18th century writing-slope: sometimes called a writing-box, or writing-desk
Hans Mayer had written: “Identity is possible only through attachment.” Christa Wolf responds: “What he does not say in so many words but knows from experience is that identity is forged by resisting intolerable conditions, which means we must not allow attachments to deteriorate into dependency but must be able to dissolve them again if the case demands it (Wolf, Parting with Phantoms, 1990-1994)
Austen could not dissolve these attachments but resisted mightily and yet without admitting resistance. This idea can be also applied as a general summation of part of D W. Harding’s famous essay on Austen’s satiric comedy, “Regulated Hatred.”
Dear friends and readers,
You may be yourself in your own life tired of virtual life and longing to turn to in-person life: I am and am not. Over the past two weeks I had a number of wonderful experiences on-line, virtually, which I would not have been able to reach in person: a London Trollope society reading group, a musical concert at the Smithsonian, a good class at Politics and Prose, held at night when I cannot drive. I also longed to truly be with people too — it’s physical places as much as communicating directly with people, casually, seeing one another’s legs and feet, but for even most the alternative was nothing at all. I think I am enjoying these virtual experiences so because they are laid on a groundwork of memory (I’ve been there or with these people), imagination (extrapolation), much reading (shared with the other participants) and visual and aural media.
All this to say I’ve been attending the Bath250 conference, officially held or zoomed out from the University of Liverpool, for several late nights and for the past evening and two days I’ve attended a full virtual version of the EC/ASECS conference. I’ve gone to EC/ASECS almost every year since 2000, and since Jim died, every year. This is the second year in row we (they) have postponed the plan to go to the Winterthur Museum for our sessions, and stay by a nearby hotel. Our topic this year has been what’s called Material Culture: A virtual prelude, but there was nothing of the prelude about the papers and talks. I will be making a couple of blogs of these in order to remember what was said in general myself and to convey something of the interest, newness and occasional fascination (from the Educational Curator of Winterthur) of what was said — with one spell-binding Presidential talk by Joanne Myers, “My Journal of the Plague Year.”
18th century lined trunk
For tonight I thought I’d lead off with the one talk or paper I can given in full, my own, which I was surprised to find fit in so well with both what was said at Bath250 and the topics at EC/ASECS, from costumes in the theater as central to the experience, to libraries and buildings, to harpsichords and pianofortes now at Winterthur. This is not the first time I’ve mentioned this paper, but it has undergone real changes (see my discussion of early plan and inspiration), and is now seriously about how a study of groups of words for containers (boxes, chests, trunks, parcels, pockets) and meaning space shows the significance for Austen of her lack of control or even literally ownership of precious real and portable possessions and private space to write, to dream, simply to be in. I’ve a section on dispossessions and possessions in the Austen films now too.
I’ve put it on academia.edu
A Woman and Her Boxes: Space and Identity in Jane Austen
Marianne Dashwood (Charity Wakefield) packing her writings away in the trunks in what was their Norland bedroom (2009 Sense and Sensibility, scripted Andrew Davies
At the last moment I added a section on women’s pockets and pocketbooks in the 18th century and as found in Austen’s novels. An addendum to the paper.
And a bibliography.
Ellen
Reveries Under the Sign of Austen, Two 
Me: Thank you for the new more thorough information on Mr Bennet’s pocket. As it happens, obsessively (at this point) I was working on that paper again
and I even reprinted it. I incorporated the new material into a note and then corrected that and I re-corrected the body of the paper. I haven’t obsessively corrected and reprinted like this for a few years now. I didn’t put all my new findings into the note: it’s in the 1995 P&P that Elizabeth informs Maria that she has control over her trunk (those are not Davies’s exact words, but the idea I was looking for is in this film adaptation not in Austen’s book).
I have built up my own simple system for footnotes and annotated bibliography so anyone wanting to read my papers and check the sources, read notes in explanations, it’s there in an obvious way. I will be writing what I want to do from here on in — and also try to read what I want to read. Not that I did much different from that but no more peer-edited papers, and no more trying for some book that might attract a publisher. Just blogs and essays (maybe using a conference for a prompter, but not necessary) and put them online. I have one more review to go (Collected of Anne Finch for Cambridge – what a big job and headache) and did promise another but the other should be not too bad: a new Trollope Companion. Then done.
Rory: “Re-reading a source text or a draft paper is often very productive. I caught the reference to Anne Elliot’s size from the Mrs Croft comment. Now, when I re-read Persuasion, I will be looking for some other reference to the physiques of Elizabeth (note: she is always Elizabeth, not Lizzy or Eliza – a formal address that reflects her high opinion of herself as “eldest daughter”) and Mary.
