Pierre Goubert: Etude psychologique de la romanciere Jane Austen (2)

Gainsborough, Wooded landscape with cottage and shepherd

Dear friends and readers,

In my first of two blogs on Goubert’s book I reviewed his presentation of Austen’s first impulses in writing, and her work looked at from the point of view of her as a woman writer reacting against the stereotype of heroines in romances of the lending library. This second blog is how Goubert sees Austen dramatizing on heroines in society, the problems heroines of sensibility face vis-a-vis the codes of their society and other characters. He then goes on to her typical categories of thought and moral and personal concerns, concluding with her motivations for writing, major stances, writing life and a coherent vision at the center of her work.

I again pick out good insights scattered in the book: goubert says we glimpse across “Love and Friendship” the existence of a primary anarchist impulse or at least ideas that are in a ferment of trouble and thus that it is important for Austen to denounce. He finds her to be a very strong egoist in the sense that she judges and feels by her own case intensely in her novels. Source of profound bitterness: everything renders precarious and derisory the advantage that culture gives a woman? is it not desolating that a young woman like Jane Fairfax has for a future only an exhausting, obscure and thankless job as a governess (p 272) Willoughby has nothing, Elizabeth nearly so. Poverty it is which inspires Austen’s most vivid strong remarks rather than abundance, luxury (p 283)

She wants to rally the forces of people against a superiority assumed that has no solid basis she respects. It’s easy to read this as political when it may be a moral & personal outlook (p 307).

A tone lightly cynical makes the charm of P&P – yes and it’s rarely remarked (p 283). P&P and S&S are tales of liberation, a chant of victory over humiliation that derives from deep past (family). MP: emotional and thoughtful and imaginative lives are of great concern to Austen especially from the point of view of someone subject to others but the words she uses shows us a very different set of terms for how the mind works and a different set of values. The imagination is suspect, the fancy often foolish in her vocabulary. Austen distrust the intrusion of intransigent stubborn advice from others.

Persuasion was called so by Henry but it is apt and maybe he had authority for it. Anne Elliot allows herself to be persuaded out of doing what she wants and later comes to see she ought to have done. Women who are dependent are susceptible to pressure we’d call it; Austen in her novel recurs to relatives doing all they can to work on heroines (or heroes) to marry someone (Reginald in Lady Susan). We are told Bingley is persuadable — how convenient for you says Elizabeth. And one of the bitterer moments between Darcy and Elizabeth is discussing just the limits one should allow one’s friends to persuade one. We are told Henry means to work on Fanny’s emotions, put a hole in her heart he says.

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Abington gate, 18th century school

He first divides fiction of this era who tended either to exalt the moral virtues of sensibility and or recommended obedience to laws of taught conduct. This period saw a decline in parental authority and we see in novels the heroine who wildly opposes her parents’ insistence she marry X; she runs away with Y and we are not taught she was too hasty or too dependent on sensibility.

He turns to the Juvenilia where we see Austen reacting against the spirit of independence, mocking rebellion as silly, egoistic, unreal. There’s a striking need to dismiss rebellion and romance as hallucinatory. She derides her romantic heroes and heroines in Love and Friendship, but in P&P; OTOH, it’s Collins who upholds sanctity of parental authority; resistence in S&S and Lady Susan is the right thing to do. NA Henry Tilney resists the tyrant father with courage and determination (despite joke novelist on his side) — these are bad parents it must be admitted, and inadequate advice: Persuasion Lady Russell.

The theme of education important here. We have adults spoiled as children, but they improve (Darcy, Emma); we have Austen mocking the impossibly gifted and talented and knowledgeable heroine (p. 256) There is a class bias here: the woman should not educated herself inappropriately, Sir Thomas wishes Fanny to forgive her aunt for “educating” her appropriate to her station (p 258); education must be in ethics and ought to be equally dispensed when together; Mary Bennet represents a cruel portrait of ugly pedantic girl (P&P). Austen was not highly accomplished, played for herself, hardly drew, could not speak French even if she could read it. Fanny Price knows no music. Anne playing for others is Austen. Jane Austen knew how to and loved dancing so that’s fine to do in the novels (p 263). It’s telling to find her hostile to what she doesn’t know how to do (p 264).

