Jane Austen (37 page)

old-fashioned boarding-school . . . where girls might be sent to be out of the way, and scramble themselves into a little education, without any danger of coming back prodigies . . . she had an ample house and garden, gave the children plenty of wholesome food, let them run about a great deal in the summer, and in winter dressed their chilblains with her own hands." One recollects Mrs. Sherwood's account of the Abbey School's very elastic time-table; of the long summer evenings spent in wandering under the trees of the garden; and when Jane Austen speaks of Mrs. Goddard's "leaving her neat parlor, hung round with fancy-work" to spend the evening by Mr.

Woodhouse's fireside, one remembers that Mrs. Latournelle's parlor was decorated with weeping willows and tombstones embroidered in chenille. But the difference between the plain and sensible Mrs.

Goddard, and old Mrs. Latournelle with her passion for anecdotes of theatrical life, is as fundamental as that between the Highbury boarding school, whence its twenty young couples walked to church every Sunday, and that truly romantic establishment, formed

partially of an abbey gate-house, in whose turrets the girls might sit gossiping and dreaming as long as they pleased. The Abbey School would not have done for Highbury, and old Mrs. Latournelle would have startled Mr. Woodhouse.

The aspect of
Emma
which is disagreeable to the modern reader is its dwelling upon distinctions of class in so bold and uncompromising a manner. This element has an importance in the historical aspect of Jane Austen's work. Her work as a whole is of so diamond-like a quality in the immutability of its value, that this is perhaps its only aspect of temporal importance--namely, the rise and selfconscious development of the middle class; to us it is painful. Most of this trouble is of course centered in Emma herself; a great

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deal of the book is quite untainted by it. Mr. Knightley, for example, is entirely free from it. Again, the character of Mrs. Elton, which occupies, with that of Mr. Woodhouse and Miss Bates, the most

important position in the novel's comic relief, owes nothing to a scale of social values in the author's mind. Mrs. Elton is extremely funny in her conviction that Miss Augusta Hawkins had held such a place in society as Mrs. Elton only could surpass; her self-complacent assumption of social equality with Miss Woodhouse,

and the patronizing good nature she showed Jane Fairfax because the latter, though infinitely more educated, elegant and better bred than Mrs. Elton, was, at the same time, in much narrower circumstances, do depend for a great deal of their comedy on the conditions of the then-existing social structure; but the character of Mrs. Elton, like that of Mr. Collins, is one fundamentally suited to the purposes of comedy. In any society, Mrs. Elton would have been delightfully intolerable. If self-consequence and meanness, a total lack of humility, perception and real goodness of heart, cannot show

themselves in one sort of behavior, they will in another. Such qualities are like the damp in a house's structure, that walks along the fabric until it finds a weakened spot, then shows itself upon the ceiling. A society in which there are no well-born heiresses to be insulted by the bumptious familiarity of a social climber, will still recognize the essential truth of Mrs. Elton's character.

Nevertheless, it is difficult not to be disgusted with Emma for the ruthless way in which she detached Harriet from her friends, Robert Martin's sisters, who had been at school with her: and disgust is the one impression that a heroine ought not to provoke. Nor is it possible to deny that this episode would have seemed less horrible in 1815

than it does today. At the same time, though one cannot think that Jane Austen

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would have been shocked in the same manner that we are by Emma's handling of the Miss Martins, yet the drawing of these young

women, in their simple, dignified reception of truly disgraceful treatment, and the extent to which poor Harriet suffered from being obliged through her blind admiration and affection for Emma, to throw them off, make it plain enough that Emma's conduct is

condemned.

"A bad business," indeed, but though Emma is proved to be, and comes to realize herself mistaken in her attitude, the book strikes an uncongenial note, because that sort of mistake, and that particular attitude, are, to our minds, absolutely repellent. Emma is the only heroine of whom we can say that her mistakes are those to which she was rendered liable by her time, rather than by the common failings of humanity.

