The sacred cows (and the secret poets) in the rambles in Netherfield & St. James’s Parks

February 14, 2016, 12:10 am

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A month ago, I wrote my first post…. http://tinyurl.com/hqwy3f7   ... about Jane Austen’s shocking veiled allusion to the Earl of Rochester John Wilmot’s infamous, Restoration-Era, X-rated poem “A Ramble in St. James’s Park” . In that post, and in two followup posts since then, I’ve identified and explained Austen’s textual hints comprising that subliminal allusion, in particular Austen’s specific pointers to Wilmot’s poem title.

That title is the reason, I suggest, why Sir William Lucas just can’t stop talking, in code, to Darcy about “dancing” at “St. James’s”—he’s reminding Darcy that he knows what Darcy does when he’s in London, even if Eliza does not. And that’s also the reason why Jane Austen’s narrator repeats the very unusual word “ramble” four times in P&P, all of them referring to Eliza Bennet and her well-known love of walks in the country—Jane Austen keeps pinging the naughty Earl’s very naughty poem, as we follow her delightful, but clueless, heroine on her beloved nature walks.

Three of those usages occur in the latter half of the novel, to describe Eliza’s walks at Rosings, Pemberley, and Longbourn, respectively, during all of which Darcy either shows up suddenly, or else Wickham does, and then the only topic is….Darcy! But I’m here today to revisit the first one, which occurs early in the novel, in Chapter 10, when Lizzy, the Bingley sisters, and Darcy stroll in the Netherfield shrubbery, and this time I present the entire passage, because it all turns out to be critical to understanding of JA’s full meaning:

“[Miss Bingley] often tried to provoke Darcy into disliking her guest, by talking of their supposed marriage, and planning his happiness in such an alliance.

"I hope," said she, as they were walking together in the shrubbery the next day, "you will give your mother-in-law a few hints, when this desirable event takes place, as to the advantage of holding her tongue; and if you can compass it, do cure the younger girls of running after officers. And, if I may mention so delicate a subject, endeavour to check that little something, bordering on conceit and impertinence, which your lady possesses."

"Have you anything else to propose for my domestic felicity?"

"Oh! yes. Do let the portraits of your uncle and aunt Phillips be placed in the gallery at Pemberley. Put them next to your great-uncle the judge. They are in the same profession, you know, only in different lines. As for your Elizabeth's picture, you must not have it taken, for what painter could do justice to those beautiful eyes?"

"It would not be easy, indeed, to catch their expression, but their colour and shape, and the eyelashes, so remarkably fine, might be copied."

At that moment they were met from another walk by Mrs. Hurst and Elizabeth herself.

"I did not know that you intended to walk," said Miss Bingley, in some confusion, lest they had been overheard.

"You used us abominably ill," answered Mrs. Hurst, "running away without telling us that you were coming out."

Then taking the disengaged arm of Mr. Darcy, she left Elizabeth to walk by herself. The path just admitted three. Mr. Darcy felt their rudeness, and immediately said:

"This walk is not wide enough for our party. We had better go into the avenue."

But Elizabeth, who had not the least inclination to remain with them, laughingly answered:

"No, no; stay where you are. You are charmingly grouped, and appear to uncommon advantage. The picturesque would be spoilt by admitting a fourth. Good-bye."

She then ran gaily off, rejoicing as she RAMBLED about, in the hope of being at home again in a day or two….”  END QUOTE

I’m revisiting the above passage today, because of something truly extraordinary that I learned with the unwitting yet invaluable assistance of Prof. Laurie Kaplan, former editor of Persuasions. Her 2012 Persuasions article, “Sunday in the Park with Elinor Dashwood: ‘So Public a Place’, is primarily about Elinor Dashwood’s “ramble” in Kensington Gardens in the very unwelcome company of the motormouth Anne Steele. However, what arrested my attention yesterday was my reading Kaplan’s brief excursus about London’s oldest public park, St. James’s Park, as I continued my routine followup to my discovery a month ago of that major allusion in P&P to “A Ramble in St. James’s Park”:

“During the reigns of the Stuarts, St. James’s Park was acclaimed as the fashionable place to ride and to be seen, particularly in the summer when the lanes were crowded with exquisitely dressed people “coaching” in modish equipages. The King’s Old Road to Kensington, or Rotten Row (route du roi), “was the bon ton’s rendezvous”. In the reign of Queen Anne this park had become “notorious for prostitutes [Boswell later frequented this park] and for the depredations of those ruffianly aristocrats known as Mohocks”…The Mohocks were a gang of “young bloods” who roamed the park accosting men and women. They did not steal money, but they disfigured their male victims and sexually assaulted their female victims. St. James’s Park was safe neither by day nor by night.”

So far, nothing extraordinary, but now we come to the information Kaplan unearthed, which frankly, blew my mind:

“The feature that drew visitors to [St. James’s] park was the herd of cows residing there. In a radical return to country values, St. James’s Park offered fresh milk served twice a day. With cows meandering over the grass and across the lanes, the landscape of St. James’s Park was a challenge for women’s dresses. In Burney’s novel, Evelina is dismayed by her Sunday walk in St. James’s Park: she complains that the Mall “is a long straight walk, of dirty gravel, very uneasy to the feet”. Notorious for its dirty lanes and sexual violence, St. James’s Park would have been too unpleasant and threatening a location for Mrs. Jennings, in her position as chaperone, to suggest to Elinor as an appropriate place for a Sunday afternoon excursion. Nor would this park have appealed to Jane Austen herself, whose own experience walking in a public garden in March was so pleasant, her observations regarding the early blooming lilacs and horse chestnuts so particular. The potential disruption caused by marauders and cows would have made the tête-à-tête between Miss Steele and Elinor virtually impossible. In addition, the reverberating calls of “A Can of Milk, Ladies; A can of Red Cow’s Milk, Sir” would have been a comic interruption into Miss Steele’s monologues…. “

So, what does that description of what were, during the Restoration (and, I’d guess, for a long while afterwards?) the famous and dirt-generating cows of St. James’s Park, have to do with the passage from the end of Chapter 10 of P&P that I quoted at the top of this post? 

EVERYTHING!!!.....as I will now explain.

Elizabeth’s laughing, parting shot at Darcy and the Bingley sisters as she “rambles” off is:

"No, no; stay where you are. You are charmingly grouped, and appear to uncommon advantage. The picturesque would be spoilt by admitting a fourth. Good-bye."

Why does Elizabeth laugh? Because, as many knowledgeable Janeites know today, and as Austen scholars have known for a very long time, her bon mot would have been recognized immediately by the cognoscenti of the Regency Era as a witty satire on Revd. Gilpin’s very famous dictum about the picturesque:      “Cattle are so large that when they ornament a foreground, a few are sufficient. Two cows will hardly combine. Three make a good group- either united- or when one is a little removed from the other two. If you increase the group beyond three, one of more in proportion must necessarily be a little detached .This detachment prevents heaviness and adds variety…”

As you now can put all the pieces together, you must see what blew my mind--- it turns out that even as Eliza laughs at her own Gilpinesque witticism, the joke is actually on her, because Jane Austen’s narrator, by referring to Eliza’s “ramble”, is alerting the knowing reader that Eliza has inadvertently referred to the famous cows of St. James’s Park!

Poor country-girl Elizabeth has no clue that Darcy (and perhaps the Bingley sisters as well) are actually familiar with those cows in St. James’s Park, as they have had their share of evening “rambles” there. And poor Eliza, whose dirty (and very odorous) petticoats are the subject of such raillery in the Netherfield salon, after she has traversed many cow pastures to get there from Longbourn, is also inadvertently conjuring up, in the dirty mind of Caroline Bingley, the dirty paths in St. James’s Park which Burney’s Evelina complains about. So the joke about dirty petticoats is deeper, and sharper, than has previously been understood by readers of P&P.

But that’s not the worst of it. There’s something even worse than all of that, in this inadvertent allusion by Elizabeth to the X-rated poetry of the Earl of Rochester. Jane Austen has given Elizabeth’s older sister Jane Bennet the exact same name as the notorious madam who supplied the working girls to fill out the guest list at the Earl’s famous naked “private ball”.

This would have suggested to the knowledgeable Regency Era reader (who’d have known about the life and the writings of the Earl, and who might even have read Gilpin’s-----yes, that same Gilpin with the famous four cows!-----1798 biographical essay about the profane life and sacred death of the Earl of Rochester) that Jane—saintly Jane---has, unbeknownst to her beloved sister, been “rambling” in St. James’s Park with Darcy during her previous visits to stay with the Gardiners in London.

And it makes sense, for another reason, to connect Gilpin and his picturesque theorizing to “A Ramble in St. James’s Park”—I will let Heather Touet, a grad student, explain:

“A strange dichotomy is seen in Rochester’s “A Ramble in St. James’s Park” where we read of the beautiful setting playing host to some decidedly unbeautiful visits. Rochester's lines play with the two sides of the park - the romantic and the depraved - as seen in the first stanza where his picturesque descriptions are punctuated with vile acts:

 Picturesque verses                                       Lewd verses    

Poor pensieve lover in this place,               Would frig upon his mother's face;
Whence rows of mandrakes tall did rise,    Whose lewd tops f----ked the very skies.
Each imitative branch does twine,               In some loved fold of Aretine.
And nightly now beneath their shade,         Are buggeries, rapes, and incests made.

In his poem, Rochester mimics the beauty of the park hiding the sinful acts by prefacing his vulgar lines with lines describing the attractions of the park.  On the surface, the park appears to recreate the countryside in the city, but on a closer reading it has become as corrupt as the rest of London.” END QUOTE FROM TROUET ARTICLE

And that leads me to revisit my final assertion in my post a month ago, i.e., that the unnamed poetic suitor for the 15 year old Jane Bennet, whom Mrs. Bennet refers to in Chapter 9 of P&P, was none other than Darcy himself---the Earl of Rochester in metaphorical disguise, if you will---and the “verses” he wrote while wooing Jane were none other than….“A Ramble in St. James’s Park”!

Recognizing the picturesque cows of St. James’s Park lurking beneath Lizzy’s Gilpinesque witticism at Netherfield Park also goes a long way toward explaining the following sharp exchange between Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Darcy, which immediately precedes that discussion of poetry. Just read the passage as if Mrs. Bennet and Darcy were discussing, in code, his randy rambles in St. James Park, and we can understand why Darcy “looks at her for a moment, before “silently turning away”:

"The country," said Darcy, "can in general supply but a few subjects for such a study. In a country neighbourhood you move in a very confined and unvarying society."

"But people themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be observed in them for ever."

"Yes, indeed," cried Mrs. Bennet, offended by his manner of mentioning a country neighbourhood. "I assure you there is quite as much of that going on in the country as in town."

Everybody was surprised, and Darcy, after looking at her for a moment, turned silently away. Mrs. Bennet, who fancied she had gained a complete victory over him, continued her triumph.

"I cannot see that London has any great advantage over the country, for my part, except the shops and public places. The country is a vast deal pleasanter, is it not, Mr. Bingley?"

"When I am in the country," he replied, "I never wish to leave it; and when I am in town it is pretty much the same. They have each their advantages, and I can be equally happy in either."

"Aye—that is because you have the right disposition. But that gentleman," looking at Darcy, "seemed to think the country was nothing at all."

This coded conversation about what Hamlet would call “country matters” will always fly right over Elizabeth’s head in the world of P&P, but, after today, it need not ever again fly over the heads of real life readers of Pride & Prejudice who know the code!

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

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The shocking hidden meaning behind Mary Crawford’s parody of Browne’s paean to tobacco: Part 1

February 14, 2016, 11:16 pm

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In Chapter 17 of Mansfield Park, in the midst of the Lovers Vows amateur theatricals episode, Mary Crawford and sister Mrs. Grant discuss brother Henry Crawford’s dangerous flirtations with sisters Maria and Julia Bertram: 

“...Fanny's heart was not absolutely the only saddened one amongst them, as she soon began to acknowledge to herself. Julia was a sufferer too, though not quite so blamelessly.  Henry Crawford had trifled with her feelings; but she had very long allowed and even sought his attentions, with a jealousy of her sister so reasonable as ought to have been their cure; and now that the conviction of his preference for Maria had been forced on her, she submitted to it without any alarm for Maria's situation, or any endeavour at rational tranquillity for herself. She either sat in gloomy silence, wrapt in such gravity as nothing could subdue, no curiosity touch, no wit amuse; or allowing the attentions of Mr. Yates, was talking with forced gaiety to him alone, and ridiculing the acting of the others.

For a day or two after the affront was given, Henry Crawford had endeavoured to do it away by the usual attack of gallantry and compliment, but he had not cared enough about it to persevere against a few repulses; and becoming soon too busy with his play to have time for more than one flirtation, he grew indifferent to the quarrel, or rather thought it a lucky occurrence, as quietly putting an end to what might ere long have raised expectations in more than Mrs. Grant. She was not pleased to see Julia excluded from the play, and sitting by disregarded; but as it was not a matter which really involved her happiness, as Henry must be the best judge of his own, and as he did assure her, with a most persuasive smile, that neither he nor Julia had ever had a serious thought of each other, she could only renew her former caution as to the elder sister, entreat him not to risk his tranquillity by too much admiration there, and then gladly take her share in anything that brought cheerfulness to the young people in general, and that did so particularly promote the pleasure of the two so dear to her.

"I rather wonder Julia is not in love with Henry," was her observation to Mary.

"I dare say she is," replied Mary coldly. "I imagine both sisters are."

"Both! no, no, that must not be. Do not give him a hint of it. Think of Mr. Rushworth!"

"You had better tell Miss Bertram to think of Mr. Rushworth. It may do her some good. I often think of Mr. Rushworth's property and independence, and wish them in other hands; but I never think of him. A man might represent the county with such an estate; a man might escape a profession and represent the county."

"I dare say he will be in parliament soon. When Sir Thomas comes, I dare say he will be in for some borough, but there has been nobody to put him in the way of doing anything yet."

"Sir Thomas is to achieve many mighty things when he comes home," said Mary, after a pause. "Do you remember Hawkins Browne's 'Address to Tobacco,' in imitation of Pope?—

     Blest leaf! whose aromatic gales dispense

     To Templars modesty, to Parsons sense.

I will parody them—

     Blest Knight! whose dictatorial looks dispense

     To Children affluence, to Rushworth sense.

Will not that do, Mrs. Grant? Everything seems to depend upon Sir Thomas's return."

"You will find his consequence very just and reasonable when you see him in his family, I assure you. I do not think we do so well without him. He has a fine dignified manner, which suits the head of such a house, and keeps everybody in their place. Lady Bertram seems more of a cipher now than when he is at home; and nobody else can keep Mrs. Norris in order. But, Mary, do not fancy that Maria Bertram cares for Henry. I am sure Julia does not, or she would not have flirted as she did last night with Mr. Yates; and though he and Maria are very good friends, I think she likes Sotherton too well to be inconstant."

"I would not give much for Mr. Rushworth's chance if Henry stept in before the articles were signed."

"If you have such a suspicion, something must be done; and as soon as the play is all over, we will talk to him seriously and make him know his own mind; and if he means nothing, we will send him off, though he is Henry, for a time."

Julia did suffer, however, though Mrs. Grant discerned it not, and though it escaped the notice of many of her own family likewise….’ “  END QUOTE

As you saw above, it was in the context of discussing the soon-to-return Sir Thomas’s power to further  Rushworth’s Parliamentary prospects that Mary, “after a pause” (suggesting she’s been thinking) offers up an adlibbed parody of a famous couplet from (Isaac) Hawkins Browne’s 1736 imitation of the much more renowned Alexander Pope. Here is Browne’s “Address to Tobacco”, a short poem, in full:

Epigraph: “Vanescit Solis ad ortus Fumus”—Lucan

[translated as “the smoke that fades away at sunrise” and explained in Browne’s 3^rdedition as follows: “This is intended as a great Compliment to the Poet imitated, who is here represented as the Sun, at whose Rising the Smoke, or Fog, is immediately dispers’d; his Writing being so fine and pure, that it suffers no Obscurity to attend it.”]

Blest Leaf! whose aromatic gales dispense
To Templars modesty, to parsons sense:   
So raptur'd priests, at fam'd Dodona's shrine
Drank inspiration from the steam divine.
Poison that cures, a vapour that affords
Content, more solid than the smile of lords:
Rest to the weary, to the hungry food,
The last kind refuge of the wise and good:
Inspir'd by thee, dull cits adjust the scale
Of Europe's peace, when other statesmen fail.
By thee protected, and thy sister, beer,
Poets rejoice, nor think the bailiff near.
Nor less, the critic owns thy genial aid,
While supperless he plies the piddling trade.
What tho' to love and soft delights a foe,
By ladies hated, hated by the beau,
Yet social freedom, long to courts unknown,
Fair health, fair truth, and virtue are thy own.
Come to thy poet, come with healing wings,
And let me taste thee unexcis'd by kings.

Until today, I was entirely unaware of the pun hidden in plain sight in the very same opening couplet that Mary parodies--- can you spot it now?  [scroll down for the answer]

……

……

The pun rests on Browne’s satirical conceit that “aromatic gales” of tobacco smoke can magically “dispense” “sense” to those who inhale it. The ironic counterpoint is that if not “sense”, at the very least the tobacco smoke will literally “dispense” “scents”! But here’s what caught me totally by surprise: it turns out that this pun is one of four crucial textual clues in Browne’s poem, which all point to a deeper, shocking source behind Browne’s parody, and behind Mary’s parody of a Browne’s parody, all to be revealed by this post’s end.

I’ve quoted you that passage from MP, and also Browne’s poem, because I sleuthed out today that while Browne did indeed imitate the general style of Pope in the above parody, he also covertly imitated one specific poem by another famous English author, an elegy mourning the death of still anotherfamous English author! My analysis, below, of the above quoted passage from MP will reveal that Mary C. (and therefore also, of course, her creator, Jane Austen) was aware of all aspects of Browne’s covert allusion –indeed, such awareness is why Mary, after that pregnant pause, pops out that particular parody at that particular point in her tete-a-tete with Mrs. Grant.

So without further ado: the specific poem by an author (other than Pope) that I say Browne was pointing to, is one which fits all four of the following very specific clues:

CLUE #1: It contains a couplet, the two lines of which end with the identical words as the Browne couplet parodied by Mary; and

CLUE #2: It contains that same pun on sense/scents which we find in that Browne couplet; and

CLUE #3: It contains a stanza which fits perfectly with Browne’s explanation of his Latin epigraph as reflective of the imitated poet as being “represented as the sun”; and

CLUE #4: It contains a reference to a historical name shared with a character in Mansfield Park mentioned five times during Mary’s brief discussion with Mrs. Grant.

