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Women readers and the Victorian Jane Austen

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Women readers and the Victorian Jane Austen

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Content WOMEN READERS AND THE VICTORIAN JANE AUSTEN by Alice Marie Villaseñor A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (ENGLISH) December 2009 Copyright 2009 Alice Marie Villaseñor ii Acknowledgements I could not have completed this project without the support of the Marta Feuchtwanger Merit Award Dissertation Fellowship from the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences as well as the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute PhD Fellowship. The USC Center for Feminist Research also supported my study with a Diana Meehan Fellowship in Feminism and Communication as well as a Graduate Student Travel Grant. The Jane Austen Society of North America International Visitor Program and the UK Jane Austen Society Travel Bursury scheme funded the time I needed in British archives to complete the archival research for my two chapters on women writers in the Austen family. These literary societies also provided support in terms of a lively intellectual community of friends who read and write on Jane Austen. I would particularly like to thank the following members of JASNA for their encouragement: Laurie Viera Rigler, Joan Klingel Ray, Marsha Huff, Claire Bellanti, Kerri Spennechia, Sheryl Craig, and Julliet Wells. JAS members who have been particularly supportive of my research include: Sarah Parry (of the Chawton House Library), Jane Hurst, Toni Colley, and Elizabeth Proudman. I would also like to thank the members of staff at rare book libraries and archives where I have studied, including the Huntington Library in San Marino, California and the Hampshire Record Office in Winchester, Hampshire. Colin Harris from the Department of Special Collections of the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford was especially helpful regarding my queries about Catherine Hubback’s iii letters on deposit there. And the staff at the Jane Austen House Museum in Chawton, Hampshire was particularly supportive of this project — in terms of providing access to their wonderful resources on Jane Austen and her family members in a warm and inviting research space. Tom Carpenter, Senior Trustee of the Jane Austen Memorial Trust, was especially helpful in the process of tracking down material related to Catherine Hubback. House Manager Ann Channon’s incomparable knowledge of printed books related to Jane Austen proved especially useful to my research. And Louise West, Collections and Education Manager of the Jane Austen House Museum, provided support, friendship, and even housing during the final stages of this research endeavor. Thank you also to those individuals who have kindly allowed me to study and cite their family manuscripts in this dissertation. Particularly, I would like to thank the copyright holder of papers and ephemera related to Catherine Hubback for loaning the Jane Austen House Museum these materials for my benefit. Thank you also to Nick Hopkinson, for giving me permission to cite his parents’ Hubback Family History Manuscript deposited at the Jane Austen House Museum. Finally, thanks also to Helen Lefroy, who kindly allowed me to study the Bellas Manuscript currently in her possession (soon to be deposited in the Hampshire Record Office). I was particularly blessed to write this dissertation in an English Department that cultivates a friendly and encouraging atmosphere among its graduate students. I would like to acknowledge the friendship and support of my dissertation group members Kathryn Strong and Ruth Blandón as well as other students of nineteenth- iv century literature who made suggestions along the way, namely, Leslie Bruce, Erika Wright, Beth Callaghan, and Wendy Witherspoon. Susan Harris, and other professional staff members of the USC Joint Educational Project, also helped this project along by providing moral support when it was most needed. This project changed much from its original inception as a study of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in relation to popular culture, and I owe much to the feedback of USC English Professors Leo Braudy and Paul Alkon, as well as USC Art History Professor Nancy Troy for offering questions and suggestions at the qualifying examination stage that helped me evolve the project into one focusing on the nineteenth-century conceptualization of Jane Austen’s image. I am also thankful to Emily Anderson, Jonathan Grossman, and Nancy Armstrong for their in-depth feedback on my argument for the final chapter of the dissertation on the relationship between Jane Austen and Samuel Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison. At the later stage, James Collins, USC Assistant Professor of Classics, stepped in with an enthusiasm for the project and a model for the kind of community-based teaching methods that originally motivated this dissertation. Professor James Kincaid, who served on both the qualifying examination committee and the final dissertation committee, has given me much to contemplate through the many stages of this project. In fact, I began to seriously consider how I would go about writing my dissertation project on Jane Austen while preparing a presentation on Jane Austen’s Emma for one of his graduate seminars. v My dissertation chair, Professor Hilary Schor, has been my biggest supporter since serving as my advisor upon my arrival at USC. I am thankful to her for providing a model of sound feminist scholarship, mentorship, and even friendship. Most of all, I am grateful that she trusted me to listen to my instincts as I entered the archives to study the Austen family. This was particularly brave as it was not always clear what, if anything, such effusions of fancy would reveal. But I am mostly thankful to her for helping me make sense of the muck that sometimes (and somewhat inevitably) results from emerging oneself completely in the Austen family papers for lengthy periods of time. vi Table of Contents Acknowledgements ii Abstract vii Introduction 1 Women Readers and the Victorian Jane Austen Chapter One 17 Four Generations of The Watsons: Catherine Hubback’s Laboring Women’s Narrative Chapter Two 62 Developing a Feminist Critical Methodology: Fanny Caroline Lefroy’s Family History Chapter Three 96 Charlotte Brontë and G.H. Lewes: Rereading Canonical Responses to Jane Austen’s Work Chapter Four 134 Jane Austen Rewrites Samuel Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison: A Case Study Illustrating Why the Victorians Still Matter Conclusion 187 Bridget Jones: A Contemporary Elizabeth Bennet Bibliography 195 vii Abstract My project reveals how the study of women’s contributions to Victorian debates about Jane Austen is vital to understanding Austen’s literary reputation. More generally, it also stakes a claim for the central role of the nineteenth-century novel as a crucial genre for women writing literary criticism. I analyze unexamined feminist readings of Austen’s work in canonical novels alongside lesser-known works of fiction, family history manuscripts, letters, and other ephemera in the Bodleian Library, the Hampshire Record Office, and the Jane Austen House Museum. Taken together, the case studies in this recovery project demonstrate that feminist thought is inextricably intertwined with Jane Austen’s critical legacy. Contrary to current assumptions, Austen’s feminism was not “discovered” during the second-wave feminist movement by scholars in the academy (e.g., Margaret Kirkham, Sandra Gilbert, Susan Gubar, and Claudia Johnson) — rather, it has always been an integral, though largely ignored, aspect of women’s responses to Austen’s work. The first two chapters of this project unearth the work of two Victorian woman writers in the Austen family: Catherine Hubback and Fanny Caroline Lefroy. Their interpretations of Austen’s stories challenge images of Austen presented by male- authored reviews in Victorian literary magazines as well as nineteenth-century biographies penned by men in the Austen family. Drawing on the recovery work of these initial chapters, my third chapter suggests that Charlotte Brontë’s novel Shirley (1849) can be read as a critical response to Austen’s novels. I recontextualize the most infamous female response to Austen in Victorian times: Charlotte Brontë’s viii critiques of Austen’s novels written in letters to George Eliot’s companion G.H. Lewes. The dissertation ends with a chapter that highlights the importance of reexamining the making of Jane Austen’s literary reputation. I show how ideas from Victorian texts still influence interpretations of Austen’s novels as I scrutinize Jane Austen’s own engagement with Samuel Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison (1753- 1754). 1 Introduction — Women Readers and the Victorian Jane Austen Now let us look at the matter the other way; the publishing way. One ought to do in this case what the authoress would have done for herself — slightly alter and very carefully correct — and though I should be sorry in such a business to trust solely to my own small knowledge of composition, it certainly might be done. (1862 letter from Anna Lefroy to her brother J.E. Austen-Leigh) 1 Jane Austen had very little control over the making of her own literary reputation. Publishing her first four novels as “a lady” allowed Austen to keep her identity a secret for only a limited time. Anna Lefroy was completely ignorant of the fact that she was in the company of the author of Sense and Sensibility when she picked up her Aunt’s first published novel in the circulating library at Alton and said, “Oh that must be rubbish I am sure from the title” (Lefroy Family History Manuscript). But with the publication of Jane Austen’s second novel, the secret of her authorship slipped even beyond the family circle, mostly due to her brother Henry Austen. His actions were quite against Jane Austen’s wishes, as the following passage from one of the novelist’s letters to her sister Cassandra makes clear: “Lady Robert is delighted with P & P —– and really was so as I understand before she knew who wrote it — For, of course, she knows now, — He [Henry Austen] told her with as much satisfaction as if it were my wish.” (218). In correspondence with her brother Francis about the drafting of her third novel Mansfield Park, Jane Austen indicates that even more people knew about her clandestine writing endeavors: “the truth is that the Secret has spread so far as to be scarcely the Shadow of a secret now” (231). By the time her fourth work was close to publication, Jane Austen’s identity was known 2 even to the Prince Regent’s librarian, James Stanier Clarke, who invited Jane Austen to dedicate her forthcoming novel Emma to the Royal Highness who had “read & admired all” of her publications (296). Henry Austen’s interference did not end there. After Jane Austen’s early death, in July 1817, her brother seized complete control over his sister’s public image. Within six months of Jane Austen’s passing, he published the remaining full-length novels — which he titled Persuasion and Northanger Abbey — under Jane Austen’s own name. He also attached a short “Biographical Notice,” providing details about his sister’s life. In 1833 he expanded this notice at the request of Richard Bentley, who published the new version along with Austen’s novels in his Standard Novels series. In the 1860s, Jane Austen’s nephew J.E. Austen-Leigh began in earnest to build upon the biographical information that his uncle Henry Austen had already presented to the public. Austen-Leigh’s A Memoir of Jane Austen — first published in 1870 and then expanded in 1871 — was the first extensive biography of Jane Austen’s life. As such, all subsequent versions of Austen’s life story draw from this seminal text, including Life and Letters of Jane Austen (1913), composed by Jane Austen’s great-nephew and great-great nephew W. and R.A. Austen-Leigh. This third familial published version of Jane Austen’s life is the basis for the current standard scholarly biography: Deirdre Le Faye’s Jane Austen: A Family Record, first published in 1989 and revised for a second edition in 2004. 1 (qtd. in Hopkinson Hopkinson Family Ch. 8: 4-5) 3 Countless critics and biographers have pointed out the flaws in J.E. Austen- Leigh’s biography — a subject I will touch upon in some of the dissertation chapters. For now, however, I would like to point out that the errors were not introduced by Austen-Leigh alone. Austen-Leigh’s opus was not a single-authored text — a fact that Kathryn Sutherland elucidates exceptionally well in her edition of Austen-Leigh’s Memoir (2002). Rather, the making of the Memoir was much like the creation of Jane Austen’s legacy at large: a communal project resulting from editing the remaining scraps of a life that was largely lost. And the people who sewed those scraps into the patchwork quilt of Jane Austen’s life, as we now understand it, were mostly nineteenth-century women. Jane Austen left all of her belongings — with the exception of two £50 legacies and money for her funeral expenses — to her only sister Cassandra (Letters 339). Cassandra immediately began to disperse of some of Jane Austen’s letters and other personal items to various family members like Fanny Knight and close friends such as Anne Sharp (see Letters 346–348 and 340–341). As Deirdre Le Faye reports, Cassandra also passed on stories about Jane Austen’s life to her brothers’ children (Family Record 268). In the first two chapters of this study, I discuss two of these nieces — Catherine Hubback and Anna Lefroy — and the material that unfolded from their communications with Cassandra Austen. But while Cassandra shared some of Jane Austen’s letters and stories with her nieces, she kept the majority of these things to herself. On May 9, 1843 she wrote to her brother Charles about the state of her papers, including Jane Austen’s letters and manuscripts: “As I have leisure, I am 4 looking over & destroying some of my Papers — others I have marked ‘to be burned,’ whilst some will still remain. These are chiefly a few letters & a few Manuscripts of our dear Jane, which I have set apart for those parties to whom I think they will be mostly valuable” (qtd. in Family Record 269-270). Caroline Austen reports that the majority of Jane Austen’s letters were destroyed during this purging period: “[Jane’s] letters to Aunt Cassandra (for they were sometimes separated), were, I dare say, open and confidential — My Aunt looked them over and burnt the greater part (as she told me), 2 or 3 years before her own death – She left, or gave some as legacies to the Nieces — but of those that I have seen, several had portions cut out —“ (qtd. in Family Record 270). Austen’s literary critics and fans continue to lament this loss. The few letters that have survived (roughly two hundred) have all been heavily edited by Cassandra Austen. When Cassandra Austen died in 1845, she took most of the details of Jane Austen’s life to the grave with her. This left J.E. Austen-Leigh with little material from which to draw when he sat down to work on his Memoir in the early 1860s. Due to the death of Jane Austen’s last living sibling (Sir Francis Austen) in 1865, J.E. Austen-Leigh was one of the few living relations who had any personal memories of Jane Austen. He was the only living person who had attended Jane Austen’s burial in Winchester Cathedral, but as he was a young boy at the time, he had few memories to rely upon. The letters that survived Cassandra Austen’s scrupulous vetting process were now scattered among the different branches of the Austen clan. With few documents in his possession and very little information from his uncle’s previously 5 published short biographical pieces from which to draw, Austen-Leigh turned to the women in the Austen family for access to Jane Austen’s unpublished manuscripts and unrecorded stories about her life. This study of women’s roles in the making of Jane Austen’s literary reputation takes a cue from J.E. Austen-Leigh himself, as my first two chapters focus on two generations of women in the Austen family: Catherine Hubback and Fanny Caroline Lefroy. I draw from rare novels, family history manuscripts, letters, and other ephemera in the Bodleian Library, the Hampshire Record Office, and the Jane Austen House Museum. Some of the material and stories in these archives were available to Austen-Leigh when he wrote his Memoir, and some of it was created in response to that work. Taken together, this material calls into question the often-repeated current critical notion of the Austen family agenda. 2 As my analysis shows, even among branches of the Austen family that had close ties with one another, the Austen family rarely reached a unanimous consensus about anything to do with Jane Austen. My dissertation concentrates on women’s participation in nineteenth-century debates 2 Note, for example, David Noke’s language, which implies that all Austen family members of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries shared Henry Austen’s agenda: Henry Austen’s unfortunate reference to his sister’s final poem was carefully censored, but another sentence from his “Biographical Notice” was widely proclaimed: “Faultless herself, as nearly as human nature can be, she always sought in the faults of others, something to excuse, to forgive or forget.” That was how the Austen family were determined to remember her. Discreetly, they adjusted the records of her life in efforts to ensure that that was how the world should remember her too. This family tradition of producing censored versions of Jane Austen’s life and works has had its inevitable effect on subsequent 6 about Jane Austen, including how women grappled with Jane Austen’s life story in relation to her work. The first chapter focuses on Catherine Hubback, the daughter of one of Jane Austen’s sailor brothers. Although Hubback was born the year after Jane Austen’s death, she was one of several cousins to whom J.E. Austen-Leigh turned for information about Aunt Jane. A full decade before her elder cousin began his Austen project, Hubback attempted to influence Jane Austen’s public image. Hubback completed Jane Austen’s then-unpublished fragment The Watsons and published the finished product as a triple-decker governess-plot novel entitled The Younger Sister (1850). She did not announce that the first few chapters of the text were written by the Aunt Jane to whom she dedicated the work — presumably in an attempt to capitalize on Jane Austen’s literary reputation in order to establish her own fairly prolific, if not memorable, writing career. Hubback makes Jane Austen’s short fragment relevant for Victorian readers by writing in the vein of popular governess-plot novels highlighting the trials faced by young heroines unexpectedly forced to earn their keep. Hubback amplifies references to the horrors of governess work that Austen briefly touches upon in Emma through the character of Jane Fairfax. Read through the lens of Hubback’s text, Austen’s novels were primarily concerned with revealing the horrors for women facing genteel poverty, much like Victorian governess-plot novels of the mid- Victorian era such as Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey (1847), Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre biographies, most of which have been based upon the tactful memoirs of later Austens. (emphasis mine, Jane Austen: A Life 4) 7 (1847), and even William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1847-1848). 3 The narrative of genteel poverty Catherine Hubback outlines in her version of The Watsons brushes uncomfortably close to Jane Austen’s own story of writing for profit — and this, I suggest, explains why Hubback’s name is virtually absent from the well-worn collective list of family members writing about Austen in the Victorian era compiled over the years by Austen scholars. Austen’s nieces and nephews — all children of Jane Austen’s brothers — did not wish to portray the men in Jane Austen’s life as being unwilling to provide much-needed financial assistance to Jane, Cassandra, and their widowed mother. Jane Austen’s great-niece Fanny Caroline Lefroy drew from unpublished family manuscripts — including her mother Anna Lefroy’s stories of Jane Austen — to develop a perspective on Austen’s life and work that anticipates twentieth-century feminist critical approaches. My second chapter traces the development of Lefroy’s argument from its origins in her Family History Manuscript through to anonymous articles in Temple Bar published in 1879 and 1883. In all of these works Lefroy blends biography, literary criticism, and fiction. Lefroy’s Austen — a victim of unrequited love — is a stark contrast to images of Austen presented in the biographical pieces of Henry Austen (Lefroy’s great-uncle) and J.E. Austen-Leigh (Lefroy’s uncle). Refuting earlier arguments that Austen’s novels reflect Austen’s own limited life experiences, Lefroy argues that Austen’s stories rarely replicate the true 3 A more detailed description of the Victorian governess-plot novel is provided in my first chapter. However, please also see Kathryn Hughes’s The Victorian Governess for a discussion of the typical tropes of governess-plot novels. 8 passion that she experienced in her own life. Lefroy cultivates a then-untold story about Jane Austen’s rendezvous with a gentleman by the sea, arguing that Austen’s biography reads much like the story of Anne Elliot’s suffering in Persuasion. Through this claim, Lefroy attempts to contradict the idea that Austen’s texts are lacking in pathos, a subject crucial to establishing Austen as a relevant figure for the Victorians. In my third chapter, I move away from an explicit conversation about relatively unknown women writers in the Austen family to show how the themes in the works of Lefroy and Hubback are addressed in the work of a canonical novelist: Charlotte Brontë. Charlotte Brontë’s negative references to Jane Austen, written in letters to George Henry Lewes, have deterred critics from seriously investigating the ways in which the novelists’ texts are in conversation with one another. But I trace the ways in which Charlotte Brontë’s well-known 1847-1848 epistolary exchange with Lewes about Austen’s novels ultimately spilled out into Brontë’s later stories and Lewes’s later reviews. In Shirley (1849), Brontë continues her discussion with Lewes about the artistic worth of Austen’s novels through her two-heroine plot. Caroline Helstone stands in for Austen while Shirley Keeldar represents Charlotte Brontë herself. Although Brontë displays a kind of stubborn attitude towards Jane Austen’s work in Shirley, Villette shows a more serious appropriation of Austen’s style. Likewise, I argue, Lewes’s later (post-Shirley) reviews show a softening towards Brontë’s ideas about Jane Austen. Exposing the entire story of Charlotte Brontë’s responses to Austen’s work emphasizes Austen’s influence on the evolution of the 9 nineteenth-century novel, as even the female novelist who is most famous for downplaying Austen’s skill could not escape her influence. My final chapter draws upon the recovery work of the first three in order to provide a case study demonstrating the importance of scrutinizing the Victorians’ view of Austen. Drawing from information in the biographies of Henry Austen and J.E. Austen-Leigh, contemporary critics continue to insist that Samuel Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison (1753-1754) was Jane Austen’s favorite novel. Oddly, these same critics acknowledge that Austen was far from reverential towards Richardson’s work. Nonetheless, when discussing Austen’s mature novels, critics tend to focus on what they read as the positive reincarnations of Richardson’s love plots in Austen’s novels. But reading the Victorian biographical comments with a serious critical eye, I suggest how some of Austen’s borrowings serve a distinct feminist purpose. I discuss how Austen rewrites the story of Richardson’s minor character, Miss Mansfield, in Pride and Prejudice (1813), Persuasion (1818), and especially Mansfield Park (1814), in order to critique Richardson’s endorsement of marriages of convenience. Austen’s revisions, I argue, explicitly encourage readers to question Richardson’s notion that poor women, like Miss Mansfield, should settle for marriages of convenience rather than demand marriages based on love and companionship. Through my analysis, I demonstrate how Austen’s relationship to Richardson is much more intricate and vexed than critics have previously acknowledged. By outlining how information proffered in Austen family bibliographies has closed down the kinds of readings that this chapter attempts to open up, I also examine some of the ways in which current 10 approaches to Austen scholarship continue to be shaped by the Austen family’s nineteenth-century publishing practices. For Austen, as well as for the other nineteenth-century women featured in this project, the novel was a crucial genre for literary criticism. With this in mind, my hope is that scholars of nineteenth-century British literature, and indeed literary scholars at large, will be drawn to this study for its consideration of the larger issue of how current approaches to literary studies systematically ignore women’s voices. Traditional reception studies of Austen exclude the responses of most Victorian women, as critics focus almost solely on interpretations published in high culture forums such as Victorian literary magazines — forums where most women were unable to contribute. In contrast, my project concentrates on women’s responses to Austen in novels and other novelized genres. One of the goals of the project as a whole is to demonstrate that examining women’s novelistic contributions to Victorian debates about Jane Austen is important to understanding the making of Jane Austen’s image at large. In this way, the project is in a conversation with recent scholarship on Austen that is concerned with tracing the impact particular readers of Jane Austen have had on her reputation. The best of this kind of work can be found in Kathryn Sutherland’s Jane Austen’s Textual Lives: From Aeschylus to Bollywood (2005), which examines the influence the Oxford University Press — including Austen’s first scholarly editor, Oxford Professor R.W. Chapman — has had on Jane Austen’s critical reception. With its emphasis on women’s readings of Jane Austen, my project was also inspired by the current lively 11 discussion about contemporary women readers of Jane Austen, including the insights brought forward by Deidre Lynch and Claudia Johnson on the topic of Janeites. 4 In fact, when I was first conceptualizing this study, I was particularly intrigued by the feminist readings of Jane Austen’s novels that were driving many of the contemporary sequels I read. For example, Lady Catherine’s Necklace, with its heroine who turns to cross-dressing in order to earn a living as a man, was clearly written in order to highlight gender inequalities of Jane Austen’s time. Reading sequels like these eventually brought me back into the nineteenth century in search of the original Austen sequel writer: Catherine Hubback. Because I recover readings that have been absent from the landscape of the Austen critical canon, my project also owes a debt to earlier feminist recovery work. In particular, I have been inspired by the methodology of archival scholars reviving lost eighteenth-century women writers resulting in a radical transformation of the way we think about the varied literary landscape from which Jane Austen drew. The first two chapters of my dissertation contain an analysis of material that has been virtually untouched by feminist scholars. Catherine Hubback’s novels and letters have been almost completely overlooked, a phenomenon I explain in more detail in the chapter focusing on her work. Therefore, my research for the chapter focusing on her work has provided me 4 See Deidre Lynch’s article “At Home with Jane Austen” in Cultural Institutions of the Novel (1996) as well as the introduction to her edited volume, Janeites: Austen’s Disciples and Devotees (2000). This volume includes Claudia Johnson’s essay on “The Divine Miss Jane: Jane Austen, Janeites, and the Discipline of Novel Studies,” 12 with opportunities to complete archival work that reach beyond the span of the dissertation. During my time at the Jane Austen House Museum as the Jane Austen Society of North America’s 2006 International Visitor, I collated some of the museum’s holdings into a Catherine Hubback archive. As it stands today, I believe The Jane Austen Memorial Trust maintains the most comprehensive information relating to Catherine Hubback’s life as a novelist in England. Since the museum’s opening, descendents of Jane Austen’s siblings have donated a number of artifacts yielding a significant archive of furnishings, textiles, books, manuscripts, and other ephemera related to the Austen family at large. Some of the material is related to lesser-known writers in the family, including Catherine Hubback. Some of this material is on long-term loan to the Jane Austen Memorial Trust, and some of it is part of the museum’s permanent collection. One of the unique items in the collection is a manuscript chronicling Catherine Hubback’s life story, which was written by Hubback’s great-granddaughter and her husband (I describe the manuscript in more detail in my first chapter). The museum also houses rare editions of Hubback’s novels (two are signed by family members), 5 Catherine Hubback’s which echoes much of the information in Johnson’s earlier “Austen Cults and Cultures” published in the Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen (1997). 5 The editions of Catherine Hubback’s novels that are currently owned by the Jane Austen Memorial Trust are: The Younger Sister; The Wife’s Sister, signed by Catherine Hubback’s brother, Henry E Austen; and The Mistakes of a Life, signed by Catherine Hubback’s daughter-in-law Mary Ingram. A copy of The Old Vicarage: A Novel (published in New York and Boston) is currently on loan to the Jane Austen Memorial Trust. Not all pieces currently housed in the museum’s collection have been assigned catalogue numbers. In cases where numbers have been assigned, I include them in my bibliography. 13 Sketchbook, 6 and other ephemera related to Hubback. Moreover, the museum’s reference library contains some of the rare twentieth-century editions of completions to The Watsons written by Hubback’s descendents that I analyze in my dissertation chapter on Hubback. The museum space offers scholars a rare opportunity to study these later revisions of Catherine Hubback’s The Younger Sister against Hubback’s original Victorian text. 7 The JASNA International Visitor Program provided the time and funding I needed to translate some of the information I unearthed while researching Hubback in British archives into Notes on the Catherine Hubback Archive for the benefit of the museum staff and future researchers. The notes (currently on deposit at the museum) provide information about specific items in the collection related to Hubback. The notes incorporate information I uncovered while reading Catherine Hubback’s letters in the Bodleian Library as well as information I gleaned from the Austen-Leigh papers in the Hampshire Record Office in Winchester. Interviews I conducted with some of Hubback’s descendents during my time at the museum also aided in my drafting of the notes. 6 This sketchbook, which is currently on loan to the Jane Austen Memorial Trust, is significant because Hubback went on to sell paintings later in life. In an 1871 letter to her son John, Catherine Hubback discusses the idea of selling paintings she has done of San Francisco: “I have went & painted photos for sale of the City. W. Watkens thought I should most likely sell them, I only want $15 apiece that is [time] for my own work” (Letters 6 verso). 7 I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer of a piece of Hubback that I submitted to Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal for pointing out the rarity of having all three editions in the same collection. 14 As part of the well-read Austen-Leigh archive in the Hampshire Record Office, numerous Austen critics have culled through Fanny Caroline Lefroy’s Family History Manuscript over the years. However, as I explain at more length in the second chapter, the material has largely been raided for biographical information about Jane Austen’s life rather than studied as a work of intentional literary criticism in its own right. As for the material on more canonical figures — Charlotte Brontë and Samuel Richardson — these readings have been hiding in plan sight since the nineteenth- century. But the relationship between Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley and Austen’s Pride and Prejudice only comes to light after first reevaluating the larger context of Brontë’s letters to G.H. Lewes. Likewise, my new reading emphasizing the debt Mansfield Park owes to Samuel Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison is only possible because I first scrutinize critics’ reliance on material presented by Jane Austen’s nineteenth- century male relatives. Taken together, the examples in this recovery project demonstrate that feminist thought has always been inextricably intertwined with Jane Austen’s critical legacy. 8 8 D.W. Harding’s “Regulated Hatred: An Aspect of the Work of Jane Austen” (1940) — largely considered to be the first “modern” piece of Austen literary criticism — challenged “the impression of Jane Austen which has filtered through to the reading public, down from the first-hand critics, through histories of literature, university courses, literary journalism, and polite allusion, deter[ing] many who might be her best readers from bothering with her at all” (Jane Austen: A Collection of Critical Essays 166). Harding protests to the notion that Austen “provided refuge for the sensitive when the contemporary world grew too much for them,” which went hand- in-hand with the idea that “her scope was of course extremely limited” (166). And later works such as Marvin Mudrick’s Jane Austen: Irony as Defense and Discovery (1952) — in which Jane Austen’s novels were read to be “[penetrating] the polished surface of the bourgeois world” encouraged Austen scholars to consider Jane Austen’s anti-conservative message (36). 15 Although the readings of influential critics like D.W. Harding and Marvin Mudrick laid the groundwork for anti-conservative readings of Jane Austen, in the now-familiar view of Jane Austen’s reception history, Austen’s feminist leanings were not “discovered” until scholars such as Margaret Kirkham, Sandra Gilbert, Susan Gubar, and Claudia Johnson outlined her feminist leanings. My study relies heavily on all of these second-wave interpretations of Austen’s life and work. But while these germinal texts have influenced my readings of Austen’s work, one of the goals of my project is to call the ingenuity of these studies into question. My work shows that feminist responses to Austen have always been an integral, though largely ignored, aspect of women’s responses to Jane Austen. Revising our understanding of Jane Austen’s critical reception history is not the end-goal of this dissertation, however. 9 The fact that feminist readings of Jane Austen’s work can be clearly traced back to the nineteenth century, suggests to me that feminist politics are an innate feature of her work. By ending my recovery project 9 After all, scours of feminist critics like Jean I. Marsden have lamented studies that solely have this end-goal in mind: My own concern incorporates not only these issues of context but also, perhaps most crucially, the ways in which we project ourselves onto the writers we recover and the consequences of such projection for our scholarship. These questions first began to surface when I was asked to review a collection of essays some years ago. Although some contributions to the volume were rigorous and challenging, the majority followed a pattern in which the author presented a woman writer whom she had unearthed, described her work, and ultimately — inevitably — discovered that this early woman writer was a feminist. In this manner, figure after figure was revealed to be a foremother not just of feminism but, more specifically, of late-twentieth-century feminism. “Beyond recovery: feminism and the future of eighteenth-century literary studies” (658–659) 16 with a case study detailing how Austen’s nineteenth-century reception continues to influence our current readings of Austen’s novels, I hope to inspire new readings of Austen’s oeuvre that highlight her own marginalized feminist literary criticism. For example, given Austen’s criticism of Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison in her own novels, it is tempting to reread her famous Northanger Defense 10 in light of the female-authored novelistic literary criticism that I focus on in this study: Yes, novels — for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding — joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally takes up a novel is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the Reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another. We are an injured body. (37) 10 Austen includes what Margaret Kirkham calls the “Northanger Defense” in Chapter 5, Volume I of Northanger Abbey. After telling her readers that Catherine and Isabella “shut themselves up to read novels together,” the narrator transitions into a fairly lengthy defense of novels, including the passage I have quoted here. 17 Chapter One — Four Generations of The Watsons: Catherine Hubback’s Laboring Women’s Narrative When Jane Austen’s nephew J.E. Austen-Leigh published the second edition of A Memoir of Jane Austen in 1871, he included several short Jane Austen works that had never before been published. Traditionally, scholars understand this to be the first public appearance of the fragment now known as Jane Austen’s The Watsons. In this chapter, however, I will focus on a version of Jane Austen’s fragment that was published by Jane Austen’s niece Catherine Hubback in 1850. The purpose of this chapter is not to argue for a reevaluation of publication dates for The Watsons — previous studies by Kathryn Sutherland and Tamera Wagner have already established the fact that the first five chapters of Catherine Hubback’s The Younger Sister are actually Jane Austen’s fragment. 1 Rather, my first aim is to elucidate how and why Catherine Hubback drew from plot points in Austen’s unpublished fragment and completed published novels in order to create a triple-decker governess-plot novel that highlights the circumstances of impoverished genteel women in mid-century Victorian Britain. In particular, I show how Hubback’s personal financial struggles motivated 1 See Kathryn Sutherland’s introduction to A Memoir of Jane Austen and Other Family Recollections (esp. xxvi-xxvii) and Jane Austen’s Textual Lives: From Aeschulus to Bollywood (esp. 259-265). Tamera Wagner has written several short articles about Hubback’s The Younger Sister for The Victorian Web including “Mrs Hubback’s The Younger Sister: The Victorian Austen and the Phenomenon of the Austen Sequel” and “’These were the days’: Victorian Themes in Hubback’s Continuation of Jane Austen’s The Watsons.” While these articles are helpful, they should be read with a mindful eye because some aspects of them are inaccurate. For example, in “Catherine Hubback: Works and Literary Significance” Tamara Wagner claims that Edith Brown was “curiously” unaware of “her grandmother’s completion.” But as I discuss later in the chapter, Edith Brown specifically proclaims that her intent is to rewrite her grandmother’s The Younger Sister. 18 the aspiring novelist to appropriate Austen’s work into the then-popular genre of the governess-plot novel. These novels, and other writings debating the governess plight, were especially popular from 1840–1860 (Hughes 147). My second goal is to illustrate how subsequent generations of writers within the Hubback family revised Hubback’s plot in order to downplay Austen’s concerns about finances that Hubback highlights in Austen’s fragment. I therefore trace the evolution of Jane Austen’s The Watsons (likely composed 1804–1805) through four versions of the text: Austen’s manuscript, Hubback’s The Younger Sister (1850), a rewrite of Hubback’s completion published by Edith and Francis Brown (1928), and yet another rewrite of Hubback’s version published anonymously by David Hopkinson (1977). My analysis of the multi-generational family tensions over the relationship between Austen’s fragment and Hubback’s Victorian governess-plot novels speaks to the larger issue of the Austen family struggles over how to present Austen’s feminist sympathies. In particular, I suggest that one of the reasons Catherine Hubback is virtually not on the radar — even among scholars who study the Austen family in the nineteenth century — is that her narrative featuring Emma Watson’s need to work as a governess came too close to Jane Austen’s own experiences earning money with her pen. Jane Austen’s The Watsons Jane Austen’s The Watsons focuses on the homecoming of Emma Watson, the youngest daughter of a “sickly” widower (107). Emma, who was raised by her wealthy aunt and uncle, returns to the Watson abode after her recently widowed aunt 19 marries a younger man. This marriage effectively disinherits the nineteen-year-old heroine, who was the expected heiress of her late uncle’s fortune. Emma is placed into a situation that is very familiar to readers of Austen’s completed novels. Unless she can find a husband who is willing to marry her despite her lack of fortune, Emma’s financial situation will radically change for the worse upon the death of her father — much like the Dashwood sisters of Sense and Sensibility, the Bennet sisters of Pride and Prejudice, and the unmarried Elliot sisters of Persuasion. And because Emma Watson only had “scanty” communication with her family during the fourteen years she was away from home —much like Fanny Price of Mansfield Park — Emma finds herself returning to a home of virtual strangers (112-113). Upon Emma’s homecoming, she has conversations with her eldest sister Elizabeth that reveal the sisters’ attitudes towards important themes in Austen’s texts: marriage, money, and love. Because Emma and Elizabeth were raised in different households —with different financial expectations — they disagree in their views about alternatives to marriage. This becomes particularly clear in a key conversation that the two sisters have about working as a teacher. Emma states: “… Poverty is a great evil, but to a woman of education and feeling it ought not, it cannot be the greatest. – I would rather be a teacher at school (and I can think of nothing worse) than marry a man I did not like.” “I would rather do anything than be a teacher at a school —” said her sister. “I have been at school, Emma, and know what a life they lead you; you never have. I should not like marrying a disagreeable man any more than yourself, — but I do not think there are very many disagreeable men; — I think I could like any good humoured man with 20 a comfortable income. — I suppose my aunt brought you up to be rather refined.” (110) As the conversation continues, Elizabeth again voices her concerns about Emma’s upbringing: “I can see in a great many things that you are very refined. I have observed it ever since you came home, and I am afraid it will not be for your happiness” (110). This potential for future conflict between the sisters about the degree to which love is necessary to enter into a marriage contract is reminiscent of similar conflicts between Austen’s generally like-minded characters. For example, Elizabeth and Jane Bennet’s difference of opinion with regard to Charlotte Lucas’s marriage is an important plot point of Pride and Prejudice; it shows that two rational women are equally valid in their opinions regarding marriages of convenience. In The Watsons, Austen sets the stage for a story that will center around the same question that she addresses in her completed novels best expressed in Elizabeth Bennet’s lines to her Aunt Gardner in Pride and Prejudice: “Pray, my dear aunt, what is the difference in matrimonial affairs, between the mercenary and the prudent motive? Where does discretion end and avarice begin?” (2:101). Potential suitors for Emma Watson are introduced in the scenes that take place during her first ball in her new neighborhood. The grand Osborne party and their entourage arrive during the second dance of the evening: “They consisted of Lady Osborne, her son Lord Osborne, her daughter Miss Osborne; Miss Car, her daughter’s friend, Mr Howard formerly tutor to Lord Osborne, now clergyman of the parish in which the castle stood, Mrs Blake, a widow-sister who lived with him, her son a fine boy of ten years old, and Mr Tom Musgrave” (120). In the extended conversation 21 between Emma and Elizabeth that took place in anticipation of the ball, Emma learned to steer clear of Tom Musgrave, a great flirt who has fraternized with all three of the Watson sisters. At this point in the fragment, the narrator provides us with information about two other bachelors in the Osborne party: Mr Howard and Lord Osborne. Osborne, reminiscent of Fitzwilliam Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, has “an air of coldness, of carelessness, even of awkwardness about him” (121). Also reminiscent of Darcy, Osborne “never danced” (121). In contrast, “Mr Howard was an agreeable-looking man” (121). Emma finds herself “seated among the Osborne set,” and immediately surprises many in attendance by offering to dance with young Charles after Miss Osborne disappoints the little boy by not keeping her previous engagement to dance with him (121). Emma’s kindness engages the “gratitude” of the boy’s mother Mrs Blake. It also earns Emma “many inquisitive glances” from Tom Musgrave and the observations of Lord Osborne (121 and 122). Although Emma is “distressed” by Osborne’s attentions, she is “very well pleased” when Mr Howard asks her to dance because “there was a quietly-cheerful, gentlemanlike air in Mr Howard which suited her” (124). As Mr Howard and Emma dance, Lord Osborne stays “continually at Howard’s elbow,” much to Emma’s annoyance (126). Many in attendance observe his attentions to Emma, and several people call at the Edwards’ home the day after the ball to “look again at the girl who had been admired the night before by Lord Osborne” (128). 