is always tinged with coarse­ ness; it loves exaggeration, and slights the modesty of truth. 2. Heroine of Mansfield Park. 3. Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), the best-known novelist of his period, wrote appreciatively about all of Austen's work in his review of Emma in The Quarterly Review (March 1816; number dated October 1815). Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), best-known as a historian, praised Austen in an essay on Frances Burney in the Edinburgh Review (1843).

210 Another of Miss Austen's excellencies is also a disadvantage. She does not paint or analyze her characters; they speak for themselves. Her peo­ ple have never those set sayings or phrases which we may refer to the author, and of which we may think, how clever! They talk as people talk in the world, and quietly betray their inner being in their folly, falsehood, or assumption. For instance, Sir Walter Elliot is handsome; we are merely told so; but we never forget it, for he does not. He consid­ ers men born to be handsome, and, deploring the fatal effect of a seafar­ ing life on manly beauty, he candidly regrets that 'naval gentlemen are not knocked on the head at once,' so disgusted has he been with Admiral Baldwin's mahogany complexion and dilapidated appearance. And this worship of personal appearance is perfectly unaffected and sincere. Sir Walter Elliot's good looks have acted on him internally; his own daugh­ ter Anne rises in his opinion as her complexion grows clearer, and his first inquiry concerning his married daughter, Mary, is, 'How is she looking? The last time he, Sir Walter, saw her, she had a red nose, and he hopes that may not happen every day. ' He is assured that the red nose must have been accidental, upon which the affectionate father exclaims kindly: ' "If I thought it would not tempt her to go out in sharp winds, and grow coarse, I would send her a new hat and pelisse." ' But it was natural that powers so great should fail somewhere, and there were some things which Miss Austen could not do. She could not speak the language of any strong feeling, even though that feeling were ridiculous and unjust. A rumour of Mr. Darcy's marriage with Eliza­ beth Bennet having reached his aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, she hurries down to Longbourn to tax and upbraid Miss Bennet with her audacity, and to exact from her a promise that she will not marry Mr. Darcy. 4 Elizabeth refuses, and there is a scene, but not a good one. Lady Catherine's interference is insolent and foolish, but it is the result of a strong feeling, and, to her, it is an important, a mighty matter, and this we do not feel as we read. Her assertions of her own importance, her surprise at Elizabeth's independence, are in keeping, but we want something more, and that something never appears. The delicate mind that could evolve, so shrewdly, foolishness from its deepest recesses, was powerless when strong feelings had to be summoned. They heard her, but did not obey the call. This want of certain important faculties is the only defect, or rather causes the only defect, of Miss Austen's works: that everything is told in the same tone. An elopement, a death, seduction, are related as placidly as a dinner or ball, but with much less spirit. As she is, however, we must take her, and what her extraordinary powers wanted in extent, they made up in depth. In her own range, and admitting her cold views of life to be true, she is faultless, or almost faultless. By choosing to be all but perfect, 4. Characters and situation from Pride and Prejudice.

FROM LIFE OF JANE AUSTEN 211 she sometimes became monotonous, but rarely. The value of light and shade, as a means of success, she discarded. Strong contrasts, bold flights, she shunned. To be true, to show life in its everyday aspect, was her ambition. To hope to make so much out of so little showed no com­ mon confidence in her own powers, and more than common daring. Of the thousands who take up a pen to write a story meant to amuse, how many are there who can, or who dare, be true, like Jane Austen? GOLDWIN SMITH From Life of Jane Austen t "Persuasion" was the last work of Miss Austen. When it was written the hand of death was upon her, and when the last touch was put to it she was very near her end. We can therefore hardly help applying in some measure to herself what she says of Lady Elliot, that "she had found enough in her duties, her friends, and her children to attach her to life and make it no matter of indifference to her when she was called on to quit them." That she would feel the value of life, and yet quit it with resignation, is what we should expect of a character like Jane Aus­ ten. There is also a passage on the melancholy charms of autumn which reminds us the writer's leaf was falling into the sere, though it is followed and relieved by an allusion to the farmer ploughing in hope of the spring. Perhaps there is a shade of pensiveness over the whole novel, and in parts an increased tenderness of sentiment such as comes with the evening hour. "Persuasion" has had passionate admirers in two per­ sons not unqualified to judge—Miss Martineau and Miss Mitford. Though as a whole not so well constructed as others of Jane Austen's novels, it may be said to contain the finest touches of her art. Its princi­ pal character, the tender, sensitive, and suffering Anne Elliot, is also perhaps the most interesting of Jane Austen's women, setting aside the totally different charm of the blooming and joyous Emma. The title denotes the gentle influences which persuade an injured and resentful lover after the lapse of years to return to his early love. Admiral Croft is an "old tough," as admirals seem to have been called in those days, drawn evidently from the life by one who knew the navy well. When interrogated about the state of a friend, who it was suspected had been wounded in his affections, he reassures the inquirer by telling t From Life of Jane Austen by Goldwin Smith (London: W. Scott, 1890), pp. 167-68, 179-80. 1. Harriet Martineau (1802-1876), writer of fiction, travel books, political treatises, and an auto­ biography; Mary Russell Mitford (1787-1855), novelist and dramatist [Editor].

212 GÉRALDINE EDITH MITTON him that the supposed sufferer had not used a single oath. His wife, as seems to have been the fashion at that time, has been a great deal at sea with him; she is a female "old tough"; and the picture of their strong though refined affection, drawn evidently with hearty relish by Jane Austen, is an "old maid's" tribute to the better state. It has been already said that there are some weaknesses in the con­ struction of the novel. Sir Walter Elliot and Elizabeth, though they occupy a good deal of space, contribute nothing or hardly anything to the action. They are a little too like the mere character pictures with which we are sometimes presented in place of characters brought into play and developed by the action of a well-constructed plot. Louisa Musgrove on one side, and Mr. William Elliot on the other, serve to add to the complexity and interest of the movement by which Captain Wentworth is to be reunited to Anne. But the destruction of William Elliot's character is needless, and strikes us as inartistic, while there is something unnatural in his whole relation to the Elliot family, and something strained in the account of his motives. The purpose for which he is introduced and afterwards killed off is too obvious. The transfer of Louisa Musgrove from Captain Wentworth to Captain Benwick, again, is abrupt, and forced as well as sudden; nor does Captain Wentworth come quite clear out of the affair. The description of Mrs. Clay's art­ fulness, and of her sinister relation to the foolish baronet, leads us to expect something lively in that quarter; but nothing comes, and Mrs. Clay leaves the scene at last a "pale and ineffectual" figure, without our being able to see with what object she was brought upon it. Nor does Lady Russell, though she seems intended for an important part, do much more than solemnly seal by her ultimate approbation the match which she had made a grand mistake in breaking off. GERALDINE EDITH MITTON From Jane Austen and Her Times t Last Days The evening of Jane's life had set in, but yet it had not occurred even to those who loved her best that they must inevitably lose her. She was in her forty-first year; recognition from the public had just begun to be accorded to her; in the novels she had lately written no sign of decay could be detected. It is true that in both Emma and Persuasion there is a particular maturity of rendering, and a kindlier tone that marks per- t From Jane Austen and Her Times by Géraldine Edith Mitton (New York: Putnam's, 1905), pp. 313-15. All notes are by the editor of this Norton Critical Edition.

FROM JANE AUSTEN AND HER TIMES 213 haps a difference, but not degeneracy. If the word seriousness can ever be used of such clear-cut, brilliant work as hers, we might say that a certain sweet seriousness pervaded these two, which are more alike in tone than any of the other novels. Persuasion has been called the "most beautiful of all the novels"; it has many excellencies, not the least among which is the character of the heroine, whose girlish weakness develops into a loyal steadfastness. She has also that endearingness that perhaps certain others of the heroines lack. In fact, of all the principal female characters that of Anne Elliot has most of that nameless and indefinable charm, which comes from a combination of qualities such as firmness, gentleness, unselfishness, sympathy and sweetness, a charm which is more lovable than any number of stereotyped graces. Though Anne was at one time weak, we feel that she outgrows it, that it was the weakness of immaturity, not of character, and that her loyalty fully redeems it. Jane herself says of Anne Elliot, "You may perhaps like the heroine as she is almost too good for me," yet the too-good note seems less obtrusive with Anne than with Fanny Price, 1 whose exceeding surface meekness does sometimes produce a little exasperation. Anne and Fanny have the most in common among the heroines of the novels, yet what a difference is there! Fanny has many virtues, but her intense ner­ vous sensitiveness makes one feel her self-consciousness, and underlying all her shrinking there was a quality of obstinacy that is felt without being insisted upon. It is just the subtle difference that Jane knew so well how to make, the feeling perhaps is that Fanny is not quite a gentle­ woman, that she would be difficult to get on with, however meek and self-effacing on the surface, while Anne could never be anything but a delightful companion. Incidentally some parts of Persuasion have already been referred to, Louisa Musgrove's fall on the Cobb, the scenes that take place in Bath, the touching words of Anne when she feels that she has hopelessly lost her lover, which strike a deeper note of feeling than any other in the whole range of the novels. It remains therefore but to say that there is no secondary character to equal those of Miss Bates or Mr. Collins, 2 that the secondary characters are in all cases less sharply defined than those usu­ ally depicted by Jane, but that Captain Wentworth is equal to his good fortune, and that as a pair of lovers he and Anne stand unrivalled. Persuasion was finished in July 1816, but Jane was not satisfied with it, perhaps her own failing health and the sense of tiredness that went with it, had made her lose that grip of the action that she had hitherto held so well; she felt the story did not end satisfactorily, that it wanted bringing together and clinching so to speak; Mr. Austen-Leigh 3 says: "This weighed upon her mind, the more so probably on account of her 1. Central character of Mansfield Park. 2. In Emma and Pride and Prejudice. 3. James Edward Austen-Leigh, Austen's nephew, published his Memoir of his aunt in 1870.

214 GÉRALDINE EDITH MITTON weak state of health, so that one night she retired to rest in very low spirits. But such depression was little in accordance with her nature, and was soon shaken off. The next morning she woke to more cheerful views and brighter inspirations; the sense of power revived and imagination resumed its course. She cancelled the condemned chapter and wrote two others, entirely different, in its stead." These were the tenth and eleventh chapters, and contained the scene in which Anne so touchingly expresses her ideas on the theme of woman's love. There is no question that the story as it now stands is improved by the change, and that her instinct was true. Mr. Austen- Leigh gives the cancelled chapter in his Memoir, and it certainly is "tame and flat" compared with the others, and had she not made the substitution it might justly have been said that Persuasion, however charming, did show signs of failing power. This book was not published until after her death, when it appeared in one volume with Northanger Abbey, the first to which her name was prefixed, this came out in 1818 with a Memoir by her brother Henry. Up to the time of her death she had received nearly seven hundred pounds for the published books, which, considering her anonymity, and entire lack of publicity and influence, must have appeared to her, and indeed was, wonderful, though in comparison with the true value of the work very little indeed.

MODERN CRITICAL VIEWS

A. WALTON LITZ New Landscapes t As we seek to define the special qualities of Jane Austen's late work our attention is inevitably drawn to the new importance she gives to natural landscapes. In the earlier fiction we visualize the characters against a man-made landscape; when the setting is not a drawing-room or ball-room it tends to be the civilized nature of eighteenth-century gardens and paintings. Trees and grass and hills are there, but they are drawn from the repertory of the picturesque, and belong in their small way to what Kenneth Clark has called the "landscape of fantasy." Nature is contemplated with Gilpin 2 and the "improvers" in mind; the landscape is described and criticized as if it were a work of art. Although the young Jane Austen delighted in ridiculing the "sublime" nature of Gothic fiction, with its rhetorical imitations of Salvator Rosa, 3 we know from her brother Henry that she had been "enamoured of Gilpin on the Picturesque" at an early age. It is not surprising, then, that Elizabeth Bennet's interest in the Lake Country is that of the amateur artist, or that she views Pemberley Woods with an eye to picturesque stage-effects. But with Mansfield Park a new feeling for external nature begins to emerge, and in Emma we find an expressive use of landscape that contrasts sharply with the descriptions of the early fiction. The course of Emma Woodhouse's life is subtly related to the cycle of the seasons: Mr. Elton's distressing proposal takes place against the background of a dark and snowy December evening, while Knightley's confession of love occurs on a delightful day in July. The chapter in which Jane Austen brings Emma and Mr. Knightley together opens with a descriptive passage that foreshadows the human changes: The weather continued much the same [a cold stormy rain] all the following morning; and the same loneliness, and the same mel­ ancholy, seemed to reign at Hartfield—but in the afternoon it cleared; the wind changed into a softer quarter; the clouds were carried off; the sun appeared; it was summer again. With all the eagerness which such a transition gives, Emma resolved to be out of doors as soon as possible. Never had the exquisite sight, smell, sensation of nature, tranquil, warm, and brilliant after a storm, been more attractive to her. t From A. Walton Litz, Jane Austen: A Study of Her Artistic Development (New York: Oxford UP, 1965) 150-60. Reprinted by permission of the author. All notes are by the editor of this Norton Critical Edition. The author's notes have been deleted. 1. Bibliographical information about this and other works cited in the essays included in this section will be found in the bibliography (pp. 315-16). 2. See note 6, p. 194. 3. Neapolitan painter (1615-1673) whose somber, often sinister landscapes were much admired in the eighteenth century. 2 1 7

218 WALTON LITZ This symbolic use of the natural setting involves a "sensation of nature" foreign to the early works, and we find the sensation intensified in Persuasion, where Anne Elliot's melancholy and "early loss of bloom" are continuously presented through the imagery of autumn. In the fol­ lowing description of a November walk Anne's feeling for the landscape harmonizes with the emotions prompted by the dialogue. Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn, that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness . . . After one of the many praises of the day, which were continually bursting forth, Captain Wentworth added, "What glorious weather for the Admiral and my sister! They meant to take a long drive this morning; perhaps we may hail them from some of these hills. They talked of coming into this side of the country. I wonder whereabouts they will upset to-day. Oh! it does happen very often, I assure you—but my sister makes nothing of it—she would as lieve be tossed out as not." "Ah! You make the most of it, I know," cried Louisa, "but if it were really so, I should do just the same in her place. If I loved a man, as she-loves the Admiral, I would be always with him, noth­ ing should ever separate us, and I would rather be overturned by him, than driven safely by anybody else." It was spoken with enthusiasm. "Had you?" cried he, catching the same tone; "I honour you!" And there was silence between them for a little while. Anne could not immediately fall into a quotation again. The sweet scenes of autumn were for a while put by—unless some tender sonnet, fraught with the apt analogy of the declining year, with declining happiness, and the images of youth and hope, and spring, all gone together, blessed her memory. She roused herself to say, as they struck by order into another path, "Is not this one of the ways to Winthrop?" But nobody heard, or, at least, nobody answered her. Winthrop, however, or its environs—for young men are, some­ times, to be met with, strolling about near home, was their destina­ tion; and after another half mile of gradual ascent through large enclosures, where the ploughs at work, and the fresh-made path spoke the farmer, counteracting the sweets of poetical despon­ dence, and meaning to have spring again, they gained the summit of the most considerable hill, which parted Uppercross and Win­ throp, and soon commanded a full view of the latter, at the foot of the hill on the other side. The effects of this passage are new to Jane Austen's art. Anne's con­ sciousness is the focus of the scene, and our interest is in her reactions,

219 but these reactions are expressed more through descriptive details than through exposition. The tone of the landscape controls the passage: Anne's regret is imaged in the autumn scene, while the reminder of spring—in immediate context a sad reminder—may also be read as a hint of future happiness. This "poetic" reliance on natural landscape is even more striking in Sanditon, the fragmentary work that closes Jane Austen's career. As E. M. Forster has observed, the town of Sanditon is "not like Lyme or Highbury or Northanger or the other places that pro­ vide scenes or titles to past novels. It exists in itself and for itself. Charac­ ter-drawing, incident, and wit are on the decline, but topography comes to the front, and is screwed much deeper than usual into the story." The sources of this new quality in Jane Austen's fiction must have been complex, but one point seems obvious. More than has been gener­ ally realized or acknowledged, she was influenced by the Romantic poetry of the early nineteenth century. Persuasion and Sanditon contain a number of references to contemporary poets, to Byron, Wordsworth, and especially Scott. And although Jane Austen's explicit use of these authors may be for the purposes of satire, her late prose reflects their influence. Nature has ceased to be a mere backdrop; landscape is a struc­ ture of feeling which can express, and also modify, the minds of those who view it. In their quiet and restrained fashion, Jane Austen's last works are part of the new movement in English literature. She has learned that the natural setting can convey, more surely than any abstract vocabulary, the movements of an individual imagination. This method for expressing individual moods was needed in Persua­ sion, for in her work on this novel Jane Austen set herself a new problem of communication. To put it quite simply, the sense of community has disappeared, and the heroine finds herself terribly alone. Anne Elliot has no trustworthy confidante, no Jane Bennet, or Mrs. Weston, or Mr. Knightley. 4 The sympathetic brothers, sisters, and fathers of the earlier novels have disappeared; Lady Russell cannot comprehend Anne Elliot, and the heroine is locked in the world of her own consciousness. Anne's need is as much communication as it is love, and in spite of the happy ending the deepest impression we carry away from Persuasion is one of human isolation. D. H. Lawrence's well-known attack on Jane Austen is directly relevant here: The sense of isolation, followed by the sense of menace and of fear, is bound to arise as the feeling of oneness and community with our fellow-men declines, and the feeling of individualism and personality, which is existence in isolation, increases. . . . Class- hate and class-consciousness are only a sign that the old togeth­ erness, the old blood-warmth has collapsed, and every man is really aware of himself in apartness. . . . In the old England, the curious 4. Characters from Pride and Prejudice (Jane Bennet) and Emma.

2 2 0 A. WALTON LITZ blood-connections held the classes together. The squires might be arrogant, violent, bullying and unjust, yet in some ways they were at one with the people, part of the same blood-stream. We feel it in Defoe or Fielding. And then, in the mean Jane Austen, it is gone. Already this old maid typifies "personality" instead of charac­ ter, the sharp knowing in apartness instead of knowing in togeth­ erness . . . After we have discounted Lawrence's masculine antagonism toward Jane Austen, and his characteristic identification of art with life, we are left with a penetrating statement of the essential themes in Persuasion. In a sense, Persuasion begins where the other novels end: Anne knows her own heart, and is not deluded about herself. Yet she is isolated, haunted by a "sense of menace and fear"; she knows only in "apartness." Her despair is that of the modern "personality," forced to live within itself. We may attribute this quality in Persuasion to the frustrations of Jane Austen's middle-age (for the first time there is no fictional counterpart to Cassandra), but such biographical speculations are of limited use­ fulness. It is better to view Persuasion as a final variation on one of Jane Austen's most persistent themes, the perils of the free spirit in its search for social identity. Here this theme is given its darkest treatment. Anne Elliot is denied the retreat into obsolete manners symbolized by Mans­ field Park, just as she is cut off from the fatherly advice of a Mr. Knightley. The social world of Persuasion seems cruelly unhelpful, and one must conclude that Jane Austen is expressing in the novel her alarm at contemporary changes in English manners. In spite of the final mar­ riage and the brave flourishes of the last chapter, Persuasion looks for­ ward to a society where the burdens of personality must be borne without a compensating "feeling of oneness and community." The familiar world of the nineteenth-century novel is at hand. The technical difficulties Jane Austen faced in her work on Persuasion were formidable, the direct result of her chosen subject. The drama of self-deception and self-recognition which holds our interest in the ear­ lier novels is almost totally absent from Persuasion, and without it the field for irony is greatly reduced. The personality of Anne Elliot must carry all our interest without the benefit of dramatic irony, and to accomplish this Jane Austen has made Anne's point-of-view that of the reader. Everything depends on our sympathy with Anne, and our inter­ est in her fate. The contrast between this narrative method and that of Emma is highly significant. Since Emma Woodhouse does not know her own mind, we soon learn that we cannot identify our vision with hers; and although most of the action of Emma is seen through the heroine's eyes Jane Austen has supplied us with glimpses into other minds, and with reliable commentary from herself and Knightley. But, as Wayne Booth has pointed out, the only significant break in "angle of

221 vision" between the first and last chapters of Persuasion occurs in the scene where Anne meets Captain Wentworth for the first time in many years. The sympathetic reader is likely to assume that he is still in love with Anne. As Booth says, All the conventions of art favor such a belief: the emphasis is clearly on Anne and her unhappiness; the lover has returned; we have only to wait, perhaps with some tedium, for the inevitable outcome. Anne learns (chap, vii) that he has spoken of her as so altered "he should not have known her again." "These were words which could not but dwell with her. Yet she soon began to rejoice that she had heard them. They were of sobering tendency; they allayed agita­ tion; they composed, and consequently must make her happier." And suddenly we enter Wentworth's mind for one time only: "Frederick Wentworth had used such words, or something like them, but without an idea that they would be carried round to her. He had thought her wretchedly altered, and, in the first moment of appeal, had spoken as he felt. He had not forgiven Anne Elliot. She had used him ill"—and so he goes on, for five more para­ graphs. The necessary point, the fact that Frederick believes him­ self to be indifferent, has been made, and it could not have been made without some kind of shift from Anne's consciousness. This isolated excursion into the mind of another character does not dis­ turb us, since in the opening chapter the author has presented the situa­ tion and characters to us in her own voice; but I doubt if it has convinced many readers. We know that Wentworth's love will be easily reawak­ ened, and our real interest lies in Anne's struggle to overcome the barri­ ers of social isolation and communicate with the man she once knew so well. It is for this reason that Jane Austen presents almost all the action from her point-of-view. Of the surviving Austen manuscripts, the two "canceled" chapters of Persuasion reveal the most about her artistic methods. On 18 July 1816 she wrote "Finis" at the end of the second volume, which then con­ tained eleven chapters; but the handling of the reconciliation scene still did not satisfy her, and during the next two weeks or so she recast the tenth chapter into the present tenth and eleventh chapters, recopying the last chapter (now the twelfth) with verbal corrections. In his separate edition of the two original chapters R. W. Chapman has recorded manuscript corrections and variants from the posthumous first edition, and a study of these corrections and additions reveals the same care for phrasing and rhythm we discovered in the revisions of The Watsons. Presumably more verbal changes would have been made in the final preparation for the press, if Jane Austen had lived. But these small changes are less illuminating than the structural changes which

222 WALTON LITZ occurred when the original Chapter X was transformed into the present Chapters X and X I . 5 By comparing the two versions we can gain a new sense of Jane Austen's skill in construction, and a feeling for the artistic ideals that governed her work on In the ninth chapter of the second volume Anne pays her visit to Mrs. Smith at Westgate-buildings, in the course of which she learns of Mr. Elliot's true character. This revelation is the subject of Anne's thoughts at the beginning of the original Chapter X. She is walking down Gay Street, considering the implications of her new knowledge, when she encounters Admiral Croft. His home is only a few steps away, and Anne is persuaded—much against her wishes—to enter and speak to Mrs. Croft. It is only when she has reached the threshold of the drawing room that Anne is casually informed, "there is nobody but Frederick here." As soon as she is confronted with Captain Wentworth, Admiral Croft draws him outside the door and begins a conversation in which Anne hears "her own name and Kellynch" mentioned repeatedly. Captain Wentworth re-enters the room, and, after a moment of embarrassment, begins to speak on the Admiral's behalf. "The Adml, Madam, was this morning confidently informed that you were—upon my word I am quite at a loss, ashamed—(breath­ ing and speaking quick)—the awkwardness of giving Information of this sort to one of the Parties—You can be at no loss to understand me—It was very confidently said that Mr Elliot—that everything was settled in the family for an Union between Mr Elliot—and yourself. It was added that you were to live at Kellynch—that Kel­ lynch was to be given up. This, the Admiral knew could not be correct—But it occurred to him that it might be the wish of the Parties—And my commission from him Madam, is to say, that if the Family wish is such, his Lease of Kellynch shall be cancel'd . . . " Falteringly, Anne informs Wentworth that the Admiral has been misin­ formed; and, encouraged by her denial and countenance, the Captain confesses his love. Her Countenance did not discourage.—It was a silent, but a very powerful Dialogue;—on his side, Supplication, on her's accep­ tance.—Still, a little nearer—and a hand taken and pressed—and "Anne, my own dear Anne!"—bursting forth in the fullness of exquisite feeling—and all Suspense and Indecision were over. The rest of the canceled chapter is given over to Wentworth's account of his own feelings and behavior during their separation. It is easy to see why Jane Austen was dissatisfied with this handling of 5. In the present edition, chapters are numbered consecutively, without regard for the divisions of the original two volumes. Chapters X and XI of the second volume thus become Chapters XXII and XXHI in the single-volume version.

223 the reconciliation. The climax comes so close on the heels of Anne's visit to Mrs. Smith that we are taken by surprise; the two critical scenes are so close together that they detract from each other. Furthermore, Anne's difficulties with her family have almost been forgotten. In rewrit­ ing the chapter Jane Austen retained a good portion of Wentworth's account of his own feelings; this needed little revision. But she com­ pletely altered the circumstances of the reconciliation, and separated it from the visit to Westgate-buildings by a new chapter devoted to Anne's family. In the final version of the novel Chapter X opens with Anne returning home after her visit to Mrs. Smith. She is exposed to the humiliating behavior of Elizabeth and Mrs. Clay; Mr. Elliot enters, and is treated coldly by Anne. We then shift to the next day; Anne is preparing to visit Lady Russell and tell her of Mr. Elliot's true nature, when the Mus- groves suddenly arrive. The visit to Lady Russell is postponed, and Anne joins her friends of the past autumn at the White Hart. Captain Went­ worth arrives, and Anne must shortly suffer another meeting between the Captain and her family. Mr. Elliot, supposedly out of town, is glimpsed in the company of Mrs. Clay. The next day (Chapter XI) Anne returns to the White Hart and finds that Captain Wentworth has already arrived. He soon calls for writing materials and begins a letter. Encour­ aged by the events of the previous day and the tenor of her conversation with Captain Harville, which he overhears, Wentworth composes a hasty love letter and contrives to place it in Anne's hands. The reconcili­ ation has been accomplished, and when they meet a short time later Wentworth launches into an explanation of his past feelings and actions. Even this crude summary of the changes made in revision can show the complexity of Jane Austen's aims and the sureness of her execution. The new tenth chapter reasserts Anne's isolation, and—through the momentary revelation of the affair between Mr. Elliot and Mrs. Clay— confirms the impressions of the previous chapter. By decelerating the pace of events Jane Austen has given full weight to Mr. Elliot's duplic­ ity, and prepared us for the understanding between Anne and Captain Wentworth. In this connection the indirect appeal by letter seems far superior to the direct confrontation of the earlier version; it emphasizes that difficulty of communication which has been the novel's major theme. Significantly, the final version sustains the internal point-of- view, allowing us to follow the turns of Anne's mind, while the shorter draft had threatened to break this psychological consistency and collapse into straight summary. It is fortunate that this fine example of Jane Aus­ ten's structural revisions has survived, since it gives us a clear sense of the rigorous self-criticism and technical control which went into the making of her mature novels.

224 [On Persuasion] t In Captain Frederick Wentworth Persuasion has a classic case-study of a modern-minded man from the conservative point of view. Went­ worth is personally attractive and an idealist, but he has the fault of trusting too implicitly in his own prior conceptions. When, eight years before the novel opens, he first fell in love with Anne Elliott, he impul­ sively demanded that she should marry him, contrary to the wishes of her family, and (since he had no money for them to live on) contrary at that stage to common prudence. He put his faith in himself, and in his powers to realize his own destiny; and because, two years later, he did make a fortune, he has always blamed Anne for not showing the same degree of confidence in him, or the courage to defy her connections, know her own mind, and trust her own will. 'She had shewn a feeble­ ness of character in doing so, which his own decided, confident temper could not endure. ' When he returns to the neighbourhood, and Anne has to listen to snatches of his conversation with Louisa on the walk to Winthrop, she hears him reiterate his faith in the self. Louisa states that she would rather be overturned by the man she loves than driven safely by anyone else, and Wentworth exclaims 'with enthusiasm,' 'I honour you!' Later, when Anne overhears their conversation within the hedge, she hears him praise 'resolution,' 'decision,' 'firmness,' 'spirit,' and finally, in truly Godwinian phraseology, 'powers of mind.' His personal philosophy approaches revolutionary optimism and individualism and he is impatient of, or barely recognizes, those claims of a mentor which for him can be dismissed in the single word, 'persuasion.' With Captain Wentworth thus established as its well-intentioned but ideologically mistaken hero, the novel takes a course familiar to the reader of Jane Austen's other novels. At Lyme his eyes are opened. On the Cobb he perceives that what he took for firmness of character in Louisa is really an extreme self-will which disregards rational restraints. After the accident, Anne's behaviour reveals to him another kind of strength, which includes self-forgetfulness, self-control, and the ability to act. He reflects over the lessons of the incident, and afterwards is able to admit to Anne that his judgement of her was prejudiced by his bitter­ ness at the broken engagement. He learns to accept that Anne's sub­ mission to Lady Russell was neither a symptom of weakness, nor cold-hearted prudence, but a further sign of principle and fortitude. In the image characteristic of Jane Austen's faulty heroines—that of blind- t From Marilyn Butler, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), 275-84. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press. All notes are by the editor of this Norton Critical Edition. The author's notes have been deleted.

225 ness upon which light suddenly breaks—he says of his own errors, 'I shut my eyes, and would not understand you, or do you justice.' The problem about this explanation of the action of Persuasion is that although Captain Wentworth is the protagonist of the novel he is not the central character. What happens in Persuasion, Wentworth's choice of Anne for a wife, and the discovery of true values which is implicit in that choice, remains in line with the conservative philosophy of all of Jane Austen's other novels. But the novel's actual effect is, notwithstand­ ing, distinct, because many of its techniques lead the attention away from the moral implications of action, and the kind of truth expressed by over-all form. On the whole, though it is not clear how far this effect is intended, the action and most of the characters in Persuasion seem meaningful primarily in terms of the impression they make upon Anne. The slow, static, at times rather laborious opening is indirectly all about her: its function is to establish her setting, first in an atmosphere of bankrupt family pride and cold formality at Kellynch Hall, and afterwards among the comfortable, unexacting Musgroves at Uppercross. Morally the Musgroves are not nearly as censurable as the Elliotts. If we feel that there is a great deal wrong with them, it is largely because they are stupid and undiscriminating about Anne. Just as the first half of the first volume is written in a way to bring out the sorrows of Anne's situation, so Captain Wentworth's entrance is delayed for the same purpose. When at last they meet, the scene is given through the blurred, rushed imprint it makes on Anne's senses: Mary, very much gratified by this attention, was delighted to receive him; while a thousand feelings rushed on Anne, of which this was the most consoling, that it would soon be over. And it was soon over. In two minutes after Charles's preparation, the others appeared; they were in the drawing-room. Her eye half met Cap­ tain Wentworth's; a bow, a curtsey passed; she heard his voice—he talked to Mary, said all that was right; said something to the Miss Musgroves, enough to mark an easy footing: the room seemed full—full of persons and voices—but a few minutes ended it. Charles showed himself at the window, all was ready, their visitor bowed and was gone; the Miss Musgroves were gone too, suddenly resolving to walk to the end of the village with the sportsmen; the room was cleared, and Anne might finish her breakfast as she could. 'It is over! it is over!' she repeated to herself again, and again, in nervous gratitude. T h e worst is over!' Mary talked, but she could not attend. She had seen him. They had met. They had been once more in the same room! In Emma syntax is used to suggest heightened emotion, but there is nothing approaching the exclusively subjective viewpoint of Persuasion.

