Austen
Molly Klein
/* Written 12:28 AM Jan 6, 1996 by myo...@Market.NET in igc:misc.writing */
Molly Klein (bo...@igc.apc.org) wrote:
: Jane Auesten, the most shameless "deck stacker" in the cannon, a
: polemicist and a prig. The accepted view that she wrote "indictments
: of an aquisitive society doesn't persuade me; she wrote *apologies* for her
: society, and indictments of its percieved *abusers* and of
: those who rebelled against it or attempted to exploit what slender
: opportunity for social mobility existed in it. She punishes
*Really? How do you explain Elizabeth Bennett, Frederick Wentworth
*and Fanny Price--all of whom rose in status?
Molly replies:
Eliza Bennet does not change her class; she only gets rich. Eliza to Debourgh: "He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman's daughter. So far we are equal." Austen is with her on this. Austen "stacks" the deck by creating heroines whose "rightful" position in s
ociety has been debased by weak fathers who fail to fulfill their role. The heroes rectify the descrepancy between their poverty and their class position. Frederick Wenworth does not change class: the objection to him is his poverty: he win prize money. N
othing more. The importance of wealth is an object of critique by Austen, not the importance of class. Fanny is also a gentlewoman, reduced by circumstances. She does not acceed to a class to which she has not been born. The social climbers in Austen are,
most evidently and importantly : Emma's protege and Wickham. The lesson of EMMA (or one of them) is the impropriety of attempting to raise the Yoemanry to the level of Gentry. Wickham is an example of deckstacking -- whereas fielding's Tom Jones has a go
od heart despite his low (or rather illegitimate) birth, Wickham is bad. The Darcy project of raising him above his station is improper and wrong, rectified by Darcy II. Anne's cousin is also an example of this.
: non-conformists, and rewards conformists, rectifies the aberrant
: relations between poverty viewed as wrongly inflicted upon right
: thinking female members of the gentry and their breeding, and doles out
: consolatory praise fo the self-abnegation of the lowly.
*Umm, could you put this in english?
Molly replies: this is English.
*Examples would be nice.
Molly replies: When I work for you, I'll do what you ask. Until then, you decide how you make your arguments; I'll decide how I make mine.
But, if it helps you: Lydia, Wickham, Marianne Dashwood, the girls at Mansfield Park are punished. Elizabeth, Jane B., Fanny, Darcy, Bingley, Anne, are rewarded for their utter acceptance of bourgeois society and class propriety. Deck stacking in this ca
se: The Gardiners, who know their place, are good. The other awful relatives, who aspire to fashion, are bad. Ferrars secret fiancee is another example, though she is not entirely punished, she is exposed and clearly not approved of by Austen.
Incidentally, I am not saying that Austen was without critical consciousness; she picks out the foibles of the upper classes, etc. etc., and is very keen about the undeniable role of wealth in society, but Darcy's appalling positions are vindicated every
where nin her novels. The lust for money is seen by Austen as a profligacy at counterpurposes with the ideology of the English gentry -- it is the corruption of the City invading the real England. Those memebers of the upper classes who are fixated on mon
ey are viewed as debasing their class; but it is not accidentally that the characters who suffer for their poverty are women of the gentry for whom Austen views poverty as a wrong to be righted by the responsible and proper men of the gentry. Her books en
act this adjustment, while maintaining, whole, the conservative notion of "gentility."
: Her fiction argues that nothing is wrong in the great house (england)
: so long as social climbers and women with sexual impulses are kept out
: of influence within it. Her present mega-popularity is not surprising
*Prove it.
Interpretation doesn't require "proof." Calm down. I will elaborate, however. By the Great House I meant Tilney's House, Pemberly, Mansfield Park, Mr. Knightly's house, and in Persuasion, we have instead The British Navy, another fine stand in for the em
pire. Deck stacking: Lydia, Harriet, Wentworth's other gal (also an L I think, can't recall) and the punished (but forgiven) Marianne Dashwood -- these are the women who do not sufficiently repress their sexual impulses. Eliza Bennet is often read looking
back at her through imitations: until the end, Austen's omniscent voice insists that her love for Darcy is "not as tender" as her sister's for Bingley, which is sweet, but cool and proper. Her love is constructed in a very mercantile fashion -- the resul
t of a compilation of characteristics. Eliza jokes about falling in love after seeing his fine grounds at Pemberly; it is sarcastic, but in fact this is the case. Austen gives us the first glimpse of Eliza's love-in-the-making while she is contemplating h
is power and the proper way he weilds it.
*The one character to lose his house out of carelessness
*is Sir Walter Elliot, an aristocrat and snob whose prejudice against
*social climbers injures his own daughter's chance at happiness.
Yes, the men of the gentry who do not behave like Darcy debase their social role, but without invalidating the role and its rightness in Austen's view. Their unfitness for the role is the object of her satire, not the existence or propriety of the role w
hen filled by a man born to it and properly bred to it. The defence of the ideology of the gentry Austen mounts does not require a view that every member of the gentry is by nature "good" and everyone else "bad." She was writing some time before eugenics.
She shows what the gentry ought to be, and the consequences of not being that: what is not found is a critique of the system and the ideology, what is, the dissection of those who pervert or attack it.
*As for sexual impulses, Austen's view is much more subtle than you're
*making it. After all, Austen opposed marrying for monetary gain at
*a time when the practice was widely accepted and condoned. By the time
*you get to Persuasion, a very strong argument is being made for
*the primacy of love.
Where -- in what novel in the english language is loveless, interested marriage condoned? I defy you to cite ONE. Even one in which the view of the neccessity for money in marriage is less conservative than in Austen. Just ONE will do! Is there one? Is th
ere even a tolerably known pamphlet to such an effect? A collection of letters? I look at the english novel and see a long long tradition off opposition to interested marriage. It is UBIQUITOUS. It is, indeed, the SUBJECT OF ENGLISH NOVELS. Fielding, Smol
let, even Richardson, Burney, Inchbald, Edgeworth, etc. etc.