One might say the abandonment of one’s authority as a parent is more denounced than parental tyranny (Mrs Dashwood, Mr Bennet); Austen returns again and again to the favored child unjustly favored (p 251). This is so frequent and two together presented as an abuse of the child that he feels Austen is mirroring her own situation — not the literal experience (though the present brought back to Anna recalls present brought back to Anne Elliot), rather they dramatize a complex of feelings of inferiority: her brothers could have careers and did not experience the poverty she did, the lack of freedom of movement (p 252). He feels the derision we feel in her letters to Clarke come out of her sense of her superiority but it is he who has the respect of classical learning and an income he can live on well (p 272)

In her novels the men are given far more responsibility and thus knowledge to deal with the world, the women are not famously educated or skilled; there is an equality of apprehension, of capability were they only asked. p 349 Elinor seems more capable than Edward; Wentworth can rely on Anne; we know Fanny smarter than Edmund. An intellectually gifted young man is married to a fool; a decent capable man married to a neurotic silly drag

She is for close surveillance of children; vanity, pride, egoism, arrogance, indifference to others must be controlled.

Goubert does not want to admit that the lack of religion in the plan of education in the novels is striking, nor that Austen is strongly influenced by Genlis. He likes to quote the minor conservative English novelists.

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Early 19th century illustration: Bath, Portman Square

Austen early on very irritated by heroines who scorn money. In S&S we have Marianne appearing to scorn opulence but we see that she wants a great deal and her eyes sparkle at the thought of a fortune. Mr Elton: “Elton may talk sentimentally, but he will act rationally.”

The angle of vision we are given permits us to see how money is so important, made precise and why. Juvenilia: I had rather work for my bread than marry him (p 354)

The theme of a heroine poor or humiliated in her poverty stretches across Austen’s work (283); Austen uses wit to separate herself but in Catherine or the Bower we recognize immediately elements in Austen’s family. Her experience after her father died analogous and direct. A sentiment of humiliation takes body in her heroines and the stories take a kind of revenge in erasing the heroine’s humiliation against the machinations of others (Tilney,the Dashwoods, Lady Catherine, Mrs Norris, Lady Denham probably, Sir Walter too). Lack of money gives characters and experiences that supply fundamental view of society.

Her characters’ parents also want heroines to marry for status, rank, not to lower theirs. We see the solitude, the negligence of the ignored; no one realizes or admits what is happening. Goubert feels she is superior to other romancers whose heroines meet pride with fierce pride by engaging her heroines in a humbling process themselves. This moral humbling is not what destroyed her possibilities in life. Even a spirit as cool and collected as Elinor Dashwood’s does not listen without being profoundly pained, grated on as Lucy exults over her. A word that repeats in Austen is “triumph’: let them triumph at a distance (p 300). Her characters who are judged fools show a love of the hierarchy itself: Collins exulting over his connection to Rosings (p 300). Just the proximity of being in this milieu makes him swell (p 300-1). Hierarchy cannot be ignored: his includes Mr Bennet towards Darcy: “he is a man I can’t refuse.”

In her novels intelligence given moral victory over rank and money. Who does she respect: Wentworth, Mr Knightley, Colonel Brandon, Sir Thomas Bertram. What individuals what groups does she defend? Gardiner respectable tradespeople. Clergymen in MP. Tenant farmer like Mr Martin who by end we agree could have done better than Harriet. Austen seems not to seek social ascension but social intermingling (p 317) “croissance”.

She’s against having to submit to the effects of prejudice which tend to refuse people a place in the society to whch he or she has a right. She shows us an indolent selfish clergyman in Grant but that does not mean all are; outlines their duties in the novel (p 319); Collins is a man who demeans his profession, acts it out in a demeaning way; he is a toady (p 320). Sh was daughter, sister, niece of clergymen.

He notices her interest in navy, her two brothers the older of whom, Frank, she takes a lot more notice (p 320); she employs all her talents to put their merits before us; we don’t see them at sea any more than we do most of the men at their work; the point is made they do it for money not to conquer an enemy (p 322).
She does not think that the order itself should change; only country gentlemen and their families and hard working middle people not be despised and cut off, be recognized for their real value when they have any

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Emma’s dream of Harriet marrying Mr Elton not herself (1996 Emma)

Garrow. a rare hostile reviewer: where the principle action of novels is a husband hunt I refuse to call edifying works which accept not only as natural but good worn and shabby institutions like simony, nepotism, the marriage of convenience.

