An on-line image of a watercolor of a genteel lady writing
Dear friends and readers,
I’ve been meaning for ever so long to talk on this blog about an important book of Austen criticism published during WW2 (1944), one sometimes forgotten: Sheila Kaye-Smith and G. B. Stern’s Speaking of Jane Austen. I’ll situate the book, describe their general outlook, offer samples of the kinds of talk their books are made up of, and then assess. And I accompany the blog with pictures that capture a tone or attitude of mind that seems appropriate to their book and how they view Austen.
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Situating the book:
Sidney Place where the Austens lived in Bath imagined inside
Janeism, the attitude of mind which sees in Austen’s books a genteel refuge from reality, is sometimes said to have begun among readers with the publication of James-Edward Austen-Leigh’s memoir of his aunt in 1870: he depicted his aunt as gentle, retreating, and by implication her novels as comical nostalgia — and was immediately mocked by Margaret Oliphant. That his portrait had begun to affect how people talked about Austen’s novels is seen in Henry James’s somewhat enigmatic and irritated reference to the way Austen was discussed as “our dear, everybody’s dear, Jane,” but as a movement it first reached reached public consciousness in Sheila Kaye-Smith and G. B. Stern’s Speaking of Jane Austen. Until their book most critics were male and most discussed the ethics or vision of her book in abstract terms, gender-neutral. They never deigned to discuss issues like Do you think Charlotte Lucas was right to marry Mr. Collins, never got that embarrassingly concrete; Kaye-Smith and Stern were the first to discuss the books as about women’s issues — and were immediately mocked by Edmund Wilson.
Their book was so popular, they published a sequel to it: More about Jane Austen. When we see that their attitudes are those behind the silly unreal comedy approach taken to the novel in the 1940 film (with Olivier as Darcy and Garson as Elizabeth), and the gentle dramatic romance with cartoon paratexts in the 1979 BBC P&P (scripted Fay Weldon), we begin to see that they were merely articulating, bringing out into the discussably open the way readers had been thinking about Austen and seeing her from the time of her first publication and those of her peers (Mrs Jane West, Mary Brunton, Maria Edgeworth, Charlotte Smith).
From a Gilpin book: an abbey or church
Who we are determines what we see & what we think important. Sheila Kaye-Smith was a novelist; she writes of rural Sussex where she was born, married and then lived in a grand house with her husband. Her novels include Joanna Godden, Susan Spray, Selina, The Valiant Woman. Gladys (G. B.) Stern also came from the upper class English gentry; she too born just before World War One. She went to a elegant girls school, Notting Hill, traveled in Germany and Switzerland; in the essay she tells us in her house they did home theatricals (a number of servants are mentioned). She studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, but did not go on to act. She wrote plays — and poety, journalism, critical reviews and novels; titles of the latter include: Pantomime, The Matriarch, The Young Matriarch.
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Their general outlook:
Matlock — from 6 views of Derbyshire
They both say they learned to love Austen during a time of intense tribulation. Stern goes so far as to tell us she was having a nervous breakdown, but from what from we are not told. Kaye-Smith says: “[Jane] helped me through a bad time …” (reminding me Rudyard Kipling’s story, The Janeites). Both see Austen’s books as comforting; she has a “gentle malice”; her books all end in “radiant happiness.” They chose not to deal with Lady Susan or The Watsons. One of them says she is among those who are dismayed by the ending of Mansfield Park (and this was the first time this was announced in print: Austen should have married Edmund to Mary and Fanny to Henry. They both quote Austen’s upbeat exhortations to the reader: “‘Pray exert yourself”.
Of Austen’s art, Kaye-Smith says: “Her methods are quietly realistic”. Unlike Austen’s contemporaries, her art isn’t unnatural, not caricature. K-S comments:
In Jane Austen’s world I can feel at home and be as much alive as in my own. The same laws function there. No licenses are issued for distortion and improbability. I meet there people who are no mere characters in fiction, but also sensible companions and their thoughts and feelings are in close alliance with what I personally think and feel.