226 In the earlier novel dialogue is important, and even Emma's free indi­ rect speech can incorporate the tones of another character's conversa­ tion. Here Anne is before us, and no one else. Her selective view of external 'reality,' her overwhelming emotional sense of a climax that is also anti-climax, is suggested by the novelist's distortion of the two 'nor­ mal' outward dimensions: time is recklessly speeded up, space gro­ tesquely contracted. The implication, as so consistently in the presentation of Anne, is that the senses have a decisive advantage over reason and fact. 'Alas! with all her reasonings, she found, that to reten­ tive feelings eight years may be little more than nothing. ' Especially after the cold, distanced beginning to the novel, with its unsympathetic handling of Elliotts and Musgroves, the intimacy with which Jane Austen approaches Anne's consciousness appears to be something extraordinary. So, too, is the effect of high-wrought nervous tension, compared with the mental worlds of other characters, whose attention is dissipated among the trivia of their external relationships. Unlike the lesser figures, Wentworth is certainly capable of feeling, but immediately after his meeting with Anne we are deliberately shown that his frame of mind is calm and nearly dispassionate. Every technique of contrast is used to throw her abnormally intense experience into high relief. There is nothing in subjective writing in any earlier English novel to compare in subtlety of insight or depth of feeling with the sequence of nervous scenes between the hero and the heroine in Persuasion. The rival realist Maria Edgeworth correctly singles out three episodes for spe­ cial praise: Don't you see Captain Wentworth, or rather don't you in her place feel him taking the boisterous child off her back as she kneels by the sick boy on the sofa? And is not the first meeting after their long separation admirably well done? And the overheard conversation about the nut? Overheard conversations are part of the technique of Emma, but there the inference is that the evidence supplied by the dialogue approaches objectivity; it is the interpretation placed upon the conversa­ tion by its observer which is liable to be biased and faulty. When Anne overhears Captain Wentworth's remarks to Louisa about the nut, the two elements, the heroine's consciousness and the hero's conversation, have precisely the reverse connotations. Captain Wentworth's praise of the beauty of the nut, his symbol for hidden richness, perfection, and strength, suggests an intelligent, attractive, witty man, of high moral aspirations; but at the same time a man who is in the grip of a strongly subjective frame of mind, a personal bias which perverts his judgement. Anne, the hidden listener, has, as we already know, and he will redis­ cover, all the richness and secret strength he is attributing to Louisa.

227 Once again the inference is that Anne's inner life has an unassailable quality and truth. Nothing like this image of the nut—richest at the kernel, made private by its strong, defensive exterior—is even suggested in an earlier Austen novel. It is of course precisely this 'inward interest' of Persuasion, its access to Anne's feelings, that has given it a relatively high standing in the twentieth century. A very large factor in securing the admiration of pos­ terity must be the subjectivism of later thinking. We find the book pecu­ liarly 'true,' that is to our current attitudes, while Emma is true only to itself and to Jane Austen's so-called 'Augustan' objectivity. The sad scenes of autumn in the novel, the desolation of winter rain, are as they are because they are felt by Anne. The world of her consciousness is so all-absorbing that it is not clear whether the outer world (the farmer's outer world, for example) has objective existence or not. And yet, even while she seems to invite the reader's emotional identi­ fication with Anne, Jane Austen orders other parts of her novel in terms that imply her continued acceptance of the old ethical certainties. Both at the beginning of the first volume, where she contrasts the values of Kellynch and Uppercross, and at the end, with the big set-piece scene at Lyme, she reverts to a form of presentation which is near-objective and presented to the reader dramatically rather than refracted through Anne's consciousness. At Lyme we continue to be aware of Anne's emo­ tion. But the meaning of the accident on the Cobb—that Anne is strong while Louisa is only childishly wilful—is directed at the moral under­ standing of Captain Wentworth and of the reader. The change of focus, or the dual focus, is awkward, and it points to the weakness of Per­ suasion. That weakness, a failure to integrate the novel's two planes of reality, becomes more acute when in the second volume the scene moves to Bath. In so far as Jane Austen is writing a novel of subjective experience, she continues to do it beautifully. Anne's nervous impatience, her acute state of suspense, is beautifully countered within her own consciousness by her mature knowledge that she and Captain Wentworth must eventu­ ally make their feelings known. But enveloping this nineteenth-century novel of the inner life is an eighteenth-century novel in search of a centre. The cold prudential world of Sir Walter and Elizabeth properly belongs within a two-dimensional tradition of social comedy, such as Fielding's. Within such terms they would convince: put in the same novel as Anne, they seem out of focus, and for various reasons. One is that the pain they give Anne, and the spiritual isolation they impose on her, are out of scale in comedy. Another is that beside Anne's conscious­ ness their very being seems sketchy. In no other Austen novel since Sense and Sensibility is the social group surrounding the heroine so thin as the Elliotts' circle at Bath. Far more glaringly wrong—and perhaps more relevant to the question

228 of Jane Austen's mastery of her material—is Mr. William Walter Elliott, the alternative claimant for Anne's hand. His entry into the novel at Lyme, which serves no function, is unusually clumsy stage-manage­ ment. In his scenes with Anne at Bath he seems curiously inexpressive and featureless. Jane Austen's unease in dealing with him is reflected in the inferior writing he inspires. He provokes from Anne herself some moralistic reflections which include a piece of prudery as disconcerting as anything uttered by Fanny Price. Mrs. Smith's history of his past, that outworn cliché of the eighteenth-century novel, is a device which Jane Austen otherwise allows herself only in Sense and Sensibility. The manoeuvre by which Mr. Elliott is disposed of, his affaire with Mrs. Clay, seems decidedly undermotivated and inconsistent with the worldly wisdom which has hitherto been his leading characteristic. Worse than any of these things, perhaps, is that Mr. Elliott has little or no place in Anne's consciousness. Apparently she does not respond to him as Eliza­ beth does to Wickham and Emma to Frank. He never represents any kind of real temptation to her. Belonging as he does to the usual Austen format, a novel of moral choices in which each choice is given external bodily reality, in this novel he inevitably loses most of his substance. Failure to define the tempter-figure is surely the most significant of the failures of Persuasion. For elsewhere in Jane Austen it is the villain who has always in some form or other embodied self-sufficiency, a whole intellectual system of individualism or self-interest that the more social and outward-turning ethic of the novel was designed to counter. Here, where Anne's inner world is implicitly vindicated, there is very little that is significant for William Walter Elliott to represent. Persuasions uneasy compromise between old techniques and new is best exemplified by its two alternative endings. In the original version of the last two chapters, a strong comic plot of a more or less traditional kind binds the events consequentially together. The characters around Anne act in the belief that she is about to marry Mr. Elliott. Anne herself is under the immediate influence of Mrs. Smith's revelations about him, which themselves came about because Mrs. Smith had heard rumours of an engagement. On her way home from talking to Mrs. Smith in Westgate-buildings, Anne encounters Admiral Croft. He too has heard that she is engaged to Mr. Elliott, and assumes that the family may want Kellynch Hall back so that the couple can live there. He takes her into his lodgings and asks his brother-in-law, Wentworth, to find out from Anne if her father would like Kellynch Hall vacated. Wentworth has to account for the question by referring to the supposed engagement; Anne replies by denying it; and the éclaircissement is made. In a sense, of course, Mr. Elliott's role is not great, even in this version, since Anne never intended to marry him. But the fact that she 1. Clarification.

229 has just come from hearing a story which proves him unfit to marry seems to give a moral colouring, in the characteristic Austen fashion, to her acceptance of Wentworth. The earlier version differs from the dénouement as we know it primar­ ily because it is an essentially objective account of external events, which follow one another in a seemingly rational sequence. Unveiling the truth about Mr. Elliott appears to clarify the attitudes of hero and heroine towards each other—just as the discovery of Frank Churchill's secret brings about the explanatory conversation of Knightiey and Emma. The original end of Persuasion was to have used the well-tried machinery of Jane Austen's other dénouements. The new version is a marvellous technical adjustment, in the unique manner of Persuasion: it is infinitely better in its access to the feelings. The second volume has been a nervous sequence of half-articulate meetings between Anne and Wentworth—as they shelter from the rain, pass on opposite sides of the street, are separated by circumstances and by Mr. Elliott at the concert. Such occasions are tracked in Anne's con­ sciousness, woven in with intensity among the cold externals of the Elliotts' social life. The first new element of the revised ending is another of these scenes, a meeting which fails to bring about any clari­ fication because Wentworth and Anne are prevented by the crowd from communicating directly with each other. The entirely new-written chapter ten brings the Musgroves to Bath to buy wedding-clothes for Henrietta and Louisa. Shelving her intention to reveal the truth about Mr. Elliott to Lady Russell, Anne goes instead to visit the party from Uppercross at the White Hart hotel. There she also meets Captain Wentworth, and attempts to set his fears at rest about Mr. Elliott, but in the hurried circumstances the task of explaining herself is still left incomplete. The new chapter eleven again reverts to the topic of Mr. Elliott—only, once more, to shelve it: One day only had passed since Anne's conversation with Mrs. Smith; but a keener interest had succeeded, and she was now so little touched by Mr. Elliott's conduct, except by its effects in one quarter, that it became a matter of course the next morning, still to defer her explanatory visit in Rivers Street. She goes instead to spend the day pleasurably with the Musgroves at the White Hart, where she finds Mrs. Croft, Captain Harville, and Cap­ tain Wentworth. There follows Anne's beautifully conceived and mov­ ing conversation with Harville about the duration of love, which Wentworth overhears: his turn to hear Anne, and to hear her eloquent and unconfined by the hurry and constraint of all their attempted con­ versations together. She is gende with Harville; judicious in revealing her own story; rational and general on the subject at issue; but at the end, when her deepest feelings are touched, she speaks straight from her

230 own experience. ' "All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one, you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone. All Anne's characteristics find expression in this conversation: her for­ titude, gentleness, modesty, integrity. The ideal Wentworth outlined in the conversation she overheard, when he spoke of the hazel-nut, comes vividly to life. Wentworth hears, and writes his letter of proposal, so that she receives it when she is alone; for, in this novel of little dialogue, hardly any of the protagonists' utterances are directed openly to one another. The positive value of replacing the Gay-street proposal scene with the two chapters at the White Hart rests on this change from a direct confrontation between the two (which has never yet occurred suc­ cessfully throughout the course of the novel) to an indirect one, in which first Anne speaks her thoughts as it were in soliloquy, then Went­ worth speaks his through the medium of the pen. The effect is in keep­ ing with the other techniques original to Persuasion, for it puts a premium on expression of the self, and avoids direct communication between the self and another. There can be no question that, of these two endings, the second and final version is infinitely more pleasing—even though it is achieved at the cost of Mr. Elliott's meaningful place in the action. By the same token, Anne, though so out of scale in her social setting, is many peo­ ple's favourite among Jane Austen's heroines. With an inner life that is rich and feeling, an outer environment that is barren, she looks forward to Maggie Tulliver and Dorothea Brooke. 2 Unfortunately she also looks backward to Elinor and, more immediately, to Fanny. 3 Matching her to her world is not the only problem. Jane Austen has further difficulties within the character—in reconciling Anne's feelings, which are often indistinguishable from those of a victim of her environment, and her exemplary role, which is that of the resolute Christian. Like Fanny, she is a perceptive bystander, implicitly the conscience and censor of her world. She rebukes the Elliotts because she is above worldly vanity; the Musgrove elders because she is meditative; unlike Louisa, she has the real strength which derives from reflection, princi­ ple, and a sense of duty. Anne comes near to being dangerously perfect: 'she is almost too good for me. ' Although it is given less explicit Chris­ tian colouring than Fanny's, her intense, withdrawn inner life would suggest the 'Saint' even without her hints to Captain Benwick on moral and religious reading, and her sober distaste for Mr. Elliott's Sunday travelling. The strong contrast between worldly vanity on the one hand and an exemplary train of thought on the other is quite as marked in Persuasion as in Mansfield Park. Anne's pain at the vanity, selfishness, and inutility 2. Central characters of George Eliot's Mill on the Floss (1860) and Middlemarch (1871-72). 3. In Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park.

231 of her father and sister have to be lightly touched upon, because a daughter's denunciations would hardly be in good taste; but the author's severe handling of the baronet comes as near to social criticism as any­ thing she ever wrote. The comparison Jane Austen makes between an idle, useless gentleman' proud of his rank, and the eminently useful sail­ ors, has been seen as a notable example of Jane Austen's willingness to be radical. So too has her perception that Lady Russell's wrong advice stemmed from a refined kind of worldliness. On the contrary, the tone of Jane Austen's criticism of her novel's father- and mother-figure— together with its fictional source, in the conscience of a selfless and duti­ ful daughter—belong to a familiar kind of conservative social comment. In Between: Persuasion t Not 'Persuasion and . . .'—Resistance, Refusal, Rebel­ lion, for instance. Just Persuasion. In previous titles using abstract nouns Jane Austen had deployed pairs. This time the debate, the struggle, the contestation, the contrarieties and ambiguities are all in the one word. As they are all in, or concentrated on, the one girl. Anne Elliot is the loneliest of Jane Austen's heroines. Persuaded by others, she has to repersuade herself. Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch-hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Bar­ onetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consola­ tion in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt, as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century—and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed—this was the page at which the favourite volume was always opened: 'ELLIOT OF KELLYNCH-HALL' Jane Austen opens her book with the description of a man looking at a book in which he reads the same words as her book opens with—'Elliot, * From Tony Tanner, Jane Austen (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1986), 208-49. Copyright © 1986 by Tony Tanner. Reprinted by permission of Harvard University Press and Macmillan Press Ltd. All notes are by the editor of this Norton Critical Edition.

232 of Kellynch-hall.' This is the kind of teasing regression which we have become accustomed to in contemporary writers but which no one asso- ciates with the work of Jane Austen. It alerts us to at least two important considerations: the dangers involved in seeking validation and self-justi- fication in book as opposed to life, in record rather than in action, in name as opposed to function; and the absolutely negative vanity' (her key word for Sir Walter) in looking for and finding one's familial and social position, one's reality, in an inscription rather than in a pattern of behaviour, in a sign rather than the range of responsibilities which it implicitly signifies. We learn how fond Sir Walter is of mirrors and how hopelessly and hurtfully unaware of the real needs and feelings of his dependents he is. This opening situation poses someone fixed in an ultimate solipsism gazing with inexhaustible pleasure into the textual mirror which simply gives him back his name. The opening of Jane Austen's text—a title, a name, a domicile, a geographic location— implies a whole series of unwritten obligations and responsibilities related to rank, family, society and the very land itself, none of which Sir Walter, book-bound and self-mesmerised, either keeps or recognises. He is only interested in himself and what reflects him—mirrors or daughters. Thus he likes Elizabeth because she is Very like himself— this is parenthood as narcissism—and Mary has acquired a little artifi- cial importance' because she has married into a tolerably respectable family; 'but Anne, with an elegance of mind and sweetness of character, which must have placed her high with any people of real understanding, was nobody with either father or sister: her word had no weight; her convenience was always to give way;—she was only Anne.' Only Anne—no rank, no effective surname, no house, no location; her words are weightless, and physically speaking she always has to give way'— that is, accept perpetual displacement. Anne we may call the girl on the threshold, existing in that limboid space between the house of the father which has to be left and the house of the husband which has yet to be found. No longer a child and not yet a wife, Anne is, precisely, in between, and she lives in in-betweenness. She is a speaker who is unheard; she is a body who is a 'nobody.' I emphasise this because the problems of the body who is, socially speaking, a nobody were to engage many of the great nineteenth-century writers. We might recall here that in one of the seminal eighteenth-century novels, La Nouvelle Héloïse, Julie's father refuses even to listen to the idea of her marrying Saint- Preux, because Saint-Preux is what he calls 'un quidam,' which means an unnamed individual or, in dictionary terms, 'Person (name unknown).' This is to say that, as far as the father is concerned, Saint- Preux exists in a state of 'quidamity. ' As far as her father is concerned, 1. Published in 1761, by French writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778).

233 Anne also exists in that state of quidamity—she was nobody, she was only Anne: 'He had never indulged much hope, he had now none, of ever reading her name in any other page of his favourite work.' Until she is, as it were, reborn in terms of writing in the Baronetage, she does not exist—not to be in the book is thus not to be. We may laugh at Sir Walter but Jane Austen makes it very clear what kind of perversity is involved in such a radical confusion or inversion of values whereby script and name take absolute precedence over offspring and dependents; or, to put it another way, when you cannot see the body for the book. Anne Elliot, then, is perpetually displaced, always giving way' as opposed to having her own way—it is worth emphasising the metaphor. The story of her life consists precisely in having had her own way blocked, refused, negated. One might almost think of the book as being about dissuasion, for she is urged or forced not into doing something which she does not want to do, but into not doing something which her whole emotional self tells her is the right thing (that is, marry Captain Wentworth at a time when he had no fortune). Her words carry no weight. The word 'persuasion' echoes throughout the novel of that title just as it is constantly haunting Anne Elliot (it occurs at least fourteen times). It is as if she cannot get away from what she has done in allowing herself to be persuaded not to marry Frederick Wentworth—or dis­ suaded from marrying him. Yet 'persuasion' implies some sort and source of 'authority'—preferably moral authority; mere power can work by simple imperatives or prohibitions backed up by force. But what is striking about the world of Persuasion is the absence of any real centre or principle of authority. Among the possible traditional sources of authority we might include the family, parents, the clergy, social rank and respected names, familiar and revered places, codes of manners and propriety, codes of duty and prudence, the care and concern of friend­ ship, or true love so certain of itself that it becomes self-authorising. But in this novel all such potential sources of authority have gone awry, gone away, gone wrong; they are absent, dispersed or impotent; they have become ossified, stagnant or—worse—totally unreliable and mis­ leading. Everything is in a condition of change in this novel, and as often as not it is change as deterioration or diminution. In such a world it becomes a real question, what can and should remain 'constant'? To retain an uncritical allegiance to certain decaying inert social hierarchies and practices means dehumanising the self for the sake of rigidifying deathly formulae; to abandon oneself to the new might be to opt for a giddy dissolution. Just about all the previous stabilities of Jane Austen's world are called into question in this novel—in which things really are 'changed utterly,' with no terrible beauty being born. 2 It is a novel of 2. See William Butler Yeats, "Easter 1916": "All changed, changed utterly:/A terrible beauty is bom."

234 great poignancy and sadness, as well as one of real bitterness and astrin- gency, for it is deeply shadowed by the passing of things, and the remembrance of things past. It is hardly surprising, then, that time plays a larger part in this novel than in any other of Jane Austen's works. It is the only one of her novels which gives a specific date for the opening action—'summer 1814'—as Emma is the only novel to use a single name as a title. The significance of that date (the end of the Napoleonic wars—apart from 'the hundred days' of Napoleon's abortive return, concluded by the battle of Waterloo in 1815), becomes increasingly obvious: it marks a big change in English history and society. But in the novel the crucial passage of time is that which has elapsed since Anne was 'persuaded' to give up Wentworth and he disappeared into the navy—'more than seven years were gone since this little history of sorrowful interest had reached its close.' Indeed Persuasion is in effect a second novel. (Part of its rare autumnal magic— not unlike that of one of Shakespeare's last plays—is that it satisfies that dream of a 'second chance' which must appeal to anyone who has expe­ rienced the sense of an irreparably ruined life owing to an irrevocable, mistaken decision.) The 'first novel' is what might be called (warily) a typical Jane Austen novel and is told in telescopic brevity in a few lines in chapter 4: He [Wentworth] was, at that time, a remarkably fine young man, with a great deal of intelligence, spirit and brilliancy; and Anne an extremely pretty girl, with gentleness, modest taste and feeling.— Half the sum of attraction, on either side, might have been enough, for he had nothing to do, and she had hardly any body to love; but the encounter of such lavish expectations could not fail. They were gradually acquainted, and when acquainted, rapidly and deeply in love. It would be difficult to say which had seen the highest perfection in the other, or which had been the happiest; she, in receiving his declarations and proposals, or he in having them accepted. End of story. To get there could have taken the younger Jane Austen some hundreds of pages. But times and things have changed. That was a happy novel of yesteryear, here no more than a distant trace, a radiant but receding, summarisable memory in this second novel. 'More than seven years were gone since this little history of sorrowful interest had reached its close.' The first novel ended when the totally vain, egotistical anti-father (he is even described as womanly in his vanity) Sir Walter Elliot 'gave it all the negative of great astonishment, great coldness, great silence. ' His 'negative' blocked the marriage and the novel alike. It is a 'negative' which is against generational and narrative continuity and renewal and it has far-reaching social implications. Here it is enough to point out that it provides the starting-point for a

235 new kind of novel for Jane Austen; a novel which arises precisely out of the thwarting and 'negating' of her first (earlier type of) novel. Hence the stress on time past. What has happened in between then and now? And what can happen next? It must be something quite different from the action and resolution of any previous Jane Austen novel, because something—history, society or whatever it is that is embodied in the sterile, life-denying figure of Sir Walter—has given that kind of novel all the negative.' What Jane Austen does say is this: 'She [Anne] had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older—the natural sequence of an unnatural beginning. ' Most of Jane Austen's heroines have to learn some kind of prudence (not Fanny Price, who has suffered for her undeviating dedication to prudentiality). Anne, born into repression and non-recognition, has to learn romance—a deliberate oxymoron surely, for romance is associated with spontaneous feelings. But in Anne's case these had been blocked; her father gave them all the negative. To find her own positive she has, as it were, to diseducate herself from the authorities who, whether by silence or disapproval or forceful opposition, dominated that early part of her life when she was—in relation to Captain Wentworth—becoming somebody. Anne has to start on a long and arduous second life, which is based on loss, denial, deprivation. This is the 'unnatural beginning' to her life, and to Jane Austen's novel, which differs quite radically from her previous works in that there, as I said, her heroines tend to graduate from romance to prudence. And because of what she has lost and regret­ ted losing (again an unusual condition for the Jane Austen heroine, who has usually not yet had any significant romance when the book opens) Anne undergoes a new kind of ordeal and tribulation, since any refer­ ence to Captain Wentworth offers 'a new sort of trial to Anne's nerves' so that she has to 'teach herself to be insensible on such points.' Among other things, Anne Elliot has to combine sense and insensibility—again, a marked change from Jane Austen's earlier work. The novel starts, then, with Sir Walter contemplating 'the limited remnants of the earliest patents' in a volume which records 'the history and rise of the ancient and respectable family.' 'Limited remnants' are indeed all that now remain, and this volume will complete the work by recording the 'fall' and self-destruction of this 'respectable family'—if not the traditional family in general. Around the unnaturally well-pre­ served appearance of Sir Walter he can only see the 'wreck of good looks of everybody else.' Did he but realise it, the 'wreckage' goes a good deal deeper than that. What is irremediably wrecked and what might yet remain to generate new life from among the 'remnants' becomes a key question of the book. Anne has to live with the regret for what she has lost, while her one friend and mother-substitute, Lady Russell, while feeling sorry for Anne, 'never wishes the past undone.' As a result 'they knew not each other's opinion, either its constancy or its change.' When

236 Sir Walter decides to move with his daughters out of the family home, Kellynch Hall, Anne is aware of 'the general air of oblivion among them.' It is an air which partially pervades the book. When Anne does finally meet Wentworth again, her concern is very much with the possi­ ble effects of time: How absurd to be resuming the agitation which such an interval had banished into distance and indistinctness! What might not eight years do? Events of every description—changes, alienations, removals,—all, all must be compromised in it; and oblivion of the past—how natural, how certain too! In the event Anne finds that 'to retentive feelings eight years may be little more than nothing. ' Time can obviously mean one thing to a couple in love—and something quite different to the society around them. Anne is a lonely figure of emotional constancy living in a society of 'changes, alienations, removals.' She hears that Wentworth finds her 'altered beyond his knowledge,' but his enlightened knowledge will find her essentially unaltered. There is of course much emphasis on the past and the pastness of the past: 'That was in the year six'; 'There had been a time'; 'those rooms had witnessed former meetings'; and so on. The pluperfect tense is poignantly present. Even painful memories are pre­ cious; indeed even precious because painful. Scenes had passed at Uppercross, which made it precious. It stood the record of many sensations of pain, once severe but now soft­ ened; and of some instances of relenting feeling, some breathings of friendship and reconciliation, which could never be looked for again, and which could never cease to be dear. She left it all behind her; all but the recollection that such things had been. The dominant mood before the end is autumnal, nostalgic, a sense of the most significant period of experience being in the past, recol- lectable but irretrievable and unrepeatable. 'One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it. ' There are moments when Wentworth speaks to Anne 'which seemed almost restoring the past.' 'Restoration' on this personal level does prove to be joyfully—miraculously—possi­ ble. But on the social and familial level no such restoration is possible. This is made clear when the heir to Kellynch, Mr Elliot, enters the novel and is not only keen to marry Anne but seems a correct and suit­ able figure to assist at such restoration after the gross and ruinous derelic­ tions of Sir Walter. Lady Russell, characteristically, would like to forward this marriage and see Anne 'occupying your dear mother's place, succeeding to all her rights . . . presiding and blessing in the same spot'. To Anne herself the idea of 'being restored to Kellynch, calling it her home again, her home forever, was a charm which she could not immediately resist.' But love is stronger than even the most

237 precious property. Anne really has 'left it all behind her.' Whatever else it might be, this is not a 'restoration' age. The question of 'what lasts' obviously figures most largely in this novel in connection with human feelings—even leading to a recurring debate as to whether man or woman is capable of the greater constancy, of loving longer. Captain Benwick is slightly reproached by Wentworth for having put aside his devotion to the dead Fanny Harville (whom he apparentiy worshipped) to marry Louisa Musgrove. 'A man does not recover from such a devotion of the heart to such a woman!—He ought not—he does not. ' Wentworth obviously has his own motives for such an assertion: he is both indirectly signalling his own unbroken devotion to Anne, and questioning hers. And indeed such pointed exchanges proliferate towards the end of the book: 'You did not like to use cards; but time makes many changes.' Wentworth's statement is of course also a question. To which Anne replies, 'I am not yet so much changed'— 'and stopped, fearing she hardly knew what misconstruction.' In the crucial 'recognition' scene—in the revised chapter 23—the central debate is between Captain Harville and Anne while Wentworth appar- endy writes a letter. Harville argues that men love longer, that women have a legendary reputation for inconstancy. Anne maintains that 'We certainly do not forget you, so soon as you forget us,' and 'All the privi­ lege I claim for my own sex . . . is that of loving longest, when existence or hope is gone. ' This is all said for the benefit of the apparently preoc­ cupied but all-attentive Wentworth. I shall return to the indirect mode of communication in this crucial scene. Here the point to note is that, as Lady Russell says, 'Time will explain'—certainly in this novel, in which time is so central, and 'explanations' (making intelligible, laying things out clearly) are both crucial and difficult to come by. And the novel itself is an inquiry into—an ex-planation of—the effects of time. As I have said, this is the 'second' novel, made necessary by the rude 'negation' of the first one, which remains as an aborted embryo in chap­ ter 4. I shall return to the relationship between Anne and Wentworth. First we should consider the general state of society as it is represented in this book. The normal sources of stability and order in Jane Austen's world would include social position, property, place, family, manners and propriety, as generating a web of duties and responsibilities which together should serve to maintain the moral fabric and coherence of society. In this novel all these institutions and codes and related values have undergone a radical transformation or devaluation. There are val­ ues, but many of them are new; and they are relocated or resited. Instead of a heedful regard for position and property and family, we have a new obsession with 'rank,' 'connexions,' money and private relationships. Lady Russell esteems Sir Walter not as a man or father (he is a wretched example of both) but as a baronet: 'she had prejudices on the side of

238 ancestry; she had a value for rank and consequence.' There are discus­ sions of'rank, people of rank, jealousy of rank.' Mary, the most insuffer­ able snob (she is not comic—she is unbearable), looks not at Mr Elliot but at 'the horses . . . the arms . . . the livery'; she regards only the insignia of rank, empty signifiers of another empty series of signifiers. For 'rank' in this book does not betoken a responsible authoritative posi­ tion in society: it signifies only itself. It is rigidifying self-reifying sys­ tem—signifying nothing. It is symptomatic of a 'state of stagnation' existing in the class which should be exemplary and active if it is to serve as, and deserve to be, a ruling class. Mr. Elliot at one time of his life despises 'the honour of the family' and declared that 'if baronetcies were saleable, anybody should have his for fifty pounds, arms and motto, name and livery included.' 'Rank' is degraded into a mere commodity. On the other hand, when it seems that it would be more profitable for him to become the serious heir to baronetcy, he speaks seriously in favour of 'the value of rank and connexion.' This is a mark not of his conversion but of his ruthlessly selfish opportunism and hypocrisy. The discourse and ideology of 'rank' happen to be available to disguise or 'embellish' his crudely egotistical aspirations. The new realm where rank does have a genuine significance and is related to a hierarchy of real functions and obligations is the navy—but I shall come back to the navy. The emphasis on the 'value' of'connexions,' which Lady Russell upholds in an apparently rational way, as the unspeakably foolish Mary does in the crudest possible way ('It is very unpleasant having such con­ nexions,' she declares of the respectable Hayters), is a relatively new one in Jane Austen. It emphasises a merely titular or 'nominal' and fortu­ itous relationship rather than any true bonding or sense of reciprocal human relatedness. An extreme example of the meaninglessness and folly of this stress on 'rank' and 'connexions' is offered by Sir Walter's and Elizabeth's frantic anxiety and eagerness to cultivate the acquain­ tance of their titled cousins, Lady Dalrymple and her daughter. As peo­ ple they are not even 'agreeable'; 'they were nothing.' Mr Elliot asserts that 'rank is rank.' The book confirms this as a meaningless tautology and counterasserts that rank is 'nothing.' More than one person is said to be 'nothing' or 'nobody.' Anne 'was nobody' because unmarried; Mr Wentworth (Frederick's brother) 'was nobody . . . quite unconnected,' because he was a curate and not 'a man of property'; Charles Hayter is 'nothing but a country curate'; Cap­ tain Wentworth, when he reappears as rich 'and as high in his profession as merit and activity could place him' was 'no longer nobody. ' These are mainly the verdicts of Sir Walter, a 'foolish spendthrift baronet' who has neither money nor profession nor merit nor activity. He is also no longer married and has rented his property. If anybody is now 'nobody,' it is he. It is indirectly Jane Austen's verdict—through Anne's silent assess­ ment—that the Dalrymples 'were nothing. ' But who then is somebody