22 After returning home, Emma relates the details of the ball, including her two dances with Mr Howard, to her sister Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s response shows that she considers Mr Howard to be far above the Watson family’s usual circle of acquaintance: “Dance with Mr Howard — good heavens! You don’t say so! Why — he is quite one of the great and grand ones; — Did not you find him very high?” (133). Three days after the ball, the sisters are both shocked when Lord Osborne visits them unexpectedly with Tom Musgrave (135). During the visit, it becomes clear that Lord Osborne is completely overcome by Emma: “It was a new thing with him to wish to please a woman; it was the first time that he had ever felt what was due to a woman in Emma’s situation. — But as he wanted neither sense nor a good disposition, he did not feel it without effect” (136). Although Emma still clearly prefers Mr Howard to Lord Osborne, the narrator betrays that she is flattered by Osborne’s visit: “To say that Emma was not flattered by Lord Osborne’s visit, would be to assert a very unlikely thing, and describe a very odd young lady; but the gratification was by no means unalloyed; his coming was a sort of notice which might please her vanity, but did not suit her pride, and she would rather have known that he wished the visit without presuming to make it, than to have seen him at Stanton” (138). The narrator’s comments suggest to me that Austen is likely setting up a plot in which the wealthy Lord Osborne will propose to Emma, thereby offering her a possible solution to her current bleak financial future. The final major event of the fragment is the visit of Emma’s brother Robert Watson. Elizabeth tells Emma that Robert married “a good wife” who had “six 23 thousand pounds” (113). The fact that Elizabeth characterizes her sister-in-law as “good,” but only supports the claim with reference to Jane’s money shows that Elizabeth understands how important marrying for money is for all of the Watson children — not just for the women. The narrator characterizes Jane and Robert Watson as wealthy snobs: Robert Watson was an attorney at Croydon, in a good way of business; very well satisfied with himself for the same, and for having married the only daughter of the attorney to whom he had been the clerk, with a fortune of six thousand pounds. — Mrs Robert was not less pleased with herself for having had that six thousand pounds, and for being now in possession of a very smart house in Croydon, where she gave genteel parties, and wore fine clothes. In her person there was nothing remarkable; her manners were pert and conceited. (139) Although none of the Watson sisters are comfortable around Jane, Emma is most keenly aware of Jane’s coldness. Emma quickly sees “that her sister-in-law despised her immediately” (141). Jane Watson is much like the selfish Fanny Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility in that both characters actively campaign against their sisters-in- law, arguing to their husbands that they cannot afford to maintain their sisters while also ensuring the comfort of their own children. Perhaps the most significant information that we gain from the visit of Jane and Robert is Robert’s attitude towards the loss of Emma’s expected inheritance. The narrator makes it clear that Robert’s estimation of Emma lowered when her expectation of fortune ended: “Robert was carelessly kind, as became a prosperous man and a brother; more intent on settling with the post-boy, inveighing against the exorbitant advance in posting, and pondering over a doubtful halfcrown, than on welcoming a sister, who was no longer likely to have any property for him to get the 24 direction of” (140). Additionally, on the day of his arrival, Robert bluntly attacks Emma with a reading of her situation that betrays his own selfishness: “What a blow it must have been upon you! —To find yourself, instead of heiress of eight or nine thousand pounds, sent back a weight upon your family, without a sixpence. — I hope the old woman will smart for it” (142). Emma’s response gives readers the clearest indication that she disapproves of her aunt’s conduct: “’My aunt may have erred’ — said Emma warmly — ‘she has erred — but my uncle’s conduct was faultless. I was her own niece, and he left to herself the power and the pleasure of providing for me’” (142). Shortly before the fragment ends, the narrator provides her readers with even more insight into Emma’s bleak thoughts: The change in her home society, and style of life in consequence of the death of one friend and the imprudence of another had indeed been striking. — From being the first object of hope and solicitude of an uncle who had formed her mind with the care of a parent, and of tenderness to an aunt whose amiable temper had delighted to give her every indulgence, from being the life and spirit of a house, where all had been comfort and elegance, and the expected heiress of an easy independence, she was become of importance to no one, a burden on those, whose affection she could not expect, an addition in a house, already overstocked, surrounded by inferior minds with little chance of domestic comfort, and as little hope of future support. — It was well for her that she was naturally cheerful; — for the change was such as might have plunged weak spirits in despondence. (151) Elizabeth urges Emma to visit Jane and Robert, arguing that Croyden offers the promise of being “in company almost every day” (152). Again, Elizabeth implies that Croyden may offer Emma the chance to escape her current situation through marriage. However, the fragment ends with Emma’s refusal to leave home. 25 Critics have long debated the feasibility of the fragment in terms of the plausibility that Austen could have fully developed the story into a work on par with her six completed full-length novels. In the 1920s, Virginia Woolf found it to be worthy of study despite its poor quality when compared to the completed novels: “Here, indeed, in this unfinished and in the main inferior story, are all the elements of Jane Austen’s greatness. It has the permanent quality of literature” (19). R.W. Chapman deemed Austen’s fragment “promising” (50). However, Brian Southam does not believe Austen could have developed the fragment into a proper story: For a fourth novel the fragment is surprisingly undeveloped; probably Jane Austen’s failure to continue the work later was in recognition of its serious flaws; perhaps, too, she felt out of sympathy with the almost unrelieved bleakness of the social picture, and the asperity of the satire. In these respects The Watsons stands apart from the other novels; it signals a failing in generosity and a loss of creative power which may be related to the circumstances of her life at this time. (63) It is interesting to note Southam’s claim that this fragment is more “bleak” than Jane Austen’s other novels. As I have shown, many aspects of The Watsons echo major plot points that Austen develops in her complete novels. Southam’s cynical attitude towards the fragment could be due to his theories about the connections between the fragment’s stories and Jane Austen’s own biography. He estimates that Austen “abandoned” the story in 1805, a time when Austen was experiencing some major life changes. Southam notes that, since leaving Steventon for Bath in 1801, Austen had lived “in a succession of temporary homes in London, Southampton and Bath” and claims that “she was never completely happy away from a settled country home” (63). With this reading, Southam echoes the point 26 of view of several scholars (footnote here) who perpetuate the romantic notion that Jane Austen was only happy in the country and therefore could not compose anything substantial until settled at Chawton in 1809. This point of view, however, contradicts Southam’s later supposition that Austen abandoned The Watsons because she was “disappointed by Cadell’s refusal to read First Impressions” and was also suffering from the “disappointment” over Crosby’s “failure to bring out Northanger Abbey [under the title of Susan], which he had accepted in 1803” (64). It is important to consider that if Austen was able to finish Susan and send it out for publication in 1803 — after leaving the supposed security of her beloved Steventon — she could most certainly also have completed The Watsons. Southam also suggests that a supposed failed romance, which may have taken place between 1800 and 1803, could have hindered Jane Austen’s writing abilities in 1805. However, as Southam himself admits, “the story of her emotional relationships, of the attachments that might have reached marriage, is obscure and conflicting in detail” (64). Due to the lack of hard evidence regarding Austen’s failed romance(s), it is dangerous to give too much credence to this theory. The degree of despondency in Austen’s story is something that several generations of Austen family members grapple with in their own completions of Austen’s fragment. Perhaps not surprisingly, the most bleak completion of Austen’s fragment is written by her niece, Catherine Hubback, at a time when the Victorian writer was experiencing her own financial difficulties. 27 Catherine Hubback’s The Younger Sister (1850) Born in 1818, Catherine Anne Hubback was the eighth of Sir Francis Austen’s eleven children (Hopkinson Hubback Family Ch. 4: 1). 2 Sir Francis Austen (1774- 1865) was one of Jane Austen’s sailor brothers. Upon Francis’s marriage to Mary Gibson, the couple were joined in their Southampton abode by Jane Austen, Cassandra Austen, their mother, and Martha Lloyd (Le Faye Family Record 153). At the time, Martha was a friend of Jane and Cassandra Austen. But the Austens were also related to Martha Lloyd by marriage: Martha’s sister Mary Lloyd was married to the Reverend James Austen (Jane Austen’s eldest brother). After the death of Francis Austen’s first wife, Francis married his sisters’ long-term friend and living companion — thereby making Martha Lloyd Catherine Hubback’s stepmother. Martha’s presence in the household motivated Cassandra Austen to visit frequently after Jane Austen’s death. During some of these visits, she brought Jane Austen’s manuscripts along with her — including Austen’s unfinished fragment The Watsons. The Austen family created and circulated multiple copies of Austen’s manuscripts in the nineteenth century (Sutherland Textual Lives 242). Therefore, it is possible that Catherine Hubback may have worked from a version of The Watsons at her home at Portsdown Lodge when she composed her completion. But it is important to note that The Hubback Family History Manuscript makes no mention of the 2 Throughout this chapter, I often refer to The Hubback Family History Manuscript authored by Diana and David Hopkinson. Drawing from Hubback’s letters, Hubback’s novels, and other family records, the typescript manuscript provides crucial insight into Catherine Hubback’s life. Since the pagination starts again from “1” after 28 existence of a Portsdown copy. Rather, the Hopkinsons refer to the fact that Hubback did not have access to the original manuscript while composing The Younger Sister because Cassandra Austen had already given it to Caroline Mary Craven (Catherine Hubback’s cousin) (Chapter 6, page 2). The Hopkinsons seem to concur with John Hubback (Catherine Hubback’s son) that Catherine Hubback published The Watsons based on her memory of hearing the fragment many times as a child: 3 Cassandra made long and frequent visits to her brother’s house and she it was who led the reading aloud from Jane’s work. In her absence Martha would continue this agreeable pursuit. Cassandra possessed Jane’s unpublished manuscripts with which Catherine soon became as familiar as with the novels themselves. … During these years [Catherine] listened so often to Cassandra and Martha; and in doing so apparently learnt one of Jane’s unfinished works almost by heart. Her first novel was in fact based upon a discarded work of Jane’s which she reproduced from memory and provided with a conclusion under the title of “The Younger Sister.” (Hopkinson Hubback Family Ch. 4: 14- 15) The degree to which The Younger Sister is actually true to Jane Austen’s vision for the novel’s completion is unknown. But due to Hubback’s personal relationship with Cassandra Austen, she would have been one of the privileged few to have any idea of what Jane Austen’s intents for her fragment were — if, indeed, they were known to anybody. The Hopkinsons claim that there was such knowledge among the Austen clan, and that Catherine was one of the few who were privy to it: the beginning of each chapter, I cite chapter and page numbers when I reference this text. 3 Kathryn Sutherland’s Jane Austen’s Textual Lives: from Aeschylus to Bollywood quotes John Hubback’s recollection that his mother worked from memory when drafting The Younger Sister (see esp. 260–61). 29 No-one except Cassandra had heard the story to its conclusion and Cassandra had retold it only within the family circle. James Edward knew from that source how the story was to continue beyond the words which Jane had put on paper. This he records in the Memoir. Catherine also knew and that was enough to get her started on the first published novel from the Austen family since Persuasion. (Hopkinson Hubback Family Ch. 6: 2) When considering Catherine Hubback’s completion of The Watsons, it is important to note the traumatic circumstances in her personal life that likely motivated her to write and publish a completion of Jane Austen’s fragment. In 1842 Catherine Hubback married a successful London lawyer, John Hubback, whom she had met through her brother Henry (Hopkinson Hubback Family Ch. 4, 20). After honeymooning on the continent, Catherine and John Hubback moved to a house in Torringston Square (Hopkinson Hubback Family Ch. 5: 6 and 8). The couple’s first child, Mary, died soon after her christening, but three sons followed in subsequent years: John Henry, born 1844; Edward Thomas, born 1846; and Charles Austen, born 1847 (Hopkinson Hubback Family Ch. 5: 8). Catherine’s husband built a successful law practice and published an influential book: Evidence of Succession to Real and Personal Property and Peerages (1844) (Hopkinson Hubback Family Ch. 5: 8 and 10). In a letter to her son John dated July 26, 1874, 4 Hubback provides a glimpse of 4 A second hand has dated it 1874. Although the context of the letter suggests to me that this particular letter has been catalogued out of chronological order — it was probably written around 1871. A note on my methods for citing unpublished, handwritten manuscripts: Some of the words in the handwritten manuscripts I cite (especially Catherine Hubback’s letters and Fanny Caroline Lefroy’s Family History Manuscript) are illegible. When I am unsure about a word or phrase, I put it in brackets. I strive to retain the author’s spelling and punctuation, but if something is obviously miswritten in the manuscript, I use “sic” so that the reader can be confident that the reading is not my own error. 30 the relatively carefree early years of her marriage: “That was in my prosperous days when I dressed well, & we gave dinner-parties” (Letters 61 recto). Catherine and her husband John Hubback began to have financial difficulties around the time their youngest son was born. John Hubback’s last case began in June 1847: his career ended early when he suffered a severe mental breakdown at the age of thirty-seven (Hopkinson Hubback Family Ch. 5: 10 and 12). For two years, he tried to rest, to visit health spas, and to change his environment — but these remedies did not provide a cure (Hopkinson Hubback Family Ch. 5: 12). The Hopkinsons conjecture that “as there was no official benevolent fund” in 1849, John Hubback’s colleagues probably provided financial assistance to the Hubback family during this difficult time. This would explain why Catherine Hubback dedicates one of her later novels to “the members of the Chancery Bar in the year 1849” for “kindness never to be forgotten” (Hopkinson Hubback Family Ch. 5: 18). In May 1850, Catherine Hubback institutionalized John Hubback in a private asylum in Alton 5 and moved in with her father and her sister Fanny at Portsdown Lodge (Hopkinson Hubback Family Ch. 5: 16). But the fact that Hubback and her sons moved into their own home twelve years later suggests that she was not willing to depend upon her father’s meager income forever. Catherine Hubback evidently turned 5 Based on 1851 census records, Robin Vick surmises the name of the institution in Alton where John Hubback stayed: West Brook House Lunatic Asylum (181–182). By the mid-1850s John Hubback was moved to a private home in Somerset (Hopkinson Hubback Family Ch. 8: 1). He may have lived there until at least 1861, since there is no JH listed in the 1861 census at Brislington House near Bristol, where John Hubback died (Vick 181). 31 to publishing novels as a means to generate an income to support herself and her three boys. I have not been able to find any evidence elucidating Hubback’s decision to complete Jane Austen’s The Watsons as her first publishing venture. The Hopkinsons suggest that it may have been a simple case of convenience: “by using Jane’s plot she had overcome one of the main problems facing a new writer of fiction” (Hopkinson Hubback Family Ch. 6: 13). However, this does not explain why Hubback clearly advertised her associations with Jane Austen on the title page of The Younger Sister, presumably in an attempt to appeal to Jane Austen’s growing Victorian audience. It may be the case that she thought her relationship to Austen was a sure means of getting her first book published. But it is also important to consider that Jane Austen’s The Watsons includes several plot contrivances likely to attract a burgeoning writer who is sympathetic to the plight of a recently impoverished genteel woman. Catherine Hubback does not acknowledge that the first section of The Younger Sister is actually Jane Austen’s The Watsons. Instead, she dedicates the novel to “the memory of her Aunt, THE LATE JANE AUSTEN.” The dedication goes on to read “This work is affectionately inscribed by the authoress who, though too young to have known her personally, was from childhood taught to esteem her virtues, and admire her talents.” By referring to herself as “the authoress,” Catherine Hubback explicitly takes credit for the authorship of the story. As Kathryn Sutherland has rehearsed, Catherine Hubback’s son John Hubback is “defensive” against inevitable objections to his mother’s methods, effectively arguing that “the huge effort of memory involved 32 exonerates his mother from the charge of plagiarism or illegal occupancy of expressions and phrases not her own” (Textual Lives 260-261) Passages from Catherine Hubback’s later letters from the United States suggest that she assumed her Austen associations would gain her both respect and money. In a letter to her son John Henry, dated 1871, 6 Hubback details her plan to begin publishing under the name of Austen: My story has come out in the Oct overland [Overland Magazine], but I have not received any money yet. I am anxious to know how much they will pay — I have two more ready, but I don’t write for nothing — by and by they can be put in a vol. & published again — I mean in future to have my name printed Mrs C Austen Hubback & make believe the A stands for that. I never have written it at length — so nobody knows — and Austen is a good nom. de. plume. (Letters 5 verso) Although Hubback’s maiden name was Austen, the “A” in her earlier published work stood for her middle name (Anne). The fact that she mentions that she means to publish under “Austen” directly after she discusses her financial motivation for writing suggests that her intended name change is driven by monetary considerations. The next year, in a June 23, 1872 7 letter to Mary Ingram, Catherine Hubback assumes that Austen’s reputation is wide-reaching enough to have some influence in the United States. After discussing a professor’s wife whom she has recently befriended, Catherine suggests she will use her Austen connections to impress her new acquaintance: “She is a very excitable lively woman, and we were friends directly — I shall tell her my genealogy and ask her if she knows the name of Austen — ” 6 A second hand has dated it 1871. 7 A second hand has dated it 1872. 33 (Letters 20 verso). Clearly, Hubback expected that her associations with Jane Austen would benefit her financially and socially. While these monetary motivations to be associated with Austen’s name are important to consider, Catherine Hubback’s work is connected with Jane Austen’s novels in more significant ways as well. In The Younger Sister, Catherine Hubback addresses several of the issues raised in Austen’s fragment, including whether or not Emma Watson should agree to marry a man she does not like. But what sets Hubback’s novel aside from later completers of The Watsons (including Edith and Francis Brown and David Hopkinson) is the centrality of the governess plot. By making Emma’s work as an unpaid governess a central plot point of The Younger Sister, Hubback addresses a concept that Austen explores in her novels: the financial pressures placed on genteel women who cannot rely on family for support. Like Austen’s heroines, Hubback’s Emma Watson escapes a marriage of convenience. But before resolving her heroine’s dilemmas through a marriage plot, Catherine Hubback spends much time exposing some of the problems facing the Victorian governess. In Emma Austen begins to address the topic of governesses through Jane Fairfax, who equates the governess trade with the slave trade (4:300). In The Younger Sister, Hubback expands on Austen’s explicit references to women’s options on the paid labor market — showcasing Austen as a woman with a keen understanding of genteel poverty. Hubback’s Austen, I think, was too knowledgeable on this subject for the taste of the descents of Jane Austen’s brothers. After all, like Robert Watson, Jane Austen’s real-life brothers were in a financial position to do more than they did for 34 their widowed mother and two spinster sisters when the trio lost their main source of income upon the Reverend George Austen’s death. Earlier scholarship has rehearsed some of the ways in which the first five chapters of The Younger Sister differ from Austen’s fragment. It is likely that at least some of these changes are the result of the possibility that Hubback worked from memory, thereby making changes due to misremembering inevitable. Some of these changes are minor, such as changing the name of Austen’s Mrs Blake to Mrs Willis. 8 Other changes are more significant, for example, Tom Musgrave becomes Tom Musgrove —which could possibly be an intentional allusion to the Musgroves in Persuasion. Many of the alterations that Hubback makes to Austen’s fragment set the groundwork for the abuse Emma suffers at the hands of her brother and sister-in-law. Whereas Austen’s fragment clearly identifies Emma as the sole expectant benefactor of her uncle’s wealth, Hubback turns Robert Watson into the “the expectant nephew.” This helps explain the extremely negative reactions that Robert and his wife Jane have towards Emma when she becomes dependent upon them after her father dies. In Hubback’s version of the story, the couple has been doubly disappointed: first by the loss of the income they expected from the uncle and second by being saddled with the burden of Emma and Elizabeth after the death of their father. 8 Similarly, Hubback makes Mrs Blake’s son Charles six-years-old rather than ten, perhaps in order to reflect the (then current) age of her own son John Henry (Hopkinson Hubback Family Ch. 6: 8). 35 Hubback also revises other aspects of Austen’s fragment in order to portray Robert to be even more mercenary and self-interested than he appears in Austen’s version. This is especially clear in Robert’s address to Emma about her uncle’s fortune: “[…] But I think the old gentleman might have given you something — a thousand pounds or so would have done very well for you, and the rest would have been most particularly acceptable to me just now. There was an investment offered itself, a month or two ago, in which I could have, beyond a doubt, doubled five thousand pounds in a very short time, and it was particularly cutting to be obliged to let it pass me, because that old man had behaved so shabbily. Upon my life, it makes me quite angry when I think of it — and just to throw you back upon my father’s hands, without a sixpence — a burden — a useless burden upon the family — what could he be thinking of!” Emma was too much overcome by the many bitter feelings this speech raised, to be able to reply; and her brother, seeing her tears, said: “Well, I did not mean to make you cry, Emma; there’s no good in that — though I do not wonder that you should be mortified and disappointed too. Girls are nothing without money — no one can manage them – but you shall come and try your luck at Croydon. Perhaps, with your face, and the idea that you have still expectations, you might get off our hands altogether.” (1:82-83) In Austen’s version, Robert expresses concern about Emma being thrown back on their father without a “sixpense,” but the reader may or may not interpret these words as concern that he will be responsible for Emma upon their father’s death. However, Hubback does not allow for a generous interpretation of Robert’s words when she explicitly outlines Robert’s concern for himself in the third paragraph with the use of the word “our”: “you might get off our hands altogether” (1:83, emphasis mine). In Austen’s version, Emma defends her uncle’s “faultless” conduct, even while admitting that her aunt “has erred” (142). In Hubback’s rewrite, Robert’s words go unchecked, 36 except by Emma’s tears. Emma’s “bitter feelings” and tears indicate that Emma interprets Robert’s words about being thrown back onto the family as a negative reflection on her uncle’s conduct rather than a negative reflection on her family’s attitude towards her. In Hubback's version, the conduct of Emma’s uncle is unpardonable, whereas in Austen’s version, it is merely questionable. 9 In Hubback’s The Younger Sister, Robert returns to settle affairs when his father dies. At this time, Penelope and Margaret announce their plans to marry. Penelope is proud to have snagged an elderly, wealthy doctor. Margaret announces her engagement to the rake Tom, a plan she agreed to during a private proposal scene inadvertently witnessed by Emma and Miss Osborne. Rather than feel shame for Margaret’s behavior, Robert praises Margaret in order to disparage Emma and Elizabeth: “I wish Elizabeth and Emma had equal good luck, to prevent their becoming a burden on their friends” (2:133). Emma’s response highlights her anger about her brother’s inappropriate attitude: A burden on their friends! How those words rang in Emma’s ears, and grated on all the feelings of her affectionate heart. Was it possible that her brother could not only think of them in this light, but could calmly express the feeling; that he should not only be void of affection, but that even the wish to seem hospitable, kind, or generous should be wanting. What would be a home in his house — what comforts — what peace could it promise, where such an expression was to meet them ere they crossed his threshold. (2:133) 9 These revisions to Austen’s text may have been motivated by Francis Austen’s own loss of an expected fortune to his nephew J.E. Austen-Leigh. Mrs Leigh Perrot, a wealthy widow, left an estate to James Austen-Leigh instead of to Francis Austen as she had once intended (Le Faye Family Record 245). This decision changed the fortune of both the Francis Austen and James Austen branches of the Austen clan in the nineteenth century. 37 When the contents of their father’s will become known, Emma learns that her fate is even worse than those of her other unmarried sisters. Emma is not remembered in the will because at the time it was written, “every one supposed Emma would be provided for by her uncle” (2:150). Left penniless by her father’s will, Hubback’s Emma resolves to take steps to earn her own bread: “Her own plan for the future was to try to procure a situation as teacher in a boarding school, or private governess; anything by which she could feel she was earning the food she eat [sic], in preference to becoming as her brother expressed it, a burden on his family” (2:160-161). With this plot twist, Catherine Hubback’s novel picks up on the aforementioned discussion between Elizabeth and Emma about becoming a schoolteacher that Austen includes in her fragment. While seeking employment, Emma finds she must move to Croyden with Robert and Jane. This puts her far away from the man she would like to marry, Mr Howard. Emma suffers much abuse from her sister-in-law, who is jealous of her superior upbringing and education. In efforts to publicly humiliate Emma, Jane goes out of her way to characterize Emma as a beggar. For example, upon first meeting her niece, Emma learns that her reputation as a “beggar” has proceeded her: “But you are quite tidy and clean — not ragged and dirty!” “No my dear,” replied Emma smiling at her puzzled look; “why did you expect to see me otherwise?” “Because the people my nurse tells me are beggars in the street go without shoes, and wear old clothes.” 38 Emma coloured slightly and made no reply, but Margaret, pressing forwards, again asked what that had to do with aunt Emma. “Papa and mama said she was a beggar, and I thought she would look like them – but she is nice and looks good, and I will not mind you teaching me at all.” (2:168) This is one of several passages in Hubback’s novel that highlights Emma’s public humiliation due to Jane’s cruelty. However, even while Jane deems Emma a beggar, she is very much aware of the financial benefit that Emma supplies to the household: “in Emma she hoped to find a competent nursery-governess who would relieve her of all cares as to the child, and supply, unsalaried, the place of the nurse-maid, to whom, under this impression, she had already given warning” (2:169). Extended scenes such as these, which detail Jane’s anxiety about Emma’s status within the household, suggest that Catherine Hubback wrote The Younger Sister with the Victorian governess-plot novel genre in mind. In her study of The Victorian Governess, Kathryn Hughes notes that the employers’ need “to mark their social distance from the governess by means of a hundred little snubs and petty slights” quickly became part of the Victorian “governess mythology” (88). Consider, for example, the scenes in Jane Eyre featuring Blanche Ingram’s attempts to humiliate Jane. By extending the governess plot introduced in Austen’s The Watsons, Catherine Hubback developed Austen’s fragment into a very timely story. Several other elements of Austen’s fragment allow for the advancement of a typical Victorian governess narrative. As the daughter of a clergyman, Emma Watson 39 fits into the class of woman who typically ended up in this profession. 10 And since Emma’s father was extremely sickly, his impending death would make Emma an orphan, thereby making her search for a post as a governess an immediate necessity. The value of Emma’s governess labor becomes an issue that is addressed several times in Hubback’s text, but it most clearly detailed in the following lengthy passage: Emma herself was, for some time, a close prisoner. Mrs Watson found so much for her to do, that she had scarcely time to stir from the nursery, except when she took a walk with Janetta [Emma’s niece], who was now almost entirely confided to her care. The child loved her dearly; and had her exertions as nursery governess given the smallest satisfaction to her sister-in-law, had they even been treated by her as an equivalent for board and maintenance, she would have been less uncomfortable. But whilst she was spending her whole time in unremunerated, and indeed unacknowledged services, she was perpetually reminded of her entire dependence on Robert, and taunted with her uselessness, her idle habits, and her fine lady manners. The numerous visitors, who dawdled away a morning hour in Mrs Watson’s parlous, were apt to expatiate on her extraordinary liberality and kindness in receiving her three sisters as her guests, little imagining that the two elder paid for their board out of their scanty incomes, and that the younger compensated for the misery she endured, under the show of patronage, in a way yet more advantageous to her grudging but ostentatious relatives. (2:277) Hubback’s Emma clearly more than compensates for her room and board by providing free labor for her brother and sister-in-law. As Emma’s friend Annie Millar points out, financially speaking, it is Emma who is owed the debt: “But, my dear Miss Emma, excuse my taking the liberty of saying that if you were governess to any other 10 According to an 1848 Report of the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution, clergyman was the sixth most popular profession of fathers of governesses (Hughes 28). 40 Lady’s child, you would not only be supposed to earn your board and lodging, but some fifty or sixty pounds in addition, so that in fact Mrs Watson is the obliged party in this concern” (2:280-281). Based on what we know of actual salaries for governesses in Victorian England, Miss Millar is somewhat optimistic in her estimate of what Emma could expect to earn as a nursery governess in another household. Kathryn Hughes reports that until the 1860s, some women would work for only board and lodging (24) — this was especially true for schoolroom governesses such as Emma Watson (155). 11 But the plot of Hubback’s novel does not correct Miss Millar’s romantic notions regarding the average salaries of governesses of the time. Rather, the plot supports the truth of Miss Millar’s interpretation when Mr Morgan, a local doctor, suggests he may be able to find a governess situation for Emma. Motivated by her desire to continue to secure Emma’s free labor for herself, Jane begs him not to mention his plan to anybody. However, Emma overhears the conversation and “immediately” resolves to discuss it with Mr Morgan in the hopes that she might be released from, what Hubback’s narrator describes as “the galling thraldom of her present situation” (2:302). Emma approaches him about the position and entreats him to make enquires on her behalf, without “absolutely” committing herself to the position. 11 Kathryn Hughes writes, “gathering together the scattered references to schoolroom salaries from advice books, memoirs and diaries, it seems that between 1830 and 1890 nearly all governesses earned between £20 and £100, with the vast majority receiving between £35 and £80, although nursery governesses often worked for nothing beyond board and lodging” (155). 41 Emma’s hesitation to become “absolutely” committed ties directly to her concern about what others will think of her if she accepts a position as a governess. The reader is privy to her considerations: She thought, for full five minutes, on what Miss Osborne [Lord Osborne’s sister, Emma’s friend] would say, when she heard of her plans, whether she would renew her invitation for her to spend some time with her after Easter; and she spent double that time in considering whether, if she did, and she should again meet Mr Howard, his manners would be warm or cold, how he would receive her, and what he would think of her undertaking such a situation (2:310) Emma’s hesitation in accepting the post has less to do with her own notions of being a “fine lady” than it does with her concerns about the way people will view her. In a letter from the United States, dated January 4, 1874, Hubback shows that she understands the social problems faced by domestic servants in England: I have a pupil whom I like teaching, & having one may lead to more. Adèle the Dutch counsul’s daughter comes to me once a week, and besides this even if I do not get a class for teaching lace, as I am trying to do, I have many orders for work, and last month I earned over 20 dollars which I certainly should not expect to do in England. … One does not lose caste here by teaching anything. That is one sensible thing, and people here who know one are willing enough to interest themselves for me —. (Letters 53 recto) The fact that Hubback deems it “sensible” for people in the United States not to “lose caste” due to teaching betrays her personal belief that women should not be negatively judged for going to service. Hubback is well aware that her opinion is not in line with the common cant of the time. Although this letter was written twenty years after the publication of The Younger Sister, it provides insight into Hubback’s personal views about governesses and other female domestic servants who need to work to provide for themselves. Hubback is very excited about taking on pupils such as Adèle, even 42 while she is conscious that this would be viewed in a negative light in England. This suggests that one of her motivations to write The Younger Sister was to erase the stigma associated with teaching for pay from the public imagination. In The Younger Sister, Hubback never portrays Emma as a paid governess. Hubback introduces a plot twist in which the young heroine is not offered the job due to a false rumor, which is eventually cleared by Lord Osborne. Significantly, this rumor comes about as a result of the fact that Emma is not chaperoned during walks with her charge, leaving her exposed to the inappropriate advances of Mr Morgan. Kathryn Hughes discusses the compromising situation that governesses such as Emma often found themselves in when their employers expected them to walk unaccompanied: “the implication was not that she had no honour, simply that it was inconceivable that anyone should wish to deprive her of it” (135). When Emma begs her brother “to persuade Jane not to send me out without a maid or some other companion, that I may not be exposed to long walks with [Mr Morgan],” Robert protests that she is vainly setting herself up to a higher standard than she deserves: “Pooh, pooh, child — don’t be absurd and prudish — there’s no use in setting yourself up for an immaculate young lady. … I am not going to indulge you, so you must find out some other way of making a martyr of yourself” (343). Eventually, Emma’s reputation is ruined, which means she cannot find work as a governess. However, a local clergyman who does not believe the scandalous rumors about Emma finds her a job working as a companion to an elderly woman. From that position, Emma visits her old home and the marriage plot is revived in a melodramatic 43 conclusion involving two marriage proposals. Lord Osborne proposes to Emma just before news arrives that Mr Howard is dead. A letter of proposal from M. Howard to Emma arrives soon after the announcement of his death. After word of Howard’s death arrives, Lord Osborne approaches Emma for an answer to his proposal, but Emma refuses Lord Osborne: “I cannot, my lord,” said she, her eyes filling with tears, “I have no love to bestow on any one, my heart is — ” she stopped abruptly. He looked very fixedly at her, and then said, “You did love Howard.” She raised her eyes proudly for a moment, but there was nothing of impertinence in his look or tone, nothing which need offend her; and moved by her feelings at the moment she exclaimed, “Yes I did love him — how can I listen to your suit?” He looked down intently, and taking up one of her embroidery needles, thrust it backwards and forwards through the corner of her work, for some minutes, with an energy which ended in breaking the needle itself — then again addressing her he said in a feeling tone. “Poor fellow, he did not live to know that, I am sorry for him!” There was something in the manner of this very unexpected admission which quite overpowered Emma’s heroism; it was so different from what she had expected; she covered her face and bust into tears. (3:304- 305) Emma’s “heroism” is an important trademark of Hubback’s love plot. While many of Austen’s heroines must endure lengthy speeches about why they should accept the hand of somebody they do not love — consider Mr Crawford’s proposal to Fanny Price, Mr Collins’s proposal to Elizabeth Bennet, and Mr Elton’s proposal to Emma Woodhouse — Emma’s heroism conjures Lord Osborne’s “unexpected” respectful response. 44 Hubback does not allow her readers to dwell too long on the question of whether or not Emma should consider a marriage to Lord Osborne to be an appropriate solution to her financial situation. Lord Osborne immediately accepts her refusal, and the still-living Mr Howard soon appears to provide Emma with the home she needs. However, because Lord Osborne’s proposal and rejection are very quickly followed by Mr Howard’s return and renewed proposal, the question of whether or not Emma should consider a marriage of convenience in order to escape from her brother’s home is never fully explored. Throughout the bulk of the narrative, Emma is always aware that both Mr Howard and Lord Osborne are in love with her. Unlike many of Austen’s heroines, who must reject a marriage proposal in the hopes that a more attractive offer will come along at some point in the future, Emma does not have to linger long over the question of marrying for survival. However, Edith and Francis Brown’s revision of Catherine Hubback’s The Younger Sister explores this very question. Rewriting The Younger Sister: Edith and Francis Brown (1928) In 1928, Edith and Francis Brown revised The Younger Sister into a new version of The Watsons. Edith Brown (born Edith Charlotte Hubback, 1876) was the daughter of Catherine Hubback’s eldest son John Henry. Edith’s writing partner, Francis Brown, was her second husband. The Browns retain some of the attributes of Hubback’s fragment. However, in their rewrite of Catherine Hubback’s novel, the Browns present a heroine who struggles with her decision to reject Lord Osborne. Because the Browns’ Emma does not consider the option of becoming a paid 45 governess, her marriage plot reads closer to an Austen marriage plot than Hubback’s melodramatic version does: Hubback’s Victorian governess plot gives way to a story that emphasizes the romance plot. Edith Brown claims an affinity to Jane Austen at the very beginning of her version of The Watsons. The title page advertises the book as “The Watsons by Jane Austen, completed in accordance with her intentions by Edith (her great grand-niece) and Francis Brown.” From the outset, the Browns take a completely different approach to Austen’s fragment than Catherine Hubback does. Whereas Hubback does not even acknowledge that the initial chapters of her novel were penned by Jane Austen, the Browns go so far as the claim that their entire book is written according to Austen’s intentions. Yet, the Browns do take credit for authorship in the pages that follow. Edith Brown dedicates the book to her father to “remind him of the time when we wrote ‘Jane Austen’s Sailor Brothers’ Together.” By alluding to the more traditional kind of criticism that she and her father had already published, Edith Brown rehearses her credentials as an authority on Austen. In the first paragraph of the preface, Edith Brown calls on a different kind of authority — authority based on her kinship to “Aunt Jane”: I will not apologize. I like my great-aunt Jane, and she would have liked me. She would have said, “I am pleased with your notion, and expect much entertainment.” Solemn people can say, if they like, that we should not do this, but I decline to be solemn about Aunt Jane. She was fun, much more than she was anything else, and this has been fun to do. She meant to do it herself some day and told Cassandra all about it. After her death, Cassandra used to read The Watsons aloud to her nieces, and my grandmother, Mrs Hubback, was one of them. She was 46 Catherine Austen then, the daughter of Frank, one of Jane’s sailor brothers. She was born too late to know Jane, but was a favorite with Cassandra. Like Catherine Hubback, Edith Brown employs language that evokes the idea of a close kinship with Jane Austen, despite the fact that Edith Brown was born in 1876, almost 60 years after Jane Austen’s death in 1817. Under the assumption that Jane Austen composed The Watsons in the year 1807, the Browns speculate about the events in Jane Austen’s life that may have discouraged her from completing story: Why then was the novel left unfinished? I believe the reason was this. Jane was deeply devoted to her family, and quite aware that family life is a fine art. Her heroine, Emma Watson, was to lose her father and go to live with her brother and sister-in-law. But Jane had lost her father and gone to live with her brother and sister-in-law. Was it wise to write on that subject at that time? Think of the feelings involved! Again, was it possible? Those of us who have tried to write know the extraordinary difficulty of telling of anything deeply felt in the present. “’With this same key Shakespeare unlocked his heart,’ once more! Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!” I think Jane put The Watsons away because it was too near her own life, but she did not abandon it, for there it was in her desk after her death. (7) This theory regarding Jane Austen’s decision to abandon The Watsons is related to the alterations that the Browns make to Hubback’s novel. The Browns reshaped Hubback’s story in order to portray Emma’s brother, Robert Watson, in a more favorable light. By rewriting Hubback’s tyrant into a more sympathetic figure, Edith Brown may have been, by extension, trying to shape readers’ opinions about Jane 47 Austen’s feelings towards Francis Austen, the brother Jane Austen stayed with in Southampton around 1807. We have little evidence of what life was like for Jane Austen during her residence in Southampton, as there are very few surviving letters for the bulk of this time. Deirdre Le Faye speculates that the sparse amount of letters probably reflects Jane Austen’s unhappiness and ill-will towards her brother James and his wife during this time: “It would seem that, despite the optimism expressed by James and Henry in their correspondence with Frank after Mr Austen’s death, Jane was suddenly very depressed by the limitations of the life imposed on her mother and herself by their bereavement and diminished income, and Cassandra probably destroyed the letters in which Jane gave vent to these gloomy feelings, as well as those written over the Christmas period in which she may have voiced exasperation concerning James and his wife” (Family Record 159). The Browns’ efforts to complete Austen’s fragment in a more cheerful tone than Catherine Hubback’s fragment was written in may reflect their desire to sweep Jane Austen’s unhappiness during her Southampton years (which came on the heels of her father’s death and the Austen women’s subsequent further decrease in income) under the rug. In their completion of The Watsons, the Browns revise aspects of Hubback’s novel in order to downplay Robert’s selfishness, even while they retain much of Hubback’s language and some of her plot points. For example, Robert’s speech to Emma about being sent back home without any money does not include a reference to Robert’s own frustrated expectations regarding his uncle’s fortune — the Browns 48 return to Austen’s portrayal of Emma as the sole expected heiress. And during the episode in which Robert returns home after his father’s death, Robert is not portrayed as completely heartless. In stark contrast to Hubback’s version, the Browns’ narrator tells us, “the sisters were really glad of their brother’s support in the necessary arrangements. Could he have remained thus importantly busy he might have continued to accumulate gratitude, and might even have been missed after his department, when some further matter had to be decided” (144). Only after explaining that Robert’s presence aids the sisters, does the narrator discuss Robert’s greedy concerns about the negative financial ramifications his father’s death will have upon himself: “Well, I must say this is most unfortunate,” sitting down in his father’s chair, “most unfortunate for me indeed. I had calculated my father could have lived ten years: I had certainly reckoned on ten years, and you see how I am taken in. Heavens [sic] knows what is to become of you girls; there will not be more than two thousand pounds to divide between you, and you will expect me to give you a home.” (144) As a point of comparison, the narrator of Hubback’s version notes that “there was scarcely an emotion betrayed on seeing his father, and what little was discernible whilst in his sick room, had all vanished before he reached the parlour door” (2:129). In a speech to his four unmarried sisters, Hubback’s Robert makes it clear that his only concern about his father’s death is the effect it will have on his fortune: “Well, I must say this is a most unfortunate thing,” said he sitting down in his father’s vacant chair and stretching out this feet to the fender; “a most unfortunate thing for me indeed: one might have calculated my father would have lived ten years more — he’s not such an old man — ten years at least I had reckoned on, and you see how I am taken in. Heaven knows what is to become of you girls — there will not be more than a thousand pounds to divide between you: and it’s so unlucky to 49 happen just now, for of course you must come home to Croydon.” (2:130) Robert’s comments in the Browns’ revision read very much as they do in Hubback’s story, but the first sentence of the Browns’ passage is softened. The Browns’ Robert merely sits in his father’s chair, whereas Hubback’s Robert sits “down in his father’s vacant chair” and stretches “out his feet to the fender.” Hubback’s Robert selfishly stretches himself beyond his father’s space, foreshadowing the way in which his selfishness will reach beyond anything his father could have ever imagined. After Emma’s sister Margaret announces her engagement to Tom Musgrove, the Browns’ Robert responds by criticizing Emma and Elizabeth: “I doubt if his income was ever a clear thousand a year, Margaret,” replied Robert, “but, provided he is not in debt, you may do very well. If only Elizabeth and Emma were in a like case we might all be very comfortable” (146). While these comments are obviously harsh, they are the upper limit of the cruelty that Robert shows his sisters. Most notably, the Browns’ Robert does not directly call Emma and Elizabeth “a burden on their friends.” As I mentioned earlier, this phrase disturbs Hubback’s Emma and ultimately motivates her to seek a position as a governess. At only 183 pages, the Browns’ completion is much more compact than Hubback’s three-volume novel. The Browns delete or wildly reduce most elements of Hubback’s unwieldy plot, including the extended discussions of Emma’s work as an unpaid governess. The Browns only retain a few mild references to Emma’s position as governess to Augusta, but these moments lack the allusions to “slavery” and “thralldom” that Hubback’s text emphasizes. When Emma first arrives at Croyden, 50 the narrator mentions Jane’s intent to benefit from Emma’s presence: “she comforted herself by recalling her explanation to the nursemaid that she might now consider herself more as a lady’s maid, as Miss Emma would soon be accustomed to attending to Miss Augusta” (155). The use of the phrase “more of a lady’s maid” suggests that, while Jane expects Emma to wait on the child, she does not expect Emma to be Augusta’s full-time companion. Although the Browns’ Emma does not suffer nearly what Hubback’s Emma suffers under her brother’s roof, the marriage plot becomes more of a central question for the heroine to debate. In this way, the Browns return to a plot that more closely resembles Austen’s marriage-plot novels. Austen’s heroines do not seriously consider the option of supporting themselves through work (this is always an unspoken threat hovering over the heroine’s stories, but it is never overtly referred to with regard to a major character). Even the poor relation Fanny Price of Mansfield Park is educated by the Bertrams with the expectation that she will gain an “establishment” through marriage — not through a post as a governess. Mrs Norris predicts Fanny will marry decently: “give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without farther expense to anybody” (3:6). But Sir Thomas insists that he will make Fanny “the provision of a gentlewoman, if no such establishment should offer” (3:7). The underlying assumption of Austen’s plots is that the heroines will marry — the stories revolve around whether or not the heroines will make the right choices when finding a mate. 51 But Hubback’s text offers a third option to Austen’s bad marriage/good marriage dilemma: avoid marriage completely and choose to support oneself instead. Since it erases Hubback’s governess plot, the Browns’ story completely centers on Emma’s marriage plot. Lord Osborne’s proposal to Emma takes place very early in the narrative — before the death of Emma’s father. Therefore, like most of Austen’s heroines, Emma is not experiencing financial dire straights at the exact moment that she receives a proposal. However, when rejecting Lord Osborne, Emma does know that she is giving up a rare opportunity to marry well. In fact, at the time of Lord Osborne’s proposal, the Browns’ Emma believes that Mr Howard intends to reciprocate Lady Osborne’s (Lord Osborne’s mother’s) advances towards him. Therefore, she has little hope that the man she loves will propose to her. Emma rejects Lord Osborne’s proposal without regret before her father’s death, but begins to second-guess her decision after her father dies. Although the Browns spare their readers from detailing Emma’s every difficulty, they do summarize Emma’s despair after moving to her brother’s home: “the months that followed were, for Emma, at the best, tedious, at the worst, hardly to be borne. Augusta, the spoiled child of a foolish mother, gave her something of affection and much more of trouble. Mrs Watson was ever ready to find fault” (161). Emma’s thoughts reflect her miserable state: “Would it not have been more sensible to accept Lord Osborne’s offer? He could not have been so unpleasant as Mrs Watson. Lady Osborne would not have had to mend a child’s clothing in a bad light!” (161). 52 Austen’s Mansfield Park probably inspired the description of Mr Howard’s eventual proposal to Emma. While Austen “purposely [abstains] from dates” regarding the conclusion of Fanny and Edward’s love plot, the Browns declare that “Emma’s reply” to Mr Howard’s proposal was “satisfactory” (180). The Browns’ narrative quickly wraps up once the proposal is accepted, ending in much the same way as Hubback’s story: Emma marries Mr Howard and escapes Robert’s home. But unlike Hubback’s text, the Browns’ version of The Watsons does not entertain the idea that Emma could consider supporting herself through work in lieu of marrying herself out of financial difficulties. Rewriting The Younger Sister Again: David Hopkinson (1977) In the 1970s Diana and David Hopkinson researched Catherine Hubback’s life. Diana Hopkinson, Hubback’s great-granddaughter, had possession of Hubback’s letters until she deposited them in the Bodleian Library, giving the Hopkinsons first- hand access to Hubback’s personal history. A March 1978 letter from Diana Hopkinson specifically refers to the Hopkinsons’ plan to write a book about Catherine Hubback and identifies David Hopkinson as the anonymous author of The Watsons published by Peter Davies in 1977: We have become very interested in Austen family affairs, and my husband, David Hopkinson recently completed (as the anonymous co-author) Jane Austen’s “The Watsons” published by Peter Davies. In addition, we have been working on a life of my great grandmother Catherine Austen (Hubback) which we have not yet managed to get published. (Letter to Mrs Foule) 53 Due to the fact that David Hopkinson published his text anonymously, 12 he takes a different approach than his predecessors when it comes to claiming authority for his completion. In an “important acknowledgement” at the conclusion of the postscript, Hopkinson hints that he was assisted by one of Austen’s relations — “Without the initial help of one of Jane Austen’s great-great-great nieces and the continuous help of another, this book would not have been produced” (235) — but he does not confess that he married into the Austen family. Rather than claim a genealogical bond to Austen’s work, David Hopkinson proclaims his authority is based on research: The author of this version, a reader of Jane Austen since childhood, has made a study of Catherine Austen’s life and writing. This has led to the conviction that between aunt and niece there were resemblances of character and temperament. On many matters they held the same views. The belief that Cassandra [Austen] and Martha [Lloyd] knew more about The Watsons than has been supposed, and that Catherine absorbed from them an accurate picture of the author’s intentions, is in my view well founded. Any merit in this present telling of the story derives from that belief. (235) Arguing for the authority of Catherine Hubback’s version, David Hopkinson suggests that his adaptation corrects problems with the Browns’ conclusion: “The present continuation of The Watsons is the second to be based on Catherine’s novel. The first, though carried out by Catherine’s grand-daughter, so greatly compressed the plot’s development that it did less than justice to Jane’s own work when all it yielded was so perfunctory a conclusion.” Yet even while David Hopkinson argues for the 12 I suspect that he wished to remain anonymous due to the fact that Austen sequels have historically been a feminine genre. By publishing anonymously, David 54 supremacy of Hubback’s version over the Browns’ rewrite, the book jacket of his text suggests that there are also problems with Catherine Hubback’s version: There was a substantial earlier and characteristically Victorian attempt in 1850 to complete the novel, written by Jane Austen’s niece: prolix, melodramatic and moralizing. Eschewing these drawbacks, the present new completion has nevertheless relied on the earlier version for much of the development of Jane’s plot, there being good reason to believe that it had long been discussed with Jane’s sister and brother. This passage recalls a section of The Hubback Family Manuscript, in which Diana and David Hopkinson register their doubts about the authority of Hubback’s completion. In particular, the couple does not believe in Hubback’s ability to emulate Jane Austen’s voice: “Catherine shared much of Jane’s outlook on the world. She looked at people and their behavior through Jane’s eyes, but she had not got that touch. What she did have of it is more evident in the letters written near the end of her life than in the sequence of novels which she now [i.e., in 1850] began to write” (Ch. 6: 1). Perhaps because David Hopkinson takes issue with Hubback’s “Victorian attempt” and the Browns’ revision, he ends up combining aspects of both versions. The resulting narrative is a story that revives aspects of Hubback’s governess plot while downplaying the melodramatic tendencies of The Younger Sister. Several specific features of Hubback’s governess plot are appropriated. For example, Hopkinson’s Emma is greeted with almost the same “ragged and dirty” speech as the Hopkinson was able to conceal his gender, thereby essentially passing as a female author. 55 one tolerated by Hubback’s Emma (152). 13 And Hopkinson’s novel echoes Hubback’s extended discussion about the fact that Emma would be grateful if her sister-in-law would realize that her unpaid labor should pay for her room and board. However, much like the Browns’ version, the cruelty of Emma’s situation as an unpaid governess in her brother’s home is downplayed. While Hubback repeatedly reminds her readers that Robert calls Emma “a burden on the family,” Hopkinson’s text relays this plot point only once (150). And whereas Hubback’s Emma is desperate to escape from the “galling thrawldom” of her situation, Hopkinson’s Emma merely “endure[s] the numberless petty annoyances” in the presence of Mrs Watson (161). In addition to reducing Emma’s governess woes, Hopkinson likewise lessens the importance of the marriage plot for Emma’s immediate happiness. Emma Watson is proposed to by Lord Osborne before she accepts Mr Howard’s subsequent proposal. Similar to Hubback’s version, Lord Osborne’s proposal occurs towards the end of Hopkinson’s novel, allowing little time for Emma to regret refusing him. But Hopkinson adds another important plot point that relieves Emma’s desire to be tempted into entering a marriage of convenience — Emma has an offer to live with her favorite brother Sam rather than Jane and Robert. Therefore, Mr Howard’s offer is not 13 Only three slight alterations are made to the wording: David Hopkinson has the child “see” beggars in the street and note that Emma does not look like “that,” whereas Hubback’s child is told by a “nurse” about beggars in the street and believes that Emma does not look like “them.” Additionally, Hopkinson’s Emma looks “good- natured,” as opposed to Hubback’s Emma who looks “good.” 56 sweetened by the fact that it provides her financial security. Hopkinson’s Emma Watson marries solely for love. Conclusion Despite the recent critical interest in the history of Jane Austen sequels and completions, Catherine Hubback is only just beginning to gain some name recognition among Austen critics. In fact, due to Hubback’s relative obscurity, her status as the author of the forerunner to the contemporary Austen sequel genre was completely overlooked in 1998 when Sybil Brinton’s Old Friends and New Fancies: An Imaginary Sequel to the Novels of Jane Austen (1912) was successfully advertised as the first Austen sequel. Yet, Hubback had a fairly prolific career in the Victorian novel marketplace. After publishing The Younger Sister, Hubback published ten novels in England between 1851 and 1863 14 and several short stories after immigrating to the United States in 1870. Only one of Hubback’s novels, Agnes Milbourne, went into a second edition; but at least one of her novels — The Old Vicarage — was pirated in the United States. 15 14 The titles of Hubback’s later novels are as follows: Wife’s Sister (1851), Life and its Lessons (1851), May and December (1854), Malvern; or, The three marriages (1855), The Old Vicarage (1856), Agnes Milbourne; or, ‘Foy pour devoir’ (1856), The Rival Suitors (1857), The Stage and the Company (1858), and The Mistakes of a Life (1863). 15 The Hopkinsons claim, “there had been several pirated editions of [Hubback’s] novels on the American market” (Hubback Family Ch. 9: 6). Thus far, however, I have only found evidence of one title. The Jane Austen House Museum currently houses what appears to be a pirated version of Catherine Hubback’s The Old Vicarage: A Novel (1856). The one-volume American version appears to be highly condensed compared to its three-volume English counterpart. 57 There is evidence to suggest that Catherine Hubback did gain some name recognition in her own time. The first volume of Allibone’s 1859 A Critical Dictionary of English Literature, and British and American Authors, Living and Deceased attests to Hubback’s popularity: “Hubback, Mrs, a niece of Jane Austen, the authoress . . . also known as a successful novelist” (qtd. in Sutherland Textual Lives 259). The following comments from a review of The Rival Suitors suggest Hubback enjoyed some critical success: “the best of all Mrs Hubback’s novels and one which proves her to be nearly allied by genius as she is by blood to the first of English female novelists, Miss Austen” (qtd. in Hopkinson Hubback Family Ch. 8: 5). Hubback’s reputation even spread to the United States, as Henry James mentions her in A Small Boy and Others (Hopkinson Hubback Family Ch. 8: 10-11). And in our own time, Hubback is beginning to gain momentum on the internet; for example, she is prominently featured as one of the out-of-print authors revived by a Victorian Literature Electronic Texts service offered by Tudor Rose Books. But modern critics tend to rate Hubback’s novels low. For example, Austen scholar Maggie Lane characterizes them as “a series of mediocre but fairly popular novels” (318). Catherine Hubback’s cousin J.E. Austen-Leigh essentially erased Hubback’s novel from the collective memory of Austen scholarship. By ignoring the existence of Hubback’s text in the Memoir, Austen-Leigh in effect insured that Hubback’s early publication of Jane Austen’s fragment would remain relatively unknown. Letters to J.E. Austen-Leigh in the decade leading up to the first edition of the Memoir suggest that Catherine Hubback’s writing was a vexed issue for several of Austen-Leigh’s 58 contributors. One of Austen-Leigh’s Memoir contributors, his sister Anna Lefroy, was one of Catherine Hubback’s greatest detractors. Lefroy’s antagonism towards her cousin’s work was likely motivated by a spirit of competition — Lefroy, a published author of children’s works and a novella, was interested in writing a conclusion of another Jane Austen fragment, Sanditon. 16 J.E. Austen-Leigh may have also felt that if he advertised Hubback’s The Younger Sister in his Memoir, he would be proliferating ideas about his aunt’s life and work that countered his own version of Jane Austen’s story. The circumstances of Catherine Hubback’s own financial impetus to publish novels very closely paralleled Jane Austen’s own enthusiasm for earning money through publications. 17 Jane Austen’s desire to make a profit from her pen directly contradicts J.E. Austen-Leigh’s portrayal of an aunt whose “life had been passed in the performance of home duties, and the cultivation of domestic affections, without any self-seeking or craving after 16 Meanwhile another contributor, Austen-Leigh’s cousin Cassandra Esten Austen (the daughter of Jane Austen’s brother Charles), certainly had her own motivations for keeping the existence of Hubback’s novels quiet. The second marriage of Jane Austen’s brother Charles was a scandal. After his first wife died, he married his wife’s sister. Hubback’s second novel, The Forbidden Marriage; or, The Wife’s Sister, takes a hard line on such marriages. The Wife’s Sister could have been read as Hubback’s public stab at her uncle’s marriage. It therefore makes sense that Charles’s daughter would want to keep any mention of Hubback’s novels out of the Memoir — a mention might revive their popularity. 17 Austen’s enthusiasm for earning money is most clearly evident from the following excerpt from an 1813 letter to Francis Austen: “You will be glad to hear that every Copy of S.&S. is sold & that it has brought me £140 — besides Copyright, if that shd ever be of any value. — I have now therefore written myself into £250. — which only makes me long for more” (217). Jan Fergus begins her biography of Jane Austen — which details how Jane Austen defined herself as a professional writer — by citing this quotation (see ix). 59 applause” (130). Austen-Leigh is sure to point out that the domestic concerns of those around her always took precedence over Austen’s novel writing: “I have no doubt that I, and my sisters and cousins, in our visits to Chawton, frequently disturbed this mystic process, without having any idea of the mischief that we were doing; certainly we never should have guessed it by any sign of impatience or irritability in the writer” (82). Moreover, Austen-Leigh does not mention Austen’s own correspondence with her publishers; instead, Austen-Leigh reports that her brother Henry “[transacted] his sister’s business with her publishers” (17). In truth, the money Jane Austen earned from her writing was a welcome addition to the meager family income, particularly after the failure of Henry Austen’s bank. In addition to losing some of her own money, the household of Austen ladies started receiving £100 less per annum in gifts from Francis and Charles Austen, who felt they could no longer afford to contribute so much to the upkeep of their mother and sisters (See Le Faye 246–247). While J.E. Austen-Leigh decided not to mention Catherine Hubback’s publication efforts in the Memoir, he did ask for Hubback’s assistance with collecting information for his project. She responded in March 1870 (Sutherland Notes 191– 192). But by August 1871, communication between the cousins seems to have broken down. In an August 27, 1871 18 letter, Catherine Hubback declares her dislike for the first edition for J.E. Austen-Leigh’s Memoir, yet still anxiously awaits seeing the second edition: “Have you read ‘Lady Susan’ which is the name of J. A Leigh’s [sic] 18 Catherine Hubback dates the letter August 27th. A second hand has dated it 1871. 60 second edition. I wish he would send me a copy! but I have been so unlucky as to see the last” (Letters 4 recto and verso). Hubback’s anger about the first edition of the Memoir could be attributed to the fact that, although Austen-Leigh clearly knew about the existence of The Watsons while drafting both versions of the Memoir, he denied the existence of the fragment in the first edition when he suggested that Austen “does not appear to have had any work in hand during her four years’ residence in Bath” (see Sutherland Notes 226). In the second edition (the edition in which he included short pieces like The Watsons, the edition Catherine Hubback is anxiously waiting to read), Austen-Leigh changes his story. He provides details about when The Watsons was written: “the unfinished story, now published under the title of ‘The Watsons,’ must have been written during the author’s residence in Bath” (59). Perhaps, since the popularity of the first edition firmly established his domain as authority on Jane Austen’s life and work, Austen- Leigh now felt safe to advertise the existence of the fragment. Despite the mounds of criticism begging scholars to read Austen-Leigh’s Memoir with a cautious eye, this biography continues to dominate our understanding of Jane Austen’s image in the nineteenth century. But if we continue to ignore Catherine Hubback’s responses to Jane Austen’s work, our understanding of Jane Austen’s reception history will remain skewed. This chapter unearths an ignored critical legacy that reveals the interconnections between feminist readings of Austen and the origins of the Austen sequel. Through the governess plot, Hubback highlights Austen’s attention to the difficult situations of governesses, and by extension, 61 impoverished genteel women. Since Hubback’s time, hundreds (perhaps thousands) of sequels, prequels, and completions of Austen’s work have been published in print and on Austen web sites such as Austen.com. The main themes of a large number of these female-authored works involve addressing gender inequalities. Even contemporary imitations of Austen’s texts like Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary — texts that re-tell Austen’s stories in contemporary settings — use Austen’s plots to highlight women’s issues. By using Austen’s text as a means to launch into a discussion of how to better the lives of women of her own time, Hubback started an important women’s tradition of writing Austen sequels that is still going strong today. 62 Chapter Two — Developing a Feminist Critical Methodology: Fanny Caroline Lefroy’s Family History In the 1860s, Jane Austen’s nephew J.E. Austen-Leigh began in earnest to collect information for his Memoir project. When composing A Memoir of Jane Austen — first published in 1870 and then expanded in 1871 — Austen-Leigh turned to his female relatives for access to unpublished manuscripts written by Jane Austen as well as information about her life. Those who complied with his requests — including Anna Lefroy (1793-1872), Caroline Mary Craven (1805-1880), Cassandra Esten Austen (1808-1897), and Catherine Hubback (1818-1877) — also advised Austen- Leigh about what he ought to include, what he ought not to include, and what he ought to revise for public eyes (see especially Sutherland, “Introduction and Notes”). Austen-Leigh and his Memoir contributors were well aware of the significant effects the project would have on the formation of Jane Austen’s literary reputation. This was to be the first biographical piece presented to the public since Henry Austen (Jane Austen’s brother) revised and expanded his short 1818 “Biographical Notice” for republication in 1833 at the request of Richard Bentley. When Henry Austen composed his first version of Jane Austen’s life, everything he wrote was new: Jane Austen’s name had not even been associated in print with her work when the 1818 notice appeared alongside the first editions of Austen’s Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. The task for Henry Austen, then, was simple: briefly introduce readers to his sister’s life story. But by the 1860s, Austen’s novels had long been widely circulated through Richard Bentley’s affordable Standard Novels Series; and, Austen’s life and its relationship to her work had already been debated by such notable literary figures 63 as G.H. Lewes and Charlotte Brontë. Austen-Leigh’s generation, therefore, had to combat ideas about Jane Austen that had been brewing for quite some time. After all of these years of silence, it now became absolutely necessary for the Austen family to present their version of a Jane Austen that the Victorian public could embrace: a pious Christian whose role as dutiful Aunt trumped her literary ambitions. Fanny Caroline Lefroy (daughter of Anna Lefroy) felt that some aspects of the Memoir encouraged misreadings of Jane Austen’s novels which, consequently, hampered the novelist’s growing popularity. Although Lefroy was sympathetic to the reasons why her mother’s generation “carefully corrected” aspects of Jane Austen’s life in the Memoir, she decided to strike out against the family. 1 In her Family History Manuscript, Lefroy begins to reshape Jane Austen’s biography, rewriting her love story and then rereading the novels through these revisions. After advancing these critical arguments in this safe, feminine genre, Lefroy further develops her theories in three articles for Temple Bar Magazine. Lefroy insists upon the importance of circulating Jane Austen’s letters and private history to the public, arguing that the information is necessary for appreciating Jane Austen’s novels and making her work relevant to contemporary readers. While 1 This refers to a quotation from one of Anna Lefroy’s letters, which I have already cited as an epigraph for the introduction to the dissertation. In 1862, Anna Lefroy writes to her brother regarding preparing Jane Austen’s manuscripts for publication: Now let us look at the matter the other way; the publishing way. One ought to do in this case what the authoress would have done for herself — slightly alter and very carefully correct — and though I should be sorry in such a business to trust solely to my own small knowledge of composition, it certainly might be done. (qtd. in Hopkinson Family Ch. 8: 4-5) 64 the Memoir encouraged reviewers to read Austen’s novels as a reflection of the author’s own limited life experiences, Lefroy argues that Austen’s novels rarely reflect the true passion that she experienced in her own life. In particular, Lefroy uses Persuasion as an example of the way Jane Austen’s love life illuminates her fiction. Far from a passionless text written by a passionless woman, Persuasion gives readers a glimpse into the true emotions that Jane Austen experienced in her lifetime. For Lefroy, the genius behind Austen’s novels is not that she was able to write realistic texts despite her limited life experiences, but that she was able to keep the passion she experienced in her own life from overwhelming her stories. Lefroy mixes several forms as she advances her arguments: novels, literary criticism, family history, and biography. While considering the relationship between Jane Austen’s stories and Jane Austen’s life through these blurred genres, Fanny Caroline Lefroy invents a feminist critical approach to Jane Austen’s work. Lefroy, like Catherine Hubback, is at least partially motivated to stake claims about Austen that will help establish herself (Lefroy) as a professional author. But Lefroy’s oeuvre moves beyond the readings of Austen’s work that Hubback’s novels offered Victorian audiences. Anticipating current feminist critical approaches to Austen’s texts, Lefroy’s literary criticism questions the relationship between Austen’s femininity and her literary reputation. To categorize this work as mere family biography writing overlooks Lefroy’s innovations, and ignores the fact that our current critical practice owes much to her experiments. 65 Fanny Caroline Lefroy’s Family History Manuscript Women in the Austen family kept the legacy of Jane Austen alive through manuscripts passed down from generation to generation. Many descendents of Jane Austen’s siblings recorded anecdotes about the novelist’s life in their family histories. These texts were often composed in an effort to memorialize the authors’ parents. But they were also written to serve as reminders of the authors themselves, as the women writing them knew the manuscripts would eventually be passed down as treasures to their own children or other relatives. The information in these manuscripts varies significantly. For example, the Jane Austen Memorial Trust collection contains Catherine Hubback’s family history notes, which is essentially a genealogy chart written on scraps of letter-writing stationary. And the Hampshire Record Office contains a lengthy letter from Anna Lefroy to her brother J.E. Austen-Leigh regarding her “recollections” of Jane Austen in narrative form. More significant family histories, however, are book-length documents containing genealogy charts along with dates, facts, and stories detailing the history of ancient family lines as well as the life stories of immediate family members. One of the most extensive family histories is a very lengthy leather-bound tome written by Fanny Caroline Lefroy housed in the Austen-Leigh papers in the Hampshire Record Office. 66 Fanny Caroline Lefroy composed her Family History Manuscript in the late 1870s. 2 At this time, Lefroy was already an established author who had published short fictional works of juvenile and religious fiction in the 1850s and 1860s. Significantly, these fictional pieces followed the prescription that her great Aunt Jane gave her mother Anna regarding limiting her writing subjects to familiar topics, places, and circumstances. Famously, Jane Austen once told Anna in a surviving letter: You are now collecting your People delightfully, getting them exactly into such a spot as is the delight of my life; — 3 or 4 Families in a Country Village is the very thing to work on — & I hope you will write a great deal more, & make full use of them while they are so very favourably arranged. (275) Similarly, in another letter of advice regarding Anna’s manuscript (Enthusiasm /Which is the Heroine?), Jane Austen wrote, “Let the Portmans go to Ireland, but as you know nothing of the Manners there, you had better not go with them. You will be in danger of giving false impressions” (269). 3 2 Lefroy’s Family History Manuscript is a history of the Austen and Lefroy families. The leather-bound volume is the longest Austen family history I have had the opportunity to study. The pages are, unfortunately, not numbered. Lefroy attempted to divide the text into chapter, but this system seems to have broken down, so I do not cite chapter numbers. Another hand has made revisions to some of the sections in pencil; however, I always quote from what I interpret to be Fanny Caroline Lefroy’s last amendments. 3 Eventually, Anna Lefroy destroyed the manuscript Jane Austen commented on, but her attempts to complete two of Austen’s own manuscripts — “Evelyn” and Sanditon — survive, as do some published works of short fiction: a novella called Mary Hamilton (1833), a children’s story entitled The Winter’s Tale (1841), and another children’s story entitled Springtide (1842) (Sutherland xxix). 67 Fanny Caroline Lefroy’s own published fictional pieces suggest that she took Jane Austen’s advice to her mother into consideration when writing. In fact, a signed copy of her first book Long, Long Ago, which is now at the Jane Austen House Museum, contains the following inscription by Fanny Caroline Lefroy’s brother Ben Lefroy: “This is the first book written and published by my sister Fanny Caroline and the first chapter is to some extent autobiographical.” 4 An anonymous hand (most likely Ben Lefroy’s) has annotated this copy of Long, Long Ago in order to differentiate between the autobiographical bits drawing from Fanny Caroline Lefroy’s knowledge of Ashe and the fictional sections. Appreciating the extent to which Lefroy followed her great Aunt’s prescription for novel-writing is important, because the idea that Jane Austen limited her subject matter to her own experiences is a crucial assumption upon which Lefroy will found her own thesis about Austen’s novels. As an established author, Lefroy was more willing than her peers to experiment with the genre of family history. For Lefroy, writing her family history was an exercise in remembering her mother and in documenting family history for posterity — just as it was for other women in the Austen family. But Lefroy was also concerned about developing critical arguments about Jane Austen’s writing — 4 These annotations are extremely useful because they help identify Lefroy as the author of this piece, which was published anonymously. Clues like this are very important, as catalogues are often inconsistent with regard to identifying Lefroy’s writings, making it difficult to even compose a proper bibliography of her oeuvre. Her published novels are very rare; unfortunately, even some copies of Lefroy’s work once held by the British Library were destroyed. 68 arguments that she later evolves into articles for Temple Bar Magazine. Commencing with her family history, Lefroy experiments with critical arguments that evolve as she figures out how to best present Jane Austen to her Victorian audience. In many ways, Lefroy’s Family History Manuscript is a typical prototype of an Austen family history. Like other manuscripts, Lefroy’s story begins with a marriage: the 1764 marriage of Fanny Caroline Lefroy’s great-grandparents the Reverend George Austen and Cassandra Leigh (Jane Austen’s parents). Lefroy goes on to describe the ancient lines of family names familiar to readers of Jane Austen’s letters, such as Austen, Leigh, Matthew, Lefroy, and Perrot. In subsequent chapters, Lefroy focuses on the life of her mother, including detailed descriptions of Anna Lefroy’s relationship with Jane Austen and the books they read together. Inaccuracies abound in this manuscript, as they do in other Austen family histories. Given how distanced Fanny Caroline Lefroy was from Jane Austen’s generation, this text cannot be relied upon to contain absolute truths regarding Jane Austen and others of that same generation. For example, when listing Jane Austen’s siblings, Lefroy suggests that George died shortly after birth, writing, “George born 1766 died.” However, as scholars have now documented, this is not true. 5 This may indicate that Lefroy was ignorant of the barest of details regarding the life of her great- uncle. More likely, however, this information suggests that Lefroy chose to follow the 5 David Nokes suggests that the Austen family often did not mention George because “it was tactful to make no mention to Jane’s ‘mad’ brother George, send away from home as an infant and never afterwards referred to” (2). 69 lead of her other family members who hid the existence of Jane Austen’s autistic brother. Lefroy probably believed that most of the information about Jane Austen surviving in family folklore was true. Based on these stories — fictional or not — Lefroy presented Austen’s life and work to the public in a manner that “modernized” Austen in order to make her marketable to Victorian readers. 6 6 Documents inserted into Fanny Caroline Lefroy’s Family History Manuscript suggest that Fanny Caroline Lefroy remained adamant about her version of Austen’s love story as told in the manuscript — and that, after the death of Lefroy, family members valued the manuscript for the version of Austen’s love life that it told. Some passages related to Jane Austen’s love life have been heavily annotated by a second hand (probably Lefroy’s sister, Louisa Bellas). Also of note is a letter inserted into the beginning of the manuscript dated December 20, 1886, written by Louisa Bellas to her Cousin Cholmely Austen-Leigh. Apparently, he had asked to use Lefroy’s memoir to rebut a misunderstanding about Jane Austen and a Swiss romance. Louisa Bellas responds by providing him with a copy of Lefroy’s manuscript: I send you by Parcels Post to day a copy of dear Fanny’s “Family History” — which you can keep as long as you like. I also send you on the other side of this, a copy of a note she wrote in her copy of Ld. Brabourne’s book. Probably however, nothing any body can say would convinced [sic] Sir F Doyle, that the romance did not take place in Switzerland — Bellas also copies out for Cholmely Austen-Leigh a note of appendix to page 248 in Lord Brabourne’s first volume of Letters by Jane Austen written by Fanny Caroline Lefroy. The excerpt includes a condensed version of her story of the “young clergyman” Jane Austen met at the seaside: In these four years, i.e. between may 1801 & August 1805 of which we have scarcely any record, much befell the sisters, for Aunt Cassandra’s long engagement was brought to an end by the death of Mr. Thos. Fowle. He went out to Barbados as chaplain to the forces & died [een they] returned. I do not know the exact date. In the summer of 1801 the father and Mother & daughters made a tour in Devonshire. They went to [Teignmouth, Sareross/Harerofs, Sidmouth &c]. I believe it was at the last named place that they made acquaintance with a young clergyman then visiting his brother who was one of the doctors in the Town. He & Jane fell in love with each other & when the Austens left he asked to be allowed to join them again farther on in their tour and the permission was given. But instead of his 70 Comparing Lefroy’s family history to the history written by her younger sister — Louisa Langlois (1824–1910), the wife of Rev S. Bellas — highlights Lefroy’s editorial decisions, and in particular, her emphasis on Austen’s novels. Louisa Bellas’s manuscript, known as the Bellas MS (1872), is based on the same source documents as Fanny Caroline Lefroy’s Family History: material passed down from their mother Anna Lefroy. In fact, several passages in the siblings’ memoirs read in exactly the same way. Although Bellas emphasizes Anna Lefroy’s connection to “the novelist Jane Austen” in the introduction, references to Jane Austen’s life and work are extremely rare. 7 Louisa Bellas’s history focuses on her mother’s story; the text arriving as expected, they received a letter from his brother announcing his death — In Aunt Cassandra’s Memory he lived as one of the most charming people she had ever known, worthy even in her eyes of Aunt Jane. Edith Lank’s helpful Persuasions On-Line article listing the annotations in Lefroy’s copy of Brabourne’s Letters suggests to me that the marginalia in the Letters showcases Fanny’s continued engagement with Austen’s romances. Lefroy’s annotations also resonate with her desire to speak back to versions of Jane Austen’s life told by other members of the Austen family. 7 Perhaps because Louisa Bellas focuses her text on Anna Lefroy’s life story, her manuscript makes very few references to Aunt Jane Austen. Bellas quotes the following passage from her mother: “My two Aunts were Cassandra Elizth Austen & Jane Austen. The name of the latter now well known in the Literary world as the Authoress of – Sense & Sensibility Pride and Prejudice Mansfield Park Emma Persuasion & Northanger Abbey. The first of these works was published by my Aunt on her own account, and the clear profit was £140 –.” Here, Bellas makes no attempt to elaborate on her mother’s discussion of Jane Austen’s novels — she merely dutifully copies down the information like she does so many other countless details related to various Lefroy and Austen family members. Later, Bellas again quotes her mother regarding basic facts about Jane Austen’s biography: “My Aunts both died unmarried, they and all but the three first of my Grand Fathers children were born at Steventon; but in the year 1801 the family left that place and settled at Bath. There my Grand Father died, and was buried in Walcot Church — this was in jany 1805 — My Grand Mother & Aunts lived after that for a year or two in Southampton but were 71 clearly reads as a kind of memorial to Anna Lefroy, which makes sense given that the text was composed in 1872, the year of Anna Lefroy’s death. 