I came across a reference in something I read online (will look later at browser history to see if I can find the source) that evidence of pinholes in the surviving manuscript shows Austen managed her revisions of “Persuasion” by attaching revision slips with straight pins. Whether these were revision slips for her own use, or for the final version is not clear, and the manuscript might need careful collation against the printed to ascertain, but I thought that knowledge might help your study of her working/writing method.
Pointers to Austen’s editing at
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/83746/see-how-jane-austen-edited-her-abandoned-novel-using-pins
I was thinking about Mrs and Admiral Croft’s offer of a ride to Anne Elliot. This has more resonance today, because it involved physical contact between comparative strangers, after two years when we have not had even handshakes, still less hugs and kisses on greeting.
It is one thing for a child/non adult to ride “bodkin” between adults, either with strangers or with a family group (think child Molly in Wives and Daughters with the Misses Browning going to the Fete at Lord Cumnor’s), but for a grown woman (in her maturity), it is very much a different matter. Not necessarily that Anne rode “bodkin” – I expect that Mrs C scrunched over (American: scooched up) against the Admiral; she attempted to put Anne at her ease by remarking if another was as slight as Anne, she thought the both could be accommodated.
Was this the start of Anne’s easy relations with the Admiral? Think of how kindly and easily he treats her when they encounter in front of the print shop in Bath”
Me: “Rory, I like this. Yes. I liked my paper because I thought I had gotten Austen’s complicated reality and tones in the instances I’d told of. I did do that to some extent for her letters in the paper on widows and widowers but the letters are not her works of genius. The genius is to capture such nuance of realized detail.
Admiral Crofts is a very easy comfortable kindly man: remember when he meets Mary Musgrove’s children: in no time he is playing with them readily, entering into their worlds, like threatening to carry them away in his pocket. This suggests he is a big man — I imagine Wentworth also tall and strong (like Ciarhan Hinds). He and Mrs Crofts have no children so we are to assume they could not and that’s sad for them.
There is also a nervousness about Catherine that comes out once you read and re-read over tiny details; I see an analogous behavior in Anne during that ride; this nervousness is obviously part of Fanny’s character (Sylvestre Le Tousel is the only actress to have captured that in the 1983 MP). I wonder if it was part of Jane Austen’s character, more hidden away like Anne.
Rory: If one were minded to speculate, and in this case it is an utter speculation (hors text):
the winter Mrs Croft (now 38, first name: Sophia, addressed as such by Wentworth) passed by herself in Deal, the then Captain Croft in North Sea, so evidently shortly after marriage “I lived in perpetual fright at that time, and had all manner of imaginary complaints from not knowing what to do with myself, or when I would hear from him next;”
One might speculate that she did not sail with him because she was in early stages of pregnancy, which terminated in an early miscarriage (the complaints), which would not be mentioned in any more specific way in conversation. But equally the North Sea posting was arduous, cold, nearly Siberian in winter, so a considerate husband might not wish to take his wife to that station. (but Deal…? I have been there! A naval and army town for wives not with their husbands, up until the 1860s if not later)
Me: Yes. Interesting I’ve not been to Deal but have a memory of reading about it. Yes I imagine she was pregnant and miscarried – maybe over and over. And then considerate husband or didn’t want her to die, he stopped impregnating her.
I’ve learned that once you put a paper on academia.edu, it’s better not to take it down to add to it or try to edit it in any considerable way. You lose the count of those who’ve viewed and those who read it. So I’ll put this here as an addendum to A Woman and Her Boxes (as there is no place for an addendum or additional information of this kind on academia. edu.) I’ve found two additions to the list of portable property and a lack of space, this time in her mid-career books, both listed by Byrne in her JA: Possessions and Dispossessions.
First the lack of space as this is the earlier text. In the fragment The Watsons (possibly a draft for Volume I) there’s an instance of a striking lack of space for a heroine who desperately needs peace and quiet (rather like Jane Bennet, Fanny Price, Anne Elliot). At the close of the fragment we have, with and through Emma’s eyes experienced her avid husband-hunting sisters (the oldest Emma, hurt; a middle sister, Penelope, treacherous ), and the egregious social climbing of parts of her family and characters outside too, Emma, who has no private space of her own, finds peace in a small space in her invalid (dying) father’s room. Then as to portable and real property, Sanditon is not noteworthy for containers; however, S Byrne shows that the novel moves across a “dialectic of devalued and absurdly over-valued and proliferating things,” “with exclusivity” a continual impulse, especially by the domineering Lady Denham. There is also a heroine, Clara Brereton, who rightly fears she may lose her home with Lady Denham (if you can call it a home; it’s a place as the old lady’s unpaid companion) if her aunt finds out she is being pursued by the aunt’s nephew.
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