At the same time, one of the charms of the book is that of her conversations with Mr. Knightley, not only of dramatic interest because they display so clearly the character of each, but because, though somewhat better expressed, they are those that we hear

among intelligent men and women of today; in particular that to which the proposal of Robert Martin and Harriet's refusal of it under Emma's influence gave rise.

"'. . . She is a greater simpleton than I ever believed her. What is the foolish girl about?'"

"'Oh, to be sure,' cried Emma, 'it is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. A man always imagines a woman to be ready for anybody who asks her.'"

"'Nonsense! A man does not imagine any such thing.'" Emma continues:

"'Supposing her to be, as you describe her, only pretty and goodnatured, let me tell you, that in the degree she

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possesses them, they are not trivial recommendations to the world in general, for she is, in fact, a beautiful girl, and must be thought so by ninety-nine people out of an hundred; and till it appears that men are much more philosophic on the subject of beauty than they are

generally supposed, till they do fall in love with well-informed minds instead of handsome faces, a girl, with such loveliness as Harriet, has a certainty of being admired and sought after, of having the power of choosing from among many, consequently a claim to be nice. Her good-nature, too, is not so very slight a claim,

comprehending as it does, real, thorough sweetness of temper and manner, a very humble opinion of herself, and a great readiness to be pleased with other people. I am very much mistaken if your sex in general would not think such beauty and such temper the highest claims a woman could possess.'"

"'Upon my word, Emma, to hear you abusing the reason you have, is enough to make me think so, too. Better be without sense, than misapply it as you do.'"

"'To be sure!' cried she playfully. 'I know that is the feeling of you all. I know that such a girl as Harriet is exactly what every man delights in--what at once bewitches his senses and satisfies his judgment.'" . . .

"'I have always thought this a very foolish intimacy,' said Mr.

Knightley presently, 'though I have kept my thoughts to myself; but I now perceive that it will be a very unfortunate one for Harriet.'"

Today, when the great population of surplus women, and the

economic difficulty of marriage for a man, have filled every

magazine and the woman's page of every newspaper with

suggestions and advice on how to attract the interest of the opposite sex, the substance of this argument comes home with a force that time has not diminished.

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Mr. Knightley, although Lord Brabourne did not like him, is thought by some to be the most satisfactory of Jane Austen's heroes. For one thing: though he is presented to us through the eyes of women, he is drawn in a more detached manner than Darcy, Edmund Bertram or

Captain Wentworth: We see the qualities of those men as they

appear to women's resentment or gratitude or admiration, but it is difficult to imagine with what difference Mr. Knightley would

appear to a man. He is calm, good-natured, honest, and has the dignity of a human being who has an essentially reasonable standard of values. His powers of judgment are as sound as Emma's are weak.

He told her from the beginning that she was mistaken in thinking she would be able to influence Mr. Elton's destiny, in spite of Mr. Elton's excessive amiability and his anxiety to ingratiate himself at

Hartfield. He pointed out, what no one else apparently was able to see, that there could be no satisfactory reason for Frank Churchill's delaying his visit to Randalls on his father's second marriage. "'There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do if he chooses, and this is, his duty.'" He also warned Emma that she might not quite understand the degree of intimacy between Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill, and was laughed to scorn for his pains. He never relaxed his logical and forthright manner of speech, and yet even Mrs. Elton was not offended by it; his protective kindness to Miss Bates and Jane Fairfax was such that Emma supposed at one time he might be in love with the latter; but his behavior was inspired by nothing more interesting than goodness of heart and the quickness of a practical man in putting his impulse of kindness into action. He is also excellent in his relations with other men. Mr. Elton liked him, and that, considering how Mr. Elton must have appeared to him, was much in his favor. Mr. Woodhouse liked and depended on

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him, although Mr. Knightley never pandered to Mr. Woodhouse's

idiosyncrasies. Mr. Weston and Mr. Cole both liked and respected him; so did Robert Martin, while William Larkins had for him that irascible and proprietary fondness that is a tribute equally to servant and master.

