Part 7

The most obvious "moral" of Jane Austen's novels is that if you are a heroine you need not trouble yourself about your future. You are certain to marry a worthy man with an income sufficient for a comfortable existence. He may be endowed with something less than a thousand a year, like Edward Ferrars, with a couple of thousand like Captain Wentworth, or with the ten thousand a year which made Darcy appear so admirable to Mrs. Bennet. In any case you will not have to eat bread-and-scrape or go without a fire in your bedroom. The Country-house Comedy of Jane Austen is full of morals if you are in need of them, but it was not written to improve you, only to amuse you--and its maker. If you must have a clear moral for each story, after the manner of tracts, you may take them thus. _Pride and Prejudice_ conveys the useful lesson that the person you most dislike in one month may be the one you will very sensibly give your affection to in the next; _Sense and Sensibility_ that when the bad man falls into the pit he has dug for himself, the good man comes by his own; _Emma_ that the {137} man whose society is most necessary to a woman's quiet contentment is the man she ought to marry; _Mansfield Park_ that a simple, unaffected girl who gains the second place in a man's affections may win the prize through the disqualification of her more brilliant rival; _Persuasion_ that nothing is more likely to revive an old passion than to see its object warmly admired by some other eligible party; _Northanger Abbey_ that a tuft-hunting father may be induced to receive a daughter-in-law of no importance by the kindly influence of a son-in-law of superior rank. As for _Lady Susan_, the moral of that unpleasing story is that if a worldly _mater pulchra_ is the rival in love of an ingenuous _filia pulchrior_ she will probably lose the battle after much suffering on either side; and from _The Watsons_ we may see that if a girl is educated above her family she will find it hard to be happy beside the domestic hearth. All these are plain workable morals. Whether the author of the novels would have endorsed them we cannot certainly know, but it is more than probable she would not.

We need not suppose that Jane Austen was ignorant of the coarseness of conversation, the {138} hard-drinking, the wild gambling, the moral laxity of a large section of society that are so frequently exhibited in the records of the age, in spite of the improvement in manners. But we can hardly help laughing at the objection taken to her novels even by some of her contemporaries, that they were "indelicate"! The "indelicacy" was usually found in the views of marriage held and expressed by the heroines and their families. The love-affairs of these country maidens were not often, we must admit, such as to steal away their beauty sleep or spoil their appetites for breakfast. Mrs. Jennings' kindly endeavour to cure a girl's disappointment in love by a variety of sweetmeats and olives, and a good fire, was perhaps not wholly unjustified by experience. In those days, when no profession save that of governess was open to women, when nursing the sick was regarded as an occupation specially suitable for those of a low class, when no door opened from the drawing-room on to the professional stage, and when the very idea of a "female" as secretary to a man of affairs or of business would have been condemned as "improper," marriage was undoubtedly viewed by most people as the only aim {139} of a young woman, "the pleasantest preservative from want," as Charlotte Lucas regarded it, and, moreover, the average age of brides was much lower than it is now-a-days. To avoid being a governess by attracting the admiration of a man who could afford a wife was the hope, at least, of most poorly endowed girls, and even if matrimony is not viewed with so much sentiment and reserve by Jane Austen's heroines as by the excessively squeamish Evelina, we may be inclined to prefer the "indelicacy" of Jane Austen to the elaborate, delicacy of Fanny Burney. Scott himself, by an ingenious paradox, has been accused--as a novelist--of immorality, and _Quentin Durward_ in particular described as "one of the most immoral novels that has even been written," because its romance expresses nothing. The interest a boy takes in its romantic passages "depends on the fact that he dreams himself to be in similar circumstances; he must treat the novel subjectively, and it is the subjective use of the imagination which does all the damage. It is in reading such books as this that a bad habit of mind is begun, and _Quentin Durward_ is more immoral for a boy of fourteen than a translation of the most {140} shockingly indecent French novel." Well may the anonymous writer of this unexpected criticism add: "There are paradoxes to be met everywhere, and most of all in the question of morality." This particular kind of immorality has not yet, so far as I know, been charged against Jane Austen. She cannot be justly accused of writing romance which "expresses nothing," but she certainly leaves plenty of opportunity for young readers to exercise their imaginations, and thus begin a "bad habit of mind."