239 and something—and by what social criteria? It would seem that there are no longer any agreed-on standards, no authoritative modes of assess­ ment, to discriminate the somebodies from the nobodies, to tell a some­ thing from a nothing. This in itself is a symptom of a crisis of values—a chaos if not a total absence and loss of'common' (i.e. communal) stan­ dards of modes of identification and evaluation. There seems to be no correlation or connection between social title and social role, between rank and merit. The honorific term 'gendeman'—always somewhat vague—now means different things to different people (Sir Walter is 'misled' when his agent Mr Shepherd refers to Mr Wentworth as a 'gentleman'), or it is meaningless (as applied to Captain Wallis) or worse it conceals heart­ less and ruthless anti-social egotism (Mr Elliott passes as "completely a gendeman'). The true 'gentlemen' are now to be found in the navy, but they are neither recognised nor addressed as such. A whole social system of categorisation and terminology is slipping into meaningless or per­ verse misapplication, dangerously so when the label 'gentleman' is con­ fidently affixed to a man who is the complete opposite (or inversion) of everything a true gentleman should be. Society's very taxonomy seems to have collapsed, being at best misleading and at worst totally corrupt. Names themselves seem to have lost any social significance—at least from the perverse and anachronistic point of view of Sir Walter, who laments thus: 'One wonders how the names of many of our nobility became so common.' One explanation may involve the dilution of aris­ tocratic families with the wealthier members of other classes; another could simply point to the behaviour of Sir Walter himself, who effec­ tively does just about everything he could to bring his family name into disrepute. It is he who, on hearing that Anne is going to visit her crip­ pled and impoverished friend Mrs Smith, says disdainfully, 'Mrs Smith, such a name!' 'Smith' is indeed the archetypal anonymous English name, a name which is in effect no 'name' at all. But, here again, this novel forces us to question all kinds of social assumptions. What really is in a name? In the case of Sir Walter Elliot, an impoverished and fatuous vanity; in the case of Mrs. Smith, a wealth of misfortune and misery; in the case of Lady Dalrymple, 'nothing. ' Like 'rank' and 'con­ nexions,' names also no longer serve to facilitate any kind of social ori­ entation. They now manifest themselves as truly arbitrary signifiers— designations unrelated to any coherent social design or structure. Let us now consider property and places, houses and homes and fami­ lies. We can note immediately that the action of the novel is dispersed among an unusually large number of different places (unusual for Jane Austen). Fanny Price visits her 'home' in Portsmouth; Emma goes to Box Hill. But Anne is variously 'removed' or 'transplanted' from Kel­ lynch Hall to Uppercross cottage; to the Great House (of the Musgroves) to Bath; with a glimpse of Winthrop and a crucial visit to Lyme. This

240 topographical diffusion and 'transplanting' is itself both a symptom and a part of a more far-reaching social fragmentation and mobility. One important scene takes place in an hotel in Bath. 'A morning of thorough confusion was to be expected. A large party in an hotel ensured a quick- changing, unsettled scene. ' An hotel is the appropriate edifice for a tran­ sient, increasingly uprooted or unrooted society, and that 'quick-chang­ ing, unsettled scene' is—in little—the scene of the whole book. The 'thorough confusion' experienced in the hotel pervades society at large. This topographical dispersal and social scattering also have their effect on the style and vocabulary of the novel. Of the incident on the Cobb we are told parenthetically that '(it was all done in rapid moments).' In a way that is true of the book as a whole, which is more episodic, more fragmentary, and more marked by quick and sudden changes and abrupt transitions and jerks of the plot than any of the previous novels. Related to that is a perceptibly new note of emotional volatility and irrup- tiveness, even excess. After the incident on the Cobb there is, not a cool discussion, but an 'interchange of perplexity and terror'—a significant dissolution of coherent speech in feeling. The word 'burst' appears a number of times in relation to sudden mental and emotional erup­ tions—'extraordinary burst of mind,' 'bursts of feeling'; phrases such as 'a thousand feelings rushed on Anne, ' 'overpowering happiness' contrib­ ute to the increased presence of sudden unanticipated and unpredictable inward intensities. And such 'bursts,' 'rushes of feeling,' emotional 'overpowerings' are not always the signs of a potentially dangerous and disorderly (or 'improper') lack of control, as they often are in Jane Aus­ ten's earlier work. On the contrary, they can now be the desirable mani­ festations of a capacity for authentic and spontaneous feeling. This means that there is a much more ruffled 'choppy' surface to the narra­ tive. 'Tranquillity' is often 'interrupted'; 'restraint' gives way to 'distur­ bance.' 'Every moment rather brought fresh agitation.' This refers to Anne near the end, but in a way it is true of the novel as a whole. There are further lessons to be learned from Anne's constant 'trans­ plantation.' The following is crucial: Anne had not wanted this visit to Uppercross, to learn that a removal from one set of people to another, though at a distance of only three miles, will often include a total change of conversation, opinion, and idea . . . she acknowledged it to be very fitting, that every little social commonwealth should dictate its own matters of discourse; and hoped, ere long, to become a not unworthy member of the one she was now transplanted to . . . she believed she must now submit to feel that another lesson, in the art of knowing our own nothingness beyond our own circle, was becoming necessary for her. This awareness that within the one common language—English—there can be innumerable discourses according to group, place, and so on, is

241 a very crucial one. It is not the same thing as a dialect but what Roland Barthes calls a 'sociolect'—'the language of a linguistic community, that is of a group of persons who all interpret in the same way all linguistic statements.' It is of course simply a general truth, and one well known to Jane Austen, that people speaking the same language can very often not 'hear' each other because they are operating within different dis­ courses or sociolects. It is characteristic of many of Jane Austen's hero­ ines that they are aware when people are operating within different discourses—an awareness which is an aspect of their sense and linguistic 'conscience' and very often a consequence of their detachment and iso­ lation. And Anne learns another lesson; just as one language is in fact made up of many discourses, so society is made up of many 'circles' and in many of these circles one may be a 'nothing' just as in some dis­ courses one is inaudible. Anne's 'word' initially 'had no weight' precisely because she was regarded as a 'no-body' within the first circle of her family—'negatived' from the beginning. Her speech can only take on its full value when she is truly regarded as a 'some-body'—a person in her own right, not according to rank or status, and taken permanently into a new circle—the navy. In between she is, well, in between. But notice two things. Anne does not fight this state of affairs or lament the plurality of discourses. On the contrary, she is willing to try and adapt herself (within the limits of her unchanging sense of propriety). Yet her speech—like her love—is 'constant' in a society apparently given over to change. Having to negotiate a plurality of partial discourses, Anne comes to embody what we might call the conscience of language. She, and she alone, always speaks truly, and truly speaks. Indeed, Jane Aus­ ten may well be intending to depict Anne as in some ways old-fash­ ioned—or, rather, out of fashion (which is by nature ephemeral and fickle). Not all change is regarded as unmitigatedly bad in this book— indeed, given the 'stagnation' and moral paralysis (if not something worse) which seems to prevail among the upper ruling clases, then some change may be not only unavoidable but positively necessary and wel­ come. But Anne's 'lessons' do point to the fact (glimpsed at the end of Emma) that society is breaking up into smaller and smaller 'circles' and units. This implies—indeed involves—the loss of any sense of a true, authoritative 'centre,' and the possible disappearance of any 'common' language (and with that, a shared sense of 'common' values). Add to this the fact that even within the small separate 'sociolects' there are people who tend towards speaking an 'idiolect' (i.e., a language which is really private to themselves and not properly heard or understood by anyone else). This could portend a society which is no longer truly a society in any meaningful sense but rather an aggregate of contiguous but non- communicating groups or just families (or even just individuals), with no real connections, no overall coherence, no single structure binding them together. Separate 'commonwealths' with neither 'wealth' not any-

242 thing much else held in 'common': 'Dictate-orships' perhaps (Jane Aus­ ten's words carry a weight of possible irony) of one kind or another. To a large extent this is our 'society' today. It is not 'society' as Jane Austen had thought it should or could be. But she saw that the change was coming and was inevitable. To a large extent she could see why. It is all there in this unique novel. In this prevailing atmosphere of change it is not surprising that 'prop­ erty' no longer plays the assured and essential role it did in earlier novels. Mary, for instance, 'had merely connected herself with an old country family and respectability and large fortune.' That 'merely' is Sir Walter's thought, Jane Austen's irony. The advantage for people 'living on their own property,' according to the insinuating Mrs Clay, is that they 'are not obliged to follow any . . . profession' but can just 'follow their own pursuits. ' Just what Sir Walter likes to hear, of course, but not at all what Jane Austen believed, since for her the owning of 'property' necessarily involved the recognition of obigations and duties to the community. If it is merely an arena for self-indulgence and hedonism, it is less than useless as a part of the maintained and maintaining order of society. It is still desirable to have property of course; but as a symbol of certain social values it is undervalued as Mary undervalues Charles Hayter's 'good, freehold property' because it confers no rank (adding, in her incomparably selfish way, 'it would be shocking to have Henrietta marry Charles Hayter; a very bad thing for her, and a still worse for me'), or as Sir Walter feels 'no degradation in his changes,' seeing 'nothing to regret in the duties and dignity of the resident land-holder' and finding 'much to be vain of in the littleness of a town.' His is the quintessential abdica­ tion and dereliction of the ruling-class landowner. When he rents Kel­ lynch Hall he causes a 'break-up of the family,' and leaves behind 'deserted grounds' and 'so altered a village. ' (There is quite possibly here a barely ironic allusion to Goldsmith's The Deserted Village. 3) He is an agent of 'desolation,' helping both to precipitate and to accelerate the destruction of the old order of society. (Anne will be the first Jane Austen heroine who will not found her marriage on the once-necessary basis of 'property.') Society in the form of Sir Walter Elliot has become all empty self-regarding form and display: he has no sense of responsibility to his position, to the land, and it is significant that he rents his house to go and participate in the meaningless frivolities in Bath. This matter of renting his house is worth pausing over for a moment. The notion 'quit Kellynch-hall' is initially horrendous to Sir Walter. But he would, as he says, 'sooner quit Kellynch-hall' than undertake any economies or constraints on his unrestricted pursuit of pleasure. His relation to his house is not a responsible one: he does not see his house 3. A poem (1770) about rural depopulation by Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774).

243 as part of a larger context, an interrelated rural society, an ecology, if you will; it is more like a pleasure-dome or a three-dimensional mirror which flatters his vanity. So he agrees to quit if he cannot have those pleasures. But note that 'Sir Walter could not have borne the degrada­ tion of being known to design letting his house—Mr Shepherd had once mentioned the word "advertise"—but never dared approach it again.' I shall come back to 'advertising' in the last chapter, but here again we note that Sir Walter wants the profits of 'renting' while still pretending to belong to an aristocracy which did not contaminate itself with contact with any kind of 'trade' or commerce. This is the self-deception of a figure no longer sensible of the significance of his social rank. When he does consider renting it he thinks of it in terms of 'a prize' for the fortu­ nate tenants—'a prize'; he has no appreciation of the real value of his inherited house. And I shall just note the areas to which he does not really want the new tenant to have access: 'The park would be open to him of course . . . , but what restrictions I might impose on the use of the pleasure-grounds, is another thing. I am not fond of the idea of my shrubberies being always approachable.' Funny of course—but again there is no sense of the importance and significance of the house of his fathers, the house in which he so signally fails in his paternal duties. To abandon it in exchange for money, for mere pleasure, rather than 'economise' is a very notable dereliction of his duties. This is an alter­ ation which is most definitely not 'perhaps an improvement' but indis­ putably a degradation. Even before Sir Walter decided to 'quit Kellynch-hall' we are told of 'the prosperity and the nothingness' of the life there, with nothing to fill 'the vacancies'—'no habits of utility abroad, no talents or accomplish­ ments for home.' Lady Elliot, the true upholder of domesticity, is dead. Anne would carry on her work—but of course is not allowed to. Rather than practise the slightest economy or curtail any of his indulgences, Sir Walter prefers to rent his landed house, which is indeed nothing of a home and merely parasitic on the community it should help to maintain and preserve. (We might note in passing that we are told that, if Sir Walter follows Anne's sensible suggestions, Lady Russell estimates that 'in seven years he will be clear. ' Of course he cannot deprive himself of any of his private gratifications for any length of time at all. It is Anne, who can wait and economise scrupulously on her emotional expendi­ ture, who after 'seven years'—when Wentworth returns—will finally 'be clear.' 'Clear,' one might say, of the whole rotten pack of her family; as well as 'clear' of the obstacles, negatives and dissuasions which had blocked the growth and consummation of her true love seven years pre­ viously.) Seeing the Crofts in Kellynch Hall after they have rented it, Anne feels that 'they were gone who deserved not to stay, and that Kel­ lynch-hall had passed into better hands than its owners.' Unlike the

244 'improvements' suggested in Mansfield Park, the 'few alterations' the Crofts make to Kellynch Hall are 'all very much for the better.' It is almost as if Jane Austen was passing a verdict on the defection of a whole class in whom she had once invested so much hope. Initially Anne is sad at the thought of 'a beloved home made over to others'—but that home was no longer home. Her loyalties shift and are displaced or rea­ ligned elsewhere. For instance: 'how much more interesting to her was the home and the friendship of the Harvilles and Captain Benwick, than her own father's house in Camden Place.' The Harvilles and Benwick are naval officers of course, and, just as there is a shift of significant, active 'rank' from society to the navy, so it is the navy who—apparently paradoxically—reconstitute a meaningful domesticity, re-create the idea of home, ultimately redefine the notion of society itself. It is Mrs Croft who asserts that 'Woman may be as comfortable on board, as in the best house in England,' and clearly her ship was more of a 'home' than Kellynch Hall. But even the house of the Harvilles and Captain Ben­ wick—rather like a ship on shore—in all its apparent oddity and some­ what cramped idiosyncrasy offers to Anne 'the picture of repose and domestic happiness.' Note that the rooms are extremely small and the very limited space is crowded. This was one of the major deficiencies of Fanny's home in Portsmouth which contributed to its 'impropriety.' Nothing of that now. The small space is turned into 'the best possible account' and instead of the chaos of excessive proximity and discord there is the snugness of hospitable ease and intimacy. The 'hospitality' of the navy is emphasised—and usual 'forms' of etiquette are at the same time devalued. There was such a 'bewitching charm in a degree of hos­ pitality so uncommon, so unlike the usual style of give-and-take invita­ tions and dinners of formality and display. ' A whole system of socially prescribed 'formal' reciprocities is here effectively displaced by an infor­ mal spontaneity. It is not prompted by custom but by 'the heart'—the rooms are so small as none but those who 'invite from the heart' would think of asking people to share their living-space. The shift of emphasis from socially prescribed 'invitations' to those which come from 'the heart' is part of a larger change from a socially based to an emotionally justified code of behaviour. It has quite radical implications. As already intimated, I shall have more to say about the navy, but I want to return to land matters. There is an example of a relatively happy home unrelated to the navy: the home of the Musgroves, the Great House. But it is 'happy' in a new way. For a start, it is characterised by an 'air of confusion' owing to the accumulating objects belonging to the lively children. The originals of the ancestral portraits would have been 'astonished' at the general 'over­ throw of all order and neatness.' So surmises Anne. But, again, though these were characteristics of Fanny's Portsmouth home, the Great

245 House is in no way another version of that horrific non-home. The tone of the description is worth noting with some care: The Musgroves, like their house, were in a state of alteration, per­ haps of improvement. The father and mother were in the old English style and the young people in the new. Mr and Mrs Mus­ grove were a very good sort of people; friendly and hospitable, not much educated, and not at all elegant. Their children had more modern minds and manners . . . and were now, like thousands of other young ladies, living to be fashionable, happy, and merry. Their dress had every advantage, their faces were rather pretty, their spirits extremely good, their manners unembarrassed and pleasant; they were of consequence at home, and favourites abroad. Alteration, perhaps of improvement: the qualification is not barbed. There is no biting irony, no malice in the text. Jane Austen is genuinely open and uncommitted. The gay hedonism of the children is not seen as dangerous or disruptive. The older generation lack education and elegance. Once that would have been a serious defect in Jane Austen's eyes. Now it doesn't matter. Because other values, such as friendship and hospitality, are coming to seem more important. There is so litde real friendship in the world!' laments poor Mrs Smith later in the book, and it is now becoming for Jane Austen a cardinal virtue. The children's 'modern minds and manners' are not mocked. They may be somewhat giddy, perhaps a little shallow or frivolous. They are lively and good- spirited (they are not 'stagnant') and their 'manners' are at least 'unem­ barrassed and pleasant'—quite unlike the ludicrous snobbery, chilly hauteur, unpleasant seeming-politeness, and mean-spirited psuedo- etiquette of the upper classes. Jane Austen cannot whole-heartedly iden­ tify with these 'modern minds and manners,' just as Anne 'would not have given up her own more elegant and cultivated mind for all their enjoyments.' But both Anne and her author can recognise their genuine happiness and applaud their 'good-humoured mutual affection.' Soci­ ety—England itself—is altering, perhaps improving. Jane Austen does not take sides; she neither mocks the old style nor reprobates the new. Her stance is Anne's. But she is clearly undertaking a radical reassess­ ment and revision of her system of values. She can be gendy ironic about the domestic arrangements of the Great House, as when, later, she describes a tolerably confused and noisy scene there with everyone doing something different and contributing to a general disharmony, and comments, 'It was a fine family-piece.' But it is not Portsmouth. A new tolerance and relativism has entered Jane Austen's tone. What for Anne is a rather nerve-racking 'domestic hurricane' is for Mrs Musgrove 'a little quiet cheerfulness at home.' Jane Austen is amused but not censorious: 'Everybody has their tastes in noises as well as in other mat-

246 ters; and sounds are quite innoxious, or most distressing, by their sort rather than their quantity. ' (Lady Russell would hear the street noises of Bath as signalling her 'winter pleasures' and would, says Jane Austen, have probably regarded them as part of 'a little quiet cheerfulness' after the deprivations of the country. ) I do not believe that Jane Austen could have written that sentence at the time of Mansfield Having mentioned 'manners' I want to point to another major reversal or change in Jane Austen's habitual mode of assessment. We have seen how important manners were to her—as to Burke 4—and how crucial she made it seem to distinguish (if possible) between Lockean good man­ ners and Chesterfield's type of good manners 5 (alternatively, between English and 'French' manners). Again, this careful distinction—indeed the whole signifying role of manners—has become useless if not treach­ erously misleading. On Mr Elliot's first appearance he 'proves' by his 'propriety' that 'he was a man of exceedingly good manners.' By con­ trast, Admiral Croft's 'manners were not quite of the tone to suit Lady Russell.' Mr Elliot indeed serves single-handedly to undermine utterly any code of values attached to manners. 'His manners were so exactly what they ought to be, so polished, so easy, so particularly agreeable' that—as manners—Anne herself finds them as good as Wentworth's! His conversation leaves 'no doubt of his being a sensible man.' And it is not merely the cultivated appearance of manners. Lady Russell finds 'the solid . . . so fully supporting the superficial' that she perceives him as an embodiment of all the virtues. 'Everything united in him.' He even seems to have 'a value for all the felicities of domestic life. ' True, Anne begins to have her suspicions and reservations, and Lady Russell is capable of erroneous judgements. But nothing in Mr Elliot's manners could have prepared anyone for the revelation of the 'true' man. Mr Elliot is a man without heart or conscience; a designing, wary, cold-blooded being, who thinks only of himself; who, for his own interest or ease, would be guilty of any cruelty, or any treachery, that could be perpetrated without risk of his general character. He has no feeling for others. Those whom he has been the chief cause of leading into ruin, he can neglect and desert without the smallest compunction. He is totally beyond the reach of any sentiment of justice or compassion. Oh! he is black at heart, hollow and black! Mrs Smith's description of the true Mr Elliot is never challenged or controverted. It is the most unqualified summary of unmitigated evil in all Jane Austen's work. Yet his manners are so perfect that even Anne 4. Edmund Burke (1729-1797), statesman and political writer, who celebrated conservative values. 5. An allusion to John Locke (1632-1704), philosopher, author of the important treatise On Education (1693), and Philip Dormer Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773), whose letters to his illegitimate son constitute elaborate prescriptions for polished behavior.

247 can scarcely differentiate them from her true, beloved, Wentworth's. Anne's own manners are 'as consciously right as they were invariably gende,' but as usual, in her constancy and genuine 'invariability,' she is an exception. With the vivid example of the absolute non-correlation between 'manners' and character presented by Mr Elliot we have to accept that 'good manners' in the socially accepted and prescribed sense are simply no longer of any use in estimating or infering the inner quali­ ties of anyone. Perhaps a new code of manners altogether is necessary— manners which, however 'incorrect' or even crude according to estab­ lished social notions of decorum and propriety, do nevertheless reveal the true qualities of the inner man, or woman. Anne, and Jane Austen, find them in the rougher but sincere manners of the navy. As I have tried to indicate, the usual sources, strongholds and tokens of social values have, in Persuasion, dried up, collapsed, or been eroded or travestied into meaninglessness. Even the family—which did seem to offer the possibility of a last stronghold in Emma—is at best a good- humoured confusion barely containing generational differences and at worst a hollow mockery or a claustrophobic prison of cohabiting egotists or a dreary vacancy. It may indeed have already 'broken up'—specifi­ cally in Anne's case, but that might be taken as a paradigm for a more general dissolution of the institution of the family. Mrs Smith seems to recognise this when she gives her opinion that 'even the smooth surface of family-union seems worth preserving, though there may be nothing durable beneath.' It would be idle to speculate whether or not this was Jane Austen's own opinion. It does indicate a felt apprehension that the 'family' was in danger of becoming an empty form, a mere name—or collective noun—when it should be the cornerstone and microcosm of society. The fate and future of 'the family' is an ongoing debate and problem in our own times. Jane Austen could already see that it was at a crisis point. We have very little to add to her diagnosis. What Jane Austen does offer as a potential source of new values, new bondings is the navy. About which now a few comments. The specific dating of this novel—1814 and after—and its obvious significance has been mentioned. Britain has won the wars against Napoleon and primarily through her navy. Many specific references to the war—including Trafalgar—are made in the book, and indeed the whole novel is not properly comprehensible without appreciating the importance of this background. As Warren Roberts rightly states, 'Per­ suasion could only have been written by someone whose life was deeply affected by the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars' (see Jane Austen and the French Revolution for detailed evidence of the relationship between the novel and the wars). The 'peace' brings Captain Wentworth back to England; more generally, 'This peace will be turning all our rich Navy Officers ashore.' That many of them were rich—through capturing

248 enemy ships and the like—is important, since, for example, it enables the Crofts to rent Kellynch Hall and makes Wentworth completely inde­ pendent of any snobbish social disapproval (such as had separated him from Anne). Indeed, it makes him a 'somebody,' since money was becoming a more powerful means of gaining social acceptance and esteem than land or even rank. But what is more important is that they bring back with them a wholly different scheme of values, and a poten­ tially new model of an alternative society or community, alive and func­ tioning where the traditional land society seemed to be moribund and largely 'stagnant'; a new community which, among other things, accepted wives as equals. Thus Anne delights in seeing the Crofts walk about Bath, meeting and warmly greeting their friends, and observing 'their eagerness of conversation when occasionally forming into a little knot of the navy, Mrs Croft looking as intelligent and keen as any of the officers around her.' That admiration and respect for 'a little knot of the navy' brings Jane Austen curiously close to Conrad and his sense of the hypocrisies of society on land and the values of fidelity within the ranks in the navy. (As it happens he also uses the word 'knot': 'the dark knot of seamen drifted in sunshine'—The Nigger of the 'Narcissus.'; 6) This, if you like, is Jane Austen's ultimate displacement or shift of values in the novel: to redefine and relocate her vision of a 'possible' society in relation to that most potentially precarious of occupations engaged with the most unstable element—an unlanded and unrooted community of people committed to the sea. Hardly a stable and fixed community, since that 'knot' could be disassembled and reassembled, depleted and augmented, indeed 'tied' or 'untied,' at any time and in any place. In truth, the extreme of a dispersed community, a floating, drifting, chang­ ing, population which would have seemed the antithesis of the kind of society Jane Austen was writing to secure or maintain. But by 1815 much had changed. For one thing it was the navy which—to Jane Aus­ ten's eyes—had saved England, while the ruling aristocratic class had done almost nothing. Seen in this light, the fact that at Uppercross 'there was a very general ignorance of all naval matters' is deplorable, while Sir Walter Elliot's unbelievably patronising and condescending attitude to naval officers is beneath contempt. Without the navy there quite possibly would no longer have been any society left in England. (Jane Austen must have been aware of the invasion panics.) Her transfer of allegiance and emotional investment from the English ruling classes (about whom she had clearly been growing more and more pessimistic) to the navy (which not only appealed to her patriotism but also embod­ ied new and welcome alternative values) is doubly understandable at this point in English history. Among other things, Persuasion is notable for some uncharacteristically lyrical passages about the sea, which also help 6. Novel published in 1897 by Joseph Conrad (1857-1924).

249 to give the novel its markedly different atmosphere. (Emma, we may recall, had never seen the sea, and one of her father's more significant fatuities is, 'I have been long perfectly convinced . . . that the sea is very rarely of use to any body. ' By this time the sea was 'of use'—of inestima­ ble use—simply to the whole of England!) In the first description of the coast and sea at Lyme, so enchanting and beautiful in contrast to the 'melancholy looking rooms' and undistinguished buildings of the town, there is a curious sentence referring to the group lingering' on the sea­ shore 'as all must linger and gaze on a first return to the sea, who ever deserve to look on it at all.' Deserve to look on the sea? Is this Jane Austen—or Melville? Here is a shift indeed. Not the awed and humble approach to Pemberley 7 or Mansfield Park; but the privilege, for those who deserve it, of gazing at—the sea. Jane Austen seems to be turning her back on more than just the local inanities of a Sir Walter Elliot. Of course the navy is on shore throughout the novel, and it is the effect they have there and the part they play in Jane Austen's redefinition and relocation of values that we must consider. At one point the enthu­ siastic Louisa burst forth into raptures of admiration and delight on the character of the navy—their friendliness, their brotherliness, their openness, their uprightness; protesting that she was convinced of sailors hav­ ing more warmth than any other set of men in England; that they only knew how to live, and they only deserved to be respected and loved. Allowing a littie for her youthful hyperbole, this is in many ways—and with moderation—the verdict of the book. Anne finds Captain Harville 'a perfect gentleman, unaffected, warm and obliging'—it would seem that, by another shift, only sailors can be true 'gentlemen': Mrs Harville is 'a degree less polished' but has the 'same good feelings. ' Above all, this naval group (or knot) are sincere, hospitable, open, warm and genuinely friendly. What they might lack in 'polish' they more than made up for in 'heart.' In any case, Jane Austen never set great store by mere 'polish' and by now she clearly distrusts it. The older values seem to have lost much of their force and degenerated into snobbish reflexes. Where the older civilities are somewhat peremptorily adhered to, it is often in 'an improper style. ' Anne of course holds on to what was best in the older practices and codes. She believes in 'duties,' in 'prudence' in 'propriety.' If she is somewhat shy and reserved, she appreciates the decent lack of these potentially inhibiting traits in others. Quiet herself, she responds to 'heartiness.' She suspects Mr Elliot precisely because he seems too controlled and good-mannered: Mr Elliot was rational, discreet, polished—but he was not open. There was never any burst of feeling, and warmth of indignation or 7. The splendid estate owned by Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.

250 delight, at the evil or good of others. This, to Anne was a decided imperfection. Her early impressions were incurable. She prized the frank, the open-hearted, the eager character beyond all others. Warmth and enthusiasm did captivate her still. She felt she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or hasty thing, than of those whose pres­ ence of mind never varied, whose tongue never slipped. The passage speaks for itself; we remember that Emma's most significant transgression occurs precisely because her tongue slips and she says 'a careless and hasty thing' to Miss Bates, and to get some idea of the kind of change in Jane Austen's values it represents just think how a Darcy or Knightley would appear if tested by these criteria. These are primarily the manners of feeling, which may dispense with manners: spontaneity is always likely to annihilate etiquette. If we want to see a 'Romantic' side to Jane Austen, it would be in such passages. In a sense Jane Austen was fortunate to have the navy to turn to. Otherwise it is something of a question whether she would not have had to have gone further afield— perhaps into socially 'dangerous' areas—to find suitable embodiments of these preferred values and characteristics. Anne is also always 'useful,' and willingly so, in anybody's home. (When Mary leaves her sick child in the care of Anne so that she can go to a dinner party, her excuse is 'I am of no use at home—am I?' It is the literal truth. In fact she is 'no use' anywhere. In this, she is not alone in the book. ) When Anne speaks up for the navy—'The navy, I think, who have done so much for us, have at least an equal claim with any other set of men, for all the comforts and all the privileges which any home can give. Sailors work hard enough for their comforts, we must all allow'—Sir Walter speaks disparagingly of them as a class and merely allows that 'the profession has its utility. ' But 'utility' is becoming a very positive word in this book. When someone is sick, Anne is glad to know herself 'to be of the first utility.' Whether or not there is some influence of Bentham 8 here it is impossible to say. But it is clear that for Jane Austen 'utility' was becoming a word of approval. We must allow, for instance, that Sir Walter and his ilk have no 'utility' whatsoever. 'Utility' is something which Anne has in common with the navy. All the more appropriate that she should find her true home here at last. Of course, there is already an example of a 'useful' woman happily integrated into the 'little knot of the navy'—Mrs Croft. From the start we gather that she is no 'lady' of idleness leaving the 'real' world to men. She is in fact better at business than her husband. 'A very well-spoken, genteel, shrewd lady, she seemed to be . . . [she] asked more questions about the 8. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) founded the Utilitarian movement in philosophy, which made usefulness the test of value.