I.e., the answers to these 4 clues converge on my 2 related claims: (a) that Browne consciously imitated a poem by a writer other than Pope; and (b) that Mary C. and Jane A. were aware of Browne’s imitation of that earlier poem. You may well now ask, why should we suspect Mary Crawford of a secret allusion, when she so matter of factly calls Browne’s poem an imitation of Pope, and when the general Regency Era understanding was the same, as per Warton’s 1782 quotation of Pope’s approval of Browne’s poetry:  “Brown is an excellent copyist, and those who take his imitations amiss, are much in the wrong; they are very strongly mannered, and few perhaps could write so well if they were not so.”

Here’s why. On a couple of occasions over the past decade, always suspecting both Mary Crawford and Jane Austen of a trick, I’ve attempted to locate the specific passage in Pope’s poetry which Browne imitated, hoping it would reveal something interesting. But each time I was disappointed that I met with no success, despite exhaustive computer keyword searching of volumes of Pope’s collected poetry. While I did find a nonspecific sort of echoing of the style of Pope’s famous couplets in those verses of Browne’s, I always found it unsatisfying that Browne apparently had no specific Pope poem in mind. It didn’t make sense that JA would insert such a wormhole in her novel, if it led nowhere interesting. Plus, Browne’s teasing explanation of the Lucan epigraph struck me like a deliberate clue, as if telling the reader that the poem being imitated had sun imagery in it. And, finally, Browne did NOT name the poet, which left the intriguing possibility that it wasn’t Pope, or, at least, it wasn’t ONLY Pope!

And it luckily turned out that my instincts were good. So, now I’ll take up each of the above four clues one by one, and then at the end of this post reveal the identity of the imitated poet, and the title of the imitated poem:

CLUE #1: It contains a couplet, the two lines of which end with the identical words as the Browne couplet parodied by Mary:

Here is Browne’s couplet:

Blest leaf! whose aromatic gales dispense
To Templars modesty, to parsons sense:   

And now here is the couplet I say Browne was imitating, which is the beginning of the second stanza of the poem that contains it:

His name’s a genius that wou’d wit dispense

And give the Theme a Soul, the Words a sense.

Do I have to explain why I’m certain that Browne’s couplet was based directly on that other couplet? It’s not just the identical final words of each line, and the closely parallel phrasing, it’s also the parallel sense (ha ha) of each couplet. I.e., in Browne, tobacco smoke magically dispenses “sense”; in his model, it’s the name and the “wit” of the genius being eulogized which has the same magic power.

CLUE #2: It contains that same pun on sense/scents which we find in that Browne couplet.

Here is the first half of the final stanza of the poem I say was imitated by Browne:

Large was his Fame, but short his Glorious Race,
Like young Lucretius and dy'd apace.
So early Roses fade, so over all
They cast their fragrant SCENTS, then softly fall,
While all the scatter'd PERFUM’D leaves declare,
How lovely 'twas when whole, how sweet, how fair.

Is it just a coincidence that the other poem, which consists of a total of only five stanzas, has one stanza significantly referring to the dispensation of “sense”, and then another one significantly referring to the casting of “scents”? Especially when combined with the answers to the other three clues, NO!

CLUE #3: It contains a stanza which fits perfectly with Browne’s explanation of his Latin epigraph as reflective of the imitated poet as being “represented as the sun”.

Here is the first stanza of the poem I say was imitated by Browne:

Mourn, Mourn, ye Muses, all your loss deplore,
The Young, the Noble Strephon is no more.
Yes, yes, HE FLED QUICK AS DEPARTING LIGHT,
And NE’RE SHALL RISE FROM Deaths eternal NIGHT,
So rich a Prize the STYGIAN GODS ne're bore,
Such WIT, such Beauty, never grac'd their Shore.
He was but lent this duller World t'improve
In all the charms of Poetry, and Love;
Both were his gift, which freely he bestow'd,
And like a God, dealt to the wond'ring Crowd.
Scorning the little Vanity of Fame,
Spight of himself attain'd a Glorious name.
But oh! in vain was all his peevish Pride,
THE SUN AS SOON MIGHT HIS VAST LUSTRE HIDE,
As piercing, pointed, and MORE LASTING BRIGHT,
As SUFFERING NO VICISSITUDES OF NIGHT.

Again, it should be clear how totally the above stanza revolves around the conceit of the eulogized poet as a “sun” who brings light to the world, which is exactly what Browne’s explanation of his Lucan epigraph was all about.

CLUE #4: It contains a reference to a non-English name shared with another character in Mansfield Park, a character who is mentioned five times during Mary’s brief discussion with Mrs. Grant that includes Mary’s adlibbing her parody.

For the answer, check out the second half of the final stanza of the poem I claim Browne was imitating:

Had he been to the Roman Empire known,
When great Augustus fill'd the peaceful Throne;
Had he the noble wond'rous Poet seen,
And known his Genius, and survey'd his Meen,
(When Wits, and Heroes grac'd Divine abodes,)
He had increas'd the number of their Gods;
The Royal Judge had TEMPLES rear'd to's name,
And made him as Immortal as his Fame;
In Love and Verse his Ovid he'ad out-done,
And all his Laurels, and HIS JULIA WON.
Mourn, Mourn, unhappy World, his loss deplore,
The great, the charming Strephon is no more.

So, here we see a reference to “his Julia won” and guess what? Julia was the name of ‘great Augustus’s’ only child, and here’s an online synopsis of the life of the royal Roman daughter Julia, whose life trajectory (loveless marriage to a rich husband, repeated adultery, then banishment to soft exile as punishment for that adultery) sounds uncannily similar to that of Maria Rushworth in Mansfield Park:

http://www.womenintheancientworld.com/julia,%20daughter%20of%20augustus.htm

“Augustus was married three times but those marriages produced only one child, a daughter, Julia.  The Emperor had divorced Julia's mother before the birth in about 39 BCE. Julia's first husband died after only two years when she was just 16 years old. Hoping for a grandson to groom to take over the reigns of government, Augustus arranged for her to marry Agrippa, a rich man more than double her age. Rumor had it that she enjoyed many affairs during the marriage. Agrippa died after 9 years, leaving Julia wealthy enough to live as she pleased until her father stepped in and arranged yet another marriage, this time with Tiberius, son by another husband of the Emperor's wife.  Julia's third husband, like the others before him, had been forced by Augustus to divorce an earlier wife in order to be free to marry the Emperor's daughter.  Julia had not wished to marry again and simply resumed her many affairs; Tiberius retired to Rhodes to live a quiet life as a private citizen. Augustus had shamelessly arranged three marriages for his daughter in order to suit his own political ends.  Though he had simply taken it for granted that that was the Roman way, he really did love her, but Julia's behavior was putting him in a very difficult position. The moral reforms that Augustus had insisted on making law required a father to act if a husband was unwilling or unable to curb a wife's adultery.  With each new affair public pressure on Augustus increased.  He had to make an example of her or rescind the entire family values program.

Julia was banished to a barren island.  Her daughter, also called Julia, took up her mother's ways and was sent into exile by her grandfather to an island in the Adriatic. Tiberius eventually became Emperor and allowed his ex-wife to move to a somewhat less inhospitable island where she remained until her death.”  END QUOTE

Plus, we can also see in this stanza another reason why Browne included that epigraph from a poem by Lucan about the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey, which preceded the reign of Augustus”!

So now we begin to understand one big reason why Mary pauses, and then recalls and parodizes Browne’s parody of the earlier poem I’ve been quoting from: Mary recalls Julia, daughter of Augustus!

And see how neatly this piece fits in the jigsaw puzzle of the novel as a whole. Sure, Mary had not yet arrived at Mansfield Park when the teenaged Julia or Maria complains to Aunt Norris that Fanny is ignorant “of the Roman emperors as low as Severus; besides a great deal of the heathen mythology, and all the metals, semi-metals, planets, and distinguished philosophers.". But now that we understand the Roman Augustan subtext behind Mary’s parody on Browne, we can connect the dots back a half dozen chapters to Mary’s first thinly veiled allusion to compulsory Roman royal loveless marriage as the model for Maria and Mr. Rushworth’s impending nuptials upon Sir Thomas’s return from Antigua:

"How happy Mr. Rushworth looks! He is thinking of November."

Edmund looked round at Mr. Rushworth too, but had nothing to say.

"Your father's return will be a very interesting event."

"It will, indeed, after such an absence; an absence not only long, but including so many dangers."

"It will be the forerunner also of other interesting events: your sister's marriage, and your taking orders."

"Yes."

"Don't be affronted," said she, laughing, "but it does put me in mind of some of the old heathen heroes, who, after performing great exploits in a foreign land, offered sacrifices to the gods on their safe return."

"There is no sacrifice in the case," replied Edmund, with a serious smile, and glancing at the pianoforte again; "it is entirely her own doing."

"Oh yes I know it is. I was merely joking. She has done no more than what every young woman would do; and I have no doubt of her being extremely happy….”

And finally I am also now certain that Jane Austen was broadly winking at the public furor in 1813-4 England, while JA was writing Mansfield Park, about the Prince Regent’s attempts to force his daughter Princess Charlotte to marry a man she didn’t love, as described in Wikipedia:

“In 1813…George began to seriously consider the question of Charlotte's marriage. The Prince Regent and his advisors decided on William, Hereditary Prince of Orange…Such a marriage would increase British influence in NW Europe. William made a poor impression on Charlotte when she first saw him, …when he became intoxicated, as did the Prince Regent himself and many of the guests. Although no one in authority had spoken to Charlotte about the proposed marriage, she was quite familiar with the plan through palace whispers…Believing that his daughter intended to marry William, Duke of Gloucester, the Prince Regent saw his daughter and verbally abused both her and Gloucester…The matter soon leaked to the papers…The Prince Regent attempted a gentler approach, but failed to convince Charlotte who wrote that "I could not quit this country, as Queen of England still less" and that if they wed, the Prince of Orange would have to "visit his frogs solo". However, on 12 December, the Prince Regent arranged a meeting between Charlotte and the Prince of Orange at a dinner party, and asked Charlotte for her decision. She stated that she liked what she had seen so far, which George took as an acceptance, and quickly called in the Prince of Orange to inform him.

Negotiations over the marriage contract took several months, with Charlotte insisting that she not be required to leave Britain….On 10 June 1814, Charlotte signed the marriage contract. Charlotte had become besotted with a Prussian prince whose identity is uncertain; according to Charles Greville, it was Prince AUGUSTUS [a Prussian general]…At a party at the Pulteney Hotel in London, Charlotte met a Lieutenant-General in the Russian cavalry, Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. The Princess invited Leopold to call on her, an invitation he took up, remaining for three quarters of an hour, and writing a letter to the Prince Regent apologising for any indiscretion. This letter impressed George very much, although he did not consider the impoverished Leopold as a possible suitor for his daughter's hand.  The Princess of Wales opposed the match between her daughter and the Prince of Orange, and had great public support: when Charlotte went out in public, crowds would urge her not to abandon her mother by marrying the Prince of Orange. Charlotte informed the Prince of Orange that if they wed, her mother would have to be welcome in their home—a condition sure to be unacceptable to the Prince Regent. When the Prince of Orange would not agree, Charlotte broke off the engagement. Her father's response was to order that Charlotte remain at her residence at Warwick House (adjacent to Carlton House) until she could be conveyed to Cranbourne Lodge at Windsor, where she would be allowed to see no one except the Queen. When told of this, Charlotte raced out into the street. A man, seeing her distress from a window, helped the inexperienced Princess find a hackney cab, in which she was conveyed to her mother's house. Caroline was visiting friends and hastened back to her house, while Charlotte summoned Whig politicians to advise her. A number of family members also gathered, including her uncle, Frederick, Duke of York—with a warrant in his pocket to secure her return by force if need be. After lengthy arguments, the Whigs advised her to return to her father's house, which she did the next day….The story of Charlotte's flight and return was soon the talk of the town….The Opposition press made much of the tale of the runaway Princess.” END QUOTE

And that vivid historical account brings me to the close of Part One of my posts about the first half of the astonishing hidden meaning I see in Mary Crawford’s seemingly trivial parody of Browne. In Part Two, tomorrow, I will unpack the other half of the hidden meaning I see—i.e., the rich implications behind Mary’s (and therefore Austen’s) covertly but unmistakably allude to the particular poet, and to the particular poem, which Browne was really imitating when he wrote his parody that Mary parodied.

The name of the poet?: Aphra Behn!

The name of the poem?: “On the Death of the late Earl of  Rochester”!!

Consider this a coming attraction: in several posts during the past month, I demonstrated the pervasive presence of John Wilmot, the infamous 2^nd Earl of Rochester, inside the complex, mysterious character of Mr. Darcy in P&P. In Part Two, I’ll explain how Henry Crawford is a much more overt portrait of the mercurial, brilliant, theatrical, scandalous, and sexually profligate Earl, and how Jane Austen emulated, not just in P&P and in MP, but also in Lady Susan, Aphra Behn’s complex portrayals of her friend, the larger than life Earl, in her writings (both in that eulogizing poem and also in Behn’s most famous play, The Rovers).

And finally I will conclude by explaining why I am the first Austen scholar to see all of the above—by showing that this is a particularly good example of the terrible power of the Myth of Jane Austen to cloud the plain meaning of JA’s allusions, such as her inclusion of the Earl of Rochester in her subtext, because they do not fit with the conventional (and utterly wrong) wisdom of what she is supposed to have done.

Mary Crawford saw the “sunlight” and knew better, and after you read Part 2, so will you!

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Jane Austen & Restoration Comedy

February 20, 2016, 2:10 pm

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Looking back at my posts of the past two months, I want to pause and take stock, and summarize what leaps out at me most strongly--- Jane Austen’s laser focus, particularly in Sense & Sensibilityand Pride & Prejudice, on Restoration Comedy—a term which, for those unfamiliar with it, is summarized nicely here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restoration_comedy

Had you asked me as recently as two months ago, I’d have told you that while the depth of Jane Austen’s engagement with the entirerange of two millennia of Western literature was extraordinary, reflecting her general encyclopedic literary knowledge and insight, her special focus was on three paramount literary domains: 

ONE: Shakespeare, of course a universe unto himself;

TWO: 18^thcentury English literature, primarily novels (in particular Richardson, Fielding, Cleland, Smollett, Sheridan, Burney, Radcliffe, Sophia Lee, de Genlis, and Charlotte Smith), and

THREE: The Bible, also a universe unto itself.

However, what I’ve found during the past two months now prompts me to add a fourth area of special focus to that short list:

FOUR: Restoration-Era plays, particularly Restoration Comedy—including the following great names of that era---Wycherley, Etherege, Aphra Behn, Congreve, Centlivre, and most shockingly of all, the single personage who was the “Beatles” (i.e., the face) of the Restoration era---John Wilmot, the notorious 2^nd Earl of Rochester.

Here are links to the posts I’ve written so far on various aspects of Jane Austen’s engagement with domain FOUR, and I still have several more to add to this list during the coming month:

Sacred cows & secret poets ramble in Netherfield & St James Parks  http://tinyurl.com/h7xazcl

Jane Austen’s dark humor about “the way of the world”… marriagewise for women

http://tinyurl.com/z4agj6c

Jane Austen the cunning connoisseur of “so much beauty” in Rochesterian Restoration sex farces

http://tinyurl.com/hu92yrv

A Ramble in St. James’s Park, Bronte’s Rochester, & Austen’s Darcy, the Man of Mode (and Rover) http://tinyurl.com/z4elso8

Lizzy’s next ball & Darcy’s savage dancing: Austen’s dazzling dialog in Pride&Prejudice

http://tinyurl.com/hut98og

Jane’s ramble in St. James’s Park: X-rated allusion dancing in plain sight in Pride&Prejudice!

http://tinyurl.com/hqwy3f7

Wycherleyan sexual innuendo in Jane Austen’s letters http://tinyurl.com/jlpsl3x

Fanny Price's autoerotic Wycherleyan "Trip into China"  http://tinyurl.com/gunm6vl

For those with the time and curiosity to read all or most of the above links, you will by the end of that process understand why I am so certain that Jane Austen was deeply engaged with Restoration comedy, including in particular its sexual innuendoes—and that’s based on my recent findings about the shadowy presence of the 2^nd Earl of Rochester and his band of sexual adventurers in S&S and P&P.

And that last point about Jane Austen’s engagement with the sexual side of Restoration Comedy is not as big a leap as it might seem, given that it is already a casually accepted conventional wisdom among Austen scholars that Jane Austen drew inspiration for her universally loved merry war of words between Darcy and Elizabeth, not only from Shakespeare’s most famous dueling lovers (most notably, Kate & Petruchio and Beatrice & Benedick) but also from Behn’s Hellena &Willmore, Congreve’s Mirabell & Millamant, and Etherege’s Dorimant & Harriet, among others.  What I am saying is that the brilliant, witty war of words was not all that Jane Austen drew upon in those Restoration comedies, but also the sexual content that undergirded the sparkling dialogue.

