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To Janeites July 26, 1999 Re: S&S, Ch 17: Sympathy for Edward; Austen Shifting on Marianne Aysin's commentary and summary made me remember Norman Douglas's wonderful novel, South Wind where the characters just sit around on their island off the coast of Naples and talk, talk, talk, and marvellous talk it is. I remember stretches in Virginia Woolf's Voyage Out where the characters indulge in intriguing debates on subjects not susceptible of resolution. I read Austen's opening line on Mrs Dashwood as ironic: it is so common for people to be spontaneously surprised at something, and then deny that surprise to themselves lest their emotions tell them something they don't to bring to full consciousness: in the case in point that it was probable, given Edward's shy temperament and the aggressive ambition and punitive tactics of his family, that Edward would not come. In fact she is brought to admit this in debate with Marianne shortly after the family arrive at Barton Cottage. Marianne has just registered an 'alarm on the subject of illness'. She is 'sure Edward Ferrars is not well. We have now been here almost a fortnight, and yet he does not come. Nothing but real indisposition could occasion this extraordinary delay': '"Had you any idea of his coming so soon?" said Mrs. Dashwood. "I had none. On the contrary, if I have felt any anxiety at all on the subject, it has been in recollecting that he sometimes showed a want of pleasure and readiness in accepting my invitation, when I talked of his coming to Barton"' (Oxford S&S, ed Chapman, I:8, 39). The real irony of his coming -- and this tells us something of Austen's understanding of the serenpidity and interconnection of evil and good in our world -- is the reason he comes is he has been too near the Dashwoods to resist coming. We may imagine he had some previously settled appointment to visit Lucy -- perhaps the epistolary S&S told this through letters (visits and journeys lend themselves to epistolary treatment). Having seen her once more, having understood his mistake, longing therefore all the more to come to Elinor, he cannot just go home again. Anyway he has no home -- as he says he loathes the prospects his family have set before them, he is alienated from all around him. Armstrong says he is a character with a low-grade melancholia; Austen uses this as part of her critique of her society in this book. I too like Edward's wording when he responds to Mrs Dashwood's solicitude on his account: "'... I have no wish to be distinguished; and have every reason to hope I never shall. Thank Heaven! I cannot be forced into genius and eloquence.'" (I:17, 90). The conversations in this chapter and the next all grow out of the various themes of the book. Isobel Armstrong's book treats them perceptively and thoroughly. What I find interesting is how they show a gradual change in the novel
towards sympathy for Marianne. In this chapter the conversation
still goes against her: £1800-2000 p.a. is an extraordinary income
in this period: people considered themselves gentry when they
had a minimum of around £250 p.a. You were on the edge:
you could afford a servant; you didn't have to do anything to
bring in more income unless you wanted to, and then it could
be something in the genteel line (such as Mrs Smith in
Persuasion''"But I thought it was right, Elinor," said Marianne, "to be guided
wholly by the opinion of other people. I thought our judgments were
given us merely to be subservient to those of neighbours. This has
always been your doctrine, I am sure."
"No, Marianne, never. My doctrine has never aimed at the
subjection of the understanding. All I have ever attempted to
influence has been the behaviour. You must not confound my meaning.
I am guilty, I confess, of having often wished you to treat our
acquaintance in general with greater attention; but when have I
advised you to adopt their sentiments or to conform to their
judgment in serious matters?"' (I:17, 94)
Elinor appears to be more subtle. She is the better debater. (The
above is fallacious because if you let someone control your conduct,
your desires from your inner thoughts may not be fulfilled). She
also seems far more aware of her own motives (she would not
expose herself over the need to have horses the way Marianne
does). She seems more perceptive, as when she distinguishes
between what people might say of one another using large general
categories as opposed to what the inner qualities of someone's mind is:
There is a charity in the above. She says I make these mistakes too.
Nonetheless, gradually in these chapters Marianne begins to
be taken seriously; she is given something to say on behalf
of her views, as when in the next chapter when they discuss
the picturesque, she says that although many people may parrot and
thus unconsciously parody feelings which belong to an
aesthetic imagination that does not mean the perceptions
of that imagination are wrong. This together with her
genuine suffering over the loss of Willoughby begin to make
her not a caricatured but a sympathetic portrayal of
sensiblity, passion and idealism in a young girl. The notes
leading up to this include Edward's reinforcement of Marianne's
animation just thinking of what is beautiful in life. Here again I
find Aysin and I are agreed on the good feeling in the following
passage; this too is a favorite passage of mine, one of those
which makes me like Edward and wonder what his letters were
like (if he wrote any) in an earlier version of S&S (if it was
epistolary):
"I love to be reminded of the past, Edward--whether it be
melancholy or gay, I love to recall it--and you will never offend me
by talking of former times. You are very right in supposing how my
money would be spent-- some of it, at least -- ... (I:17, 92-93) [I don't count what I spend on books each year -- and my husband
doesn't count what he spends on music.]
At the same time we are going gradually to see that Elinor's is
susceptible to the same blindnesses as Marianne. Although we
don't see this as yet, on our second reading we realise that
Edward is behaving in ways analogous to those of Willoughby --
there is a similarity even if the motives and tone of mind and
integrity of the characters are disparate: for example, Edward
hurts Elinor in this chapter, is reserved, because he does not
want to fool her; Willoughby hurt Marianne because originally
at least he did want to fool her. Nevertheless, he is in a false
position and knows it. Note too Elinor make excuses for
Edward (as does Marianne for Willoughby).
If the note of the previous chapter was pain and confusion,
the note of this one is softened by Edward's arch teasing,
the good motives which justify his melancholy, and the playfulness
of the talk. Perhaps Austen was aware she needed an antidote
to the tone of the last
The novel is getting yet more interesting, yet more complicated
in its ramifications. We have been forgetting that a central theme
of the book -- according to Tony Tanner -- is secrecy & lies, that in
a hard society like ours, people resort to secrecy & lies to protect
themselves; that secrecy and those lies twist, distort, and make
us ill (or 'sick' in Tanner's alliterative formulation). The secret
engagement of Edward and Lucy, the supposed secret correspondence
and hoped-for secret engagement of Willoughby and Marianne
form part of this vein in the book.
Ellen Moody
July 26, 1999
Re: S&S, Ch 17: Sympathy for Edward; Austen Shifting on Marianne
The basic point of the passages is that
Edward is not falsely ambitious; he is not mercenary, worldly,
not interested in impressing the wealthy or powerful. Perhaps I should
have quoted the whole passage. The rest reads:
There's an interesting self-irony or deprecation in Edward's closing line.
Through it we hear how immoderate or difficult is merely this business
of being "perfectly happy" in our own way. What his family wants is
to mangle him in the image of someone riding around in a great barouche.
One might also think about how Henry Crawford shows Fanny how eloquent
he could have been in the pulpit, and how Fanny regards that as much
less important than what is in the heart and what a clergyman might
do -- unheralded and not well paid -- for his parishioners.
There is an interesting question here. Consider how Mary Crawford
insists on the contempt the worldly feel for men who chose to be
mere clergymen. Austen's family had many males who chose this line
partly because it was a position open to them as gentlemen without
large incomes, but also partly because they had religious convictions.
Late in life Henry Austen became evangelical. In this her first
novel Austen uses the contempt Mrs Ferrars and Fanny Dashwood feel
for clergyman to impugn worldliness as such; in MP she seems
also to impugn a lack of religious feeling in the Crawfords.
Ellen Moody
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