251 house, the terms, and taxes than the admiral himself, and seemed more conversant with business.' Thus Mr Shepherd. When Anne meets Mrs Croft we are given the description of effectively a new kind of woman in Jane Austen's world. Quite outside any structure of dominance and deference, she seems to belong to no class at all. She is both inseparable from her husband—does all that may become a man—sharing all his travels; and also strongly independent—and still very much a woman. If she seems 'rougher' than many Jane Austen heroines, she is also in many not unadmirable ways tougher. Anne is not (yet!) like Mrs Croft. But she admires her. Mrs Croft, though neither tall nor fat, had a squareness, upright­ ness and vigour of form, which gave importance to her person. She had bright dark eyes, good teeth, and altogether an agreeable face; though her reddened and weather-beaten complexion, the conse­ quence of her having been almost as much at sea as her husband, made her seem to have lived some years longer in the world than her eight and thirty. Her manners were open, easy, and decided, like one who had no distrust of herself, and no doubts of what to do; without any approach to coarseness, however, or any want of good humour. Anne is 'pleased' with her, and so are we. So, obviously, was Jane Aus­ ten—and in that depiction of Mrs Croft she is offering a new model of a new kind of woman, scarcely imaginable in any of her previous novels. (One odd note: she is childless. But then Jane Austen never does actually show us a good mother. I think we must infer from this what we choose. ) A key area of the debate concerning old and new values concerns resolution and wilfulness. A central problem here hinges on Anne's early 'yielding' to the negative persuasion of Lady Russell, which effec­ tively involved her supressing the love she felt for Wentworth and pre­ venting a marriage both of them desired. Was she wrong? Did she show insufficient resolution and belief in her own instinct and desires? We shall leave a final adjudication until later, but her behaviour in fact poses a problem which reverberates through the book. For instance, in talking to Louisa (who boasts that she is not so 'easily persuaded' and derides 'nonsensical complaisance') Wentworth praises her for her 'char­ acter of decision and firmness' and speaks with understandable bitterness against the opposite: 'It is the worst evil of too yielding and indecisive a character, that no influence over it can be depended on. . . . Everybody may sway it; let those who would be happy be firm.' And to emphasise his point he picks up a hazel nut—one of the rare emblematic aids to discourse in Jane Austen!—praising its exemplary enduring strength and hardness, and asserting, rather foolishly, that its 'happiness' is a function of its unpunctured 'firmness. ' A 'nutty' happiness indeed, but not per-

252 haps a very helpful model for a young—and virgin—woman! Is this fair to Anne? Was she too easily 'swayed'—too indecisive and lacking in firmness? It is at least something of a question. But Louisa's 'decision and firmness' reveal themselves most graphically on the Cobb. We have been told that Louisa has the habit of 'doing as she liked' and believed in 'the merit in maintaining her own way' (against 'parental wishes or advice') and is quick to advance 'heedless schemes.' On the Cobb she also wants her own way: this times it involves jumping from the steps into the arms of Wentworth. Enjoying the sensation, she expresses a wish and an intention to do it again. Wentworth 'reasoned' against it, but 'in vain': she smiled and said, 'I am determined I will.' And 'main­ taining her own way' she jumps—too precipitously ('heedlessly'?)—and as everyone knows she falls and suffers a dangerous concussion. There lies the 'nut' of'decision and firmness'! She indeed would not 'yield' to any 'persuasion,' however 'rational'—and she will not be 'swayed.' But how 'meritorious' or 'admirable' is that now? Is such a character trait of determined wilfulness a virtue or a rashness? Is it a real strength or an egotistical rashness (she not only causes damage to herself but great anguish and a lot of trouble to other people)? Is that jumping girl a finer character than the sedate and self-effacing—and apparently 'persuad­ able'—Anne? We might remember that another of the Musgrove chil­ dren sustains a 'bad fall': young Charles falls and dislocates his collarbone in chapter 7. On that occasion 'Anne had every thing to do at once,' since Mary retires into useless hysterics, and all the duties and responsibilities devolve on Anne. As, of course, they do after Louisa's accident on the Cobb. There even Wentworth reveals an uncharacteris­ tic sense of helplessness: 'Is there no one to help me?' These are unusual words from a Jane Austen hero. He is not omni-competent and once again all eyes turn to Anne for advice and direction. She effectively has to help and advise them all. These modern youngsters are attractive and lively, and perhaps engagingly adventurous and independent in their wilful heedlessness of external constraints—or advice. The Musgrove girls are 'wild for dancing,' 'wild to see Lyme'—'wild' is one of their favourite words and, as a word, harmless enough as a youthful hyperbole (as for a more recent young generation everything was 'fabulous,' 'fantas­ tic,' and so on). But are they perhaps in fact too wild? After all, Elizabeth Elliot is also accustomed to 'go her own way' and there is nothing at all attractive about her ice-cold selfishness. After the Cobb incident Anne might well wonder whether it ever occurred to him [Wentworth] now, to question the justness of his own previous opinion as to the universal felicity and advan­ tage of firmness of character; and whether it might not strike him that, like all other qualities of the mind, it should have its propor­ tions and limits. She thought it could scarcely escape him to feel,

253 that a persuadable temper might sometimes be as much in favour of happiness, as a very resolute character. Of course she is right. Louisa, in 'jumping' at will, shows herself to have a very 'yielding' character, but she yields to her own whims and caprices. At least Anne thought that she was 'rationally' persuaded to yield to Lady Russell. It comes back to the problem of authority in a period of change when all traditional sources of authority are in doubt, if not disqualified or defunct. Whose persuasion or advice should one—anyone—listen to? When Wentworth cries for help he is articulating a larger need. In the event, in this novel it is the apparently yielding but actually steadfast Anne who becomes the authority to whom others turn. Wentworth's 'nut' lies sufficiently crushed to make us (and him) realise that she would be in no way an appropriate wife for him. He says he wants 'A strong mind, with sweetness of manner' in any wife he chooses. There is of course only one candidate. Anne is not a 'nut'—that visual image for the ideal wife was curiously infelicitous. For nuts are either totally hard or totally smashed (I suppose they can also go rotten). Anne's strength of character is peculiarly human. Which means that it must combine flexibility and firmness, the concessionary and the adamant, the rights of self with the obligations of selflessness, in a complex, ever-demanding way. Wentworth is right in seeking for an alliance of strength and sweet­ ness (the lion and the honeycomb). He is only wrong temporarily and perhaps understandably—in not seeing that that ideal admixture is only to be found in one woman (in this novel). Anne. Only Anne. How Anne will discover Wentworth's true state of feelings, how she will be able to convey her still 'unyielding' love for him, raises a problem familiar in Jane Austen's work: namely, that of private communication in a predominantly public world in which various taboos on certain forms of direct address between the sexes are still operative. It is again a problem of hermeneutics. 'Now, how were his sentiments to be read?' After his return they are 'repeatedly in the same circle,' but that offers as many chances for misreadings (on both sides) as it does opportunities for reliable interpretation. People talk too littie or too much. (As when Anne finds herself the unwilling repository of the 'secrets of the com­ plaints of each house. ' Regarded as nothing herself, a permanendy avail­ able pair of hands or ears, she is 'treated with too much confidence by all parties.' On the other hand, the one man she wants to hear most from says least. She cannot control these asymmetries and excesses or shortfallings of communication.) Mary, inevitably, provides a constant example of lack of all communicative tact—as when she asks Anne to tell their father they have seen Mr Elliot. To Anne 'it was just the cir­ cumstance which she considered as not merely unnecessary to be com­ municated, but as what ought to be supressed.' For Jane Austen the imperatives of verbal repression were as important as the obligations of

254 communication: social harmony depends on getting the balance right. Needless to say, in the world of Persuasion most people have lost that tact. Anne often has to 'smother' her own feelings and preoccupations, realising that they are of little or no interest to her interlocutors. She knows what it is to have to converse' without 'communicating.' She also knows what it is like to talk without being heard. 'They could not listen to her description of him. They were describing him themselves.' But of course her main concern is somehow to communicate with Wentworth and this in fact provides the climax of the book. At the concert near the end she is sure of his feelings and desperate to communicate hers. But she cannot contrive the necessary propinquity. As other Jane Austen women do, she has recourse to the eye—trying to catch Wentworth's when she is prevented from speaking to him: 'she was so surrounded and shut in: but she would rather have caught his eye.' But she is trapped by the unwelcome attentions of Mr Elliot and the general 'nothing-saying amongst the party.' How to find or create a place or position which would make 'something-saying' possible is again a recurrent problem for Jane Austen's heroines. Interestingly, she manages to choose a seat on the bench with a 'vacant space' next to her. Wentworth nearly takes it, but Mr Elliot breaks in. Here is a small parabolic tableau of the problem for a woman. She can create a space for the man but cannot invite him to take it. Man has to initiate, and if there is any hesitation the wrong (and more assertive) male may take advantage of that space. Mr Elliot does this—and a jealous Wentworth takes his departure. Anne still has her problem: 'How was the truth to reach him? How, in all the peculiar disadvantages of their respective situations, would he ever learn her real sentiments?' So crucial is this problem that Jane Austen revised her first—exces­ sively simple—resolution of it into two longer chapters which dramatise in detail the strategies of indirection to which the lovers have recourse. This revision (chapters 22 and 23) is of great subtlety and importance and is worth some particular examination and comment. In the first version Admiral Croft crudely contrives to leave them alone in his house and very quickly everything is cleared up. There is 'a hand taken and pressed; and "Anne, my own dear Anne!" bursting forth in the fulness of exquisite feeling,—and all suspense and indecision were over. They were re-united.' This is summary to a degree and a very lame solution to a problem which has been growing in importance until it becomes the main problem in the book. The revised and substituted chapters do not merely prolong the suspense and defer narrative gratification through gratuitous complication of plot: they comprise an infinitely richer and more searching examination of the whole problem of com­ munication between man and woman. The revised chapters add much. We learn more of the 'odious insin-

255 cerity' of Mr Elliot and his dubious connection with that other plotting 'hypocrite,' Mrs Clay, whose name is suggestive enough of a weak vessel and whose 'freckles' not only indicate a flawed and 'spotted' moral inte­ rior but may indeed suggest the remnants or traces of syphilis. (In a very interesting letter to The Times Literary Supplement on 7 October 1983, Nora Crook points out that 'Gowland's Lotion,' which Sir Walter rec­ ommends to Anne 'on the strength of its supposed benefits to Mrs Clay's freckles,' contained 'corrosive sublimate of mercury,' which 'had a par­ ticular connection with the old-fashioned treatment of syphilis.' Mrs Crook produces evidence from contemporary journals such as Reece's Gazette of Health and, while admirably tentative in drawing any con­ clusions, rightly points out that 'so few are references to actual trade­ names in Austen that one feels that this one must have had some sort of function other than "realism." ' I agree completely and feel surer than she does—though on no more evidence—that a hint of syphilis must be intended. After all, Mrs Clay ends up in London as Mr Elliot's mistress and thus with a status little better than that of a prostitute. The fact that she was a welcome intimate of Sir Walter's and Elizabeth's, in prefer­ ence to Anne, not only confirms the worst we feel about their utterly corrupted judgement: it also suggests the presence of the most ruinous sexual disease among the upper classes. She is a fitting 'partner' for the totally corrupt Mr Elliot—who is also the heir of Kellynch Hall. A fine end to be inscribed in that volume chronicling the 'history and rise of the ancient and respectable family'!) We learn that Louisa is 'recovered' but 'altered' (perhaps improved?). There is no 'running or jumping about, no laughing or dancing. ' Her newly acquired 'stillness' is not the result of achieved moral poise and undistractability—the stillness which Jane Austen admired—but the timorous cowering of a nervous wreck. But centrally there is the extended problem of how Anne can commu­ nicate with Wentworth. It is he now who is acting under an 'unfortunate persuasion': namely, that she loves Mr Elliot. In the crowded hotel scene 'he did not seem to want to be near enough for conversation' and the 'circumstances' only expose them to 'inadvertencies and miscon­ structions of the most mischievous kind.' Eyes and glances—surrepti­ tious, anxious, inquiring—are again active. More venturesomely (or desperately) Anne speaks words to others which are meant obliquely for Wentworth—as when she loudly proclaims her complete lack of interest in a party being organised for the theatre which would include Mr Elliot. She trembles as she speaks, 'conscious that her words were lis­ tened to, and daring not even to try to observe their effect. ' When they do have to exchange social conversation, Anne has recourse to another strategy. Referring to trivia—whether she still enjoys card games—Anne uses the occasion to transmit a second meta-message by emphasising that 'I am not yet so much changed,' hoping that the generalising

256 response will not be lost on Wentworth—though she still fears 'she hardly knew what misconstructions.' It is indeed a tricky and dangerous game when a lifetime's happiness depends on the outcome. We may wonder at the need for all these tormenting ploys of indirection. Why cannot Anne be open and direct—qualities she admires in other people? The contrast is indeed made in the next chapter when Mrs Musgrove is talking. Her talk is marked by 'open-hearted communication,' but it is all concerned with personal 'minutiae' and Anne feels that 'she did not belong to the conversation.' The obstacle—effectively a double-bind— seems to be that you cannot speak 'openly' and 'directly' about such important matters as your feelings of love, to the person you love, until you have achieved a certain intimacy (tantamount to engagement) which then permits such open talk. But how do you ever manage to get intimate enough to be intimate, as it were? I don't think this is just a matter of tiresome, overdelicate etiquette or the repressive interdictions of propriety. It certainly has something to do with true modesty. More generally I think it dramatises the delicacy and difficulty of identifying and establishing the right sexual partner. That social conditions and codes made this particularly difficult in Jane Austen's period we can hardly doubt. But one feels that there is some deeper correlation between the delicacy of the approach and the value and quality of the ensuing union. We have gained much by our less inhibited and less formalised ways of achieving sexual and marital rapprochements. Argu­ ably our loss has been no less great. Be that as it may, we now approach the actual moment of full com­ munication. How it is achieved—the context, the method—could hardly be more interesting. The general talk has become meaningless to Anne—'only a buzz of words in her ear. ' She must look for (and send) the right signal in the noise. Then Captain Harville approaches Anne with a 'small miniature painting.' It is a portrait of Captain Benwick which was commissioned for Captain Harville's dead sister, Fanny. Benwick now wants it reset to give to Louisa, whom he is to marry. Harville finds the commission too painful and Wentworth has gallantly agreed to take care of it. He is seated nearby—'writing about it now, ' as Harville explains. Harville almost tearfully muses that 'Fanny . . . would not have forgotten him so soon' and there ensues that debate about the relative constancy of men and women in their love. Anne argues that women do not forget so soon. 'We cannot help ourselves. We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us. You are forced upon exertion . . . continual occupation and change soon weaken impressions.' Then follows a famous exchange in which Har­ ville has recourse to the evidence and authority of literature—writing: But let me observe that all histories are against you, all stories, prose and verse. If I had such a memory as Benwick, I could bring

257 you fifty quotations in a moment on my side the argument, and I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not some­ thing to say upon women's inconstancy. . . . But perhaps you will say, these are all written by men. Anne replies, 'Perhaps I shall.—Yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove any thing. ' 'But how shall we prove any thing?' 'We never shall.' Painting, writing, speech. The portrait is a fixed representation or 'quo­ tation' of the man which he can dispatch to different women. The man changes in his affections; the portrait remains 'constant.' In this it is precisely a misrepresentation—an ideal image of the man which leaves all his emotional changeableness out. However accurate as to physiog­ nomy, it is untrue to life. It is a detached token which can be sent through intermediaries—Harville, Wentworth—to now this woman, now that. And potentially any other. It is in all respects the opposite of an unmediated confrontation of, and communication between, a living man and a living woman. In this the portrait comes dangerously close to being like a piece of money, a coin of fixed, arbitrary 'value' which can circulate through different hands and purchase any object to be obtained at the price on the coin. There need be no relationship between the purchaser and the object. Indeed, the whole mode of trans­ action is marked by separation and im-personality. The model for this kind of 'relationship' is ultimately the open market. This is not to impugn the feelings of reciprocity which may have gone into the 'rela­ tionship' of Benwick, but only to point out that it is excessively mediated. Benwick is a man who lives in and by books. He woos and wins Louisa by quotations and a portrait (as he did Fanny and, we feel, would have tried to do with Anne). They are signs which are precisely not his own, not himself. They are substitutions for an essential absence—emotional if not ontological. Anne has no access to totally unmediated communi­ cation, but she must avoid the kind of mediation briefly but tellingly here alluded to. And so must Wentworth. Benwick's books and Har- ville's allusion to his 'quotations' might remind us that at the start of this book Anne was effectively written out of meaningful life because she was not written in to Sir Walter's 'book of books.' She has suffered from male 'writing' since indeed 'the pen has been in their hands'—starting with the originating male authority, the father. Her argument has of

258 course a general and very important validity, relevant to the condition of all women in her—and our—society. But one crucial little incident gives it a vividly local and specific point. As she is arguing with Harville—and of course her words have a dou­ ble target and dual purpose, as she hopes that the nearby Wentworth, seated and writing, will hear them and detect the personal message con­ tained in the general statements—a 'slight noise' draws their attention to Wentworth. 'It was nothing more than that his pen had fallen down.' Nothing more—in many ways it is the most quietly dramatic and loaded incident on the book. The pen may, generally speaking, be in 'their hands'; but at this crucial moment the pen—a specific one—had dropped from his—specific—hand. However unintentionally, however momentarily, he is disproving the generalisation which Anne is enunci­ ating. He is, perhaps by a 'slip,' excepting himself from—revealing him­ self as an exception to—the rule. We tend to read a lot of significance into 'slips' now, but, at no matter what level of conscious or unconscious intention, Wentworth's 'slip' in dropping the pen at that moment is per­ haps the most important signal—or unvoiced communication—in his entire relationship with Anne. I am not concerned with possible phallic interpretations of'the pen': literalness is quite powerful enough here. No single definitive reading of the incident is either possible or desirable. But we can say at least this: Wentworth at this critical moment has, however inadvertently, dropped (let go of, lost his grip on) that instrument which is at once a tool and a symbol of men's dominance over women; the means by which they rule women's destinies, literally write (through inscription, prescription, proscription) their lives. It is as if he is open to a more equal (unscripted) relationship in which the old patterns of domi­ nance and deference are abandoned, deleted—dropped. Benwick quotes from already written books; Sir Walter wrote in his book according to an ancient and now non-functional scriptural tradition (his 'book of books' is only a bible for himself—a mere mirror instead of the authorising and authoritative sacred text). Wentworth was writing a commission for another person—he drops the pen and, after that crucial lacuna or inter­ ruption, when he picks it up again it is to 'speak' to Anne. Under the 'public' letter he writes for Harville and Benwick he now writes a 'private' letter—like a sub-text—to Anne, which he hides under scattered paper. He goes out—formally—with Harville, and returning under false pre­ tences (left gloves), furtively delivers the hidden—but 'true'—letter to Anne. Significantly the writing is 'hardly legible': we may guess that the impersonal 'public' letter was in a perfect hand. The hidden letter was indeed not really written, but rather 'spoken.' As he writes in it, 'I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. ' It is the desperate calligraphy of the heart—written under pressure and social constraints. No wonder it is 'hardly legible.' For this speechwriting is not done according to prescribed formulae or convention: it is an 'exceptional'

259 writing which seeks to find a way through all the restraining and silenc­ ing rules and codes to communicate directly to the chosen woman. It attempts the apparently impossible—mediated im-mediacy. Like love. There is no need here to reproduce the contents of that letter-under-the- letter. With its delivery and reading the 'union' is assured. But two final points about it. Anne realises that, 'while supposed to be writing only to Captain Benwick, he had been also addressing her. ' No doubt some of this final drama (or game) can be traced to the specific difficulties of intersexual communication in Jane Austen's society. But the episode points up and dramatises a larger truth. All 'writing' or communication is potentially double (at least exoteric and esoteric, to go no further: there may always be another message in—under—the ostensible message); we can 'address' more than one person at the same time, and likewise be 'addressed' by messages not apparently meant for us. Indeed, one might say that the addresser and the addressee of the letter—all 'letters'—are potentially indeterminate and plural. There is ultimately no single, definitively correct 'address.' The problems and difficulties which Anne and Wentworth have to negotiate are not a function of early nineteenth- century English society. They are inherent in language and communica­ tion itself. How important is this rather singular little parlour 'game'? Well—'On the contents of that letter depended all which this world could do for her!' Life, and all that it might offer, can indeed depend on 'the letter.' It is a final joke that informs us that, as Wentworth is now rich enough to be 'accepted' as a husband for Anne by her father, it 'enabled Sir Walter at last to prepare his pen with a very good grace for the insertion of the marriage in the volume of honour. ' It is of course a dead volume by now and the paternal pen is as irrelevant as it is power­ less. Anne and Wentworth will 'write' their own marriage elsewhere, in a new book, in their own hands. Of course they will never 'prove' any­ thing by the book, any book. When it comes to matters of love we can never prove anything—by writing, or speaking, or painting. And we never shall. When Othello asks Iago for 'ocular proof of Desdemona's infidelity, he is lost. Her honour is 'an essence that's not seen.' You may fake 'proof of infidelity (nothing easier for an Iago) and misread signs (and books) as evidence of inconstancy. But you cannot prove love—any more than you can 'see' honour or constancy. You must finally trust beyond the available evidence. The proof of the loving can only be in the living. Before leaving the matter of language and communication in this novel, I want to draw attention to a rather surprising notion which Jane Austen inserts into Anne's thoughts while she is listening to another social conversation which combines the vacuous and the hyperbolic. 'Allowances, large allowances, she knew, must be made for the ideas of those who spoke. She heard it all under embellishment. All that sounded extravagant or irrational in the progress of the reconciliation might have

260 no origin but in the language of the relators' (emphasis added). Of course social conversation can lie and fabricate—nothing unusual in such an observation. But Anne's thought is potentially more radical. Allow that language 'embellishes'; but what if all that people talk about has 'no ori­ gin but in the language of the relators'? Put it another way: language may be the origin of all that people relate. It is perhaps not such a new idea for us, but, coming out of the context in which Jane Austen was writing, the hint (it is perhaps no more) that language itself might be the origin of what we talk about—i.e., that language is the origin of what we think of as reality—is here startling. Language thus becomes capable of creating its own referents and referends—an awesomely autonomous, generative, and 'originating' power. If in fact we live primarily in the world we speak, then we should be careful indeed about the words we use. Jane Austen herself exemplifies that indispensable vigilance and scrupulousness. What follows the final achieving of clarification and communication between Anne and Wentworth is characteristically summary. They stroll along a 'retired gravel-walk' and there can indulge their 'private rapture' in 'public view. ' As usual Jane Austen does not pursue them into their private passional discourse. Whether we ascribe this to ignorance, repression or delicacy hardly matters. Jane Austen has shown us all that is essential to her novel; now she maintains a tactful distance. There they exchanged again those feelings and those promises which had once before seemed to secure every thing, but which had been followed by so many, many years of division and estrangement. There they returned again into the past more exqui­ sitely happy, perhaps, in their re-union, than when it had been first projected. . . . And so on. There they are oblivious of the passing groups—'sauntering politicians, bustling house-keepers, flirting girls, nursery-maids and chil­ dren.' The 'world' is temporarily lost, and well lost. They have made 'a separate peace. ' But we should add a few words about Anne and her mar­ riage. In some respects she is like Fanny Price, with her 'still' virtues, her essential loneliness, her general desire 'not to be in the way of any body'; her pleasure is only to be 'unobserved,' her plight to be generally over­ looked. She is glad just to do her duty and to be 'useful,' however unap­ preciated. In her apparent weakness she is the real source of strength. But there is a crucial difference, related to the larger difference between the two worlds of the novels. At one point in the confusion of Uppercross, we are told of an insuperable problem: 'How was Anne to set all these matters to rights?' Fanny Price does effectively 'set to rights' all the wrongs, neglects, and partial deteriorations of Mansfield Park—which becomes something of a microcosm of society as it should be and might be. Anne's healing efforts are necessarily more local and limited in the

261 scattered and diffused world of Persuasion. She would have put her father's house 'to rights' but is not allowed to. She can nurse a sick child here, tend a wounded girl there, sympathise with a grieving bereft lover, provide concrete help when Wentworth cries out for it (a hint of a possi­ ble new equality there). But society is too far gone in disarray to be 'put to rights' by an exemplary heroine. Fanny Price's marriage to Edmund symbolises and seals the restoration and renewal of a whole social order and structure. Anne's marriage to Wentworth signifies nothing larger than their own refound and reconstituted happiness in love. Their 're­ union' is not a sign of any larger re-established harmony. To borrow that enigmatic and resonant phrase of Jay Gatsby's, 9 it is 'just personal.' Their marriage is not grounded in property—as all the previous con­ cluding marriages in Jane Austen are. Mary—of course—gloats that Anne 'had no Uppercross-hall before her, no landed estate, no headship of a family.' And indeed it is one of Anne's regrets that she has 'no relations to bestow' on Wentworth, 'no family to receive and estimate him properly.' In fact it is he who offers a family—the new 'family' of the navy. She brings to him only her 'undistracted heart,' in Henry James's memorable phrase. The marriage itself does not portend an end­ less stability: there will always be 'the dread of a future war.' She has to 'pay' for her marital happiness in a way unknown to any previous Jane Austen heroine. Thus the conclusion: 'She gloried in being a sailor's wife, but she must pay the tax of quick alarm for belonging to that profession which is, if possible, more distinguished in its domestic vir­ tues than in its national importance.' (Contrast the conclusion of M<ms- field Park and Fanny's return to the 'paternal abode' of Mansfield, which formerly 'Fanny had been unable to approach but with some painful sensation of restraint and alarm' but which 'soon grew as dear to her heart, and as thoroughly perfect in her eyes as every thing else within the view and patronage of Mansfield Park, had long been.' Her 'alarm' was definite but is in the past, replaced by an extended future of assured happiness and 'perfection.' Anne's 'alarm' is indefinite and in the future—an integral part of her happy marriage, out of an old society and into a new one, far away from the abandoned 'paternal abode,' with nothing assured except her joy in her reciprocated love.) The final words of Persuasion effectively point to that radical redefinition and relocation of values which marks the whole novel. Established society and domes­ ticity are now, as we say, 'all at sea'—metaphorically (they are in a state of chronic confusion, chaotic flux) but also literally. For the new social and domestic virtues are now to be found, indeed, 'at sea'—for those 'who ever deserve to look on it at all.' (To base a marriage almost exclusively on feelings, no matter how 9. Protagonist of The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940).

262 tested and proved those feelings may be, inevitably entails a new kind of 'risk. ' It is more than apt that this new kind of model for a more personal society, in which actions come 'from the heart,' is situated both meta­ phorically and actually on the sea—traditionally regarded as 'the unsta­ ble element.' Even though Anne and Wentworth are models of emotional stability and constancy, the emotions are by nature inherently potentially unstable, and, without the reinforcement of some forms— formalities—and conventions, any society based on feelings must be precarious and in danger of ensuring its own impermanence. In found­ ing a possible new society on the sea, even metaphorically, Jane Austen was engaging deliberately in what is almost a contradiction of terms. It is some measure of her disenchantment with 'landed' society that she felt prepared, or compelled, to take that risk.) Was Anne right to give in to the 'persuasion' of Lady Russell? There is rich ambiguity or hesitation here, and phrases such as 'the fair inter­ ference of friendship' in their poised ambivalence indicate that Jane Austen knew all about the multiple motivations which are at work in the impulse to exert some apparently beneficent control over a person in a weaker position. There is, perhaps, no point at which you can clearly distinguish persuasion from constraint or constraint from coer­ cion. It is something of a blur, a confusion if you will—and it is out of just that confusion that Anne the nobody has somehow to come to clarification and remake her life. In discussing the point with Went­ worth at the end of the book, when they are privately conversing while 'apparently occupied in admiring a fine display of green-house plants' (a somewhat more auspicious adjunct to a discussion of love than 'nuts'!), Anne defends her decision without wholly exculpating Lady Russell: I must believe that I was right, much as I suffered from it, that I was perfectly right in being guided by the friend whom you will love better than you do now. To me, she was in the place of a parent. Do not mistake me, however. I am not saying that she did not err in her advice. It was, perhaps, one of those cases in which advice is good or bad only as the event decided; and for myself, I certainly never should, in any circumstance of tolerable similarity, give such advice. Lady Russell is by no means one of Jane Austen's malign characters. On the contrary she is a 'benevolent, charitable, good woman, and capable of strong attachments.' She is genuinely fond of Anne and truly appreci­ ates all her qualities and virtues. Anne loves her to the end. She is indeed regarded by all who know her as a person of 'the greatest influence with every body,' and that 'influence' is often wisely employed and invariably with disinterested concern for what is right or best. If she has a fault, it is not a kind of masked will-to-power masquerading as good advice. But

263 'she had prejudices on the side of ancestry . . . a value for rank and con­ sequence, which blinded her a little to the faults of those who possessed them.' In a word, she favours the old order of society and cannot always see its derelictions and delinquencies. She is not—as she insists—a 'match-maker,' though we can see her as a 'match-marrer' when it comes to not appreciating the reality and value of Anne's and Wentworth's love for each other. But her real importance and significance is that, for Anne, 'she was in the place of a parent'—a surrogate mother. This brings me back to the central problem of the lack of any reliable properly consti­ tuted authority in the book. Effectively Lady Russell fills—and is allowed to fill—an authority vacuum. As far as my memory and my notes go, I think I am right in saying that that key word is only once applied to any character in the book, and that is Lady Russell. When Wentworth is explaining to Anne that he could only think of her as 'one who had yielded,' who had been 'influenced by any one rathert:han by me,' he is referring to his apprehensions about the persuasive power which Lady Russell might still be exerting over Anne: 'I had no reason to believe her of less authority now' (emphasis added). As Anne explains, she thought she was yielding to 'duty,' and, while she now admits she was wrong, she makes the point that she was yielding to 'persuasion exerted on the side of safety, not of risk. ' Perhaps she was too cautious, but she learnt her lesson and she is justified, in the event, when Wentworth comes to see where 'risk' can lead to—as in Louisa's foolish jump. (Emma, in her capricious wilfulness, often abuses her powers of 'persuasion': for exam­ ple, in relation to Harriet's 'rejection' of the perfectly suitable Robert Martin—as Knightley angrily accuses her, 'You persuaded her to refuse him'; and in relation to herself, as when she excuses herself for her 'de­ ficiency' in not visiting the Bateses by 'the persuasion of its being very disagreeable—a waste of time—tiresome women'—a perverse act of self- persuasion which, at 'heart,' she herself knows to be a culpable rationali­ sation for a more selfishly and snobbishly motivated disinclination and neglect.) Wentworth had to learn his own lesson, 'to distinguish between the steadiness of principle and the obstinacy of self-will, between the darings of heedlessness and the resolution of a collected mind.' The old order was wrong; but Louisa's reaction is not the right one—self-destructive rather than reconstructive. Lady Russell's 'authority' was capable of error, but with no other reliable authority available in this society-with- out-a-centre (as in Anne's family-without-parental-guidance), it seemed to Anne—as to others—the only reliable substitute. But it was a substi­ tute. Lady Russell is not Anne's mother and she is not a true central authority in society. And it is the lesson that she has to learn that is as important as any in the book. It is a lesson which centres on her radically incorrect appraisals of the respective worth of Mr Elliot and Wentworth:

264 She must learn to feel that she had been mistaken with regard to both; that she had been unfairly influenced by appearances in each; that because Captain Wentworth's manners had not suited her own ideas, she had been too quick in suspecting them to indicate a character of dangerous impetuosity; and that because Mr Elliot's manners had precisely pleased her in their propriety and correct­ ness, their general politeness and suavity, she had been too quick in receiving them as the certain result of the most correct opinions and well regulated mind. There was nothing less for Lady Russell to do, than to admit that she had been pretty completely wrong and to take up a new set of opinions and of hopes. [Emphasis added] There is no more important passage in the novel. We remember that Anne had been 'prudent' (an old and basic Jane Austen value) but had had to learn 'romance.' Similarly Lady Russell will have to learn to re­ educate her 'feelings' when judging people and not rely on the once- reliable signs of'propriety' and 'correctness,' 'manners' and 'politeness.' In a changing society a more emotional, 'romantic' personal code is emerging as both desirable and necessary—with a proper appreciation of the difference between 'spontaneity' and 'impetuousness,' between the mere rashness of 'risk' and the securely grounded independence of indi­ vidual feelings, whether or not these seem to be approved and ratified by the old standards and codes of society. The lesson that Lady Russell has to learn is not in itself revolutionary or subversive, but it does repre­ sent a radical assessment—and turning away from—many of the old values. I have said that Anne was initially 'in between,' an uncertain status both socially and ontologically. The novel shows that English society is similarly 'in between': in between an old social order in a state of decline and desuetude, and some new 'modern' society of as yet uncertain values, hierarchies and principles. It may precipitately 'jump' to its own destruction and wreckage (like Louisa). It may, though it is a slim hope, reconstitute itself and its values as Anne—and 'only Anne'— has learnt to do with Wentworth. Meanwhile the message within the message of the book, the not-so-hidden 'letter' under the text of the story, reads like this: 'There was nothing less for English society to do, than to admit that it had been pretty completely wrong, and to take up a new set of opinions and hopes.'