The only person to whom, unsatisfactory as he is, Mr. Knightley appears to do less than justice, is Frank Churchill, and it is in connection with the latter that Mr. Knightley's very endearing weakness is made known. His otherwise concealed love for Emma is perhaps first genuinely apparent to the reader in the ball at the Crown, when Emma says she will dance with him, if he likes,

adding: "'You know, we are not really so much brother and sister as to make it at all improper'"; to which he replies: "'Brother and sister!-

-no, indeed!'" But the first manifestation of his jealousy of Frank Churchill comes at a time when it cannot be recognized for what it is.

"'I will say no more about him,' cried Emma--'you turn everything to evil. We are both prejudiced! you against, I for him; and we have no chance of agreeing till he is really here.'"

'"Prejudiced! I am not prejudiced!'"

"'But I am very much, and without being at all ashamed of it. My love for Mr. and Mrs. Weston gives me a decided prejudice in his favor.'"

"'He is a person I never think of from one month's end to another,'

said Mr. Knightley with a degree of vexation, which made Emma

immediately talk of something else, though she could not

comprehend why he should be angry."

The mainspring of his attitude to Frank Churchill is described in the paragraph which concludes the chapter in which he proposes to

Emma in the garden after the storm.

"He had found her agitated and low. Frank Churchill

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was a villain. He heard her declare that she had never loved him.

Frank Churchill's character was not desperate. She was his own Emma, by hand and word, when they returned into the house; and if he could have thought of Frank Churchill then, he might have

deemed him a very good sort of fellow."

Frank Churchill's secret engagement to Jane Fairfax is another of those episodes on which opinion today would be essentially the same as that of 1815, though the criticism would be couched in different terms. No one now supposes that any blame attaches to a secret engagement or to corresponding with a person of the opposite sex to whom an engagement has not been publicly announced. On the other hand, Frank Churchill's conduct would strike a circle of

acquaintances today very much as it impressed the people of

Highbury. To be engaged to one girl and to go about "with manners so very disengaged," almost making love to another; and for two people to have such an alliance with each other, unknown to the rest of society, and to mix with that society as if nothing of the kind existed, would certainly cause a feeling--not of moral indignation, but that an unfair advantage had been taken of unsuspecting people.

A girl who had denied all particular knowledge of a young man, when she was in fact engaged to him, as Jane Fairfax denied any special knowledge of Frank to Emma; and a young man who had

carried on with an unattached girl as Frank had carried on with her, would, today, be scarcely popular in a small town when their secret and long-standing engagement was finally announced.

Jane Fairfax herself is a most interesting creature. Her appearance is described in quite as lovely a passage as Emma's. "It was not regular, but it was very pleasing beauty. Her eyes, a deep grey with dark eyelashes and eyebrows had never been denied their praise; but the skin which she had

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been used to cavil at, as wanting color, had a clearness and delicacy which really needed no fuller bloom. It was a style of beauty of which elegance was the reigning character." We know that Jane's hair was dark, because in the happy conclusion to her story Frank was having some of the family jewels reset for her in an ornament for the head, and said to Emma: "'Will not it be beautiful in her dark hair?'"

One of her keenest misfortunes, to rank with an uncongenial home and the misery of even the illusion of disappointed love, was the prospect, though that also proved illusory, of her having to go for a governess. The vivid presentation of the horrors of such a fate is the more interesting because it occurs in the same book as Mrs. Weston, who, as "poor Miss Taylor that was," had occupied a position of such confidence and affection at Hartfield, that when she married, her one regret was to be leaving "friends who could ill bear to part with her." Emma's love for Mrs. Weston is most beautifully displayed in the sentences that open the fateful party at Randalls.

There was "not anyone to whom she related, with such conviction of being listened to, and always understood, of being always interesting and always intelligible, the little affairs, arrangements, perplexities and pleasures of her father and herself; . . . the very sight of Mrs.