And I conclude with a quotation from a post that Ellen Moody wrote in Janeites way back in April 2000, which goes beyond that conventional wisdom and provides other data that provides a great deal of excellent historical background for my claims, which I make based on textual evidence in JA’s writings that Ellen did not detect, that Jane Austen loved Restoration comedy:

“Someone has asked if there is any evidence that Jane Austen read Restoration comedy. I don't remember any passages in her letters; however, we have always to remember the majority were destroyed and what we have left is bowdlerized. They are thus almost worthless as evidence for saying anything for certain about Austen. Nor can I at this moment think of any allusions or references to specific plays. Are any such listed by Chapman in the back of one of the volumes of his edition reprinted by Oxford? Nonetheless, it is even improbable that she didn't know many many Restoration comedies and tragedies and farces as well as 18th century ones, and know them rather well. This because they were very popular reading. What publishers did in the 18th century was bind up whole groups of these plays and sell them as sets. This was regularly done on the cheap and many of these books have survived in one or two copies -- they were literally read to pieces. I have read some mid-18th century plays in such books (in rare book rooms) because I couldn't find a copy any other way.
Also the plays were the standard repertoire of the theatre well into the 19th century. It is only in the early Victorian period that they are finally replaced by bourgeois sentimental comedy, domestic realism, translations of plays from the continent. The Victorian audience was out of sympathy with the harshness of the comedies, found the tragedies absurd (except of course when the type formed the basis of librettos for operas). Some mid-to later 18th century comedies survived into the 1890s when again there was a sea
change with people like Pinero, Shaw, and Wilde. Ibsen too began to enter the repertoire. I have been reading books on Bath and have come across lists of what was performed in Bath and Bristol during the time Austen was there: the standard repertoire of comedy and tragedy going way back to 1660. Dryden is a favorite, Etheredge, Otway, some more minor people of the 1690s (one of whom wrote a play based on Aphra Behn's Oroonoko; his name was Thomas Southerne); very popular were Steele (Conscious Lovers), Cibber (Love's Last Shift), Vanbrugh (The Provok'd Husband, The Provok'd Wife). These titles recur; also titles from the mid-and later 18th century -- like Lovers Vows and the whole set of plays the Bertrams and Crawfords have laying about the house to choose from. I have left out Shakespeare. His name is constant -- though his texts were rearranged and rewritten in parts.
The literature of the period also constantly shows us readers reading plays. The Rivals suggests they were seen as salacious and rebellious. Plays and novels were lumped together as the reading people did when no one was looking. The circulating libraries were making lots of money by the close of the century printing scads of such books. Other autobiographical documents and records of all sorts show that wealthier genteel families loved to put them on -- probably because they were risque and dealt daringly with issues of moment. …Austen uses the motif of reform in the plot of P&P: Darcy in effect reforms. What has changed in the drama is partly that it is influenced by the new kind of books called novels. There -- in Richardson's Pamela and Clarissa spectacularly is the grave serious melancholy (a new element by the mid-18th century) heroine refuses the rake at first or altogether or marries him and is made miserable. Or any other of a large number of variants. Until the later 18th century people liked to read plays aloud, then novels replaced them. …So yes Austen knew and probably relished Restoration and 18th century comedy….”

And I would rewrite that final sentence as:

“So yes Austen knew and definitely relished Restoration and 18th century comedy….”

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

“Now, do not be suspecting me of a CODE, I entreat”: Mary Crawford as Jane Austen the author

February 22, 2016, 11:36 am

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A few days ago, I pulled together a half dozen posts of mine from the past month and a half, and made the case…..http://tinyurl.com/jmy5bo3…..for Jane Austen as an audacious alluder to the pervasive sexual innuendoes of Restoration Era comedy, particularly those connected to John Wilmot, the notorious 2^nd Earl of Rochester—a shocking inference, but one based on a growing wealth of textual evidence I’ve collected.

My friendly opponent in many such discussions (of my heretical claims about Jane Austen) in the Janeites group, Nancy Mayer, has, as is her wont, raised questions in rebuttal, which I know that a number of other Janeites will also be thinking about as they read my arguments. And so this post gives me the opportunity to respond both to Nancy and to all of those others, in clarifying certain aspects of my claims.

Nancy: “Restoration comedy was around at that time but some were finding it not quite in accordance with their current ideas of propriety and moral behavior. Restoration comedy was the cause of the imposition of the censorship over the theaters. I think there is a reference to Jane Shore in one of her letters.”

Nancy, if you’ve read “A Ramble in St. James’s Park”, the Earl of Rochester’s X-rated poem which I claim Jane Austen integrally wove into the subtext of Pride & Prejudice, and to a lesser extent into Sense & Sensibilityas well, you must realize that “not quite in accordance with ideas of propriety and moral behavior” is the understatement of the (17^th, 18^th, 19^th  and 20^th) centuries! 

But, if you take a closer look at Rochester’s poem, while its verbiage is very graphic, it is really not that much more “improper” in content than the 16 year old Jane Austen’s Sharade on the “pet” of James the First. Which is another way of my saying that I am certain that Jane Austen, at 37, was still every bit as “improper” as she was at 16!

Nancy:  “However, while I think she did read widely, I think the reading became such a part of her mind that she didn't sort it out as to this piece from Shakespeare, this piece from Dryden, and this piece from the Apocrypha-- I think they were all in her mind as things she knew and experienced along with people she knew and life as she observed it.”

Nancy, it seems to be crucial to your beliefs about Jane Austen that any allusions she made, but especially the “improper” ones, must have been unintentional and unconscious. Given the hundreds and hundreds of examples I’ve collected, and described in my posts over the past 11 years, that is the furthest possibility from what clearly happened, the far simpler and more plausible explanation, which is that in making literary allusions, as in all other respects in her life that we know about, there were no accidents, no slovenliness, no carelessness--- it was all intentional.

Nancy: “It does seem to me that sometimes you appear to show her as spending more time deciding who to copy than writing her stories.”

And once more, you’ve ignored what I have said on that topic, which is that this is not copying (which implies a lack of creativity), it is allusion (which demonstrates a depth of creativity, in being able to weave in prior sources, in a manner that harkens back to the Shakespeare canon and the Bible, both of which are filled from one end to the other with allusions to prior writings.

Allusion is the way great writers who are also great readers pay appropriate tribute to those who inspired them, while at the same time creating their own new stories. That we can trace the profound change in Mozart’s music after he studied Bach deeply, does not make Mozart a copyist, it makes him a self confident genius who knew he was safe in allowing Bach’s genius to saturate his mind, because he would still be Mozart afterwards. The same with Jane Austen and her allusions to the four main sources I detailed in my last post.

Nancy: “That is not only insulting to a majority of the readers but rather elitist. How can one instruct people about one's theme if it isn't readily available to readers. It sounds like someone planning a little in-joke on all the rest of the people who didn't know the secret handshake or code word. There might be many authors who did write books with secret messages for their friends. I imagine they gave them a hint and made the authors feel very clever at putting something over on the rest of the people. However, you contradict yourself. If she was trying to teach female readers to beware of the wolves wearing sheep's clothing, I think she would do it in a manner more accessible by most of the feminine population instead of just an elite few. She spoke of Dull elves only as to knowing who was speaking -- omitting "he said" and "she said". She didn't say she wrote so that a small cadre of readers could feel superior to all others by adding what she didn't write.”

Nancy, as I’ve noted countless times before, Jane Austen was in a Catch 22 situation as an author who had the kind of subversive, authority-undermining goals that she had. In a perfect world, I believe she would certainly have wanted her message to be understood, if not immediately then eventually over time, by as many members as possible of her primary target audience---women.

But she lived in a far from perfect world for female authors challenging male privilege. In early 19^th century England, the right-wing political environment in which the relatively tame feminist message of Mary Wollstonecraft had triggered a savage counter-attack on her character after her death in childbirth, Jane Austen knew that her own coded message, much more radically feminist even than Wollstonecraft’s,  needed at all times to retain its plausible deniability.

Plausible deniability would keep JA safe if she were challenged by a suspicious or even hostile reader---who might be someone in her family who felt critical of her being an author at all; or a family friend who believed they were being skewered by one of her comic characters; or a publisher wary of getting into hot water by being the one to give a subversive “unsex’d female” a public forum to spread “Jacobin” hatred toward powerful men; or by a conservative literary critic who’d want to defend male authorial privilege; or even by a government official or a judge who might have picked up, e.g., on the “Prince of Whales” subtext of the charade in Emma, and might then actually prosecute her---as actually happened, as we all know, to Leigh Hunt, in 1812, when his harsh criticism of the Prince Regent became too explicit.

In short, Jane Austen, if suspected of hostility to the status quo of English society, needed at all times to be able to respond, with a totally straight face (or as she would have put it, without losing her countenance),  “Who, me?”  And in that exact same vein, I now suggest that you think of Mary Crawford as Jane Austen’s self portrait as an author, when we read, in Mansfield Park, Mary’s sly and most famous bon mot:

“…Of various admirals I could tell you a great deal: of them and their flags, and the gradation of their pay, and their bickerings and jealousies. But, in general, I can assure you that they are all passed over, and all very ill used. Certainly, my home at my uncle's brought me acquainted with a circle of admirals. Of Rears and Vices I saw enough. Now do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat."

As I’ve previously asserted, in posts such as  “What Mary Crawford REALLY was saying in code to Fanny in Mansfield Park”  http://tinyurl.com/n5heb97, Mary was trying to warn Fanny that brother William was going to have pay a very dear price for his naval commission, in the form of having to first serve up his own “rear” to the “vices” of that circle of pedophilic admirals (and possibly to Henry Crawford as well). And by the way, I also believe that Jane Austen as she wrote that scene in MP, had on her radar screen Samuel Pepys, the great diarist and social observer of the Restoration Era, who was, in his capacity as a secretary to the British Navy, been both an observer, and also perhaps a participant, in that very same specific form of corruption and vice.

But, on a metafictional level, Mary also symbolizes Jane Austen the punning, winking, hinting author, who wants to thread the needle of getting her warning out, but disguising her warning enough to elude the censors who would silence her completely if they knew for sure that she was really saying what she seemed to be suggesting.

And there are other reasons for the longstanding preservation of the secrecy of the Jane Austen Code. .Jane Austen, I am certain, did get a major kick out of constructing her double stories – it is an astonishing achievement from a literary point of view—like Mozart’s 6-part polyphony in the final minutes of the final movement of his final symphony, the “Jupiter” – he was showing that he could do Bach nearly as well as Bach himself. What artist would not revel in such an achievement? She was showing that she could adapt Shakespeare’s theatrical shadow stories to the exciting new medium of the novel, where she could take advantage of her infinitely subtle narrative voice to enhance the ambiguity of her fictional worlds.

And finally, we also find a very significant clue in the sequence of Jane Austen’s novel publications that she realized herself, as she went along, that she had initially overestimated the ability of women (who in her time lived in the shadows of a man’s world and had to learn to communicate around its edges, as a survival tactic) to decode her novels. Here’s that clue--as I (and also Diane Reynolds) have written, Emma, which is the last major work JA completed before she began to suffer the effects of the illness that eventually killed her, is very different from her three previously published novels in one crucial aspect—it has the famous “Gotcha!” of the revelation in Chapter 49 (out of 55) of the secret relationship between Frank and Jane.

That” Gotcha!” sprung on her readers was Jane Austen’s way of telling them, without saying it explicitly, that she was capable of hoodwinking them for nearly the entire length of a novel, hiding clues to a major hidden plotline in plain sight in dozens of different places in the text, and then splashing cold water on the reader’s face with the revelation that then necessitates a rereading in order to see all the hidden clues. She was Agatha Christie before Agatha Christie existed—and, indeed, Christie learned her detective writing skills from Austen first and foremost.

If JA could do it once, alert readers could realize, she could do it twice—but she kept the second “Gotcha!” implicit, in the shadows. So, in a nutshell, the first “Gotcha!” of Emma is that Jane has had a covert relationship with Frank. But the second “Gotcha!” is that Jane is pregnant, and needs to find a place for her baby after she is born---and, as I’ve been saying for 11 years now, Jane does find a place for her baby girl---in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Weston, who pretends to be pregnant near the end of the novel!

So, in a very real sense, if you think about it, that second “Gotcha!” is a major expansion of Mary Crawford’s winking bon mot.

But then, the biggest reason why it took nearly 200 years for Jane Austen’s shadow stories to be discovered (by me), is what happened right after her death. The final chapter of Jane Austen’s authorial career is a tragic one on multiple levels, but none more so than that before her remains even had a chance to start to moulder in her grave, her family, led by brother Henry, had already initiated emergency damage control. Once JA’s own voice was forever silenced by death, they successfully hoodwinked the world for nearly two centuries into thinking that “Aunt Jane” was really the doe-faced, pious, humble little country mouse we see in James Edward Austen-Leigh’s ubiquitous bowdlerized image of his aunt….http://www.talklikejaneausten.com/talk_like_jane_austen_day_files/JASNAGCR.jpg

  ….instead of the steely-eyed, determined, fiercely independent genius Cassandra actually sketched in 1810:

http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitLarge/mw00230/Jane-Austen

And that, above all, is the reason why the secret of Jane Austen’s shadow stories remained largely intact for nearly two centuries, and after millions of copies of her novels had been read (and often reread many times) around the entire world. And the ultimate irony of all of this is that it is totally in keeping with Jane Austen’s core epistemological message---which is that, generally speaking, people only see what we expect to see. The Myth of Jane Austen was so successfully sold to the reading public that it has decisively shaped, and continues to do so even to this very moment, mainstream interpretation of JA’s writing.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Why Jane Austen’s shadow stories weren’t detected for nearly 2 centuries

February 24, 2016, 1:48 pm

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In Janeites, Nancy Mayer responded to my last post about Jane Austen's extensive veiled allusions to Restoration comedy as follows: "Jane Austen was a genius. She could have written stories getting her theme across without running afoul of any laws. She wasn't advocating sedition or replacing the royal family."

First, I really do thank you, Nancy, for your continuing serious and polite pushback on my ideas, and your prompting me to explain myself further. I’ll give it one more go on this point.

You say she wasn’t advocating sedition or replacing the royal family, but in my interpretation of her shadow stories …. tinyurl.com/onftqz7   ….., it is clear that she aspired to a radical subversion of male, aristocratic, and financial privilege. And, as anyone can see in the “Prince of Whales” secret answer to the “courtship” charade in Emma, JA had the Prince Regent, the self-styled “first gentleman of Europe”, right in the center of her polemical crosshairs. She made him the unwitting butt of her fierce satire and critique of the status quo in all three of those categories of privilege. Her satire encompasses within it all the (justified) attacks on the PR by Hunt, Lamb, Cruikshank, and others. And then, as icing on the allusive cake, she had the kahones to dedicate Emmato him! You don’t get more subversive, and therefore more dangerous, than that!  How could she possibly have let that subliminal subtext be too visible and too obvious? Too risky.

So her strategy was to weave this sort of extreme satire and subversion into the subtext of her superficially “status quo-friendly” love stories. And you are correct, as literary history actually unfolded, there was, in fact, no recognition of JA’s shadow stories, as coherent entities, for nearly two centuries, until I made the first such claim in early 2005, after 2 ½ years of my own grasping toward that epiphany. But….I strenuously assert that such long history of nonrecognition was not an inevitable, foregone conclusion that Jane Austen could have foreseen when she wrote her novels. Instead, I suggest that three factors converged to keep Austen’s shadow stories, as coherent entities, invisible to readers for 190 years:

CAUTION: Her extreme caution, meaning (as I’ve previously explained) that JA felt she had to hide her shadow stories well enough to make them deniable if detected—“do not be suspecting me of a CODE”;

GENIUS: Her extreme genius, meaning (as I’ve also previously explained) she was so brilliant, and must have been so totally consumed over a very long period of time with the process of creating double stories,  that she (ironically) lost perspective and was not a good judge of just how much disguise was the optimal amount. I.e., she thought they’d be more readily decodable than they are.  On this point, I can speak from direct personal experience, because my own ability to decode her shadow stories has gradually but steadily improved over the past 12 years—and at first, I really was surprised when people didn’t see what I see. But after ten years of public debate about this topic with hundreds and hundreds of other readers, I now understand just how difficult (or undesirable) taking such a large leap is for many other Janeites.

But, as I’ve suggested, we can see a progression in JA’s novels, as I believe she sought to hit that sweet spot right in the middle between too obvious and too obscure. That’s why she wrote Emma, with its mysteriousness right there on the surface for all to see, so different from her three previous published novels. And had she lived another ten years, she not only would have gained national prominence and a bully pulpit to be open about her views, she’d have written more novels in which, I am confident, the shadow stories would have been brought closer and closer to the surface. Sooner or later, lightning would have struck.

and

HISTORY: But the Austen family decisively shaped the narrative (to borrow the buzzword we hear every day in election campaign punditry)  about the kind of author JA was, from the moment JA died. I.e., if you’re a Janeite reading Austen, and you’re told, with 100% assurance, by pretty much all the mainstream Austen experts, that she was an author who would never hint at dark shadows, then, unless you are a stubborn self-confident contrarian like myself, you will not acknowledge those shadows, even when they pop up right in front of your eyes.  I’ve seen it myself hundreds of times, in books, articles, blog and discussion posts—where readers do spot “bread crumbs”—those anomalies in the text which don’t fit with the mainstream interpretation of a given character—but in the end those readers have almost all turned away from the door they opened themselves, and rationalized away the anomalies. Such is the power of the Myth of Jane Austen.

I was just doing a 2014 NY Times puzzle from the archive, and came across this wonderful quote by the  Impressionist composer Claude Debussy: “Music is the space between the notes”. I think Virginia Woolf may have had Debussy’s music, or maybe even that statement by Debussy, in mind, when she wrote:

“Jane Austen is thus a mistress of much deeper emotion than appears upon the surface. She stimulates us to supply what is not there. What she offers is, apparently, a trifle, yet is composed of something that expands in the reader’s mind and endows with the most enduring form of life scenes which are outwardly trivial.”

Sounds like the inflation that occurred right after the Big Bang! But what never dawned on Woolf was that the expansion of that “something” could occur in another fictional universe than the one she thought was the only one there in the novel.

So, those are three main factors which converged to keep JA’s deepest secret a secret till I started excavating more than a decade ago.

And I’d like to add one more piece to the part about why Jane Austen had to keep her shadow stories deniable. As I have written about often in the past, but did not emphasize in my recent posts, at the base of all the levels of stories  JA was telling, was a very personal story having to do with female sexuality in three very different ways:

INCEST & SEXUAL ABUSE: A true story of Austen family incest and sexual abuse. That's the story of Marina in Shakespeare's Periclesthat Jane Austen told in Emma --Mr. Woodhouse's attempt to recall Garrick's Riddle is the wormhole that leads into that awful dark reality, the memory of which I believe Jane Austen endured her entire life. It's also the story she started to tell more openly in Fanny's dread at the sound of Sir Thomas's slow footsteps coming upstairs to her attic room; and

BISEXUAL OR LESBIAN: A true story of Jane Austen’s own complicated sexual preference, which I believe was either bisexual or lesbian; and

DEATH IN CHILDBIRTH: The true story of the dreadful but ignored epidemic of death in childbirth, very similar to the way the AIDS epidemic unfolded in modern times.

These were sexual stories JA knew she could  never tell openly in early 19^thcentury England---and yet, they had to be told, somehow, she felt an inner compulsion to put her life (which was far from a unique experience) on record, even if it would only be understood by a precious few readers.