Stern has to admit there are deaths, but they are, says she, not dwelt upon. Surprisingly they concur in placing P&P at the bottom of Austen’s achievements. Stern is one of those who didn’t like MP at first; all she could get herself to read were the theatricals and then she forgot the book altogether for 20 years.
An idyllic Little Women world
Both see this novel as the one which has most of the elements of popular success; Kaye-Smith talks of its “slightly Cinderella-ish story, novel hero and tint of farce.” Many a reader who begins with P&P and then goes on to another of the novels is very disappointed by them. The other novels, says, Kaye-Smith, demands tastes and sympathies which the better known book does not require — they are for Jane Austen’s friends not her acquaintances. They concur in favouring Emma whose heroine is them. They were caught for life upon reading its opening sentence:
Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.
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The kind of specific talk they pioneered
They would enjoy this 1890s Henry and Catherine in the curricle (from a recent Jane Austen calendar)
Chapter 3: Kaye-Smith writes “without Jane Austen’s wit, her novels would be sentimental and quaint.” Austen’s “acid, salty characteristic [tone] is an essential ingredient of the novels and makes up for the absence of deeper, more universal qualities”. “Jane dear” avoids the “darker sides of life;” nothing “odious” permitted here, no brutalities, no harshness; in fact were we not to read about it elsewhere, we would not know there was a devastating revolution going on in France, a horror of repression in England as well a decade of hunger for the poor (nothing new in that of course), a war set on by Napoleon; we would not know of gambling, of the viciousness of the streets, of the acceptance of the most egregious cruelties by the thugs of the world by Parliament (because forsooth, how can you stop it?), no references to life’s small despairing difficulties as registered in the outward social circumstances of the time.
Chapter 4: Sheila Kaye-Smith talks about “chumps” in Austen and defends her use of the term. She says she was accused of slang and says that’s appropriate to these characters. She defines chump in a way that suggests delight in the type and insists on their good-nature and harmlessness: “you are ready to love them”; they are made up of “endearing engredients”; they are “a little vague, deeply earnest in their statements and deeply honest. Chumps do no harm”. Kaye-Smith’s near-synonyms: “idiot, ass, nitwit, moron, simpleton, fathead, goose and gorm” (p. 33). For me such words are for people who laugh at others because they are dumb. To K-S the harmlessness is not in the lack of malice, but incapability. But is Mr Woodhouse incapable of getting what he wants? K-S gets a kick out of Harriet’s helplessness, and laughs at Harriet’s responses to Emma’s comment that Mr Martin must when he grows old be “a completely gross, vulgar, farmer …” “Will he indeed, that will be very bad.” This comment sends Kaye-Smith into gales of laughter. Kaye-Smith does say there are times when a character is not quite the total ass of vacuity she find so delicious (e.g., Lady Bertram).
Chapter 5: Kaye-Smith expresses her dismay and disappointment that there are so few details about food, dress, places, and houses; still what matters is what is there is well-used to convey mood, values. Mrs Elton is one of the few characters whose dress is described because Mrs Elton cares, and Mrs Elton’s concern and the details given are shaped to make the woman obnoxious and grating, a pretentious snob without an inner life to be valued. The details in MP create a world of unease, anxiety, and sharp retorts between one another. K-S notes how the books often begin in autumn, reach a height in winter and trail off in spring: the autumnal nature of Persuasion is done justice to; the brevity of NA. Then again she notices how different kinds of details dominate each book: in Emma it is food; in NA, consumer goods of a fancy type and long full picture of an abbey; we have picturesque landscape in S&S. K-S works in the detail into her text to convey the experience of Austen’s particular book. She showsthe threads that make up the peculiar tapestry of eachbook through tracing a choice and use of object through the book. Ms Kaye-Smith has a gift for concisionand generalisation out of precision that recalls Austen’s own.