The view of marriage as a profession, with or without ardent affection, is not the only thing that has shocked the delicacy of many of Jane Austen's readers. Serious objection has been taken to her introduction of episodes of an "improper" nature. How is the charge supported? Lydia Bennet, a vulgar, badly brought-up girl still in her teens, infatuated with the red coats of the militia officers, insists on going away with Wickham, and lives with him as his mistress until, by the generous aid of Darcy, and the determination of the Gardiners--her uncle and aunt--"a marriage is arranged" and does "shortly take place." This episode, say the stern critics, was (1) unnecessary to the plot, {141} and (2) if it was necessary, it is too much insisted on and developed. That it is an essential part of the little plot, worked in to exhibit the best side of Darcy's character, which before has only been seen in its least attractive light, seems to me obvious, and I agree with Professor Saintsbury's opinion that it brings about the _dénouement_ with complete propriety. Lydia's entire indifference to the moral aspect of her conduct is and was unusual in a girl of sixteen and of her class, but her character from first to last is consistently drawn, and the contrast between the selfishness of Wickham and Lydia, who care nothing for any one's happiness except their own, and not even for each other's, and the sympathy of heart and variety of temperament which bring Elizabeth and Darcy together is admirably drawn.

Then we are asked to be shocked at the illustration of the bad character and selfish cruelty of Willoughby given to Elinor Dashwood by the very worthy and very dull Colonel Brandon in _Sense and Sensibility_. It is a painful story. Willoughby, the faithless lover of Marianne Dashwood, had seduced an impressionable girl whom Brandon, out of affection for the memory of her {142} mother, herself ruined by a scoundrel, had practically adopted, and whom such scandal-mongers as Mrs. Jennings declared to be the Colonel's own child. "Why drag in this nasty story?" ask the objectors, and above all, "why allow the Colonel to pour it into the ears of a young girl like Elinor?" That it comes unfortunately from Brandon, who is a rival--hopeless as it had seemed--of Willoughby for Marianne's affection, and that in the middle-class society of to-day a well-bred man would not tell such a tale to a girl if he could find any other means of achieving an imperative object is undeniable.

What was Brandon to do? He knew that Marianne was pining for love of a man at least as unworthy of her as, in his worst days, was Tom Jones of Sophia, and he believed, with or without reason, that the knowledge of Willoughby's character would be a bitter but efficacious medicine for her heart-sickness. Elinor, the sensible, prudent, devoted sister, seemed the only person to whom he could tell the story with any hope that it would be discreetly used. "He had spent many hours in convincing himself that he was right," and when Elinor said, "I understand you, you have {143} something to tell me of Mr. Willoughby that will open his character farther. Your telling it will be the greatest act of friendship that can be shown to Marianne. My gratitude will be ensured immediately by any information tending to that end, and hers must be gained by it in time. Pray, pray let me hear it," there is little reason for wonder that "upon this hint he spake," and told the story of the moral ruin of the mother and the cruel desertion of the daughter which the reader of _Sense and Sensibility_ will recall, Elinor lost little time in retailing it to her sister, with the immediate and apparently unexpected effect of increasing the girl's unhappiness. "She felt the loss of Willoughby's character yet more heavily than she had felt the loss of his heart," though we know that she soon afterwards became as fond a wife of Colonel Brandon as she ever could have been of Willoughby.

Far more remarkable, I think, than Brandon's telling Elinor the miserable story of his sister-in-law and her daughter is the manner in which Elinor herself receives Willoughby's attempt to excuse his conduct. He admits his treatment of Miss Williams, but asks how Elinor could think {144} Colonel Brandon an impartial reporter of the affair, and proceeds to offer his own excuse in the words that follow--

"I do not mean to justify myself, but at the same time cannot leave you to suppose that I have nothing to urge,--that because she was injured, she was irreproachable,--and because I was a libertine, she must be a saint. If the violence of her passion, the weakness of her understanding--I do not mean, however, to defend myself. Her affection for me deserved better treatment, and I often, with great self-reproach, recall the tenderness which, for a very short time, had the power of creating any return. I wish--I heartily wish it had never been. But I have injured more than herself; and I have injured one whose affection for me (may I say it?) was scarcely less warm than hers, and whose mind--oh! how infinitely superior."

In other words, the inexperienced child was of weak understanding, and loved him passionately, and therefore he was not so much to blame as if she had been less warm in her affection and stronger in her intelligence. Surely the reasoning should have been reversed. Yet after this fine oration Elinor "pities" him, and, when he goes on to disparage his wife, whom he has married for {145} her fortune, and to express his continued love for Marianne, all that Elinor says is, "You are very wrong, Mr. Willoughby, very blamable, you ought not to speak in this way, either of Mrs. Willoughby or my sister," and in saying this "her voice, in spite of herself, betrayed her compassionate emotion." When he left her, Elinor assured him that she thought better of him than she had done, "that she forgave, pitied him, wished him well--was even interested in his happiness--and added some gentle counsel as to the behaviour most likely to promote it;" counsel which he showed little disposition to take.