2 6 5 Moral Luck and Judgment in Jane Austen's Persuasion t Prospero. they prepared A rotten carcass of a butt, not rigged, Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats Instinctively have quit it. There they hoist us, To cry to th sea that roared to us. Miranda. How came we ashore? Prospero. By providence divine. —The Tempest " . . . and here was another instance of luck. We had not been six hours in the Sound, when a gale came on, which lasted four days and nights, and which would have done for poor old Asp, in half the time; . . . Four-and-twenty hours later, and I should only have been a gal­ lant Captain Wentworth, in a small paragraph at one corner of the newspapers; and being lost in only a sloop, nobody would have thought about me." —Persuasion I shall begin with a hypothetical case involving a moral judgment: Anne, a nineteen-year-old woman with "elegance of mind and sweet­ ness of character," is living in England in 1 8 0 6 . Her mother had died five years earlier. Anne's father is a self-centered baronet with no male heir who is living well beyond his means, and her unmarried oldest sister is equally vain. She also has a younger sister. An aristocratic widow lives nearby who was a close friend of the deceased mother and who is a trusted moral advisor of Anne. A handsome, dynamic naval captain on shore leave meets Anne, and they fall "rapidly and deeply in love." Although having "been lucky in his profession," the captain has no for­ tune and faces a dangerous future in naval combat. He proposes to Anne. The father does not overtly oppose the marriage but thinks it a "degrading alliance." Anne's moral advisor discourages her and finds the marriage proposal "unfortunate." What is Anne to do? (One stipulation: there can be no long engagement. ) The moral judgment occurs, of course, in Jane Austen's last great novel Persuasion ( 1 8 1 6 , publ. 1 8 1 7 ) . Anne Elliot turns down Captain Frederick Wentworth on the advice of Lady Russell who "persuaded" her to believe the engagement "a wrong thing—indiscreet, improper, hardly capable of success, and not deserving it. " Why else does Anne turn down the proposal? Not for a "merely selfish caution" but in a t Robert Hopkins, "Moral Luck and Judgment in Jane Austen's Persuasion," Nineteenth-Century Literature 42(1987): 143-58. Reprinted with the permission of the author. All notes are by the editor of this Norton Critical Edition. The author's notes have been deleted.

266 "belief of being prudent, and self-denying principally for [Captain Wentworth's] advantage" as well. Dismayed, hurt, and angered, the Captain returns to the sea to assume his first command of a sloop, the Asp, to succeed wonderfully in capturing prizes of war, and eight years later to return to Anne's neighborhood with a fortune of over twenty thousand pounds. Persuasion gives Anne Elliot a second chance at hap­ piness with Wentworth after he overcomes his pride and diffidence to propose to her again at the end of the narrative in Jane Austen's most memorable love scene. This time Anne accepts but, reflecting on her earlier moral judgment, she believes that because Lady Russell was "in the place of a parent" she was right to take her advice. "Perhaps," Anne rationalizes to Wentworth, this was "one of those cases in which advice is good or bad only as the event decides" (italics mine). This is an extraordinary statement! How can a subsequent event be the determinant of whether a moral decision is right or wrong? Suppose, for example, that Captain Wentworth had married Anne, returned to sea, been severely wounded in battle and then returned to Anne, like Roches­ ter in ]ane Eyre, blinded, and, in addition, destitute? Would this scenario have proved Lady Russell morally right? Or suppose Anne had married and had a daughter, and Wentworth had died at sea but had not yet earned his fortune? This scenario will immediately remind Austen- ites of Jane Fairfax's origins in Emma: "The marriage of Lieut. Fairfax, of the regiment of infantry, and Miss Jane Bates, had had its day of fame and pleasure, hope and interest; but nothing now remained of it, save the melancholy remembrance of him dying in action abroad—of his widow sinking under consumption and grief soon afterwards—and this girl." Is Anne Elliot merely assuming a providential universe in which what­ ever happens is right? Is she intuitively recognizing what twentieth-cen­ tury moral philosophy calls "consequentialism"? And is Jane Austen projecting into her last novel a reconsideration of the moral implications of her earlier prudential plots that, in spite of her hard-boiled, no-non­ sense vision, reward her heroines with marriage and with fortune? Leo­ pold Damrosch, Jr., who has studied Puritan and eighteenth-century "providential fiction" metaphysically modelling itself on "God's plan" believes that after Fielding English novelists bid "farewell to providential fiction" (with some exceptions) and that "Jane Austen based her fictions firmly in the contemporary social order" with heroines "learning to accommodate [themselves] to the world as it is." Austen's fiction might be viewed as prudential fiction because of its emphasis on individual moral judgments being made in the context of a secular problematic social world. Anne Elliot's rationalization that "the event" may decide the goodness or badness of moral judgment suggests consequentialism— defined by Alan Donagan as actions "judged morally solely according to

267 the nature of their consequences per se"—or, more specifically, "act- consequentialism," described by Michael Slote as "a theory that judges the Tightness of actions in terms of whether those actions have optimal consequences." Although consequentialism is an outgrowth in twentieth-century eth­ ics of utilitarianism, the moral problem it reflects, whether we judge an action's Tightness or wrongness by its effects or by the purity of the agent's motive (as Kant had insisted), had been wrestled with by Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759): But how well soever we may seem to be persuaded of the truth of this equitable maxim [that a moral action should not be judged by it unintended consequences], when we consider i t . . . in abstract, yet when we come to particular cases, the actual consequences which happen to proceed from any action, have a very great effect upon our sentiments concerning its merit or demerit. It is precisely the "particular cases" and "actual consequences" of a novel like Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749) that can best spotlight the diffi­ culties of judging moral actions solely by motives. Squire Allworthy is a well-intentioned, morally obtuse magistrate/patriarch whose moral judgments in the first third of the narrative are well-nigh catastrophic. Martin C. Battestin has shown how the narrator's thesis that "Goodness of Heart, and Openness of Temper" are not enough to do "Business in the World," that "Prudence and Circumspection are necessary even to the best of Men," relates to Fielding's focus on Christian practical wis­ dom, to Prudentia, one of the four cardinal virtues. Allworthy, then, means well but lacks prudence when he is emotionally involved. He judges that Jenny Jones is Tom's mother because Jenny tells him so, not realizing that Jenny is covering up for Tom's real mother Miss Bridget Allworthy. Next he judges Partridge to be Tom's father on the basis of Mrs. Partridge's perjury. (Partridge is condemned by the community, his wife dies, he loses his annuity and his school, is forced to leave the area, and is eventually sent to prison.) Black George is judged falsely for wiring hares because of BlifiTs lying. Allworthy almost sends Molly Seagram to Bridewell prison for bastardy until Tom intercedes. Eventu­ ally Tom himself is exiled from Paradise Hall when Blifil again lies to Allworthy. R. S. Crane grossly understated the case when he wrote of Allworthy that "in spite of his excellent principles, it is hard for us to maintain entire respect" for him, particularly when he could "dispose so precipitously" of Jenny Jones and Partridge. Though the comic tone of the work tends to suspend our moral judgment, we are horrified by the failures of All worthy's moral judgment, particularly on subsequent readings of the novel when we no longer share his ignorance. We could argue that judged purely on motive Allworthy is intrinsically good but

268 that judged solely on the consequences of his judgments he has much to answer for. The problem of Allworthy is the ethical dilemma raised by consequentialism. Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel, two well-known contemporary philosophers, have dealt with the complexities of this dilemma in two essays entitled "Moral Luck." Williams, writing in the Humean tradi­ tion of skepticism, coined the provocatively shocking term "moral luck" to show that no matter how far back "in the "direction of motive and intention" we place "the dispositions of morality," they are "as 'condi­ tioned' as anything else." Williams' fictitious case study is that of a would-be painter named Gauguin who deserts his wife and five children in order to dedicate himself to the vocation of artist. Should Gauguin drown while crossing the English Channel, his decision will be judged as immoral. Should he succeed in his vocation and become a world famous painter, his decision will be judged consequentially. Since his paintings will benefit mankind his decision would be a right one. Thomas Nagel cites the case of Chamberlain signing the Munich agreement. Suppose Hitler had died of a heart attack after occupying the Sudetenland, and then Germany had not overrun Europe exterminating millions? Since Chamberlain's motives and intentions were presumably moral, to prevent war, his action at Munich while betraying the Czechs would "not be the great moral disaster that has made his name a house­ hold word." Nagel defines moral luck as occurring where "a significant aspect of what someone does depends on factors beyond his control, yet we continue to treat him in that respect as an object of moral judgment." He oudines "four ways in which the natural objects of moral assessment are disturbingly subject to luck": One is the phenomenon of constitutive luck—the kind of person you are, where this is not just a question of what you deliberately do, but of your inclinations, capacities, and temperament. Another category is luck in one's circumstances—the kind of problems and situations one faces. . . . [Then there is] luck in how one is deter­ mined by antecedent circumstances, and luck in the way one's actions and projects turn out. "However jewel-like the good will may be in its own right," Nagel con­ tinues, "there is a morally significant difference between rescuing some­ one from a burning building and dropping him from a twelfth-storey window while trying to rescue him." (Were I that someone, needless to say, I or my estate's attorney would take a consequentialist rather than a Kantian point of view stressing intention.) Not himself a consequen­ tialist, Nagel agrees with Williams that there is a genuine "philosophical problem" involved with any attempt to insist on the purity of moral judgments isolated from events: "The view that moral luck is paradoxical is not a mistake, ethical or logical, but a perception of one of the ways

2 6 9 1. The situations alluded to in this and the next sentence belong to Sense and Sensibility. in which the intuitively acceptable conditions of moral judgment threaten to undermine it all." In the context of moral luck so formidably presented by Williams and Nagel how are we to interpret Anne Elliot's event-governed moral judgments? And what does Jane Austen mean us to think? In Pride and Prejudice Charlotte Lucas had claimed that "Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance," and Elizabeth Bennet had replied, "You make me laugh, Charlotte; but it is not sound. You know it is not sound, and that you would never act in this way yourself." (Charlotte does "act in this way" when she marries Mr. Collins. ) All of Austen's heroines in her earlier novels seem clearly to argue for not relying on chance or luck in marital matters. Not only do these heroines judge prudently, but they are rewarded with marriage to like-minded men who are comfortably situated. Their judgments are based on what David A. J. Richards (a twentieth-century Kantian philosopher) defines as a "principle of mutual love requiring that people should not show personal affection and love to others on the basis of arbitrary physical characteristics alone, but rather on the basis of traits of personality and character related to acting on moral principles." Bernard Williams refers to this position as "righteous absurdity." Why do Austen's admiring readers—and I count myself among them—experi­ ence a similar reaction to some of the too prudish moral judgments of the two problem novels Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park? Williams objects to Kantian moral philosophy for its tendency to treat "persons in abstraction from character," for abstracting "moral thought" from "par­ ticular circumstances and particular characteristics of the parties" involved, and for failing to recognize that "love, even love based on 'arbi­ trary physical characteristics,' is something which has enough power and even authority to conflict badly with morality." This conflict between truth and morality poised by Williams is what we surely must feel when Austen marries off Marianne Dashwood to Colonel Brandon before she falls in love with him. 1 We know that Edward Ferrars is too indecisive for Elinor Dashwood and that it is Elinor who should have married Brandon. We resent a plot ending morally at the expense of truth. Barbara Hardy has noted how even in Persuasion the conventions of the romantic novel save Anne Elliot from the "consequences of her choice." She has also noted the emphasis in Persuasion on "human luck or chance" but disapprovingly, as if Austen were using it to resolve the plot at the expense of genuine artistry. As Paul N. Ziedow showed over twenty years ago, however, Austen's emphasis on luck in the novel is intentional and not to be taken lightly. Since Zietiow's 1 9 6 5 essay, the important new insights in ethical philosophy on "moral luck" and conse- quentialism now enable us to see that Jane Austen is struggling with a

270 major dilemma of moral judgment by placing that judgment in the con­ text of moral luck where a providential universe is invisible to the moral agent. How radical this is can be illustrated by a little-known episode involv­ ing Samuel Johnson's friend, the editor of the Adventurer paper, John Hawkesworth. In 1773 Hawkesworth's edition of the Voyages to the South Seas was published, an edition containing the first publication of Captain Cook's first voyage to Tahiti, New Zealand, and Australia. Eagerly awaited by the public, this authorized edition shocked readers not only by its salacious descriptions of Tahitian mores, but by Hawkesworth's "Providential heresy" in his general introduction. When Cook's ship, the Endeavour, risks being sunk on a reef but is saved by the wind subsiding, Hawkesworth refuses to see providence at work but merely a "natural event." For the next five months until his death in November, 1773, Hawkesworth was hounded by reviews and letters in the major periodicals attacking his rejection of particular providence. The episode resurfaces in Boswell's Life of Johnson. On their tour of the Hebrides, Boswell and Johnson are caught in rough seas off the Isle of Skye. Johnson is below deck while Boswell is above. Terrified, Boswell claims to have remembered Hawkesworth's objection against a particu­ lar providence and the "arguments of those who maintain that it is in vain to hope that the petitions of the individual, or even of congrega­ tions, can have any influence with the Deity. " Boswell regains his equi­ librium, however, when he remembers "Dr. Ogden's excellent doctrine on the efficacy of intercession." Providence has been traditionally a tacit frame for mariners' discourse as evidenced by Robinson Crusoe, Boswell, or by Cowper's "The Cast­ away" illustrating religious despair. It should have come as a bit of a shock to Jane Austen's readers, then, when Captain Wentworth, just before his first proposal, is described as follows: Captain Wentworth had no fortune. He had been lucky in his pro­ fession, but spending freely, what had come freely, had realized nothing. But, he was confident that he should soon be rich;—full of life and ardour, he knew that he should soon have a ship, and soon be on a station that would lead to every thing he wanted. He had always been lucky; he knew he should be so still. This description has an insouciant ring to it, capturing perhaps the atti­ tude of Jane Austen's own two brothers who were naval officers con­ fronted with the random nature of naval warfare and of storms at sea. Even Lady Russell, who earlier had been so cautious, tries to persuade Anne to consider the attentions of Mr. Elliot, but first explains that she is "no match-maker . . . being much too well aware of the uncertainty of all human events and calculations." "Uncertainty" indeed! Had Lady Russell genuinely recognized that many moral actions involve "judg-

271 ment under uncertainty," that risk and moral luck are especially inher­ ent in match-making, she would not have discouraged Anne from marrying Wentworth. Anne suffers throughout Persuasion for her earlier moral failure to take risks for love. Admiral and Mrs. Croft did take such risks. When the Crofts speculate about Wentworth proposing to one of the Miss Musgroves, the Admiral exclaims, "If it were war, now, he would have settled it long ago.—We sailors, Miss Elliot, cannot afford to make long courtships in time of war. How many days was it, my dear, between the first time of my seeing you, and our sitting down together in our lodgings at North Yarmouth?" Mrs. Croft replies, "We had better not talk about it, my dear, . . . for if Miss Elliot were to hear how soon we came to an understanding, she would never be persuaded that we could be happy together. I had known you by character, however, long before." A long engagement would clearly not have been an alternative action for Anne Elliot and Wentworth, and the Crofts' discussion is extremely painful for Anne. Mrs. Croft later repeats her objection to long engagements to Mrs. Musgrove while Anne and Wentworth overhear: "I would rather have young people settle on a small income at once, and have to struggle with a few difficulties together, than be involved in a long engagement." And what of Wentworth's own sense of providence, divine interces­ sion, or moral luck when at sea? When Admiral Croft and Wentworth reminisce—Anne and the Musgroves are listening—Wentworth jests about the admiralty "now and then . . . sending a few hundred men to sea, in a ship not fit to be employed" because they "have a great many to provide for; and among the thousands that may just as well go to the bottom as not, it is impossible for them to distinguish the very set who may be least missed." The Admiral counters twice with "Lucky fellow," reminding Wentworth that there were at least "twenty better men" who had applied for command of the Asp. "I felt my luck, admiral," replies Wentworth. The emphasis on moral luck continues with Wentworth never having "two days of foul weather all the time he was at sea," having "the good luck" then to capture a French frigate, and, finally, as "another instance of luck," bringing his vessel into Plymouth just before a four-day gale which would have almost certainly sent it to the bottom: "Four-and-twenty hours later, and I should only have been a gallant Captain Wentworth, in a small paragraph at one corner of the newspa­ pers." No wonder that Anne shudders to herself. The supreme irony of all this occurs when Anne learns that Captain Benwick was engaged to Captain Harville's sister, that he had been wait­ ing two years for a promotion and fortune before marrying, only to dis­ cover tragically that his fiancée had died the previous summer while he was at sea. Suppose in another scenario that Anne had insisted on a pru­ dent long engagement, that Wentworth had returned to sea to seek his fortune, and that Anne had died! At numerous places in the narrative

272 Anne is reminded of moral luck: to try to avoid in marriage "the uncer­ tainty of all human events and calculations" is to avoid living itself. Clearly Jane Austen is struggling in Persuasion with the problem of moral judgment under uncertainty. I believe that she is also reconsid­ ering the ethical implications of her earlier plots which too readily reward prudential moral judgments with fortunate resolutions. Autho­ rial ambivalence seems to me to be unmistakably articulated in the first three sentences of the final chapter of the novel: Who can be in doubt of what followed? When any two young peo­ ple take it into their heads to marry, they are pretty sure by persever­ ance to carry their point, be they ever so poor, or ever so imprudent, or ever so little likely to be necessary to each other's ultimate comfort. This may be bad morality to conclude with, but I believe it to be truth, [italics mine] Had Anne and Wentworth married eight years sooner, they would have been poor, imprudent,—and very much in love. All the weight of the narrative—the Crofts, Captain and Mrs. Harville, Captain Benwick and his deceased fiancée—argues in favor of Anne and Wentworth marrying earlier. Given a choice between prudential morality and the truth of love, Persuasion argues for love. Alasdair Maclntyre has called Jane Austen "the last great representa­ tive of the classical tradition of the virtues." By doing so he joins other Austenites, notably Wayne Booth, Lionel Trilling, and Martin Price, in recognizing the importance of moral judgment in Austen's works, but he has not had the benefit of Mary Poovey's more recent radical reading of Brilliantly applying feminist theory and Marxist assumptions to Per­ suasion, Poovey finds at the heart of the novel an "epistemological rela­ tivism," a "mortal vertigo," from which it follows that "ethical judgment will be based at least initially on appearances and that all moral evalua­ tion will be at least implicitly subjective": "Anne's intuitions are meant to be morally responsible and hence authoritative." Poovey finds that "the centralizing narrative authority taken for granted in the earlier nov­ els has almost completely disappeared from Persuasion" so that the "sub­ jectivity of the heroine" dominates "at nearly every level." Poovey clearly recognizes that the truly radical nature of Persuasion is in its ethical phi­ losophy. Where I disagree strongly with Poovey is in her linking this supposed "epistemological relativity" with a supposed "state of total collapse" of a "social and ethical hierarchy superintended by the landed gentry" as symbolized by the "fiscal and moral bankruptcy of Sir Walter Elliot." Such a reading gives Sir Walter far more social significance than Jane Austen intended. Such interpretations—and they are numerous—have been thoroughly demolished by the historian David Spring whose essay

273 "Interpreters of Jane Austen's Social World" is surely one of the most significant contributions to Austen scholarship in the last twenty years. What Spring shows is that "landed society" was not losing power in the Regency period, that the use of the word "bourgeois" to apply to Austen's world is woefully inadequate, and that Sir Walter's renting out his coun­ try house while living elsewhere more cheaply "was an ancient expedi­ ent for debt-ridden landowners" and not "a portent of the imminent downfall of landed society." Without denying the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, or Jane Austen's interest in the meritocracy of the British Navy, Spring reminds us what we knew all along from our reading of Trollope's fiction, our viewing of nineteenth-century English country houses, and our reading of Winston Churchill biographies: English landed society continued to be enormously powerful. (In fact, in a published version of his 1981 Tawney Memorial Lecture, David Spring says that it was not until after 1870 that an "erosion of landed society" gathered force and that only after World War I was the "English aristocracy's sense of purpose" for the first time "seriously shaken.") In response to Frederic Jameson's admirable exhortation in The Political Unconscious (1981) always to historicize, and in response to radical political interpretations of Persuasion by literary critics, David Spring would seem to be replying, "Fine, but you have not historicized enough." The crisis in Persuasion, I believe, is not a socio-economical- political crisis, but a moral one. In all fairness to Poovey, however, I must grant that she recognizes Jane Austen's essential conservatism that gives "individual feeling moral authority" and places it in a private sphere "qualitatively different from the public spheres" (by Marxist analysis corrupt). Poovey also argues that only in this private sphere can "the premises and promises of romantic love," "one of the fundamental myths of bourgeois society," be perpetu­ ated. The problem with this thesis is that, as Hannah Arendt, Michael Walzer, and numerous other political theorists have observed, the pri­ vate sphere has been shown again and again to be the last bastion of moral value and personal integrity against the totalitarian (authoritarian) pressures of regimes of both the left and the right. A commitment to the private sphere or to romantic love, particularly when it is earned as it is in Persuasion, can be moral. Precisely because Persuasion places a heavy burden on individual choice, on personal judgment by an agent when confronted with the complexities of consequentialism and the context of moral luck, it has become my favorite Jane Austen novel. In this work I also find Austen's position to be essentially liberal and acutely prescient by showing the enormous burden that the modern Western world places on individual moral choice. In Persuasion Jane Austen has transcended the limitations of a poten­ tially too-calculating, closed system of communitarian morality present in her earlier novels, where male suitors are either too obviously

274 ROBERT HOPKINS immoral or too priggishly moral. (Mr. Elliot is never a real threat to Anne as a suitor in Persuasion.) Captain Wentworth, in contrast to such clerical suitors in Austen's other novels as Henry Tilney or Edmund Bertram, 2 presents a thoroughly admirable secular character. His mar­ riage to Anne seems based less on moral calculus and more on the mys­ terious biology of desire, love, and psychological compatibility. Courtship becomes the arena in which choices may not be obviously right or wrong, good or bad, until proved out consequentially in a con­ text of moral luck. This is not to say that any choice is equally plausible because of a context of "epistemological relativism," but rather that each individual cannot fall back on an external checklist or on an authoritar­ ian moral adviser to evade personal choice. The burden of choice henceforth is on the self and on character. Finding this burden of choice endemic to a "classic liberal theory" rooted in an "ontology of individual freedom," Charles Fried argues that such theory has "trouble" accounting for "love and friendship" while offering a "stringent code of moral constraint and of obligation": The theory of classical liberalism locates man's nobility and the source of his moral worth in his capacity of judgment (his rational­ ity) and his capacity to conform his conduct to the deliverances of that judgment (his freedom). This power of judgment and choice distinguishes all men, and entitles all men to our equal respect. This definition seems to me to apply perfectly to Anne Elliot in Persua­ sion. (No "righteous absurdity" here!) "If I was wrong in yielding to per­ suasion once, remember that it was to persuasion exerted on the side of safety, not of risk," explains Anne to Wentworth. By the end of the novel she is willing to opt for risk. Although Austen's last known surviving letter referring to her immi­ nent death as "the appointment of God, however secondary causes may have operated" affirms her Christian courage and belief in a particular providence, it reveals also her awareness of an alternative view suggested by "secondary causes." Is it possible that while writing Persuasion, her health already deteriorating from the fatal effects of Addison's Disease, Jane Austen is reconsidering her earlier plot resolutions and projecting a deep sense of anxiety about a universe governed providentially (what ought to be) versus a universe governed by moral luck (what is)? Such a very human anxiety throws more of an existential choice back onto the individual. Like it or not, Jane Austen's men and women—especially women—must make moral judgments on their own and be prepared— as Anne Elliot is admirably willing to do even when she is wrong the first time—to live with the consequences of those judgments. Above all, not to judge, or to let others judge for you, is to fail in the conduct of life. 2. From Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park.

275 ANN W. ASTELL Anne Elliot's Education: The Learning of Romance in Persuasion t Most readers will agree with Richard Simpson (Review), C. S. Lewis, ("A Note"), Karl Kroeber (Styles), D. D. Devlin (]ane Austen) and oth­ ers that the Austen literary corpus reveals an overriding concern with the educational process in character formation—a process which, in the case of most of Austen's heroines, leads through love from self-deception to self-knowledge. Critics, however, have always had difficulty in approaching Austen's Persuasion from a pedagogical perspective. As Syl­ via Sieferman recently observed, they usually argue that Anne Elliot's education has been completed before the novel begins; that she main­ tains a clear-sighted, morally elevated, central but static position throughout, while Captain Wentworth's gradual learning of love and truth defines the forward movement of the plot. In him the reader sees the educational process; in her, only the product. This interpretation of the novel is, it seems to me, unsatisfactory for a variety of reasons. First of all, it identifies the educational process exclusively with what C. S. Lewis calls the "pattern of undeception" without making provision for a broader understanding of learning. Sec­ ondly, it assumes that the process of education ceases, in Austen's understanding, after a person has achieved a fundamental self-knowl­ edge. Third, it fails to take into account the explicit and repeated refer­ ences in Persuasion itself to Anne's on-going self-education. Fourth, it provides an aesthetic model of interpretation that is frankly at variance with our reading experience of the novel. It is Anne's mental processes, her perceptions, actions, and modulations of feeling—not Went­ worth's—that absorb our attention. As John Wiltshire observes, "The process of [Wentworth's] unblinding is so lightly charted that it is plain that Jane Austen is not deeply interested in it." Persuasion cannot, I think, be said to be about Wentworth's education when it is so obviously Anne's story. The narrator defines the object of Anne's instruction in the fourth chapter: "She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older—the natural sequence of an unnatural beginning." Critics, it seems to me, have been too quick to assign Anne's learning of romance exclusively to the past—in particular, to her eight years of separation from Wentworth—when her romantic experi­ ence so clearly belongs to the present action of the novel which unfolds t Ann W. Astell, "Anne Elliot's Education: The Learning of Romance in Persuasion," Renas­ cence 40 (1987): 2-14. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. The author's notes have been deleted.

276 in time as the "natural sequence" of prior events. Anne's knowledge of romance does not stop short with a clear cognition of what might or could or should have been; it becomes an experiential knowledge, medi­ ated through the emotions, which tests her moral maturity, her psychic stamina, to the utmost. Anne's feelings for Wentworth are not new; but the ethical context in which she must deal with them is. The intense interiority of the novel, which draws us into the world of Anne's think­ ing, feeling, and willing, invites us to participate in a learning of romance that is colored by the passions without being blinded by them, that is both intellectually and emotionally true, and that is increasingly independent of surrounding circumstance. In the end Anne's happiness depends less on Wentworth's loving her than on her loving him, freely, unconditionally, and eternally. Indeed, there is something silently Augustinian in Austen's transformation of a youthful romance, which is simply defined by strong, mutual attraction, into a mature romance which derives its spiritual splendor from selfless intentionality, and the ordering power of a directed will. If the object of Anne's education is romance, then it must also be said that the pedagogical process involved in her instruction is a Romantic one. The Romantic features of the novel—its celebration of nature, its revolutionary impulse, its affirmation of emotion, its focus on the indi­ vidual, its ranging homelessness, its poignant emphasis on remem­ brance—have often been noted (see Wiesenfarth, Spence), but the relationship between Romantic theories of composition and Anne's own method of self-education has not been sufficiently explored. Persuasion presents a series of incidents, each of which trigger a strong emotional response in Anne, who first withdraws to recollect herself, testing her perception of the present against her memory of the past, and then exerts herself to virtuous action, drawing on the strength of those same emo­ tions. As Wiltshire has said, "Her goal, and the goal of the novel, is a harmonizing of her agitation that shall involve no giving in, no compro­ mise, no suppression of one part of the personality by another." The gradual process of Anne's psychic integration in Persuasion parallels the process William Wordsworth describes in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads: our continued influxes of feeling are modified and directed by our thoughts, which are indeed the representatives of all our past feel­ ings; and, as by contemplating the relation of these general repre­ sentatives to each other we discover what is really important to men, so, by the repetition and continuance of this act, our feelings will be connected with important subjects. The Romantic view of the educational process, then, as outlined by Wordsworth and imitated by Austen, involves the conversion of essen­ tially passive and spontaneous reactions to the world of sensory experi­ ence—that is, our "continued influxes of feeling"—into freely-willed

277 and energetic responses—that is, the purposeful connection of our feel­ ings with important subjects—through the habitual exercise of the intel­ lect in the close examination, modification, and direction of our emotions. The feelings, then, are an essential factor in the educational process—not only because, properly understood, they enable one to dis­ cover what is essential to human nature, "what is really important to men," what is timeless and universal in the individual life-experience; but also because the emotions impel one to act. As Wordsworth notes in his 1815 "Essay Supplementary to the Preface," "To be moved . . . by a passion is to be excited, often to external, but always to internal, effort; whether for the continuance and strengthening of the passion, or for its suppression." If Wordsworth's discussion of the effect of the passions on poet and reader alike looks forward to Thomas de Quincey's "Literature of power," it also looks backward to Lockean treatments in the eighteenth century. As Devlin has shown, John Locke clearly understood the end of education to be the acquiring of virtues, an attainment dependent both on the clear, rational discernment of right and wrong, and on the ability to act in accord with that recognition. Locke realized that, because the passions can impair our reasoning powers and deprive us of inner freedom, the art of controlling the emotions is central to the educational enterprise. In On the Conduct of the Understanding Locke writes: When the fancy is bound by passion, I know no way to set the mind free and at liberty to prosecute what thoughts the man would make choice of, but to allay the present passion, or counterbalance it with another; which is an art to be got by study and acquaintance with the passions. In Some Thoughts on Education (1693) Locke urges the early practice of the agere contra 1 as a way of achieving "the principle of all virtue and excellency" which "lies in a power of denying ourselves the satisfaction of our own desires where reason does not authorize them." In the same treatise Locke affirms that "the great principle of all virtue and worth" consists in the mind's ability to "endure hardships" and "purely follow what reason directs as best, though the appetite lean the other way." This is clearly a life-long educational objective that can only be learned by being practiced. If Locke's discussion of vigorous and virtuous resolve as a counterforce to emotional impulse seems far-removed from Austen's Persuasion, one only needs to recall how Anne Elliot's "strong sense of duty" defines her peculiar heroism, and determines her actions from beginning to end. When the nineteen-year-old Anne submits to Lady Russell, a woman 1. Literally, "to act against." Locke is recommending acting against the grain, against one's immediate desires [Editor].