8 In stark contrast to the family history of Louisa Bellas — which does not include any literary analysis of Jane Austen’s novels — Lefroy takes several opportunities to mention Jane Austen’s novel writing. In fact, she inserts references to Jane Austen into the text while discussing the Austen family history at large. For example, discussing the effect the marriage between James Austen (Lefroy’s grandfather) and his second wife Mary Lloyd had on Anna (Lefroy’s mother), Fanny expands on the time Anna spent at Jane Austen’s Steventon home: I think my mother must have spent most of her time at Steventon during the widowhood of her father for she would remember being noticed and played with by the pupils, and hearing ‘Pride and Prejudice’ (begun 1796) read aloud by it’s [sic] youthful writer to her sister. She was a very intelligent quick-witted child and she caught up the names of the characters and talked about them so much downstairs that her Aunts feared she would provoke enquiry, for the story was still a secret from the elders. Let me in my mother’s own words describe the house and room in which Jane Austen wrote her two first works … In her lengthy description of Steventon copied from Anna Lefroy’s writings, Fanny Caroline Lefroy leaves two large gaps in the manuscript, perhaps indicating that she finally established in the Village of Chawton, my Uncle Mr Knight being the proprietor of Chawton House and its estate.” Again, Bellas makes no attempt to elaborate on Jane Austen’s personal life or her writings — instead she merely copies the facts down as her mother describes them. 8 Louisa Bellas begins her family history, which is significantly shorter than Fanny Caroline Lefroy’s version, by declaring that the narrative will be limited to detailing her mother’s experiences: “This book contains letters & extracts from diaries &c of Jane Anna Elizabeth Austen eldest daughter of Red James Austen of Steventon Hants. She married Benjamin Lefroy in 1814. She was a favourite niece of the novelist Jane Austen.” 72 meant to go back and expand upon her mother’s observations regarding the details of the “very comfortable family residence.” This suggests to me that Lefroy could have intended to elaborate even more on Austen’s novels while copying stories from other source documents. Lefroy often describes her family history in terms of Jane Austen’s plots in an effort to comment upon Jane Austen’s novels as much as possible. For example, Lefroy begins a description of her mother’s wedding festivities by quoting her Aunt Caroline, but she then refers to Emma to add details to her Aunt’s report: Such were the wedding festivities at Steventon in 1814. That they were something less than usual is probable. But when Aunt Jane marries Emma Woodhouse she describes a wedding which would not have been very different, and which Mrs Elton (no doubt justly) thought very inferior to her own. “Very little white Satin. Very few lace veils, and a most pitiful business.” — Words which aptly describe my mother’s. Lefroy also includes her mother’s own description of the wedding. Since that description makes no such connections to Jane Austen’s novels, the link between the wedding in Emma and Anna Lefroy’s wedding is likely to have been completely Fanny Caroline Lefroy’s own invention. Similarly, when describing the unsuitability of her mother’s first engagement (to a man whom her family did not like), Lefroy turns to Jane Austen’s novels to make her point: “As a match it would have been about as suitable as one between Lizzie Bennet & Mr Collins; or between Emma Woodhouse and Mr Rushworth had they ever met.” In this last example, we see Lefroy experimenting with Austen’s novels: shuffling the characters from book to book in a way that anticipates Sybil G. Brinton’s Old Friends and New Fancies: An 73 Imaginary Sequel to the Novels of Jane Austen (1913) and numerous sequel-writing successors who imagine characters from various Austen novels meeting each other. But what is especially important to note, is the way in which Lefroy novelizes her mother’s life through Jane Austen’s stories — imaginatively supplementing biographical facts with fictional details. Here, Lefroy is creating the critical methodology she will use in her Temple Bar articles as she experiments with genre — blending biography with novel writing. Later she extends this experiment in her Temple Bar articles when including material about Jane Austen’s life. Lefroy tests her critical method of blending fact with fiction at several points in her Family History Manuscript. For example she weaves a discussion of Austen’s novels into a description of the novelist’s appreciation of the countryside around Steventon: But Jane loved the country and her delight in natural scenery was such that she would sometimes say she thought it must form one of the joys of heaven. It is remarkable how very little there is of her writings to indicate this taste. Some glimpses there are of it in Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park, but there is not what can be called a picturesque description to be found in any one of her novels. No word pictures no elaborate accounts of wind and storm of light and shade or even of the fair meadows, and the winding hedgerows and the primrose strewn coppices in which her youth was passed. Every touch she did put in was true but even here there was a remarkable reserve and reticence as to her own tastes. The last sentence of this passage is particularly significant, as the idea that Jane Austen’s “reserved” writing is not a thorough indication of her tastes and abilities — nor a thorough representation of her life experiences — is a theme that Lefroy returns to in her Temple Bar articles. Additionally, here we see Lefroy separating Jane Austen 74 from her Romantic contemporaries, thereby implicitly associating Austen’s novels with more contemporary Victorian writers; this is yet another strategy Lefroy develops in her Temple Bar articles. In Temple Bar, Lefroy argues that Jane Austen’s letters provide an important context for gaining a proper understanding of the extent of Jane Austen’s reserve, particularly with regard to the subject of love. In her Family History Manuscript, Lefroy begins to develop her ideas with regard to Jane Austen’s letters as she copies and annotates them in order to show explicit connections between Jane Austen’s life and work. For example, Lefroy adds the words “Mansfield Park” after citing Jane Austen’s August 10, 1814 letter to Anna Lefroy in which Austen explains that the last chapter of Anna’s novel did not please the family: “perhaps from having had too much of plays in that way lately.” With this insert, Lefroy connects biographical details outlined in Austen’s letters with one of her novels. And, after she finishes copying the letter, Lefroy writes, “I think the criticism in this letter and in those that follow are very interesting as showing the careful study, and the attention to every minute detail which must have been executed on her own works.” This short comment upon Jane Austen’s attention to specifics is important, as Lefroy returns to this subject at several points in her later articles on Austen’s work. Here we see Lefroy beginning to work out her ideas regarding the influence Jane Austen’s life experiences had on her novels, as well as the related issue of the extent to which her novels actually reflect her life experiences. This connection between criticism and biography is a key focus of all three of Lefroy’s later Temple Bar Articles. 75 As Lefroy evolves her arguments in her Temple Bar articles, the importance of Jane Austen’s letters and the love story they contain becomes a key theme. Lefroy’s critical arguments focus on the influence Jane Austen’s love life had on her novels; but before drafting these pieces, Lefroy outlines Jane Austen’s various love interests in her Family History Manuscript. She introduces her first story about Jane Austen’s romantic endeavors — a possible relationship with her neighbor Mr William Digweed — as a potential explanation as to why Jane Austen’s parents decided to uproot themselves and their daughters to Bath: The resolution to leave Steventon took all their relations by surprise and as there did not seem any sufficient reason for it in the health of either, some such motive was suspected. Mr and Mrs Leigh Perrot thought they left in such haste because they apprehended a growing attachment between Mr William Digweed and Aunt Jane. Neither our Grandmother nor Aunt Caroline at all believed it. It might have been so on the gentlemen’s side. I knew him as an old man and certainly fancied there was some charm linked with her name, although I did not know then that any such suspicion had ever existed. Given the age of the Austen girls (26 and 28), a more probable explanation for the family’s removal to Bath is that George and Cassandra Austen were fairly desperate to find husbands for their older, unmarried daughters by this time. Bath, as many contemporary scholars note, was known as the place to get husbands — a phenomenon Jane Austen jokes about in Emma through the courtship of Mr and Mrs Elton. But Lefroy’s suggestion that the family might in fact have been fleeing in order to avoid a potential attachment between Jane Austen and a local gentleman places the story in a different light. Jane Austen’s supposed extreme reaction (a fainting spell, which Lefroy details in the Family History Manuscript) to the news that she was to 76 leave Steventon for Bath is often repeated in Austen family folklore and has managed to trickle down to contemporary biographies and even current literary scholarship. 9 Lefroy’s version of the dramatic tale offers a more flattering interpretation of the Austens’ decision to move to Bath. The idea that Fanny Caroline Lefroy wanted to dissuade readers from interpreting the removal to Bath as a desperate ploy to get the Austen girls married might also explain why she weaves the tale of Cassandra Austen’s engagement to Thomas Fowle into the narrative of the removal to Bath. Lefroy ends her recanting of the story of Fowle’s untimely death abroad by writing, “I cannot find the date of his decease nor how many years the engagement had lasted when it came to so unhappy an end. Possibly the attachment had grown from childhood. With it so far as we know ended the romance of Aunt Cassandra’s life.” Due to the lack of specific dates, Lefroy is able to pair the story of Cassandra’s engagement with the tale of the Austens’ removal to Bath — despite the fact that the latter incident occurs much later. In truth, Thomas Fowle died in February of 1797 while Cassandra, Jane, and their parents left Steventon for Bath over four years later in May of 1801 Le Faye Chronology 193 and 257). Lefroy’s version suggests to readers that Cassandra may have been engaged at the time of the move. As with the story of Jane Austen’s supposed romance with William Digweed, the story of Cassandra Austen’s engagement to Thomas Fowle 9 David Nokes challenges the authority of this often-repeated story in Jane Austen: A Life (see esp. pages 220–222). He ascribes the origin of the tale to Caroline Austen’s letter, the same source from which Fanny Caroline Lefroy draws her information. 77 provides a convenient answer to the assumption that the Austens left for Bath with the explicit intention of getting husbands for their daughters. Fanny Caroline Lefroy makes much of the well-documented proposal of Harris Bigg-Wither to Jane Austen. Lefroy documents the proposal, which Austen famously accepted before changing her answer the next morning, in a passage that has been heavily annotated by both Lefroy and a later hand that has written “2 Dec. 1802” in the Family History Manuscript. Notably, Lefroy only notes the positive aspects of the potential match with Bigg-Wither, such as his healthy income and the friendly relationship Jane Austen had with his sisters. Lefroy does not mention the fact that he was generally thought to be unattractive and that he stuttered when he spoke — instead, she presents Bigg-Wither as a wholly desirable match. Fanny Caroline Lefroy makes no mention of the youthful flirtation between Tom Lefroy and Jane Austen, a romance that has interested many biographers for example, Jon Spence, whose Becoming Jane Austen was the basis of the recent biopic Becoming Jane). This absence from the Family History Manuscript is striking due to the double family connection that should have given her access to both sides of the story: Fanny Caroline Lefroy was related to Tom Lefroy through her father (Ben Lefroy was Tom’s cousin) as well as to Jane Austen through her mother (Anna). Here, Fanny Caroline may be following the lead of her aunt Caroline Austen who argued that this incident was insignificant in an 1869 letter to her half-brother J.E. Austen-Leigh: “I think I need not warn you against raking up that old story of the still living ‘Chief Justice’ — That there was something in it, is true — but nothing out of 78 the common way — (as I believe) Nothing to call ill usage, & no very serious sorrow endured” (186). Caroline’s letter suggests a reason why Fanny Caroline Lefroy skirted this issue in her family history; the reference to “ill usage” implies that Tom Lefroy jilted Jane Austen due to her lack of fortune. Of all of the romantic escapades outlined by Fanny Caroline Lefroy in the Family History Manuscript, the most significant is Jane Austen’s supposed seaside romance. In her introduction of the story, Lefroy emphasizes the significance of the relationship by equating it with Cassandra’s engagement to Thomas Fowle: “Jane’s history was in some respects not very different.” Because Lefroy emphasizes the importance of this romance to Persuasion in this document as well as in her Temple Bar articles, I am quoting her description of the romance at length: The Austens with their two daughters were once at Weymouth the date of that visit was not later than 1802. But besides this they were once traveling in Devonshire moving about from place to place and I think that tour was before they left Steventon in 1801. Perhaps as early as 1798 or 9. It was whilst they were so traveling according to Aunt Cassandra’s account that they somehow made acquaintance with a gentleman of the name of Blackall. He and Aunt Jane mutually attracted each other, and such were his charms that even aunt Cassandra thought him worthy of her sister. They parted on the understanding that he was to come to Steventon but instead I know not how long after came a letter from his brother to say that he was dead. There is no record of Jane’s affliction, but I think the attachment must have been very deep. Aunt Cassandra herself had so warm a regard for him that some years after her sister’s death and when she herself was an elderly woman, she took a good deal of trouble to find out and see again his brother. Lefroy’s acknowledgement that “there is no record of Jane’s affliction” is significant, as it speaks to the suspicious gaps in Jane Austen’s surviving letters during years that were supposed to be especially painful for her, such as this one. But the absence of 79 letters for this period of time allows Lefroy imaginative room to speculate about what Jane Austen “must have” felt — and this kind of speculation continues in the Temple Bar articles. In an attempt to lend some support to claims she makes about Jane Austen’s romance at the sea, Lefroy copies in an “extract of a letter from our dear Aunt Caroline to Mary Leigh,” dated 1870: I have no doubt that Aunt Jane was beloved of several in the course of her life and was herself very capable for loving. I wish I could give you more dates as to Mr. Blackall. All that I know is this, at Newtown Aunt Cassandra was staying with us when we made the acquaintance of a certain Mr. Henry Edridge of the [Euguiers]. He was very pleasing and very good looking. My Aunt was much struck with him, and I was struck by her commendation as she rarely admired anyone. Afterwards she spoke of him as of one so unusually gifted with all that was agreable [sic] and said he had reminded her strongly of a gentleman whom they had met one summer when they were by the sea (I think at Devonshire) who had seemed greatly attracted by my Aunt Jane that when they parted (I imagined he was a visitor also, but the family might have lived near) he was urgent to know where they would be the next summer implying or perhaps saying that he should be there also whenever it might be. I can only say, the impression left on Aunt Cassandra’s mind was that he had fallen in love with Aunt Jane. Soon afterwards they heard of his death. I am sure she thought him worthy of her sister from the way she recalled his memory and also that she did not doubt either that he would have been a successful suitor. Later in the manuscript, Fanny Caroline Lefroy cites “evidence” from Jane Austen’s August 10, 1814 letter to Anna Lefroy that this romance could have taken place. In reference to the book manuscript penned by Anna Lefroy, Austen writes, “I am not sensible of any blunders about Dawlish.” After copying this sentence, Fanny Caroline Lefroy inserts a note in brackets: “Here is evidence that Aunt Jane was in Devonshire in 1808. As I have before said I believe she and her father, mother and sister were all 80 there as early as 1798 or 9, if so this was her second visit. In 1804 they went to Lyme. It may be thought that if the Austens desired change of air and sea breezes they would more naturally have sought them on the coast of Hampshire than on that of Devonshire.” Lefroy attributes much importance to this aborted romance, claiming that it accounts for Jane Austen’s lack of writing productivity for over a decade of time: I fancy it was about 1799 that this blow fell upon Jane Austen, and to it and the similar sorrow of her beloved sister [due to the death of Thomas Fowle], I attribute her disuse of her pen during so many of the finest years of her life. Between her two first novels “Sense and Sensibility” and “Pride and Prejudice” and their successors there was a period of twelve years. A long strange silence for which there must surely have been some reason. It is not probable that lively and cheerful as she was in manner, she had that deep silent sorrow at her heart which could not but indispose her to the exertion of writing, perhaps even paralysed the faculty of invention. “Pride and Prejudice,” “Sense and Sensibility” and “Northanger Abbey” were all written before she was five and twenty. Indeed I think we might say before she was three and twenty, and it was not until she was thirty five that she began revising them for the press. How much has that silence lost to the world! But perhaps had a happier end been granted to her love we might have lost yet more and Miss Bates and Mrs [Norris] have had no existence. That her grief should have silenced her is I think quite consistent with the reserve of her character. Many could have found consolation in pouring out their sorrows to the public and describing their own feelings under the disguise of their heroines, but only once did Jane Austen’s heart slip into her pen when she said as Anne Elliot “All the privilege I claim for my sex, and it is not a very enviable one is that of loving longest when hope is gone.” I have again cited Lefroy at length because several of the ideas that she brings up in this passage are crucial to the arguments she advances in Temple Bar. In particular, Lefroy later expands on her attempt to link Jane Austen’s life experiences with Anne Elliot’s experiences in Persuasion. 81 Fanny Caroline Lefroy’s Family History Manuscript has much to offer historians and Austen critics alike, and I have concentrated on describing what I read as the major themes that Fanny Caroline Lefroy revisits in her Temple Bar Magazine articles. Because all of these aspects of the Family History Manuscript show up in Fanny Caroline Lefroy’s criticism, the manuscript can be read as a form of Jane Austen criticism itself — a forum used by Lefroy to work out the arguments about Jane Austen’s novels that she later presents in a more public venue. Fanny Caroline Lefroy and Temple Bar Magazine Fanny Caroline Lefroy presents a complex argument about the relationship between realism, biography, and Austen’s popularity in her articles published in Temple Bar Magazine. Drawing from her own Family History Manuscript and other Austen family manuscripts (including letters from Jane Austen that were in her possession), Lefroy blends fiction, literary criticism, family history, and biography. In these articles, Lefroy suggests that Jane Austen’s reputation is tarnished because Victorian readers believe her to be a loveless prude. According to Lefroy, these misreadings can be attributed to two main sources: first, the family’s desire to keep Jane Austen’s love life private (as reflected by the Memoir); second, Jane Austen’s realism, which is so acute that her readers falsely assume that everything in every novel has an actual source and that the novels represent the only real-life experiences Jane Austen had (in other words, if it does not exist in Jane Austen’s novels, then it did not happen to Jane Austen). Lefroy insists that if the public knew more about Jane Austen’s actual life experiences (particularly her love story), readers would see how 82 truly brilliant her brand of realism is, and, consequently, they would place her in the same category as other revered Victorian writers. In the first article — “Hunting for Snarkes at Lyme Regis” (1879) — Lefroy aligns Jane Austen’s work with two popular Victorian authors, emphasizing Jane Austen’s modernity and relevance for late nineteenth-century readers. Lefroy associates Jane Austen with Lewis Carroll and Alfred Tennyson in order to highlight the importance of her realism to her art. In doing so, Lefroy expands upon the connections she worked out in the Family History Manuscript between Jane Austen’s novels and recently published Victorian texts. The title of Lefroy’s article is a reference to the mythical snarks first featured in Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” poem in Through the Looking Glass (1871) and in his later poem “The Hunting of the Snark” (1876). But Lefroy’s use of the term snark also gives the impression that the characters in Jane Austen’s novels were in fact creations of Jane Austen’s imagination: “Hunting for snarkes [sic] is a very pleasant occupation if you do but make believe strong enough, and Jane Austen’s creatures shall be realities to us as long as we stay at Lyme Regis” (391). This is a pivotal moment for Lefroy, as she is underpinning her entire argument about the realistic aspects of Jane Austen’s novels with a reference to an obvious invention. While the rest of the article discusses the fact that Austen’s descriptions of setting are so precise that exact sites from her novels can be easily identified, Lefroy has begun by suggesting that Austen is just as inventive as Lewis Carroll. This lays the groundwork for her argument that Jane Austen’s novels do not reflect all of her life experiences. 83 Although the settings of Austen’s novels can often be pinpointed to real locations described with uncanny accuracy, the characters and the situations in the stories are all the author’s own inventions. The bulk of Lefroy’s article reads much like a typical travel diary often posted on twenty-first century Jane Austen websites featuring a modern-day pilgrim tracing the real settings of Jane Austen’s fictions. In these diary entries, fact and fiction are often blurred, as pilgrims literally act out scenes from Jane Austen’s novels (for example, mimicking Louisa Musgrove by jumping off of the steps at Lyme). As author-pilgrim, Lefroy retraces the steps of the characters in Persuasion in order to emphasize the astute descriptions of settings. In this way, Lefroy’s article reinforces nineteenth-century reviews of Austen’s novels written by such authors as Sir Walter Scott and G.H. Lewes who also argue that a strength of Austen’s novels is their attention to detail. Lefroy had already mulled over this aspect of Austen’s realism in her comments on Jane Austen’s letters in the Family History Manuscript. But here, she includes an extended discussion of Austen’s descriptions of settings. For example, Lefroy notes that “the parade is only open to winds that blow from the south, south- east, or south-west, especially south-east, and this fact was our first proof of Jane Austen’s accuracy, for she speaks of the bloom in Anne Elliot’s face being produced by the ‘fine south-easterly wind’ she had been meeting” (391). The word “proof” here is significant, as it hints at a kind of scientific accuracy apparent in Austen’s novels that Lefroy discusses in the rest of the article. She then identifies specific places in 84 Lyme in which scenes from Jane Austen’s Persuasion take place. At “first,” she convinces herself that she is “in the very house which the Harvilles occupied.” But upon further inspection of the staircase, she revises her opinion: The situation answered precisely. Captain Benwick must have rushed past its window when flying for the doctor, and Captain Harville must have seen him. The dining-room, too, was so small, that only ‘those whose invitations came from the heart’ could have supposed it possible to ask their friends to dine in it. Nothing could fit better, and we counted the bedrooms and arranged the party, and settled which was the chamber to which Louise Musgrave [sic] was carried, when the word ‘carried’ struck us all dumb. That dreadful staircase; could any man, even though a sailor, have carried any young lady up that dark and crooked ladder?—and not only dark and crooked, but with a projecting beam in the darkest corner, from which one could scarcely save one’s own head. She might, indeed, have been carried up the steps of the outside of the house and so in at the back door, as our boxes had been, there being no other way of getting them into our rooms; but we dared not suppose so unusual a mode of entrance, and were reluctantly obliged to give up the idea. (392–393) Lefroy does not consider that Jane Austen may have taken aspects of different homes in Lyme in order to piece them together into a realistic description of a setting. Instead she identifies another “small house equally suitable in situation” in which to settle the Harvilles (393). Here, Lefroy oddly undercuts ideas about Jane Austen’s inventiveness that the title reference to snarks suggests. Lefroy dissuades readers from interpreting her article as a mere effusion of Janeite pilgrimage by referring to the fact that Alfred Tennyson supposedly traveled to Lyme with Austen’s novels in mind: “We happened also to know that when Mr Tennyson went there, and his friends wanted to show him the precise spot where the Duke of Monmouth landed, he exclaimed with an indignation equally creditable to this own genius and to hers, ‘Don’t talk to me of the Duke of Monmouth. Show me that 85 precise spot where Louise Musgrave [sic] fell’” (391). By showing that Tennyson cared more about the fictional Louisa Musgrove than he did about the actual Duke of Monmouth, Lefroy highlights Austen’s realistic description of details. Linking Tennyson to Austen in this way also emphasizes Austen’s relevance for important contemporary writers. Finally, it highlights the popularity of the novels — even Alfred Tennyson feels the need to pay homage to Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Lefroy discusses the recent surge in popularity of Austen’s fiction in a description of her visit to the library at Lyme to obtain a copy of Persuasion: For some few years ago, when in Bath, being anxious to amuse ourselves with verifying all the places and streets, &c, mentioned in [Persuasion] and in Northanger Abbey, we turned into a library close to Milsom Street, and asked for the volume, we were told not only that they had not got it, but had never even heard of Jane Austen! And what was still worse, and hurt our feelings more, was that when we sought the inn which her genius has made so memorable, though we indeed found it, lo and behold! It was no longer the White Hart, it had sunk into the Queen, or the Royal Hotel, or something equally commonplace. It was some consolation to discover the displaced old sign, the veritable gold-collared White Hart standing in an obscure corner not very far off. Lyme, however, proved more grateful. The library not only contained the volume, but some one had added to its title, “A Story of the Cobb.” (393) As she compares her visit to Lyme with her previous visit to Bath, Lefroy offers a sort of explanation as to why she describes Jane Austen as “now famous” at the beginning of the article. According to Lefroy, it was only “some few years ago” that Jane Austen was virtually unknown; but now (i.e., at the time of the article’s publication) Austen’s novels have been elevated to the point in which they are worthy of annotation, an honor usually reserved for such works as religious texts and collected editions of Shakespeare’s plays. 86 After firmly establishing the importance of Austen’s realism, Lefroy begins to challenge the family line by questioning biographical details presented in J.E. Austen- Leigh’s Memoir. In particular, Lefroy briefly returns to aspects of Jane Austen’s romantic life that she had already outlined so extensively in her Family History Manuscript. Lefroy now claims that it was Jane Austen’s modesty that dissuaded her from attracting many romantic admirers: “We could not pass the assembly-rooms without remembering that she had danced in them, for at the time of her visit to Lyme she was only twenty-eight; young and pretty enough still to attract the admiring eyes of strangers, and to secure her more partners than she in her moderation wanted” (394). Here, Lefroy seems to be returning to the moment in the Family History Manuscript in which she insists that the Austens did not move to Bath in order to marry off Jane and Cassandra. More importantly, however, in this article Lefroy begins to hint at some of the inaccuracies printed in her uncle’s Memoir. With regard to information about Jane Austen’s love life, Lefroy writes, “of this visit to Devonshire there is no mention in the Life written by her nephew a few years ago.” Lefroy’s next two articles were also published anonymously and appeared back-to-back in an 1883 issue of Temple Bar. Lefroy begins the final article —“A Bundle of Letters”— by again associating Jane Austen with a well-known Victorian author. The first line of the article links Jane Austen’s letters with Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford: One of the “most charming chapters in that most charming book, Cranford,” contains the description of Miss Matty sorting and burning her old letters. Letters have a curious vitality about them; they carry us back with one bound to the days in which they were written. Time 87 softens so many things, changes so entirely their aspects, blots out so many lines, that our memories scarcely serve us. But letters catch the thousand and one little trivialities of every-day life, and preserve them long after the “land that write” them is dust. (285) By equating Cassandra’s burning of Jane Austen’s letters with the family letters Miss Matty burns in Cranford, Lefroy begins on a melancholy note. Like Cassandra Austen, Miss Matty is motivated to burn her family letters in order to destroy “such as ought not to be allowed to fall into the hands of strangers”: “She had often spoken of the necessity of this task, but had always shrunk from it, with a timid dread of something painful” (85). Far from gleefully editing (essentially, erasing) her family’s story according to her own whims, Miss Matty is pained by the process; the narrator reports, “I saw the tears stealing down the well-worn furrows of Miss Matty’s cheeks, and her spectacles often wanted wiping” (85). The “earliest set of letters” destined to be destroyed were love letters written by Miss Matty’s parents before their marriage. The narrator of Cranford is struck by the difference between the Johnsonian-type rector of her remembrance and the young author of the love letters: “[The letters] were full of eager, passionate ardour; short homely sentences, right fresh from the heart — (very different from the grand Latinised, Johnsonian style of printed sermon, preached before some judge at assize time)” (86). The figure of the elderly Johnsonian sermon-writer who wrote love letters in his youth is a useful image for Lefroy to conjure up at the beginning of this article. Lefroy wants her readers to imagine Austen’s letters to be as distinguished as Johnson’s, even though they contain the private sentiments of a young girl in love. After citing Gaskell’s novella, Lefroy takes us even further back into literary history 88 by mentioning the letters of Madame de Sévigné and William Cowper. Lefroy spends much time discussing the importance of Cowper’s letters to understanding “the secrets of his reticent, sensitive nature,” in order to show how Jane Austen’s letters overflow with “gentle humour and keen appreciation of the little comedies, which are for ever being acted free of charge, on the stage of this world” (285 and 287). Lefroy then brings us back to Johnson, as she equates Austen’s letters with his: “’I believe I am going to write a long letter, and have therefore taken a whole sheet of paper,’ writes Johnson. ‘This will be a quick return for yours, my dear Cassandra,’ writes Miss Austen to her sister” (285). Lefroy’s reference to Johnson also conjures the literary debate in Cranford between Captain Brown (Pickwick Papers reader) and Miss Jenkyns (who favors Dr Johnson), which associates Jane Austen at once with both a well-known person of letters and a fictional spinster. Lefroy attempts to recast these two notions of Jane Austen — the author and the spinster — by introducing biographical information about her love life that will lead Victorian authors to read her texts differently. In doing so, Lefroy aggressively challenges the Austen family line that she began to question in her first Temple Bar article (“Hunting for Snarkes at Lyme Regis”) and in her Family History Manuscript. Lefroy begins the first of the back-to-back articles —“Is it Just”— by vehemently objecting to a statement about Jane Austen printed in Temple Bar: “Had Miss Austen felt more deeply, she would have written differently”: These words in a recent number of ‘TEMPLE BAR’ are the reason why this paper is written. They are, in whatever point of view we look at 89 them, very wide of the truth, and are not the only error their author has fallen into, nor is he the only person who thus misjudges her. It is, notwithstanding all the praise bestowed, becoming the fashion to accuse her of being shallow and coldhearted, and her heroines of being prudish; and undoubtedly there is not to be found in her novels those highly-spiced love scenes with which we are all so familiar, but which, while requiring little genius to write, only deprave the taste and imagination of the reader. (270) Unlike popular tales of passion that for Lefroy border on the pornographic, Austen’s romance plots are appropriately contained. Here, Lefroy is once again trying to separate Austen’s novels from the popular romances of the time and align her with respected nineteenth-century authors such as Tennyson and Gaskell. Lefroy celebrates the fact that Jane Austen’s fame has grown in recent years. But she also distinguishes the kind of reputation Austen built for herself before her death from the kind of popularity other “female writers” experienced during their lives: Others, notably Miss Burney, enjoyed far more fame during their lives. They sowed one week and they reaped the next; admiring crowds followed them, and their name was in everybody’s mouth. They were the lions of their day and enjoyed their own lionhood. But she never knew that she was a lion, and lived and died scarcely more widely known than Cowper’s old woman, who “never was heard of half a mile from home.” And now her name and the praise of her works is for ever cropping up in the most unlikely places, and her admirers and readers are innumerable, ranging from Cardinal Newman (nay, it would not astonish us to find the Pope himself amongst the number) to the young Hindus in the college at Calcutta. (270) Here, as elsewhere in her Temple Bar articles, Lefroy emphasizes the recent growth of Jane Austen’s fame. But she stresses the notion that the details of Austen’s life are not very well known, even though she has grown to be as popular as Tennyson, Gaskell, Burney, Cowper, and Johnson: 90 And yet there is no modern writer of equal fame of whom the public know so little. The blank of her life in some sort impairs the interest of her books, and so far is, and has been, an injury to her fame. That blank is mainly owing to her own nearest relations. They did not perceive that genius must always, bon gré, mal gré, lift its possessor out of the class of private individuals and more or less deprive them of the shelter, as it does of the obscurity, of private life. (270) Here, Lefroy implies that if Jane Austen is ever to be completely acknowledged for her talents, more biographical details about her life need to be disclosed. Austen is popular, Lefroy contends, but her “fame” has been injured due to the misreadings of her novels that have resulted from the lack of available biographical information. While blaming family members of Austen’s own generation for the recent attacks on the novelist’s reputation, Lefroy also defends the family’s actions. Speaking of Cassandra’s decision to burn her sister’s letters, Lefroy writes the following: Was she right or wrong? We feel ourselves aggrieved that we have lost so much, but if Jane Austen had been asked, she would undoubtedly have approved of her sister’s conduct. We cannot therefore condemn it. Surely people, even geniuses, have a right to keep their lives hidden if they shrink from fame, and their relations a right to respect such a wish, even though it injures, as it must often do, the permanence of the renown. (271) But at the same time that she endorses the earlier generations’ decisions, Lefroy also defends her own move to break the family confidence. She argues that the first generation could not have predicted the ways in which their dealings would damage Austen’s reputation: But the destruction of Miss Austen’s letters has we think hurt, not so much her literary fame, as the loveableness of her character has shown to us. This her family could not have foreseen, and would not have desired. It could not have been their wish that she should be esteemed 91 by any of her readers and critics, hard and shallow-hearted. Let us try to remedy this injustice. We think a careful study of such scraps as have come down to us will show that the manner of her writing certainly did not arise from any such cause. (271–272) This last sentence is especially important to consider. Lefroy never declares herself to be related to Jane Austen in any way. And yet, by mentioning the “scraps” that have “come down,” she suggests that she is privy to information about Jane Austen that only a family member could know. She does not declare herself to be related to Anna Lefroy, but she does emphasize the relationship between Anna and Jane Austen through extensive quotations from Jane Austen’s letters to Anna that were published in The Memoir (see esp. page 274). And although she does not declare herself to be his niece, Lefroy also praises her uncle James Austen-Leigh in print by calling his Memoir “very pleasant” (272). Lefroy conveys details about Jane Austen’s love life in order to encourage readers to think about Austen's novels in a new light. As she does in her Family History Manuscript, Lefroy takes opportunities to convey the fact that Cassandra and Jane were not spinsters by choice. Lefroy hints at Cassandra’s ability to attract suitors while citing a letter “addressed to a gentleman who was a near connection and old neighbour, but not a relation. Had there been any love passages between them, unsuccessful on his side? If so, it would account for the young lady writing and not her mother, on whom the duty would have more naturally devolved” (273). The brief mention of Cassandra’s marriagability sets the scene for the romance that dominates the bulk of the article: Jane Austen’s supposed romantic attachment to the gentleman at the seaside. Lefroy begins: 92 We are told that neither in Miss Austen’s letters nor her books do we find any traces of a spirit ill at ease and restless, and dissatisfied with its lot, and it is therefore inferred that she had never had any “serious attachment,” or met with any disappointment. If by disappointment be meant the having loved without meeting any return, that is undoubtedly true. No such trouble befell her. But does the absence of restlessness and discontent imply that no “serious attachment” has ever been felt? What if the love had ended in the grave? (275) Here it is important to pause to lay out Lefroy’s argument. Readers have assumed that Jane Austen’s novels reflect her entire life experiences; however, they cannot know what these life experiences are because they do not have the letters to confirm their ideas. Jane Austen’s letters reveal a life that was far from passionless. Once readers understand the true story of Jane Austen’s love life, they will appreciate her books even more because they will understand that they do not include every detail of her life. In other words, the letters highlight Austen’s restraint: her uncanny ability to pick and chose enough realistic details from her life experiences without including every personal detail. With this logic in mind, it becomes clear why Persuasion is such a key text for Lefroy. Only in Persuasion, argues Lefroy, does the reader get a brief glance at the torment Jane Austen suffered in her personal romantic life. Lefroy briefly relates the tale of the death of Austen’s potential seaside-gentleman suitor. As in the Family History Manuscript, the story of Cassandra’s dead fiancée is woven in with Jane’s love story, thereby making Jane’s supposed relationship appear to be as serious and the relationship between Cassandra and Thomas Fowle (see esp. 276–277). But, argues Lefroy, these “graver” personal thoughts were never “mixed up” in Austen’s stories — with the exception of one incident: 93 The most touching conversation between Anne Elliot and Captain Harville in which Anne cries, “All the privilege I claim for my sex, and it is not a very enviable one is that of loving longest when hope is gone.” The ring of deep and true feelings make these words beautiful, even in the ears of those who know nothing of the private history of the writer; but read by the light of her own romantic story, how pathetic they grow! How impossible it seems that they should have been anything less than the very truth from her own heart. (Is it Just? 279) Lefroy directly relates Jane Austen’s love story to Persuasion and to Jane Austen’s letters: It has been said that Jane Austen’s books are wanting in pathos. It is true they have none of the hysterical sentimentality, none of the morbid love of all that is painful, which are so common in the novels of the present day. Yet it can scarcely be denied that the character of Anne in ‘Persuasion’ is treated with a great tenderness, and drawn by a very delicate hand. This character is all the more touching for its reticence, for its modest self-control, and Anne is as womanly in her yieldingness as she is in her constancy. There has been a conjecture that Anne is Jane Austen herself, and that the story of the heroine was possibly that of the writer — only with a different ending. It is easy to believe that this may be true, although proofs are wanting. We find in Miss Austen’s own letters to her family the same sweet traits, the same gentle affection, the same quiet depth of feeling that we have loved in the heroine of ‘Persuasion;’ and towards the end, when her health failed her, we read between the lines still more clearly, her pure unselfish nature. (emphasis mine, Bundle of Letters 286) Lefroy concludes her three-article sequence by again insisting upon connections between Jane Austen’s letters, novels, and personal history. This is yet another example of Lefroy’s attempt to convince readers that the more information the public has about Jane Austen’s life, the more they will appreciate the “modest self-control” elucidated in her novels. 