1883: Fanny receives the chain from Edmund — presumably K-S and G would hate this illustration
Chapter 6 offers so much grating ceaseless Fanny Price-bashing I’ll simply move on to Chapters 7 and 8: Stern is a character-monger; whatever may be the ostensible subject matter of her essays, she is endlessly responding to characters. She reads the books as historical sources: they tell us how the rich spent their leisure in ways that seemed useful, active and not sinful: girls learn to read, play music, sing, draw, ride horses, serve others, and dance. She imagines Austen sitting silently on some local town council as an important female citizen in the community. Chapter 9 by Stern is called “Addicted to Letter-writing.” She does not care for Austen’s letters as letters, only as revealing aspects of her personality and possibly art. Stern writes:
Jane Austen’s own letters show from page to page her excessive delight in the small, odd, senseless behavior of all those who come and go within her range. Perhaps this is what makes them at times somewhat wearisome reading; they arrive, they stay five minutes, and they depart again, yet within that five minutes Miss Austen has run a sharp little instrument, like a pastry-cutter, around their chief absurdity so that she may serve it up for the delectation of her sister Cassandra the next time she writes. The letters can be excessive in their acid, uncomfortable for a reader.
In the later chapters they object to certain characters (beyond Fanny) — Brandon, Eleanor Tilney, Catherine Morland. Stern’s rejection of Eleanor Tilney shows she has underestimated, not taken seriously the characterisation of General Tilney as dramatised by Austen. She simply asserts that she cannot believe that the General would not have seen the error of his ways had Eleanor pointed them out to him. She brings no proof anywhere in the text to bolster this one up. She finds it ‘strange and disappointing’ that neither of the General’s children who are so ‘intelligent’ have not succeeded finding the method to handle ‘this conceited stupid, noisy old donkey’. She regards the General as basically harmless: “I do not believe for a single moment that the General would have been able to withstand such an argument for the expedience of retracting his gross incivility towards a young girl whom he had himself invited … She offers new stories to replace the one we’ve got. She doesn’t believe in Lady Catherine; Brandon isn’t there as a presence. No surprise to find that Chapter 11 is filled with embryo sequels.
Chapter 13 opens with a quiz, and then feels like a whole Digest minus the separate headings. The two ladies go back and forth, spurting out what’s on their mind, sudden remarks and paragraphs and meditations which are not connected to one another in the manner of a composed discourse.
The last two chapters have a poignant backdrop to the attempt to leave us with cordial feeling. Stern writes:
Emma is, I believe, my favourite Jane Austen because it is my happiest escape. In Emma I can lose myself. There is so little sorrow in it. Its high spirits are so infectious. Its story can so completely absorb; record of the daily normal sequence of days spent in Highbury, so enthralling to us for whom, since the war began, to-morrow can hardly ever be a continuation of today …
She moves from this sudden swerve to telling us that while she is reading Austen she thinks the world will continue tomorrow so she is no longer “on the rim of catastrophe.”
Kaye-Smith again says P&P is her least favorite. Why? She doesn’t believe in the story. She doesn’t believe in the two romances between the two top couples (Elizabeth and Darcy, Jane and Bingley); she doesn’t believe a “sensible” man like Darcy could have produced such an insulting proposal; she doesn’t believe in Darcy’s reformation; the situation “between Jane and Bingley” is “incredible”; Bingley’s going away just on Darcy’s statement and being brought back is perfunctory and contriver. She admits to the wonderful heroine and much satisfying dialogue.
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Assessment:
From the cover of the graphic novel of P&P
To read this book is like being a lurker on a listserv. In the case of Stern I found myself bouncing off her comments, arguing with her. Her continual Fanny-Bashing was irritating, especially since it clearly stemmed from her upper class background. In fact I felt that background grate on my nerves more than anything else as she was so unconscious that she had such a narrow view of the world (no upper class lady could be so rude, it just hits one in the face, &c). Sheila Kaye-Smith at her best is very like Mary Lascelles. The voice is the same. The aesthetic approach, the delicacy of apprehension about small structures and parts of patterns. Some of analyses of characters are superb: the one of Lady Russell (whom she seems to have met in life). Her argument that NA is the most technically sophisticated and at times controlled of Austen’s novels is striking. She argued what we have is a late text.