I'm not saying Austen's view was not subtle, only that is was misogynist. Misogynist in presenting paragons of female virtue who, in Mr. Bennet's words, "look upon their husbands as their superiors." A decade before Austen, Wollstonecraft and others were
writing of women as EQUALS. They were writing of the necessity to liberate women from traditional constraints, including those associated with marriage. Austen lamented the difficulty intelligent women faced finding these superiors, but she did not challe
nge the propriety of doing so or the subordination of women to these superiors when they could be found. Eliza's poor friend Charlotte's deference to her husband is viewed as a virtue, though her marriage is lamented as an economic necessity. This is her
sexism, however, not her misogyny. That is this: Women come in for special attack in Austen: all the villains are women with the exception of Anne's cousin: De Bourgh, the Manfield Park Crew, Caroline Bingley, Anne's sister and her sexually uncrontrolled
friend, andLydia. . .also, the most debased and villified characters are women. The heroines are of course paragons, but always defined as being perfect women in contrast to the vast majority of women who display in abundance particularily female vices
and failings -- stupidity, avarice, vanity, sexual unconstraint, frivolity, wiles. The "savior" is always a man, Mr. Mansfield Park (what's his name), the Heroes. Sir Walter Eliot is an unlikeable character, effeminate not surprisingly, but the villain of
the piece is her ladyship Persuader. Willoughby is untrue, but Ferrars' first fiancee is scheming and low. Mrs. Bennet is vulgar beyond expression. The De Bourghs. . .
*What Austen did condone was control of one's impulses, that is not
*the same as the denial of them.
I spoke neither of control nor denial, but of absence and presence. When talking of Eliza Bennet, Emma Woodhouse, and Elinor Dashwood, denial and absence is a toss up. Certainly there is little textual evidence of denial -- these heroines are constructed
without evident sexuality. Anne is another story; in that case, control/denial fits. Persuasion is slightly different from the other novels in ideology, I think; much less priggish and strident.
: (it owes a deal to having spawned a genre which has somewhat modified
: her snobbery and rigid views of class), but how she has become known as
*Actually, regencies are a tight market right now. And remember, Austen
*is an intellectual more than a class snob.
Can't remember what I never knew. The occurrence of the word "vulgarity" with great frequence in her works savors of class snobbery to me; vulgarity has nothing to do with "intellect." Vulgarity has to do with "class" and "breeding." While Austen's female
villains tend to be stupid, her social climbing males are often rather bright, charming, not "vulgar": Wickham, Anne's cousin, for example.
Next point: I didn't mean the genre of pulp "regency romance" but the genre of the nliterary novel of manners and moeurs
: an opponent of or ciritc of bourgeois ethico-social values/reality is
: beyond me.
*Obviously.
Yes, obviously. But how is it evdent to you? I've yet to be told. You don't advance an argument here -- there is nothing but interrogative rebuttal. Have you a reading to share, perhaps? A point to make? "Examples might be nice," that sort of thing.
: writers of her time still read, and though a generic innovator, her
: plots often depend on creaky coincidences through which are revealed
: the arduous ideological labors of the censorious authorial hand to
: hhold the reins on the runaway critical consciousness and keep it
: directed along the straight and narrow path of pedantic exemplary
: tales. An egregious conservatism, in the context of novels from
*You think Austen is misogynistic? On what grounds? What writer strikes
*you as less misogynistic from her period? Also, you don't seem to
*get what she's doing with her conscious structuring of plot.
Writers less misogynist: Inchbald, Ferrier, Edgeworth, De Stael, Godwin, Wollstonecraft, both Shelleys, Sir Walter Scott, Thomas Love Peacock, Thomas de uincy, James Hogg, etc.
Who do you find more so? On what grounds to you find her not so? What is she doin with the conscious structuring of plot? If I don't get it, maybe you could EXPLAIN. I don't thinkk you can, but. . .enlighten me. Do.
*By the way, your argumentation would benefit from shorter sentences,
*each containing a single idea.
Your argument would also benefit from a single idea. You argument, in fact, would benefit from an argument. If Austen's novels are not as I've described them, how are they? What are they about? What is Austen's position on class? Money? Marriage? How is t
his position articulated? "No, you're wrong" is not a persuasive argument. "You don't get it" has failed to convince me.
: Fielding to Godwin and Shelley, marks her work and lays the foundations
: for the elaborate ideological structure of victorianism. Austen's work
*What, Austen laid the foundations for the elaborate ideological
*structure of Victorianism? I'd love some evidence for this
*supposition. Also, why Fielding to Austen to Godwin and Shelley.
*Godwin and Shelley are hardly in the continuum you've begun
For the first, too long to reply here. See Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel, Raymond Williams The English Novel, Franco Moretti The Way Of The World, Igor Web, From Custom To Capital, Terry Eagletons books, Edward Said Culture and Imperialism, etc. For the
second -- why are Godwin and Shelley out of the continuum? The continuum is "novels in English," or perhaps "British novels." Godwin's novels are contemporaneous with Austen; if you don't know them, they include St. Leon, Caleb Williams, and Mandeville.
Frankenstein is also contemporaneous, while Shelley's other novels are only slightly later. I said "From Fielding to Godwin and Shelley" eaning to demarcate a period of the novel, from mid-eighteenth century to the Napoleonic era and Regency. I could have
said from Richardson to Burney's Wandered, covering the same time frame, roughly. To what are you objecting?
: has made its way, of course, into the vast critique of bourgeois
: ideology, but it has done so emphatically in spite of Austen.
*In spite of? What did she do to stop it?