So, Nancy, the ball’s in your court again. ;)

NOW I WILL ADD MY RESPONSE TO THE FIRST RESPONSE I RECEIVED IN JANEITES TO THE ABOVE POST:

Louise Culmer responded to my latest post as follows: ”I personally would be very sorry to believe that Jane Austen wrote 'double stories', because the thing I like most about her books is how real her characters are, and if there were really double stories they wouldn't be, they would just be a joke; not interesting characters at all, but just some elaborate charade. Jane Austen's world has always seemed very real to me, not a cardboard edifice.”

Louise, it is fascinating for me to read all the assumptions you make, which are the opposite of my own experience, and also inconsistent with what I actually wrote. Let’s see if I can articulate specifically what I mean by that:

First, you say that double stories would destroy the reality of Jane Austen’s characters, but I’ve often pointed out that Jane Austen’s double story structure provides an experience to the reader which is MORE real, not further from it:   

“The key point in this ingenuity, which elevates such ambiguous writing from mere sterile literary puzzle–construction and transmutes it into the highest level of literature, is that Jane Austen, by such ambiguity-creation, thereby creates an uncanny verisimilitude of real-life, such that the reader is forced to judge and analyze what is happening in the story, without having an omniscient, objective narrator to hold their hand and explain everything. I.e., as in real life, the reader must struggle to create meaning, and must learn to tolerate not being sure if his or her inferences and conclusions are accurate—and in that struggle, especially upon rereadings, when more is seen in the text than upon first impression, and when the reader’s subconscious has had a long while to work, unseen, on making sense of what was at first confusing or bewildering, the reader is educated, becomes smarter and wiser. Without the pain of that struggle, there is no gain in insight.”

In other words, if you read the novels as if the narration is telling you everything you need to know, then that’s NOTHING like real life, right? Do you have such a narrator on your shoulder telling you who is a good person, and who is a bad one?  I sure don’t!

And why you imagine that a double story structure means that the characters must be cardboard cutouts and absurd is also beyond me. What it actually means is that there are in the two separate fictional universes of P&P, e.g., two different Mr. Darcys, two different Charlotte Lucases, two different Mary Bennets, etc. Each of these doppelgangers is a fully realized, complex, and coherent character in his or her own world.

What makes JA’s achievement remarkable, even staggering, is that these two very different versions of the same character say the exact same words when in Elizabeth’s presence, and also appear exactly the same to Elizabeth when she observes them. What is different is that in the overt story, Elizabeth is correct in her judgment of those other characters, and so the narration, which reflects Elizabeth’s point of view, is also correct; whereas in the shadow story Elizabeth is completely clueless about them, and therefore the narration, while not a lie, is subtly but profoundly misleading.

Let me take Charlotte Lucas as a particularly good example. If she is the Charlotte you know, then she is a woman opting for security over romance and true companionship-- a very complex, poignant character. But if she is the Charlotte of the shadow story---i.e., a lesbian in love with Elizabeth, who works behind the scenes to get back to living close by Elizabeth---then she is an even more complex, poignant, and interesting character.

It’s a twofer, Louise--- we get twice as much Jane Austen in each novel. And while there is trickery involved on Jane Austen’s part, it’s a didactic trickery, in the same vein as Socrates' trickery of his students, not out of sadistic elitism, but so as to shake them out of their complacent assumptions about life, and enable them to become wiser.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

 

LL Cool J & how his stage name and song title celebrate his personal heritage

February 24, 2016, 8:12 pm

≫ Next: Millenium Hall lesbian subtext in Austen, especially Mansfield Park: A very FLAT business, I am sure!

≪ Previous: Why Jane Austen’s shadow stories weren’t detected for nearly 2 centuries

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I’ve really been enjoying watching Finding Your Roots, the PBS show hosted by Professor Henry Louis Gates. It’s a very clever twist on our national obsession with celebrities---instead of the schadenfreude of hearing the latest A-list gossip, or gawking at the red carpet fashionistas, Professor Gates genially and artfully invites us in to eavesdrop on his tete-a tetes with the likes of John McCain, Norman Lear, Gloria Steinem, and Maya Rudolph, in which we get to share their wonder, delight, and, at times, tears, as they learn about their own roots. And, in the process, I suspect Gates also achieves a subtle didactic purpose---i.e., of assuring that, along the way, we all also learn something about our complicated collective heritage as Americans. So, I recommend the show, as a lowkey addition to your TV viewing choices.

Which brings me to the particular episode that surprisingly caught my attention in my capacity as wordplay sleuth, as I hint in my Subject Line. A few weeks ago, in an episode upon which the good professor seemed to bestow particular loving care, he had only two guests instead of the usual complement of three – Sean Combs (aka P Diddy) and rapper LL Cool J—two icons of African American music and culture.

I don’t want to overload this post with spoilers for the episode, in case you get a chance to watch it in the near future, so I’ll focus only on the one thread which caught my eye and ear. But keep in mind that there is so much else going on in this extraordinary episode for the heart and mind than I will be discussing in the remainder of this post.

So, let me get down to specifics. I was enjoying watching Gates lead each of these younger men on a remarkable journey back in time—and, atypically for the episodes I’ve seen, Gates also chose just the right moment along the way to speak personally about himself---as they learned about their ancestors-both those who survived enslavement, but also those who, surprisingly, were born free (or, at least, as free as people of color could be in racist 19^thcentury America).

Early on, Gates had asked about the origin of his unusual and lyrical stage name, and LL Cool J (born James Todd Smith) replied that he had invented it at age 14, “totally out of his imagination”, as a kind of wishful thinking abbreviation of “Ladies Love Cool James”. Then Gates proceeded to unravel for his guest the mystery of the parentage of LL’s mother, a mystery which LL’s mother had heard vague whispers about ---and that’s precisely when my inner wordplay sleuth was unexpectedly shaken awake, when the name of LL’s biological maternal grandmother was eventually revealed to be……………… Ethel Mae Jolly.

Now, before I tell you what it was I saw in that name as it materialized on the genealogy chart that made me shake my head in wonder, can you guess what it was?

(scroll down)

…..

(scroll down)

….

Those who follow along here know that I do a lot of crossword puzzles, and I’ve also played a lot of Scrabble over the years, plus, I’ve been intensively studying all the different forms of wordplay that Jane Austen and Shakespeare deployed in their writings, including acrostics, anagrams, and the like. So, all of that wordplay activity over a very long time is almost certainly why I almost instantaneously spotted the following eerie transformation (imagine each letter is a Scrabble tile that can be moved) between one name and another, requiring only a few short steps:

ETHEL MAE JOLLY   == >  MAE JOLLY == > OLLY J AE == LL COOL J!

Although not a perfect anagram, LL COOL J is pretty darned close, particularly in sound, to ETHEL MAE JOLLY, don’t you think? It’s just jumbled up a bit.

And this semantic parallelism was even more amazing, because it came right after Gates informed LL that his bio maternal grandfather, great-uncle (John Henry Lewis, world light heavyweight champion from 1935-9), and great-great-grandfather, whose existence LL Cool J had also been completely unaware of till sitting there in the TV studio, had all been professional boxers.

And what was remarkable about that, was that LL Cool J promptly responded that both he and his mother had always been zealous boxing fans---so much so, in fact, that one of his well known songs, from 1990, was entitled “Mamma said knock you out”, and the video for same shows LL Cool J in a boxing ring!:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vimZj8HW0Kg

Now what could be a good explanation for these two remarkable coincidences, assuming, as I do, that we should take LL Cool J at his word that (1) he made up his stage name without any conscious knowledge whatsoever that he was echoing the surname of his actual biological maternal grandmother, and (2) he and his mother had not been aware of the existence, let alone the name or profession, of his biological maternal grandfather, when they both came to love boxing.

He had no idea, because he and his mother had always been told, and believed, that her biological parents were actually another couple, Eugene Grissom, a jazz musician who gave him his first guitar at age 8, and his wife, Ellen Hightower, who had not only raised his mother, but also helped his mother raise LL Cool J himself from an early age.

LL Cool J’s explanation for this eerie coincidence re boxing, affirmed by Gates, was that there was something in the family genes that somehow expressed itself over generations. This reminded me of the well known identical twin studies, which showed that such twins, even when separated at birth, often make astonishingly similar choices in life as adults.

Now, genes could indeed explain the boxing connection, but what about that ETHEL MAE JOLLY == > LL COOL J anagrammatical connection? Just a wild coincidence?

I am suspicious of big coincidences, and so it was while asking myself this question, that a second explanation occurred to me, one that would account for the coincidences on both sides of his maternal family tree. From the dates of birth provided during the show, it was easy to deduce that LL Cool J’s grandfather had been 30, and his grandmother 19, when his mother was born. According to Gates, his mother’s birth certificate, dated a year and a half after her birth, suggested that a legal adoption had been arranged, and in those days, children were often not told that they had been adopted.

And it was also obvious from LL Cool J’s repeated statements, that his adoptive grandparents, who were no longer living, had both always been incredibly loving and kind to both him and his mother.

Given all of that, I believe there is another naturalistic explanation which fits all the evidence, which is not inconsistent with the genetic explanation, and which fits very closely with LL Cool J's repeated assertions about the kindness and love showered on his mother and him by his adoptive grandparents.

Think about the most likely scenario that led to his mother being adopted at age 1 1/2 in 1946 - it is likely that her adoptive parents knew the circumstances of LL’s mother's birth, and possibly even were personally connected to one of the bio parents: a handsome high profile 30 year old man [was he married at the time?] and a 19 year old girl.  Keeping the baby must not have been a viable option, and so the next best alternative was a placement with loving childless adoptive parents.

But here’s the real payoff of this theory--- perhaps the reason why both LL Cool J and his mother were such avid boxing fans, and why LL Cool J came up with that particular stage name, was one and the same---his adoptive grandparents wanted to give their adoptive daughter (and then her son) a sense of her/their biological heritage - and so they somehow, early on, planted the name “Jolly” (the surname of the bio mother) in the child's mind as something positive, and they encouraged a love of boxing in both (the bio father's famous profession).

I’m also reminded of the poignant climax of Rain Man, when the protagonist Tom Cruise realizes that “Rain Man” was his babyish way of saying his older brother’s name, Raymond, played of course by Dustin Hoffman.

Of course, I can’t assert with certainty that my theory is correct, but it seems pretty plausible to me. And what’s more, I think it would be lovely if true, a beautiful gift to LL Cool J and his mother from Eugene Grissom and Ellen Hightower, even if they didn’t realize it had been delivered until long after it was “sent”.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Millenium Hall lesbian subtext in Austen, especially Mansfield Park: A very FLAT business, I am sure!

February 26, 2016, 2:44 pm

≫ Next: Elizabeth’s unwitting epiphany: “Come, Mr. Wickham, we are brother and sister…BIOLOGICALLY!”

≪ Previous: LL Cool J & how his stage name and song title celebrate his personal heritage

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In Janeites and Austen L today, Ellen Moody wrote:“One final work, Sarah Scott's Millenium Hall shows single lives for women which include happiness. A number of spinster characters. Most fully developed Miss Louisa Mancel. Kittredge is her most cheerful in this section: she likes the story of Mancel enormously. Mancel's beauty was definite problem since she had no money, and she moves from destitution to well-off several times; mostly she solves her problem of self-support by servitude (Kittredge's word) in a great house. No Downton Abbey here. She takes society's view of herself and is willing to come down and live with low status without apparent repining. Her great virtue of self-control: she controls how she shows herself, escapes persistent sexual harassments: she's a lady's maid. …Self control and a true friendship with Miss Melvyn and some luck carries her over her deep unhappiness in her situation (hidden from all this unhappiness). The friend marries and becomes Mrs Morgan, Miss Mancel moves nearby (gets another job) but Mr Mancel cannot bear this competition; he insists his wife give up the friend altogether. To me strangely Kittredge suddenly sides with him! …So now her refusal to talk about lesbianism comes in. Scott was lesbian, this is a lesbian relationship in covered up; by not admitting this or talking of it, the whole story is skewed. Only if we admit this is an intense lesbian relationship can we really say the husband is understandable – and in a way Mrs Morgan married him on false terms. Admit the lesbianism too and we could say Mrs Morgan has been so repressed she doesn't understand what she is – Emma Donoghue and Lisa Moore's books deny that the women could know. At any rate we'd be in reality world; Kittredge has strangely here not been willing to say what is happening. Her inference is Scott is saying there are worse things than remaining unmarried because Mrs Morgan is now bullied and isolated and she mentions how Hayley in his cruel book on old maids warns women if you don't marry your friends will and have to cut you off and out when they have children. Probably Kittredge wants to keep our minds on heterosexuals as the generality, but lesbians were there and complicate the picture of who stayed unmarried. Fast forward to today: in cases of husband abuse it's common for the man to have behaved with harsh jealousy and isolated her from family and friends. At any rate the husband dies and they open Millenium Hall. And then of course acts of generosity towards spinsters abounds. But this is allegory. Galesia's story is closer to the reality; and Miss Mancel and Mrs Morgan before Mr Morgan dies.” END QUOTE FROM ELLEN MOODY

I agree completely with Ellen when she writes “So now [Kittredge’s] refusal to talk about lesbianism comes in. Scott was lesbian, this is a lesbian relationship in covered up; by not admitting this or talking of it, the whole story is skewed. Only if we admit this is an intense lesbian relationship can we really say the husband is understandable – and in a way Mrs Morgan married him on false terms. Admit the lesbianism too and we could say Mrs Morgan has been so repressed she doesn't understand what she is – Emma Donoghue and Lisa Moore's books deny that the women could know. At any rate we'd be in reality world; Kittredge has strangely here not been willing to say what is happening. Her inference is Scott is saying there are worse things than remaining unmarried because Mrs Morgan is now bullied and isolated and she mentions how Hayley in his cruel book on old maids warns women if you don't marry your friends will and have to cut you off and out when they have children. Probably Kittredge wants to keep our minds on heterosexuals as the generality, but lesbians were there and complicate the picture of who stayed unmarried….”

But I take Ellen’s above comments a giant (but justified) step farther. I wrote back in 2008 about how strongly I agree with Jocelyn Harris in her claim in A Revolution Beyond Expression (2006) that Persuasion contains a significant veiled allusion to Millenium Hall. At that time, I also argued that there is an even more significant allusion to Millenium Hall in Mansfield Park as well:

“They are contained in the inset story entitled "The History of Mrs. Trentham", and involve a young girl, Harriot Trentham who at age 8 upon the remarriage of her previously widowed father winds up in the care of her rich maternal grandmother, who was already the caretaker of Harriot's four slightly elder cousins, a boy and three girls. Sound vaguely familiar? Then how about this: ‘As their grandmother was rich, there had been a strong contention among them for her favour, and they could not without great disgust see another rival brought to the house. Harriot was extremely handsome and engaging. The natural sweetness of her temper rendered her complying and observant...Had Miss Alworth and Miss Denham [two of Harriot's cousins] been much younger, Harriot would not have passed unenvied. Every day increased their dislike to her...and they let no opportunity escape of making her feel the effects of their little malice. Their hatred to her produced an union among themselves; for the first time they found something in which they all agreed...."

I think you get enough of a taste there to realize that JA reproduced a not too distant replica of that home in Mansfield Park. But there's more, remember, there is one boy cousin in the mix:
"Master Alworth [the boy cousin], by being thus kept at home, had frequent opportunities of observing the malice of his sister and Miss Denham against Harriot....His fondness for Harriot soon made him beloved by her, and as she found little pleasure in the society of her other cousins, she sought his company...Master Alworth was far enough advanced in learning to assist his favourite, and from him she received instruction with double pleasure...Thus beloved by her grandmother and Mr. Alworth, and hated and traduced by her female cousins, Harriot lived till she was 16....when Mrs. Alworth judged it proper that her grandson should go abroad...He had no objection to the scheme but what arose from his unwillingness to leave Harriot...To be deprived of his society was losing the chief pleasure of her life, and her best guardian against her enemies. Mrs Alworth...hope to see an happy union arise from it....but the two friends themselves had not extended their views so far. Bred up like brother and sister, a tenderer degree of relation had not entered their thoughts...."
I think any commentary by me on that passage would be utterly superfluous, it has so obviously been tracked by JA in Fanny and Edmund....but there's still more----Harriot discourages a suitor, Mr. Parnel, because Harriot is patiently waiting for her cousin to realize he loves her. So that suitor then marries her cousin. But then, by various circumstances, Harriot's cousin realizes that she was not Mr. Parnel's first choice, and you can just imagine what ensues. Chaos.
…What I am really struck by, once again as I skimmed parts of Millenium Hall, is how intelligent and subtle it is. Clearly Sarah Scott was one brilliant woman, and it is extraordinarily easy to imagine how JA, whenever in her life it was when she first heard about Sarah Scott, and read this book, would have been enthralled from the first page onward. This was a book written by a woman who, by a combination of good fortune and her own considerable gifts, had lived a good life in a relationship that had many of the earmarks of a long term committed lesbian relationship (just go to Wikipedia to read about Sarah Scott's life), and was able to both write 'the best fiction" (to paraphrase Cousin Elliot), and to implement her utopian ideas in a very pragmatic way just outside Bath (where perhaps JA visited sometime before Scott died in 1795).”

And I would add today, with the better perspective I’ve gain in the last 8 years, that it’s utterly clear to me from all of the above that the lesbian subtext in JA’s novels (particularly, Charlotte Lucas in love with Elizabeth in P&P and Mary Crawford in love with Mary in MP) drew significantly on a number of prior literary sources, but none more than Scott’s Millenium Hall. I hadn’t thought about Charlotte Lucas before I read this part of Ellen’s post:

“Only if we admit this is an intense lesbian relationship can we really say the husband is understandable – and in a way Mrs Morgan married him on false terms. Admit the lesbianism too and we could say Mrs Morgan has been so repressed she doesn't understand what she is”

That is exactly what I’ve been saying about P&P, and so I can paraphrase Ellen as follows – i.e., that Charlotte marries Collins on false terms (unless he too is gay, in which event, they are a mutual marriage of pure convenience), and Elizabeth Bennet is so repressed that she doesn’t understand what she is.