This tolerance by Elinor for a man who, on his own admission, had "taken advantage" of a simple young girl, ignorant in the world's ways, this readiness to allow extenuating circumstances to a mercenary breaker of reputations and hearts, is a far more serious fact than the mere introduction of a story which does fit quite easily into the plan of the novel. Elinor's reflections when Willoughby had ended his apologies sufficiently show that the point of view suggested in the duologue between the sinner and the sister was deliberately set up by the author--

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"She made no answer. Her thoughts were silently fixed on the irreparable injury which too early an independence and its consequent habits of idleness, dissipation, and luxury, had made in the mind, the character, the happiness, of a man who, to every advantage of person and talents, united a disposition naturally open and honest, and a feeling, affectionate temper. The world had made him extravagant and vain; extravagance and vanity had made him cold-hearted and selfish. Vanity, while seeking its own guilty triumph at the expense of another, had involved him in a real attachment, which extravagance, or at least its offspring necessity, had required to be sacrificed. Each faulty propensity, in leading him to evil, had led him likewise to punishment. The attachment from which, against honour, against feeling, against every better interest he had outwardly torn himself, now, when no longer allowable, governed every thought; and the connection, for the sake of which he had, with little scruple, left her sister to misery, was likely to prove a source of unhappiness to himself of a far more incurable nature."

The chapter describing this interview between Willoughby and Elinor is the only one in all the novels of Jane Austen wherein a "problem," after the kind dear to the dramatist of to-day and the novelists of yesterday, is fully presented and {147} considered, the heroines, with this exception, answering to Mr. Andrew Lang's description, being "ignorant of evil, as it seems, and unacquainted with vain yearnings and interesting doubts." Elinor only, as we find her on this occasion, is a pioneer of that school of sociology which whitewashes the individual at the expense of his early environment and education. Her defence of this wretched man is, in principle, that which an Old Bailey advocate offers when he cites the theories of Lombroso in favour of a beetle-browed criminal who has stuck his knife into the breast of some confiding woman. It was "the world" that had made him what he was, he was to be pitied, not condemned.

Though we have not to consider here whether Elinor and the advocate are right or wrong, it is hard to avoid the thought that, when she wrote this remarkable chapter, Jane Austen was influenced in a degree quite unusual in that age with people of her class by the sense of futility which, not long before her day, had been the motive of _Candide_. Voltaire's irony is bitter, in spite of the optimism which his book preaches, and of the essential kindness of his nature, while Jane Austen's is as sweet {148} as irony can ever be. That she was intentionally ironical in this case of Elinor's tolerance is scarcely possible. Only a cynic would treat a pure-minded maiden's apology for a heartless seducer as a subject for covert satire, and Jane was not a cynic.

Writing of Maria Edgeworth in his _Notes for a Diary_, Sir M. E. Grant Duff says: "In her, as in Miss Austen, there is something wanting. Is it what has been called the _nostalgie de l'Infini_?" That intellectual ailment is more common now-a-days than it was in the eighteenth century, and there was little of it in the grey matter of any country brains when Jane was born. Certainly it cannot be diagnosed from her work generally. Only in the particular case of Elinor and Willoughby does that idea of the helplessness of man in the maelstrom of Infinity which has paralyzed the wills of so many unhappy victims, and induced the devastating literature of determinism, seem to have entered into her plan of work--for only thus can I account for the moral whitewashing of Willoughby, not by a "man-of-the-world," with his "after all," and his "human nature" arguments, but by a country ingénue. The more I {149} read Jane Austen's writings the stronger grows my conviction that she was one of those fortunate beings whose optimism is differentiated from pessimism by the good offices of an excellent digestion and an even pulse.

We need not suppose that she had thought much about the philosophical sanction of conduct as opposed to the purely religious, or that she had studied the French _Encyclopædia_. She was born and brought up in an atmosphere wherein convention, in regard to the things that matter, was almost omnipotent, and she was not of the type whereof iconoclasts are made. She attacked no system, social or religious; but she had no fondness for "isms," and thus it is that dogmatism is quite as hard to discover in her writings as scepticism.

It has been said already that Jane Austen was not a cynic. Yet it would be easy, by making _Lady Susan_ one's text, and ignoring the rest of her writings, to show that she was as cynical as a Swift or an Anatole France. Of course I do not mean that her apparent cynicism in this case was exercised on the kind of subjects which is ridiculed in _The Tale of a Tub_ or in _L'Ile des {150} Pingouins_. But I know nothing, in its way, more cold-blooded in the presentation of "love" than the conclusion of that novel of Jane's springtime, which she herself, her own wise critic, withheld from publication. The rivalry of mother and daughter for the affections of the same man must always be an unpleasant subject, and the story of the conflict between Lady Susan Vernon and her daughter for the matrimonial prize represented by Reginald de Courcy, as told in letters among the characters concerned, is on a low plane. The morals of the "heroine" may not be suspect, but her tone is below suspicion.