I meant that an expropriative reading of Austen's novels is necessary for them to be of use to a critique of bourgeois ideology. Austen's works do not participate in that critique. They require interrogation, and when interrogated are useful to that crit
ique. They are examples of bourgeois ideology, and how that ideology is expressed in novels. This is a pretty simple statement. She didn't "do anything" to stop it. We are talking about novels, remember? A sympathetic reading, that is one taking Austen on
her own terms, will give rise to an apology for this ideology, not a critique. That's what I said from the beginning. Instead of simply dropping your jaw, if you disagree you might venture a word or two WHY you do.
*I once had a medieval lit. professor who, when faced a with a
*student's patronizing assessment of Chaucer's motivations in
*writing something, would say, "Why do you assume Chaucer is dumber
*than you?" Your sweeping assessment of Austen, which ignores
*the many contradictions in her work, makes me wonder why you
*assume Austen is dumber than you?
This si ridiculous. There are no "extra requirements" of intelligence to evaluate an author in a less than perfectly laudatory way. Your fulsome praise, I assume, is given with a consciousness of having enough brains to evaluate Austen, thus rendering you
r thumbs up, in your own mind, valuale. Your presuming to genuflect to her does not, I suppose, suggest a belief that you are superior to her in intelligence, thus qualified to give approval. I am not evaluating the historical figure, anyway: my ouija boa
rds out of commission. We are talking about artifacts, novels. This is really ridiculous, and makes me wonder why you are so upset with an evaluationg of Austen that you don't agree with. Are you descended from her or something? Or have you built a religi
on around her works? As for ignoring her contradictions, I do not. I have discussed them. I'd be happy to discuss them further. How about you? What contradictions to you see?
Do YOU HAVE AN OPINION other than "tsuh! How dare you!" Can you put it into words, perhaps? This defence/ interpretation to which you are alluding, teaingly, but hiding?
*It has struck me that the pretty, lovable facade of Austen's
*work means that people often don't consider her as carefully
*as they do a less-accessible writer
You seem to have only knelt at her alter, not considered her works carefully. The consideration of her works, carefully, seems to strkike you as some pompous action based upon a belief that she was dumber than the person presuming to consider.
* Personally, I am repeatedly
*struck by the number of levels on which Austen can be read and
*interpreted.
You are shocked by, not struck by, a political interpretation. You are offended by a glance at this "level" (in high school parlance). Austen may or may not have been dumber than I; this I cannot know. But I've a feeling that you are dumber than I, if you
are not simply perverse.
* It amazes me how much is contained in seemingly
*light novels about young provincial women getting married.
what a set up -- but no payoff! This is the BEGINNING of an argument; youve mistaken it for the argument itself and the CONCLUSION. So far, you've said nothing about Austen, only challenged my comments. Put forward an interpretation, and then we cn talk.
I see, also, a great deal in these novels, and I've tried, briefly, to indicate, specifically, what I see. It was specific enough to upset you. Now why don't you do the same? Have you anything to say, anythig more specific than "how much" or "the number o
f levels."?
*margaret
--Molly
Molly Klein
Some quotes relating to this debate:
About romantic love and marriage:
"The assiilation of the values of romantic love to marriage. .
.occurred particularily early in England, and was closelconnected with
the Puritan movement." Ian Watt, Rise of the Novel
About Austen:
"It is not that Jane Austn's fiction presents us merely with
ideological delusion; on the contrary, it offers us a version of
contemporary history which s considerably more revealing than much
historiography. And this is not just the effect of Austen's aesthetic
forms, which so 'distantiate' ideology as to ligh up the shady
frontiers where it abuts, by negation, onto real history. If ideology
is indeed mere illusion, then it would certainly demand some such
formal, unilateral operation to embarass it into a betrayal of truth.
But if Austen's forms do this, it is because they themselves are the
product of certain ideological codes which, in permitting us access to
certain values, forces and relations, yeild us a sort of historical
knowledge." Terry Eagleton, Criticism and Ideology
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen chose to
ignore the decisive historical events of her time. . . .But history has
many currents, and the social history of the landed families at that
time in England was among the most important. As we sense its real
processes we find that they are quite central and structural in Jane
Austen's novels. . . .Jane Austen . . .reminds us, involuntarily, of
the two meanings of improvement which were historically linked but in
practise often contradictory. There is the improvement of soil, stock,
yeilds, in a working agriculture. And there is the improvement of
houses, parks, artificial landscapes, which absorbed so much of the
actually increasing welath. It is the essential commentary on what can
be abstracted technically as the agricultural revolution; that it was
no revolution, but the consolidation, the improvement and the expansion
of an existing social class.
"Cultivation has the same ambiguity as improvement. There is
increasing growth and this is converted into rents, and then the rents
are converted into what is seen as a cultivated society. What the
"revolution" is for then, is this: the quality of life. Jane Austen
could achieve her remarkable unity of tone -- that cool and controlled
observation which is the basis of her narrative method; that highly
distanced management of event and description and character which need
not become either open manipulation or participation annd personal
involvement -- because of an effective formula: improvement is
improvement. The working improvement, which is not seen at all, is the
means of social improvement, which is then so isolated that it is seen
very clearly indeed.
"It is not seen flatteringly. The conversion of good income
into good conduct was no automatic process. But what is crucial is that
the moral pretension is taken so seriously that it becomes a critique:
*never of the basis of the formula* [my emphasis], but cooly and
determinedly of its results in character and action. She guides her
heroines steadily to the right marriages. She makes settlements, alone,
like some supernatural lawyer, in terms of that exact proportion to
moral worth which could assure the continuity of the general formula.