And…I conclude this post with a quote from George Haggerty’s excellent 1992 article which is the first I can find to claim a lesbian subtext in Millenium Hall:

…The popular and well distributed text Satan’s Harvest Home, or the Present State of Whorecraft, Adultery, Fornication, Procuring, Pimping, Sodomy, and the Game at Flatts…(1749), for example, offers in its almost pornographic fervor a different picture of 18^thcentury attitudes toward female sexuality… a description of male effeminacy…proceeds to a diatribe against sexual transgression….After cataloguing a variety of sexually transgressive females, for instance, he turns his attention to Sappho:

“…What does [Sappho] do then? Not content with our Sex, begins Amours with her own, and teaches the Female World a new sort of Sin, call’d the Flats, that was follow’d not only in Lucian’s Time, but is practis’d frequently in Turkey, as well as in Twickenham at this day.”

…the “Flats” is taught rather than ‘caught’. Partridge tells us that flats is the slang term for false playing cards or counterfeit money. Also current, slightly later according to Partridge, is the use of the term flat-cock to describe a woman, ‘for one of two possible anatomical reasons”, and flat-f---k for ‘simulated copulation by a pair of women: lesbian.”

It is interesting that flats include a sense both of cheating and deception as well as female homosexuality.  …a flat-f----k is no f----k at all, from a male perspective….”

Out of curiosity, I checked Mansfield Park for the word “flat”, and found the following very interesting passage in Chapter 6:

“Mr. Bertram set off for————, and Miss Crawford was prepared to find a great chasm in their society, and to miss him decidedly in the meetings which were now becoming almost daily between the families; and on their all dining together at the Park soon after his going, she retook her chosen place near the bottom of the table, fully expecting to feel a most melancholy difference in the change of masters. It would be a very flat business, she was sure.”

So, in this passage which refers to the departure of the heir to the Bertram fortune, and the effect this will have on Mary, who had clearly tipped her cap at him while he was there, it sure ain’t a coincidence, in light of Haggerty’s excellent catch of the slang lesbian meaning of “flat”, that we read Mary thinking about where to turn her amorous attentions, and there is a pointed reference to it being “a very FLAT business”. And that’s exactly when I see Mary’s courtship of Fanny begins!

A very flat business, I am sure, as well!

So, thanks to Ellen for prompting me to revisit Millenium Hall today, and to make my own understanding of its lesbian subtextual role in MP more complete.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Elizabeth’s unwitting epiphany: “Come, Mr. Wickham, we are brother and sister…BIOLOGICALLY!”

March 2, 2016, 1:57 pm

≫ Next: When the enemy of my enemy is NOT my friend: 2016 Republican politics and…..Pride & Prejudice??

≪ Previous: Millenium Hall lesbian subtext in Austen, especially Mansfield Park: A very FLAT business, I am sure!

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 A little over two years ago, I wove a web of text-based speculations….  http://tinyurl.com/mn7rej4

 …..about the hidden connection I see, in the shadow story of Pride & Prejudice, between two apparently unrelated inquiries (tellingly, both beginning with the words “You cannot”) that Elizabeth Bennet fields about her own brief life history while visiting Charlotte at Hunsford:

First, in Chapter 29 at Rosings, Lady Catherine sharply cross-examines Eliza about her exact age:

 "Upon my word," said her ladyship, "you give your opinion very decidedly for so young a person. Pray, what is your age?"

"With three younger sisters grown up," replied Elizabeth, smiling, "your ladyship can hardly expect me to own it."

Lady Catherine seemed quite astonished at not receiving a direct answer; and Elizabeth suspected herself to be the first creature who had ever dared to trifle with so much dignified impertinence. "You cannot be more than twenty, I am sure, therefore you need not conceal your age."

"I am not one-and-twenty."

Then, only three chapters later, in Chapter 32, Darcy worriedly questions Eliza about the duration of her habitation at Longbourn:

“[Elizabeth] "I do not mean to say that a woman may not be settled too near her family. The far and the near must be relative, and depend on many varying circumstances. Where there is fortune to make the expenses of travelling unimportant, distance becomes no evil. But that is not the case here. Mr. and Mrs. Collins have a comfortable income, but not such a one as will allow of frequent journeys—and I am persuaded my friend would not call herself near her family under less than half the present distance."

Mr. Darcy drew his chair a little towards her, and said, "You cannot have a right to such very strong local attachment. You cannot have been always at Longbourn."

Elizabeth looked surprised. The gentleman experienced some change of feeling ....”

While I invite you to read my entireearlier, above-linked post for all its supporting Shakespearean allusive detail, I will now cut to the chase and repeat my conclusion as stated in that earlier post:

“in reading the subtext of P&P, we think about [Burney’s] Cecilia, who will inherit an income of 3,000 pounds per year, together with a lump sum payment of 10,000 pounds, upon reaching the age of 21, and realize that THIS is the SAME explanation for why all the bees are suddenly buzzing around Elizabeth when she is approaching her 21^stbirthday, and why everyone is so focused on a moment in family history a little more than 20 years ago, i.e., right around the time that Elizabeth Bennet was born! Mrs. Bennet’s nerves came to unfortunate prominence at that exact moment when the orphan Elizabeth was brought to the Bennet residence house under cover of night!”

In short, I claimed that in the shadow story of P&P, Elizabeth is the true heir of Pemberley, as the late Mr. Darcy’s only legitimate biological child, who, like Fielding’s Tom Jones, was banished to Longbourn as an infant pursuant to murky Darcy family intrigue in which Mr. & Mrs. Bennet secretly participated.

I was prompted to revisit all of the above by Diane Reynolds’s comment today in Janeites and Austen L: 

“I teach P&P and have been thinking about the scene in which Lydia arrives as Mrs. Wickham and irritates Elizabeth no end with her posturings about taking Jane's place in leading her daughters into dinner and in her chatter about finding husbands for her sisters. It clearly satirizes a social hierarchy in which an idiot like Lydia can outrank a sensible person like Jane, based only on a shot gun marriage, but it also is true that, while annoyed, Elizabeth bows to the dictates of her social system. She gets the "win" not by challenging or disrupting the social order but by being better at working the system: she will beat Lydia by marrying someone of higher rank.”

When I reread that scene (in Chapter 52) in which Lydia postures about her superior rank, and thought about Diane’s comment about Elizabeth achieving a higher rank by marrying Darcy, I recalled my above described 2013 post, and thought about Elizabeth, in the shadow story, already(albeit unknowingly) holding a higher status by virtue of her own birth as a Darcy.

And that was when I suddenly read, with fresh eyes, the memorable tete a tete between Eliza and her new brother-in-law, George Wickham, right after Lydia struts and boasts, when Eliza gets in a final, witty dig at him:

“They were now almost at the door of the house, for she had walked fast to get rid of him; and unwilling, for her sister's sake, to provoke him, she only said in reply, with a good-humoured smile:  "Come, Mr. Wickham, we are brother and sister, you know. Do not let us quarrel about the past. In future, I hope we shall be always of one mind."

She held out her hand; he kissed it with affectionate gallantry, though he hardly knew how to look, and they entered the house. “

I’ve previously suggested a Shakespearean source for Eliza’s “Come, Mr. Wickham, we are brother and sister” in Orlando’s retort to elder brother Oliver in As You Like It:  “Come, come, elder brother, you are too young in this”. But I did not realize before today that Jane Austen, the nonpareil mistress of hiding significant meaning in very plain sight, had written Eliza’s bon mot so that it would be read in the overt story as referring to Wickham as Eliza’s brother-in-law via marriage, but could also be read in the shadow story as Eliza’s unwitting epiphany that she is Wickham’s biological half brother, because both of them  share the same biological father, the late Mr. Darcy!

In that regard, I’m very far from being the only Janeite to have ever seen Mr. Wickham as the illegitimate son of the late Mr. Darcy, and therefore as Darcy’s half brother, very much like the Biblical rivalries among the sons of Jacob sired on different mothers.

But now, via the train of inference detailed above, I find in Elizabeth’s comment to Wickham a very broad wink by Jane Austen at this very dicey interpretation!

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

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When the enemy of my enemy is NOT my friend: 2016 Republican politics and…..Pride & Prejudice??

March 5, 2016, 1:32 pm

≫ Next: My YouTube video chat about the shadow story of Austen's Emma with the First Impressions Podcast hosts Kristin Whitman & Maggie Riley

≪ Previous: Elizabeth’s unwitting epiphany: “Come, Mr. Wickham, we are brother and sister…BIOLOGICALLY!”

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According to Wikipedia: “ ’The enemy of my enemy is my friend’ is an ancient proverb which suggests that two opposing parties can or should work together against a common enemy. The earliest known expression of this concept is found in a Sanskrit treatise on statecraft dating to around the 4th century BC, while the first recorded use of the current English version came in 1884. Some suggest that the proverb is of Arabic origin.”

This ancient proverb is, I suspect, on many minds at this very moment, as the bitter campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination has progressed into its first climactic stage, which began on Super Tuesday, and will end when the votes are counted in winner-take-all Ohio and Florida on March 15.

At the heart of this high political drama (although the circus is an apter metaphor than the stage for this increasingly grotesque spectacle) is the unholy alliance emerging among the three very strange bedfellows in mortal combat with Donald Trump --- Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and John Kasich. They all seem to have recognized, albeit a little late in the political day, that (to quote another ancient proverb) “united they stand, divided they fall”. At the most recent debate Thursday, it was clear that Cruz and Rubio, who previously had been savaging each other, are honoring a de facto ceasefire between them, with the common cause of directing a double barrage at point blank range at the massive ego of Mr. Trump.

This temporary alliance is extremely uncomfortable for many establishment Republicans, mainly because of the intense antipathy that many of them feel not only toward Trump but also toward Cruz as well. Six weeks ago, Lindsey Graham pithily summed up that Hobson’s Choice:  "It's like being shot or poisoned. What does it really matter?"  

Graham’s bon mot embodies a rejection of the proverb, in this case, by the constituency who follow the lead of Graham, Romney, the Bushes, and McCain--the enemy (Cruz) of their enemy (Trump) is most decidedly NOT their friend—so it’s pretty obvious that they’re holding their noses and counting the hours till they can revoke their truce with Cruz, and pull out all stops to get Rubio (or some other establishment white knight) on the ballot against Hillary Clinton.

And…stepping back for a broader political perspective, the Republican circus is also causing a great deal of anxiety for Democrats like myself. Why? Because, from our perspective, all four of the Republican candidates are “enemies”. It’s not just Trump and Cruz, who embody different forms of right wing extremism that would make either of them a very very scary person to sit in the Oval Office. It’s also the deep hypocrisy of Rubio (a rebooted, Latino version of smiling, genial George W Bush)  and even Kasich (who, while far and away the most moderate of the four Republican candidates still standing, is still someone who I and many other liberals fear would, with a Republican congress behind him, do harm comparable to that perpetrated on our nation from 2001-2008.

We on the left end of the spectrum are therefore sorta like Lindsey Graham, in that some of us are rooting for Cruz or Rubio to weaken Trump enough to make him vulnerable in the national race to come, if he is the candidate. Yet others of us find Cruz so awful that even Trump seems less awful, because he is not a fanatical ideological conservative, and thus might work with Democrats on a pragmatic basis. And yet, our fear of the outsized danger posed by Trump or Cruz does not negate our fear of a “reasonable” Republican winning the election.

In short, then, how strange that is for many of us, to actually think of either Cruz or Trump as a “friend”. And the central point I wish to bring out via this brief analysis, is that it’s not a binary situation, it’s much more multipolar and complicated than the ancient proverb suggests.  

Which brings me to the main point of this post, which is that it only occurred to me this morning that there is a direct parallel to the above-described political funhouse madness, in the most unlikely of places---at the heart of Jane Austen’s most popular and famous novel—Pride & Prejudice. Let me explain.

The plot structure of P&P can be boiled down to this pithy formula: the heroine Elizabeth Bennet faces a very difficult romantic choice between the charming, sympathetic underdog Mr. Wickham and the aloof, arrogant aristocrat Mr. Darcy.

In the first half of the novel, Mr. Wickham seems to carry the day with Elizabeth, until he abruptly and unaccountably jilts her for (what turns out to be an unsuccessful attempt to marry) the freckled heiress Miss King. Then, after Eliza rejects Darcy’s disastrous first proposal, Eliza finds herself in no woman’s land, and she crystallizes her dilemma in this famous comment to sister Jane:

“She then spoke of the letter, repeating the whole of its contents as far as they concerned George Wickham. What a stroke was this for poor Jane! who would willingly have gone through the world without believing that so much wickedness existed in the whole race of mankind, as was here collected in one individual. Nor was Darcy's vindication, though grateful to her feelings, capable of consoling her for such discovery. Most earnestly did she labour to prove the probability of error, and seek to clear the one without involving the other.

"This will not do," said Elizabeth; "you never will be able to make both of them good for anything. Take your choice, but you must be satisfied with only one. There is but such a quantity of merit between them; just enough to make one good sort of man; and of late it has been shifting about pretty much. For my part, I am inclined to believe it all Darcy's; but you shall do as you choose."

As that last sentence indicates, Eliza has by that point already flipped her position upside down, and now accepts Darcy’s dark version of Wickham, whereas twenty chapters earlier she accepted Wickham’s “portrait” of Darcy. And that’s how the novel ends in the minds of Janeites---with Darcy wearing a white hat and Wickham a black one.

But what never occurs either to Elizabeth, or to pretty much all of the millions of readers of P&P over the past two centuries, is that Elizabeth has in effect relied too strongly on that ancient proverb. I.e., she has assumed that she is facing a binary choice, and therefore, the enemy of her enemy must be her friend. So, if Wickham and Darcy are mutual enemies, Elizabeth believes she has no choice but to see Wickham as a good guy so long as she sees Darcy as a bad guy; and then, when she fiips, she believes she has no choice but to see Darcy as a good guy, once she sees Wickham as a bad guy.

So, what if, in the fictional universe of the shadow story of P&P that I’ve been writing about for a decade, not only Wickham, but also Darcy, both turn out to be bad guys who happen to be enemies of each other? Or, drawing on the political analogy I’ve been making, what if not only Cruz, but also Trump, are both bad guys who happen to be enemies of each other?

That is the one scenario that never occurs to Elizabeth –that Darcy and Wickham are both adept at trashing the reputation of the other, because they are both justified in their attacks on the other!

Elizabeth should have listened to the whispering pundit (who I long ago identified as none other than sister Mary Bennet) who tries to warn Elizabeth to stay away from both Wickham and Darcy:

“The gentlemen came; and she thought he looked as if he would have answered her hopes; but, alas! the ladies had crowded round the table, where Miss Bennet was making tea, and Elizabeth pouring out the coffee, in so close a confederacy that there was not a single vacancy near her which would admit of a chair. And on the gentlemen's approaching, one of the girls moved closer to her than ever, and said, in a whisper: "The men shan't come and part us, I am determined. We want none of them; do we?"

Indeed, when it comes to the Republican slate of Presidential candidates, I want none of them!

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

My YouTube video chat about the shadow story of Austen's Emma with the First Impressions Podcast hosts Kristin Whitman & Maggie Riley

March 5, 2016, 7:57 pm

≫ Next: Miss Bennet, Elizabeth, Lizzy, Eliza: who calls her what....and why

≪ Previous: When the enemy of my enemy is NOT my friend: 2016 Republican politics and…..Pride & Prejudice??

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This afternoon, I had the very great pleasure of recording a 90 minute YouTube video chat ....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9WkpqjJPR4

 ....the subject matter of which was my interpretation, which I've been refining over the past 11 years, of what I call the "shadow story" of Jane Austen's Emma.

My hosts were two witty, well-informed, and open-minded young Janeite friends who host the First Impressions Podcast, created by them for discussion of all things Jane Austen's genius, that they started a few months ago:

Kristin Whitman, whom I first met via Austen L about 8 years ago, and

Kristin's great friend, Maggie Riley, who is now my newest Janeite friend.


I was very flattered when Kristin first approached me two months ago with the idea of this discussion, in honor of the year long bicentennial celebration of the publication of Emma in 1816. I immediately agreed to do it, because I already knew that they were both smart, fearless, and funny--a wonderful combination--- and what better way to make my debut on YouTube and in podcast land than that!

So we basically came in with very little preplanned structure, and just let it fly--I hope you'll agree that the conversation was lively, irreverent, and interesting (even if at times we all were talking a little bit too loud, and laughing a little too hard, as Billy Joel would have put it).

If you're not familiar with my ideas, and don't want to watch the video completely cold, you are welcome to first read the following brief summary of my shadow story theory:

My fundamental premise is that each Austen novel, but above all Emma, is told from (pretty much) the exclusive point of view of the heroine for a crucial reason—which is that, by means of her infinitely clever narrative technique, I have found that Jane Austen became increasingly expert in telling two completely different stories using the identical words for each—just like the proverbial figure ground image. 

 http://changingminds.org/images/gestalt_figure_ground.jpg

Is it two faces looking at each other, or a candle-stick holder? It’s both, depending on the observer’s point of view. Both are plausible, and therefore neither is exclusively correct. The image itself never alters, only our perception of it. And it’s still pretty mysterious how our brains can switch back and forth between the two images, both with and without our conscious control. 

The same applies, I claim, with Jane Austen’s novels. On the one hand, if we read the narrative as mostly objective, and therefore both accurate and complete as presenting “all we need to know” in order to comprehend the story told, then we get the novels as they have been pretty universally read for 2 centuries—what I call the “overt stories”. And it is the understatement of the millennium to state that each of JA’s six completed overt stories are miraculous works of sublime genius. 

But… if we read the narrative as mostly subjective(and therefore extremely incomplete in terms of presenting the story from the heroine’s often fallible point of view), then we get the novels as they have never been coherently read for 2 centuries prior to my discoveries of the past decade. Many other readers before me have seen pieces of the proverbial elephant in Austen’s novels, but I am the first to assert that each novel contains a second entire “elephant” we need to work very hard. over a long period of time, in order to glimpse it in its full splendor—and you know I call that the “shadow story”. 

And one last crucial aspect to this—the reading of JA’s narrative as fundamentally objective is the opposite of real-life experience of the real world, whereas the reading of her narrative as subjective is an exact replication of real life experience of the real world. I.e., in real life, none of us has an omniscient narrator perched on our shoulder reliably telling us what is “really” happening in our lives—we each must struggle to overcome our own often flawed individual judgments, to make the best sense we can of what happens, particularly in terms of understanding both our own personalities and actions, and also those of other people. Our real lives are a perpetual struggle to discern what is happening in the shadows  around (and inside) us, and to not be prone to either faulty “first impressions” or to hard-wired prejudices. 

It was over 10 years ago that I had my final major epiphany about those six coherent shadow stories. And it was Emmawhich gave me this flash of insight, because when I began to look at the novel through the lens of Frank as possible murderer of his aunt in order to end his “servitude” to her, I was shocked to find that the entire novel (and not just Frank’s character and actions) lit up for me like a Christmas tree of offstage shadowy threads, with a thousand textual hints about /all/ of the characters, all suggesting something beyond the apparent surface meaning. All the holes (like the curious lack of mention of anyone in the downstairs at the Bates residence) are, to me, wormholes, which lead somewhere. And most of all, we have the oracle of /Emma/, Miss Bates, whose torrent of words sounds to Emma (and most readers) like trivial drivel to be ignored, or at most, enjoyed as comedy, but who actually is constantly speaking in code about what is happening in the shadows, especially the most serious matters unknown to Emma.

And, to answer the common question I am asked, why am i the first person in 200 years to see this, here's a recent answer I gave in Janeites:  In my interpretation of her shadow stories it is clear that she aspired to a radical subversion of male, aristocratic, and financial privilege. And, as anyone can see in the “Prince of Whales” secret answer to the “courtship” charade in Emma, JA had the Prince Regent, the self-styled “first gentleman of Europe”, right in the center of her polemical crosshairs. She made him the unwitting butt of her fierce satire and critique of the status quo in all three of those categories of privilege. Her satire encompasses within it all the (justified) attacks on the PR by Hunt, Lamb, Cruikshank, and others. And then, as icing on the allusive cake, she had thekahones to dedicate /Emma/ to him! You don’t get more subversive, and therefore more dangerous, than that! How could she possibly have let that subliminal subtext be too visible and too obvious? Too risky. 

So her strategy was to weave this sort of extreme satire and subversion into the subtext of her superficially “status quo-friendly” love stories. And you are correct, as literary history actually unfolded, there was, in fact, no recognition of JA’s shadow stories, as coherent entities, for nearly two centuries, until I made the first such claim in early 2005, after 2 ½ years of my own grasping toward that epiphany. But….I strenuously assert that such long history of nonrecognition was /not/ an inevitable, foregone conclusion that Jane Austen could have foreseen when she wrote her novels. Instead, I suggest that three factors converged to keep Austen’s shadow stories, as coherent entities, invisible to readers for 190 years:
 

CAUTION: Her extreme caution, meaning (as I’ve previously explained) that JA felt she had to hide her shadow stories well enough to make them deniable if detected—“do not be suspecting me of a CODE”;
 

GENIUS: Her extreme genius, meaning (as I’ve also previously explained) she was so brilliant, and must have been so totally consumed over a very long period of time with the process of creating double stories, that she (ironically) lost perspective and was not a good judge of just how much disguise was the optimal amount. I.e., she thought they’d be more readily decodable than they are. On this point, I can speak from direct personal experience, because my own ability to decode her shadow stories has gradually but steadily improved over the past 12 years—and at first, I really was surprised when people didn’t see what I see. But after ten years of public debate about this topic with hundreds and hundreds of other readers, I now understand just how difficult (or undesirable) taking such a large leap is for many other Janeites. But, as I’ve suggested, we can see a progression in JA’s novels, as I believe she sought to hit that sweet spot right in the middle between too obvious and too obscure. That’s why she wrote Emma, with its mysteriousness right there on the surface for all to see, so different from her three previous published novels. And had she lived another ten years, she not only would have gained national prominence and a bully pulpit to be open about her views, she’d have written more novels in which, I am confident, the shadow stories would have been brought closer and closer to the surface. Sooner or later, lightning would have struck.   and
 

HISTORY: But the Austen family decisively shaped the narrative (to borrow the buzzword we hear every day in election campaign punditry) about the kind of author JA was, from the moment JA died. I.e., if you’re a Janeite reading Austen, and you’re told, with 100% assurance, by pretty much all the mainstream Austen experts, that she was an author who would /never/ hint at dark shadows, then, unless you are a stubborn self-confident contrarian like myself, you will not acknowledge those shadows, even when they pop up right in front of your eyes. I’ve seen it myself hundreds of times, in books, articles, blog and discussion posts—where readers do spot “bread crumbs”—those anomalies in the text which don’t fit with the mainstream interpretation of a given character—but in the end those readers have almost all turned away from the door they opened themselves, and rationalized away the anomalies. Such is the power of the Myth of Jane Austen. 

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Miss Bennet, Elizabeth, Lizzy, Eliza: who calls her what....and why

March 11, 2016, 10:46 pm

≫ Next: MARTHA (Lloyd & Anne) SHARP(E) hiding in THE closet…with Jane Austen!

≪ Previous: My YouTube video chat about the shadow story of Austen's Emma with the First Impressions Podcast hosts Kristin Whitman & Maggie Riley

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Last night, a new Janeite friend privately posed a very interesting question to me which I had not previously considered—was there any rhyme or reason to the numerous different ways that the heroine of Pride & Prejudice is referred to by other characters and by the narrator? Here is my answer.

Initially, after a very quick search, I responded as follows:

She is called "Lizzy" 97 times altogether, but without exception only by the other members of her immediate family, plus Mr. & Mrs. Gardiner (and “Lizzie” is a misspelling that never appears in the nove).

She is almost always called "Elizabeth" by the narrator, except when a servant is involved, in which case the narrator calls her "Miss Elizabeth".

Darcy and Lady Catherine generally refer to her as "(Miss) Elizabeth Bennet”, which makes the single time when Darcy calls her “dearest, loveliest Elizabeth” all the more powerful for its being the only such event in the entire novel.

Mr. Collins invariably calls her "cousin Elizabeth" and Mr. Bingley invariably calls her "Miss Bennet"

So far, nothing really remarkable, just Jane Austen, as always, achieving meticulous verisimilitude to real life, as all of these modes of addressing or speaking about Elizabeth Bennet are consistent with the characters of the speakers.

As for the narrator’s universal “Elizabeth” when speaking in a more or less objective manner, think about how different the tone of the novel would have been had the narrator always called her “Lizzy” or, conversely, Miss Elizabeth Bennet. “Elizabeth” seems to me to set the perfect tone, poised exactly in the middle between what would have been the overfamiliarity of the former and the overformality of the latter.

And this brings us to what I find to be the most interesting and intriguing example. There are only four characters who ever refer to our heroine as “Eliza”:

Charlotte  Lucas only calls her “Eliza”, and does so nine times;

Maria Lucas calls her “my dear Eliza” once;

Sir William Lucas only calls her “Eliza” and does so three times in one scene, at the Lucas Lodge dance, by calling her “my dear Miss Eliza” twice and “Miss Eliza” once.

Caroline Bingley calls her “Miss Eliza” three times, and “Miss Eliza Bennet” three times as well, for a total of six usages.

I am sure you’ll agree that it makes perfect sense that three members of the Lucas family would all use the same nickname for Elizabeth; but why Eliza rather than the Bennet family nickname, Lizzy? My sense is that Charlotte was the “author” of this nickname, and the reason seems clear to me. I.e., as I’ve said countless times over the past 7 years, I agree with the character in The Jane Austen Book Club who believes that Charlotte is a lesbian. And I take that a big step further, and assert that Charlotte’s true and constant beloved from beginning of the novel to the end is our heroine. So, what better way for Charlotte to express that forbidden love, in a constant yet subliminal and subtle way, than to have a special name for her that no one uses other than those connected to Eliza via Charlotte’s intimate friendship—Charlotte’s own family.

So far, so good, but what are we to then make of the strange bedfellow in the naming business—Caroline Bingley? Why does she follow the Lucas lead rather than that of two more plausible role models in that regard: her brother and Mr. Darcy? After all, she is not at all connected to the Lucases, as far as we can see. Is this JA’s sly and subtle hint to the attentive reader that Caroline is in contact with one or more of the Lucases without Eliza’s knowledge of that contact?

I’ve got three possible explanations to toss out to you:

First, as I blogged within the past several months, I believe Lady Lucas in general is covertly and maliciously doing her darnedest to thrown monkey wrenches into Mrs. Bennet’s matchmaking gears at every turn. So, it would make perfect sense for her to have reached out to Miss Bingley, and made common cause with her, conspiring together for those dark purposes.

Second, and much less likely, I think, I wonder whether Caroline, whom I (and also the author of Lost In Austen) suspect of not being entirely heterosexual, might have had some sort of romantic relationship with Charlotte during Caroline’s stay in Meryton. I find it much less likely, because I don’t believe Charlotte would “cheat” on Eliza, and, as I have also argued previously, Charlotte is not her own mother’s ally in her mother’s guerilla war against Mrs. Bennet, but actually repairs the damage her mother attempts to inflict on the Bennets.

Third, and in a way most convincing to me, it may simply be that Caroline’s usage of “Eliza” is simply a parody of what Caroline overhears at Lucas Lodge in Chapter 6, which I will now quote:

“[Sir William] paused in hopes of an answer; but his companion [Darcy] was not disposed to make any; and Elizabeth at that instant moving towards them, he was struck with the action of doing a very gallant thing, and called out to her:

"MY DEAR MISS ELIZA, why are you not dancing? Mr. Darcy, you must allow me to present this young lady to you as a very desirable partner. You cannot refuse to dance, I am sure when so much beauty is before you." And, taking her hand, he would have given it to Mr. Darcy who, though extremely surprised, was not unwilling to receive it, when she instantly drew back, and said with some discomposure to Sir William:

"Indeed, sir, I have not the least intention of dancing. I entreat you not to suppose that I moved this way in order to beg for a partner."

Mr. Darcy, with grave propriety, requested to be allowed the honour of her hand, but in vain. Elizabeth was determined; nor did Sir William at all shake her purpose by his attempt at persuasion.

"You excel so much in the dance, MISS ELIZA, that it is cruel to deny me the happiness of seeing you; and though this gentleman dislikes the amusement in general, he can have no objection, I am sure, to oblige us for one half-hour."

"Mr. Darcy is all politeness," said Elizabeth, smiling.

"He is, indeed; but, considering the inducement, MY DEAR MISS ELIZA, we cannot wonder at his complaisance—for who would object to such a partner?"

Sir William is as phony as Mr. Collins, but smoother, and so his unctuous form of flattery is ripe for parody, wouldn’t you say? And guess who was eavesdropping on that very conversation?:

“…Elizabeth looked archly, and turned away. Her resistance had not injured her with the gentleman, and he was thinking of her with some complacency, when thus accosted by Miss Bingley:

"I can guess the subject of your reverie."

"I should imagine not."

"You are considering how insupportable it would be to pass many evenings in this manner—in such society; and indeed I am quite of your opinion. I was never more annoyed! The insipidity, and yet the noise—the nothingness, and yet the self-importance of all those people! What would I give to hear your strictures on them!"

"Your conjecture is totally wrong, I assure you. My mind was more agreeably engaged. I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow."

Miss Bingley immediately fixed her eyes on his face, and desired he would tell her what lady had the credit of inspiring such reflections. Mr. Darcy replied with great intrepidity:

"Miss Elizabeth Bennet."

"Mis Elizabeth Bennet!" repeated Miss Bingley. "I am all astonishment. How long has she been such a favourite?—and pray, when am I to wish you joy?"

"That is exactly the question which I expected you to ask. A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment. I knew you would be wishing me joy."

"Nay, if you are serious about it, I shall consider the matter is absolutely settled. You will be having a charming mother-in-law, indeed; and, of course, she will always be at Pemberley with you."

He listened to her with perfect indifference while she chose to entertain herself in this manner; and as his composure convinced her that all was safe, HER WIT FLOWED LONG.”

So, now I understand for the first time that “her wit flowed long” refers not merely to the ribbing that Miss Bingley inflicted on Darcy that evening. I suggest to you that Miss Bingley’s calling our heroine “Eliza” in all of the following passages is the continuation of that flow, and that we are meant to remember Sir William’s three phony “Elizas” each time we hear her say “Eliza”:

Ch. 8: "MISS ELIZA Bennet," said Miss Bingley, "despises cards. She is a great reader, and has no pleasure in anything else."

Ch. 11: "MISS ELIZA Bennet, let me persuade you to follow my example, and take a turn about the room. I assure you it is very refreshing after sitting so long in one attitude."

Ch. 18: "So, MISS ELIZA, I hear you are quite delighted with George Wickham! Your sister has been talking to me about him, and asking me a thousand questions...I pity you, MISS ELIZA, for this discovery of your favourite's guilt; but really, considering his descent, one could not expect much better."

And even much later in the novel as well:

45: Pray, MISS ELIZA, are not the ——shire Militia removed from Meryton? They must be a great loss to your family…..How very ill MISS ELIZA Bennet looks this morning, Mr. Darcy," she cried; "I never in my life saw anyone so much altered as she is since the winter. She is grown so brown and coarse! Louisa and I were agreeing that we should not have known her again."

I have not watched the 1995 P&P recently—does anyone recall if Andrew Davies might have somehow subtly let the audience know that Caroline was parodying Sir William?

And so, I am grateful to my new Janeite friend for prompting me to investigate this intriguing and significant aspect of JA’s utter mastery in organizing every last single detail of P&P, no matter how small, because they point back to the heart of the story, when properly decoded.

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

MARTHA (Lloyd & Anne) SHARP(E) hiding in THE closet…with Jane Austen!

March 13, 2016, 10:39 pm

≫ Next: “I (really) am not what I am”: The Hidden-in-Plain-Sight Identity of the Potty-Mouth Clown in Othello

≪ Previous: Miss Bennet, Elizabeth, Lizzy, Eliza: who calls her what....and why

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I ended my last post earlier today as follows:

Ellen wrote: "In the case of Martha Lloyd and Jane Austen as far as we can tell Jane called Martha Martha and Martha Jane Jane. I don't think I jump to conclusions when I at least repeatedly point to what it seems the Austen world wants to ignore about the depth and continuity of this relationship. I'm persuaded that in Charlotte Lucas we have a reflection of that friendship"

And I replied: And this is another one of those rare occasions when Ellen and i agree about a subtextual interpretation of JA's writing, as I have also previously stated that Charlotte Lucas is in some way a portrait of Martha Lloyd, Jane Austen's beloved (in more than purely platonic ways) particular friend.”

A few hours later, thinking some more about names in JA’s novels, in particular about Martha Lloyd as a source for some of JA’s non-heterosexual female characters, something tickled the edges of my memory, and led me to search to see whether there might have been a “Martha”, a minor character, somewhere in her novels—and sure enough, I found the following passage in Chapter 38 of Sense & Sensibility, when Nancy Steele accosts Elinor and starts telling her all about a conversation between Edward and Lucy about their future life together:

"I do not understand what you mean by interrupting them," said Elinor; "you were all in the same room together, were not you?"

"No, indeed, not us. La! Miss Dashwood, do you think people make love when any body else is by? Oh, for shame!—To be sure you must know better than that. (Laughing affectedly.)—No, no; they were shut up in the drawing-room together, and all I heard was only by listening at the door."

"How!" cried Elinor; "have you been repeating to me what you only learnt yourself by listening at the door? I am sorry I did not know it before; for I certainly would not have suffered you to give me particulars of a conversation which you ought not to have known yourself. How could you behave so unfairly by your sister?"

"Oh, la! there is nothing in THAT. I only stood at the door, and heard what I could. And I am sure Lucy would have done just the same by me; for a year or two back, when Martha Sharpe and I had so many secrets together, she never made any bones of hiding in a closet, or behind a chimney-board, on purpose to hear what we said."

Elinor tried to talk of something else…

My eyes widened when I beheld the one and only  “Martha” in all of JA’s six novels combined: it was a name which I must have registered subliminally before, but which today took on its full significance, in the light of my and Ellen’s shared opinion about Martha Lloyd as a lesbian allusive source for JA’s fiction. 

When I read what Nancy Steele said about Martha Sharpe, as my Subject Line suggests, I realized that “Martha Sharpe” had to be a blending of the first name of one, and the last name of the other, of the two women I have long believed were Jane Austen’s real life Charlotte Lucases ---- MARTHA Lloyd and Anne SHARP!

I then immediately wondered whether any other Austen scholar had ever taken notice of the name “Martha Sharpe”. I found only three who had ever mentioned it other than in passing. 

The first was Margaret Doody, in her 2015 book about names in Jane Austen’s novels, but her comment showed no awareness whatsoever of the personal Austenian significance of that name:

“That Nancy has an equally mannerless friend named “Martha Sharpe” (a New Testament first name already demoted) clarifies her lower middle class milieu.”

The second was my good friend Linda Robinson Walker, in her recent Persuasionsarticle about Colonel Brandon as a survival of circumcision while in the Subcontinent, picked up on a possible pun in “Margaret Sharpe:: “And of course, there is her sister’s friend, Martha Sharpe.  Thaler, who also has taken note of the “sharps” and Lucy’s dueling with Elinor, points out that duels at the time of Austen’s writing were usually conducted with pistols. “

But, as far as I can tell, only our own Ellen Moody noted the following in September 2012 in a blog post:

“Martha is found in Austen’s novels in a minor character. Nancy Steele mentions eavesdropping on her sister, Lucy….”When Martha Sharpe and I had so many secrets together.”…Jane has conflated her two favorite women, Martha Lloyd and Anne Sharpe. In this scenario, she is Nancy …More seriously, alas, we don’t know enough about Martha’s inward character accurately described to try to discern which of Austen’s characters might have some of her traits, unless aspects of Nancy Steele caricature Martha.”

However, Ellen, having gotten so close, and having already recognized that Martha was a source for the lesbian Charlotte Lucas in P&P, failed to make clear that Martha and Anne were more than JA’s “favorite women”—they were women with whom JA had a strong romantic connection. Which tells us that Martha Lloyd had already made this “cameo” appearance  in S&S, before she made a full fledged appearance in the significant role of Charlotte Lucas in P&P two years later.

What seals the deal, I think, is the way Nancy Steele describes “Martha Sharpe”---could JA be more sexually suggestive than to have the crude, vulgar Nancy Steele say, “when Martha Sharpe and I had so many secrets together, she never made any bones of hiding in a closet, or behind a chimney-board…”. So many secrets together? Hiding in a closet? Hiding behind a chimney-board?

Where have we heard such crude sexual innuendo coming out of the mouth of a vulgar female Austen character? Of course, you know the first passage that came to my mind:

“…Dear me! we had such a good piece of fun the other day at Colonel Forster's. Kitty and me were to spend the day there, and Mrs. Forster promised to have a little dance in the evening; (by the bye, Mrs. Forster and me are such friends!) and so she asked the two Harringtons to come, but Harriet was ill, and so Pen was forced to come by herself; and then, what do you think we did? We dressed up Chamberlayne in woman's clothes on purpose to pass for a lady, only think what fun! Not a soul knew of it, but Colonel and Mrs. Forster, and Kitty and me, except my aunt, for we were forced to borrow one of her gowns; and you cannot imagine how well he looked! When Denny, and Wickham, and Pratt, and two or three more of the men came in, they did not know him in the least. Lord! how I laughed! and so did Mrs. Forster. I thought I should have died. And that made the men suspect something, and then they soon found out what was the matter."

And don’t forget Miss Bates’s memorable turn in a similar Freudian vein:

“'Oh,' said he, 'wait half a minute, till I have finished my job;'—For, would you believe it, Miss Woodhouse, there he is, in the most obliging manner in the world, fastening in the rivet of my mother's spectacles.—The rivet came out, you know, this morning.—So very obliging!—For my mother had no use of her spectacles—could not put them on. And, by the bye, every body ought to have two pair of spectacles; they should indeed. Jane said so. I meant to take them over to John Saunders the first thing I did, but something or other hindered me all the morning; first one thing, then another, there is no saying what, you know. At one time Patty came to say she thought the kitchen chimney wanted sweeping. Oh, said I, Patty do not come with your bad news to me. Here is the rivet of your mistress's spectacles out. Then the baked apples came home….”

Secrets between female friends, hiding in closets and chimneys--- and to find them explicitly connected to a character named for JA’s two intimate female friends. It doesn’t get any more suggestive than that!

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

“I (really) am not what I am”: The Hidden-in-Plain-Sight Identity of the Potty-Mouth Clown in Othello

March 18, 2016, 12:35 am

≫ Next: P.S. re Iago as Othello's Clown

≪ Previous: MARTHA (Lloyd & Anne) SHARP(E) hiding in THE closet…with Jane Austen!

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Over the past half century, there’s been a surprising amount of scholarly discussion about a relatively minor Shakespearean character, who (i) only appears in two short scenes, (ii) only speaks a total of fourteen short speeches in total, (iii) seems to be in the play for some unfunny comic relief, and (iv) seems to have no impact on the progression of the plot.  As my Subject Line indicates, I’m talking about the Clown in Othello, who appears only in Scenes 1&4 of Act 3. In both instances, we see him outside in front of the Governor’s Castle in Cyprus where Othello, recently returned ashore after a successful campaign against the Turks, is celebrating his marriage to his lovely new bride, Desdemona.

Here’s the first scene with the Clown, which begins Act 3 and immediately follows the final speech of Act 2, in which Iago has just shared with the audience his appalling game plan for destroying his General’s new marriage. Cassio has arranged for a small wind ensemble to serenade Othello to start the day, whereupon the Clown appears and puts a quick stop to the little concert while engaging in brief ribald repartee with the head performer, and then accepts Cassio’s request to discreetly pass a message on to Emilia:

Act 3, Scene 1: Enter CASSIO and some Musicians

CASSIO  Masters, play here; I will content your pains; Something that's brief; and bid 'Good morrow, general.'

Music     Enter Clown

CLOWN: Why, masters, have your instruments been in Naples, that they speak i’ the nose thus?

FM: How sir, how!

CLOWN: Are these, I pray you, wind instruments?

FIRST MUSICIAN: Ay, marry, are they sir.

CLOWN: O, thereby hangs a tail.

FIRST MUSICIAN: Whereby hangs a tail, sir?

CLOWN: Marry, sir, by many a wind instrument that I know. But, masters, here's money for you: and the general so likes your music, that he desires you, for love's sake, to make no more noise with it.

FIRST MUSICIAN: Well, sir, we will not.

CLOWN: If you have any music that may not be heard, to’it again; but, as they say, to hear music the general does not greatly care.

FIRST MUSICIAN: We have none such, sir.

CLOWN: Then put up your pipes in your bag, for I’ll away: go, vanish into air; away!

Exeunt Musicians

CASSIO:  Dost thou hear, my honest friend?

CLOWN: No, I hear not your honest friend; I hear you.

CASSIO: Prithee, keep up thy quillets. There's a poor piece of gold for thee: if the gentlewoman that attends the general's wife be stirring, tell her there's one Cassio entreats her a little favour of speech:
wilt thou do this?

CLOWN: She is stirring, sir: if she will stir hither, I shall seem to notify unto her.

CASSIO: Do, good my friend.

Exit Clown       Enter IAGO….

Notice also that the next event onstage after the Clown’s exit is the entrance, after an unstated gap of time, of Iago, who then converses with Cassio in furtherance of Iago’s scheming.

And now, here is the scene a short time later in 3.4, when we find Desdemona and Emilia with the Clown outside that same Castle, with Desdemona seeks the same help from the Clown that Cassio requested, but in reverse—i.e., she asks the Clown to help her find Cassio:

Act 3, Scene 4.  Enter DESDEMONA, EMILIA, and CLOWN

DESDEMONA Do you know, sirrah, where Lieutenant Cassio lies?
CLOWN I dare not say he lies any where.
DESDEMONA Why, man?
CLOWN He's a soldier, and for one to say a soldier lies, is stabbing.

DESDEMONA Go to: where lodges he?
CLOWN To tell you where he lodges, is to tell you where I lie.
DESDEMONA Can any thing be made of this?
CLOWN I know not where he lodges, and for me to devise a lodging and say he lies here or he lies there, were to lie in mine own throat.
DESDEMONA Can you inquire him out, and be edified by report?
CLOWN I will catechise the world for him; that is, make questions, and by them answer.
DESDEMONA Seek him, bid him come hither: tell him I have moved my lord on his behalf, and hope all will be well.
CLOWN To do this is within the compass of man's wit: and therefore I will attempt the doing it. Exit

In the dozen or so scholarly reactions to Othello’sClown that I retrieved and read during the past two days, the discussion mostly focuses on how unusual a Shakespearean clown this Clown is, including (i) the small size of his role compared to the clowns in Lear, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, All’s Well That Ends Well, and The Winter’s Tale, (ii) how unfunny Othello’s Clown is; and (iii) the hard-to-fathom function of these very short scenes within the arc of the storyline in Othello. The most extensive and insightful of these modern scholarly analyses of Othello’s Clown, is the earliest,  “The Comic Scenes in Othello” by Robert A. Watts, Shakespeare Quarterly, 19/4 (Aut., 1968), 349-54.  I’ll now quote Watt’s highlights most relevant to my revelation of “the hidden-in-plain-sight identity of the potty-mouth Clown”. Please read these excerpts, to set the stage for my “punch line”, below:

“…the comic scenes in Othello serve an important function…as a microcosm of the major themes of the tragedy…resulting in a reversal of the emotional reaction of the reader, who now laughs at a theme which…was part of the tragic progression of events...Certainly the Clown in Othello does not have the functional role of Lear’s Fool, nor does he engage in the subtle, enigmatic punning of the comical Gravedigger in Hamlet. Nevertheless, both…reflect SS’s most subtle use of comic scenes as thematic microcosm…

The Clown first appears in the opening scene of Act III…Before this seemingly unimportant event has any significance for us, we must see what role the theme of music has played in the drama as a whole…

Since the music was meant to soothe Othello after the ribaldry of the drinking scene in Act II, the Clown’s motives basically are those of Iago’s, since both wish to create disharmony and unrest.

Indeed, the Clown is Iago, in that both the Clown and Iago share means, but not ends. What the Clown does for the sake of comedy, Iago does for tragedy. The Clown even talks like Iago. Note his use of rustic and obscene animal imagery as he exchanges words with his unwitting straight man, the First Musician…

The rationalist Iago, who defeated Cassio by causing discord, cannot tolerate this demonstration of harmonious passion. He vows to ‘untune’ the music and thereby dispel the illusion that passion can be as ordered, meaningful, and cohesive as reason. Only a few scenes after this episode, the Clown enters and banishes music from the stage…

…The Clown’s punning on the word ‘lie’ includes three implications: that of lodging, that of telling untruths, and that of sexual activity. Certainly, if the Clown represents a comic Iago, it is altogether fitting that he use the demeaning, sexual connotations which characterize Iago’s speech throughout the play. Even more important, however, is the fact that Desdemona’s question “Can anything be made of this?” might well be a universal cry against the deception and trickery as used by Iago. After the confusion, Desdemona finally asks the Clown to seek out Cassio for her. He agrees and terminates the conversation (and the scene)…This passage concludes what little comedy there is in this almost uniformly tragic drama, but it is a meaningful last note. If the Clown has aped Iago each minute on the stage, we can be certain that this last comment is an important aspect of Iago presented in microcosm.

…Iago spurns witchcraft in favor of wit to achieve his ends, and, indeed, it is only in the realm of wit that Iago and the Clown can be effective. Both of these characters, then, combine forces to banish music from the witchcraft world of Othello and Desdemona and to utilize their superior wit to achieve their goals.

…the Clown, with his wit, is superior to anyone who shares a scene with him, just as Iago is intellectually superior to any of his associates. When either Iago or the Clown enters a scene, he dominates the stage and forces all others into the role of victim. This fact adds in an important dimension to Shakespeare’s technique of comic inversion. Our laughter at the Clown tempers our hatred for the villain, Iago, and reminds us that we respect the intellectual powers of both characters regardless of their motives. By thus focusing the major themes of the tragedy into these infrequent scenes of comedy, Shakespeare evokes from the audience a duality of response which tempers the themes of the tragedy and renders them more effective links in the chain of tragic events.” END QUOTES, WATTS ARTICLE

Now read what Laurie Maguire, without citing Watts, wrote in Othello: Language and Writing (2014):

“…Productions that cut the Clown ignore the way his role paves the way for Iago’s, both linguistically and dramaturgically. The mid-line stage direction below shows us the sequence in 3.1 in which Cassio bids goodbye to one Clown as he welcomes another…The Clown exits just as Iago arrives: the latter replaces the former, using his tactics, occupying his place. Iago may not be promoted to military lieutenant in the plot, but he is a lieutenant (literally “place holder”) in the play’s comic dramaturgy.”

I found Watts’s article while sleuthing out a different subtextual thread in Othello (which I’ll also be blogging about in the near future); so it was pure serendipity when I read….

“Indeed, the Clown is Iago…”

…and a light bulb switched on brightly in my head. I.e., although Watts was being metaphorical (while describing multiple points of resonance and similarity between the Clown and Iago), I made the leap to wondering whether, in the fictional world of the play, Shakespeare actually intended the sharp elves among his readers/audience to recognize that the Clown literally was Iago…but in disguise----a disguise so effective that he’s not recognized by either Cassio or Desdemona---although Emilia, who knows that Iago is using Desdemona’s handkerchief (that Emilia purloined at his request) for some intrigue, surely knows that the Clown is her own husband!

In other words, I realized that Watts’s imaginative literary detection and analysis brought him to the threshold of a significant discovery, as to which Shakespeare had very deliberately provided numerous subtextual clues, like proverbial bread crumbs, in Act 3. However, because a trick of such magnitude on the reader/viewer was not dreamt of in Watts’s philosophy of interpretation, he never crossed that conceptual threshold, but left it for the likes of an unabashed literary sleuth such as myself to do so nearly six decades later!

Since my epiphany, I’ve quickly amassed a rich array of textual and extratextual evidence for the Clown as Iago in disguise----in particular that the character of Iago was strongly modelled by Shakespeare on certain villain types prevalent in Italian theater prior to Othello [in The Comedy of Errors, Antipholus of Syracuse even refers to "Soul-killing witches that deform the body, DISGUISED CHEATERS, prating MOUNTEBANKS, / And many such-like liberties of sin" (1.2.100-102)]. And I find it quite funny and striking that some scholars have speculated over the years that Robert Armin, Shakespeare’s great “fool”, played the Clown, while others have suggested that Armin played Iago--whereas my reading suggests that Armin played both roles…..which are actually the same role!

Today, I’ll merely provide to you my explanation of why Shakespeare would resort to such authorial trickery. In my opinion, Shakespeare was not an angry literary Iago taking malicious, mean-spirited pleasure at the expense of trusting readers/viewers. Rather, Shakespeare was a benign Iago, who wished us to struggle to see through his deception, and to recognize the Clown as Iago, thereby making ourselves wiser and sharper readers of literature, and of life. And when we do the work, I hope you’ll agree that it addsto our understanding of Othello.

For starters, of all Shakespearean characters we might suspect of adopting a disguise so as to do harm to others, who would be higher on the list than Iago? He announces the essence of his character early on with "I am not what I am"- a parody of God's "I am that I am" in Exodus 3:14. And pretty much all that Iago says or does is, on a metaphorical level, a disguising of his true, malevolent intent. He uses his enormous insight into human nature and persuasive skill to make others believe he cares about them and wishes to help them, all the while disguising his intent to trick them into destroying their own lives. So it can hardly be considered out of character for Iago, if we now find out, four centuries after he was created, that his palette of deceit includes actual physical, as well as metaphorical, disguise. Plus, on top of all that, Iago advises Roderigo to provoke Cassio to blows in Act 2, taking advantage of Cassio’s not knowing Roderigo by sight—a kind of disguise by ignorance. Iago, like Shakespeare, is a connoisseur of point of view.

And stepping back to the level of metafiction: how fitting that Shakespeare would disguise his protagonist Iago as "Clown" and leave it to us to unmask him. What better way for the audience to understand the experience of those whom Iago deceives during the course of the play—by which I mean, pretty much every other character who has the misfortune to come into contact with Iago—than to feel this experience of being tricked on our own skin.  

And here’s the best part of Shakespeare’s disguising of Iago as the Clown. Once we view the Clown’s two brief appearances through the lens, and in the full context, of the overall action of the play—in particular as part of Iago’s elaborate, methodical and daring plot, we see that Iago’s plotting is even more daring and resourceful than we previously knew. So, please don your deerskin caps and cogitate about all of this with me, and see if you agree with my take, below, on the strategy and tactics I detect behind Iago’s decision to disguise himself not once but twice as the Clown, in the short period of time covered in Act 3, in order to further his nefarious goals—I would not be at all surprised if some of you come up with additional explanations for Iago’s disguise as the Clown!

First in 3.1: aside from his crude banter with the First Musician, the “Clown” (of course, meaning, Iago in disguise) accomplishes an obvious goal---he stops the music from playing. Some commentators have suggested that music is a metaphor for sex in Othello, and so they see the Clown, on a metaphorical level, as putting a stop to the sexual concord that Othello and Desdemona presumably wish to reach in their bedroom, above. But, in stopping the music, what else does the Clown accomplish, on a practical level, and in a non-obvious way? 

I suggest that Cassio’s curious choice to hire musicians to play a morning serenade for his General has a second unstatedmotivation. I.e., this is Cassio’s only way of discreetly getting Desdemona’s attention, so that he can request that she intercede on his behalf with Othello, and redeem him for his drunken riot the evening before (that Iago incited him to).  Desdemona is awaking to the new day with her new husband upstairs in the Cyprian Castle, but it’s 1606, not 2016, so Cassio cannot text her! So he finds an ingenious solution:  getting her attention via music---perhaps asking the musicians to play a song which was played when Cassio wooed Desdemona on Othello’s behalf, so she alone would know it was Cassio outside.

But Iago, who is staying at the Castle as well—he’s Othello’s right hand man, after all----recognizes this, because it was he who got Cassio drunk, and then suggested he reach out to Desdemona! So Iago has already planned to turn Cassio’s obvious desperation, and Desdemona’s likely empathy, to full advantage, but he must prevent a meeting between Cassio and Desdemona until the time is just right. And that right time will only arrive when Iago has first set the stage, by positioning himself at Othello’s side, and pouring poison into his General’s ear about what Cassio and Desdemona were doing, right after Othello watches Cassio walk away from Desdemona.

So the music is a little premature, and must be stopped. But Iago cannot just come outside as himself and stop it, because it’s also crucial that Iago retain Cassio’s trust and goodwill—and if Iago, as Iago, shuts down the music, that goodwill will evaporate on the spot. So Iago improvises a disguise and a character, taking on the look of the “Clown”—an apparent servant of Othello---and comes outside just in time to abruptly silence Cassio’s musical signal before it reaches Desdemona’s ears.

And then, to complete this shutdown of communication between Cassio and Desdemona, Iago must also make Cassio believe that his message will get through to Desdemona by other means. So the “Clown” assures Cassio that he will deliver that message to Emilia on Cassio’s behalf. And the “Clown” thereby succeeds in delaying delivery of that message to Emila, until Iago is ready. 

And that is my account of Iago in the role of the “Clown” in 3.3, which carries Iago’s plot forward up till the moment when opportunity knocks--or rather, when Iago’s tireless planning finally yields fruit---when Desdemona attempts to care for Othello’s “headache” and in so doing drops her handkerchief, which Emilia, already prompted by Iago to be ready for just such an occasion, then purloins and gives it to Iago.  Iago now knows he holds the key to success of his plan, and he tells the audience that he’ll drop the handkerchief in Cassio’s digs, and then make sure Cassio finds it. So, even though Shakespeare does not show Iago doing this, we know that he has accomplished this before 3.4 begins.

But how Iago do it? He cannot very well risk being seen going to and from Cassio’s place, so once again he dons the disguise of the “Clown” in order to move about unnoticed and do the deed. And that’s the reason why we find him in conversation with Desdemona in the garden of the Castle in 3.4: he’s on his way back from having just accomplished that dark deed. And when he runs into Desdemona, she has now been rendered desperate by Othello’s suspicions about the handkerchief, and so she is looking for Cassio. But it would utterly defeat Iago’s entire plan, if she were to actually meet with Cassio---somehow she could wind up getting her handkerchief back before Othello can demand that she produce it.

So Iago must find a way to prevent that meeting everhappening. Therefore, when she asks him where Cassio is, the “Clown” pretends to take on the task of finding Cassio, even though it is a task he’ll never even attempt to perform. He wants Desdemona to have to meet Othello without having any idea where her handkerchief is. And so Iago goes back into the Castle to quickly change back into Iago, and then we may well guess that Iago wastes no time in also telling Othello that Desdemona is outside looking for Cassio.