What is the _dénouement_ of _Lady Susan_? The mother's schemes to marry the man of the daughter's choice have ended in her own marriage to the wealthy noodle whom she had tried to force upon the daughter. "Frederica," says the author,--dropping the "correspondence" plan in order to wind up the book more readily--"was therefore fixed in the family of her uncle and aunt till such time as Reginald de Courcy could be talked, flattered and finessed into an affection for her which, allowing leisure for the conquest of his attachment to her mother, for his abjuring all future {151} attachments, and detesting the sex, might be reasonably looked for in the course of a twelve-month. Three months might have done it in general, but Reginald's feelings were no less lasting than lively. Whether Lady Susan was or was not happy in her second choice, I do not see how it can ever be ascertained...."

It is certain that to some considerable extent _Lady Susan_ was a satire on several lady novelists of the period. All Jane Austen's novels are more or less satirical, from _Northanger Abbey_, which is full of burlesque passages, to _Persuasion_, in which they are so rare that it needs a hunt to discover any. Whether or not _Lady Susan_ was intended to be taken more seriously than in jest, it is a dull performance. The whole plan and treatment of the book are artificial. It was not Jane's natural instinct or her finer art which was at work in its making. So foreign is it to herself that if the MS. had been found in some cupboard of a manor-house no occupants of which had been of known relationship to the Austens, I doubt if it would have been attributed to her by any one who had not made a meticulous comparison of its phraseology with her acknowledged works.

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There is, I think, no surer evidence of Jane's fine taste, alike in character and in literature, than that, having brought this novel to completion, she deliberately suppressed it. Had she sold it to a publisher, and allowed it to run its chance of popularity like the rest of her finished novels, we should have had to revise our views on her nature and judgment to a considerable extent. As it is, the fact that having written a poor novel of disagreeable tendency she recognized the unsatisfactory thing that she had done in time to cancel it is much in her favour, and justifies the opinion that whatever defects of subject or of treatment we may find in _Lady Susan_ were condemned by its author. It is for this reason that we need not regret the decision of her nephew and niece to publish, many years after their aunt's death, the book which she herself had withheld. Only, let us never forget as we read it that it was cancelled by the author.

_The Watsons_ was produced, as far as can be ascertained, in that middle period of Jane's life when, after her father's resignation of the Steventon living he was spending his few remaining years at Bath with his wife and daughters. Having {153} written three of her six novels in the nineties of the eighteenth century--the six novels by which she chose to be judged--at Steventon, she produced nothing more of her best until at Chawton, in the early years of the nineteenth century, she completed her life's work.

All her books that live by their own merits were written in the heart of the country. The book that comes nearest to the commonest fiction of her period was chiefly written in a town which, however staid and irreproachable in its tone at the present date, was in her time a centre of worldliness and frivolity.

_The Rivals_ was first acted in the year of Jane Austen's birth, but the picture it offers of Bath society is almost as true of 1802 as of 1775. Dress had changed much in the intervening years, but in all else there seems to have been little change between the Bath of Sheridan the lover of Elizabeth Linley, and the Bath of Sheridan the friend of the Prince Regent. It was among Lydia Languishes and Captain Absolutes that Jane Austen walked in Milsom Street and danced at the Assembly-rooms in 1802-5, and it was in an atmosphere of social affectation and busy idleness that she found {154} her powers unequal to any nobler performance than the account of the husband-hunting and silly young women who angle for Lord Osborne and his friends. The futilities of _The Watsons_ form a remarkable interlude between _Pride and Prejudice_ and _Mansfield Park_.

The rural society into which Jane Austen takes us in all her novels marks a rapid development from the manners of the preceding age. If we regard the Squire Western of Fielding as representative of a considerable class of the country gentlemen of his time, we may wonder how it is that no such rude disturber of the peace bursts in among the Woodhouses and the Dashwoods. His nearest relation in Jane's novels is Sir John Middleton, and he, with all his noise and ignorance, is a quiet, well-bred person in comparison with the rude father of the delicious Sophia. Even the less rubicund and animal squire of the Hardcastle species is here unknown, and Squire Allworthy himself would have been strange in the drawing-rooms of Mansfield Park and Pemberley, or the parlours of Longbourn and Hartfield. There is less change to be seen in the "manners and tone" of the women, especially the younger {155} women, than of the men. Sophia and Amelia would have used a few expressions, perhaps, that might have made Emma stare and cry "Good God!" or the fine colour deepen on Elizabeth's cheeks, and Marianne Dashwood would have confided to Elinor her astonishment that such otherwise attractive girls should be so ignorant of the poets, and of the proper arrangement of natural scenery. Had the girls become confidential on further acquaintance, Sophia might have wondered why Elizabeth said so little about the appearance of her lover, and so much about his intelligence. But Tom Jones and Booth would never have got on intimate terms with Knightley, or Darcy, or Edward Ferrars, until these Austen young men had drunk more port than anybody in Jane's novels--with the exception of John Thorpe as described by himself--could carry without disaster.