But within this conventional bearing, which is the source of her
confidence, the moral discrimination is so insistent that it can be
taken in effect as an independent value. . . In these hands [g. eliot,
coleridge arnold] decisively, the formula broke down:improvement was
not improvement, not only not neccessarily but at times in definite
contradiction. Jane Austen, it is clear, never went so far. . .But she
provided the emphasis which had only to be taken outside the park walls
into a different social experience to become not a moral but a social
criticism." Raymond Williams, The English Novel
A reply:
Re: Mnsfield Park
"Once the principles have ben interiorized, the comforts follow: Fanny
is settled for the time being at Thornton Lacy. . .Susan is brought in
"first as a comfort to Fanny, then as an auxilliary, and at last as her
substitute" when the new import takes Fanny's place at Lady Bertram's
side. Te pattern established at the outset of the novel clearly
continues, only now it has what Austen intended to give it all along,
and internalized and retrospectively guaranteed rationale. This is the
rationale that Raymond williams describes as "an everyday,
uncompromising morality which is in the end seperable from its social
basis and which, in other hands, can be turned against it.'
"I have tried to show that the morality is not in fact
seperable from its social basis: right up to the last sentence Austen
affirms and repeats the geographical process of expansion involving
trade, production, and consumption tht predates, underlies, and
guarantees the morality." Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism
Re: Pride and Prejudice as classic Bildungsroman in which the outside
is absorbed, the non-conformist conforms, and the established order
reinforced:
"When Lukacs discusses the novelistic attempt to restore a 'concrete
totality', he s thinking precisely of the continuity of particular and
universal in symbolic representation. And when he ascribes the
"problematic" nature of such an attempt to the 'heterogeneity of
'interiority' and 'second nature', he too, like Coleridge, is
envisaging a form of social and cultural realtionships no longer marked
by ruptures between subject and object, thereby permitting the
'abolishment of alienation.'
"The abolishment of alienation. . .A very enchanting
expression, and very vague. . .But leaving aside what it could mean
when in the future tense, to establish what it means in the case of the
classical Bildungsroman we must return breifly to the question of point
of view. The reader is forced to share that of the protagonist: but
this, we have said, does not allow a satisfying 'vision.' In the long
run, the reader will inevitably desire the disappearance of those
attributes f the protagonist that hinder a clear perception of the tex
and threaten to have it go on for ever. . . .. he wants Wilhelm
[meister] and Elizabteh [Bennet] to renounce their stubborn critical
stance; only if they agree to give up intellectual autonomy can Darcy
and the Tower come forward to ascribe a univocal, definitive and
totalizing meaning to what has been read.. .
".But what is abolished in this process is not "alienation" --
rather 'interpretation,' this fever which in the 16th century rends the
religious unity of wstern Europe, and from that moment on is the
necessary prmise mfor any sort of intellectual autonomy. For any
project of Bildung, it would seem. But the symbolic totality of the
classical Bildungsroman does not allow for interpretation.. . Or in
other words, mening, in the classical Bildungsroman has its price. And
this price is freedom. . . .
"Far from beginning mankind's coming of age, the ending of the
classical bildngsroman is illuminated by a meaning that is *octroye':
benignly granted to the 'pliant' subject, not forcibly seized and built
by the free citiZen.. . .Once again, the French Revolution -- the
elusion of the French Revolution: for the classical Bildungsroman, far
from being the proud achievement of the enlgihtenment, is the final
restatement of a different and far more modest 18th century desire. The
desire for a mechanism of social advancement able to reconcile, rather
than estrange, the two dominant economic classes of the epoch [landed
artisto-bourgeois and their client gentry; radical agressive capitalist
urban bourgoisie]. Thus in Wilhelm Meister and Pride and Prejudice, the
representatives of the opposing social poles -- Wilhelm and Elizabte on
the one hand; Lothario, Jano and Darcy on the other -- undergo a sea
change that softens and renders ioffensive their respective class
features.. ..If the conclusive marriages are ideed mesalliances, this
does not indicate -- as Lukacs put it in Geothe and His Age -- the
generous supremacy of universalistic-democratic deals over narrow class
interests; it indicates a way -- the only way, in the world of the
novel -- to restore harmony within the ruling class. In short, the
Bildungsroman narrates 'how the French revolution could have been
avoided." -- Franco Moretti, The Way Of The world
More class consolidation, as opposed to "jacobinism.":
"Pride and Prejudice is the great representative novel of the major
transition between the system, real and wished for, of the early 18th
century and the new industrial and agricultural capitalism. It is
written, in a sense, at a fixed point of transition, and so manages a
wholesale reconciliation across a range of issues, literary and
ideological.
"Thus, although the novel is essentially afirmative and
optomistic, its clearest educational statement is that circumstance
makes character.. . .Such a view contains the radical implication that
a chnage in ciircumstance can effect change in character, but in the
novel this idea recieves a conservative coloring. For circumstance in
P&P tends to mean the world we are born into, a world that is at once
the past and a world over which we have no effective control. In this
sense, the clearest source of value in the novel is, as it were,
inherited value.. .
"The source of value in this view, as well as of failure, is
clear enough. But it also wholly paternal.. . .Paradoxically, the
paternalistic model is affirmed as the source of value at the same time
that the two actual fathers are shown to have failed, in varying
degrees, to fulfill their roles. . . Once trauma has been survived and
error worked through to a new grasp on self and society, then the basis
of a reconiliation which strengthens inherited value has been laid.
"In our experience of reading the novel we are. I think, wholly
convinced hat this reeconciliation is plausible and right. Yet it is
celar, once we lift our eyes from the pages, that this is a
reconciliation made within very careful limits. Darcy and Elizabeth,
for instance, no doubt learn from bitter experience, but even this
learning has a passive quality. . .The final triumph, too, in the novel
is visualixed as Pemberly. Noe Pemberly may be Darcy's home, Darcy's
estate, and thus mean "darcy" to Elizabeth. But Pemberly, in fact, is
as much if not more the "soil" of the late Mr. Darcy; an estate is not
built up in a year or two. So that while the novel demonstrates the
failures of Mr. Bennet and Mr. Darcy, and forces their children to make
their own way, in the end, all of the reconciliations are focussed on
Pemberly, which, as it were, takes them in and makes itself stronger.