94 Conclusion It is only a little bit of an exaggeration to state that all contemporary feminist readings of Jane Austen’s fiction echo this conclusion made by Lefroy in her final Temple Bar Article. Consider, for example, the uncanny similarities between Lefroy’s emphasis on “modest self-control” and Gilbert and Gubar’s germinal reading of “Jane Austen’s Cover Story.” Tellingly, this chapter of The Madwoman in the Attic begins with a biographical declaration: “Jane Austen was not alone in experiencing the tensions inherent in being a ‘lady’ writer” (146). It is also revealing that Gilbert and Gubar end their chapter on Austen’s cover story by directly connecting Jane Austen with her characters: “Neither fainting into silence nor self-destructing into verbosity, Elizabeth Bennet, Emma Woodhouse, and Anne Elliot echo their creator in their duplicitous ability to speak with the tact that saves them from suicidal somnambulism on the one hand and contaminating vulgarity on the other, as they exploit the evasions and reservations of feminine gentility” (183). The specific mention of Anne Elliot, as well as the basic idea that Austen’s characters are reflections of their creator, of course very explicitly echoes Lefroy’s own conclusions. And we see a similar method (i.e., equating Anne Elliot with Jane Austen) in more contemporary criticism of Austen written by women. For example, Adela Pinch (1996) suggests that the moment in which Captain Wentworth drops his pen upon hearing Anne Elliot argue with Benwick about male writers’ biases against women’s constancy is actually about Jane Austen herself: “Austen also calls our attention to herself as a writer, and as a woman writer, here” (158). And Hilary M. Schor has made a similar argument about 95 Elizabeth Gaskell’s relationship to Cranford, the master-text that Lefroy earlier aligned with Jane Austen’s own life; Schor reads Cranford as a text that offers “the novelist as heroine” (83). The details of Austen’s love life, or lack thereof, were critical points debated by the Austen family throughout the nineteenth century — especially during the drafting of the Memoir. Writing after the publication of the Memoir, Lefroy’s insistence upon the importance of considering Austen’s biography alongside the novels was especially timely in that it struck a cord with other Victorians’ debates about biography. Like Catherine Hubback before her, Fanny Caroline Lefroy understood the importance of making Austen’s work relevant for Victorian readers. And just as Hubback’s work can be seen as anticipating the contemporary Austen sequel, so too can Lefroy’s work be read as one of the first feminist critical response to Jane Austen’s novels. 96 Chapter Three — Charlotte Brontë and G.H. Lewes: Rereading Canonical Responses to Jane Austen’s Work Catherine Hubback and Fanny Caroline Lefroy hoped to use their relationships with Jane Austen to catapult their own literary careers. After all, if Jane Austen’s masterpieces displayed true genius, there was a chance that some of that genius survived in the novels of other women writers in the Austen family. There were, of course, more recognized nineteenth-century female novelists who bound their work up in Austen’s legacy despite their lack of family ties to the famous writer. Consider, for example, Elizabeth Gaskell’s appropriations of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park in North and South and Wives and Daughters respectively. And critics have also pointed out the ways in which George Eliot draws from Austen’s novels in her fiction. 1 However, Charlotte Brontë’s less-than-enthusiastic attitude towards Jane Austen’s novels, expressed in letters to George Henry Lewes and William Smith Williams, has deterred critics from seriously investigating the influence of Austen’s work on Brontë’s novels. The first part of the debate between Brontë and Lewes about Austen has been fairly well documented, if not fully appreciated, by Victorian scholars. In order to understand the full impact Charlotte Brontë had on Jane Austen’s legacy — as well as the influence of Jane Austen’s effect on Charlotte Brontë’s novels — we must consider the entire conversation between Lewes and Brontë. Brontë’s harshest criticisms of Austen’s novels were first sparked when Lewes unfavorably compared 1 For example, Laura Mooneyham White has suggested that “Mr. Gilfil’s Love Story” (1857) is a melodramatic reconstitution of Mansfield Park. 97 Jane Eyre (1847) to Austen’s work. The discussion between Lewes and Brontë played out in letters written between them before quickly spilling out into Brontë’s novels and G.H. Lewes’s critical reviews. This exchange, I argue, worked in both directions. Brontë’s craft evolved as she eventually capitulated to Austen’s methods — mockingly in Shirley (1849), but then more seriously in Villette (1853) — while Lewes amended his positions on how women novelists can best create Art. Early Reviews of Jane Austen’s Novels The eminent Victorian critic George Henry Lewes is known for many things: writing fiction and non-fiction; acting; editing; and, of course, encouraging George Eliot in her writing endeavors. To Austen scholars, however, he is probably best known for his unflagging praise of Jane Austen’s work. From December 1847 to 1861, Lewes praised Jane Austen’s novels in six separate reviews. 2 Lewes was a key figure in the making of Jane Austen’s literary reputation during the Victorian era, reminding his Victorian audience of the praise Austen received from other prominent literary critics. The earliest nineteenth-century reviewers of Austen’s work did not tout the exceptional nature of her work. Rather, they recommended Austen’s novels to women readers for their didactic elements, arguing that Austen’s female characters idealized appropriate female behavior. For example, an unsigned Critical Review piece praises 2 G.H. Lewes’s discussions of Jane Austen can be found in the following reviews cited at length in this chapter: “Recent Novels: French and English,” Fraser’s (1847); “Review of Shirley,” Edinburgh Review (1850); “The Lady Novelists,” Westminster Review (1852), and “The Novels of Jane Austen,” Blackwood’s (1859). Lewes also 98 Sense and Sensibility (1811) for providing readers an “excellent lesson” and a “useful moral” (149). Despite its lack of “newness,” the author of the review claims that lessons the story provides separates Austen’s first published work from “the numerous novels which are continually presenting themselves to our notice” (149). The reviewer particularly praises Austen’s portrayal of Marianne Dashwood, who the critic “fears” is like “too many” real-life “romantic enthusiasts” (151). After bemoaning the fact that “the sensibility of Marianne is without bounds” the reviewer happily relates that, in the end, “Marianne sees the fallacy of all this nonsense, and becomes a good wife” (155). Similarly, a May 1812 unsigned notice in the British Critic discusses Marianne’s plot before assuring “female friends” that “they may peruse these volumes not only with satisfaction but with real benefits, for they may learn from them, if they please, many sober and salutary maxims for the conduct of life” (527). The author of the February 1813 unsigned British Critic notice of Pride and Prejudice (1813) also links the novel’s moral message with the real life female examples from which Austen supposedly drew, arguing, “the picture of the younger Miss Bennets, their perpetual visits to the market town where officers are quartered, and the result, is perhaps exemplified in every provincial town in the kingdom” (190). As Austen’s popularity began to grow, however, lengthier reviews of her work reflected changes in the theory of the novel itself, as reviewers focused on her close attention to detail and realistic characterizations of the genteel class. These influential articles — for example, those penned by Sir Walter Scott, Richard Whatley, and writes about Austen in “Review of The Fair Carew,” The Leader (1851) and “A Word 99 Thomas Macaulay — built upon the aforementioned reviews of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice in that they emphasized the relationship between Austen’s novels and “real life.” At the same time, however, these later reviews shifted focus a bit. Rather than concentrate on the real-life women who are learning lessons from Austen’s realistic characters, reviewers highlighted the methods by which these characters were created. Sir Walter Scott’s famous unsigned review of Emma in the Quarterly Review (March 1816) discusses the evolution of the novel genre, from early novels based on romances to novels that “belong to a class of fiction which has arisen almost in our own times, and which draws the characters and incidents introduced more immediately from the current of ordinary life than was permitted by the former rules of the novel” (189). Scott praises authors who are able to paint “a scene of common occurrence,” arguing that the composition is then “within that extensive range of criticism which general experience offers to every reader” (193). He goes on to praise Austen for successfully representing everyday life in Emma (1815): We bestow no mean compliment upon the author of Emma, when we say that, keeping close to common incidents, and to such characters as occupy the ordinary walks of life, she has produced sketches of such spirit and originality, that we never miss the excitation which depends upon a narrative of uncommon events, arising from the consideration of minds, manners, and sentiments, greatly above our own. (193) Like Scott’s review, Richard Whatley’s January 1821 unsigned Quarterly Review of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion also praises Austen’s descriptions of about Tom Jones,” Blackwoods (1860). 100 ordinary life. Like the early notices, Whatley’s review also connects Austen’s didactic message with her portrayal of everyday incidents: “her’s is that unpretending kind of instruction which is furnished 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” (360). Over twenty years after the publication of Whatley’s review, Thomas Macaulay’s unsigned article on “The Diary and Letters of Mme D’arblay” (1843) in the Edinburgh Review claims Jane Austen to be the writer who has “approached nearest to the manner of the great master [Shakespeare],” because “she has given us a multitude of characters, all in a certain sense, common-place, all such as we meet every day” (561). General experience, unpretending, common-place: for Scott, Whatley, and Macaulay, one of the things that is most remarkable about Austen’s novels is how well she executes stories about un-remarkable subjects, settings, and scenarios. This is the point G.H. Lewes amplifies in his own influential reviews of Austen’s novels written in the second-half of the nineteenth century. But he shifts the focus: for Lewes, Austen’s novels are remarkable because they are so limited. As he offers Austen up as a model of female authorship, Lewes combines the praise for feminine didacticism often cited in the earliest reviews of Austen’s work with the later idea that Austen’s work is exemplary because she confines herself to the “common place.” Lewes argues that Austen’s attention to detail is a form that should be mimicked by all aspiring female authors. Through his series of articles citing the novels of Austen and Brontë, Lewes suggests that since women’s experiences are, in general, limited, so too should 101 be the subject matter in their novels. The seeds of this conclusion can be found in Lewes’s early letters to Brontë. And it was a suggestion that Charlotte Brontë could not accept. Reviews of Jane Eyre Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë were both daughters of clergymen living in relative seclusion and publishing novels anonymously. And yet, their literary reputations could not have been more different in the nineteenth century. As we have seen, Austen’s earliest reviewers of her novels deemed her to be the epitome of ladylike modesty. The reviews for Charlotte Brontë’s first published novel, Jane Eyre, were quite different. In contrast to the praise Austen’s work received throughout the nineteenth century, early reviewers of Jane Eyre condemned Charlotte Brontë’s novel for containing material that was inappropriate for female authors to create. It is important to consider the criticism that Brontë received with regard to her status as a woman writer, as these experiences partially explain Brontë’s initial negative reaction to Lewes’s mention of Austen’s novels. Like Austen, Brontë published anonymously. But while Austen made her gender clear by publishing as “A Lady,” Charlotte Brontë hoped to be read as a male by assuming the pseudonym “Currer Bell.” Reviewers responded by making their speculations about the gender of the author of Jane Eyre a key focus of their criticism — much to Charlotte Brontë’s dismay. For example, an April 1848 review in the Christian Remembrancer criticized Jane Eyre for its supposedly masculine attributes: “we cannot wonder that the hypothesis of a male author should have been started … 102 for a book more unfeminine both in its excellences and defects, it would be hard to find in the annals of male authorship. Throughout there is masculine power, breadth and shrewdness, combined with masculine hardness, coarseness, and freedom of expression” (396). Later, in an especially influential review of “Vanity Fair and Jane Eyre” in the December 1848 Quarterly Review, Elizabeth Rigby speculated about the gender of C.B. by analyzing the author’s supposed disregard of feminine details. Rigby conjectures that the novelist is a man based on the following “minutiæ of circumstantial evidence”: No woman … makes mistakes in her own métier — no woman trusses game and garnishes dessert-dishes with the same hands, or talks of so doing in the same breath. Above all, no woman attires another in such fancy dresses as Jane’s ladies assume — Miss Ingram coming down, irresistible, “in a morning robe of sky-blue crape, a gauze azure scarf twisted in her hair!!” No lady, we understand, when suddenly roused in the night, would think of hurrying on “a frock”’ They have garments more convenient for such occasions, and more becoming too. This evidence seems incontrovertible. (175-176) Based on these points, in addition to other observations, Rigby concludes that “if we ascribe the book to a woman at all, we have no alternative but to ascribe it to one who has, for some sufficient reason, long forfeited the society of her own sex” (176). Rigby is correct to point out that the author of Jane Eyre was unfamiliar with these kinds of ladylike habits. But the reason was due more to the class of the novelist rather than to the gender of the writer; unlike Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë did not have the benefit of socializing in wealthy estates on a regular basis. Rigby’s comments stung Brontë. In fact, the novelist wanted to include a response to some of 103 Rigby’s claims in a preface to her next novel, Shirley, but her publishers would not allow it (Hook 17-18). 3 Other reviewers — even those who looked more favorably on the novel as a whole than Rigby did — were also grave about the notion that the author could be a woman. For example, in an unsigned review in North British Review, James Lorimer attempts “to acquit [Jane Eyre] of the charge of conventional vulgarity” that was brought against it by Miss Rigby’s review. However, he also sides with Rigby in surmising that the novel was written by a man because the material was ultimately too improper for a woman to write: “if they are the productions of a woman, she must be a woman pretty nearly unsexed; and Jane Eyre strikes us as a personage much more likely to have sprung ready armed from the head of a man, and that head a pretty hard one, than to have experienced, in any shape, the softening influence of female creation” (116). Reviews such as these made Charlotte Brontë especially sensitive to the topic of female authorship. As she explained in a letter to William Smith Williams (the reader at Smith, Elder & Co who was responsible for bringing Brontë into the firm), Brontë objected to the fact that many critics of Jane Eyre judged the novel by different standards based on their beliefs about the gender of the author: 3 Perhaps in an attempt to get around her publisher’s objection, Brontë directly responds to the review in chapter twenty-one of Shirley as she places Rigby’s criticisms in the mouths of two fictional characters: Mrs and Miss Hardman (Hook 613). By this method, Brontë was able to characterize Rigby’s thoughts on governesses as selfish and hypocritical (see esp. pages 364-365). 104 The literary critic of [The Economist] praised [Jane Eyre] if written by a man and pronounced it “odious” if the work of a woman. To such critics I would say — “To you I am neither Man nor Woman — I come before you as an Author only — it is the sole standard by which you have a right to judge me — the sole ground on which I accept your judgment.” (2: 235) The significance of this statement cannot be taken too lightly when considering Charlotte Brontë’s initial discussions with G.H. Lewes about Jane Austen. It was in the wake of all of this criticism of Jane Eyre — based on surmises of the author’s gender rather than on the content of the novel itself — that Lewes contacted Brontë via William Smith Williams. Brontë wrote back to Lewes under her pen name, suggesting that she did not want to correspond with him as a woman, but rather as an Author only. Brontë’s state of mind on this subject made her especially sensitive to Lewes’s insistence upon Jane Austen’s status as an exemplary female novelist. From Jane Eyre to Shirley: Brontë and Lewes Discuss Austen Although George Henry Lewes’s letters to Charlotte Brontë have not survived, we can recreate their contents based on Brontë’s replies to them and summaries of them that she includes in her letters to William Smith Williams. In Lewes’s initial letter to Brontë, he explains that he intends to write about Jane Eyre in the December issue of Fraser’s Magazine. Brontë expresses her enthusiasm regarding Lewes’s attentions in a November 6, 1847 letter to W.S. Williams. Probing Williams for “information respecting Mr Lewes,” Brontë remarks, “he styles himself ‘a fellow- novelist.’ There is something in the candid tone of his letter which inclines me to think well of him” (1: 557). She also declares that “upon the whole [Lewes] seems 105 favourably inclined to [Jane Eyre] though he hints disapprobation of the melo- dramatic portions” (1: 557). Brontë’s first letter to Lewes, dated November 6, 1847, includes some defensive posturing regarding his advice about melodrama. Specifically, Brontë responds to Lewes’s warning that she should “beware of melodrama” and that she should “adhere to the real” (1: 559). Brontë responds by explaining that she was explicitly told that her books were not publishable as long as they lacked melodrama. Referring to the fact that her first manuscript, The Professor, was rejected, Brontë elaborates: When I first began to write, so impressed was I with the truth of the principles you advocate that I determined to take Nature and Truth as my sole guides and to follow in their very footprints; I restrained imagination, eschewed romance, repressed excitement: over-bright colouring too I avoided, and sought to produce something which should be soft, grave and true . . . I offered it to a publisher. He said it was original, faithful to Nature, but he did not feel warranted in accepting it, such a work would not sell. I tried six publishers in succession; they all told me [The Professor] was deficient in “startling incident” and “thrilling excitement,” that it would never suit the circulating libraries, and as it was on those libraries the success of works of fiction mainly depended they could not undertake to publish what would be overlooked there. (1: 559) For Brontë the subject of melodrama is a personal one, as it is tied to the rejection of her first manuscript. Here, she betrays her feelings that Lewes’s advice places her within a double bind. Brontë found incorporating melodrama to be the only means by which she could get her work published, and yet this very act exposed her to the criticism that Lewes offers in his letter. 106 In this first letter to Lewes, Brontë clearly writes to him as the fellow-novelist to whom she referred in her epistle to W.S. Williams, exposing herself to Lewes by informing him about the initial difficulties she had getting her work published. After presenting herself to Lewes as a novelist whose art has been constrained by the demands of the marketplace, Brontë turns to him as a person who has the authority to speak back to that marketplace. Armed with the knowledge that Lewes was planning to discuss Jane Eyre in an upcoming review, Brontë implored him to plead her cause: “If in your forthcoming article in Frazer’s [sic] you would bestow a few words of enlightenment on the public who support the circulating libraries, you might, with your powers, do some good” (1: 559). But Lewes clearly disappoints Brontë’s hopes that he will speak as a fellow- novelist on the subject of the demands of the circulating libraries. In his December 1847 unsigned Fraser’s review, “Recent Novels: French and English,” Lewes sidesteps Brontë’s request to discuss the circulating library situation. Instead, he again insists on the importance of limiting subject matter in order to represent reality more accurately. He also advises Brontë to conform to the model of novel-writing set forth in the novels of Jane Austen: What we most heartily enjoy and applaud, is truth in the delineation of life and character: incidents however wonderful adventures however perilous, are almost as naught when compared with the deep and lasting interest excited by any thing like a correct representation of life. That, indeed, seems to us to be Art, and the only Art we care to applaud. To make our meaning precise, we should say that Fielding and Miss Austen are the greatest novelists in our language . . . we would rather have written Pride and Prejudice, or Tom Jones, than any of the Waverley Novels. (687) 107 Later in this review, and again in many other reviews in which he compares Brontë’s work with Austen’s novels, Lewes reiterates his “preference for true and artistic delineation of life and character” (687). It is important to note Lewes’s terminology, as his insistence on this strict definition of Art shadows the rest of his conversation with Brontë about Austen’s novels. In this same review, Lewes offers his prescription for producing novels that are true to nature (i.e., representations of true Art): limiting subject matter to one’s personal experiences. Over all, Lewes’s review of Jane Eyre is favorable, and he even praises the story’s reality: Reality — deep, significant reality — is the great characteristic of the book. It is an autobiography, — not, perhaps, in the naked facts and circumstances, but in the actual suffering and experience. The form may be changed, and here and there some incidents invented; but the spirit remains such as it was. The machinery of the story may have been borrowed, but by means of this machinery the authoress is unquestionably setting forth her own experience. This gives the book its charm: it is soul speaking to soul; it is an utterance from the depths of a struggling, suffering, much-enduring spirit: suspiria de profundis! Lewes calls attention to the gothic qualities of Brontë’s novel by associating it with Thomas de Quincey’s fragmentary prose poetry published only two years earlier. With its red room, madwoman in the attic, and scenes featuring a hungry and delusional heroine wandering the streets, the “autobiography” of Jane Eyre does share common traits with the autobiographical, opium-induced dream experiences chronicled in Suspiria de Profundis. But while Lewes appreciates the spirit of truth in Jane Eyre, he goes on to recommend that the author — who he guesses is a woman — 108 should limit her subject matter to reflect her actual life experiences in order to attain a more realistic representation of life: Has the author seen much more and felt much more than what is here communicated? Then let new works continue to draw from the rich storehouse. Has the author led a quiet secluded life, uninvolved in the great vortex of the world, undisturbed by varied passions, untried by strange calamities? Then let new works be planned and executed with excessive circumspection; for, unless a novel be built out of real experience, it can have no real success. To have vitality, it must spring from vitality. All the craft in the circulating-library will not make that seem true which is not true. (691) Jane Austen becomes the solution Lewes offers to Brontë in response to her earlier complaint about the circulating library market. Rather than put the onus for change on the market, as Brontë had requested, Lewes suggests that Brontë’s theories about the dictates of the market are wrong. He offers up Jane Austen as an example of a novelist whose work flourishes in the circulating library market despite their lack of melodrama. 4 Under these circumstances, it is no wonder that Brontë was irked by Lewes’s mention of Jane Austen. We can gauge some of Brontë’s initial reactions to Lewes’s review from her December 1847 letter to W.S. Williams. She shares her thoughts on Lewes’s advice about building a novel “out of real experience”: There is a strange sagacity evinced in some of his remarks — yet he is not always right. I am afraid if he knew how much I write from intuition, how little from actual knowledge, he would think me 4 In her article, “Sensibility by the Numbers: Austen’s Work as Regency Popular Fiction,” Barbara M. Benedict outlines the ways in which Austen wrote her novels for the circulating libraries. Austen’s association with the circulating library seems to be clearly understood by Brontë, who writes in her January 18, 1848 letter to Lewes, “I will, when I can (I do not know when that will be as I have no access to a circulating library) diligently pursue all Miss Austen’s works, as you recommend” (14). 109 presumptuous ever to have written at all. I am sure such would be his opinion — if he knew the narrow bounds of my attainments — the limited scope of my reading. (571) Brontë seems to agree with the majority of the things Lewes has to say about Jane Eyre. And yet, she specifically objects to his advice that she limit her novels to real experiences. This suggests to me that we should read Brontë’s January 12, 1848 letter to G.H. Lewes as a kind of defense of the use of imagination and melodrama in her novels. Brontë makes her first comments about Austen’s work in the midst of her debates with Lewes about her use of the imagination. Mulling over Lewes’s advice, Brontë responds: “If I ever do write another book, I think I will have nothing of what you call ‘melodrama’; I think too I will endeavor to follow the counsel which shines out of Miss Austen’s ‘mild eyes’; ‘to finish more, and be more subdued; but neither am I sure of that’” (10). But after suggesting that she might concede to Lewes’s point of view, Brontë ultimately refutes Lewes’s claims about the importance of adhering to real experiences. Specifically, she objects to the adoration of Pride and Prejudice that Lewes expresses in his Fraser’s Magazine article: Why do you like Miss Austen so very much? I am puzzled on that point … I had not seen Pride and Prejudice till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book and studied it. And what did I find? An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a common face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers — but no glance of a bright vivid physiognomy — no open country — no fresh air — no blue hill — no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen in their elegant but confined houses. (2: 10) 110 Brontë’s reference to the daguerreotype recalls Scott’s aforementioned praise of Austen’s sketches — Scott saw Austen as doing something new by focusing on the ordinary. Therefore, Brontë is not just reacting to Lewes; whether she was aware of it or not, Brontë is also reacting to a larger canon of Austen criticism from which Lewes draws in his reviews. It is important to note that Brontë is not challenging Lewes’s claim that Austen represents real life in an accurate way — her use of the term daguerreotyped hints that she agrees with Lewes regarding the accuracy of Austen’s renderings. Rather, Brontë is challenging the artistic utility of Austen’s accurate portraits. Brontë clarifies her specific objections to Austen’s novelistic offerings in her next letter to Lewes, dated January 18, 1848 (2: 14). She “acknowledges” Lewes’s point that Austen is “one of the writers with the nicest sense of means to an end that ever lived.” But she goes on to declare that she cannot “learn to acknowledge [Austen] as one of the greatest artists, of the greatest painters of human character.” Brontë explains, “Miss Austen, being as you say without ‘sentiment,’ without poetry, may be – is sensible, real (more real than true) but she cannot be great” (2: 14). Here, Brontë challenges the very premise of Lewes’s definition of art. For Brontë, true art needs to offer more than a realistic portrayal, a point she clarifies in an 1849 Letter to Ellen Nussey: You are not to suppose any of the characters in Shirley intended as literal portraits — it would not suit the rules of Art — nor my own feelings to write in that style — we only suffer Reality to suggest — never to dictate — the heroines are abstractions and the heros also — qualities I have seen, loved and admired are here and there put in as decorative gems to be preserved in that setting. (2: 285) 111 Like Jane Austen, Brontë claims that her characters are comprised of several different traits of many different people she has met — rather than character sketches based on exact replicas of actual people. By aiming to create characters that are abstractions of reality, comprised of different characteristics she has observed in reality, Brontë explicitly defines art in a manner that is in direct contrast to Lewes’s ideas. But even before writing this insightful letter to Ellen Nussey, Brontë worked out some of her responses to Lewes in her second published novel: Shirley. Shirley as a Novelistic Response to Lewes’s Criticisms In Shirley, Brontë alludes to many of the same words, images, and concepts that she includes in her 1848 letters to Lewes — suggesting that she is expanding upon her epistolary remarks to Lewes about Austen in novel form. Brontë endeavors to refute Lewes’s claim that she needs to emulate the works of Jane Austen by appropriating aspects of Pride and Prejudice within Shirley. Through her allusions to Jane Austen’s work, Brontë dramatizes the point she made to Lewes in their conversations about Austen’s novels: merely representing everyday conversations and happenings is not art, as it does not represent truth. Brontë sets the stage for a continuing discussion with Lewes about Jane Austen’s novels from the very first chapter of Shirley. To begin with, she sets her story in 1812 — the time in which Austen was actively writing and publishing her novels (39). She then describes the genre: If you think, from this prelude, that anything like a romance is preparing for you, reader, you never were more mistaken. Do you anticipate sentiment, and poetry, and reverie? Do you expect passion, 112 and stimulus, and melodrama? Calm your expectations; reduce them to a lowly standard. Something real, cool, and solid, lies before you; something unromantic as Monday morning. (39) At least one critic, Franklin Gary, reads this passage as “evidence that in Shirley [Brontë] was at least attempting to follow Lewes’s principles, and that Lewes himself was in her mind” (533). According to Gary, “this paragraph speaks for itself; it shows clearly just how deep an impression Lewes’s principles had made, in spite of her revulsion” (533). Since Brontë specifically mentions “romance” and “melodrama,” she is likely alluding to her January 12 letter to Lewes (in which she responded to his advice about avoiding melodrama and adhering to the real). However, Gary overlooks the complications of the ironic tone that is central to understanding this passage. When Brontë writes she will avoid passion, stimulus, and melodrama, she is indeed implying she will be following Austen’s subdued formula. But the result, Brontë predicts, will not be the kind of exemplary art that Lewes deems Austen’s novels to be. Rather, Brontë warns her readers to “reduce” their expectations “to a lowly standard,” stating that the resulting story will be the literary equivalent to a meal of “cold lentils and vinegar without oil” (39). Just before introducing the three curates in the first chapter of Shirley, the narrator echoes Brontë’s opinion that Pride and Prejudice is a “highly cultivated garden” when she asks her readers to “step into this neat garden-house” (40). With this allusion to her first letter to Lewes, Brontë may be alerting him to the fact that she is experimenting with Jane Austen’s style by drawing from her real-life observations to present the three curates. Considering this first chapter as an allusion to Lewes and 113 Brontë’s debates about Austen helps to explain the seeming contradiction between the information in Brontë’s aforementioned letter to Ellen Nussey (in which Brontë claims that her characters are not literal portraits of people) and the information that Elizabeth Gaskell provides about Brontë’s portrayal of the curates in this chapter. Gaskell’s The Life of Charlotte Brontë confirms that the three curates in this chapter were indeed “real living men, haunting Haworth and the neighboring district; and so obtuse in perception that, after the first burst of anger at having their ways and habits chronicled was over, they rather enjoyed the joke of calling each other by the names she had given them” (Life 379). If, as I suspect, Brontë wrote the clergymen into the novel for Lewes’s sake, it would explain why her portrayals of the clergymen in Shirley are so literal, despite the fact that it contradicts with Brontë’s notions of Art as explained to Ellen Nussey. Brontë’s portrait of the curates’ uneventful lives echoes her description of Austen’s characters in her January 12, 1848 letter to Lewes (in which she complained that the characters of Pride and Prejudice are portrayed in “their elegant but confined houses” and denied a “glance of a bright vivid physiognomy”). Brontë emphasizes that the three curates live a constrained life despite the fact that they are “in the bloom of youth,” possessing “all the activity of that interesting age.” These “youthful Levites” see their clergy duties as “dull work,” but they spend their days in activities that many would find to be “more heavy with ennui, more cursed with monotony, than the toil of the weaver at his loom”: I allude to a rushing backwards and forwards, amongst themselves, to and from their respective lodgings: not a round — but a triangle of 114 visits, which they keep up all the year through, in winter, spring, summer, and autumn. Season and weather make no difference; with unintelligible zeal they dare snow and hail, wind and rain, mire and dust, to go and dine, or drink tea, or sup with each other. (40) Here, Brontë is clearly criticizing the life of many country curates of the time who were more concerned with dining than with the souls of their parishioners. But the novelist could also be commenting upon the kinds of details that Austen outlines in her novels. One recalls, for example, the snowstorm in Emma that almost ruins the Christmas party attended by Mr Elton. Additionally, Mr Collins’s most important clerical duty seems to be his readiness to appear on time whenever he is asked to dine at Lady Catherine’s table in Pride and Prejudice. The ideas about Austen that Brontë presents in this first chapter are key, as they announce to Lewes that he should be reading the novel with his advice about Austen in mind. But Brontë’s experiment with appropriating Austen’s novels goes far beyond the comical presentation of the clergy in this first chapter. The novelist stages her debate with Lewes over the artistic worth of Austen’s novels through her two- heroine plot. Caroline Helstone, who is referred to as a “novel-heroine,” stands in for Austen’s heroines, while the more “masculine” character of Miss Shirley Keeldar represents Charlotte Brontë herself (387 and 352). 5 By structuring her story in this way, Brontë displays for Lewes that she is perfectly capable of appropriating the 5 Following Elizabeth Gaskell’s reading of Shirley in The Life of Charlotte Brontë, Shirley is more traditionally interpreted by critics to reflect the qualities of Emily Brontë. 115 Austen formula to tell a story — and yet, she chooses to portray a heroine who is not bound by the generic confines of a proper domestic novel. Brontë specifically marks Caroline Helstone as the Austen heroine of the novel in a few key ways. Brontë’s narrator describes Caroline as a character who, like the “common face” of Elizabeth Bennet that Brontë also writes about in her January 12 letter to Lewes, could be daguerreotyped: upon looking at herself in the mirror, “Caroline saw a shape, a head, that, daguerreotyped in that attitude and with that expression, would have been lovely” (123). Through this characterization, Brontë not only makes an allusion, once again, to her epistolary remarks to Lewes, but she also depicts Caroline as the Austen heroine of her novel. Significantly, Brontë’s narrator provides this description directly after telling readers about Caroline’s hopes with respect to her relationship with Robert Moore. Although Caroline claims their “love- making” is “not like what we read of in books,” her relationship with Moore does parallel the marriage plot of Pride and Prejudice in key ways. Like Fitzwilliam Darcy, Moore “does not flatter or say foolish things” to his eventual bride (123). And early in the novel, we learn that Caroline believes that she will be an “excellent wife” to Robert Moore if they marry because she will “tell him of his faults” (123). 6 Similarly, Elizabeth tells Darcy that she believes he was attracted to her because she was impertinent enough to point out his improprieties and deficiencies (2: 380). And in the 6 Along these lines, it is also important to note the similarities between Robert Moore and Fitzwilliam Darcy that come to the surface through Caroline’s reading of Coriolanus: both characters are proud and act cold to strangers. Additionally, Robert’s tendency to refer to all working people as “the mob” hints of Darcy’s tendency to scorn the company of people who attend assembly balls. 116 last chapter of Pride and Prejudice, the narrator suggests that Elizabeth will continue to take these “liberties” with Darcy after they are married (2: 388). One key way in which Brontë differentiates her heroines is through their different reading habits. Although the narrator tells us that Shirley was delighted to discover that she and Caroline read the same books with “pleasure,” the two characters have wildly different approaches to the literature that they read (231). Mrs Pryor must teach Caroline, who indulges in romances “whenever she can get them,” that such tales give “false pictures” of marriage (366). “They are not like reality,” explains Mrs Pryor, “they show you only the green tempting surface of the marsh, and give not one faithful or truthful hint of the slough underneath” (366). And later in the novel, Mrs Yorke asks Caroline, “Are you aware that, with all these romantic ideas, you have managed to train your features into an habitually lackadaisical expression, better suited to a novel-heroine than to a woman who is to make her way in the real world, by dint of common sense?” (387). In contrast to Caroline’s “habitually lackadaisical expression,” according to Caroline’s own uncle, there is “nothing lackadaisical about [Shirley]” (207). And whereas Caroline constantly has to be told that novels do not reflect reality, Shirley questions the misrepresentation of women in literature at various points in the novel. For example, in chapter eighteen, Shirley says, “Cary, we are alone: we may speak what we think. Milton was great; but was he good?” (341). The fact that Shirley points out to Caroline that they are alone before she presents her own reading of Milton shows that Shirley understands that women are often unable to express their 117 true feelings in public. She goes on to question Milton’s representation of Eve, suggesting that his representations of women were influenced by his reading of actual women: “Milton tried to see the first woman. But Cary, he saw her not. … It was his cook that he saw; or it was Mrs Gill” (315). Again and again, Shirley challenges the gender norms ascribed to women as she questions men’s relationships to written texts. A particularly poignant example of this appears in her conversation with Joe Scott, who is disturbed that Robert Moore’s mill is under Shirley’s “petticoat government.” As a land owner, Shirley has as much investment as does Robert Moore in the local political rumblings. She announces to Joe that politics are a “habitual study” of hers, asking, “Do you know I see a newspaper every day, and two of a Sunday?”. He responds by assuming that she reads about marriages, murders, accidents, and the like. Shirley clarifies her reading regimen: “I read the leading articles, Joe, and the foreign intelligence, and I look over the market prices: in short, I read just what gentlemen read” (321). Shirley can and does read what men read — allowing her to gain a firm appreciation of the class struggles around her. However, Shirley’s financial situation means her kind of power is rare in comparison to the other women in the novel. And even a character as forward thinking as Shirley is subject to ideas proliferated by powerful institutions dominated by men, such as the church. Joe Scott challenges Shirley by citing the second chapter of St. Paul’s First Epistle to Timothy to support his idea that women should not be involved in politics. Because she does not read Greek, Shirley is not able to absolutely refute Joe’s argument. But she does suggest 118 multiple ways in which the scripture could be reinterpreted to women’s advantage, arguing: He wrote that chapter for a particular congregation of Christians, under peculiar circumstances; and besides, I dare say, if I could read the original Greek, I should find that many of the words have been wrongly translated, perhaps misapprehended altogether. It would be possible, I doubt not, with a little ingenuity, to give the passage quite a contrary turn; to make it say, “Let the woman speak out whenever she sees fit to make an objection;” — “it is permitted to a woman to teach and to exercise authority as much as may be. Man, meantime, cannot do better than hold his peace,” and so on. (323) Here, Shirley once again questions men’s ability to interpret texts properly. In Shirley’s mind, just as Milton mistook Eve for his cook, biblical interpreters could easily misread the gospel either by misinterpreting the written language or by applying a specific textual example out of context. This theme — men’s inability to read women — speaks back to Brontë’s conversation with Lewes about Austen in key ways. Building upon these incidents, Shirley eventually surmises that men cannot see women “as they really are” because, like Caroline, they are also unduly influenced by novels: To hear them fall into ecstasies with each other’s creations, worshiping the heroine of such a poem — novel — drama, thinking it fine — divine! Fine and divine it may be, but often quite artificial — false as the rose in my best bonnet there. If I spoke all I think on this point; if I gave my real opinion of some first-rate female characters in first-rate works, where should I be? Dead under a cairn of avenging stones in half an hour … Women read men more truly than men read women. I’ll prove that in a magazine paper some day when I’ve time; only it will never be inserted: it will be “declined with thanks,” and left for me at the publisher’s. (343) Brontë’s specific mention of a magazine paper gestures back to Lewes’s references to Austen and Brontë in his Fraser’s Magazine article. Through allusions to Austen’s 119 Pride and Prejudice, Brontë substantiates Shirley’s claim that “first-rate female characters in first-rate works” have affected men’s abilities to read women (343). 7 In a heated discussion between Shirley and Mr Yorke, Shirley provokes him into misreading her as an Austen heroine by appropriating explicit references to Pride and Prejudice. The debate begins when Shirley comes to Robert Moore’s defense against Yorke’s intimations that Moore did not have the right to defend his mill from attack. During the course of the conversation, Shirley claims that Helstone (a rector who helped Moore defend the mill) was “proud and prejudiced” just like Yorke. She goes on to claim that Moore, “though juster and more considerate than either [Yorke] or the Rector, is still haughty, stern, and, in a public sense, selfish” (358). Then, in a line reminiscent of Caroline Bingley’s jealous response to Darcy’s admiration of Elizabeth Bennet’s “fine eyes” — “I am all astonishment. How long has she been such a favorite? And pray when am I to wish you joy?” (2: 27) — Yorke insinuates that Shirley is hoping to marry Moore when he asks her, “When is it to be?” (358). Moreover, as the scene continues, it recalls a conversation in Pride and Prejudice 8 between Elizabeth Bennet and Lady Catherine that begins when Lady Catherine unexpectedly appears at Longbourn to quiz Elizabeth about her relationship 7 This is the same chapter in which Brontë responds to Elizabeth Rigby’s negative review of Jane Eyre. 8 This is a scene that Austen had already revised from book eight, chapter three of Frances Burney’s Cecilia (1782). In Burney’s scene, Lady Delville entreats Cecelia not to marry her son. Similar to Lady Catherine, Lady Delville claims to represent the wishes of “a family as ancient as it is honourable, as honourable as it is ancient” (638). I have not yet been able to determine if Brontë was aware of this particular debt that Austen owed to Frances Burney. 