And this kind of frank reading talk is given its first license in James-Edward Austen-Leigh’s Memoir.
Ellen
Reveries Under the Sign of Austen, Two 
This is in reply to an off-blog comment: Without wanting to re-ignite the long gotten over Fanny wars, I’ll reply that when I first came onto lists I was startled by the vehemence of the dislike of Fanny Price — and last night reading over my notes on Sheila Kaye-Smith and G.B. Stern was startled by the Fanny-bashing. I so myself immediately bonded with her 🙂 – and saw and still see how like she is to Austen’s other heroines in central ways. As she reads over Edmund’s letter the terms of her condemnation of Mary are the terms Elinor and Marianne, Elizabeth and Jane would use — perhaps Austen has invented a story which brings forward this kind of talk explicitly is the problem. But MP is not an openly didactic novel in the way of say Hannah More or Elizabeth Hamilton at all. I’ve been reading Frances Burney D’Arblay’s diaries and journals and see such an enormous difference between FBA’s depiction of her Fanny’s enjoyment of social life and Austen’s continual questioning, withdrawing, and to me it’s that angle on FP and of MP that makes the discomfort. It’s the angle of the letters.
I found myself a cheap copy of Mary Field Belenky & others, Women’s Ways of Knowing and began it last night. It’s part of the Carol Gilligan school of women’s psychology: a defense of caring and attachment, of the way women relate personally to experience, of how girls grow up forming attachments to others (and how hurt they become when these are broken off or betrayed).
I’ve only begun but it seems a deeper book in some ways than Gilligan — because researched, ultimtely a refutation of Freud.
Certainly to read Kaye-Smith and Stern against a couple of generations of critics of Austen all of whom but one were men is to be startled. Of course the men were inhibited against talking of the novel so openly and personally but it is more than that. They didn’t think to discuss the books this way in the first place — not publicly and maybe not even in the privacy of their mind..
E.M.
This sounds like an interesting book. I am struck by the rim of catastrophe comment. Again, as in Kiplings’s Janeites, really a marvelous story if you get past the dialect, the backdrop to clinging to Austen is war and uncertainty and change. Criticized or not, Austen’s novels and the world they depict become the counterpoint to chaos, the irony being the extent to which Austen critiqued her social order: In it are the seeds of war. And yet, it was order.
I’m not sure I’ve conveyed what an important book it is in the history of Austen scholarship. It probably embarrasses contemporary feminist academics so they want to forget it, erase it, but it’s a turning point. It was the first book in print to talk about Austen in the intimate way, judging the characters from a woman’s point of view that we have grown so used to. It might have been seen as functioning to keep Austen out of the academic curriculum — remember she was not assigned in schools as a classic until well past the mid-20th century. A silly woman’s romance — and that’s why Wilson ridiculed Kaye-Smith and Stern. But it’s from the popular world that Austen makes her world-wide mark and gains her stature.
JEAL articulated what many readers may have felt generally in the 1870s reading Austen’s books and attached to her “character” and life story, but he didn’t bring out his view with respect to the novels in details. Kaye-Smith and Stern’s book was so popular, they wrote a sequel and it sold. Their own novels were read. The books have been quietly influential. That’s why I longed to write this blog for ever so long.
I don’t know that I would have the patience to go through it the way we did on Austen-l in the later 1990s.
Rim of catastrophe is a good phrase: my leading thesis about the Jane Austen film canon is the films present Austenland as a place of refuge. Recently this has been satirized (Lost in Austen, Austenland) and among intelligent film-makers there has been an undercurrent of showing the implicit probable hardships and miseries of life in the 18th century too (Andrew Davies’s films all do this); nonetheless, this idea broached in dialect memorably by Kipling is alive and well. After all is not the name of one list-serv Janeites? is not the term in common use? when you are in a tight spot and bombs are raining down, the thing to do is retreat to your bunker and read Jane ….