All of the different personalities and the different ways of life they
represent -- the Bingleys, the Gardiners, The Bennets, even Lady
Catherine -- all are concentrated into Pemberly. So that the
reconciliations obscure and overcome th failures of the novel's
paternalistic society and thereby apotheosize it.[!] Elizabeth and
Darcy may, through their activity, have changed themselves, or, in the
language of the novel improved themselves; but it is the unchanged past
embodies in Pemberly that actually triumphs.
"When Jane Austen writes under greater strain, in a more
defensive posture,as in Mansfield Pa4rk, the primacy of the landed
estate becomes unpleasant dogma. The interplay between the activity of
the children and the responsibilty of the adult stops; the novel is
more insistent but less certain about the source of value." --Igor
Webb, From Custom To Capital
Despite disagreements, here is defined a reading of Austen which
recognizes and reveals Austen's apologetic manoeverings; these
manoeverings hardly erase the value of her work as revealing of
ideology, but they can only be understood if the ideological prject is
recognized for what it is. Moretti's view that P&P enacts a
reconciliation of two competing camps of the ruling class -- a
reconciliaion which took place in Engladn, but resulted in violent
conflict in France -- complements, with a different focus, Said's
reading of Austen's work as participating in the formation fo Victorian
imperialist confidence, and both derive from William's original
excavation of ide4as of "improvement" and "cultivation," aspects of th
base, as they are expressed ideologically in Austen's morality.
Following Eagleton's method, Moretti and Said interrogate Austen's
novels for historical content and the process by which literature is
produced from the raw materials of history and ideology, which
production in turn reiforces and contributes to ideology
(dialectically). An examination of Austen's novels as, esentially, an
apology for her class and its ideology in the process of consolidation
and adjustment to historical reality yeilds a complex undestanding not
only of the history and ideology informing the work but of the process
by which fiction is "produced" from those raw materials. A critique
which accepts unquestioned Austen's percievable values and ideological
paradigm can yeild nothing but a restatement of Austen's own moral,
social, and political polemic, which in contrast to the contemporaneous
"jacobin" novelistic tradition, is conservative, indeed reactionary,
conformist, paternalistic, bourgeois, slightly utopian, and sexist and
"snobbish" (with regard to class) as well.
-- Molly
Margaret Young
: Margaret:
:
: /* Written 12:28 AM Jan 6, 1996 by myo...@Market.NET in igc:misc.writing */
: Molly Klein (bo...@igc.apc.org) wrote:
: : Jane Auesten, the most shameless "deck stacker" in the cannon, a
: : polemicist and a prig. The accepted view that she wrote "indictments
: : of an aquisitive society doesn't persuade me; she wrote *apologies* for her
: : society, and indictments of its percieved *abusers* and of
: : those who rebelled against it or attempted to exploit what slender
: : opportunity for social mobility existed in it. She punishes
: *Really? How do you explain Elizabeth Bennett, Frederick Wentworth
: *and Fanny Price--all of whom rose in status?
: Molly replies:
: Eliza Bennet does not change her class; she only gets rich. Eliza to Debourgh: "He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman's daughter. So far we are equal." Austen is with her on this. Austen "stacks" the deck by creating heroines whose "rightful" position in s
: ociety has been debased by weak fathers who fail to fulfill their role. The heroes rectify the descrepancy between their poverty and their class position. Frederick Wenworth does not change class: the objection to him is his poverty: he win prize money. N
: othing more. The importance of wealth is an object of critique by Austen, not the importance of class. Fanny is also a gentlewoman, reduced by circumstances. She does not acceed to a class to which she has not been born. The social climbers in Austen are,
: most evidently and importantly : Emma's protege and Wickham. The lesson of EMMA (or one of them) is the impropriety of attempting to raise the Yoemanry to the level of Gentry. Wickham is an example of deckstacking -- whereas fielding's Tom Jones has a go
: od heart despite his low (or rather illegitimate) birth, Wickham is bad. The Darcy project of raising him above his station is improper and wrong, rectified by Darcy II. Anne's cousin is also an example of this.
Molly, for some reason, the word wrap on your post is not working. I
am not seeing everything you've written, so I may miss part of your
argument, but I will reply to what I can discern.
First, Wickham is not condemned for trying to move upward, but
for selfishness. Second, wealth had quite a bit to do with
rank. Bingley, the gentleman, is the son of a tradesman. Elizabeth
is the grandaughter of one. In Emma, a penniless governess is
married to a gentlemen without a word of diapprobation. Fanny's
lack of a dowry hardly marks her as a fit wife for Edmund. Indeed,
most of Austen's heroines are considered adventuresses (except for
Emma and Anne) at some point by someone in the books. Wentworth
earns his fortune by capturing ships--not by simple preferment.
In order to make your point, you're sweeping aside a substantial amount
of evidence to the contrary.
: : non-conformists, and rewards conformists, rectifies the aberrant
: : relations between poverty viewed as wrongly inflicted upon right
: : thinking female members of the gentry and their breeding, and doles out
: : consolatory praise fo the self-abnegation of the lowly.
: *Umm, could you put this in english?
: Molly replies: this is English.
Not really. It's a polemic.
:
: *Examples would be nice.
: Molly replies: When I work for you, I'll do what you ask. Until then, you decide how you make your arguments; I'll decide how I make mine.
: But, if it helps you: Lydia, Wickham, Marianne Dashwood, the girls at Mansfield Park are punished. Elizabeth, Jane B., Fanny, Darcy, Bingley, Anne, are rewarded for their utter acceptance of bourgeois society and class propriety. Deck stacking in this ca
Lydia is no more of a social climber than any other member of her
family. She is condemned for rashness, not ambition. Wickham is
condemned for selfishness.