120 with Mr Darcy. When Yorke questions Shirley about the appropriateness of a union between her and Robert Moore, Shirley replies, “Moore is a gentleman” (359). Yorke begins to respond, “And if Moore is a gentleman, you can be only a lady, therefore —,” but Shirley interrupts him: “Therefore there would be no inequality in our union?” (359). Similarly, in Pride and Prejudice, Lady Catherine argues that if Elizabeth “were sensible of [her] own good, [she] would not wish to quit the sphere in which [she had] been brought up” (229). Elizabeth’s response is much like Shirley’s: “In marrying your nephew, I should not consider myself as quitting that sphere. He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman’s daughter; so far we are equal” (229). This encounter confuses Yorke, who “tried to read [Shirley’s words], but could not” (359). This exchange between Shirley and Yorke mirrors the exchange between Brontë and Lewes that the narrator set up in the first chapter of the novel. Shirley has become Charlotte Brontë herself: appropriating the Austen sentence for a different end. Charlotte Brontë can act the part of the female writer in that she can create a proper plot for the Austen heroine, Caroline Helstone. But confusion results when Brontë places Elizabeth Bennet’s words in the mouth of the unconventional heroine, Shirley. Brontë’s novels and Shirley’s characteristics are both deemed “masculine” by those around them. As she steals Austen’s tricks, weaving Austen’s plots and words into her own novel, Brontë exhibits a rebellious attitude towards Lewes, teasing him by appropriating Austen’s work only to mock his advice. 121 Lewes Praises Austen in Response to Shirley After the publication of Shirley, Lewes continued to write reviews comparing Brontë’s novels with Austen’s work. He does not mention Brontë’s allusions to Pride and Prejudice in Shirley. But he does highlight the particular scenes in which Brontë appropriates Austen’s work, suggesting that he read Brontë’s novel as a response to their discussions about Jane Austen. Very shortly after the publication of Shirley, Lewes revisited his conversation with Brontë. Like W.S. Williams and many of Brontë’s reviewers, Lewes objects to the first chapter (See 2: 271). In her November 1, 1849 letter responding to Lewes, Brontë addresses the topic of female authorship and the first chapter: I wish you did not think me a woman: I wish all reviewers believed “Currer Bell” to be a man — they would be more just to him. You will — I know — keep measuring me by some standard of what you deem becoming to my sex — where I am not what you consider graceful — you will condemn me. All mouths will be open against that first chapter — and that first chapter is true as the Bible — nor is it exceptional. (2: 275) The first part of Brontë’s response to Lewes echoes her earlier conversation with W.S. Williams about Jane Eyre reviews: “To you I am neither Man nor Woman — I come before you as an Author only —.” This hints that Brontë is continuing to read Lewes’s words in the context of the larger body of criticism about her novels. Additionally, by responding to Lewes’s objections to the first chapter of Shirley — the chapter with the allusions to their earlier debates about Jane Austen — Brontë may also be defending the accuracy of her parody of Austen’s work. 122 Lewes published his review of Shirley in the January 1850 Edinburgh Review. He covers the topic of female authorship at length before ultimately revealing that Currer Bell is a woman. This particular piece by Lewes is a key text for literary scholars due to the fact that it features this betrayal. While expanding on his ideas about female authors in general and Brontë’s Shirley in particular — especially the passages in which Brontë alludes to Pride and Prejudice — Lewes once again invokes Austen as an example of an exemplary female novelist for women like Brontë to model their own work after. It is important to note that there is some evidence to suggest that Lewes did not write all of the ideas presented within this important piece. Lewes wrote to Elizabeth Gaskell in April 1857 to ask her to “insert a phrase respecting the Edinburgh article” in the second edition of The Life of Charlotte Brontë (qtd. on 333). In the letter, he claims that somebody else wrote the most offensive parts: “Lord Jeffrey tampered with the article, as usual, and inserted some to me offensive sentences [sic], but the main argument — as far as I recollect it — is complimentary to women not disrespectful” (qtd. on 333). Of course, Brontë would not have had a way to know this when she read Lewes’s review of her work. But it is important to keep Lord Jeffrey’s edits in mind, as this does explain why some aspects of the article seem to contradict with ideas about Austen that Lewes advances in other reviews. 123 The review begins with a reference to Shirley’s re-vision of the Eve tale, 9 which the author uses to introduce his ideas about female writers. Stating that it “may be correct” that “women are inferior in respect of intellect,” the reviewer surmises that “the position of women in society has never yet been — perhaps never can be — such as to give fair play to their capabilities” (154). It is impossible to know for certain, but given Lewes’s encouragement of George Eliot’s work in particular, it is highly probable that the first statement was probably Lord Jeffrey’s. At other points in the review, the author suggests ideas that are more consistent with opinions about women writers that Lewes discusses in later articles. The reviewer suggests that “[women] have had no Shakespeare, no Bacon, no Newton, no Milton, no Raphael, no Mozart, no Watt, no Burke” because “the number of Women who have had either the benefit of such training, or the incitement of such pursuits, has been comparatively insignificant” (154). The author claims that this lack of education is due to biological differences between men and women. In emphasizing the differences between the sexes, the reviewer does not claim that women are inferior (as had been stated earlier in the review). This suggests to me that Lewes’s opinion is represented here: We assume not general organic inferiority; we simply assert an organic difference. Women, we are entirely disposed to admit, are substantially equal in the aggregate worth of their endowments: But equality does not imply identity. They may be equal, but not exactly alike. Many of their endowments are specifically different. Mentally as well as bodily 9 Lewes writes, “the gallant suggestion of our great Peasant Poet, that Nature ‘tried her “prentice hand” on Man, before venturing on the finer task of fashioning Woman,’ has not yet found acceptance otherwise than as a sportive caprice of fancy” (152). 124 there seem to be organic diversities; and these must make themselves felt, whenever the two sexes come into competition. (154-155) Lewes explains that “all women are intended by nature to be mothers [for] twenty of the best years of their lives — those very years in which men either rear the grand fabric or lay the solid foundations of their fame and fortune — women are mainly occupied by the cares, the duties, the enjoyments and the sufferings of maternity” (155). Here, we see Lewes the biologist and anthropologist represented in his literary criticism. Even “virgins and childless widows,” such as Austen and Brontë, are affected by maternity because “it is impossible to know who are to escape that destiny, till it is too late to begin the training necessary for artists, scholars, or politicians” (156). Again, this last statement might go too far to represent Lewes exactly, as his other articles praising Austen contain no such reference to her lack of training. But it is also clear why Lewes tells Gaskell that he remembers this article being, on the whole, favorable towards women. In these passages, we see ideas about society’s influence on women’s education that anticipate John Stewart Mill’s observations in The Subjection of Women: “All women are brought up from the very earliest years in the belief that their ideal of character is the very opposite to that of men; not self-will, and government by self-control, but submission, and yielding to the control of others” (1015). Turning from his explanations about female attainments in general to female literature in particular, Lewes claims, “in literature … women have most distinguished themselves” (156). After singling out Madame de Staël for her “powerful” writing and George Sand for her “eloquence, power, and invention,” Lewes lists a few more 125 women of special note, and discusses his ideas about why women’s literature remains in the “second rank”: Mrs Hemans, Miss Edgeworth, Miss Baillie, Miss Austen, Mrs Norton, Miss Mitford, Miss Landon, are second only to the first-rate men of their day; and would probably have ranked even higher, had they not been too solicitous about male excellence, — had they not often written from the man’s point of view, instead of from the woman’s … Women have too often thought but of rivaling men. It is their boast to be mistaken for men, — instead of speaking sincerely and energetically as women. So true is this, that in the department where they have least followed men, and spoken more as women, — we mean in Fiction, — their success has been greatest. (157) Again, this passage was almost certainly edited by Lord Jeffrey, since Austen is always included in the first rank of writers in Lewes’s other articles until his final piece on Austen in 1859. 10 But Brontë likely read this passage as speaking to her work in several ways. Perhaps most obviously, when the author claims, “it is [women’s] boast to be mistaken for men,” he clearly criticizes women, like Brontë, who write under pseudonyms in order to avoid being judged as mere women writers. Moreover, Lewes’s claim — even the best female writers are still “second” to “the first-rate men of their day” — reiterates the very prejudice against women writers that Brontë was attempting to avoid by publishing under the name of Currer Bell. But perhaps most importantly, when the author claims that women succeed the most when they follow men the least, the reviewer introduces a topic that dominated Lewes’s initial correspondence with Brontë: the limitations that he believes women writers should place on their writing. 10 For example, in his 1852 Westminster Review article on “The Lady Novelists” Lewes claims that Austen “surpasses all the male novelists that ever lived” (72). 126 Just as Lewes did in his initial letters to Charlotte Brontë, the reviewer praises Jane Austen for working within tight margins: Surely no man has surpassed Miss Austen as a delineator of common life? Her range, to be sure, is limited; but her art is perfect. She does not touch those profound and more impassioned chords which vibrate to the heart’s core — never ascends to its grand or heroic movements, nor descends to its deeper throes and agonies; but in all she attempts she is uniformly and completely successful. (157) Although Jane Austen was listed along with other “second rate” female authors earlier in the same paragraph (again, probably by Lord Jeffrey), the reviewer has now distinguished Austen above all other authors — male and female — in one category: as a delineator of common life. Here, we recognize the Lewes who wrote so many articles praising Austen’s superiority in this area. And yet, a slight shift has occurred in Lewes’s argument, possibly as a result of his conversation with Charlotte Brontë. In Lewes’s 1847 review, he does not mention any flaws in the work of Austen. But after reading Brontë’s commentary about Austen in letters and in Shirley, Lewes now concedes some of Brontë’s points. 11 Lewes’s reference to Austen’s limited range corresponds to Brontë’s claim that Austen’s characters exist in a world of “elegant but confined houses.” What’s more, Lewes’s language seems to respond to Brontë’s prose. Lewes’s detailed discussion of Austen’s limitations — emphasized by the words “not,” “never,” and “nor” seem to echo Brontë’s repeated use of the term “no” in her outline of Austen’s confines: “no 11 I would like to thank Hilary Schor for pointing out this crucial detail. 127 glance of a bright vivid physiognomy — no open country — no fresh air — no blue hill — no bonny beck.” Only after discussing the difficulties facing women writers and praising Jane Austen’s art in particular, does Lewes betray Brontë by declaring “Currer Bell is a woman” (158). Once he does this, he goes on to judge Brontë’s work based on his ideas about appropriate topics that women’s work should address. Lewes echoes the opinions of earlier reviewers by condemning Jane Eyre’s supposedly masculine qualities: “a more masculine book, in the sense of vigour, was never written. Indeed that vigour often amounts to coarseness, — and is certainly the very antipode to ‘lady like’” (158). He then outlines the masculine aspects of Shirley: “this same over- masculine vigour is even more prominent in ‘Shirley,’ and does not increase the pleasantness of the book … Nature speaks to us distinctly enough, but she does not speak sweetly. She is in her stern and somber mood, and we see only her dreary aspects” (158–59). By contrasting the supposedly “masculine” vigor of Brontë’s novels with the “lady-like” novels of Jane Austen — which, according to Lewes, “never descend” to “deeper throes and agonies” (157) — Lewes again praises Austen’s work at the expense of Brontë’s novels. Throughout the rest of his review, Lewes critiques many aspects of Shirley for its misrepresentations of truth (159). He does not directly mention Brontë’s allusions to Pride and Prejudice. But he comments on many scenes in Shirley that contain these references, suggesting that he is responding to these citations. For example, Lewes criticizes chapter one, claiming that the curates are “offensive, uninstructive, 128 and unamusing” (159). He also condemns Caroline Helstone, arguing that while she is “sometimes remarkably sweet and engaging” she is “a failure” (164). Perhaps most significantly, Lewes spends much time referencing Brontë’s chapter on men misreading women: Currer Bell is exceedingly scornful on the chapter of heroines drawn by men. The cleverest and acutest of our sex, she says, are often under the strangest illusions about women — we do not read them in their true light; we constantly misapprehend them, both for good and evil. Very possibly. But we suspect that female artists are by no means exempt from mistakes quite as egregious when they delineate their sex … (164) Lewes’s bitter remark — “Currer Bell is exceedingly scornful on the chapter on heroines drawn by men” — hints that Lewes may indeed have understood Brontë’s full meaning and wished to refute it. Famously, Brontë initially had only one line to write to Lewes in response to this review: “I can be on my guard against my enemies, but God deliver me from my friends” (2: 330). In her next letter, she expanded on her remarks, explaining that she “was so hurt”: “after I had said earnestly that I wished critics would judge me as an author not as a woman, you so roughly — I thought — so cruelly handled the question of sex” (2: 333). Due to Lord Jeffrey’s tampering, we may never know exactly what Lewes wrote about Austen and Brontë in his review of Shirley. However, it is clear from his oeuvre that many of the important ideas advanced in the review of Shirley were indeed Lewes’s. For example, in an 1852 Westminster Review article on “The Lady Novelists” Lewes again argues that female literature “has been too much a literature of imitation” and that women are best “adapted” to writing fiction (72). 129 Most importantly, in “The Lady Novelists,” Lewes clarifies the separate spheres argument that he introduced in his review of Shirley: While it is impossible for men to express life otherwise than as they know it — and they can only know it profoundly according to their own experience — the advent of female literature promises woman’s view of life, woman’s experience; in other words, a new element. Make what distinctions you please in the social world, it still remains true that men and women have different organizations, consequently different experiences. To know life you must have both sides depicted. (71) Here, Lewes the biologist makes his strongest pitch for female novelists such as Brontë to limit their subject matter to their own womanly experiences in order to create something new. Only women can represent the life of women: and when that happens the genre of the novel as a whole evolves. Austen, Lewes argues, is able to represent life more accurately than any other novelist without having to resort to melodrama and other unseemly generic conventions. Her success lies in the simple act of limiting her subject matter to her own experiences: She has risked no failures by attempting to delineate that which she had not seen. Her circle may be restricted, but it is complete. Her world is a perfect orb, and vital. Life, as it presents itself to an English gentlewoman peacefully yet actively engaged in her quiet village is mirrored in her works with a purity and fidelity that must endow them with interest for all time. (73) Influenced by Charlotte Brontë’s opinions, Lewes amends his ideas about Austen’s perfection in a piece published seven years later. Lewes again grapples with the issue of Austen’s popularity in “The Novels of Jane Austen” (published in 1859 in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine). He begins by claiming his intent to “substantiate” his opinion “that Miss Austen is an artist of high rank, in the more 130 rigorous sense of the word” (99); but he spends the bulk of the article analyzing aspects of Austen’s work that have resulted in her “limited popularity” (106). Lewes begins the article in a familiar way. He compares the writings of Austen and Brontë, arguing that while he has heard all of Austen’s novels read aloud four times, Jane Eyre cannot continue to peak his interest in this way: “the test of reading aloud applied to Jane Eyre, which had only been read once before, very considerably modified our opinion of that remarkable work; and, to confess the truth, modified it so far that we feel as if we should never open the book again” (101). However, once he is finished making this comparison, Lewes’s allusions to Charlotte Brontë become less predictable. In fact, the majority of Lewes’s specific references to Brontë are introduced to concede that “the absence of breadth, picturesqueness, and passion” in Austen’s novels ultimately limits her readership (107). To this end, Lewes actually quotes extensively from Charlotte Brontë’s letter (which, by this time, had been published in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë) about Jane Austen’s novels offering mere daguerreotypes. Although he points out that Brontë has an “almost contemptuous indifference to the art of truthful portrait-painting” (107), for the first time, he also accepts that some people simply “do not care about these picture of ordinary life”: “While defending our favourite, and giving critical reasons for our liking, we are far from wishing to impose that preference on others” (108). In this last essay, Lewes stretches himself very far from the ideas he presented in his earlier reviews and correspondence with Charlotte Brontë. In the end, the 131 difference of opinion between Brontë and Lewes ultimately hinges almost entirely on the meaning of the term Art. Their disagreement about the application of this concept to Austen’s work remains constant throughout their entire conversation. Brontë never veers from her initial stance that Austen’s lack of poetry precludes her novels from being deemed art. But Lewes continues to argue that Austen’s work deserves this label, even while, in this last review of Austen, he seems to come around to Brontë’s ideas about Austen’s lack of poetry. Notably, in his initial correspondence with Brontë, Lewes admitted Austen’s novels lacked “poetry,” but he still insisted she was one of the greatest authors. And yet, here, Lewes explicitly lists “her deficiencies in poetry and passion” as a weakness (106). What is even more remarkable, Lewes’s ultimate conclusion creeps dangerously close to Brontë’s initial claim about the lack of “bright vivid physiognomy” in Austen’s novels: “[Jane Austen’s] place is among great artists, but it is not high among them” because her miniatures are “moving only amid the quiet scenes of every-day life, with no power over the more stormy and energetic activities which find vent even in everyday life” (113). It is tempting to read G.H. Lewes’s softening towards Charlotte Brontë’s point of view as the result of his relationship with George Eliot. Lewes does not make the gender of Charlotte Brontë or Jane Austen a point of discussion in this last article. This is, perhaps, related to his intimate knowledge of George Eliot’s own motivations for publishing under a male pseudonym. In any case, Lewes did consider George Eliot’s work in light of Jane Austen’s novels, as he makes the following comparison between the two novelists before citing extensively from Scenes of Clerical Life: Mr 132 George Eliot “seems to us inferior to Miss Austen in the art of telling a story, and generally in what we have called the ‘economy of art;’ but equal in truthfulness, dramatic ventriloquism, and humour, and greatly superior in culture, reach of mind, and depth of emotional sensibility” (104). Significantly, this discussion of emotional sensibility is as close as Lewes comes in this article to touching on the well-worn subject of melodrama. The fact that George Eliot’s gothic tale, “The Lifted Veil,” was first published in the same issue of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine as Lewes’s final article on Austen, may have made him rethink his criticisms of Charlotte Brontë’s melodramatic techniques. Conclusion What we learn from following this discussion to its conclusion is that the making of Jane Austen’s legacy was as much a pull and tug enterprise for canonical novelists and critics in the nineteenth century as it was for women in the Austen family like Catherine Hubback and Fanny Caroline Lefroy. G.H. Lewes’s influential reviews of Austen’s work — written in part, to defend Austen’s novels against the charges Brontë laid against them — were clearly influenced by his conversations with Charlotte Brontë about Jane Austen’s work. This chapter, then, reveals Charlotte Brontë’s influence on the development of Jane Austen’s literary reputation. Exposing Charlotte Brontë’s many responses to Austen’s work also emphasizes Austen’s influence on the evolution of the nineteenth-century novel, as even the female novelist who is most famous for downplaying Austen’s skill could not escape her influence. Brontë’s conversations with Lewes may have helped her 133 develop her own art, as it forced her to articulate how she defined herself as a novelist. And just as G.H. Lewes’s reviews show that he finally agreed to some of Brontë’s ideas about Jane Austen, so too can Charlotte Brontë’s novelistic arc be read as a kind of concession to the truth of some of Lewes’s claims about the effectiveness of appropriating Austen’s methods. For example, in Shirley, the gothic aspects of Jane Eyre gave way to more realistic representations, including appropriations of Austen’s techniques in the characterizations of the clergymen and Caroline Helstone. But this experiment resulted in a second novel that was not as well received as the first. Villette, Brontë’s most psychologically powerful novel, can be read as Brontë’s serious attempt to follow Lewes’s advice about appropriating Austen’s methods. The gothic elements of Jane Eyre are still employed in Villette, but they are explained away; for example, the mysterious nun in the school attic turns out to be de Hamal, rather than a gothic monster. As Judith Wilt has shown, Austen’s gothic inheritance is reflected in her portrayal of the anxieties of common life (see esp. pages 121-172). Brontë’s milder form of the gothic in Villette seems to be negotiating a similar kind of relationship with the gothic tradition. This allows Brontë to develop her art, learning to balance the thrilling excitement required by circulating library readers with the realistic portrayals of life that G.H. Lewes appreciated in Jane Austen’s novels. 134 Chapter Four — Jane Austen Rewrites Samuel Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison: A Case Study Illustrating Why the Victorians Still Matter Richardson’s power of creating, and preserving the consistency of his characters, as particularly exemplified 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. (from Henry Austen’s 1818 “Biographical Notice” 141) Her knowledge of Richardson’s works was such as no one is likely again to acquire, now that the multitude of the merits of our light literature have called off the attention of readers from that great master. Every circumstance narrated in Sir Charles Grandison, all that was ever said or done in the cedar parlours, was familiar to her, and the wedding days of Lady L and Lady G were as well remembered as if they had been living friends. (from J.E. Austen Leigh’s 1870 Memoir of Jane Austen 71) The influence of Samuel Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison (1753–1754) on Jane Austen’s writing has been a popular subject of inquiry for Austen scholars. Jane Austen owned all seven volumes of the first edition of Sir Charles Grandison and there are multiple allusions to Sir Charles Grandison throughout Austen’s letters, juvenilia pieces, and mature novels. In 1977 Brian Southam attributed a short play passed down through the Austen family, Sir Charles Grandison; or The Happy Man (completed around 1800), to Jane Austen (see esp. 136). This fairly recent revelation of a new association between Austen and Richardson only confirmed what Austen scholars have already known for some time: Richardson’s novel was a major influence on Austen’s literary development. Most discussions of the influence of Richardson’s novels on Austen’s writing include acknowledgements that Austen was not exactly reverential towards 135 Richardson’s work. 1 But while critics are generally quick to acknowledge Austen’s irreverence in her youthful parodies, critical discussions of Austen’s mature novels tend to read various aspects of Austen’s plots as mere offshoots of Richardson’s masterpieces. Such readings often focus on the positive reincarnations of Richardson’s love plots in Austen’s novels. 2 Moreover, when it comes to critical discussions of Austen’s relationship to Samuel Richardson, most scholars still tend to perpetuate critical assumptions about Austen that originated in the Victorian era and that have long been debunked. For example, Austen critics continue to echo and proliferate the common assumption that Samuel Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison was Austen’s favorite novel. 3 Often scholars cite Henry Austen’s 1818 “Biographical 1 For example, in Grandison’s Heirs: the Paragon’s Progress in the Late Eighteenth- Century English Novel (1985), Gerard A. Barker writes, “while Austen was genuinely fond of Richardson’s novel and valued his artistic genius, she was too much a realist and ironist to accept his preposterously perfect hero uncritically” (147). 2 The most important exception is Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (1979). To date, The Madwoman in the Attic contains the most serious discussion of Austen as a feminist revisionist of Richardson. Gilbert and Gubar write, “Austen retains her suspicions about the effect of literary images of both sexes, and she repeatedly resorts to parodic strategies to discredit such images, deconstructing, for example, Richardson’s influential ideas of heroism and heroinism” (119). Gilbert and Gubar also focus on Austen’s revisions of Richardson’s seduction plots. However, while Gilbert and Gubar are interested in discussing how Austen reworked overall themes of previous writers’ works, they do not discuss how Austen appropriated specific scenes or language from Richardson’s novels in order to speak to those themes. 3 For example, in “Jane Austen and the Burden of the (Male) Past” (1995), Jocelyn Harris writes, “as a young woman, Austen’s literary-critical imperative makes her want to improve on Richardson, especially her favorite History of Sir Charles Grandison” (emphasis mine, 92). Other scholars refrain from calling Sir Charles Grandison Austen’s favorite novel, but they employ language that implies that Austen 136 Notice” or James Austen-Leigh’s 1870 Memoir of Jane Austen as their authorities for this claim, despite the fact that the accuracy of these Victorian biographies has been widely challenged 4 and despite the fact that neither text actually argues for Austen’s favoritism of Richardson. As the quotations I have excerpted for the epigraph of this chapter demonstrate, these early family biographies merely claim that Jane Austen had a thorough knowledge of Jane Austen’s works. In this final chapter of my study, I aim to model how ideas from Victorian texts continue to influence current critical approaches to Austen by (re)examining the relationship of Jane Austen’s novels to Samuel Richardson’s writing. In doing so, I provide a case study for how thinking critically about the making of Jane Austen’s literary reputation in the nineteenth century can lead to new readings of Austen’s novels. With a suspicious glance towards Henry Austen’s and J.E. Austen-Leigh’s desire to meld Austen’s work with Richardson’s writings, I suggest that Austen appropriates Sir Charles Grandison with an eye towards revising Richardson’s ideas about love, money, and marriages of convenience. In the process, I demonstrate how had a sentimental attachment to Richardson. For example, In Jane Austen: Her Life (1985), Park Honan claims, “she cherished all seven volumes of Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison (1753–4) and pored over the elegant text so often that Henry was later surprised …” (emphasis mine, 38). 4 For example, in Jane Austen: A Life (1998), David Nokes challenges the validity of many of the claims made by members of the Austen family about regarding Jane Austen’s reading practices. He writes, “in fact, what she loved [about Sir Charles Grandison] was to make fun of Richardson’s book” (109). In Jane Austen, Feminism and Fiction (1983), Margaret Kirkham also challenges Henry Austen’s discussion of the influence of Richardson on Austen’s work: “Her brother tells us that she admired [Grandison] particularly, though … we should probably take this with a grain of salt. 137 Austen’s relationship to Richardson is much more intricate — and vexed — than critics have previously acknowledged. I discuss how Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Persuasion (1818) revise the story of one very minor character in Samuel Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison: Miss Mansfield. Through a close reading that highlights how Austen revises Miss Mansfield’s story in order to give voice to her perpetual “silences,” I show how Austen’s novels investigate Richardson’s attitudes about the connections between love, marriage, and money. Because the Miss Mansfield plot centers on themes that are at the heart of Austen’s plots, careful attention to this story is important for a proper understanding of Austen’s relationship to Richardson. In particular, I argue, Austen’s revisions explicitly encourage readers to question Richardson’s notion that poor women, like Miss Mansfield, should settle for marriages of convenience rather than demand marriages based on love and companionship. Miss Mansfield’s Plot: A Marriage of Convenience The Miss Mansfield plot, which centers on a marriage of convenience, is a very minor plot in Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison. It is only discussed in a few of the novel’s letters, and Miss Mansfield is excluded from Richardson’s “Names of the Principal Persons” (a kind of dramatis personae that precedes the text of the epistolary novel). Miss Mansfield first appears as part of a story of reconciliation between Sir Charles and his uncle, Lord W. After the death of Sir Charles’s father The evidence of Austen’s own writings suggests a highly critical attitude to 138 (Sir Thomas Grandison), Sir Charles pays a visit to Lord W. At the time of the story, Lord W has not been on speaking terms with Sir Charles for several years due to a longstanding family rift. However, one of the ways in which Sir Charles ingratiates himself with Lord W is by finding a wife for the elderly, gouty man. When Sir Charles first mentions the subject, Lord W is surprised that his current heir would risk disinheritance by proposing such a plan: “Blessed God! – Why, nephew, you overturn me with your generosity. Are you not my next of kin? And can you give your consent, were I to ask it, that I should marry?” (2:57). Once Sir Charles responds by assuring his uncle that he not only gives his “consent” but he also gives his “advice” to marry, Lord W continues to question the scheme, pointing out that he is “not a young man” (2:57). Sir Charles responds with a very long discourse about why his uncle’s old age and physical decline should actually motivate him to find a bride: The more need of a prudent, a discreet, a tender assistant. Your Lordship hinted, that you liked not men-servants about your person, in your illness. You are often indisposed with the gout: Servants will not always be servants when they find themselves of use. Infirmity requires indulgence: In the very nature of the word and thing, indulgence cannot exist with servility; between man and wife it may: the same interest unites them. Mutual confidence! Who can enough value the joy, the tranquility at least, that results from mutual confidence? A man gives his own consequence to the woman he marries; and he sees himself respected in the respect paid her: She extends his dignity, and confirms it. (2:58) The only kind of “consequence” Lord W possesses is based solely on wealth and class, but Sir Charles puts much stock in the power of this kind of consequence. Sir Charles believes that his uncle’s money and social position will tempt a young woman to Grandison, and some antipathy to Richardson in general” (30). 139 marry Lord W for the explicit purpose of serving him better than a paid “man-servant” would. After convincing Lord W that he should marry to secure an “indulgent” nurse, Sir Charles is happy to discover that his uncle does not have a specific “Lady in [his] eye” (2:58). Upon learning this, Sir Charles outlines the qualities that Lord W should look for in a wife, suggesting that the future Lady W should be “a gentlewoman by birth and education” (2:59). Sir Charles also recommends that his uncle marry a woman of child-bearing age: “And if your Lordship should be blessed with a child or two to inherit your great estate, that happy event would domesticate the Lady, and make your latter years more happy than your former” (2:59). Upon hearing this, Lord W again praises Sir Charles for working “against interest,” before insisting Sir Charles find him a wife who is not “younger than Fifty” (2:59). But Sir Charles ultimately ignores this request and chooses a woman who is young enough to bear his uncle an heir; Miss Mansfield, we are later told, is “not more than three or four and thirty” (2:266). What Sir Charles proposes, in essence, is a marriage of convenience for both parties. The young lady is expected to benefit financially, while Lord W is expected to benefit in two main ways: a young wife might be able to bear him children while she also serves as his nurse. The convenience aspect of the match is further emphasized by the fact that Lord W relies on his nephew to make all of the arrangements for the marriage: [Lord W] declared, that I had described the very wife he wished to have. “Find out such an one for me, my dear kinsman, said he; and I 140 give you carte blanche … Make the settlements for me: I am very rich: I will sign them blindfold. If the Lady be such an one as you say I ought to love, I will love her: Only let her say, she can be grateful for my Love, and for the provision you shall direct me to make for her; and my first interview with her shall be at the altar” (2:59). Lord W shows implicit trust in his nephew when he takes the extreme measure of declaring that he will agree to marry Sir Charles’s choice site unseen. But it is also important to note that the uncle says he “will” love his bride because he “ought” to love her. This statement implies that Lord W believes that the marriage will begin as a financial contract, but that it will eventually evolve into a loving relationship on his part. And, because of the way “gratitude” of women is represented throughout the rest of the novel, the uncle’s requirement that his wife be “grateful” for his love could allude to the fact that he ultimately believes his bride will eventually learn to love him as well. I will return to a more thorough discussion of the novel’s larger message about the connections between love and gratitude later in this chapter. Sir Charles singles out Miss Mansfield for Lord W because he believes that her poverty will lead her to encourage Lord W’s proposals. 5 Sir Thomas Mansfield, Miss Mansfield’s now-dead father, was “once possessed of a large estate” but lost most of it due to a lawsuit (2, 2:266). Throughout the novel, Sir Charles works to secure the Mansfields’ interest in this lawsuit. At the time that Sir Charles identifies Miss Mansfield as a potential bride for Lord W, Lady Mansfield is caring for her five 5 In an early letter to his friend and confidant, Dr Bartlett, Sir Charles declares, “I think, my friend, I have in my eye such a woman as my Lord ought to do very handsome things for, if she condescend to have him. I will not tell you, not even you, whom I mean, till I know she will encourage such a proposal; and for her own fortune’s sake, I think she should” (2:59–60). 141 remaining children: three boys and two girls (Miss Mansfield and her younger sister, Fanny). When Sir Charles first proposes his plan to Lady Mansfield, he begins by specifically asking her about Miss Mansfield’s previous attachments: “Making an apology for my freedom, I asked her, if Miss Mansfield were, to her knowledge, engaged in her affections? She answered, she was sure she was not: Ah, Sir, said she, a man of your observation must know, that the daughters of a decayed family of some note in the world, do not easily get husbands” (2:268). Sir Charles responds to Lady Mansfield’s financial concerns by stressing the material advantages of the match: “I will take care, madam, said I, that Miss Mansfield, if she will consent to make Lord W happy, shall have very handsome settlements, and such an allowance for pin-money, as shall enable her to gratify every moderate, every reasonable, wish of her heart” (2:268). After this brief exchange, Lady Mansfield sends for her eldest daughter. Miss Mansfield privately discusses the proposal with her mother, and the two of them return to Sir Charles. Then, addressing himself to the mother, Sir Charles begins to outline the details of the match. In particular, he is careful to detail the “conveniences” and the “inconveniences” of the match because Miss Mansfield and Lord W have never met: “There never was … a treaty of marriage set on foot, that had not its conveniences and inconveniences. My Lord is greatly afflicted with the gout: There is too great a disparity in years. These are the inconveniences which are to be considered of for the lady” (2:269). Sir Charles is also careful to point out that the 142 entire family will benefit financially from the match: “the conveniences to yourselves will more properly fall under the consideration of yourselves and family” (2:269). Although he does not apply the term “persuasion,” Sir Charles claims that he is aware of the family pressures that Miss Mansfield will inevitably face as a result of the proposal. But despite his claims to the contrary, he never actually protects Miss Mansfield from these pressures. After explicitly outlining the conveniences and inconveniences of the match, Sir Charles adds: “let not a regard for me bias you: Your family may be sure of my best services, whether my proposal be received or rejected” (2:269). When Miss Mansfield responds with “silence” and her “conscious eye” glances “now-and-then” towards her mother, Sir Charles again emphasizes the material advantages of the match: “I will take care,” says Sir Charles, “that settlements shall exceed your expectation” (2:269). Note that Sir Charles never considers Miss Mansfield’s glances and silences as evidence of her fear that rejecting the offer might anger her mother — a reasonable reading given the financial circumstances of the Mansfield family. Sir Charles notes Miss Mansfield’s “silence” throughout the scene seven times, but he only interprets this silence as “modesty.” At one point, he states, “her not having given a negative, was to be taken as a modest affirmative” (2:270). As I will discuss later in this chapter, this is an interpretation that Jane Austen ridicules in several of her mature novels. Sir Charles explains that he does not think he should mention the proposal to Miss Mansfield’s brothers and sisters because “it might perhaps have engaged them all in its favour, as it was of such evident advantage to the whole family, and that might 143 have imposed a difficulty on the Lady, that neither for her own sake, nor my Lord’s, it would have been just to lay upon her” (2:270–271). Directly after Sir Charles makes this statement, however, Lady Mansfield mentions her desire to discuss the proposal with the family, and Sir Charles readily assents to the plan: Lady Mansfield came out to me, and said, I presume, Sir, as we are a family which misfortune as well as love, has closely bound together, you will allow it to be mentioned — To the whole family, madam? — By all means. … And now you shall give me leave to attend Miss Mansfield. I am a party for my Lord W. Miss Mansfield is a party. Your debates will be the more free in our absence. (2:270) Far from helping to prevent Miss Mansfield’s siblings from knowing about the matter, Sir Charles actually encourages the entire family to discuss the proposal without Miss Mansfield by actually interrupting Lady Mansfield mid-sentence in order to anticipate her desire to discuss the matter with her other children. Sir Charles’s response diminishes the importance of what is, for Miss Mansfield, a life-changing moment by suggesting that her “interest” in the match is on an equal footing with his own — Sir Charles may be “a party” for Lord W, but his personal fate is not in question. After Miss Mansfield’s mother consults with the rest of the family, she comes back with this declaration for her daughter: “We are all unanimous. We have agreed to leave every-thing to Sir Charles Grandison: And we hope you will” (2:270-271). Upon hearing this, Miss Mansfield at first remains “silent.” But Sir Charles takes the opportunity to encourage her to agree to the match by suggesting he will “tell my [Lord W], that you are disengaged; and that you wholly resign yourself to your mother’s advice” (2:370). Eventually, Miss Mansfield bows her head in agreement. 