To the contrary, says Goubert: what we find in the novels is a willing refuge in self dependence freely and proudly accepted on whatever terms forced, and this indirect way of condemning the husband-hunt from the get-go of the books seems to him central to understanding them, even the late semi-finished book, Persuasion or the one begun so early with the naive non-desperate Catherine (p 354).

Leading up to, considering marriage: Word “misery” has a very strong meaning for Jane Austen (p 338); real hostility in the later 18th century in women’s novels where the girl is sold for rich marriage; even Mrs West calls it legal prostitution. Don’t marry w/o affection — this is what Charlotte Lucas does; do anything, be anything but this (pp 239-40). Her language is so strong that one feels she must have experienced or seen such a marriage. She needs to justify herself to herself for having refused the “good match” in her solitude, near destitution w/o relatives for such a long time; he feels this strong intensity of emotion comes from her understanding the grave consequences of her decision.

Sexual angle: He recognizes the significance of the incident in the letters where she is by the door and becomes so nervous about a male’s aggressiveness. Some intense anxiety.

Marriage, when it occurs in the books: Jane Austen does opt for prudence over an heroic independence; Lydia’s conduct is one of high selfish stupidity. Elizabeth cannot listen to Darcy say to ask her to marry him is an act of degradation. Except for Emma all the women in Austen who look forward to future will be impoverished if they do not marry; part of this obsession is her ensconcement in a certain class, gentry (p 352): marriage or governess/teacher/companion. Something deeply wrong where someone seeks a husband no matter what his nature. Austen seems to call on the contrary for her heroines to be willing to accept celibacy out of strong pride and selfhood rather than no matter what husband. He finds “poor Miss Taylor” the woman whose marriage is closest to that of Austen’s possibilities.

The spectre of destitution, the humiliation it brings are essential in understanding the psychology of Austen; she makes us feel the manner in which she feels her fate, tries to counter the notion of inferiority of women not married. The rigor with which P&P condemns or exposes Charlotte Lucas’s choice (p 358): a fierce outrage underlies this. Emma’s choice clearly assumed, not imposed is important part of character.

The fact that these comic characters must live together is not funny (p 358); marriage a grave act. Miss Bates funny but all funny traits are those of older poor single woman: Knightley: how could you have treated a woman of her age, character, situation …

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Joshua Reynolds’s niece, Theophila Palmer studying the book of reflections and morals taken from Clarissa

Goubert then goes over the lines of thought about human psychology in the novels. How does Austen regard imagination, judgement, reason common sense.

Each novel does seem to him to have its lesson: NA an imagination unbridled; S&S emotionalism cultivated without restraint, P&P prejudices complacently cultivated, Emma liberating herself from judgement and reason. Persuasion not a lesson but an attitude: remarkable statement about the knowledge and understanding of Nurse Rooke (p 376): women can know as much that matters as anyone with rich stores of prestigious knowledge.

Imagination and judgement: Philosophers showed the importance of the imagination,but commonality distrusted any truths rooted in imagination. At extreme end we see fear of madness — from Shaftesbury to Johnson; Burney’s Cecilia made dangerously ardent; the centrality of the Don Quixote theme — as deluded and at risk and hurting others too. We could say Marianne confuses the ideals she reads about with the man in front of her, she does not see him p 382; theme with different permutations until and including Sanditon (384). Austen speaks to author she has been reading: “my dear Mrs Piozza all this is … flight and fancy and nonsense.” She took over Locke’s ideas.

Judgement and prejudice: first impressions comes out of the this continual finding of prejudice at work — part of era too (p 396). Emma wrongly prejudiced against Jane Fairfax (p 39)6; with Anne Elliot a turn-around not to dismiss a first impression — of open heartedness. Prejudice a cloud, a veil over the mind, keeps you from lucidity, from open day. Loiterer has as its aim to demolish preconceived ideas. She is for candour, for seeing the best, interpreting something in the most charitable way (p 401); it’s detestable to be constantly on your guard, something seriously awry with someone who is. Pride is a great enemy of judgement. Elinor reflects on the validity of her judgements, tries to get outside self.

Persuasion: vulnerable relatively powerless person can be over-persuaded. A repeating event throughout the novels. Lady Susan: A joke (not kind) made out of persuading Reginald to love and marry Frederica, it’s people playing on one another’s weakness. MP: Henry cannot work on Fanny as she already loves and she has strong judgement (so his appeal through his tenants doesn’t quite work. Persuasion: thus Lady Russell insinuating Anne should think of Elliot and our narrator says Anne’s “imagination and heart were bewitched” This is a scene probably meant to foreshadow great pain in a volume 3 never written.

Common sense has its place: Subtlety is not that important in some area of life; to decide sanely what is the best course of conduct. Mr Martin, Mrs Morland. People reasoning justly, discerning reality – not that easy to be someone “sensible” (p. 430) Key is see through improbability; such insight enables the author to ridicule characters or show us what’s ridiculous and untrue (p. 431-32). He is too purely for here: He forgets real context of the time: why should people not grieve when they are forced apart; it’s not true that violence is far from us and so on. H is too dismissive of gothic, but he does see that safety is an important concern to Austen and she perceives it as founded on discerning true as opposed to false dangers.

Rest for the mind; the word comfortable resonates in the novels. Austen’s characters want to be comfortable; the spirit at ease with itself, free from care; she does not present ambitious characters as exemplary, pp 440-441. An absence of agitation is an ideal:

By implication Jane Fairfax’s is not a truly happy ending for her. Her internal peace matters to her and she’s marrying a man who likes to tease meanly, who is not above getting back to her in public at Box Hill by humiliating her (in her and his eyes at least). Jane Fairfax seems to assert there she does have strength overcome the attachment which will lead to a marriage that may bring her much emotional hurt. But we see she does not. She cannot bear the future she will have as a governess. she goes into deep migraine, can’t sleep, So she caves in when Mrs Churchill dies and Frank can offer her a good and safe home, far from the patronizing servitude she’d know under Mrs Elton’s friend. It’s important to grasp she’s as sensitive as Marianne Dashwood, Fanny Price, Anne Elliot. That’s why governessing would be such a torture. A common type woman in Austen; Emma Watson the same.

But Jane is also much attached to Frank and actually enjoys his transgression when they are not aimed at her. She can’t resist what is poison for her. There’s a line in Chaucer and Shakespeare about how we drink down poison in part of what we are allured to in passion. (Emma does notice Jane’s enjoyment of this sort of thing but is too egoistic to realize what it’s all about.)

So it’s as complicated as life in her need for him financially but without feeling as strongly against him as Mr Knightley (who concedes he overdid it – we see from jealousy) we are given enough in the novel to feel it’s not going to be a life as comfortable and without unkindness as Harriet will know (Mr Martin has more than enough money and property, he has common sense, kindness, dignity, treats Harriet with respect).

Emma does best in the lottery at the end — to my mind unfairly (I fear not to Austen’s as by the end fo the novel the distance she had maintained from Emma in the first two thirds of the novel seems to dissolve) but then she says she always expects the best and gets it. She did have an ample dowry. The properties adjoin. Who else would tolerate Mr Woodhouse.

Austen has strong scepticism about sincere compassion in the world — not someone who believes in benevolence (p 454). Austen has characters with delicate insight, tact, concern. They learn through their experience what it is to be good or generous – Anne’s love “all generous attachment,” rarely see in sickroom “generosity and fortitude’ This is a quality that does not deny the basic selfishness of people but sees some that can get beyond this in some instances, p 455. Self-denial in Austen’s perceived world is also a strong virtue. Fanny Price shows this latter trait because she has been humbled and had to submit to invisibility so accustomed despite her strong selfishness to deprivation. Part of this he finds a solid resistance to evangelism (p 468) not one word of sympathy or compassion for Maria Bertram; presence of Eliza Williams annihilated by fault; we to rejoice Eliza Brandon died (471). A brutality of judgement even features in Elizabeth Bennet at close (p 473)

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Fanny Price (Sylvestre Le Tousel) writing and imagining in library at Mansfield Park (1983)

So how shall we describe her typical way of thinking? the first thing she writes about is within the worlds of art, she reacts to romance. If they censored her, she did live in a writing family family with a number of highly intelligent people. She is a woman and writes as a woman too. We see how women of her class and type lived. Her characters are judged according to innate ethical merit.

Henry her brother and James Edward the nephew present her as having confidence in her own judgement. Jane something of an introvert and like other introverts badly understood and ignored or her desires neglected (489). Austen clearly meant to be a moralist — if ironically or caustically so. Spent long hours writing and revising for years.

He sees a coherence between the presence at the center of the novels and how she led her life. A desire for clarity and reason holds it all together; simplicity of her style with this. She gives us a solid bedrock of words founded on observation. And it’s a gain precious of balance what she felt while writing. She had not resigned herself

Ellen