As for conformity being rewarded, only to a certain extent and never
if it conflicts with the heroine's sense of ethics. Elizabeth is
rewarded with Darcy for her "impertinence", her willingness to
speak out. Emma's willingness to consider her actions steers her
clear finally of her own follies. The ever-meek Fanny Price refuses
to do a play despite pressure from everyone else. Anne Elliot only
obtains happiness when she finally speaks her mind and defends
women.
: se: The Gardiners, who know their place, are good. The other awful relatives, who aspire to fashion, are bad. Ferrars secret fiancee is another example, though she is not entirely punished, she is exposed and clearly not approved of by Austen.
: Incidentally, I am not saying that Austen was without critical consciousness; she picks out the foibles of the upper classes, etc. etc., and is very keen about the undeniable role of wealth in society, but Darcy's appalling positions are vindicated every
: where nin her novels. The lust for money is seen by Austen as a profligacy at counterpurposes with the ideology of the English gentry -- it is the corruption of the City invading the real England. Those memebers of the upper classes who are fixated on mon
: ey are viewed as debasing their class; but it is not accidentally that the characters who suffer for their poverty are women of the gentry for whom Austen views poverty as a wrong to be righted by the responsible and proper men of the gentry. Her books en
: act this adjustment, while maintaining, whole, the conservative notion of "gentility."
If you mean Austen was not a radical, yes. But she did not adhere to
a notion of fixed, rigid class either. Snobs such as Lady Catherine
: : so long as social climbers and women with sexual impulses are kept out
: : of influence within it. Her present mega-popularity is not surprising
: *Prove it.
: Interpretation doesn't require "proof." Calm down. I will elaborate, however. By the Great House I meant Tilney's House, Pemberly, Mansfield Park, Mr. Knightly's house, and in Persuasion, we have instead The British Navy, another fine stand in for the em
: pire. Deck stacking: Lydia, Harriet, Wentworth's other gal (also an L I think, can't recall) and the punished (but forgiven) Marianne Dashwood -- these are the women who do not sufficiently repress their sexual impulses. Eliza Bennet is often read looking
: back at her through imitations: until the end, Austen's omniscent voice insists that her love for Darcy is "not as tender" as her sister's for Bingley, which is sweet, but cool and proper. Her love is constructed in a very mercantile fashion -- the resul
: t of a compilation of characteristics. Eliza jokes about falling in love after seeing his fine grounds at Pemberly; it is sarcastic, but in fact this is the case. Austen gives us the first glimpse of Eliza's love-in-the-making while she is contemplating h
: is power and the proper way he weilds it.
How are you deciding who has sexual impulses? Is Elinor deciding
Edward is handsome even though he's not supposed to be a sign
of sexual attraction? For that matter, is Elizabeth's attractioin
to Darcy's ability to weild power (your POV, not mine) sexless?
: *The one character to lose his house out of carelessness
: *is Sir Walter Elliot, an aristocrat and snob whose prejudice against
: *social climbers injures his own daughter's chance at happiness.
: Yes, the men of the gentry who do not behave like Darcy debase their social role, but without invalidating the role and its rightness in Austen's view. Their unfitness for the role is the object of her satire, not the existence or propriety of the role w
: hen filled by a man born to it and properly bred to it. The defence of the ideology of the gentry Austen mounts does not require a view that every member of the gentry is by nature "good" and everyone else "bad." She was writing some time before eugenics.
: She shows what the gentry ought to be, and the consequences of not being that: what is not found is a critique of the system and the ideology, what is, the dissection of those who pervert or attack it.
Except that many of Austen's heroes do not end up with an estate. They
are clergymen with a living, or in the case of Wentworth provide thei
wife with a carriage rather than a single place to live.
A truly strong Austen hero can exist without his estate. Knightly
moves in with Emma for her sake--something considered slightly
inappropriate by others in Highgate.
Austen's heroes are gentlemen, but her definition is less rigid than
yours--after all, she was not that far removed from trade, herself.
: *As for sexual impulses, Austen's view is much more subtle than you're
: *making it. After all, Austen opposed marrying for monetary gain at
: *a time when the practice was widely accepted and condoned. By the time
: *you get to Persuasion, a very strong argument is being made for
: *the primacy of love.
: Where -- in what novel in the english language is loveless, interested marriage condoned? I defy you to cite ONE. Even one in which the view of the neccessity for money in marriage is less conservative than in Austen. Just ONE will do! Is there one? Is th
: ere even a tolerably known pamphlet to such an effect? A collection of letters? I look at the english novel and see a long long tradition off opposition to interested marriage. It is UBIQUITOUS. It is, indeed, the SUBJECT OF ENGLISH NOVELS. Fielding, Smol
Can Your Forgive Her? by Trollope. Let me know if you want more.
: I'm not saying Austen's view was not subtle, only that is was misogynist. Misogynist in presenting paragons of female virtue who, in Mr. Bennet's words, "look upon their husbands as their superiors." A decade before Austen, Wollstonecraft and others were
: writing of women as EQUALS. They were writing of the necessity to liberate women from traditional constraints, including those associated with marriage. Austen lamented the difficulty intelligent women faced finding these superiors, but she did not challe
: nge the propriety of doing so or the subordination of women to these superiors when they could be found. Eliza's poor friend Charlotte's deference to her husband is viewed as a virtue, though her marriage is lamented as an economic necessity. This is her
: sexism, however, not her misogyny. That is this: Women come in for special attack in Austen: all the villains are women with the exception of Anne's cousin: De Bourgh, the Manfield Park Crew, Caroline Bingley, Anne's sister and her sexually uncrontrolled
: friend, andLydia. . .also, the most debased and villified characters are women. The heroines are of course paragons, but always defined as being perfect women in contrast to the vast majority of women who display in abundance particularily female vices
: and failings -- stupidity, avarice, vanity, sexual unconstraint, frivolity, wiles. The "savior" is always a man, Mr. Mansfield Park (what's his name), the Heroes. Sir Walter Eliot is an unlikeable character, effeminate not surprisingly, but the villain of
: the piece is her ladyship Persuader. Willoughby is untrue, but Ferrars' first fiancee is scheming and low. Mrs. Bennet is vulgar beyond expression. The De Bourghs. . .