144 Before he parts with the Mansfield family, Sir Charles shares his philosophy about gratitude and love with Miss Mansfield: “Your goodness, will make him good. I dare say that he will engage your gratitude; and I defy a good mind to separate love from gratitude” (2:271). Lord W, as I have mentioned, says that he “will” love his future bride, but he “only” requires that his future bride be “grateful” for his love and for the provision she shall receive. But while Lord W differentiates between the love he expects to feel and the gratitude he requires from his future bride, Sir Charles’s statement implies that love and gratitude are difficult to disentangle. In this sense, Sir Charles’s philosophies are very much in line with the heroine’s (Harriet Byron’s). Throughout the novel, Harriet Byron often declares that her love of Sir Charles was “founded” in gratitude, and several letters in the final volume are centered around this idea (for example, see 3:318). Harriet’s belief in the fine line between love and gratitude is perhaps most clear from the contents of a letter that she writes after being rescued by Sir Charles. In volume I, letter 33, Harriet outlines her “gratitude” in a “long, long letter” to her relatives: But what shall I do with my gratitude? O my dear, I am overwhelmed with my gratitude: I can only express it in silence before them. Every look, if it be honest to my heart, however, tells it: Reverence mingles with my gratitude — Yet there is so much ease, so much sweetness, in the behavior of both — O my Lucy! Did I not find that my veneration of both is equal; did I not, on examination, find, that the amiable sister is as dear to me, from her experienced tenderness, as her brother from his remembered bravery (which must needs mingle awe with my esteem); in short, that I love the sister, and revere the brother; I should be afraid of my gratitude. (1:167) 145 Jane Austen parodies Harriet Byron’s letter in an October 11, 1813 letter to her sister Cassandra when she writes, “Such a long Letter! . . . Like Harriet Byron I ask, what am I to do with my Gratitude? — I can do nothing but thank you & go on” ( 234). Through this reference, Jane Austen mocks Richardson’s (vis-à-vis Harriet Byron’s) long-windedness, perhaps laughing with her sister about the fact that Harriet Byron constantly surprises herself with the length of her own letters. But this joke, which was written only a few months after she completed Mansfield Park, also suggests Austen’s reservations about the connections between love and gratitude that are proffered by Richardson’s hero and heroine. 6 In his 1755 version of A Collection of the Moral and Instructive Sentiments Contained in the History of Sir Charles Grandison, Samuel Richardson adopts the point of view of Sir Charles and Harriet Byron regarding the connections between gratitude and love. In the preface to the Collection, Richardson (writing under the pen name of “a friend”) explains that the point of the Collection is to highlight the instructions offered in the novels: As the narrative part of those Letters was only meant as a vehicle for the instructive, no wonder that many readers, who are desirous of fixing in their minds those maxims which deserve notice distinct from the story that first introduced them, should have often wished and pressed to see them separate from that chain of engaging incidents that will sometimes steal the most fixed attention from its pursuit of serious truth. (ix) 6 Deidre Le Faye estimates that Mansfield Park was completed in July 1813 (Letters xxvii). 146 In the Collection, Richardson echoes Sir Charles's belief about the difficulty of separating love and gratitude. Under the topic of “Gratitude, Ingratitude” Richardson writes, “Love and Gratitude cannot be easily separated” (289). Similarly, under the heading “Fancy, Imagination, Romances” Richardson writes, “gratitude, with a generous mind, will supply the place of love” (262). The Collection is one of several methods Richardson uses in order to encourage the “correct” reading of his novels; we can therefore assume that Richardson’s choice to excerpt and highlight these maxims shows that he intended for his readers to agree with Sir Charles’s and Harriet Byron’s hints about the blurry line between love and gratitude. Another important issue addressed in the Collection that is related to the Miss Mansfield plot is the question of persuasion. All of the morals and sentiments listed in the Collection under the heading “Persuasion, Forced Marriages” portray persuasion in a negative light. For example, Richardson writes, “there may be a cruelty in Persuasion, when the heart rejects the person proposed, whether the urger be either parent or guardian” (360). He argues that “persuasion strongly urged by parents, is more than compulsion [because it seeks to make a young creature accessory to her own unhappiness]” (360). He therefore includes the following warning for parents: “a parent or guardian, who compels her child to marry against inclinations, ought to think himself chargeable with the unhappy consequences that may follow from such a cruel compulsion” (360). Throughout the novel, Sir Charles expresses similar philosophies about the potential dangers of persuasion with regard to two specific characters: Emily and 147 Clementina. Sir Charles’s dealings with Emily and Clementina are more closely aligned with his philosophies regarding persuasion than with his dealings with Miss Mansfield. This is partially due to the fact that persuasion is a term Sir Charles applies to scenarios in which a woman’s heart is already engaged to somebody else. Because Sir Charles does not think that women should be persuaded to marry one man if their affections are engaged to another, he is careful to address this topic with both Miss Mansfield and her mother. After getting Lady Mansfield’s assurance that Miss Mansfield’s affections are not engaged, Sir Charles brings up the issue with Miss Mansfield herself: “were your affections engaged to the lowest honest man on earth, I would not wish for your favor to my Lord W” (2:269). Of course, by reading Miss Mansfield’s silent response as modesty, Sir Charles disregards the fact that if Miss Mansfield’s heart were engaged to somebody else, etiquette would forbid her to mention it to Sir Charles and her mother. Although decorum will not allow him to explicitly state it, Sir Charles is well aware that Clementina is being persuaded to marry the Count of Belvedere despite the fact that she is in love with Sir Charles. 7 After his own marriage to Harriet Byron takes place, Sir Charles goes to great lengths to save his one-time Italian fiancé, Clementina, from being persuaded into a marriage by her family. In an attempt to intervene on Clementina’s behalf, he draws up a contract between Clementina and her 7 Clementina had refused to marry Sir Charles because he was not willing to convert to Catholicism. Even though Clementina still has feelings for Sir Charles, she encourages him to marry Harriet Byron once the engagement between Sir Charles and Clementina is finally dissolved. 148 parents. The fifth clause of the six-clause contract requires Clementina’s family to make the following promise: That they will never with earnestness endeavor to persuade, much less to compel, Lady Clementina to marry any man whatever; nor encourage her Camilla, or any other friend or confident, to endeavor to prevail upon her to change her condition: Her parents, however, reserving to themselves the right of proposing, as they shall think fit, but not of urging; because the young Lady, who is by nature sweet- tempered, gentle, obliging, dutiful, thinks herself (however determined by inclination) less able to withstand the persuasions of indulgent friends, than she should be to resist the most despotic commands. (3:375) In this clause, Sir Charles implies that Clementina is more susceptible to persuasion than other young ladies might be — an idea that is more explicitly stated at other points throughout the novel. For example, Sir Charles tells Harriet, “overpersuasion, as you lately observed, in such a case as [Clementina’s], is a degree of persecution. In the unhappy circumstances she had been in, she should have had time given her. Time subdues all things” (3:329). In a conversation with another character, Sir Charles says, “persuasion, Sir, in the circumstances this excellent Lady is in, is compulsion” (3:310). It is important to note that Sir Charles points out Clementina’s special “circumstances” because it helps explain why Sir Charles seems to take such an extremely different approach to Clementina’s circumstances than he does to the situation of Miss Mansfield. Sir Charles also goes to great lengths to avoid even the appearance of persuasion with respect to his young ward, Emily. Again, although he does not explicitly acknowledge it, he is aware of the fact that Emily is also in love with him. Therefore, when Harriet suggests that Mr Beauchamp (a friend of Sir Charles) could 149 be Emily’s future husband, Sir Charles cuts her off mid sentence in order to object to any suggestion of encouraging a match for his young ward: We all, Sir, said I [Harriet], look upon Mr Beauchamp as a future — Husband for Emily, madam, interrupted he? — It must not be at my motion. My friend [Mr Beauchamp] shall be entitled to share with me my whole estate; but I will never seek to lead the choice of my WARD. Let Emily, some time hence, find out the husband she can be happy with; Beauchamp the wife he can love: Emily, if I can help it, shall not be the wife of any man’s convenience. Beauchamp is nice, and I will be as nice for my WARD. And the more so, as I hope she herself wants not delicacy. There is a cruelty in persuasion, where the heart rejects the person proposed, whether the urger be parent or guardian. (2: 303) Just as Sir Charles cuts off Lady Mansfield in order to encourage her to consult with the entire family about the proposed match between Miss Mansfield and Lord W, Sir Charles cuts off Harriet in order to prevent her from expressing her ideas about the suitability of a match for Emily. Mr Beauchamp and Emily do end up getting married at the end of the novel, but Sir Charles makes it clear that he did not encourage the match. Sir Charles takes a different approach with Miss Mansfield’s than he does with Emily and Clementina due to the vast differences in the women’s financial situations. Emily and Clementina do not need to find husbands to maintain them because Emily has £50,000 and Clementina can retain her estate as long as she does not enter a convent. In contrast, Sir Charles is very conscious of the fact that there are very few options for women like Miss Mansfield. In fact, the subject of poor, genteel women is directly addressed in a conversation between Mrs Reeves and Sir Charles in letter 18 150 of the fourth volume of the novel. Here, Mrs Reeves outlines the financial hardships faced by many single women of the genteel class: I believe in England many a poor girl goes up the hill with a companion she would little care for, if the state of a single woman were not here so peculiarly unprovided and helpless: For girls of slender fortunes, if they have been genteely brought up, how can they, when family-connections are dissolved, support themselves? A man can rise in a profession, and if he acquires wealth in a trade, can get above it, and be respected. A woman is looked upon as demeaning herself, if she gains a maintenance by her needle, or by domestic attendance on a superior; and without them where has she a retreat? (2:355) Sir Charles agrees with Mrs Reeves’s point of view, and describes his proposed solution to the problem: the establishment of protestant nunneries. At several points in the novel, Sir Charles repeats his wish that such establishments will be created. The fact that there are not any nunneries for women in Miss Mansfield’s state may explain why Sir Charles’s actions with regard to Miss Mansfield’s marriage to Lord W are supported and praised by so many characters in the novel. It may be that Richardson advocated for marriages of convenience, such as the marriage between Lord W and Miss Mansfield, simply because he saw few alternatives. Richardson seems to be doing his best to immediately improve the situation for women by advocating for the ideal solution (Protestant nunneries), but then suggesting more immediate, short-term solutions. Although not ideal, marriages of convenience were the sought-after solution for poor women like Miss Mansfield. And Sir Charles Grandison does advocate for men to treat their young wives with respect. From this perspective, Sir Charles Grandison is in line with Pamela and 151 Clarissa in that the story does attempt to better women’s situations by highlighting women’s plights. Although Sir Charles protests against what he calls “mercenary marriages,” he does not object to a poor woman like Miss Mansfield marrying for security. As with Austen, mercenary marriages are a complicated issue. Consider, for example, Elizabeth Bennet’s lines to her aunt Gardner in Pride and Prejudice: “Pray, my dear aunt, what is the difference in matrimonial affairs, between the mercenary and the prudent motive? Where does discretion end and avarice begin?” (2:101). But although the line between the mercenary and the prudent may be tenuous for both Richardson and Austen, Austen continually interrogates Richardson’s positive portrayal of Miss Mansfield’s marriage of convenience plot. Throughout several of her mature novels, she returns to this plot in order to point out the flaws in Sir Charles’s approach to the marriage of convenience. Pride and Prejudice Scholars have already noted some of the ways in which Sir Charles Grandison influenced the plot of Pride and Prejudice. Most of the criticism focuses on how Fitzwilliam Darcy can be read as an improvement upon the Grandisonian hero. 8 The heavy critical emphasis on Darcy’s love plot, however, has eclipsed investigations of Richardson’s influence on minor marriage plots in Pride and Prejudice, such as the 8 For example, in Jane Austen’s Art of Allusion (1977) Kenneth L. Moler points out the influence of Sir Charles Grandison on Darcy’s character, specifically the scenes at Pemberley (105). And in Grandison’s Heirs (1985), Gerard A. Barker argues, “during the course of the novel, Darcy undergoes a profound change that leads to his 152 marriage between Mr Collins and Charlotte Lucas. 9 In order to fully understand Austen’s rewriting of Richardson in Pride and Prejudice, it is important to consider that Mr Collins, Austen’s most infamous “comic monster,” inherits many of his idiosyncrasies from Richardson’s hero. 10 Pride and Prejudice, in other words, contains two Sir Charles figures — Mr Collins and Fitzwilliam Darcy — whose parallel marriage plots allude to marriage plots in Sir Charles Grandison. As Ivor Morris argues in Mr Collins Considered, there is an “intriguing parallel existing between Mr Darcy and Mr Collins, evident in their ways of courtship” (158). 11 I suggest that many of these parallels are due to the fact that both characters embody characteristics of Sir Charles’s personality with regard to different marriage plots in Sir Charles Grandison. Mr Collins’s marriage of convenience echoes Miss Mansfield’s story in many ways, with one important revision: Charlotte’s happiness in her marriage. Meanwhile, as Darcy evolves in the third volume to emergence as a Grandisonian hero, though one more realistically conceived than his predecessor” (146). 9 Although critics have largely ignored the topic of Richardson’s influence on Austen’s minor characters, Austen’s minor characters have garnered much critical attention, particularly from feminist critics like Claudia Johnson, who discusses the importance of parallel plots in Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel. More recently, Alex Woloch details the central role that minor characters play in our understanding of Elizabeth Bennet’s development as the heroine of Pride and Prejudice (see esp. 43–124). 10 D.W. Harding discusses the concept of Austen’s “comic monsters” in his influential 1940 article “Regulated Hatred: An Aspect of the Work of Jane Austen” (see esp. 171). 11 Mr Collins Considered was later republished under a new name: Jane Austen and the Interplay of Character (1999). 153 emulate and improve upon the positive traits of Richardson’s hero, Elizabeth appropriates Harriet Byron’s approaches to gratitude and love. Through the marriage plots of Mr Collins and Mr Darcy, Austen experiments with an early critique of Miss Mansfield’s marriage plot that she takes up again in Mansfield Park and Persuasion. In Pride and Prejudice, Austen draws two extreme versions of Sir Charles in order to show her readers which aspects of Sir Charles should be emulated and which aspects should be avoided. Several aspects of Mr Collins’s initial letter to Mr Bennet indicate that Austen is inviting her readers to view him as a version of Sir Charles Grandison: The disagreement subsisting between yourself and my late honoured father, always gave me much uneasiness, and since I have had the misfortune to lose him, I have frequently wished to heal the breach … I flatter myself that my present overtures of good-will are highly commendable, and that the circumstance of my being next in the entail of Longbourn estate, will be kindly overlooked on your side, and not lead you to reject the offered olive branch. I cannot be otherwise than concerned at being the means of injuring your amiable daughters, and beg leave to apologise for it, as well as to assure you of my readiness to make them every possible amends, — but of this hereafter. (2:63) As Kenneth L. Moler and Brian Southam have previously explained, Mr Collins’s reference to the “olive-branch” is important because it marks him as a reader of Richardson’s novels. 12 But I would like to suggest that this letter goes beyond merely showing that Mr Collins is a reader of Richardson; Mr Collins’s allusions to his late 12 In a 1963 Notes and Queries article, Southam identifies many similarities between Mr Collins and the Rev Elias Brand in Richardson’s Clarissa, including their references to the “olive branch” (191–192). In a 1983 Notes and Queries article, Moler argues that Mr Collins’s epistolary reference to the olive branch could be read as an appropriation of Harriet Byron’s lines to Clementina in Volume VII of Sir Charles Grandison (214). 154 honoured father, the family rift, and the entail all suggest that he is drawing parallels between himself and Richardson’s admired hero. Like Mr Collins and Mr Bennet, Sir Charles and his uncle (Lord W) are not initially on speaking terms due to a longstanding family rift. Austen does not give us any details about the source of the quarrel between Mr Collins’s father and Mr Bennet — suggesting, perhaps, that we are to fill in the narrative gaps with arguments similar to those that took place between Sir Charles’s father and Lord W. Austen’s narrator does tell us that Mr Collins’s father was “miserly” and that he brought up Mr Collins under “subjection,” suggesting that much like Sir Charles’s contemptible father, Mr Collins’s father may have shared the bulk of the blame for the rift (2:70). Despite the narrator’s hints about his father’s faults, however, Mr Collins pays respect to his “late honoured father” in his letter, expressing concern about being respectful to this father’s “memory” (2: 62–63). Similarly, Sir Charles protects his undeserving father’s memory during his reunion with his uncle (1:378). Mr Collins also tries to ingratiate himself with his uncle by suggesting that, like Sir Charles, he has a generous attitude regarding the entail. Mr Collins refers to his “readiness” to make the Bennet daughters “every possible amends.” Two chapters later, the narrator bluntly explains Mr Collins’s plan for doing so: Having now a good house and very sufficient income, he intended to marry; and in seeking a reconciliation with the Longbourn family he had a wife in view, as he meant to chuse one of the daughters, if he found them as handsome and amiable as they were represented by common report. This was his plan of amends — of atonement — for inheriting their father’s estate; and he thought it an excellent one, full of eligibility and suitableness, and excessively generous and disinterested on his own part. (2:70) 155 Clearly, Mr Collins’s focus on the Bennet daughters’ handsomeness and amiability renders his approach to amending the entail much less disinterested than Sir Charles’s plan. Unlike Sir Charles, Mr Collins has no interest in actually giving up any of the money he currently stands to inherit. In fact, by highlighting that Mr Collins plans to propose to one of the daughters only if he finds them “as handsome and amiable as they were represented by common report,” the narrator shows that Mr Collins is actually planning to use his relationship with the Bennet family as leverage for his own personal gain. Despite this fact, however, Mr Collins clearly views himself as a generous kind of Sir Charles Grandison figure. The narrator tells us that Mr Collins considers his plan to marry one of the Bennet daughters as “disinterested” and “generous” — two adjectives that Lord W uses to praise Sir Charles for his dealings with the entail. Perhaps because he sees himself as similar to Sir Charles, Mr Collins’s marriage proposal mirrors the marriage contract that Sir Charles negotiates for Lord W. Similar to the way in which Sir Charles bluntly approaches Lady Mansfield with Lord W’s proposal, Mr Collins sees no reason to hide the fact that he comes into Hertfordshire “with the design of selecting a wife” (2:105). He approaches the business with lightening speed, deciding to marry Jane during his “first evening” at Longbourn (2:70). Just as Sir Charles first addresses himself to Miss Mansfield’s mother, Mr Collins addresses himself to Jane’s mother the very morning after his arrival: 156 … in a quarter of an hour’s tête-à-tête with Mrs Bennet before breakfast, a conversation beginning with his parsonage-house, and leading naturally to the avowal of his hopes, that a mistress for it might be found at Longbourn, produced from her, amid very complaisant smiles and general encouragement, a caution against the very Jane he had fixed on … Mr Collins had only to change from Jane to Elizabeth — and it was soon done — done while Mrs Bennet was stirring the fire. Elizabeth, equal next to Jane in birth and beauty, succeeded her of course. (2:71) The fact that the conversation begins with Mr Collins’s “parsonage-house” and then “naturally” leads to his desire to marry Jane echoes Sir Charles’s thought process. Mr Collins is able to fix on a prospective second wife during the short time it takes for Mrs Bennet to “stir the fire” because, as with the marriage of Lord W, it does not matter who the woman is, as long as she meets the qualifications set forth by his patroness, Lady Catherine. According to the narrator, on the day that Mr Collins makes “his declaration in form” to Elizabeth, Mr Collins “set about it in a very orderly manner, with all the observances which he supposed a regular part of the business” (2:104). The use of the word “supposed” hints that Mr Collins’s methods, which in many respects echo Sir Charles’s techniques, are actually far from regular. These allusions suggest that Mr Collins’s odd notions of the workings of “elegant females” were probably acquired from reading novels like Richardson’s (2:108). In Jane Austen’s Art of Memory, Jocelyn Harris outlines how Mr Collins’s proposal to Elizabeth Bennet emulates a proposal to Harriet Byron from an unworthy suitor, Sir Hargrave (see esp. 112). But several aspects of Mr Collins’s proposal to Elizabeth also reverberate with Sir Charles’s dealings with Miss Mansfield. For example, Mr Collins begins his proposal by declaring that he interprets Elizabeth’s 157 aversion to the meeting as a manifestation of her “natural delicacy”: “Believe me, my dear Miss Elizabeth, that your modesty, so far from doing you any disservice, rather adds to your other perfections.” (emphasis mine, 2:105). This is similar to the way in which Sir Charles interprets Miss Mansfield’s perpetual “silences” as a sign of her modesty (2:270). Moreover, during his lengthy monologue towards the end of this proposal scene, Mr Collins again channels Sir Charles’s approaches to marriage contracts. After Elizabeth makes yet another attempt to “express [her] refusal in such a way as may convince [Mr Collins] of its being one,” Mr Collins outlines several reasons why he assumes that the proposed match is acceptable (2:108). Mr Collins emphasizes the “establishment he can offer” and his “connections with the family of De Bourgh” as evidence of his importance, assuming that these examples of his consequence will impress Elizabeth (2:108). This echoes Sir Charles’s assumption that his uncle’s “consequence” will attract a wife (2:58). In his final words to Elizabeth Bennet during the proposal scene, Mr Collins assumes she will succumb to his offer once her family discusses the matter with her: “I am persuaded that when sanctioned by the express authority of both your excellent parents, my proposals will not fail of being acceptable” (2:109). But because Elizabeth Bennet’s father is still alive, she does not suffer from the same financial pressure that Miss Mansfield does. In fact, when she finally leaves the room, Elizabeth is confident that her father will support her decision to reject Mr Collins: Elizabeth was “determined, if [Mr Collins] persisted in considering her repeated refusals as flattering encouragement, to apply to their father, whose negative might be 158 uttered in such a manner as must be decisive, and whose behavior at least could not be mistaken for the affectation and coquetry of an elegant female” (2:109). Of course, Mrs Bennet does attempt to pressure Elizabeth to accept Mr Collins. Even after Mr Bennet refuses to “insist upon her marrying him,” Mrs Bennet does not “give up the point”: “She talked to Elizabeth again and again; coaxed and threatened her by turns” (2:112). After her unsuccessful endeavors “to secure Jane in her interest,” Mrs Bennet even goes so far as to call “on Miss Lucas for her compassion, and [entreat] her to persuade her friend Lizzy to comply with the wishes of all her family. ‘Pray do, my dear Miss Lucas,’ she added in a melancholy tone, ‘for nobody is on my side, nobody takes part with me, I am cruelly used, nobody feels for my poor nerves’” (2:113). Because nobody will join Mrs Bennet in her quest to marry Elizabeth off to the heir of the estate for the benefit of the whole family, the serious role that family pressures — such as that which Richardson’s Miss Mansfield and Austen’s own Fanny Price and Anne Eliot have to endure — is underscored in Elizabeth Bennet’s plot by a comic mocking of Mrs Bennet. Elizabeth is not only supported by the other characters in the novel, she is also supported by readers who find it hard to identify with Mrs Bennet’s exaggerated “nerves” which come and go at curiously convenient times throughout the narrative. Charlotte Lucas, however, is not so lucky. As with Mr Collins, many of Charlotte Lucas’s ideologies can be traced back to Sir Charles Grandison — specifically, to the marriage plot of Sir Charles Grandison’s sister, Charlotte 159 Grandison. 13 Just as Sir Charles rushes his sister’s marriage to Lord G, Mr Collins surprises Charlotte Lucas with his quick proposal. 14 The narrator tells us that Charlotte Lucas is ultimately surprised by how promptly her “scheme” to engage Mr Collins’s addresses works: Appearances were so favourable that when they parted at night, she would have felt almost sure of success if he had not been to leave Hertfordshire so very soon. But here, she did injustice to the fire and independence of his character, for it led him to escape out of Longbourn House the next morning with admirable slyness, and hasten to Lucas Lodge to throw himself at her feet. (2:121) Once Charlotte Lucas consents, Mr Collins repeatedly pressures Charlotte to name her date. Sir Charles also pressures Charlotte Grandison to set a specific, early date for her wedding. By emphasizing the fact that Mr Collins constantly repeats his entreaties, Austen stresses the similarities between Charlotte Lucas’s lack of enthusiasm for her marriage and Charlotte Grandison’s reluctance to be “choacked” by the “matrimonial noose” (2:334). This point initially comes up when Mr Collins and Charlotte Lucas are first engaged: “In as short a time as Mr Collins’s long speeches would allow, everything was settled between them to the satisfaction of both; and as they entered the house, he earnestly entreated her to name the day that was to make him the happiest of men” (2:122). However, the narrator bluntly explains that Charlotte Lucas, like Charlotte Grandison, was in no hurry to set a date: “Miss Lucas, who 13 Jocelyn Harris outlines the ways in which “Charlotte Grandison’s marriage to a man who seems at first ridiculous is mirrored by her namesake Charlotte Lucas” (see esp. Art of Memory 99–104). 14 Also, in Volume VI of Sir Charles Grandison, Harriet’s uncle and Sir Charles both pressure her to name an early date (3:94 and 3:97–98). 160 accepted him solely from the pure and disinterested desire of an establishment, cared not how soon that establishment were gained” (2:122). Mr Collins echoes his desire for a date in his letter of thanks to the Bennet family: “Lady Catherine, he added, so heartily approved his marriage, that she wished it to take place as soon as possible, which he trusted would be an unanswerable argument with his amiable Charlotte to name an early day for making him the happiest of men” (2:128). But when Mr Collins leaves Hertfordshire for the second time, Charlotte has still not succumbed to his repeated requests: After a week spent in professions of love and schemes of felicity, Mr Collins was called from his amiable Charlotte by the arrival of Saturday. The pain of separation, however, might be alleviated on his side, by preparations for the reception of his bride, as he had reason to hope, that shortly after his next return into Hertfordshire, the day would be fixed that was to make him the happiest of men. (2:139) Mr Collins’s consistent use of the term “happiest of men” echoes language used for marriages that Sir Charles has a hand in bringing about. For example, when Charlotte Grandison finally consents to name a date for her marriage ceremony, Lord G tells his Aunt, “Tuesday was to be his happy day” (2:317). And when Clementina meets Harriet Byron after Harriet is married to Sir Charles, she says, “receive my thanks for making happy the man I wished to be the happiest of men; for well does he deserve to be made so” (3:355). Austen subtitles her short dramatization of Richardson’s play “The Happy Man,” suggesting she was familiar with these references to Sir Charles Grandison’s character and was alluding to her early joke in Pride and Prejudice. Through Charlotte Lucas’s plot, Austen highlights the role that family expectations and financial pressure can play in women’s decisions to marry. By 161 dramatizing the family’s reaction to Charlotte’s engagement, Austen makes specific the kind of pressures that Miss Mansfield may have felt. The narrator makes it clear that Charlotte has considered the fact that Mr Collins was “neither sensible nor agreeable,” while also highlighting the fact that these considerations do not impede on the family’s thoughts. Upon Charlotte’s engagement to Mr Collins, the narrator dwells on how the family only rejoices in Charlotte’s “good luck” (2:123): Sir William and Lady Lucas were speedily applied to for their consent; and it was bestowed with a most joyful alacrity. Mr Collins’s present circumstances made it a most eligible match for their daughter, to whom they could give little fortune; and his prospects of future wealth were exceedingly fair. Lady Lucas began directly to calculate with more interest than the matter had ever excited before, how many years longer Mr Bennet was likely to live; and Sir William gave it as his decided opinion that whenever Mr Collins should be in possession of Longbourn estate, it would be highly expedient that both he and his wife should make their appearance at St. James’s. The whole family in short were properly overjoyed on the occasion. The younger girls formed hopes of coming out a year or two sooner than they might otherwise have done; and the boys were relieved from their apprehension of Charlotte’s dying an old maid. (2:122) In her description of the family’s celebrations, the narrator systematically highlights their selfishness. Everybody considers how he or she will benefit from the match: Lady Lucas will finally triumph over her rival, Mrs Bennet; Sir William’s desire to present his daughter and son-in-law at St. James’s will be fulfilled; the boys are free from the expectation of having to support an old maid; and the girls get to come out sooner. There is no mention of Charlotte Lucas’s affections — or lack thereof — for Mr Collins. Austen’s narrator explains that the very serious motivation of “preservation from want” is what ultimately leads Charlotte to encourage her intended (2:123). But this extended description of the family’s reactions, suggests that there 162 was also a release of underlying family tension that existed because Charlotte was not fulfilling the family’s understood set of expectations. Charlotte Lucas, as far as we see, does not consider that she has the option to marry for love. Throughout the novel, Charlotte never wavers from the marriage philosophy that she espouses to Elizabeth during their initial conversation about Jane and Bingley. While Charlotte declares that she thinks Jane will fall in love with Bingley — “when she is secure of him, there will be leisure for falling love as much as she chuses” — she makes no similar claims for her own marriage to Mr Collins (2:22). Elizabeth’s response — “your plan is a good one” if “nothing is in question but the desire of being well married” — highlights Charlotte’s conscious appropriation of Sir Charles’s advice. Charlotte openly follows and advocates for Sir Charles’s methods, but she expects the end results to be different. Charlotte Lucas’s blunt explanation as to why she accepts Mr Collins’s proposal is powerful: “I ask only a comfortable home; and considering Mr Collins’s character, connections, and situation in life, I am convinced that my chance of happiness with him is as fair, as most people can boast on entering the marriage state” (2:125). Charlotte never uses the word “love” or “gratitude” in reference to herself — she has no delusions that either will come to her. As Elizabeth later remarks, Charlotte chooses her fate “with her eyes open” (2:216). Charlotte Lucas seems to follow the philosophy that Charlotte Grandison espouses towards the beginning of her marriage: “Married people, by frequent 163 absence, may have a chance for a little happiness” (2:434). 15 But while Austen draws many parallels between the plots of Charlotte Lucas and Charlotte Grandison, Austen is careful to revise Richardson’s ending. Charlotte Grandison eventually finds happiness with Lord G after a very turbulent honeymoon period; in the final volume of Sir Charles Grandison, Charlotte writes to Harriet in order to outline her newfound “conjugal felicity”: “I, Charlotte G who married with indifference the poor Lord G, … now stand forth, an example of true conjugal felicity, and an encouragement for girls who venture into the married state, without that prodigious quantity of violent passion, which some hare-brained creatures think an essential of Love” (3:402). In contrast, before Elizabeth leaves Huntsford, the narrator observes that Charlotte’s state of relative contentment will eventually end: “Her home and her housekeeping, her parish and her poultry, and all their dependent concerns, had not yet lost their charms” (emphasis mine, 2:216). Austen will not allow Charlotte Lucas to develop love for Mr Collins; instead, she clearly points out that things for Charlotte Lucas will get worse as time goes on. Elizabeth Bennet, as Jocelyn Harris has argued, also inherits some of Charlotte Grandison’s qualities: namely, her “satiric wit” (87). But once Darcy begins emulating Sir Charles’s positive traits, Elizabeth’s marriage plot also begins to resemble Harriet Byron’s story in significant ways. During Darcy’s first proposal to Elizabeth, his behavior is so repulsive that she cannot even pretend to feel gratitude: 15 The narrator of Pride and Prejudice suggests that the couple does not spend much time together when she observes, “When Mr Collins would be forgotten, there was 164 “In such cases as this, it is, I believe the established mode to express a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed, however unequally they may be returned. It is natural that obligation should be felt, and if I could feel gratitude, I would now thank you” (2:190). However, in a scene that resembles Harriet Byron’s initial visit to Sir Charles’s estate, Darcy’s positive Grandisonian qualities begin to take shape. 16 Elizabeth’s expressions of gratitude spring forth as her opinion of Darcy changes: “Every idea that had been brought forward by the housekeeper was favourable to his character, and as she stood before the canvas, on which he was represented, and fixed his eyes upon herself, she thought of his regard with a deeper sentiment of gratitude than it had ever raised before; she remembered its warmth and softened its impropriety of expression” (2:251). The similarities Austen draws between Harriet Byron’s first visit to Sir Charles’s estate and Elizabeth Bennet’s first visit to Pemberley suggest that we can infer that this mention of “gratitude” actually alludes to the early stages of Elizabeth’s love for Darcy. After all, at this point in the novel, Darcy has done nothing for Elizabeth to be grateful for except propose to her — he has not yet saved Lydia or rekindled the romance between Jane and Bingley. Once Elizabeth returns to the inn, she begins to reflect upon her new feelings: It was gratitude. — Gratitude, not merely for having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough, to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations accompanying her rejection. He who, she had been persuaded, would really a great air of comfort throughout [the house], and by Charlotte’s evident enjoyment of it, Elizabeth supposed he must be often forgotten” (2:157). 16 Gerard Barker and Jocelyn Harris discuss the similarities between these two estate visits. 165 avoid her as his greatest enemy, seemed, on this accidental meeting, most eager to preserve the acquaintance, and without any indelicate display of regard, or any peculiarity of manner, where their two selves only were concerned, was soliciting the good opinion of her friends, and bent on making her known to his sister. Such a change in a man of so much pride, excited not only astonishment but gratitude — for to love, ardent love, it must be attributed; and as such its impression on her was of a sort to be encouraged, as by no means unpleasing though it could not be exactly defined. She respected, she esteemed, she was grateful to him, she felt a real interest in his welfare; and she only wanted to know how far she wished that welfare to depend upon herself, and how far it would be for the happiness of both that she should employ the power, which her fancy told her she still possessed, of bringing on the renewal of his addresses. (emphasis mine, 2:266) Elizabeth later encourages Darcy to propose to her a second time by following through with her “desperate resolution” to express her gratitude for his help with Lydia’s marriage: “Ever since I have known it, I have been most anxious to acknowledge to you how gratefully I feel it. I should not have merely my own gratitude to express” (2:365). The narrator’s classification of Elizabeth’s resolution as “desperate” may imply that Elizabeth hopes Darcy will understanding that her allusion to her “gratitude” is actually a declaration of her love. It is no coincidence that Elizabeth rejects the character that appropriates the negative Grandisonian traits before she marries the character who improves upon Richardson’s hero. Austen uses the parallel marriage plots of Darcy/Elizabeth and Collins/Charlotte in order to show what happens when we uncritically accept Sir Charles Grandison’s attitudes towards marriages of convenience. If we are to appropriate Sir Charles, we need to be like Darcy — we need to take the good attributes of Richardson’s hero and improve upon them. It is important to note that, in stark contrast to Sir Charles Grandison, all marriages in Pride and Prejudice do not 166 end to everybody’s satisfaction. Richardson’s Charlotte Grandison and Lord G eventually end up in a marriage that is just as happy as the marriage between the hero and the heroine, even though Charlotte did not enter into the marriage with love. However, Austen will not allow this to be so for her parallel marriage plots. Only the marriage that is founded in love and gratitude is allowed a happy ending. Mansfield Park Jane Austen structures Pride and Prejudice so as to draw comparisons between two different Sir Charles Grandison figures in order to begin to address several of the themes that are central to Miss Mansfield’s marriage plot. But ultimately, the love match between Elizabeth and Darcy takes precedence over the peripheral story of Mr Collins and Charlotte Lucas. While Charlotte Lucas’s tale manages to cast a dark shadow over the “light, bright, and sparkling” narrative of Pride and Prejudice, the marriage of convenience is ultimately the story of a minor character that remains off- scene for the entire final volume. 17 In Mansfield Park, Austen’s tone shifts. Instead of addressing the subject of marriages of convenience through the comic figure of Mr Collins, Sir Charles reappears as the towering Sir Thomas Bertram. Contributing to the shift in tone from Mansfield Park to Pride and Prejudice is the fact that Fanny Price — the new incarnation of Miss Mansfield — endures immediate financial stress and extended family pressure that Austen’s earlier manifestations of Miss Mansfield did not have to endure. In Pride and Prejudice, both Elizabeth Bennet and Charlotte 17 In a February 4, 1813 letter to Cassandra, Jane Austen refers to Pride and Prejudice as “rather too light & bright & sparkling” (203). 167 Lucas face future poverty if they remain unmarried, but neither one of them experiences an immediate economic crisis such as the one Fanny Price experiences. With this shift in tone, comes a more extended rewrite of the marriage plot of Richardson’s Miss Mansfield. By reinventing the minor character of Miss Mansfield as the heroine of Mansfield Park and taking Fanny’s first name from an even more obscure character (Miss Mansfield’s younger sister, Fanny), Austen makes the peripheral figure of the impoverished female a central concern. 18 Previous critics have briefly pointed out the similarities between the names of characters in Mansfield Park and Sir Charles Grandison; for example, Jocelyn Harris and E.E. Duncan-Jones both show that Richardson’s Sir Thomas Mansfield can be equated with Fanny’s uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram, the owner of Mansfield Park. 19 But I suggest that the connections between Richardson’s novel and Austen’s revision go far beyond what E.E. Duncun-Jones calls the “foolishly minute” name connections (16). Austen, I argue, includes these details in order to signal to her readers that she rewrites Richardson’s portrayal of Miss Mansfield’s story in order to give voice to the minor character’s perpetual “silences.” As Austen revisits Richardson’s story in 18 Many recent post-colonial critics have noted two other probable source names for Mansfield Park: the Mansfield Judgment (1772) and Thomas Clarkson’s A History of the Slave Trade (1808). 19 In Jane Austen’s Art of Memory (1989), Jocelyn Harris surmises that Sir Thomas Bertram’s estate is probably named after Sir Thomas Mansfield (132). In a short Notes and Queries article (1951), E.E. Duncan-Jones points out what he calls two “foolishly minute” connections between Sir Charles Grandison and Mansfield Park: “In [Austen’s] favorite Sir Charles Grandison, there is a Mansfield House, belonging to a Sir Thomas (Mansfield, not of course Bertram). The other point concerns another Sir Thomas in the same novel, the faulty father of the hero” (16). 168 Mansfield Park, she offers interpretations of the motivations behind the actions of various characters in Richardson’s text. The most overt revision of Miss Mansfield’s story occurs in the scene in which Sir Thomas Bertram approaches Fanny Price about marrying Henry Crawford. 20 This scene specifically refers back to the moment in which Sir Charles approaches the “silent” Miss Mansfield about marrying Lord W. Richardson’s epistolary novel only exposes readers to the thoughts of two characters in this scene: Sir Charles and Harriet Byron. Richardson’s version is told in a letter to his friend and confidant, Dr Bartlett. But this letter is embedded in one of Harriet Byron’s letters to her family (volume IV letter 2), thereby creating an opportunity for Harriet to describe her approval of Sir Charles’s doings before she transcribes Sir Charles’s letter detailing the story. In Sir Charles’s summary of his visit to the Mansfield home, he paints the conversation in a positive light, concluding with him leaving the family “followed by the blessings of [all of the Mansfields]” (2:271). In contrast, Austen’s revision of the scene is a traumatic incident for Fanny, concluding with Fanny in tears. Unlike Richardson’s version, Austen’s rewrite allows readers access to the thoughts and motivations of multiple characters. Austen’s intrusive, omniscient narrator is privy to Fanny’s thoughts and therefore able to disclose the reasons behind the heroine’s perpetual “silences.” 20 Jocelyn Harris reads this scene as a revision of Sir Hargrave's proposal to Harriet Byron (see esp. Art of Memory 131–133). 