Jane Austen (18 page)

barbarity that can underlie a polished behavior, in deeds of violence and rape; Jane Austen does it, without going one step beyond the confines of everyday existence.

The part played in
Northanger Abbey
by the satire on Gothic romance is secondary to the attraction of the characters themslves, but is exceedingly entertaining in itself, and the more so to a modern reader because its chief value is not its intrinsic interest, but the effect it has on the minds of the different people who read it. The parody of Mrs. Radcliffe which Henry Tilney makes for Catherine's amusement when they are driving to Northanger is indeed not so much a parody, as another romance on the lines of
Udolpho
, and gives those who shirk reading that romance all that they need to know.

"'He smiled and said: 'You have formed a very favorable idea of the Abbey.'"

"'To be sure I have. Is it not a very fine old place, just like what one reads about?'"

"'And are you prepared to encounter all the horrors that a building such as one reads about may produce? Have you a stout heart? Nerve fit for sliding panels and tapestry?'"

"'Oh! yes, I do not think I should be easily frightened, because there would be so many people in the house; and besides, it has never been uninhabited and left deserted for years, and then the family come back to it unawares, without giving any notice as generally

happens.'"

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"'No, certainly we shall not have to explore our way into a hall dimly lighted by the expiring embers of a wood fire, nor be obliged to spread our beds on the floor of a room without windows, doors or furniture. But you must be aware that when a young lady is (by whatever means) introduced into a dwelling of this kind, she is always lodged apart from the rest of the family. While they snugly repair to their own end of the house, she is formally conducted by Dorothy, the ancient housekeeper, up a different staircase and along many gloomy passages, into an apartment never used since some

cousin of kin died in it about twenty years before. Can you stand such a ceremony as this! Will not your mind misgive you, when you find yourself in this gloomy chamber, too lofty and extensive for you, with only the feeble rays of a single lamp to take in its size, its walls hung with tapestry exhibiting figures as large as life, and the bed of dark green stuff or purple velvet, presenting even a funereal appearance? Will not your heart sink within you?'"

"'Oh! but this will not happen to me, I am sure.'" The state of mind into which Henry's narrative had thrown her made Catherine more than naturally predisposed to find enchantment in a house calling itself an Abbey; her first view of it was something in the nature of a disappointment because its rooms had been rendered so modern,

elegant and comfortable. It was not until she went to bed that things began to take a different turn, and her sensations are described in a short passage which shows that when Jane Austen wished to create the atmosphere of eeriness as experienced by a real girl on going to bed in a strange country house, she had very little to learn from Mrs.

Radcliffe's ebony and silver nocturnes and the harrowing whisper of their breezes.

"The night was stormy; the wind had been rising at

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intervals the whole afternoon; and by the time the party broke up, it blew and rained violently. Catherine, as she crossed the hall, listened to the tempest with sensations of awe; and when she heard it rage round a corner of the ancient building, and close with sudden fury a distant door, felt for the first time that she was really in an abbey.

Yes, these were characteristic sounds! but she had nothing to dread from midnight assassins and drunken gallants. Henry had certainly been only in jest in what he had told her that morning. In a house so furnished, so guarded, she could have nothing to explore or to suffer, and might go to her bedroom as securely as if it had been her own chamber at Fullerton. Thus wisely fortifying her mind, as she

proceeded upstairs, she was enabled, especially on perceiving that Miss Tilney slept only two doors from her, to enter her room with a tolerably stout heart; and her spirits were immediately assisted by the cheerful blaze of a wood fire. 'How much better is this,' said she, as she walked to the fender; 'how much better to find a fire ready lit, than to have to wait shivering in the cold till all the family are in bed, as so many poor girls have been obliged to do, and then to have a faithful old servant frightening one by coming in with a faggot! How glad I am that Northanger is what it is! If it had been like some other places, I do not know that, in such a night as this, I could have answered for my courage; but now, to be sure, there is nothing to alarm one. "

"She looked round the room. The window curtains seemed in motion. It could be nothing but the violence of the wind penetrating through the division of the shutters; and she stept boldly forward, carelessly humming a tune, to assure herself of its being so, peeped courageously behind each curtain, saw nothing on either low

window seat to scare her, and, on placing a hand against the shutter, felt

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the strongest conviction of the wind's force." She decided "not to make up her fire: that would seem cowardly, as if she wished for the protection of light after she were in bed. The fire therefore died away; and Catherine, having spent the best part of an hour in her arrangements, was beginning to think of stepping into bed, when, on giving a parting glance round the room, she was struck by the

appearance of a high, old-fashioned black cabinet, which, though in a situation conspicuous enough, had never caught her notice before."

The light and shade of the book is considerably varied; as between Catherine's friendships with the "resolutely stylish" Isabella Thorpe, on the one hand, and the shy, elegant, well-bred Eleanor Tilney on the other; the Gothic terrors of romance and the very real horror and distress occasioned by the behavior of General Tilney; Henry's sparkling good humor, and the gentleness, patience and forbearance of his sister; at the same time the impression the work leaves on the reader's mind is one of consistent liveliness and wit. Much of the humor is conveyed by the characters exposing themselves in

conversation; but there are some instances of good things being said by the author that are dazzling but more summary, less exquisitely related to the matter in hand than is true of similar features in the later work. There is the instantaneous flash in which Mrs. Allen is printed on the reader's consciousness: "Mrs. Allen was one of that numerous class of females whose society can raise no other emotion than surprise at there being any men in the world who could like them well enough to marry them," and the brilliant contribution to that never-failing topic of whether intelligence in women is a handicap to their social success: "Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well-informed mind, is to

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come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman,

especially if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can. I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable, and too well-informed themselves, to desire anything more in woman than ignorance." When one

remembers the conversations of Emma and Mr. Knightley on the

very subject of woman's beauty and woman's brains, one feels that after this, the last completed work of her early period, she

relinquished this habit of stringent witticism without sacrificing any of her wit: that indeed in becoming less harsh, it became at the same time more penetrating and more luminous.

The book contains one picture of family affection, worthy to be put among those of the later works. It is the arrival of Catherine after her miserable journey from Northanger. "The chaise of a traveler being a rare sight at Fullerton, the whole family were immediately at the window; and to have it stop at the sweep gate was a pleasure to brighten every eye, and occupy every fancy; a pleasure quite

unlooked for by all but the two youngest children, a boy and girl of six and four years old, who expected a brother or sister in every carriage. Happy the glance that first distinguished Catherine! Happy the voice that proclaimed the discovery! But whether such happiness were the lawful property of George or Harriet, could never be

exactly understood.

"Her father, mother, Sarah, George and Harriet, all assembled at the door, to welcome her with affectionate eagerness, was a sight to awaken the best feelings of Catherine's heart; and in the embrace of each, as she stepped from the

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carriage, she found herself soothed beyond anything that she had believed possible. So surrounded, so caressed, she was even happy!"

The conclusion of the book gives the reader an unusual degree of aesthetic satisfaction; not only in pleasure at the happiness of the people concerned, but because the behavior of every one of the parties is so perfectly judged. All Jane Austen's novels have the property attributed to the pool of ink in the saucer of an Egyptian conjuror: the more each one is studied, the deeper into its interior the gazer's eye can strike; and when we read of Henry's being allowed to bring Mr. Morland the General's consent to the marriage in a page full of empty professions, we feel that we know exactly the manner in which the General treated his son and daughter-in-law and the degree to which it was likely to affect their happiness at Woodstone.

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THE CALAMITY that ended the friendship of the Devonshire

summer holiday was not the only event that marked their stay in Sydney Place, letters treating of which may have been destroyed by Cassandra Austen.

In the November of 1802 Cassandra and Jane paid a visit to James and Mary, now occupying Steventon Rectory. The new Rector's

family consisted of his own Anna and Mary's Edward, and there was ample room for them in the house which had sheltered the family of the Rev. George Austen.

Cassandra and Jane, who had arranged to give part of the visit to Catherine and Alethea Bigg, were, it was supposed, at Manydown when, on the morning of Friday, December 3rd, Mary was startled by their unexpected reappearance in the Biggs' carriage,

accompanied by the sisters. She was still more surprised at the agitation with which the party, on alighting, took farewell of each other; the tears and convulsive embraces were so unlike anything she had been accustomed to in the Austen family. When the carriage had driven off, her surprise increased, for Jane, seconded by Cassandra, announced that they must return to Bath immediately. As James

would not wish them to go so far without an escort, and his going with them on a Friday

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would mean his having to find someone to preach for him on

Sunday, Mary besought them not to think of going off so soon. A hint of causing inconvenience to one of her brothers would normally have been enough to deter Jane from almost any course of action; but, to Mary's increasing bewilderment, on this occasion both Jane and Cassandra brushed away all remonstrance on James' behalf, and insisted that he must take them home immediately.

The cause of this mysterious behavior could not long be kept a secret, and when it came to light it showed how much more highly strung Jane was than anyone but Cassandra might have suspected.

During the visit at Manydown, Jane had received a proposal from Harrison Bigg-Wither. Whether he had had it in mind to make it for some time, and had engineered the Austens' visit to give him an opportunity of doing so; or whether, having always regarded Jane with the affection of an invalidish man for a girl who was at once lively and gentle, he had been swept off his feet at the sight of her, reunited with old friends, at her gayest and most endearing, can be now only conjectured; but on Thursday, December 2nd, he proposed to her, and she accepted him.

The match from her point of view was a good one. Her own

provision in life was small and would be smaller, her father's income from the livings of Steventon and Deane would die with him, and though all her brothers were doing well in the world, none of them except Edward was rich enough to do very much beyond their own immediate families. A match with the heir of Manydown Park was one quite at the top of her reasonable expectation, and it had further inducements; not only had Harrison no serious drawbacks in himself, he was neither stupid nor unpleasing, but his sisters were her dear friends already; the marriage would

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place her in a very agreeable situation, near to James and Mary, and in the neighborhood of Martha, and would enable her, when both her parents should be dead, to offer the security of a home to the person she loved best on earth. It was a marriage that would confer

happiness on many, and it was reasonable to suppose that it would bring a large measure of it to herself.

She accepted; but in the night the struggle began, between every worldly advantage, common sense and even kindness on the one

hand, and, on the other, an absolute rectitude of soul, the inescapable tyranny of a mind formed by nature and by training to put first things first. It was not that she did not want to marry, or that she

undervalued the comfort, the importance, the security of being a married woman; she might have urged another woman, situated as she was, to accept Mr. Bigg-Wither, if she could; but when it came to doing it herself, to marrying for an establishment, to marrying without love, she could not do it. Whether she sat up in bed and waited for the morning when she could tell Harrison Bigg-Wither that she must take back her word; whether she could see him as soon as she was dressed, or had to sit through the torment of a leisurely pleasant breakfast , at which the family treated her with redoubled kindness as their sister-in-law to be: at all events, her nerves were so unstrung that by the time the Biggs had brought her back to the Rectory and had left her there in tears, not Steventon, not