I think you're confusing realism with misogyny. Are you saying women
were not financially dependent on men during this period? That
Austen was not a radical like Wollstonecraft does not make her
a misogynist. Austen was very aware of the constraints on woman and
Anne Elliot's argument with Harville makes one of her gentlest
heroines speak out on the subject.
As for your saying the bad women are worse than the bad men, that's
entirely subjective. Austen's women are stronger characterizations
than are her men, that is hardly misogyny. Lucy Steele is hardly
painted worse than Willoughby. Louisa Musgrove is a bit reckless,
but hardly compares in villainy to the Eliot heir. Mary Crawford
is less harmful than her brother Henry. As for venial sins,
Mr. Collins is every bit as foolish as Harriet Smith and quite a
bit more unpleasant.
As for the intelligence question, Lucy steele and Mary Crawford
are both intelligent.
Basically, you're making an assumption that does not consider
contradictory evidence.
: *What Austen did condone was control of one's impulses, that is not
: *the same as the denial of them.
: I spoke neither of control nor denial, but of absence and presence. When talking of Eliza Bennet, Emma Woodhouse, and Elinor Dashwood, denial and absence is a toss up. Certainly there is little textual evidence of denial -- these heroines are constructed
: without evident sexuality. Anne is another story; in that case, control/denial fits. Persuasion is slightly different from the other novels in ideology, I think; much less priggish and strident.
See above on defining of sexual impulse.
: : (it owes a deal to having spawned a genre which has somewhat modified
: : her snobbery and rigid views of class), but how she has become known as
: *Actually, regencies are a tight market right now. And remember, Austen
: *is an intellectual more than a class snob.
: Can't remember what I never knew. The occurrence of the word "vulgarity" with great frequence in her works savors of class snobbery to me; vulgarity has nothing to do with "intellect." Vulgarity has to do with "class" and "breeding." While Austen's female
: villains tend to be stupid, her social climbing males are often rather bright, charming, not "vulgar": Wickham, Anne's cousin, for example.
See above. Also, the repeated emphasis in Austin is on the compatibility
of minds--elegance of mind and similar tastes. Her main warning is
against mismatches in such matters--her books are full of unhappy
marriages where one partner is foolish. Why you think Charlotte
Lucas is admired for her marriage puzzles me. It's clearly painted
as the sad result of desperation. Charlotte does her best, but the
marriage is hardly one Elizabeth is supposed to emulate--her father
warns her against such a mismatch.
: Next point: I didn't mean the genre of pulp "regency romance" but the genre of the nliterary novel of manners and moeurs
: : an opponent of or ciritc of bourgeois ethico-social values/reality is
: : beyond me.
: *Obviously.
: Yes, obviously. But how is it evdent to you? I've yet to be told. You don't advance an argument here -- there is nothing but interrogative rebuttal. Have you a reading to share, perhaps? A point to make? "Examples might be nice," that sort of thing.
I'm not really trying to make arguments. I'm simply pointing out the
problems with yours. What my arguments may be has little to do with
this....
: : writers of her time still read, and though a generic innovator, her
: : plots often depend on creaky coincidences through which are revealed
: : the arduous ideological labors of the censorious authorial hand to
: : hhold the reins on the runaway critical consciousness and keep it
: : directed along the straight and narrow path of pedantic exemplary
: : tales. An egregious conservatism, in the context of novels from
: *You think Austen is misogynistic? On what grounds? What writer strikes
: *you as less misogynistic from her period? Also, you don't seem to
: *get what she's doing with her conscious structuring of plot.
: Writers less misogynist: Inchbald, Ferrier, Edgeworth, De Stael, Godwin, Wollstonecraft, both Shelleys, Sir Walter Scott, Thomas Love Peacock, Thomas de uincy, James Hogg, etc.
Umm, you're not really answering me as to why you think Austen's
lack of radicalism is inherently misogynistic.
The plots are conscious satires of novel conventions of the day.
Her earliest work is completely satirical.
I don't find Austen misogynistic for the simple reason her heroines
are portrayed as capable of making their own choices and aren't
punished for their independent thought. This stands in stark
contrast to the Victorians--what one of George Eliot's heroines
came to a happy end. They're either dead or submerged. Similar
things are seen in Tolstoy, Dickens, Thackeray. Austen's heroines
live in restricted environments, but they are not passive. To
the degree they can make choices, they do. What heroine makes
such choices in Fielding? Sir Walter Scott? Or how about
James and much of Hardy? I like many of these writers, but
women suffer in those books if they think.
:
: *By the way, your argumentation would benefit from shorter sentences,
: *each containing a single idea.
: Your argument would also benefit from a single idea. You argument, in fact, would benefit from an argument. If Austen's novels are not as I've described them, how are they? What are they about? What is Austen's position on class? Money? Marriage? How is t
: his position articulated? "No, you're wrong" is not a persuasive argument. "You don't get it" has failed to convince me.
Once again, pointing out problems with your argument does not mean
I need supply a counterargument.
: : Fielding to Godwin and Shelley, marks her work and lays the foundations
: : for the elaborate ideological structure of victorianism. Austen's work
: *What, Austen laid the foundations for the elaborate ideological
: *structure of Victorianism? I'd love some evidence for this
: *supposition. Also, why Fielding to Austen to Godwin and Shelley.
: *Godwin and Shelley are hardly in the continuum you've begun
: For the first, too long to reply here. See Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel, Raymond Williams The English Novel, Franco Moretti The Way Of The World, Igor Web, From Custom To Capital, Terry Eagletons books, Edward Said Culture and Imperialism, etc. For the
: second -- why are Godwin and Shelley out of the continuum? The continuum is "novels in English," or perhaps "British novels." Godwin's novels are contemporaneous with Austen; if you don't know them, they include St. Leon, Caleb Williams, and Mandeville.