169 In both proposal scenes a benevolent patriarch approaches a young lady to discuss an offer that would alter the financial status of her impoverished family. As I have previously outlined, Miss Mansfield’s entire clan discusses the proposal before her mother informs Miss Mansfield that the family has “unanimously” agreed that they want her to accept the offer. In Mansfield Park Sir Thomas Bertram expects a similar deference to the family’s wishes from Fanny Price. Sir Thomas challenges Fanny’s refusal of Mr Crawford by pointing out that she did not ask any of her family members for advice. He also specifically reprimands her for disregarding the financial benefits of the match for her family back in Portsmouth: You have now shewn me that you can be willful and perverse, that you can and will decide for yourself, without any consideration or deference for those who have surely some right to guide you — without even asking their advice. You have shewn yourself very, very different from any thing that I had imagined. The advantage or disadvantage of your family — of your parents — your brothers and sisters — never seems to have had a moment’s share in your thoughts on this occasion. How they might be benefited, how they must rejoice in such an establishment for you — is nothing to you. (3:318) As Fanny continues to insist that she cannot marry Mr Crawford, Sir Thomas’s accusations of ingratitude and selfishness eventually move Fanny to “tears.” But despite her refusals, Sir Thomas begins “to have hopes” that she will eventually relent: “He knew her to be very timid, and exceedingly nervous; and thought it not improbable that her mind might be in such a state, as a little time, a little pressing, a little patience, and a little impatience, a judicious mixture of all on the lover’s side, might work their usual effect on” (3:320). By carefully outlining Sir Thomas’s motivates, Austen gives her readers a new perspective from which to consider the 170 disconnection between Sir Charles’s words and his actions with regard to Miss Mansfield’s situation. Sir Thomas makes temporary provisions in order to relieve Fanny of immediate pressure to accept Henry Crawford, but these provisions are motivated by the patriarch’s desire to convince Fanny to accept Henry in the end. Austen’s revision suggests that perhaps, like Sir Thomas, Sir Charles only claims to protect Miss Mansfield from family pressure in order to gain his point in the end. Ignorant of Sir Thomas’s thought process, however, Fanny reads these temporary reprieves as evidence of his kindness. Sir Thomas suggests that he will protect Fanny from direct family pressure by keeping Mr Crawford’s proposal a secret from the rest of the family: “I shall make no mention below of what has passed; I shall not even tell your aunt Bertram. There is no occasion for spreading the disappointment; say nothing about it yourself” (3:322). The narrator relates Fanny’s gratitude for being spared from the family confrontation: “This was an act of kindness which Fanny felt at her heart. To be spared from her aunt Norris’s interminable reproaches! — he left her in a glow of gratitude. Any thing might be bearable rather than such reproaches. Even to see Mr Crawford would be less overpowering” (3:322). But Fanny only enjoys temporary relief from pressure. Eventually she has to endure a rather lengthy confrontation with Mr Crawford, who continues to be encouraged by Sir Thomas’s assurances that all of Fanny’s family members encourage the match: “In all his niece’s family and friends there could be but one opinion, one wish on the subject; the influence of all who loved her must incline one way” (3:329). 171 Sir Thomas reasons that by appearing kind, he will gain his point in the end: Sir Thomas resolved to abstain from all farther importunity with his niece, and to show no open interference. Upon her disposition he believed kindness might be the best way of working. Intreaty should be from one quarter only. The forbearance of her family on a point, respecting which she could be in no doubt of their wishes, might be their surest means of forwarding it. (3:330) By highlighting the way in which Sir Thomas immediately breaks his resolution to “show no open interference,” Austen’s narrator highlights Sir Thomas’s — and by analogy, Sir Charles’s — willingness to steer a young woman into what he (rather than she) believes to be best. Despite his claim that he will not show “open interference,” Sir Thomas immediately opposes his earlier resolution by taking “the first opportunity” of praising Mr Crawford to Fanny for his “perseverance” and for having “chosen so well” (3:330). Austen again emphasizes Sir Thomas’s deceitfulness when Sir Thomas interrupts Fanny’s explanation as to why she cannot marry Mr Crawford: “My dear,” interrupted Sir Thomas, “there is no occasion for this. Your feelings are as well known to me, as my wishes and regrets must be to you. There is nothing more to be said or done. From this hour, the subject is never to be revived between us. You will have nothing to fear, or to be agitated about. You cannot suppose me capable of trying to persuade you to marry against your inclinations. Your happiness and advantage are all that I have in view, and nothing is required of you but to bear with Mr Crawford’s endeavors to convince you, that they may not be incompatible with his. He proceeds at his own risk. You are on safe ground.” (3:331) After this speech the narrator again shows that Sir Thomas almost immediately breaks his compact: “In spite of his intended silence, Sir Thomas found himself once more obliged to mention the subject to his niece, to prepare her briefly for its being imported to her aunts; a measure which he would still have avoided, if possible, but 172 which became necessary from the totally opposite feelings of Mr Crawford, as to any secrecy of proceeding” (3:331). The use of the phrase “once more” in this passage emphasizes the much-repeated idea that Sir Thomas breaks his promise to protect Fanny from family pressure at multiple points in the narrative. Just as Miss Mansfield faces family pressure due to Sir Charles’s proposal, Fanny Price also endures much pressure from her family. After Sir Thomas communicates the news to Fanny’s aunts, Fanny suffers persecution from both of them. Mrs Norris, who promised not to speak of it, “looked her increased ill-will” (Vol III Ch 2, 3:332). But Lady Bertram’s response distresses Fanny, as the usually complaisant woman insists upon advising Fanny about the proposal: “I must just speak of it once, I told Sir Thomas I must once, and then I shall have done” (Vol III Ch 2, 3:333). Lady Bertram’s advice manages to shock Fanny: “I could do very well without you, if you were married to a man of such good estate as Mr Crawford. And you must be aware, Fanny, that it is every young woman’s duty to accept such a very unexceptionable offer as this.” This was almost the only rule of conduct, the only piece of advice, which Fanny had ever received from her aunt in the course of eight years and a half. — It silenced her. (3:333) Fanny’s silence is, of course, a response to her shock at being given direct advice by Lady Bertram. However, Fanny’s silence also recalls Miss Mansfield’s silent responses to the marriage proposal. Here, Austen offers her readers a possible interpretation of Miss Mansfield’s silences — perhaps Miss Mansfield was equally shocked by the forceful advice that she was unexpectedly given by her family. 173 When Edmund returns home to have “all the great events of the last fortnight” relayed to him by his father, he initially interprets the situation as his father does (3:334). Under the impression that he is working on Fanny’s behalf, Edmund pressures Fanny to accept Mr Crawford’s offer. Like Sir Thomas, Edmund believes that Fanny will capitulate to Mr Crawford: “Crawford had been too precipitate. He had not given her time to attach herself. He had begun at the wrong end. With such powers as his, however, and such a disposition as hers, Edmund trusted that every thing would work out a happy conclusion” (3:335). When he finally approaches Fanny about the subject, Edmund seems to set himself apart from the rest of the family by doing what they do not do: he asks her about her “feelings” (3:346). At first, it seems Fanny has an ally in Edmund, particularly when Edmund explicitly states that he does not “blame” her for refusing Crawford (3:346). Edmund seems to agree with her when he says, “You did not love [Mr Crawford] — nothing could have justified your accepting him” (3:347). This declaration temporarily puts Fanny, who “had not felt so comfortable for days and days,” at ease (3:347). Throughout the interview, he claims that he has a different point of view than the rest of the family. But even though the reasoning behind his arguments is different, he still ultimately joins his family in the same cause. In this way, Edmund is much like Sir Charles. As Edmund begins to espouse beliefs that resemble Sir Charles’s ideas, Fanny’s supporter becomes another member of the family whom she has to battle. Edmund declares that time will create the love that is required for Fanny to marry Mr Crawford: 174 Crawford’s is no common attachment; he perseveres, with the hope of creating that regard which has not been created before. This, we know, must be a work of time. But (with an affectionate smile), let him succeed at last, Fanny, let him succeed at last. You have proved yourself upright and disinterested, prove yourself grateful and tender– hearted; and then you will be the perfect model of a woman, which I have always believed you born for. (3:347) The “but” in this passage is important because it signals that, while his reasoning may be different, Edmund ultimately agrees with the rest of the family: Fanny should marry Mr Crawford. Edmund implies that Fanny could will herself to love Crawford if she indulged in her gratitude: “I cannot suppose that you have not the wish to love him — the natural wish of gratitude. You must have some feeling of that sort. You must be sorry for your own indifference” (3:348). By dwelling on Fanny’s gratitude, Edmund revisits sentiments that were first expressed by Sir Thomas. After she declares that she cannot marry Mr Crawford, Sir Thomas accuses Fanny of “ingratitude” (3:319). Fanny’s “gratitude” is also a subject of some concern to Mr Crawford: “her diffidence, gratitude, and softness, made every expression of indifference seem almost an effort of self-denial” (3:327). Edmund, Sir Thomas, and Mr Crawford emphasize Fanny’s gratitude, because, like Sir Charles, they connect gratitude with love. As I outlined earlier, Sir Charles’s parting lines to Miss Mansfield once she agrees to marry Lord W highlight Sir Charles’s belief that a grateful wife can reform her husband: “Your goodness, will make him good. I dare say that he will engage your gratitude; and I defy a good mind to separate love from gratitude” (2:271). In his conversation with Fanny, Edmund echoes Sir Charles’s belief that a woman’s goodness can make a man good and lead to 175 a mutually happy union: “[Mr Crawford] has chosen his partner, indeed, with rare felicity. He will make you happy, Fanny, I know he will make you happy; but you will make him everything” (3:351). Although Edmund’s lines on the subject of Fanny’s gratitude come dangerously close to Sir Charles’s philosophies, Austen revises her hero’s ideas in one important way. Both Edmund and Sir Charles draw connections between gratitude and love; but whereas Sir Charles advocates for marriages to take place before the love blooms, Edmund cautions Fanny against such a plan. Even with this important shift, however, Fanny is disturbed by Edmund’s unconscious repetitions of Sir Charles’s philosophies. For example, Edmund jokes about Miss Crawford’s suggestion that Fanny should marry Mr Crawford with the expectation that the love will eventually emerge: “She meant to urge [Mr Crawford] to persevere in the hope of being loved in time, and of having his addresses most kindly received at the end of about ten years’ happy marriage” (3:354). Edmund highlights the ridiculousness of Mary Crawford’s notions by relating that her words made everyone “laugh.” But Fanny’s struggle to “give the smile that was here asked for” suggests that she sees how close Edmund has come to appropriating Miss Crawford’s — and Sir Charles’s — attitudes (3:354). In addition to battling the idea that gratitude will eventually lead to love, Fanny must also war with her family’s belief in Sir Charles’s assumption that one of the few reasonable reasons for rejecting a proposal is if a woman’s affections have 176 been previously engaged. 21 Like Sir Charles, Sir Thomas also subscribes to the philosophy that being in love with somebody else is one of the few reasonable reasons for rejecting a marriage proposal. This explain why, once Sir Thomas “was easy on the score of the cousins” (i.e., once he convinced himself that Fanny was not in love with one of his sons), Fanny’s “unaccountableness was confirmed,” and his “displeasure increased” (3:317). Of course, like Sir Charles, Sir Thomas disregards the rules of decorum that Miss Mansfield and Fanny Price must follow: propriety dictates that women cannot declare their affections for a man until he makes her an offer of marriage. 22 What is more, Sir Thomas is wrong — at this point in the novel Fanny is already in love with her cousin, Edmund. Because Fanny keeps this detail to herself, Henry Crawford continues to believe he will succeed in getting her to capitulate to this advances. Austen’s narrator tells us, “he knew not that he had a pre- engaged heart to attack. Of that, he had not suspicion” (3:326). By adding this important plot element, Austen offers her readers another perspective from which to consider Miss Mansfield’s perpetual “silences.” Austen’s rewrite asks us to pause and rethink those silences — the possibility that Miss Mansfield was engaged to somebody 21 Although Sir Charles mostly emphasizes the idea that Miss Mansfield should not marry Lord W if she is in love with somebody else, Sir Charles does suggest one other scenario in which he would prefer Miss Mansfield reject Lord W’s offer. Sir Charles tells Miss Mansfield that he would not wish her to marry Lord W if “my Lord’s death would be more agreeable to you than his life” (2:269). 22 Fanny explicitly reminds Edmund of the rules of propriety regarding women’s responses to men’s proposals during their tête-à-tête about Mr Crawford. Referring to the philosophies espoused by Mr Crawford’s sisters, Fanny states, “we think very differently of the nature of women, if they can imagine a woman so very soon capable 177 else (yet bound by convention not to say so) is only one of several possible explanations for Miss Mansfield’s silences. Because, as we have seen, Sir Thomas adheres to several of Sir Charles’s beliefs, he eventually takes extreme measures to encourage Fanny to marry Mr Crawford. Sir Thomas sends Fanny back to Portsmouth in the hope that the financial pressures will encourage her to change her mind. Like Sir Charles, he sees his actions as benevolent. In fact, the narrator describes in detail his belief that he is curing Fanny of what he interprets to be her “diseased mind”: It was a medicinal project upon his niece’s understanding, which he must consider as at present diseased. A residence of eight or nine years in the abode of wealth and plenty had a little disordered her powers of comparing and judging. Her Father’s house would, in all probability, teach her the value of a good income; and he trusted that she would be the wiser and happier woman all her life, for the experiment he devised. (3:369) By imagining how Sir Thomas would interpret Fanny’s feelings, Austen’s narrator highlights Fanny’s fortitude: “Could Sir Thomas have seen all his niece’s feelings, when she wrote her first letter to her aunt, he would not have despaired. … Could he have seen only half that she felt before the end of a week, he would have thought Mr Crawford sure of her, and been delighted with his own sagacity” (3:389). Hinting that it would have been reasonable for Sir Thomas to consider his plan a success, Austen’s narrator suggests that weaker women, such as Miss Mansfield, might have easily been persuaded to agree to the proposals of a man as wealthy as Mr Crawford. of returning a reply” (3:353). Fanny argues that immediately accepting Mr Crawford’s proposal would have gone against the rules of propriety. 178 By resisting family pressure — both in Portsmouth and at Mansfield Park — Fanny Price manages to keep herself “safe from Mr Crawford” in the end (3:461). The narrator’s reflections on the novel’s abrupt ending are significant because they could be read as an invitation to interpret Austen’s final chapter as a revision of Richardson’s ending. Just as Austen rewrote Charlotte Grandison’s ending through the character of Charlotte Lucas, Austen also revises Miss Mansfield’s ending in Mansfield Park. Emphasizing her revision of Richardson’s ending, Austen begins her final chapter with an explicit discussion of conclusions: “Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore every body, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest” (3:461). As previously discussed, Richardson’s seventh volume is dedicated to showing that marriages of convenience — including Miss Mansfield’s marriage to the reformed rake, Lord W — are just as successful as the love match between the hero and the heroine. But unlike Richardson’s Miss Mansfield, Austen’s Fanny Price makes a conscious decision to risk her financial security in order to gain her “happy ending.” In sharp contrast to Richardson’s ending, Austen’s conclusion highlights the differences between Fanny’s “happiness” 23 and the misery of her cousin Maria, whose marriage of convenience to Mr Rushworth ends in divorce after Maria runs off with Henry Crawford. By highlighting these differences directly after stating that she will 23 In the second paragraph of the last chapter, the narrator tells us four times that Fanny is “happy” (3:461). 179 only restore the “faultless,” Austen’s narrator implicates characters like Maria, who marry for “fortune and consequence” (3:202). Moreover, the specific reference to “consequence” takes us back to the marriage of convenience outlined in the first line of the novel: “About thirty years ago, Miss Maria Ward of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet’s lady, with all the comfort and consequences of an handsome house and large income” (emphasis mine, 3:3). But despite acquiring Sir Thomas Bertram's “consequences” Lady Bertram — like her namesake daughter, Maria — never achieves the mutual confidence with her husband that Richardson’s hero assumes will eventually result when a women marries a man of consequence. Persuasion It was Henry Austen who bestowed the title of Persuasion on Jane Austen’s final completed novel manuscript before publishing it soon after her death (Le Faye 259). 24 His decision to do so seems appropriate, as the role of persuasion is one of the central concerns of the novel. This title also signals back to Jane Austen’s engagement with Samuel Richardson’s notion of persuasion that she grappled with in Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park. But in her final completed work, Jane Austen revisits the topic of persuasion from a new angle. Rather than readdressing 24 According to Deirdre Le Faye’s second edition of Jane Austen: A Family Record (1989), Jane Austen had discussed several possibilities for the novel's title, and Cassandra thought the most likely to be chosen would be The Elliots (238). 180 the question of having to decide whether to agree to a marriage of convenience, the main question before us in Persuasion is whether women should marry for love without the money required to maintain them in the style to which they are accustomed. With the exception of Elizabeth Bennet’s brief infatuation with Wickham in Pride and Prejudice, this is a new concept for an Austen heroine to consider. In Persuasion, Austen asks an important question: should family and friends persuade women away from somebody they love due to a lack of fortune? As Austen explores persuasion from this new angle, she again refutes some of Richardson’s maxims. And, although not by name, the Miss Mansfield plot is alluded to once again in order to address the notion of paid and unpaid servitude in Sir Charles Grandison. From the beginning of Persuasion, the narrator hints that Lady Russell’s motives for encouraging Anne to break her engagement with Captain Wentworth stem from negative aspects of her personality. After detailing Lady Russell’s benevolence, her correct conduct, and her good breeding, the narrator adds that Lady Russell also had “prejudices on the side of ancestry” and “a value for rank and consequence, which blinded her a little to the faults of those who possessed them” (5:11). In the fourth chapter, the narrator explains how the Elliots and Lady Russell persuaded Anne Eliot to break her engagement with Wentworth: A short period of exquisite felicity followed [the engagement between Anne and Captain Wentworth], and but a short one. — Troubles soon arose. Sir Walter, on being applied to, without actually withholding his consent, or saying it should never be, gave it all the negative of great astonishment, great coldness, great silence, and a professed resolution of doing nothing for his daughter. He thought it a very degrading alliance; and Lady Russell, though with more tempered and pardonable pride, received it as a most unfortunate one. (5:26) 181 Here Austen describes Anne’s personality as being somewhat akin to Clementina’s in Sir Charles Grandison — there is something in her nature that makes her especially susceptible to being persuaded by friends and family members. Although Anne was not absolutely prohibited from marrying Wentworth, the disapproval of those around her was too much for her to endure: “Such opposition, as these feelings produced, was more than Anne could combat … She was persuaded to believe the engagement a wrong thing — indiscreet, improper, hardly capable of success, and not deserving it” (5:27–28). As Anne grows older, however, she sees that she should not allow herself to be guided by her friends. Three years after breaking the engagement with Captain Wentworth, Lady Russell loses the ability to persuade Anne in love matters. The narrator tells us that Lady Russell’s attempts to persuade Anne to marry Charles Musgrove are unsuccessful: “[Lady Russell] would have rejoiced to see her at twenty- two, so respectably removed from the partialities and injustice of her father’s house, and settled so permanently near herself. But in this case, Anne had left nothing for advice to do” (5:29). By the age of twenty-seven, Anne had grown to regret being persuaded by Lady Russell: Anne, at seven and twenty, thought very differently from what she had been made to think at nineteen — She did not blame Lady Russell, she did not blame herself for having been guided by her; but she felt that were any young person, in similar circumstances, to apply to her for counsel, they would never receive any of such certain immediate wretchedness, such uncertain future good. — She was persuaded that under every disadvantage of disapprobation at home, and every anxiety 182 attending his profession, all their probable fears, delays and disappointments, she should yet have been a happier woman in maintaining the engagement, than she had been in the sacrifice of it; and this, she fully believed, had the usual share, had even more than a usual share of all such solicitude and suspense been theirs, without reference to the actual results of their case, which, as it happened, would have bestowed earlier prosperity than could be reasonably calculated on. (5:29) The narrator seems to support Anne’s conclusions about the dangers of persuasion by deeming Anne’s trajectory unnatural: “She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older — the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning” (5:30). This statement is key because it directly contradicts the education of Harriet Byron in the final volume of Sir Charles Grandison regarding her romantic ideals. Throughout Richardson’s novel, Harriet advances the “romantic” notion that she could only marry her first love, Sir Charles (see 3:404). However, after witnessing Charlotte Grandison’s conversion into a wife who is “satisfied with herself, her situation and prospects,” Harriet declares that she is “brought over to [Charlotte Grandison’s] opinion, that if the second man be worthy, a woman may be happy, who has not been indulged in her first fancy” (3: 412). In this way, Harriet Byron’s conversion compliments the maxims under the heading “First Love” that Richardson includes in the 1755 Collection. Richardson warns that “few first loves are fit to be encouraged” and “FIRST Love is generally first folly” (320). As a whole, Austen’s oeuvre suggests a serious engagement with Richardson’s blanket claims about first attachments. Consider, for example, Austen’s exploration of second attachments in Sense and Sensibility. After poking fun at Marianne for not believing in second attachments even though she was the product of one, Austen 183 resolves Marianne’s story in a way that questions Richardson’s maxims. Austen quells Marianne’s over-frenzied passion for Willoughby only to resolve her plot in a marriage to Colonel Brandon that is a bit too mild to provide a satisfactory ending. Marianne’s eventual love for Colonel Brandon shows a kind of maturity from romantic excess, but this maturity conjures a love that is lacking in the kind of passion experienced by more well-suited couples (for example, Darcy and Elizabeth). Likewise, Anne Elliot’s love plot suggests that Austen seeks to further question Richardson’s maxims. The narrator of Persuasion makes it clear that Anne is unable to form a second attachment: “No second attachment, the only thoroughly natural, happy, and sufficient cure, at her time of life, had been possible to the nice tone of her mind, the fastidiousness of her taste, in the small limits of the society around them” (5:28). In the end, Anne Elliot gains both love and money through the resolution of her marriage plot. But what about the characters who are not so lucky? As Charlotte Lucas’s plot demonstrates, Austen sometimes sacrifices her minor characters to sadder fates in order to highlight the difficult choices women have to make with respect to the marriage market. In Persuasion, Austen gestures towards an alternative to the marriage of convenience. Once again, Austen alludes to Miss Mansfield’s plot in order to make her point. As I previously discussed, Sir Charles convinces his gouty uncle to get married by arguing that a wife makes a better nurse because she will “indulge” him in a way that servants will not. However, for Sir Charles, this benefit is not reciprocal — Sir 184 Charles explicitly states that men are not designed to nurse sick women: “Male nurses are unnatural creatures! [There is not such a character that can be respectable] Womens [sic] sphere is the house, and their shining-place the sick chamber in which they can exert all their amiable and shall I say lenient qualities?” (2:58). The debate about male and female nurses is rehearsed in Persuasion, when Charles Musgrove’s young son of the same name — both potential namesakes of Sir Charles Grandison — falls down and breaks his collarbone. Mary Musgrove objects to her husband’s plan to leave her home to nurse their child while he leaves to dine with his family as planned: “If there is any thing disagreeable going on, men are always sure to get out of it, and Charles is as bad as any of them. Very unfeeling! … So, here he is to go away and enjoy himself, and because I am the poor mother, I am not to be allowed to sit; — and yet, I am sure, I am more unfit than any body else to be about the child.” (5:56) Anne responds by echoing Sir Charles’s idea that women are better nurses than men: “Mary, I cannot wonder at your husband. Nursing does not belong to a man, it is not his province. A sick child is always the mother’s property, her own feelings generally make it so” (5:56). Eventually, Anne proposes that she and the servant stay with the child, so that her sister and Charles can dine at the Great House with Captain Wentworth. This solution ensures that the child is looked after and offers Anne a convenient excuse to avoid seeing Wentworth for one more night. But later in the novel, the narrator praises Anne for sending a servant to care for Louisa, who is seriously ill due to her fall: Charles conveyed back a far more useful person [than Charles or his father] in the old nursery-maid of the family, one who having brought 185 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. Vague wishes of getting Sarah thither, had occurred before to Mrs Musgrove and Henrietta; but without Anne, it would hardly have been resolved on, and found practicable so soon. (5:122) The narrator’s claim that the servant is a “useful person” is supported by the fact that she ultimately succeeds in nursing Louisa back to health. Austen’s extensive description of the mutually beneficial relationship between Louisa and the servant challenges Sir Charles’s philosophies regarding servants. The narrative of Persuasion suggests that paid servants can and will do a good job of caring for the sick. Austen’s narrative suggests that, rather than resort to “persuading” women into marrying sickly men as Richardson’s novel suggests, the duties of a nurse should instead be taken up by elderly women such as Sarah, who are in need of the income such positions provide. Conclusion Austen’s novels grapple with what Pride and Prejudice’s narrator calls the “mortifying conviction that handsome young men must have something to live on, as well as the plain” (2:99). This maxim, as Austen’s narratives constantly remind us, also holds true for young women on the marriage market. In her mature novels, Austen returns to Miss Mansfield’s story several times in order to explore the nuances of Richardson’s philosophies about love, money, and marriage as dramatized in Sir Charles Grandison. Given the many close connections between Jane Austen’s major 186 novels and Sir Charles Grandison, it is incredible that the readings of Austen’s novels suggested in this chapter have not been previously unearthed. This case study speaks to the power Jane Austen’s nineteenth-century relatives still have in directing current critical approaches to Jane Austen’s work. A few sentences in the family biographies of Henry Austen and J.E. Austen-Leigh have deterred critics from engaging in the kinds of critical readings of Austen’s relationship with Richardson that I discuss in this chapter. This suggests to me that there is still much work to be done. 187 Conclusion — Bridget Jones: A Contemporary Elizabeth Producer Sue Birtwistle recalls the following conversation she had with a potential American backer of the 1995 BBC television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice: “How many copies has [Jane Austen] sold?” “You mean altogether?” “Yeah. Since publication.” “Since …1813?” There was a long pause. “You mean she’s dead?” (Another pause). “So she wouldn’t be available for book signings?” (qtd. in Birtwistle viii) Almost 200 years after her death, Jane Austen re-emerged in our popular imagination as the undisputed queen of romance. In 1995 and 1996 alone, six film and television adaptations based on Austen’s novels appeared, prompting People Magazine to declare Jane Austen one of the “most intriguing people of 1995” while book publishers bemoaned the fact that she was no longer available for autographs (qtd. in Brownstein 19). Although it took Hollywood 55 years to rediscover Austen’s narratives, the concept of revising Austen’s novels for contemporary audiences is not new. With its focus on Victorian fiction, my dissertation project only scratches the surface of a larger phenomenon of women’s responses to Austen that has been gaining momentum since the nineteenth century. In addition to traditional academic criticism, this movement includes early twentieth-century stage and screen adaptations, contemporary sequels and internet fan zines set in Austen’s time, and postmodern 188 films and novels that transport Austen’s characters and stories into contemporary settings. I briefly mentioned in my introduction that my interest in contemporary Jane Austen sequels first steered me towards my dissertation topic. And at the end of my first chapter, I briefly touch upon the fact that Catherine Hubback’s The Younger Sister is the nineteenth-century forerunner to popular contemporary Jane Austen sequels, prequels, and other imitations of Austen’s work. My project suggests that the nineteenth-century novel was a crucial genre for women writing literary criticism. But as a conclusion, I want to focus on my favorite contemporary adaptation of Austen’s work in order to suggest the importance of turning our critical gaze towards twentieth- and twenty-first century responses to Austen’s stories. Like most contemporary writers who update Pride and Prejudice, Helen Fielding, the author of the wildly popular Bridget Jones’s Diary, is unabashed about the debt she owes Austen: “I shamelessly stole the plot. I thought it had been [very] well market-researched over a number of centuries” (Fielding “Interview”). Fielding recasts Austen’s Elizabeth as a thirty-something career woman who negotiates the confusing dating scene of modern London with the help of her singleton friends and a stack of self-help books. Unlike Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, with its omniscient, intrusive narrator, Bridget tells the story from her own point of view. In her Diary, Bridget chronicles her story and reflects upon it; in many of the entries, she discusses her anxieties and insecurities. In order to highlight the modern marriage market and its negative effects on women, Fielding exaggerates certain aspects of Elizabeth Bennet’s 189 character and story when chronicling Bridget’s tale. Because Fielding highlights Austen’s feminist message, Fielding teaches us something new about Austen’s Pride and Prejudice while she echoes its message to modern readers. Austen’s narrator never tells us that Elizabeth Bennet has overt concerns about her financial future. However, we know that Jane Austen was very conscious of the fact that many women marry because of financial considerations (a subject I have discussed at length in chapter four). For example, in an 1817 letter to her niece Fanny Knight, Jane Austen wrote, “single Women have a dreadful propensity for being poor — which is one very strong argument in favour of matrimony” (332). Bridget Jones’s career prospects put her in a far better position than the majority of Austen’s heroines. As Bridget’s friend, Sharon, points out: “We [working] women are … a pioneer generation daring to refuse to compromise in love and relying on our own economic power” (18). 1 Fielding dwells at some length on the fact that the situation of modern women is still a bleak one. 2 Bridget earns an income —she is not forced to marry — but she faces other pressures. Bridget is haunted by negative filmic images of single women 1 In the sequel to Bridget Jones’s Diary, Bridget Jones: the Edge of Reason, Bridget echoes these sentiments: “One does not need a man. Whole thing used to be that men and women got together because women could not survive without them but now — hah! Have own flat (even if hole-filled), friends, income and job (at least till tomorrow) so hah! Hahahahaha!” (274). 2 Because Fielding’s novel highlights the fact that “while feminism has allowed women great freedom to follow their ambitions and to support themselves, it hasn’t done much by way of making the truly single woman less of a socially pathetic figure,” some self-proclaimed ‘third wave’ feminists (e.g., the authors of Manifesta) embrace Bridget’s story (Baumgardner 40). 190 in their thirties (such as Glen Close’s character in Fatal Attraction). Subjected to a constant barrage of questions and comments about her single life, Bridget often, understandably, feels like a “[a modern day] Miss Havisham” (35). Bridget’s situation is compounded by the fact that, even though she tells herself, “if you’re a feminist, you shouldn’t need a [man],” her feminism does not dull her desire to have a relationship with one (Edge 299). 3 In particular, Bridget, like many women who watched the 1995 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice, is in love with one (fantasy) man — Colin Firth (the actor who played Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice and was subsequently hired to play Mark Darcy in the film version of Bridget Jones’s Diary). Bridget’s obsession over Mr Darcy/Colin Firth (she has problems distinguishing between the two) is an important plot element. In the first chapter of Bridget Jones’s Diary, Bridget observes the parallels between Mark Darcy and Jane Austen’s Mr Darcy: “It struck me as pretty ridiculous to be called Mr Darcy and to stand on your own looking snooty at a party. It’s like being called Heathcliff and insisting on spending the entire evening in the garden, shouting ‘Cathy’ and banging your head against a tree” (12). 3 Because of her fear of being alone (and her fear that feminist ideals contribute to loneliness), Bridget’s feminist sympathies waver throughout the novel — often shifting radically as a result of her ever-shifting relationship status. For example, three days after meeting and being rejected by Mark Darcy, Bridget sinks “down into [her coat]” and shushes her friend Sharon, explaining, “there is nothing so unattractive to a man as strident feminism” (18). However, at other times, particularly when she hears encouraging statistics (e.g., “by the turn of the millennium a third of all households will be single, therefore proving that at last we are no longer tragic freaks”) Bridget gains confidence from the feminist ideals espoused by her friend Sharon, and feels empowered enough to read books like Susan Faludi’s Backlash (a text that Darcy read 191 Bridget’s initial reaction to Darcy’s rejection of her is very differently from Elizabeth Bennet’s immediate response upon overhearing Darcy’s rude comment at the Meryton Assembly: “She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me; and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men” (2:12). At first, Elizabeth does not bemoan the loss of the potential suitor; instead, Austen reports, “[Elizabeth] told the story . . . with great spirit among her friends; for she had a lively, playful disposition, which delighted in any thing ridiculous” (2:12). In contrast to Elizabeth, however, Bridget Jones questions herself, not Darcy, when she is similarly insulted at an event: “Oh, why am I so unattractive? Why? Even a man who wears bumblebee socks thinks I am horrible. Hate the New Year. Hate everyone” (15). While Bridget and Elizabeth initially react differently to Darcy’s rejection, Bridget’s reaction (specifically, her reference to being “so unattractive”) just exaggerates Elizabeth’s eventual feelings about Darcy’s comment. Although, at first, Elizabeth is able to laugh about it with her friends, she soon betrays the fact that she was mortified by Darcy’s words. When Charlotte defends Darcy’s “pride” Elizabeth confesses, “I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine” (2:20). Because of her mortified pride, she remains “perfectly unaware” of Darcy’s increasing regard for her: “To her he was only the man who made himself agreeable no where, and who had not thought her handsome enough to dance with” (emphasis mine, 23). “when it first came out” — proving he is sensitive to contemporary feminist issues) (67 and 13). 192 Accordingly, she misinterprets the motive of his stares — “I see what he is about” she tells Charlotte Lucas, “he has a very satirical eye” (2:24). I have dwelt on the fact that Bridget’s focus on her body is actually an exaggeration of Elizabeth’s feelings, because Bridget’s obsession with her physical features is a major plot point of Fielding’s novel. Bridget begins each day’s Diary entry by recording her current weight and the amount of alcohol units and calories she has consumed. At various points in the Diary she also chronicles how she physically tortures herself for beauty. One especially poignant example of this, is her description of her regimen in preparation for her date with Daniel Cleaver (the novel’s Wickham character): Since leaving work I have nearly slipped a disc, wheezing through a step aerobics class, scratched my naked body for seven minutes with a stiff brush; cleaned the flat; … plucked my eyebrows; … put the washing in and waxed my own legs … Ended up kneeling on a towel trying to pull off a wax strip firmly stuck to the back of my calf while watching Newsnight in an effort to drum up some interesting opinions about things. My back hurts, my head aches and my legs are bright red and covered in lumps of wax. (52) Much like Elizabeth realizes that Darcy’s comment about her looks is “ridiculous,” Bridget understands that the current Cosmo culture makes women take ridiculous steps for beauty. And yet, Bridget cannot help but conform: “Wise people will say [men] should like me as I am, but I am a child of Cosmopolitan culture, [I] have been traumatized by supermodels and too many quizzes and know that neither my personality nor my body is up to it if left to its own devices” (52). The issue of Bridget’s negative body image has been a crucial point of debate among Bridget Jones’s Diary readers. Feminists cite Bridget’s constant self-loathing 193 as a reason to look upon Bridget Jones’s Diary as “every feminist’s nightmare” (Iley). 4 But other readers embrace Bridget’s blunt discussions — arguing that the novel helps to initiate a dialogue about topics that need to be discussed. It is important to note that readers of Bridget Jones’s Diary do not relish in the story’s romantic ending as much as they identify with the neurotic thoughts that Bridget is plagued with throughout the bulk of the book. Even though Darcy and Bridget end up together in the end, the pressures that Bridget experiences throughout the story do not change because she is rescued from her singleton status. Like Pride and Prejudice, Bridget Jones’s Diary does not offer women a prescription to help them change the unfair aspects of society that it showcases. But it does use Austen’s novels as a platform for a discussion about women’s issues in contemporary society, not unlike Catherine Hubback’s novels (on the subject of governesses) and even the work of Charlotte Brontë (on the subject of women writers). The path to true love most definitely does not run smooth for Bridget — but that is Fielding’s point. Like Jane Austen, Helen Fielding only delivers her readers a happy ending after they read through a book that highlights the trials and tribulations that single women still face in the contemporary world. By showing us the imaginary Diary of a thirty-something singleton in the contemporary age, Helen Fielding asks us 4 For example, Jane Lapotair, the author of Out of Order: A Haphazard Journey Through One Woman’s Year, laments the popularity of Bridget Jones: “It makes me very depressed that a book like Bridget Jones’s Diary is so popular … I’m angry that the younger generation of young women who live and work in our big cities should have lives that solely revolve around how many cigarettes they have smoked, how many calories they have eaten, how much alcohol they have consumed, who they are 194 to ponder how far we have come since the 1813 publication of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice — and how far we still have to go. Long Beach, California November 2, 2009 going to bonk in the office and what they are going to wear to do it in” (qtd. in Mcglone). 195 Bibliography Aiken, Joan. Lady Catherine’s Necklace. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000. 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Creator Villaseñor, Alice Marie (author)

Core Title Women readers and the Victorian Jane Austen

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program English

Publication Date 11/25/2011

Defense Date 07/29/2009

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Austen family history,Austen, Jane,Austen-Leigh, James Edward,Bridget Jones's Diary,Brontë, Charlotte,eighteenth-century novel,feminist criticism,Fielding, Helen,Hubback, Catherine,Lefroy, Fanny Caroline,letters of Jane Austen,Lewes, George Henry,Mansfield Park,nineteenth-century novel,OAI-PMH Harvest,persuasion,Pride and Prejudice,reception history,Richardson, Samuel,Shirley,Sir Charles Grandison,Temple Bar,The Watsons,The Younger Sister,Victorian letters, Victorian manuscripts,Victorian literary magazines,women readers,women writers

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Schor, Hilary M. (committee chair), Collins, James (committee member), Kincaid, James R. (committee member)

Creator Email withheld per the author

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m2756

Unique identifier UC1198215

Identifier etd-Villasenor-3195 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-281202 (legacy record id),usctheses-m2756 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Villasenor-3195.pdf

Dmrecord 281202

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Villaseñor, Alice Marie

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu