J A N E T I L I T Y

          One engaging feature of Austen’s novels is her technique of aligning character traits with their natural (as in nature) affinities or aversions. Elizabeth Bennet’s appreciation for talent and virtue over money and rank is reflected in her reaction to the grounds of Pemberley, i.e., that their “…natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste”; Marianne Dashwood’s propensity for dwelling upon loss is reflected in her musings upon Norland’s dead leaves. Mrs. Elton’s affectation is comically rendered in the running monologue that expresses her eroding zeal for strawberry picking. There is an allusion to Catherine Morland’s maturing in an exchange between her and Tilney; when she says that she has learned to love a hyacinth – the flower symbolizing the juvenile attributes of playfulness and sport – he asks whether she might then learn to love a rose – the flower symbolic of romantic love. The selfishness of Sir Walter Elliot and his eldest daughter corresponds to their reluctance to allow a tenant to enjoy the use of their gardens. Sir Walter is “…not fond of the idea of my shrubberies being always approachable [by a tenant]”, and Anne has been dispatched to instruct the gardener in “…which of Elizabeth’s plants are for Lady Russell” – presumably to preserve them from Kellynch’s new occupants.

Sylvestra Le Touzel, as Fanny Price

          In Mansfield Park, when Fanny Price and Mary Crawford stroll the parsonage grounds, their conversation expresses Fanny’s appreciation of nature and Mary’s indifference to it, but the particular object of Fanny’s admiration are the evergreens. “The evergreen! How beautiful, how welcome, how wonderful the evergreen!” Even while Mansfield Park is symbolically channeled through Fanny – her musing on how the same soil can nurture such variety of plants represents the disparate characters who occupy or pass through the Bertram estate – it is the unchanging evergreen, the manifestation of permanence, fidelity, immutability and self-renewal that embodies the character of Fanny Price.

Frances O’Connor, as Fanny Price

          Yet, every so often, Austen readers will encounter an article or a speaker whose topic is something on the order of “In Defense of Fanny Price”; “defense” implying that Fanny Price is deficient when compared to Austen’s other heroines, and therefore requires vindication. Even C. S. Lewis, in “A Note on Jane Austen” maintained that Fanny had “…nothing but rectitude of mind; neither passion, nor physical courage, nor wit, nor resource.” True, she is not as witty as Elizabeth Bennet, nor as passionate as Marianne Dashwood, and her resources are not tested in the manner that Catherine Morland’s are; moreover, Fanny is not as beautiful as Jane Bennet, nor as accomplished as Jane Fairfax; she does not even provide the comic intervals that the reader enjoys by way of Mrs. Bennet or Mrs. Elton.

Billie Piper, as Fanny Price

          Fanny Price is the only Austen heroine who is defined by intrinsic virtue and moral integrity, rather than her failures of character and objectivity. Elizabeth Bennet is susceptible to prejudice, Marianne Dashwood is emotionally indulgent, Emma is self-important and manipulative, Catherine Morland’s limited intellect is warped by popular novels and self-serving acquaintances, Anne Elliot abdicates her natural good judgment in favor of well-meaning (and not-so-well-meaning) relations and friends. As their tales advance, the mechanics of plot are linked to the flawed heroine’s self-realization and eventual contrition. “These recollections will not do at all,” concludes Elizabeth Bennet. “I assure you that I have long been most heartily ashamed [of her language].” Marianne states that, “Whenever I look towards the past I saw some duty neglected or some failing indulged.” Emma comes to hope that “…every future winter of her life…would yet find her more rational, more acquainted with herself, and leave her less to regret when it were gone.” When Catherine understands how far her imagination has offended Henry Tilney, it “…opened her eyes to the extravagance of her late fancies”. Even while the long-suffering Anne justifies her deference to Lady Russell, she concedes that “…for myself, I certainly never should in any circumstance of tolerable similarity, give such advice.”

          In contrast, Fanny is always correct. Her affection is never misplaced, her character assessments are borne out in a plot that, rather than exposing her errors of judgment, reveals where the judgment of the others has gone awry.

            Fanny experiences unhappiness, but no moral regret, unless you count those “…feelings so near akin to envy as to make her hate herself for having them.” Her uncomplaining submission to the indolence of Lady Bertram and the tyranny of Mrs. Norris may aggravate the reader; her steadiness, when compared to the spirited repartee of Elizabeth Bennet or the resolute folly of Emma or Catherine, may appear static and colorless. If Fanny does not possess the buoyancy and wit of Austen’s other heroines, she does have – without the accompanying advantages of wealth, status, accomplishment or even physical stamina – a moral intuition that is as intriguing (considering the households in which she was raised) as cleverness and charm.

          Fanny may not, as Lewis observes, have “physical courage” (though I think the same may be said for most of Austen’s heroines), but she does have to draw upon emotional reserves in a way that other heroines (with the possible exception of Elinor Dashwood) do not; Elizabeth, Anne, Catherine, Emma may face an obstacle to romance, but the obstacle does not materialize in the form of a competitor. Darcy is not attached to Anne deBourgh, nor would Knightley ever marry Harriet Smith; Wentworth dallies with Louisa and Henrietta without being serious about either, and Tilney is not in love with anyone else. Even Willoughby’s choice is a matter of fortune rather than affection. But Fanny does have a rival for Edmund’s affection in the beautiful and accomplished Mary Crawford. Unlike Darcy, Tilney, Knightley, or even Edward Ferrars or Willoughby, Edmund Bertram is the one Austen hero who falls in love with someone other than the heroine. Unlike Fanny’s response to Henry Crawford, Edmund rationalizes Mary’s impropriety, and continues to hope that she will overlook the fact that he is a second son and a clergyman, until her sentiments prove to be so corrupt that Edmund cannot continue to justify them. Fanny, on the other hand, is able to witness Henry’s newly-expressed gentleness and consideration, without weakening, and views it as sign that he may just enough of a changed character that he will “not much longer persevere in a suit so distressing to her”. She can appreciate the improvement in his conduct, but her opinion of him as a potential husband is not swayed.

          Perhaps in an era where undeserving “celebrities” reap undeserved attention there are those who consider “rectitude of mind” to be “nothing”. But Austen readers should know better.

    “Alphonsine did not do. We were disgusted in twenty pages as, independent of a bad translation, it has indelicacies which disgrace a pen hitherto so pure, and we changed it for the “Female Quixotte,” which now makes our evening amusement; to me a very high one, as I find the work quite equal to what I remembered it.”

So wrote Jane Austen to Cassandra in 1807. Austen evidently had a taste for the lively and burlesque; she had also expressed a liking for E. S. Barrett’s The Heroine, a quixotic novel about a young lady who decides that she has not been told the truth about her parentage, and who resolves to go out into the world in quest of her birthright.

     The Female Quixote, or the Adventures of Arabella, published in 1752, was the second novel of poet and novelist Charlotte Lennox, and it is no surprise that Austen liked it enough to re-read it, as her “equal to what I remembered it” suggests. In the words of author and critic Anna Barbauld, who was influential in reviving interest in the work some fifty years after its publication, The Female Quixotewas “…an agreeable and ingenious satire upon the old romances, and I really think it is written in a modern spirit…”.

Charlotte Lennox

The Female Quixote, like Northanger Abbey, satirizes the effects of popular fiction on the reader. In fact, it would not be a stretch to suppose that Lennox’s most popular novel was a direct influence on the Austen work.

The target of Lennox’s novel is romantic fiction. “Romantic” did not refer to love and courtship, but to highly imaginative, usually episodic tales of adventure, heroism and exaggerated sentiment, authored by the likes of Eliza Heywood, Henry Fielding or Mary Davys. Unlike Austen, Lennox offers up a suitable candidate for her heroine; “Nature had given [Arabella] a most charming face, a shape easy and delicate, a sweet and insinuating voice and an air so full of dignity and grace as drew the admirations of all that saw her.” Compare this to Catherine Morland: “[The Morlands] were in general very plain, and Catherine, for many years of her life, as plain as any. She had a thin, awkward figure, a sallow skin without color, dark, lank hair and strong features.”

In accomplishments, as well, Catherine is a direct contrast to Arabella, whose “…naive charms were improved with all the heightenings of art…The best masters of music and dancing were sent for from London to attend her. She soon became the perfect mistress of the French and Italian languages”, whereas Catherine “…was often inattentive and occasionally stupid” and regards one of the happiest days of her life as the day that her music master was dismissed.

Arabella “would have made a great proficiency in all useful knowledge had not her whole time been taken up by another study” (i.e., reading novels of romance). Catherine takes to books, but only when “…nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them…all story and no reflection…such works as heroines must read…”

There are other comparisons, in the two suitors – the self-important one (Arabella’s Sir George, and Catherine’s John Thorpe) and the sensible, tolerant one (Arabella’s Glanville and Catherine’s Tilney) – and in the move from relative seclusion to society where the novels’ vision of the world is tested against the social order. There is, however, a comparison to another of Austen’s early novels: Sense and Sensibility. Unlike Catherine’s mistaken notions that are corrected, at the cost of some embarrassment, by her own innate level-headedness, Arabella judgment is corrupted to the point where her behavior has life-threatening consequences; her determination to see the world in romantic terms is as indulgent as Marianne Dashwood’s emotional excess. Just as Arabella at last owns up to her errors “…my heart yields to the force of truth…I begin to perceive that I have hitherto trifled away my time”, Marianne says that, “My illness has made me think – it has given me leisure and calmness for serious recollection….Whenever I looked towards the past, I saw some duty neglected or some failing indulged.”

But back to Alphonsine, or Maternal Affection (1806) the work by prolific author Madame deGenlis, that Austen rejected. The plot presents an interesting spin on a young lady whose understanding has been distorted, not by novels but by the extreme limitations of her physical world. Alphonsine, the illegitimate daughter of a countess is born in a dungeon – the mother’s vengeful husband has imprisoned his wife, and neither he nor her attendants are aware of the child’s birth or existence – and is raised entirely in both sensory and social darkness. When, after thirteen years, they are released, Alphonsine’s introduction to the world becomes not only an expanded social experience, but a more fundamental sensory revelation. Perhaps Austen would have found something more relevant in Alphonsine if she had not succumbed to the “twenty page rule”. Her own view of epistolary integrity – “I have now attained the true art of letter-writing, which we are always told is to express on paper exactly what one would say to the same person by word of mouth” is not all that different from The Critical Review’s assessment of the rejected novel, that “[Madame deGenlis] has attained the true moral end of novel writing, that which consists not in a few pages of poetical justice, but in the general impression left upon the reader’s mind when he closes the volume.”

“[Tom Lefroy] has but one fault, which time will, I trust, entirely remove – it is that his morning coat is a great deal too light. He is a very great admirer of Tom Jones, and therefore wears the same colored clothes, I imagine which he did when he was wounded.”

This observation, noted in a letter written by 20-year-old Jane Austen to her sister, suggests that Austen, as well as Lefroy, were familiar with Henry Fielding’s novel. It is she, after all, who infers that Lefroy’s morning coat is an homage to the garment worn by a wounded Tom Jones, who had been wounded in a dispute over a lady’s reputation.

There are a few references to Lefroy in Austen’s letters that were written in the early part of 1796. From Steventon, she writes of their “profligate and shocking” flirting, and that she found him to be “gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant”. Several days later, she looks forward “with great impatience to a ball at which “I rather expect to receive an offer from my friend in the course of the evening. I shall refuse him however, unless he promises to give away his white coat.” It is interesting that she writes with the same blithe self-confidence of Lady Susan Vernon, the focus of her recent novella, announcing that she “bequeaths” all of her beaux to a friend, “as I mean to confine my future to Mr. Tom Lefroy, for whom I do not care a sixpence” – yet, she cares enough that “my tears flow as I write” at the thought of his imminent departure.

Tom Lefroy

Jane Austen

There is a gap in 1797, before her correspondence resumes the following year; this is the period in which she converted her epistolary Elinor and Marianne to Sense and Sensibility, which provokes some interesting speculation about what may have influenced the character of Willoughby. There are certainly points where Lefroy’s hero and Austen’s most complex scoundrel intersect.

Tom Jones and John Willoughby both have expectations that are kept at bay, to a different degree, by the course of their own conduct. In the end, both are rewarded – again, to a different degree. Jones gets the lady and his claim to fortune; Willoughby gets a lady, who comes with a fortune. Tom Lefroy, who lived in the real world, could not hope for the serendipitous good luck of fiction. It is unlikely that the great-uncle who funded Lefroy’s education would have behaved as Jones’ benefactor who “…threatened [Tom Jones] with the entire loss of his favor”, or that Lefroy would have forfeited his uncle’s good will by the sort of conduct that had Willoughby, “…formally dismissed from [his relative’s] favor”; still, Austen’s poverty would have been viewed as an impediment, by Lefroy’s relations, to their marriage.

Jones and Willoughby have similar encounters with the charming heroine. Marianne Dashwood injures herself in a fall, and winds up in the arms of Willoughby. Sophia Western is tossed from her unruly horse into the arms of Tom Jones. When the ladies receive their farewell letters, Sophia laments that, “I have thrown away my heart on a man who hath forsaken me…He hath taken his leave of me forever in that letter”, while Marianne wails, “Willoughby, where was your heart, when you wrote those words?” In both works there is a somewhat satirical contrast between the natural and the conventional, expressed, to varying degrees, in the manner in which illegitimacy affects the course of romance.

Still, in literature and life, Austen must accept the “mortifying conviction that handsome young men must have something to live on, as well as the plain”, and her novels’ marriages do not take place until that “something to live on” is certain. Yet, in Sense and Sensibility, chronologically closest to the brief Austen/Lefroy relationship, Austen is able to propose an ideal resolution through her fiction: Willougby – as dissolute as Tom Jones and as good-looking and pleasant as Tom Lefroy – is  reinstated by the rich cousin upon whom he is dependent, not by marrying the woman he had wronged, or by marrying a wealthy woman, but by marrying a woman of good character – a rapprochement that, ironically, he might have effected by marrying Marianne.  Did Austen secretly hope that Lefroy might count on the same benevolence?

Certainly, there was no engagement between Austen and Lefroy, and she cannot claim to have been jilted, but he was not forgotten. (Perhaps this was what enabled her to write so feelingly, in her next effort, of the effect of Bingley’s absence on Jane Bennet). Two years after Lefroy’s departure, Austen writes of a visit from his aunt, that, “…of her nephew she said nothing at all…She did not once mention the name of [Lefroy] to me, and I was too proud to make any enquiries.” Only weeks later, in early 1799, Jane writes of a cold and its effect on her eyes, and describes a ball with little enthusiasm. “I do not think I was very much in request. People were rather apt not to ask me till they could not help it. One’s consequence you know, varies so much at times without any particular reason.” Yet, she retained enough consequence to be solicited – and to decline – “Lord Bolton’s eldest son” for a partner. Perhaps her “indifferent” vision is the result of tears, shed upon learning of the engagement of Tom Lefroy, who was married in March of 1799.  When she does go on to write “Whenever I fall into misfortune, how many jokes it ought to furnish my acquaintance in general…” she echoes Marianne Dashwood’s lament upon Willoughby’s desertion: “I must feel – I must be wretched – and they are welcome to enjoy the consciousness of it that can.”

Clive Francis as Willoughby (1971)

Greg Wise as Willoughby (1995)

Peter Woodward as Willoughby (1981)

“Tomorrow, I shall be just like Camilla in Mr. Dubster’s summer-house; for my Lionel will have taken away the ladder by which I came here, or at least by which I intended to get away and here I must stay till his return.”  So wrote Jane Austen to Cassandra in 1796, when her return to Steventon was delayed because none of her brothers were able to escort her. She describes her predicament by alluding to one of the most popular novels of the day, Fanny Burney’s Camilla. In one chapter, the title character and her sister climb a ladder to examine an elevated summer-house; the ladder is removed by their mischievous brother, Lionel, who rides off and leaves them stranded.

Frances "Fanny" Burney

Exclusive of Austen’s reference to Camilla, it may be inferred that Austen was a reader of Burney. Fanny Burney’s first three novels – Evelina (1778), Cecilia (1782) and Camilla (1796)– were  “coming of age” novels, which usually involved the heroine’s departure from home and her introduction to a to a society that requires her to make romantic and moral choices. You see this influence in Austen; in all of her novels, save for Emma, significant episodes occur when the heroine leaves the family home. (And, in the case of Emma, this is true of Jane Fairfax). The two authors’ works share a common element: that the vanity, ignorance, prejudices, but also the morality, which had incubated in the family circle are tested against the failings and merits of a broader environment and a new set of acquaintances.

When  Austen wrote her earliest complete works – the work later titled Lady Susan, and Elinor and Marianne, which became Sense and Sensibility - they were written in the epistolary fashion of Evelina . Moreover, when the Reverend Mr. Austen attempted to interest Burney’s publisher in his daughter’s early work (most reports state that the work was First Impressions; an auction notice offering the signed portion of Mr. Austen’s letter suggests that it was Sense and Sensibility), he makes a comparison, in length, to Evelina.

Austen followed up Elinor and Marianne with First Impressions; however, by the time of its publication, there was already a popular novel titled First Impressions, or The Portrait (by Mrs. Margaret Holford), so Austen drew upon the final chapter of Cecilia for her Plan B title, Pride and Prejudice. Cecilia’s plot revolves around a conditional bequest, wherein a young lady’s inheritance depends upon her suitor’s consent to assume her family surname. (Derived, perhaps, from the actual situation of real-life heiress Mary Eleanor Bowes). In bringing the complications to conclusion, the summation, given by the character Lyster, states: “The whole of this unfortunate business has been the result of PRIDE and PREJUDICE…if to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you owe your miseries, so wonderfully is good and evil balanced that to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you will also owe their termination.” (Yes, it is rendered in upper case in the printing).

However, one might wonder whether Austen drew upon the work of another Burney in crafting some of her characters. In 1807, she writes of re-reading the novel Clarentine (1796) by Sarah Burney (Fanny’s step-sister): “We are reading Clarentine and are surprised to find how foolish it is. I remember liking it much less on a second reading than the first, and it does not bear a third at all.” And yet, there is something very Marianne Dashwood about Clarentine’s assertion that, “It is equally impossible for me to forget, or not to feel”, and something quite Darcy-like in Sir Edgar’s “…reserve, which frequently cast a gloom over his features…appeared to denote an unsocial and contemptuous disposition in himself [which] had often displeased her extremely and led her, very naturally, to suspect him of a degree of arrogance and pride.”

If Austen’s assessment of Sarah Burney’s contrived plotting is that it is “full of unnatural conduct and forced difficulties, without striking merits of any kind”, she is good-natured enough to take such criticism to task as well in Northanger Abbey, by citing embarrassed novel-readers who confess that, “’It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda’, or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed.”

Hangover Square is loosely based upon the novel by Patrick Hamilton, author of the plays Rope and Gaslight and the three novels known as the Gorse trilogy – “loosely based upon” defined as “very little remains of”, because screenwriter Barre Lyndon (The Lodger) converts Hamilton’s socio-political pre-WWII tale to an fin de siècle gothic melodrama, with the principal common element being the blackouts suffered by the main character George Harvey Bone. Hangover Square is directed by John Brahm (The Lodger) and stars Laird Cregar (Bone), playing pretty much the same role he played in The Lodger,

Cregar, in The Lodger

Cregar, in Hangover Square

George Sanders playing pretty much the same role he played in The Lodger,

Sanders, in The Lodger

Sanders, in Hangover Square

Linda Darnell and Faye Marlowe playing the role Merle Oberon played in The Lodger,

Faye Marlowe

Merle Oberon

and Alan Napier, who was not in The Lodger

The beloved character actor, Alan Napier

Periodically, one of Cregar’s films shows up, and cinephiliacs are reminded what as astonishing presence he was. There was an assurance, a finish to his performances that was not only in contrast to his size (he was 6’4″ and well over 300 pounds for much of his career), but to his youth – in five years, he made sixteen films, dying prematurely at age 31; Hangover Square was his last film. Cregar’s George Harvey Bone is a tormented wretch (another variant of not only his role in The Lodger, but in I Wake Up Screaming), a struggling composer suffering from blackouts that are triggered by discordant sounds. These lapses synch up with a string of unsolved murders, and on the advice of his patron’s daughter, Bone consults with a doctor attached to Scotland Yard; the doctor dismisses Bone’s fear that he may be the killer, but suggests that the stress of his in-progress concerto may be the cause of the blackouts. His prescription is for Bone to take a break (no pun intended) from his music and amuse himself among the common folk. Cut to an inebriated Bone in a seedy dance hall where Netta (Darnell) is performing. George becomes infatuated with Netta, who plays him along in order to persuade him to put a friend’s lyrics to music, providing her with material to boost her career. Soon poor besotted George has tabled his concerto (serious art) to crank out dance hall ditties (commercial entertainment) that bring Netta to the attention of a theatrical producer, who stars her in his next production:

Yes, you read that right

There is, of course, the long-suffering lady friend who is, in turn, befriended by the doctor, the avuncular father/mentor who dispenses advice, and a really terrific use of Guy Fawkes Day as a plot device. The superbly edited climax is fashioned around George’s performance of his concerto. The concerto and score were done by Bernard Hermann whose piercing flute that accompanies George’s spells is every bit as unnerving as his shrieking violins in Psycho.

So which Austen characters would enjoy Hangover Square? Marianne Dashwood would find something of a kindred spirit in a composer who dies for his art, Mary Bennet would empathize with Bone’s conflict when her long concerto is not received with as much “praise and gratitude” as her popular Scotch and Irish airs, Captain Benwick would certainly understand that even the most determined melancholy might be relieved by a lively and frivolous young lady and Catherine Morland would have relished all of the film’s atmosphere of eerie mystery.

Three degrees of Jane Austen? Laird Cregar co-starred in Charley’s Aunt with Edmund Gwenn, who played Mr. Bennet in the 1940 Pride and Prejudice.