278 who has taken "the place of a parent" for her, she follows her conscience and yields "to duty," renouncing her desire to marry Wentworth. She considers herself to be "consulting his good, even more than her own," and this conviction empowers her to give him up at a time when she feels exceedingly drawn to him. When Wentworth returns after years of separation, Anne's long-dormant feelings of attraction for him are aroused with all their former intensity; at the same time, however, her breaking of their engagement has changed their relationship in such a way that those feelings have virtually no outlet, no direct and immediate means of outward expression. Anne and Wentworth are "repeatedly in the same circle" but they can allow themselves "no intercourse but what the commonest civility" requires. "Once so much to each other" they are "nothing" now, existing in "perpetual estrangement." Before Anne lived apart from Wentworth without him; his return forces her to endure an existential separation from him in his physical presence. The same "strong sense of duty" which moved Anne to break their engagement initially now challenges her to allow Wentworth to exercise the freedom she has given him. She understands that he wishes "to avoid seeing her"; that he is "actually looking around, ready to fall in love" with anyone else but her. She silently witnesses him "accepting the attentions" of both the Musgrove girls, and sees his intimacy with Louisa advance to such a point that others consider him "an engaged man." The accident at Lyme calls upon Anne in a dramatic way to fulfill "the office of a friend" toward the young woman who is her chief rival for Wentworth's affection, and we are told that "she would have attended on Louisa with a zeal above the common claims of regard, for his sake," directing the strength of her love for Wentworth into the charitable ser­ vice of another. Event after event stirs painful emotions with which Anne must deal within an objective frame of conduct dictated by social norms and her own fine conscience. Anne's heroic struggle to master her own emotions, to deal with what Wordsworth calls "continued influxes of feeling," defines her program of self-education. Her success is measured in two ways: first of all, by her unfailing usefulness to others in the performance of duty; secondly, by her free decision to bind her affection finally and irrevocably to Wentworth, whether or not he returns her love, whether or not she receives any other proposal of marriage. If Anne's resolute sublimation of emotion in socially consequent action recalls Locke, her affirmation of a single, radical affection as the well-spring of that virtuous behavior recalls Wordsworth who maintains that poetry, imitating life, finds its first origin in "the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions." Indeed, Austen's summary phrase—"the resolution of a collected mind"—unites the polar focuses of Locke and Wordsworth in a description of the per­ sonal integrity Anne strives to attain through a rigorous and uncompro­ mising self-education.

279 Austen emphasizes Anne's need to educate herself by pointing out the inadequacy of the would-be mentor figures who surround her. Lady Elliot, long dead, is only a shadowy presence in the novel. Sir Walter, foolish, vain, and indifferent to Anne, is morally incapable of offering his daughter guidance. Lady Russell is good, well-mannered, well- intended, and genuinely attached to Anne. She has, however, "preju­ dices on the side of ancestry" and a "value for rank and consequence" which tend to blind her to the faults of the gentry. She is always quick to find reasons to approve her own liking, even if, as in advocating the Elliots' move to Bath, she has to "oppose her dear Anne's known wishes." When Lady Russell exerted her influence over Anne, urging her to break off her engagement with young Wentworth, she did so because, in her opinion, he "had nothing but himself to recommend him, and no hopes of attaining affluence." Unlike Anne, Lady Russell finds "nothing suspicious or inconsistent, nothing to require more motives than appeared" in William Elliot's renewed cordiality; indeed, she delights in the prospect of Anne's assuming her mother's position in Kellynch Hall as the heir's wife. Anne's disapproval of her "overanxious caution which seems to insult exertion and distrust Providence" suggests that Lady Russell's errors in judgment—both in opposing Wentworth's suit and in favoring Elliot's—stem from a way of thinking that is too naturalistic and worldly, too little founded on the faith in God which, according to Locke, must be the very basis of education. The reference to trust in Providence, in a literary context saturated with the imagery of flowering and bloom, recalls the Sermon on the Mount and the scrip­ tural discourse on the lilies of the field, thus providing an implicit counter-text to Lady Russell's pattern of counsel. Anne's mother, "an excellent woman, sensible and amiable," had turned in her final illness to Lady Russell, hoping that her friend would support and maintain "the good principles and instruction which she had been anxiously giving her daughters." Anne was only fourteen when her mother died, but her sensitive, docile nature must have been partic­ ularly receptive to her mother's early influence, for Lady Russell fancies "the mother to revive again" in her. The assimilation between mother and daughter—which might have gained fictive expression in their warm intimacy, shared principles, and parallel judgments—becomes a fusion in Austen's novel. We do not see Anne's mother; we only see Anne—the daughter who bears her name, and whose "elegance of mind and sweetness of character" reflects her mother's own "superior char­ acter. " As D. D. Devlin has pointed out, Austen's handling of the mentor figure clearly demonstrates the relation of her individual talent to the tradition of the eighteenth century novel. According to Devlin, how­ ever, Anne Elliot functions directly as a mentor for Captain Wentworth, and indirectly as the reader's mentor, while she herself has nothing to

280 learn. What Devlin and other critics have failed to recognize is that Anne only instructs others in the process of instructing herself. The world of appearances, which exerts so great an influence in Persuasion on Anne's tender sensibility, is continually tested by her in her search for truth, a search which leads her from the present into the past to discover what is real and unchanging, the only fit foundation for futu­ rity. If Anne Elliot has suffered, and continues to suffer, without becom­ ing embittered, it is because she has found a way to supply the need for a mentor within her own consciousness. Throughout the novel Anne is depicted as a composite figure who is simultaneously mother and child, teacher and learner, and who carries on the dialogic, didactic discourse within her own mind. When Anne is called upon to advise others, she only teaches lessons she is learning herself. At Uppercross, for instance, she finds herself "being treated with too much confidence by all parties." After listening to all the complaints, she can only "soften every grievance, and excuse each to the other," giving "hints of the forebearance necessary between such near neighbors." Anne herself exercises "perseverance in patience, and forced cheerfulness" in Mary's company. Her "pleasure" at the hap­ piness of the Musgroves over their daughters' musical performance over­ rides her own feelings of "mortification" at the keyboard. Her conduct consistently exemplifies the forebearance she urges others to practice. That, however, is an achievement that involves considerable self-sac­ rifice on Anne's part. When she arrives at Uppercross she tells herself "that another lesson, in the art of knowing our own nothingness beyond our own circle, was become necessary for her." When she is surprised by the Musgroves' lack of interest in the Elliots' affairs, she resolves "to avoid such self-delusion in future" and put aside any notions of her own importance. Indeed, she takes it as her aim to detach herself from Kel­ lynch Hall, and "clothe her imagination, her memory, and all her ideas in as much of Uppercross as possible." If Anne masters this lesson, it is because she submits to the discipline of her own sense for what is fitting. At Lyme Anne converses with Captain Benwick, a man afflicted by his fiancee's recent death. Once again the narrative emphasizes that Anne identifies with the one she instructs. She tells herself that his heart is not "more sorrowing" than hers; she compares his loss and "blighted" prospects with her own. After preaching "patience and resignation" to him, she admits to herself the fear that she has been "eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination." She only tells Benwick what she must tell herself over and over again as she strug­ gles to maintain an inner equilibrium. Anne's conversation with Benwick reveals that she herself attaches a great importance to books as a means of self-education. She has cer­ tainly read the "works of our best moralists, " the letters, and the memoirs she recommends to Benwick as a way of fortifying her own mind "by

281 the highest precepts, and the strongest examples of moral and religious endurances." On the other hand, she is clearly familiar with the poetry Benwick discusses and recites, including "all the tenderest songs . . . and all the impassioned descriptions of hopeless agony. " Anne's sophisti­ cated understanding of the psychology of reading affirms the value of the lyrical expression of sentiment as a way to grow in self-knowledge and understanding for others. At the same time, however, she clearly understands the dangers it entails. She urges Benwick to include in his daily study "a larger allowance of prose," and cautions him against read­ ing too much poetry, observing that the "strong feelings" which make a person capable of really appreciating poetry also expose him to poetry's dangers, and require him in prudence "to taste it but sparingly. " Anne's counsel reveals much about her own reaction to poetry, her own need to practice temperance. The reader recalls that Anne "occu­ pied her mind" with snatches of poetry during the walk to Winthrop— an occupation which increased her susceptibility to the influence of autumn at a time when Wentworth's attentions to Louisa Musgrove were renewing her own painful sense of loss. Indeed, she endeavored at that time to avoid overhearing them by reciting to herself tender autum­ nal sonnets "fraught with . . . the images of youth, and hope, and spring, all gone together. " The advice Anne gives to Benwick indicates that she regulates her own emotional response to poetry, first of all, by limiting her reading of it, and secondly, by submitting the strong emotions aroused by poetry to the order of reason reflected in expository writing on moral and religious themes. Anne, in short, is the mature reader of poetry that Wordsworth celebrates in his 1815 "Essay Supplementary to the Preface" of Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth begins by affirming that The appropriate business of poetry, . . . her appropriate employ­ ment, her privilege and her duty, is to treat of things not as they are, but as they appear; not as they exist in themselves, but as they seem to exist to the senses, and to the passions. He goes on to admit that the poetic "world of delusion" necessarily entails dangers for the young and inexperienced, whose feelings are flammable and "little disciplined by the understanding. " After differenti­ ating various classes of readers by age and interest, Wordsworth describes the one group whose judgment can be trusted in the criticism of poetry: "those and those only who, never having suffered their youthful love of poetry to remit much of its force, have applied . . . the best power of their understanding" to a study of poetry's laws within a broader literary context. Such readers possess "a mind at once poetical and philosophi­ cal," and "a natural sensibility that has been tutored into correctness without losing anything of its quickness." Like Anne Elliot they have the "strong feelings" that respond to poetry's passionate appeal; at the

282 same time, they possess the mental discipline to examine those same emotions, and the cause of their arousal, within a larger frame of refer­ ence. Like her, they are both young and old; they are able to guide others because they first instruct themselves. Anne's way of dealing with the passions stirred by poetry parallels her method of mastering the emotions aroused by life. Indeed, her practice conforms to the stages outlined in Wordsworth's theoretical discussion of lyrical composition. Again and again she withdraws and struggles to recollect in tranquillity the powerful feelings which agitate her. She thinks about what she feels—and finds enough calm in that contempla­ tion to mobilize the inner strength needed to act, to re-engage the world, to give herself in the performance of her duties. The "sublimation of grief merges with the fulfillment of her love and makes it possible for Wentworth, in turn, to find himself in love with her. Austen consistently describes Anne's struggle with her emotions as an educational process that is triggered by the events she experiences. Those events belong to a narrative order that is often so colored by Anne's emotional perception of things that the ordinary distinction between first and third person narrators no longer applies. The impres­ sionistic, fragmentary account of the Musgroves' discussion of Went­ worth, for instance, is clearly an instance of free indirect discourse: To hear them talking so much of Captain Wentworth, repeating his name so often, puzzling over past years, and at last ascertaining that it might, that it probably would, turn out to be the very same Captain Wentworth whom they recollected meeting, once or twice, after their coming back from Clifton;—a very fine young man; but they could not say whether it was seven or eight years ago,—was a new sort of trial to Anne's nerves. The "so much" and "so often," and the selection of details reflects Anne's inner experience of the talk that evening. She is clearly agitated, and she responds to her own emotional turmoil with the resolution to "teach herself to be insensible." As an inhabitant of Uppercross, Anne feels she cannot allow her personal distress to mar the "comfort" of the Musgroves, who are grateful to Wentworth, and eager to meet him. Anne's own first meeting with Wentworth after years of separation is narrated in a fragmented style that suggests the rush of "a thousand feel­ ings." When he leaves she begins "to reason with herself, and tries to be feeling less"—only to discover "that to retentive feelings eight years may be little more than nothing. " She asks herself about Wentworth's senti­ ments, and then hates herself "for the folly which asked the question." After seeing him she acknowledges to herself that she has definitely seen "the same Frederick Wentworth"—whether or not he sees the same, or an altered, Anne. The dialogue she carries on within herself affirms that

283 her present feelings match her remembered ones, and she knows that she still loves him. The first kindness Wentworth shows to Anne—in carrying off little Walter, who had bound himself to her back and neck—produces "such a confusion of varying, but very painful agitation" in Anne that she is forced to leave the room. She is "ashamed of herself," honestly admits her own weakness, and grants herself the "long application of solitude and reflection" which is necessary for her recovery. During the walk to Winthrop Anne inadvertently overhears a conver­ sation between Wentworth and Louisa that reveals his opinion of her character. Once again she experiences "extreme agitation." As long as her emotions hold her "fixed," she cannot move; she takes the time she needs to recover. Later that same day, when her fatigue becomes appar­ ent to Wentworth and he assists her into the Crofts' carriage, Anne is so distracted by this unexpected kindness that she does not even hear what the Crofts are saying. Through the use of free indirect discourse Austen lets us overhear Anne as she contemplates the act and its significance, and reflects on her own emotions "compounded of pleasure and pain." Anne's affections increase, rather than limit, her powers of percep­ tion, even as her memories give her insight into present happenings. "From her knowledge of [Wentworth's] mind" Anne feels assured that he cannot speak about "former times" without recalling their engage­ ment. She dares to judge from her "observations" based on "memory and experience" that Wentworth is not really in love with either of the Musgrove daughters, nor they with him. Because she loves (and there­ fore knows) Wentworth, she can interpret the "momentary expression" on his face, and know the meaning of his "contemptuous glance." Because she connects the "little circumstance" of the carriage ride with "all that had gone before," she is suddenly able to understand that Went­ worth still feels for her without being able to forgive her. Her own suffer­ ing consistently increases her empathy for others, her insight into their character. Nor do Anne's painful emotions keep her from virtuous action; they rather strengthen her to exert herself. Like her mother, whose unhappi- ness in marriage led her to devote herself to "her duties, her friends, and her children," Anne directs the energy of her passions into useful deeds. Sad about leaving Kellynch Hall, and dreading the move to Bath, Anne goes to Uppercross to help Mary, feeling "glad to have anything marked out as a duty." Distressed at Wentworth's return, she devotes herself to little Charles, knowing herself "to be of first utility to the child." When dancing is proposed at the Musgroves' party, Anne offers her services at the keyboard. Her eyes fill with tears as she plays, but she is "extremely glad to be employed." She accepts the invitation to go on the walk "as she might be useful" in lessening Mary's interference in the plans of the

284 Musgrove girls. At Lyme she keeps Benwick company, and thus per­ forms "a good deed." Her greatest service there, of course, is the leader­ ship she provides when Louisa injures herself severely in her jump from the stiles. There is, as Wentworth says, "no one so proper, so capable as Anne." During the last days of Anne's stay at Uppercross she has "the satisfaction of knowing herself extremely useful there" as a companion, counsellor, and practical assistant to the Musgroves. Anne's ability to compose her emotions, and channel their forceful flow into service, has two results. First of all, it provides a series of lessons which teach Anne her own value. She who had felt herself "rejected as no good at all" comes to know herself as someone "extremely useful." The gratitude of Benwick and the Musgroves, and Wentworth's words of praise at Lyme, awaken in her "a second spring of youth and beauty." Secondly, Anne's resourcefulness and kindness teach others her true worth. Wentworth sees her nursing little Charles and caring for Louisa, and learns to appreciate her anew. Benwick praises her "ele­ gance, sweetness, beauty." William Elliot is delighted by her visits to her old schoolfellow, and considers her "a model of female excellence. " While Anne disciplines her feelings and directs their energy into vir­ tuous action, she never denies them. She remains true to herself, and that truth becomes a standard by which she assesses the character of others. She instinctively distrusts William Elliot, in particular, because he is "not open," because he never has a "burst of feeling" which leads him to reveal his true sentiments. He is, she thinks, "too generally agree­ able," too polished in his manner, too skilled in the art of pleasing every­ one. His pliability suggests a lack of principle. Anne realizes from pass­ ing remarks that he has been, and perhaps still is, "careless on all serious matters," including religious obligations. She notes that Elliot's "value for rank and connexion"—which leads him, like her father, to pay court to the Dalrymples—is greater than hers. Finally, when she compares Elliot with Wentworth, she discovers that she continues to prize "the frank, the open-hearted, the eager character beyond all others." Her early impressions inform her present ones, even as her own principles test those of others. Anne's "continued influxes of feeling" at Bath serve to teach her about her own unchanging sentiments. Agitated by the news of Louisa Mus­ grove's engagement to Captain Benwick, she withdraws to her room in an attempt "to comprehend it." She discovers that she is "ashamed to investigate" her feelings because they are "too much like joy, senseless joy. " Her chance meeting with Wentworth at Molland's produces "agi­ tation, pain, pleasure, a something between delight and misery." She confesses to herself that she is not yet "wise and reasonable" for she cannot "be quite herself without knowing his sentiments toward her. She must continue to educate herself. The conversation with Went­ worth at the concert, which reveals so much to her, leaves her "in need

285 of a little interval for recollection." She recalls his every word, his tone, his look, and her observations lead her to believe that he "must love her." In the final movement of Persuasion Anne becomes reconciled to herself. Through the repeated contemplation of her own emotions she learns that she has always loved Wentworth, and becomes convinced that she always will: be the conclusion of the present suspense good or bad, her affection would be his forever. Their union, she believed, could not divide her more from other men, than their final separation. The inner peace which attends this "yes" to her own unconditional love for Wentworth marks an atmospheric change in Anne's soul which sym­ bolically affects the world around her: "It was almost enough to spread purification and perfume all the way." At this point in the narrative, before Wentworth declares his love, Anne discovers the meaning of her life—past, present, and future—in her unchanging love for him—a love that has strengthened her and empowered her endurance. As she tells Captain Harville, a woman's privilege consists in "loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone." If the ending of Persuasion is aestheti­ cally satisfying, even haunting (and it is), that is because it is a story of love without end, a love that has been tested and become increasingly independent of outward circumstance—be it physical separation, the passage of time, the interference of others, or the outbreak of a Napole­ onic War. Even the marriage of Anne and Wentworth is secondary to the achievement of Anne's inner freedom to love, "the harmonizing of her agitation." Their mature, mutual "recollection in tranquillity" of their youthful love for one another mirrors Anne's independent achievement, and leaves them both "more equal to act, more justified in acting." Indeed, their marriage becomes an outward sign, a symbol, of the integ­ rity Anne has achieved within herself. Anne, like Mrs. Smith, possesses an "elasticity of mind" which disposes her "to be comforted," to turn "from evil to good," to find "employment which [carries] her out of herself." Austen's novel shows that this spiritual capacity, which is simultaneously a gift "from Nature alone" and "the choicest gift of Heaven," is also a talent to be developed, a task to be undertaken will­ fully and freely. Because Anne dares to let herself be educated by life with all its tempests and trials, and does not shrink from the challenge posed by her own passionate reactions to persons and events, she suc­ ceeds in learning a romance that is all the more wonderful because it represents an ordered synthesis, an integration of elements initially cha­ otic and potentially destructive. Persuasion moves us to believe that such transcendent lessons can be learned—at least by minds which possess an elasticity comparable to Anne's own.

286 Persuasion: The "Unfeudal Tone of the Present Day" t Persuasion has always signified more than what it singly comprises: its two slender volumes have been made to bear the imprint of Austen's entire career. Whereas Pride and Prejudice and Emma can be and most often are discussed without reference to Austen's other works, Persuasion is above all else the last novel, the apparent conclusion that determines the shape of everything that has come before. The critical tradition has designated Persuasion the "autumnal" novel, and this adjective brings with it a parcel of value-laden and often quite pedestrian assumptions about both the course of Austen's career and the course of literary history in general. Wistful and romantically unfulfilled in the twilight of her life, so the argument goes, the author grows tenderer on romantic sub­ jects she had disparaged in the confidence and severity of her youth; with her own opening out onto a new world of emotion, eighteenth- century "objectivity" yields to nineteenth-century "subjectivity"; the assured, not to say simple-minded, gives way to the ambiguous and complex. The underlying assumption that Anne's autumn and Austen's are complementary—in other words, that Persuasion, like the other nov­ els, indeed like all novels by women, is the author's own love story, composed with little or no aesthetic distance—is of course teeming with fallacies, not the least glaring of which in this particular case are those which result from the imposition of specious teleology. Persuasion will not look so unequivocally like Austen's last and most mature word about love and the changing world before death stopped her lips if we recollect that Sanditon, which recapitulates the raucous energy and renews the literary debates characteristic of Austen's earliest work, followed so closely on its heels. Austen, unlike her latter-day readers, did not have the benefit of knowing that her impending death would be imparting a gently resigned, autumnal melancholy to all her observations. Many prominent, yet seldom-discussed, elements of Persuasion call the youth­ ful Sense and Sensibility to mind—the apparently unfeeling allusion to Mrs. Musgrove's "fat sighings," the conventionalized villainy of William Elliot and the conspicuously artificial means of disclosing it, the overt- ness of its sarcasms at the expense of silly and uninformed people. To judge them in terms of the autumnal paradigm, with which they are at odds, these features can only be dismissed as unfortunate lapses in morbid foresight. This of course is not to say that Persuasion gives us nothing new, but * From Claudia L. Johnson, Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel (Chicago: U of Chi­ cago P, 1988), 144-66, 181-82. Reprinted by permission of The University of Chicago Press. All notes are by the editor of this Norton Critical Edition. The author's notes have been deleted.

287 only that it should be considered without using the benefit of hindsight to beg so many important questions. Most readers note, for example, that Persuasion ridicules the ruling class. This fact appears distinctive, however, only when we assume that it is a departure from the practice of the earlier novels. But surely nothing said in Persuasion about the Musgroves or Elliots surpasses the satire to which the Middletons, Palm­ ers, and John Dashwoods are treated in Sense and Sensibility. What is different about Persuasion is not that it shows how the improvident landowners, proving themselves unworthy of their station, have left England poised on the brink of a new world dominated by the best and the brightest, the Royal Navy. As one historian has observed, foolish and financially embarrassed landowners are nothing new to English social history or to Austen's fiction. Eventually, Sir Walter will réas­ sume Kellynch, and yield it in the time-honored way to his heir William Elliot, a man who, knowing how to serve "his own interest and his own enjoyment," will doubtless not, as Sir Thomas had, lose his hold on "the situation in which Providence has placed him." But if in Persuasion the landed classes have not lost their power, they have lost their prestige and their moral authority for the heroine. Whereas Pride and Prejudice could, with elaborately wrought qualifica­ tions and finely modulated discriminations, finally vindicate the highly controversial practice of "prejudice," Lady Russell's "prejudices on the side of ancestry" and "value for rank and consequence" are never allowed to be anything more than amiable but groundless articulations of self-interest. Like her idea of what constitutes a "little quiet cheer­ fulness" or, for that matter, Admiral Croft's idea of proper decor, Lady Russell's "prejudices on the side of ancestry" are not favored with any corroborative footing in "objective" reality. As Admiral Croft puts it, "Ay, so it always is, I believe. One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best. And so you must judge for yourself . . . " Sense and Sensibility makes it hard to believe that Austen ever shared Lady Russell's prejudices, yet even there she evinces a heart­ ier tolerance for booby squires than what she somewhat wearily musters here. For all his absurdity, Sir John Middleton's bluff generosity com­ mands some respect. But whether darting eagerly after weasels, defending the claims of eldest sons, or extolling the virtues of "good, freehold property," Charles Musgrove has little to recommend himself. His ideas, like his activities, are tediously predictable, and his "old coun­ try family of respectability and large fortune" has no charm: Anne never regrets her refusal to attach herself to this inoffensive, but unredeemably mediocre gentleman and the long-established kind of domestic life he represents. Persuasion, then, distinctively minimizes problems which had before been so momentous to the heroines. By centering her novel on a maturer heroine, of course, Austen is free to explore female indepen-

288 dence without being obliged to explore the concomitant impertinence which always seems to accompany the self-assurance of younger hero­ ines. The duty of filial piety, for example—Fanny Price's "great rule to apply to"—is nowhere dignified with the status of being at issue here. Even though her "word" has "no weight" within her family circle, Anne, like Emma, is an autonomous heroine. For this reason, to conceptual­ ize Persuasion, as readers so often do, as a debate between individualism and propriety is not only to employ an opposition already curiously loaded in favor of conservative arguments, but it is also to underestimate the degree of Anne's independence from traditional, paternal authority and to misplace the emphasis of the plot. Starting as early as the second chapter, for example, when we learn that she regards paying one's debts as an "indispensable duty," Anne distances herself from an impropriety that is specifically paternal. General Tilney's wrath with Catherine is the catastrophe of Northanger Abbey. But the crisis in Persuasion—Anne's decision to break off her engagement—has little to do with Sir Walter's paternal displeasure. On the contrary, it has everything to do with the advice, not the authority, of a trusted friend, Lady Russell, to whom Anne does not owe the comparable duty of obedience. Such is Anne's filial disposition at nineteen. At twenty-eight she pays Sir Walter even less mind. While Sir Walter pursues Lady Dalrymple, Anne visits a "nobody"—Mrs. Smith—without as much as informing him, let alone seeking his permission, and once his disapproval is expressed, it is ignored without fuss. For Anne, no hard conflict between duty and inclination is implied by defying or simply ignoring her father. Indeed, it is all too easy: "Anne kept her appointment; the others kept theirs. " Although Anne's indifference to filial propriety can show us the dis­ tance Austen has come since Northanger Abbey, Austen's earlier novel is nevertheless tied up with Persuasion. Published together posthu­ mously in 1817, they seem unlikely companions, but in Austen's mind their partnership was deeper than the accident of their copublication. Persuasion itself speaks to problems that to all appearances pressed on Austen while she was reviewing, perhaps even revising, Northanger Abbey for publication. The "hand of time" may have been "lenient" to Catherine Morland's feelings, but Austen considered it harsh to her novel. In the "Advertisement" to Northanger Abbey she dwells on the "thirteen years" during which "places, manners, books, and opinions have undergone considerable changes," changes which render parts of her novel "comparatively obsolete." The "thirteen years" marked here, of course, are the same thirteen years that cause such dislocation in This novel is constantly calling attention to a temporal gap, to the time unwritten, but everywhere felt, to the missing third volume, as it were. Austen's handling of time in her plots is famously exact, carefully coordinated with reference to almanacs. But for all her exacti­ tude, once Austen forges the temporal schemata of her narratives, she

2 8 9 generally proceeds to submerge them, and only the most determined of students would wish to note down references to years and dates and then arrange them sequentially. But Persuasion is a calculated tangle of years and dates, and the passage of time itself is foregrounded. Here, as in no other novel, we are constantly being pointed backwards—to the knell­ like repetition of "thirteen years" that have left Elizabeth husbandless, to the heavy "eight years" that have changed everything but Anne's feel­ ings for Wentworth, to the tolled "twelve years" that have transformed the smart young Miss Hamilton into the poor and crippled Mrs. Smith; in short, to the inconjurable difference time makes. The years alluded to in the "Advertisement" to Northanger Abbey and throughout Persuasion as the occasion of so much change are not just any years which would work changes at any time. With the benefit of hindsight, we look back upon those thirteen years as having sealed the reaction, 1 but as they appear in Persuasion they do not present a repres­ sive and politically monolithic aspect. Sir Walter himself seems firmly enough entrenched, to be sure, but he is not all there is. In his related capacities as general, pamphleteer, and stern paterfamilias, General Til- ney is the obstacle in Northanger Abbey whose authority must be con­ fronted and in some ways, however limited, overcome. But now, some two decades later, defenders of the nation appear under a different guise and are envisioned as alternatives to, rather than representatives of, the establishment. Admiral and Mrs. Croft are not gentry. Far from presid­ ing over a neighborhood, they live most contentedly at sea, uncon­ cerned with the production of heirs or the reproduction of ideologically correct values through the cultivation of local attachments. From some points of view, the differences between Admiral Croft and General Til- ney may be minimal. The former, to be sure, nowhere expresses or implies progressive opinion. But to Anne, the difference is great. The years which bring the Admiral into prominence are those which mark off the disparity between the "old English style" of the senior Musgroves, and the "new" English style of their "accomplished" daughters, and which have brought changes with them accounting for what William Elliot calls the "unfeudal tone of the present day" (emphasis added). But the causes and the processes of such transformation are not themselves the subject of Persuasion. Instead they are the pervasive backdrop Austen establishes throughout Persuasion in order to consider the psychological impact that social arrangements have on women and the apparent possi­ bilities which the "unfeudal tone of the present day" may hold out for them. Of all Austen's novels, Persuasion is, in point of mere years, the far­ thest removed from the pressures of political controversy that animate the fiction of her time. And yet, though it is often viewed as a forward- 1. This was a period of political reaction and repression, in response to fears of radicalism raised by the French Revolution.

290 looking novel, it makes a concerted effort to embrace a prerevolutionary context as well. Many of the most basic terms in the novel have a decid­ edly Johnsonian 2 ring to them, and this should not surprise us, not only because Johnson is so sympathetic a figure to Austen generally, but also because he is probably foremost among the "best moralists" Anne rec­ ommends to the stylishly melancholy Benwick. Persuasion continually contrasts the merits of fortitude, which can be "headstrong" or daringly heedless, with the merits of prudence, which can be "over-anxious cau­ tion which seems to insult exertion and distrust Providence." The oppo­ sition itself, of course, is Johnson's trademark. He frequently juxtaposes "heartless pusillanimity" to "heady confidence" (Rambler 25) and opposes the "presumption and arrogance" of expecting sure success to the "weakness and cowardice" of anticipating sure defeat (Rambler 43). Although neither Johnson nor Austen definitively resolve this opposi­ tion, both writers are self-consciously unconventional in refusing the moral authority of prudential maxims. Writing when she does, however, Austen cannot treat temerity and timidity as neutral poles in a disinterested debate, nor can she omit scrutinizing their tacit reference to sexual difference. For Lady Russell, they are political attitudes. Lady Russell does not share the mindlessness typical of the squires, ladies, and baronets in this novel. Much to Eliza­ beth's irritation, in fact, she is always reading "the new poems and states of the nation that come out," and as we might expect, her opinions about Anne's suitors bespeak her absorption in and sympathies for con­ servative apologetics. She aims her approval of William Elliot at Anne in such a way as to show Wentworth's boldness in what she considers to be the worst possible light: He [William Elliot] was steady observant, moderate, candid; never run away with by spirits or by selfishness, which fancied itself strong feeling; and yet with a sensibility to what was amiable and lovely, and a value for all the felicities of domestic life, which characters of fancied enthusiasm, and violent agitation seldom really possess. Lady Russell's argument is a manifestly sentimental one whose object is to establish the priority of that most basic unit of the social structure, the patriarchal family. She awards the prize for true, as opposed to "fan­ cied," feeling to the man whose sensibility evinces the most respon­ siveness to women—the "amiable and lovely" being of course their province—and dismisses Wentworthian impetuosity as only fitful in its loyalties and subversive in its effects. Of course Lady Russell is drastically wrong about Sir Walter's heir. Like all the villainous gentlemen and peers of progressive fiction who manipulate other people's domestic lives in order to secure their own 2. A reference to their similarity to the terminology of Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the great moralist.

2 9 1 power, he is out for himself, and if a semblance of sensibility to the fair sex is needed to acquire prestige, then so be it. Lady Russell is wrong about Wentworth as well, although in this case her error is plausible, since Wentworth is a complex figure whose own sensibility bears the deep marks of ideological contradiction. The action of Persuasion begins eight years before the opening of the novel, when Wentworth angrily spurns young Anne Elliot because he believes she showed "feebleness of character" in relinquishing their engagement. Wentworth's anger deserves particular attention, because it is anything but customary to fault women for diffidence. In another kind of novel by another kind of novelist, Anne's initial hesitation would strike Wentworth and us alike as exemplary and he, like the enthusiastic Henry Crawford 3 glorying in his chains, would, rather than take umbrage at her maidenly doubt, manfully seize an occasion to prove his worth. But Wentworth does not appear to believe that the inconvenient modesty of the maiden will be redeemed by the submission of the wife, or to value the "feebleness" so often held to be part of woman's duty as well as her charm. Conservative fiction and conduct literature tirelessly preach to women about the duty of submission. In her avowedly counterrevolutionary Letters Addressed to a Young Man, Jane West assures young men of the kingdom that they have every right to expect their wives to give way, whatever the "pestiferous doctrines" of revolutionaries urge to the contrary. The "wise and beautiful subordination which Providence has instituted to avoid domestic contention" dictates precisely the kind of persuadableness in women that Wentworth scorns: "submission is the prescribed duty of the female; peace must be preserved, and she must yield." Maria Edgeworth was, as we shall see, a careful reader of the very passages of Persuasion which specifically address how the different social conditioning of men and women creates differences in their psychologi­ cal makeup. The political agenda of her Practical Education, co- authored with her progressive father, is not so unashamedly clear as West's. Here Edgeworth disclaims—though she does not outright dis­ miss—any progressive concern for the condition of women, illuminat­ ing their problems, but disavowing any intention to solve them: "Their happiness is of more consequence than their speculative rights." Accord­ ingly, she recommends that female children should be taught restraint, sweetness, and submission, because these, like it or not, are to be expected from them throughout their lives as adults. Women, she con­ tinues, "must trust to the experience of others; they cannot always have recourse to what ought to be, they must adapt themselves to what is. . . . Timidity, a certain tardiness of decision, and reluctance to act in public situations, are not considered as defects in a woman's character." Edgeworth's statement, of course, is already a stunning piece of intertex- 3. In Mansfield Park.

292 tuality, imbedded as it is with a number of conservative truisms: it is wiser to trust to the accumulated experience of others than to advance and pursue one's own ideals, to submit to what "is" rather than quixoti­ cally striving for what "ought to be," and to habituate male, but espe­ cially female, children to what Edgeworth a little later terms dutiful "forebearance" rather than self-willed "precipitation." Wentworth's contempt for what he perceives as Anne's failure to be decided, forward, and strong thus implicates and dissents from an already firmly established and widely available tradition of debate about women's manners. To Wentworth, a woman is guilty of "weakness and timidity" when she evinces a readiness "to oblige others," and when, deferring to the judgment of family or friends, she credits fearful rather than hopeful predictions about her betrothed. A strong man himself, Wentworth knows, or at least thinks he knows, that he wants the same qualities in a woman. He "seriously described the woman he should wish to meet with. 'A strong mind, with sweetness of manner,' made the first and the last of the description." Wentworth's description appears straightforward enough. But as his subsequent remarks attest, he is in fact caught within highly charged tensions about women's manners, and his description of the ideal woman is oxymoronic, because however much he may desire "strength" in women, he considers it essentially inconsistent with the sweetness he also exacts. The narrator's remarks on the "large fat sighings" of Mrs. Musgrove "over the destiny of a son, whom alive nobody had cared for" are relevant here. They will appear less like the gratuitous and tasteless cruelties which the subversive school has so relished when we consider them in light of Wentworth's contra­ dictory assumptions about women. The narrator in fact brings up the grotesqueness of Mrs. Musgrove's grief only to ponder the irrationality of our response to it: "Personal size and mental sorrow have certainly no necessary proportions. A large bulky figure has as good a right to be in deep affliction, as the most graceful set of limbs in the world. But, fair or not fair, there are unbecoming conjunctions, which reason will patronize in vain,—which taste cannot tolerate,—which ridicule will seize" (emphasis added). The tendency of Persuasion as a whole is to consider conjunctions which perhaps have even less basis in reason, but which are so much more pervasive that their arbitrariness is not even noticed. This discred­ ited association of physical size with emotional delicacy prefaces a debate between Wentworth and Mrs. Croft about female manners, in which Wentworth takes a position very different from what Lady Russell would expect. If a large, bulky figure has a "right" to affliction, then conversely perhaps a "graceful set of limbs" has a "right" to venture- someness as well. To Wentworth, however, the very idea seems as ludi­ crously incongruous, if not indeed as repellent, as fat grief may be to us, and this despite his declared wish to find "a strong mind, with sweetness

2 9 3 of manner" in a woman. With the haughtiness typical of him, Captain Wentworth announces his principled opposition to carrying women on board ships precisely on account of their delicacy. His objections, he explains, arise not from mean-spirited misogyny, but rather from high- minded chivalry: "There can be no want of gallantry, admiral, in rating the claims of women to every personal comfort high—and this is what I do. I hate to hear of women on board, or to see them on board; and no ship, under my command, shall ever convey a family of ladies any where, if I can help it." Having spent the best years of her life on a man- of-war, Mrs. Croft regards her brother's opinions as "idle refinement!" But Mrs. Croft's claim that "any reasonable woman" can be "perfectly comfortable" on board actually loses points with her brother. To a man fixed in his ideas about female delicacy, women so "reasonable" are simply not ladies. He is willing to transport women on his ships insofar as they are a dear friend's property—"I would bring any thing of Har- ville's from the world's end, if he wanted it"—but the possibility that women themselves may not consider such journeys a violation of their lovely and amiable natures is obnoxious to him: "I might not like them the better for that, perhaps. Such a number of women and children have no right to be comfortable on board" (emphasis Wentworth's). The objections not only to female sturdiness, but also to a female "right" to it, that Wentworth expresses here explain why it was and still is impossible for him to recognize "strength of mind" and "sweetness of manner" in Anne Elliot, until Anne's sturdiness and her forwardness to take control after the the catastrophe at Lyme oblige him to surrender his notions about delicacy. Like female modesty, which is suspected to the same degree as it is commanded, female strength is disapproved to the same degree as it is desired. Although the introduction of the tearful Benwick and the domestic Harville upsets conventional conjunctions of ideas about gender, for Wentworth delicacy and strength are sex-typed oppositions reinforced by class, and where he finds them conjoined in women of his own class—officer's wives—he is by his own admission displeased. Mrs. Croft's extraordinary rebuttal seizes on what she regards as absurd in her brother's ideas about manners and class: "I hate to hear you talking so, like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures." As we recall, Mr. Knightley can convincingly oppose the modish primitivism of Mrs. Elton's projected "gipsy party" to the "nature and simplicity of gentlemen and ladies, with their servants and furniture," because Emma as a whole is predicated upon the worthiness of the gentry ideal and the gentlemen and ladies who comprise it. But in Persuasion, gentlemen and ladies are excluded from the category of "rational creatures. " Not that rational creatures of either sex here abandon the amenities of life, like Mrs. Elton's impossi­ bly idealized gypsies. Indeed, the conditions Wentworth imagines to be too grueling for a lady to bear turn out to be quite accommodating after

294 all. It is Wentworth himself who ridicules land-loving civilians for sup­ posing that sailors rough it, "living on board without any thing to eat, or any cook to dress it if there were, or any servant to wait, or any knife or fork to use." But though Mrs. Croft may not repudiate some of the comforts of gentility, she does repudiate the system of sexually differentiated man­ ners ladies and gentlemen depend upon. Her views on the subject are actually quite remarkable, given the renewed importance ascribed to female manners during the period in question. Conservatives and radi­ cals alike agreed that amiable weakness and loveliness in women guaran­ tee the continuance of patriarchy itself. "The age of chivalry is gone," as Burke famously wailed in a passage of the Reflections which Lady Rus­ sell seems to remember, and along with the chivalric sensibility, he predicts, will die the conditions which make the old regime possible: the gallant disposition in men to feel fondly disposed to the amiable softness of women restrains the otherwise indecent and uncivilized rapacity of their appetites, and the retiring docility and dutiful chastity of women insures the identity and survival of the blood lines of good families. 4 Of course not all of Burke's allies believed that the civilized world was held together by chivalrous opinion. Jane West, for one, opined that Burke's notions of chivalry bordered on idolatry, and granted women far more than they intrinsically deserved, filling their weak heads with silly ideas about their own importance, when it is they instead who should study to please, and to be sensible helpmates and useful companions rather than lovely and ever-distressed females. While conservative and progressive discourse sometimes intersects on the phrase "rational creatures," the insistence that men and women's shared status as rational creatures takes precedence over sexual differ­ ence in questions relating to their manners and their morals was gener­ ally perceived to be the progressive position. Wollstonecraft's critique of the cultivation of speciously differentiating delicacy in women was often treated as though it were a wholesale recommendation of grossly viragi- nous 5 strength. Thus Robert Bisset, for example, scoffs that Wollstone- craft included among the "rights of women" the right to serve as "soldiers, sailors, senators, politicians, scholars, philosophers, and rakes. . . . She trusted the time would soon arrive when the sex would require high renown in boxing matches, sword and pistol." Seen in this light, Mrs. Croft is a tour de force of characterization. Though her comport­ ment has not the slightest hint of mannish impropriety about it—Lady Russell, for one, finds her a pleasing and sensible neighbor—her man­ ners are conspicuous by their lack of features usually construed as femi- 4. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), in a passage bemoaning the fact that "ten thousand swords" failed to leap from their scabbards to "avenge even a look that threatened [the Queen of France] with insult." 5. Characteristic of viragoes: bold, quarrelsome, aggressive women.

2 9 5 6. Darcy is the hero of Pride and Prejudice. nine, such as bashfulness, roundness, sweetness, and daintiness. She "had a squareness, uprightness, and vigour of form, which gave impor­ tance to her person" and "a weatherbeaten complexion, the conse­ quence of her having been almost as much at sea as her husband." She omits that self-doubt and reluctance that Edgeworth, for one, exacted from women, particularly in public situations. She looks "as intelligent and keen as any of the officers around her," and her manners are "open, easy, and decided, like one who had no distrust of herself, and no doubts of what to do; without any approach to coarseness, however, or any want of good humour. " And finally, without ever really appearing to be the eccentric she is, Mrs. Croft prefers warships to the most comfortable manors in the kingdom, throwing overboard as needless weight the excellencies of the proper lady, and she "shares with him [Admiral Croft] in everything." Mrs. Croft appears never to consider robustness and self-confidence an oxymoronic violation of her feminine nature, and she could bid fare­ well to the age of chivalry without worrying much about the future of the civilized world. To her chivalry and the way of life it guarantees are superfluous: Wentworth's solicitude for women's comfort is a "super­ fine, extraordinary sort of gallantry," which appears even more unneces­ sary in his case, since he in particular, as his sister implies, has the good fortune not to be a "fine gentleman" to begin with. Sir Walter, for his part, does not regard Wentworth as a "gentleman" at all, and his usage, however unpleasant, is far from idiosyncratic. Wielding a fortune in war prizes of mythically immense proportions, Wentworth is nouveau riche with a vengeance. Sir Walter restricts the term "gentlemen" to "some man of property," and thus does not recognize the claim even of Went­ worth's clerical brother to the title: "Mr. Wentworth was nobody, I remember; quite unconnected, nothing to do with the Strafford family." He objects besides to the tendency of Wentworth's profession itself to contend with and confound the established networks of social prestige, for the military is "the means of bringing persons of obscure birth into undue distinction, and raising men to honours which their fathers and grandfathers never dreamt of. " In all fairness, the contempt is entirely mutual. To a man who prides himself on "the gratification of believing myself to earn every blessing that I enjoyed" the famous "Elliot pride" in membership within their own family—as well as the precedence-, title-, and pedigree-mongering that goes along with it—is offensive. Mary Musgrove's eagerness to assure him that she regards the Hayters as unworthy connections only arouses in him "a contemptuous glance, as he turned away, which Anne perfectly knew the meaning of. " Further­ more, the record of filial piety which makes up an important part of Darcy's characterization, 6 for example, has no place in Wentworth's

296 history, and his impatience with Anne's hesitation at nineteen to defy paternal displeasure surely suggests how little store he sets by paternal authority in general. Since Wentworth has no place in, and indeed is actually hostile to, the patriarchal world of family and neighborhood which Sir Walter represents, though none too well, his "superfine" gal­ lantry has no rationale and operates at political cross-purposes with his own designs and energies. Wentworth's argument with Admiral and Mrs. Croft does not settle any issues, for no sooner does the subject reach an impasse than Went­ worth breaks off and withdraws altogether. To their assurance that he will change his mind when he marries, he rather angrily returns: " 'I can only say, "No, I shall not;" and then they say again, "Yes, you will," and there is an end of it.' He got up and moved away." Wentworth's words here both recapitulate his quarrel with Anne Elliot eight years ago and prefigure the same dilemma he will face in a matter of days when Louisa wants to jump down from the stiles at the new Cobb: "He [Went­ worth] advised her against it, thought the jar too great; but no, he rea­ soned and talked in vain; she smiled and said, 'I am determined I will.' " Recurring to the imagery of hardness and to such related concepts as complaisance and determination, elasticity and fixation, impressionabil­ ity and obstinacy, Persuasion continues to explore the antinomies of autonomy and authority that figure prominently in Austen's other nov­ els as well. The subject of one of Elizabeth's and Darcy's first debates, after all, is the worth of ductility and resoluteness: "To yield readily— easily—to the persuasion of a friend," Elizabeth taunts, "is no merit with you" (emphasis Elizabeth's). But while both novels attempt to delimit the legitimate boundaries of authoritative interference, the later novel deals with conflicts which, as with the conceit of fat sighings, "reason will patronize in vain," and where persuasion accordingly is more prob­ lematic. In Persuasion neither giving in on the one hand, nor holding out to get one's way on the other, are very attractive options. Conservative apologists, of course, cut the Gordian knot by submitting such conflicts to the arbitration of persons wisely vested by tradition with the authority to decide. But if Persuasion does not specifically indict this method, it also stops far short of adopting it, since the "authorities" so vested are inadequate. In Anne's case, an older woman friend, and no venerable father, carried the day. Lady Russell stands not in place of a mother, but rather "in the place of a parent," and the very need to replace a living but morally dysfunctional father itself points to a problem with the conservative model. Moreover, although Anne is steadfast in refusing to apologize for having once been persuaded by a woman who takes the place of a parent, she soon eschews Lady Russell's prudential reasonings on the grounds that they "insult exertion and distrust Providence," and she never allows herself to be persuaded again. When Anne receives a

2 9 7 proposal from Charles Musgrove, she solicits neither her father's opin­ ions nor Lady Russell's, but "left nothing for advice to do." Anne's gen­ tle imperviousness to interference is fortunate, for Lady Russell's approval of Charles Musgrove's suit and her championship of William Elliot's do not testify to her powers of discrimination. Like Northanger Abbey, Persuasion reflects on its own refusal to ratify received notions: the narrator validates the perseverance of young people in carrying their points even though doing so is, as she says, "bad morality to conclude with." In erased notes of the cancelled chapter covering the same mate­ rial, Austen dwells at greater length on her departures from conventional wisdom in fashioning a story where the older and unassailably "proper" woman is wrong, not once, but twice: "Bad Morality again. A young Woman proved to have . . . more discrimination of Character than her elder—to have seen in two Instances more clearly what a Man was . . . But on the point of Morality, I confess myself almost in despair . . . and shall leave i t . . . to the mercy of Mothers and Chaperons and Middle- aged Ladies in general." Even though Anne finally avers in defense of her own infelicitous, but not culpable, deference to Lady Russell, "if I mistake not, a strong sense of duty is no bad part of a woman's portion," the efficacy of "submission" is, if not utterly undone, then at least called into question by authorially emphasized criticism of the principles which underpin and valorize such duty. The unyielding firmness and independence Wentworth advocates is likewise tested and found wanting. After persuading Henrietta to visit Charles Hayter despite the interference of Mary Musgrove, Louisa pro­ claims: "And so I made her go. . . . What!—would I be turned back from doing a thing that I had determined to do, and that I knew to be right, by the airs and interference of such a person?—or, of any person I may say. No,—I have no idea of being so easily persuaded. When I have made up my mind, I have made it. " This speech, and Wentworth's enthusiastic response to it, are not the simple assertions of principled self-determination they appear to be. Louisa, after all, did not disinterestedly supplement her sister's faltering powers of mind with the strength of her own. Instead, she took advan­ tage of her sister's persuadability in order to clear the field for Wentworth and herself. Further, Louisa recommends independence even as she congratulates herself for her own interference: "I made her go." Finally, Wentworth disdains the feeble malleability of "too yielding and indeci­ sive a character" when it defies him as Anne's did, but he does not seem to mind or even to notice the same qualities when they malleably conform to his own influence. Louisa has really done no more than give Wentworth what he wants to hear, and unaware that Louisa's strength of mind is really only persuadability to him in disguise, he rewards her

298 with his praise: "Happy for her [Henrietta], to have such a mind as yours at hand." Clearly, Wentworth's preference for singlemindedness is as indiscrim- inating and self-serving in its own way as Lady Russell's prejudice in favor of wealth and family is in its. If "complaisance" can be, as Louisa terms it, "nonsensical," inflexibility can be so as well. Wentworth takes little notice of this possibility. "[L]et those who would be happy be firm," he intones, anticipating the moral of his parable about the hazelnut: "To exemplify,—a beautiful glossy nut, which, blessed with original strength, has outlived all the storms of autumn. Not a puncture, not a weak spot anywhere.—This nut. . . while so many of its brethren have fallen and been trodden under foot, is still in possession of all the happi­ ness that a hazel-nut can be supposed capable of." The most salient feature of the glossy hazel-nut, however, is not that it holds impressions well, but that it is not susceptible to them at all. The efficacy of determi­ nation is undermined when Louisa, "armed with the idea of merit in maintaining her own way," withholds herself from advice and falls head­ long onto the pavement at the Cobb. Even Wentworth eventually sur­ renders resolution so fixed and intransigent. After the accident, he turns desperately to Anne for help, to be ordered and told what to do. And throughout the novel, his immovable resentment of her loosens under the influence of other peoples' admiration of her. He arrives at Uppercross swearing that Anne has aged beyond recognition, but he changes his tune when he observes William Elliot to be struck by her, and later when connoisseurs of beauty sing Anne's praises in his hearing. Wentworth's determination is generally considered to mark him as a "new man," temperamentally as well as ideologically opposed to the way of life Sir Walter represents. But like his gallantry towards women, his steadfastness to the point of inflexibility actually aligns him with Sir Walter, and he must mitigate his self-will before reconciliation is possi­ ble. When Anne defies him by suspending their engagement, she encounters "all the additional pain of opinions, on his side, totally unconvinced and unbending, and of his feeling himself ill-used by so forced a relinquishment. " Wentworth's tenacity in holding "unbending" opinions, his tendency to remain "unconvinced" by and inaccessible to opposition, and most alarmingly of all, his readiness to feel "ill-used" place him in the unflattering fellowship of none other than the Elliots themselves. Like spoiled children, Elizabeth and Sir Walter bitterly blame the world for the necessities their own debts place them under. They feel "ill-used and unfortunate," and steadfast in their foolishness, they refuse to forego expensive "decencies"—"Journeys, London, ser­ vants, horses, table"—that alone make life supportable even to "private" ladies and gentlemen. Having inherited "a considerable share of the Elliot self-importance" without commanding any comparable hauteur,

2 9 9 Mary Musgrove manifests their tyrannical self-pity in a particularly degraded form. She always fancies herself "neglected or ill-used," always thinks with bullheaded obstinacy "a great deal of her own complaints," and feels everything as a wound. Wentworth has his own version of the "Elliot self-importance" which prompts him in like fashion to be headstrong and absolute. True, he may not have behaved like "an ill- used man" when Louisa falls for Benwick, but this is not, as the Admiral thinks, because he has "too much spirit" to kick against the goad, but rather because he came to regret their flirtation to begin with. As the Admiral could not have known, eight years ago, when it counted, Wentworth did feel like "an ill-used man," and he does "murmur" and "whine and complain"—not with Mary's sorts of whimpers, but rather with icy vindictiveness nursed over a period of eight years. In the Elliots' case, of course, self-importance is a birthright, a benefit conferred upon them by their social position. Sir Walter believes he is somebody to the "nobody" of virtually everyone else. But though Sir Walter is convinced that, as a public figure, he carries his importance around with him irrespective of place, people only three miles away at Uppercross are contentedly oblivious to "the affairs which at Kellynch- hall were treated as of such general publicity and pervading interest" by Sir Walter himself. Anne's mortification to discover that Sir Walter and Elizabeth "see nothing to regret" in relinquishing "the duties and dignity of the resident land-holder" bespeaks her lingering sympathy with the life of the manor, but landholders less distinguished than her father are not spared either. As presented in Persuasion, at least, landed existence itself fosters an immobility that fixes delusions of self-consequence which cause so much conflict. Anne is an adept in "the art of knowing our own nothingness beyond our own circle," and this is what makes her wise. But the otherwise unobjectionable Musgroves, whose views are bounded by the narrowness of their neighborhood, cannot share such wisdom. Except in Pride and Prejudice, where a countrified Mrs. Bennet takes umbrage at Darcy's cosmopolitan pretentions, only in Per­ suasion does Austen portray the provinciality of her characters as a disad­ vantage. Taken by himself, Charles Hayter, for example, could appear as an earnest and respectable gentleman. But placed alongside Frederick Wentworth and ineffectually pleading with a troublesome child, he fades into nonentity. And just as the Admiral's tendency to confuse Henrietta and Louisa suggests their indistinguishability, so the redun­ dancy of Hayter's Christian name, doubling with that of Charles Mus­ grove, calls attention to what is undistinctive about eldest sons in general. And in no other novel is a gentry matron exposed to such pain­ ful comparisons with a woman with wider horizons. When Mrs. Croft summarizes her travels, adding "We do not call Bermuda or Bahama, you know, the West Indies," poor Mrs. Musgrove finds herself baffled:

300 "Mrs. Musgrove had not a word to say in dissent; she could not accuse herself of having ever called them any thing in the whole course of her life." Landed life is not taken to task simply because it promotes mediocrity or ignorance, but rather because its insularity is psychologically damag­ ing, especially for women. Conservatives laud membership within a neighborhood precisely on account of the strong and stabilizing attach­ ments, the changeless pace, and the unceasing familiarity that it carries with it. But for women it also carries with it a particularly narrow and unwholesome confinement, and discussion of this problem in Persua­ sion is specific, prolonged, and dramatically charged. Whatever baron­ etcy does for Sir Walter, it has not helped a daughter who has reached the age of twenty-nine without marrying. For Elizabeth the Baronetage cannot be the never-ending fund of solace unalloyed it is for her father. Every reading mercilessly reiterates an ever-receding birthdate and an unchanging status as spinster. Mr. Bennet's sarcasm—"a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then. . . . It is something to think of— has a disturbing relevance to Persuasion, where such crosses are all that women have to think of. Being the mistress of Kellynch-hall—"doing the honours, and laying down the domestic law at home"—is not as engaging, as satisfying, and as adequate to Elizabeth's imagination as running Hartfield and its environs is to Emma's. Elizabeth is haunted by her disappointment in love, and the cares and duties of "her scene of life" are not enough to keep her from revisiting and fixing her pain. Bitterness, mortification, regret, and worry are all she has "to give inter­ est to a long, uneventful residence in one country circle, to fill the vacancies which there were no habits of utility abroad, no talents or accomplishments for home, to occupy." Nor is Elizabeth's condition unique. Anne has more "resources," as they are termed in Emma, than her sister Elizabeth, yet she understands that her regret over Wentworth lingers because "no aid had been given in change of place . . . or in any novelty or enlargement of society" that could dislodge and eventually efface her painful impressions. Whether it is because we typically exclude Austen in general from access to, capability for, or interest in arcana of any sort, or whether it is because we have a habit of regarding Persuasion in particular as a tender love story that is not conducive to such considerations, rather scant attention has been accorded to Austen's affiliation with the eigh­ teenth-century tradition of liberal psychology. But readers of Johnson's essays, who recall his fears about the corrosiveness of hopes and disap­ pointments, his recommendation of "change of place" (Rambler 5, 47), and his anxieties about the "vacuities of recluse and domestick leisure" (Rambler 85), will recognize the provenance of her concerns and the character of her diction, and will appreciate how, by linking women's confinement within their changeless neighborhoods to the strength and

301 longevity of their feelings, she develops this tradition with particular emphasis on women's problems. Anne herself tells Harville that women do "not forget you [men], so soon as you forget us." But far from pres­ enting the constancy of woman's love in the light of a virtue, for exam­ ple, loyalty, she presents it as a burden—"our fate rather than our merit." Men will love faithfully "so long as [they] have an object," but woman's love can subsist indefinitely as fantasy alone: "All the privilege I claim for my own sex . . . is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone." A dubious privilege indeed, this liability to hopeless fixation. Anne's rather technical explanation for the stubborn durability of women's love combines social criticism with psychological acuity: "We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us. You are forced on exertion. You have always a profession, pursuits, business of some sort or other, to take you back into the world immediately, and continual occupation and change soon weaken impressions. " To Maria Edgeworth, whose access to moral psychology, unlike Aus­ ten's, is undisputed, Anne's analysis held special interest. The margina­ lia in her personal copy of Persuasion are very sparse until this episode, which prompts a flurry of scratches, underlinings, and comments. She, for example, reiterates Anne's socio-psychological argument here with "our mind is continually fixt on one object"; to the claims that occupa­ tion and change weaken impressions, she writes a heartily concurring "That it does"; and she brushes aside Harville's analogy between the strength of men's "bodily frames" and the constancy of their feelings with an emphatic "No." But whereas Edgeworth in conservative fashion upholds the traditional social arrangements that expose women to the problems she herself laments, on the grounds that defying such arrange­ ments will not promote their happiness, Persuasion asks us to consider whether women's happiness may not be better served by cutting loose from those arrangements. Mrs. Croft disapproves of long and uncertain engagements because they expose women to perilous anxieties and fan­ tasies—and her brother, eavesdropping, appears to acknowledge that the application to his own case with Anne has a compelling legitimacy which he had never before considered. Mrs. Croft's example as a wife suggests that life on the high seas, for all its dangers, is to be preferred to the "safety" of helpless immobility she experienced when she lived conventionally, as most wives such as Mrs. Musgrove do: "The only time I ever really suffered in body or mind, the only time I ever fancied myself unwell, or had any ideas of danger, was the winter that I passed by myself at Deal, when the Admiral (Captain Croft then) was in the North Seas. I lived in perpetual fright at that time, and had all manner of imaginary complaints from not knowing what to do with myself." The phenomena of change and relativity in Persuasion have long

302 been considered symptoms of the dizzying modernity to come, a moder­ nity usually described as either brave or degenerate, according to the axis of the critic. But to those characters who take notice at all, the deracination and relativity presented in Persuasion are not felt to be dis­ turbing or disorienting. Except when she has pangs in tender remem­ brance of her dear mother, Anne cannot regret the Croft's tenancy at Kelly neh-hall. She cannot say of her family seat what she knows social orthodoxy would have her say: "These rooms ought to belong only to us. . . . How unworthily unoccupied! An ancient family to be so driven away!" Rather than feel that their removal to the diminished accommo­ dations at Camden-place constitutes a fall, Sir Walter and Elizabeth themselves find more than enough "extent to be proud of between two walls, perhaps thirty feet asunder. " Anne is not bewildered to learn that our somethingness is tenuous and relative, or sad to confront her noth­ ingness beyond her family circle—she, after all, is rather less than some­ thing in her family circle as well. Only from within a mentality which organizes people hierarchically from somebodies down to nobodies, and often according to whether or not they yield or are yielded to, does that status of nothingness feel so degrading. Anne does not possess such a mentality, and detached from a single neighborhood and a fixed world of traditional institutions that make that mentality possible, she allows the alienation she experiences upon first coming to Uppercross to be a benefit. Anne finds it "very fitting, that every little social commonwealth should dictate its own matters of discourse," and by learning different social discourses she is able to be a citizen of many commonwealths. Accordingly, she considers it "highly incumbent on her to clothe her imagination, her memory, and all her ideas" in Uppercross. Though first undertaken as a duty, this reinvestiture is later experienced as a boon. After leaving, Anne discovers that subjects which she had felt obliged to "smother among the Musgroves" assume only "secondary interest." She is "sensible of some mental change": her sorrow about Kellynch and even her tenacious loyalty to Wentworth loosens, and she now entertains thoughts of Benwick, and even of Walter Elliot. If processes of inuring can be therapeutic—Anne, for example, "was become hardened to such affronts" as she receives at home—some kinds of malleability can bring relief as well, even if it makes possible a certain erasure. Anne finally refuses to take sides in the debate about hardness and softness, and determination and submission, setting her sights instead on "elasticity of mind, that disposition to be comforted, that power of turning readily from evil to good, and of finding employment. " When Wentworth wittily explains how in marrying Anne he is not get­ ting what he deserves, he elaborates on this quality: " 'Like other great men under reverses,' he added with a smile, 'I must endeavour to sub­ due my mind to my fortune.' " The ironic mode of his statement is oddly fitting, for the "reverse" in question of course is the happiness

3 0 3 of reconciliation, possible only after relinquishing the obduracy of his resentment and becoming susceptible to opposition. But the people in Persuasion who are preeminent for elasticity of mind are significantly far more remote than Wentworth, who after all by the end of the novel is acceptable even to Sir Walter. By the standards set in Austen's fiction, in fact, they are unusual, and by those set in conservative fiction, far too marginal to be the models they are here. They are mostly without the kinds of affiliations, idealized in such writing, that exact a high cost— confinement, unventuresomeness, fixity, boredom—for the stability they guarantee. Some Sir Walter regards as scarcely human: "A Mrs. Smith. A widow Mrs. Smith. . . . And what is her attraction? That she is old and sickly.—Upon my word, Miss Anne Elliot, you have the most extraordinary taste! Every thing that revolts other people, low company, paltry rooms, foul air, disgusting associations are inviting to you." Yet Mrs. Smith above all others typifies the "elasticity of mind" Anne val­ ues, and this is not only despite the reverses that have marginalized her, but also in some ways because she has undergone them. Insofar as salvos like these would console the unfortunate by con­ tending that it is better to suffer after all, they condone the processes and conditions which cause such suffering to begin with, and so may be con­ sidered implicitly conservative. Persuasion is sometimes deeply tinged with such quietism. And yet Anne's preference of "low company, paltry rooms, foul air" to the companionship of her father and those he would choose for her is nevertheless a pretty piece of social criticism. Fortune, Providence, luck, chance—these are extremely prominent entities in the novel, and are emblemized here by the sea itself. And the person with "elasticity of mind"—the "choicest gift of Heaven"—takes and resigns what they give with equal cheer, and makes her- or himself malleable to their impressions, much as the Crofts have let the sea air write itself onto their complexions without bothering with applications of Gowland's Lotion. On Mrs. Smith, who lives beyond the margins of "good" society, their marks have been the deepest: "She had been very fond of her hus­ band,—she had buried him. She had been used to affluence,—it was gone. She had no child to connect her with life and happiness again, no relations to assist in the arrangement of perplexed affairs, no health to make all the rest supportable." But though she is the least sheltered from fortune's blows—and as Mrs. Croft says, "We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days"—she is also the most resilient for having "weathered it," the least inclined to feel "ill-used." Her bodily immobil­ ity—roughly similar in kind, if not in degree, to the confinement under­ gone by proper ladies in their provincial homes—serves only to highlight her resources more brilliantly. In a similar way Harville lives just beyond society, bordering out onto the sea itself, which has not served him a fraction so generously as it has Wentworth. If his case is not so dire as Mrs. Smith's—he is less crippled, less cramped, less destitute, and with

304 a loving family, less disattached—by Sir Walter's standards he still ranks as a "disgusting association." But though even Anne herself suffers a "moment's astonishment" at the meanness of his lodgings, she later regards them as the seat of "great happiness." While the people Anne casts her lot with are well-traveled citizens of many different commonwealths, to recall Anne's metaphor, they are proprietors of none. Always ready to determine orders of precedence and to feel "ill-used" if opposed or neglected, Mary Musgrove decides after only a little consideration that even though Anne's accession to marriage restores her "to the rights of seniority," her own situation is still superior: "Anne had no Uppercross-hall before her, no landed estate, no headship of a family; and if they could but keep Captain Wentworth from being made a baronet, she would not change situations with Anne." To Anne, however, these lacks are a virtue. Religious intimations are more fre­ quent in Persuasion than in any of Austen's other novels and more enmeshed into its outlook. But whereas in other novels the world of wealthy gentry in which Mary takes such pride is either genuinely or at the very least nominally in the service of such intimations, in Persuasion it is not. Characters here who are most like the glossy but impermeable and therefore irredeemable hazelnut in Wentworth's parable are not Wentworth himself, who finally yields after all, but members of the privileged class, such as Sir Walter, who is devoted to avoiding crow's- feet, and the"polished" William Elliot, who is suspect precisely because he "endured too well" and gives no evidence of friction or wear. From the very beginning of the novel, Anne has valued "cheerful confidence in futurity" and scorned to "distrust Providence!" Peopled more with friends than family, and accepting the "dread of war" that sometimes dims the "sunshine" of domestic felicity, the society Anne finally selects—the "best" company—removes itself from the institutions of the country manor to front more directly and hospitably onto Provi­ dence. But while the break Anne accomplishes with those institutions is more complete than what we find in any other novel, and while her efforts at accommodation are the most perfunctory, she and the alterna­ tive society she joins are also the least prone to overt indictment, and this constitutes a departure from Austen's early fiction especially. Whereas Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey derive much of their dramatic tension from the defiance of tyrannical parents, Persua­ sion eludes, even frowns upon, overt rebellion. Social forms may be neglected—Anne dislikes "give-and-take invitations, and dinners of for­ mality and display"—but not outright opposed. Accordingly, Anne her­ self is capable of betraying some shame about her association with Lady Dalrymple and Miss Carteret, but she politely keeps it under wraps: " Tes,' sighed Anne, we shall, indeed, be known to be related to them!'—then recollecting herself. . . not wishing to be answered." But William Elliot's history of expressed disrespect for rank itself is not

3 0 5 7. In Sense and Sensibility. acceptable. The narrator makes no bones about averring that "Sir Walter was not very wise," but Anne shudders "with shock and mortification" to learn that his heir applies words as irreverent as "fool" to him. But before we conclude that Austen's willingness to cover for Sir Walter betrays deplorable bad faith, or perhaps less damningly, loyalties too deep and residual to permit penetrating social criticism, we would do well to ponder the typically confounding twist in her characterization of William Elliot. Surely to identify the person who mouths social disre­ spect with the person who then panders to the very people of "credit and dignity" whom he admits are "nothing in themselves" is to underscore the particularly sterile conventionality of the entire system of "blood and connexion" and the cynicism on which it subsists. Of none of Austen's works, but of Persuasion perhaps least of all, can it be said, as Trilling has, "Nothing in the novels questions the ideal of the archaic 'noble' life which is appropriate to the great beautiful houses with the ever-remembered names—Northanger Abbey, Donwell Abbey, Pemberly, Hartfield, Kellynch Hall, Norland Park, Mansfield Park. In them 'existence is sweet and dear,' at least if one is rightly disposed. . . . With what the great houses represent the heroines of the novels are, or become, completely in accord." Northanger Abbey is far from a haven to Catherine Morland, and this is not because she fails to be "rightly disposed"; Norland Park provides no values with which the Dashwood sisters can accord; 7 and Kellynch Hall, not even "ever- remembered" by its own proprietors, is bidden a rather wistful good rid­ dance by a daughter far superior to what it now "represents." Works of fiction written on the conservative model tirelessly exhort us to accept infelicity as the condition of life and urge us instead to seek our modest satisfactions in the consciousness of prescribed attachments well hon­ ored, and duties well done. But Austen's novels are pervasively con­ cerned, not with according ourselves to an existence "sweet and dear," but with achieving a more active, expansive, and personally fulfilling happiness, and they persistently suggest that this is well worth the striv­ ing. Sometimes, as in Pride and Prejudice, Austen contrives to locate such happiness within conservative institutions themselves, but . . . it takes some work before Pemberly will accommodate Elizabeth. And once Pemberly does make a place for her, one suspects that it is the "great beautiful house" itself, rather than Elizabeth, that will be essen­ tially improved for her presence there, because whatever its previous dignity, it never seemed a place of pleasure. The word "happy" rings as frequently across the pages of Persuasion as it does those of Pride and Prejudice, and it should tell us something that in Persuasion it is the nefarious Walter Elliot who wishes to dissuade Anne from pursuing the highest happiness she can conceive of. When he discovers that she pre-

306 fers the "best" company to merely "good" company, he warns, "You have a better right to be fastidious than almost any other woman I know; but will it answer? Will it make you happy? Will it not be wiser to accept the society of these good ladies in Laura-place, and enjoy all the advantages of the connexion as far as possible?" Fortunately, Anne's fastidiousness, like Elizabeth's, finally does "answer." But unlike Eliza­ beth's, it is achieved not at a great beautiful house with an ever-remem­ bered name, but rather in a disposition only discernible in people who do not belong to such houses, people such as the Crofts, who walk "along in happy independence," or like Harville, whose weather-beaten lodgings are a "picture of repose and domestic happiness." The interests of happiness, piety, and well-being demand removal from Kellynch Hall, its proprieties and priorities. But whether moving beyond Kellynch or any equivalent bespeaks a victory of autonomy from what a great house represents, or a despair of its ever improving enough to be desirable, is hard to say. Not surprisingly, since they belong exclu­ sively to the years which assured the reaction, Austen's last three novels reflect a strong sense of the increasing immovability of established authority. While Sense and Sensibility concludes with an opposition and a withdrawal that are angry, permanent, and committed, in Nor­ thanger Abbey General Tilney finally does yield, if minimally, and in Pride and Prejudice Darcy is improved by confrontation, and eventually even Lady Catherine comes around. But even though Sir Thomas's judgment in Mansfield Park is thoroughly impeached, his authority is fixed. In Emma, when his kind of authority is transformed and femi­ nized, and joined with Knightley's, it assumes a benign aspect. But in Persuasion, stately houses and their proprietors are no longer formida­ ble, and their intransigence is matched only by their vapidity. Good characters depart from them without a breach, differ from them without defiance. Thus the overarching structure of Persuasion as a whole repro­ duces and asks us to accept the same sorts of unresolved tensions found in so many of its shorter, characteristically oxymoronic formulations— such as "fat sighings," or "she was deep in the happiness of such misery, or the misery of such happiness." Persuasion setdes little: it resumes a debate interrupted eight years in the past without reaching an agreement, and without requiring one. Wentworth does not concede that Lady Russell had been right, Anne refuses to concede that yielding was wrong: "cheerful confidence in futurity" precludes such regret, and Providence has been equally served by delay. The "elasticity of mind" celebrated in Persuasion accepts and sur­ passes both of these, as well as the broader social conflicts the book details. It is tempting to see in this effort to define and endorse extensive difference from established institutions, without effecting an overt or impassible breach from them, as the perfection of the strategies and the positions that have marked Austen's fiction from the start. Austen, no

307 Doubleness and Refrain in Jane Austen's Persuasion t Among the characters in Jane Austen's canon of fiction, the heroine of Persuasion is supremely mysterious. Anne Elliot suggests a residual 8. William Blake (1757-1827), revolutionary poet. t Cheryl Ann Weissman, "Doubleness and Refrain in Jane Austen's Persuasion," Kenyon Review n.s. 10 (1988): 87-91. Copyright 1992 by Kenyon College. Reprinted by permission. The author's notes have been deleted. less than Blake, 8 wrote for an audience with what one critic has called "war-manacled minds," and her works, no less than Blake's, attempt— inevitably with only limited success—to shed those manacles which she perforce wore too. Among the least doctrinaire of all her contemporar­ ies, Austen from the outset took on the materials which political contro­ versy endowed with such importance, without inviting or aggravating partisan impulses. During a time when all social criticism, particularly that which aimed at the institution of the family in general and the place of women in particular, came to be associated with the radical cause, Austen defended and enlarged a progressive middle ground that had been eaten away by the polarizing polemics born of the 1790s. If she very early opted definitely not to ratify the anarchism of the radical opposition, despite an allegiance to the liberal tradition which underlay much of it, she also avoided its irritability, its confusion, and its very early defeat. Conservative fiction was Austen's medium because it very quickly became the only fiction there was, other voices being quelled, and Austen persistently subjected its most cherished mythologies to interrogations from which it could not recover. The highly parodie style developed in the juvenilia, when applied to the stuff of conservative fiction, constituted a kind of piracy which commandeered conservative novelistic discourse and forced it to hoist flags of different colors, so to speak, to say things it was not fashioned to say—as when Catherine Morland, for example, assures herself with perfect trust that the good General Tilney "could not propose any thing improper for her"; or when Marianne's "sensibility" and Elinor's "sense" turn out not to be antitheti­ cally opposed; or most optimistically, when Darcy himself absorbs the values of his antagonist in order to make her as well as himself happy. In none of the novels can conservative ideology be entirely overcome, but in all, as most forcibly in Mansfield Park, its basic imperatives— benevolence, gratitude, family attachment, female modesty, paternal authority—are wrested from their privileged claims and made, like Edmund Bertram, to relinquish their "moral elevation."

308 depth of personality that eludes narrator as well as reader in this, Aus­ ten's last completed work. Yet even as character emerges with extraordi­ nary subtlety, this novel's structure and language call themselves to our attention by virtue of their contrasting and conspicuous schematism. The wistful tone of Persuasion is informed by a bizarre and implacable emphasis on doubleness and refrains in diction, plot, themes, and even syntax. Symmetric doubling is not intrinsically remarkable in Austen's fic­ tion, of course. The titles Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility reflect the harmoniously epigrammatic rhythm of eighteenth-century prose. But in that tradition, as in Austen's earlier novels, structural sym­ metry suggests the dependable order of a stable, rational world. In Per­ suasion, names and events recur in a disturbingly irrational way, reflecting a transient, uneasy one. It is a world keenly reminiscent of the stylized and gloomy milieu of fairy tales. Anne Elliot is a Cinderella figure dominated by a vain and unloving parent (Sir Walter) and two selfish sisters. In a mythical past, eight years prior to the novel's time frame, she was persuaded by a well- intentioned godmother (Lady Russell) to reject Frederick Wentworth, a suitor with modest financial expectations, and that submission to per­ suasion has proved to be the mistake of her life. Now Wentworth returns, having improbably made his fortune after all, and to Anne's profound anguish he courts both of her sisters-in-law; no Prince Charm­ ing was ever more misguided! Anne has become faded and impover­ ished, but she remains deeply in love with him. She regrets her decision, although she refuses to repent it; it was the correct choice under the circumstances, she insists, even though it chanced to be the wrong course of action. Meanwhile, chance further contrives to present her with a second suitor, William Elliot. As heir to her father's estate, this man would offer her the unique opportunity to succeed her long-deceased mother in name, fortune, and even place of residence. With fairy tale symme­ try, Anne could thus be restored to her home and in some measure be compensated for the wrongs done her by a godmother's error in judg­ ment and a natural mother's symbolic abandonment. We, as readers, can see that the legacy also includes her mother's terrible folly of mar­ rying an unworthy man, but for a time Anne's perception of this remains uncertain. Fortunately but not accidentally, she is not persuaded to be incon­ stant in favor of this specious continuity. The problematic options of sameness and difference do not double her vision; she recognizes the opportunity for authentically changing the bleakness of her life by remaining faithful to Wentworth, her original and only lover. Consis­ tency of character and of attachment prevail over the menacing forces of chance and confer a happy ending upon the revised fairy tale after all.

3 0 9 Inlaying this hauntingly elemental story are stylistic devices that emphasize its kinship with fairy tales; Austen appears to have gone out of her way to focus attention on the artifice of fiction. We find a surprising occurrence of coincidentally shared names, for example. In the plot, the dramatic turning point is foreshadowed by an earlier, strikingly similar contrivance. And both the narrator's and characters' diction are studded with arresting refrains. Presented from its outset as a sequel to an implic­ itly meaningful, unwritten earlier story, this novel is a puzzling play on the notion of doubleness. Beginning with names, the first page contains a breezily irreverent reference to "all the Marys and Elizabeths" that ancestral Elliots have married, alerting us to a quirk of repetitiveness that the coming story will vigorously display. In Anne's contemporary world, Charles Mus­ grove has both a son and a cousin (his brother-in-law-to-be) with the same Christian name, and Mrs. Smith's deceased husband was a Charles as well. This is an oddly extravagant gesture, coming from an otherwise tautly economical crafter of novels. Ironically, Admiral Croft remarks that he wishes "young ladies had not such a number of fine christian names"; how much simpler "if they were all Sophys, or some­ thing of the sort. " William Walter Elliot, heir to Sir Walter Elliot, incorporates a remarkable range of identities within his semi-original name. Morally duplicitous, he has been a false friend to Sir Walter and to Charles Smith. Narratively he is accorded an odd versatility as well. He appears first as an unidentified traveler, spontaneously smitten with Anne at Lyme, then later is shown to have had a calculated plan to court her. Yet, despite his characteristic deviousness, his admiration at the inn was genuine, arising in ignorance of her identity. It was simply a coinci­ dence—a narrative doubleness. A striking doubleness characterizes the plot as well as the cast of char­ acters. Anne's anticipated first meeting with her former lover, Went­ worth, is scuttled by a domestic accident in the Musgrove household: little Charles is injured in a fall. And with a thud that is uncannily familiar, the turning point of the novel will occur when the boy's aunt, Louisa Musgrove, falls on the Cobb at Lyme. The symmetry is as sig­ nificant as the similarity; as the child's fall heralds a courteous and cold reacquaintanceship, Louisa's precipitates Wentworth's recognition of love and his return to Anne. Freud was intrigued by the congruence of chronological and spatial patterning in the grammar of dreams, observing that "temporal repeti­ tion of an act is regularly shown . . . by the numerical multiplication of an object." Repetitions inform Louisa's accident with just such dream­ like ciphering. The company at Lyme are taking their second walk along the Cobb, owing to Louisa's determination, and she further, obstinately insists that Wentworth "jump" her down the steps once, and then again.

310 After she has fallen and her sister Henrietta has fainted from shock, we are told that the passersby are especially delighted with the entertain­ ment of seeing not merely one, "nay, two dead young ladies, for it proved twice as fine as the first report. " Along with such doubling in names and actions, a cadence of poetic refrain characterizes much of the novel's diction. For example, an unusually long and spiraling sentence expresses Anne's piteous solitude in the wake of events following Louisa's accident: She was the last, excepting the little boys at the cot, she was the very last, the only remaining one of all that had filled and animated both houses, of all that had given Uppercross its cheerful character. This nostalgic sentence echoes another description of lingering lastness, the reference to the old nursery-maid who is delightedly rehabilitated by Louisa's fall: A chaise was sent for from Crewkherne, and Charles conveyed back a far more useful person in the old nursery-maid of the family, one who having brought up all the children, and seen the very last, the lingering and long-petted master Harry, sent to school after his brothers, was now living in her deserted nursery to mend stockings, and dress all the blains and bruises she could get near her, and who, consequently, was only too happy in being allowed to go and help nurse dear Miss Louisa. The sentence is a chanting, balladlike story; the image of the nursery is presented with the soothingly monotonous rhythm of a nursery rhyme, another variation on the theme of refrain. And refrain is a theme. Implicit in the novel's premise is a doubleness of time, for Persuasion is constructed like a palimpsest, an overlay through which we must decipher an original. The dramatic action that occurred in the novel's implied past is reflected and reflected upon throughout the text. We need only consider the way in which Anne is presented; until the events at Lyme precipitate her "second spring of youth and beauty," she belongs more to the ghostly past than to her dismal present circumstances. She lives amid the resonant tension of simultaneous time periods. The passage which most pivotally expresses this impossible dou­ bleness of time occurs just before the story's turning point. In the poised, held moment before Louisa jumps down the Cobb steps and sets in motion a tumultuous rearrangement of the characters' romantic pair­ bonds, Austen pauses in her story for a haunting reverie on the sea: The party from Uppercross passing down by the now deserted and melancholy looking rooms, and still descending, soon found them­ selves on the sea shore, and lingering only, as all must linger and

3 1 1 gaze on a first return to the sea, who ever deserve to look on it at all, proceeded towards the Cobb. . . . Anne's first view of the sea is paradoxically not her first view, it is a "first return." And all of the radical patterning in Persuasions plot structure and diction emphasizes this tremulous union of beginnings and returns. The motif of first returns opens the apparently closed story of Anne's life. It suggests the possibility for recovery of what was thought to have been irrevocably lost. And as the story of a misunderstanding that is revisited, the novel challenges the reader's convictions regarding his own perceptions. In the earlier Austen novels, the anticipation of the happy ending invests the whole with a promise of pleasing resolution. But the anticipated ending of Persuasion must provoke apprehension; we cannot be sure where this return will lead, or if it will have an ultimate destina­ tion at all. Even Anne's dizzyingly narrow escape from a wasted life is not as properly satisfying as we expect fictional escapes to be. A painful residue of doubt clings to the ending, and we wince with ambivalent desires and beliefs when we are told that They returned into the past, more exquisitely happy perhaps, in their re-union, than when it had been first projected; more tender, more tried, more fixed in a knowledge of each other's char­ acter. . . . Analogue of a first return, here is a redeemed past. And Anne teas- ingly denies us our sigh of relief with her paradoxical insistence that Lady Russell had been wrong in her advice, yet she herself had been right to follow it. We want to agree, yet we are left frowning; like Dr. Johnson's Rasselas, we are being asked to drink from the mouth of the Nile even as we drink from its source. Anne's defense of her terrible error feels like a flirtation with disaster even as the novel is about to close, grinding against her miraculous, precarious rescue. It is the nature of storytelling to etch patterns and simultaneously to violate them. In Persuasion this aesthetic conflict is brought into the foreground; the will to conserve the patterns of the past inviolate abrades against the impulse to disrupt and reform them. As the "imaginist" Emma Woodhouse in Emma wishes to preserve authority over her world and yet wishes to make matches (which must necessarily under­ mine her control over those matched), so the narrator of Persuasion expresses contradictory impulses toward enshrinement of the past and toward implacable progress. Narrative ambivalence is apparent from the start. If the promised story of Anne Elliot is introduced as the wistful remnant of a lost past, then the scene with which that story commences farcically counterpoints the yearning to return there. We meet the fatuous Sir Walter gazing tire-

312 lessly at the two handsome duodecimo pages of the Baronetage upon which his family's historical existence is summarily acknowledged. He delights in beholding his own name, feeling an endless glow radiated by his ancestors' prestige. He favors the pursuit of no profession at all, any sort of employment being necessarily deleterious to one's original per­ sonal substance. Absurd as such a caricature of conservatism is, his com­ pulsion to hold his story still brings into relief the narrator's and heroine's inclinations to cut Anne's losses, to deny the potentially dan­ gerous possibilities of hope and change. In change there is loss, of course, but there can be more than com­ pensatory gain as well. On a thematic level, both characters and narrator frequently express faith in justice and the value of suffering. On another level, Anne's losses can be equated with the missing elements of the narrative. The story that overflows the banks of fictional knowledge is in a sense lost, but as with Anne's and Wentworth's lost days, absent fea­ tures of the text are pledges of a greater richness to come. The more information we are given about a character's inner life, the sparser that information seems. Who was Anne Elliot before the novel began, and how can we account for the eight years that transformed the persuadable girl of nineteen into the firm woman we are shown? And further, how has this narrator elicited from us such unconventional, seemingly inappropriate curiosity? She has done so at least in part by contrasting a playfully contrived, non-mimetic fictional background with an earnestly realized, provoca­ tively elusive central figure. Figure and ground resonate, creating a ten­ sion that invests the text with powerful emotional authenticity, and anticipating the direction taken by such later novelists as Proust and Joyce. In place of the unobtrusive mimetic foundation that persuasively sup­ ports earlier Austen heroines, here is fictional scaffolding illuminated with narrative searchlights. Patterns of doubleness and refrain have taken the place of progressive momentum, creating a cadence exqui­ sitely suited to this heroine's step. For she is no Elizabeth Bennet, com­ ing of age and learning to distinguish between appearances and reality; Anne Elliot begins her narrative journey with maturity and discern­ ment, and in her world such phenomenological distinctions are no longer possible. Here the focus has veered from character to the percep­ tion of character, and knowledge of another person's motives and idio­ syncratic vision is always insufficient. Grounded by Persuasions schematically patterned narrative surface, personality emerges with a residual richness that extends beyond the borders of the text.

Jane Austen: A Ckronology 1775 Jane Austen born, December 16, at Steventon, Hampshire, the seventh of eight children of the Rev. George Austen. George III is on the throne of England. 1784 Formal education ends at age 9, at school in Reading. 1789-91 Between the ages of 14 and 16, she writes a novel called "Love and Freindship," a "History of England," and stories called "Lesley Castle" and "A Collection of Letters." 1793-96 Writes "Lady Susan" and "Elinor and Marianne," the earli­ est version of Sense and Sensibility. 1797 Writes "First Impressions," the earliest version of Pride and Prejudice. 1797-98 Rewrites "Elinor and Marianne" as Sense and Sensibility (which remains unpublished until 1811). 1798-99 Writes Northanger Abbey (published posthumously in 1818). 1801 Austen family moves to Bath. 1804-05 Now at Southampton, she writes "The Watsons," possibly an early version of Emma. 1805 Her father dies and the following year the family moves to Southampton, where after an interval of several years her major works were composed. 1809 Rewrites "First Impressions" as Pride and Prejudice, and revises Sense and Sensibility for publication. 1811-20 The Regency: George, Prince of Wales, takes over the pow­ ers of George III, who lives on until 1820. 1811 Sense and Sensibility published at last, anonymously—like all her other works; writes Mansfield 1813 Pride and Prejudice published. 1814 Writes Emma and publishes Mansfield 1815 Writes Persuasion. 1816 Emma published. 1817 Jane Austen dies at the age of 42 in Winchester, of Addison's disease, leaving "Sanditon," an unfinished novel. 1818 Northanger Abbey and Persuasion published, again anony­ mously. 3 1 3

Selected Bibliography The first section of this bibliography lists the editions of Jane Austen essential to serious study of her work. The second section includes the tides of works that bear indirectly on Austen's modes of thought. All are cited in the essays included in this edition. Works of biography and criticism, with emphasis on relatively recent criticism, are listed in the third section, which provides biblio­ graphic data for other critical citations from the essays. Except for the editions in the first section, nothing listed is the source of any excerpt appearing in the present text. JANE AUSTEN: WORKS AND L E T T E R S The Novels of]ane Austen. Ed. R. W. Chapman. 5 vols. 3rd ed., Oxford, 1933. A sixth volume, including minor works by Austen, appeared in 1954. Jane Austen's juvenilia have appeared in three volumes: Volume the First. Ed. R. W. Chapman. Oxford, 1933. Volume the Third. Ed. R. W. Chapman . Oxford, 1951. Volume the Second. Ed. B. C. Southam. Oxford, 1963. Jane Austen's Letters to Her Sister Cassandra and Others. Ed. R. W. Chapman. 2nd ed. Lon­ don, 1952. RELATED MATERIAL Donagan, Alan. The Theory of Morality. Chicago, 1977. Fried, Charles. "Liberals and Love." The New Republic (December 24, 1984). Maclntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. London, 1981. Nagel, Thomas. Mortal Questions. Cambridge, 1979. Richards, David A. J. A Theory of Reasons for Action. Oxford, 1971. Slote, Michael. Common-sense Morality and Consequentialism. London, 1985. Spring, David. "Land and Politics in Edwardian England." Agricultural History 58 (1984): 17-42. Williams, Bernard. Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers, 1973-1980. Cambridge, 1981. BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM Austen-Leigh, J. E. A Memoir of Jane Austen. London, 1870. Battestin, Martin C. The Providence of Wit: Aspects of Form in Augustan Literature and the Arts. Oxford, 1974. Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago, 1983. Brown, Julia Prewitt. Jane Austen's Novels: Social Change and Literary Form. Cambridge, MA, 1979. Brown, Lloyd. Bits of Ivory: Narrative Techniques in Jane Austen's Fiction. Baton Rouge, 1973. Crane, R. S. "The Concept of Plot and the Plot of Tom Jones." Critics and Criticism: Ancient and Modem. Ed. R. S. Crane. Chicago, 1952. Damrosch, Leo. God's Plot and Man's Stories: Studies in the Fictional Imagination from Milton to Fielding. Chicago, 1985. Devlin, D. D. Jane Austen and Education. London, 1975. Duckworth, Alistair M. The Improvement of the Estate: A Study of Jane Austen's Novels. Balti­ more, 1971. Duffy, Joseph M. "Structure and Idea in Persuasion." Nineteenth Century Fiction 8 (1953): 272-79. Dussinger, John A. In the Pride of the Moment: Encounters in Jane Austen's World. Columbus, OH, 1990. 315

316 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Forster, E. M. Abinger Harvest. London, 1936. Gard, Roger. Jane Austen's Novels: The Art of Clarity. New Haven, 1992. Unlike most recent criticism, this book returns to a mode of "appreciation" for Austen's accomplishment. Garrod, H. W. "Jane Austen, a Depreciation." Essays by Divers Hands . . . Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature. N.s. 8 (August 1957): 21-40. One of the first negative appraisals. Greene, D. J. "Jane Austen and the Peerage." PMLA 68 (1953): 1017-31. Useful for understand­ ing Austen's treatment of social class. Halperin, John, ed. Jane Austen: Bicentenary Essays. Cambridge, 1975. Harding, D. W. "Regulated Hatred: An Aspect of the Work of Jane Austen." Scrutiny 8 (1940): 346-62. Hardy, Barbara. A Reading of Jane Austen. New York, 1976. Honan, Park. Jane Austen: Her Life. New York, 1987. The best recent biography. Kaplan, Deborah. Jane Austen and the World of Women. Baltimore, 1992. A fresh treatment of Austen's cultural situation. Kroeber, Karl. Styles in Fictional Structure: The Art of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot. Princeton, 1971. Lawrence, D. H. Apropos of Lady Chatterley's Lover. London, 1930. Lewis, C. S. "A Note on Jane Austen. Essays in Criticism 4 (1954): 359-71. Monaghan, David M. Jane Austen: Structure and Social Vision. Totowa, 1980. Mooneyham, Laura G. Romance, Language, and Education in Jane Austen's Novels. London, 1988. Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. Chicago, 1984. Price, Martin. Forms of Life: Character and Moral Imagination in the Novel. New Haven, 1983. Sieferman, Sylvia. "Persuasion: The Motive for Metaphor." Studies in the Novel 11 (1979): 283-301. Southam, B. C , ed. Critical Essays on Jane Austen. London, 1968. Spence, Jon. "The Abiding Possibilities of Nature in Persuasion." SEL 21 (1981): 625-36. Spring, David. "Interpreters of Jane Austen's Social World: Literary Critics and Historians." In Jane Austen: New Perspectives. Ed. Janet Todd. New York, 1983. Pp. 53-72. Sulloway, Alison G. Jane Austen and the Province ofWomanhood. Philadelphia, 1989. Tave, Stuart M. Some Words of Jane Austen. Chicago, 1973. Trilling, Lionel. Sincerity and Authenticity. Cambridge, MA, 1971. Weinsheimer, Joel. "Chance and the Hierarchy of Marriages in Pride and Prejudice." ELH 39 (1972): 404-19. Wiesenforth, Joseph. "History and Myth in Jane Austen's Persuasion." The Literary Criterion 2 (1977): 76-85. Wilson, Edmund. "A Long Talk about Jane Austen." Classics and Commercials. New York, 1950. 196-203. Wiltshire, John. "A Romantic Persuasion?" The Critical Review 14 (1971): 3-16. Wordsworth, William. "Essay Supplementary to the Preface" and "Preface to Lyrical Ballads." In Wordsworth's Literary Criticism. Ed. W. J. B. Owen. London, 1974. Zietlow, Paul N. "Luck and Fortuitous Circumstance in Persuasion: Two Interpretations." ELH 32(1965): 179-95.