: Frankenstein is also contemporaneous, while Shelley's other novels are only slightly later. I said "From Fielding to Godwin and Shelley" eaning to demarcate a period of the novel, from mid-eighteenth century to the Napoleonic era and Regency. I could have
: said from Richardson to Burney's Wandered, covering the same time frame, roughly. To what are you objecting?
Because Godwin and Shelley were not mainstream novelists. Godwin wasn't
one at all, and Frankenstein hardly strikes me as working in the
realist tradition. I got part of what you sent me, but it doesn't
really answer my question. That Austen reflected and commented on
the changes in her society is not new. Nothing you sent showed
how her work laid a foundatioin for Victorian ideology.
: : has made its way, of course, into the vast critique of bourgeois
: : ideology, but it has done so emphatically in spite of Austen.
: *In spite of? What did she do to stop it?
: I meant that an expropriative reading of Austen's novels is necessary for them to be of use to a critique of bourgeois ideology. Austen's works do not participate in that critique. They require interrogation, and when interrogated are useful to that crit
: ique. They are examples of bourgeois ideology, and how that ideology is expressed in novels. This is a pretty simple statement. She didn't "do anything" to stop it. We are talking about novels, remember? A sympathetic reading, that is one taking Austen on
: her own terms, will give rise to an apology for this ideology, not a critique. That's what I said from the beginning. Instead of simply dropping your jaw, if you disagree you might venture a word or two WHY you do.
I don't suppose you realize you're guilty of the thing for which
you condemn others?
It was interesting to note that you e-mailed me critic's arguments,
but not any text references.
: *I once had a medieval lit. professor who, when faced a with a
: *student's patronizing assessment of Chaucer's motivations in
: *writing something, would say, "Why do you assume Chaucer is dumber
: *than you?" Your sweeping assessment of Austen, which ignores
: *the many contradictions in her work, makes me wonder why you
: *assume Austen is dumber than you?
: This si ridiculous. There are no "extra requirements" of intelligence to evaluate an author in a less than perfectly laudatory way. Your fulsome praise, I assume, is given with a consciousness of having enough brains to evaluate Austen, thus rendering you
: r thumbs up, in your own mind, valuale. Your presuming to genuflect to her does not, I suppose, suggest a belief that you are superior to her in intelligence, thus qualified to give approval. I am not evaluating the historical figure, anyway: my ouija boa
: rds out of commission. We are talking about artifacts, novels. This is really ridiculous, and makes me wonder why you are so upset with an evaluationg of Austen that you don't agree with. Are you descended from her or something? Or have you built a religi
: on around her works? As for ignoring her contradictions, I do not. I have discussed them. I'd be happy to discuss them further. How about you? What contradictions to you see?
: Do YOU HAVE AN OPINION other than "tsuh! How dare you!" Can you put it into words, perhaps? This defence/ interpretation to which you are alluding, teaingly, but hiding?
My opinion is that you're being a little silly. You make sweeping
generalizations based on about three characters (Lydia, Wickham and
Elizabeth Bennett). Nothing you've said shows you pay careful
attention to the discriminations Austen makes repeatedly. Instead,
you write as if she were blind to obvious issues. You say you don't
ignore her contradictions, but make arguments that do in fact ignore
quite obvious contradictions.
I don't "genuflect" at Austen's shrine. Unlike you, I am familiar
with all of her works and don't base my opinions on a couple of
characters and whatever literary theory's currently trendy. I
don't agree with all of Austen's opinions--I think S&S has some
serious weaknesses and find Fanny Price overly virtuous.
By the way, much as you'd like to think you're somehow outraging
me by the audacity of your opinions, you're not. Poor arguments
of any sort do tend to irritate me into responding, however.
: *It has struck me that the pretty, lovable facade of Austen's
: *as they do a less-accessible writer
Let's see, first you say I make no arguments, then you say I'm
: You seem to have only knelt at her alter, not considered her works carefully. The consideration of her works, carefully, seems to strkike you as some pompous action based upon a belief that she was dumber than the person presuming to consider.
: * Personally, I am repeatedly
: *struck by the number of levels on which Austen can be read and
: *interpreted.
: are not simply perverse.
A political interpretation? You haven't made one. You haven't
said one thing that actually relates to the political implications
of Austen's work. If anything, you show a lack of awareness of
England's political realities in Austen's time.
Why, for instance, is Austen promoting a stable gentry with
a patriarchal bent? Why isn't Wentworth a member of the landed
gentry? How has Sir Walter Elliot lost his money? Why are
aristocrats portrayed negatively? Why did Austen nearly give
her heroines a dowry though she herself had none? Why does
Austen repeatedly show men involved in the Napoleonic wars, but
cconstututes happiness change over the course of her
novels?
Now, please stop making easy assumptions.
If you do, I promise to actually make an argument or
two.
margaret
so important?
D
academic catch phrases means you don't consider what she's
actually writing? What are the bourgoisie values that she
is promoting? How do they compare to 50 years later? Why
Dis a happy ending possible for Emma Woodhouse, but not
Gwendolyn of Daniel Deronda/
: * It amazes me how much is contained in seemingly
: *light novels about young provincial women getting married.
: what a set up -- but no payoff! This is the BEGINNING of an argument; youve mistaken it for the argument itself and the CONCLUSION. So far, you've said nothing about Austen, only challenged my comments. Put forward an interpretation, and then we cn talk.
: I see, also, a great deal in these novels, and I've tried, briefly, to indicate, specifically, what I see. It was specific enough to upset you. Now why don't you do the same? Have you anything to say, anythig more specific than "how much" or "the number o
: f levels."?
A blanket condemnation of Austen as a misogynist and blanket supporter of
the status quo hardly shows careful observation on your part.
: *margaret
: --Molly