And then it’s only after Iago knows that Othello has gone off on Desdemona that he then brings Cassio back to Desdemona. At that point, no further disguise is required to complete the plan, and so the “Clown” therefore disappears from the play without Iago having to kill him (as he kills Roderigo, to silence him).  So we see that Iago dons disguise as the Clown twice, to liaise between between Cassio and Desdemona and both times to gum up the works, so that his slanders will work.

I also see another motivation for Iago to be in disguise in these two scenes, as he speaks in the first one to Cassio and in the second one to Desdemona. Iago gets what he wants from others by sweet talking them, but he is so clearly filled with rage and contempt for those he tricks, that it must cause a huge buildup of restrained anger when he interacts with his victims. So, perhaps another benefit to Iago from adopting the Clown persona, is that it gives him license to safely vent some of his disgust and contempt at Cassio and Desdemona, via his crude sexual innuendoes. Even Iago is human enough to need this outlet.

And there I will end my post, and hope to receive some lively responses to my interpretation.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

P.S. re Iago as Othello's Clown

March 19, 2016, 11:58 am

≫ Next: Ironic echoes in Othello of Acts 13:1-12, Sonnet 116, & the Anglican Marriage Vows

≪ Previous: “I (really) am not what I am”: The Hidden-in-Plain-Sight Identity of the Potty-Mouth Clown in Othello

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In followup to my immediately preceding post about Iago disguising himself as the Clown in Othello, without Shakespeare explicitly telling the audience that this is the case, I have just had the following conversation in the Shaksper group:

Alan Dessen wrote: “For a very different (and learned) take on the clown in Othello see Lawrence J. Ross, “Shakespeare’s “Dull Clown” and Symbolic Music, Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Spring, 1966), pp. 107-128.”

Yes, I read Ross’s article, and I would qualify what you wrote as follows---everything Ross wrote about the metaphorical significance of music in that first scene with the Clown in Othello takes on added significance if the Clown is actually Iago. Then, it’s as if Iago is a self-appointed chorus vulgarly yet insightfully and ironically having his own private joke, riffing on the conversation that Othello and Iago had shortly before about music. Read again what Watts (who cites Ross’s article) said on this point through the lens of my argument:

“Othello embraces Desdemona and kisses her saying: “And this, and this, the greatest discords be That e’er our hearts shall make!” While to one side, Iago comments “Oh, you are well tuned now! But I’ll set down the pegs that make this music, As honest as I am. (II.i) The rationalist Iago, who defeated Cassio by causing discord, cannot tolerate this demonstration of harmonious passion. He vows to ‘untune’ the music and thereby dispel the illusion that passion can be as ordered, meaningful, and cohesive as reason. Only a few scenes after this episode, the Clown enters and banishes music from the stage…”

 Whereas, if the Clown is just Othello’s servant, this becomes an artifice, a small jarring bit of unreality that detracts from the authenticity of the fictional world of the play.

Larry Weiss wrote:   “Arnie Perlstein offers an ingenious argument that we are meant to understand the Clown in “Othello” to be Iago in disguise.  I see one problem with that hypothesis which I hope he will ponder and address”

 Gladly, Larry, I really enjoyed your generous and well reasoned reply!

 Larry also wrote: “As Arnie observes, it has been suggested—persuasively in my opinion—that Iago was played by Robert Armin, the company’s “clown” in c. 1609.  It is also more than plausible that Shakespeare wrote the apparently trivial role of “Clown” to provide Armin with a traditional part for him, at least to satisfy the audience’s expectations.  If we assume that Armin doubled as Iago and Clown, what are we to believe the Jacobean audience understood by it?  They were well used to doubling and undoubtedly accepted the doubling player as two different characters.  Why would they believe that, in this instance, the doubling player was in fact one character who counterfeited another?  If they did, would they also believe that Lear’s Fool was Cordelia in disguise (probably also Armin doubling the parts)?”

Well, I am not sure, but even if such an interpretation was only accessible to a small elite who were intellectually prepared to be edified by the margent of Shakespeare’s ingenuity, that would hardly be the only aspect of Shakespeare’s genius which was not meant to be “caviare to the general”, right?

Larry also wrote: “In all other plays in which disguise is a plot feature, the audience is told unequivocally that, for example, Fidelio is really Innogen.  It would have been very easy for Shakespeare to give Iago a line or two to make clear that he is elaborating his deception to, in fact, be what he is not.  After all, Iago, like Richard III, is not averse to sharing his schemes with the audience.”

An excellent observation, but with all due respect, you beg the most important question –what if Shakespeare’s goal was precisely to simulate real life by NOT giving Iago that extra line or two – in real life, when we encounter other people, we do not have an omniscient author perched on our shoulder whispering “the truth” in our ear –instead, being human in a complex social world is a never ending challenge to ascertain the truth about others—and for that matter, about ourselves! And that entire experience would be denied to the reader/viewer if the answer were simply presented to us on a platter.

As I suggested in my first post, this sort of authorial trick is not malicious, it is didactic—it shows us how to interpret life, it does not tell us—and that is a much more effective, Socratic sort of teaching. As Elizabeth Bennet observes to her sister Jane near the end of Pride & Prejudice, in a speech that does not make it into the film adaptations, because its strangely Buddhist message does not seem to fit the romantic moment: “We all love to instruct, though we can teach only what is not worth knowing “

I say that Shakespeare,  and then Jane Austen two centuries later, both understood how to “teach” what was (and still is) worth knowing.

Larry finally also wrote: “All this being said, I agree with Arnie that his interpretation adds something.  I would have no objection to a director making the point explicit, saying by having Iago don a cap and bells or pick up a bauble in the sight of the audience before the first entrance of the Clown and then perhaps discard them as the Clown exits.  But this would be a directorial decision, which we would not have to accept as authorial.”

I only disagree with this otherwise excellent suggestion that the more powerful way of making this point would be for Iago’s disguise as the Clown be maintained intact for the audience until the Clown exits at the end of 3.4—whereupon, instead of entirely leaving the stage, we would see him at the extreme side of the stage, behind some sort of wall so as to be out of sight from Desdemona and Emilia, shed his disguise as the Clown, to reveal himself as Iago, and then for him to enter again right away as Iago! I believe this would be a wonderful, even electrifying moment, from a dramatic point of view, and it would allow for the message to get through to the audience, which would have just experienced the same sort of duping as Iago inflicts on everyone else in the play, but where we are rescued from our duped status before the play continues. I.e., we feel what it is like to be deceived, and so we can no longer rest assured that we would not be gulled by Iago if we were there. It takes us all down a peg.

 Again, Larry, thanks very much for exactly the sort of reply I hoped to receive, one that challenges me, and thereby assists me to extend my argument.

 Before I close, I wish to add one quick p.s. to my argument, which I dug up after posting yesterday. I was thinking about how Iago, as the Clown, seems to be Othello’s servant, and that made me wonder whether Shakespeare might have hinted at Iago as the Clown in other passages in the play. Well, talk about stumbling upon a rich lode of literary ore, check these passages out:

 IAGO

Why, there's no remedy; 'tis THE CURSE OF SERVICE,
Preferment goes by letter and affection,
And not by old gradation, where each second
Stood heir to the first. Now, sir, be judge yourself,
Whether I in any just term am affined
To love the Moor.

RODERIGO  I would not follow him then.

IAGO

O, sir, content you;
I FOLLOW HIM TO SERVE MY TURN UPON HIM:
We cannot all be masters, nor all masters
Cannot be truly follow'd. You shall mark
Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave,
That, doting on his own obsequious bondage,
Wears out his time, much like his master's ass,
For nought but provender, and when he's old, cashier'd:
Whip me such honest knaves. Others there are
Who, trimm'd in forms and visages of duty,
Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves,
And, THROWING BUT SHOWS OF SERVICE ON THEIR LORDS,
Do well thrive by them and when they have lined their coats

Do themselves homage: these fellows have some soul;
And SUCH A ONE DO I PROFESS MYSELF.

 There you have Iago, in his own words, telling Roderigo (and the audience) that he is going to “throw a show of service” in Act 3, when he dons the disguise of a servant, in order to line his own coat! What a sharp, sharp irony it is to have Iago, who is in reality the master of all the other characters in the play, in terms of his ability to effortlessly manipulate them all like puppets on a string, accomplish part of his “master plan” (ha ha) via playing a servant!

 And then, much later in the play, when Iago has brought Othello to a foaming frenzy, Iago revisits the notion of himself as Othello’s servant when he utters the following during the perverse, impromptu “marriage ceremony” for himself and Othello that he spontaneously improvises:

IAGO Do not rise yet.

Kneels

Witness, you ever-burning lights above,
You elements that clip us round about,
Witness that here IAGO DOTH GIVE UP
The execution of his wit, hands, heart,
TO WRONG’D OTHELLO'S SERVICE! Let him command,
And to obey shall be in me remorse,
What bloody business ever.

 Surely this wordplay on “service” in these two scenes, separated by several acts, is not accidental, or unconscious, on Shakespeare’s part. It is Shakespeare’s way of pinging our imagination subliminally, planting the seed of the idea of Iago not only as Othello’s servant in the concrete sense of his acting as ancient to a general, or in the metaphorical sense of his acting as Othello’s solicitous advisor, but in the sense of his taking on the role of Othello’s literal servant in the person of the “Clown”!

 Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Ironic echoes in Othello of Acts 13:1-12, Sonnet 116, & the Anglican Marriage Vows

March 21, 2016, 12:49 pm

≫ Next: “disposing of poor Mr. Woodhouse…”: “removing impediments” to marriage, Austen style!

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In further response to my posts suggesting that the Clown in Othello is Iago in disguise, I received two very interesting responses in the Shaksper listserv:

OTHELLO & ACTS 13:1-12:

Steve Sohmer wrote: “You might want to give a thought to that Biblical Clown (Fool) who traveled to Cyprus with Barnabas (Acts 13), then went on to catechize the world. There’s more in play here than a disguise. Hope this helps. Steve”

Steve, although I think you’re creatively stretching to bring Iago-as-the-Clown into the picture, as opposed to Iago generally, I nonetheless find your suggestion very interesting, Steve! I just read the KJV text of Acts 13: 1-12, to which you have referred, and have a comment, below:

“Now there were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers; as Barnabas, and SIMEON THAT WAS CALLED NIGER, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen, which had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them. And when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, they sent them away. So they, being sent forth by the Holy Ghost, departed unto Seleucia; and from thence THEY SAILED TO CYPRUS. And when they were at Salamis, they preached the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews: and they had also John to their minister.

And when they had gone through the isle unto Paphos, they found a certain sorcerer, a false prophet, a Jew, whose name was Barjesus: Which was with the deputy of the country, Sergius Paulus, a prudent man; who called for Barnabas and Saul, and desired to hear the word of God. But Elymas the sorcerer (for so is his name by interpretation) withstood them, seeking to turn away the deputy from the faith.

Then Saul, (who also is called Paul,) filled with the Holy Ghost, set his eyes on him. And said, O FULL OF ALL SUBTILTY AND ALL MISCHIEF, THOU CHILD OF THE DEVIL, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord? And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thee, and THOU SHALT BE BLIND, not seeing the sun for a season. And immediately there fell on him a mist and A DARKNESS; and he went about seeking some to lead him by the hand. Then the deputy, when he saw what was done, believed, being astonished at the doctrine of the Lord.”

First, I find it remarkable that in this very short passage of 13 Biblical verses, we find

(1) “Simeon that was called Niger” [of course, this word meaning “black” suggests Othello];

(2) the prophets and teachers sail to Cyprus [and a quick search tells me that the only references to Cyprus in the entire Bible are in Acts];

(3) the description of Elymas is a perfect description of Iago as well; and

(4) Paul’s striking Elymas blind and casting him into “a darkness”  echoes strikingly with what I read the other day in Elizabethan Stage Conventions and Modern Interpreters (written by Alan Dessen, who was, coincidentally, the first Shaksper participant to respond to my post the other day) beginning at P. 80:    “…By far the most complex rendition of such metaphoric darkness can be seen in the final movement of Othello…Even more important for the spectator watching the action in ‘imaginary darkness’ is an increased awareness of the manipulative power of Iago, who literally controls the light during much of the scene….[D]arkness is linked not to verisimilar night or lighting but rather to a failure to ‘see’ associated both with Iago’s poison and a blindness (or vulnerability) on the part of the observer….the darkness of misperception, the blindness of inner night.”

So I think it’s pretty clear from this dense interconnectivity that Shakespeare did have this very passage in mind as he wrote Othello.

Second, Steve, perhaps you are already aware of the following very relevant and specific discussion of Acts 13:1-13/ Pauline subtext in Othello in Islamic Conversion and Christian Resistance on the Early Modern Stage by Jane Hwang Degenhardt (2010):

“Cyprus resembled Ephesus through its particular association in the New Testament with Pauline conversion – an association that distinctly illuminates both the miracle of Othello’s Christian conversion and the failure of inner sight that prompts his damnation. It was in Cyprus that St. Paul performed his first prominent conversion of a Gentile. As detailed in Acts 13.5-12, Paul visited Cyprus with Barnabas and John when a Roman proconsul called upon them to ‘heare the worde of God” (13.7). Paul proceeded to teach the proconsul about Jesus, when a “Jewish sorcerer” named Elymas intervened and tried to “turn away the Deputie from the faith” (13.8). Paul then blinded the sorcerer, and, in turn, the Gentile proconsul was persuaded to convert to Christianity. Thus, the impossibility of the Jewish sorcerer’s conversion was set against the miracle of Gentile conversion. It was at this moment (13.9) that Paul, heretofore referred to as Saul, began to be called Paul. St. Paul’s momentous conversion of the Gentile proconsul, who, in being made to see the blindness of the Jewish sorcerer, is himself brought into the light, resonates powerfully with Shakespeare’s representation of a tragic protagonist whose demand for ocular proof belies an inner blindness. The resonance between Othello and the Jewish sorcerer is further reinforced through Brabantio’s charges of witchcraft (1.3.105-7), as well as by Othello’s own association of himself with a handkerchief given to his mother by an Egyptian charmer (3.4.58-9, 72).  What Shakespeare exposes through Othello’s damnation is the impossible conversion that both undoes and sustains Pauline universalism.  Othello’s potential connection to witchcraft and to the Jewish sorcerer in Acts 13 may, as Burton argues, constitute a ‘sign of his irrevocable non-Christian origins,….Just as the play equivocates about Othello’s capacity for Christian conversion, it is unclear about whether its critique of ocular proof is aimed at Othello or at the logic that consigns him to damnation. Leading up to its tragic conclusion, the play seems caught between endorsing the universal sway of Pauline faith and insisting upon a narrower understanding of faith….”

So, thanks for bringing that angle to my attention!

II. OTHELLO, SONNET 116 & THE ANGLICAN MARRIAGE VOWS

Sidney Lubow responded to my post about Iago as Othello's Clown as follows:

“Is the Clown Iago, Shakespeare’s alter ego of the Sonnets? Full Definition of alter ego. : a second self: as, a : a trusted friend, b : the opposite side of a personality, c : counterpart.

 Lord Narcissus, speaking to his own mind in the Sonnets, is talking to his alter ego, the other I that one might punningly call an Iago, as the bard might have cleverly associated with the double name, alter ego, done perhaps a bit too cleverly to be easily recognized in Othello, ‘O, the llo’rd,  Narcissus, the son of Cephisus, the river King, and the naiad, Lirope, who swam in his stream Othello’s alter ego, his trusted lieutenant, Iago, proved as disloyal as the bard’s did in the Sonnets. Shakespeare’s  Phoenix and Turtle also recalls the line, “Single nature’s double name.” The alter ego?  You are on the right track, it seems to me.”

Sidney, I am reticent about making interpretations of the Sonnets on a global scale. However, I will take this opportunity to point out that, as part of the research I did the past week, I became aware that there is an extraordinary degree of resonance among three texts which have not previously been connected by Shakespeare scholars, as far as I can tell:  Othello, Sonnet 116 (“marriage of true minds”), and the Anglican marriage vows!

I came upon that extraordinary resonance when my eye was caught by the word “impediment” in Othello’s speech in 5.2 just before he kills himself, and then I also found that word in a speech by Iago early in the play, in which he refers to Othello and Cassio as impediments to the marriage that the greedy Roderigo seeks with the heiress Desdemona:  

“Sir, [Cassio] is rash and very sudden in choler, and haply may strike at you: provoke him, that he may; for even out of that will I cause these of Cyprus to mutiny; whose qualification shall come into no true
taste again but by the displanting of Cassio. So shall you have a shorter journey to your desires by the means I shall then have to prefer them; and the IMPEDIMENT most profitably REMOVED, without the which there were no expectation of our prosperity.

Given that Iago can be seen as a Satanic marriage-breaker, the exact opposite of what happens in an Anglican marriage ceremony, I believe Shakespeare made a point of echoing in Othello many words from the following two famous texts, the first of which he of course was the author!  (see the words in ALL CAPS):

SONNET 116:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds 
Admit IMPEDIMENT. Love is not love 
Which ALTERS when it ALTERATION finds, 
Or bends with the REMOVER to REMOVE:

O no; it is an ever-fixed MARK, 
That looks on TEMPESTS, and is never shaken;  
It is the STAR to every wandering BARK,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 
Within his bending sickle's COMPASS come; 

ANGLICAN MARRIAGE VOWS:

I shall now ask you if you freely undertake the obligations of marriage, and to state that there is no legal IMPEDIMENT to your marriage.
….

Groom: I do solemnly declare that I know not of any lawful IMPEDIMENT why I, N.N. (full name, including surname), may not be joined in matrimony to N.N. (bride's full name)
Bride: I do solemnly declare that I know not of any lawful IMPEDIMENT why I, N. N. (full name, including surname) may not be joined in matrimony to N. N. (groom's full name).

To fully unpack all the nuanced usages of the ALL CAPS words in Othello would require several pages of analysis, which collectively embody the notion of Iago as Satanic marriage-breaker.

Given that Sonnet 116 is among the most famous of Shakespeare’s sonnets, how is it that I am apparently the first Shakespeare scholar to notice this striking thematic and verbal resonance?

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

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“disposing of poor Mr. Woodhouse…”: “removing impediments” to marriage, Austen style!

March 22, 2016, 12:02 am

≫ Next: A special bicentennial Emma quiz

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As those who follow this blog know, I just wrote a series of posts about Shakespeare’s self-intertextual wordplay between Othello, on the one hand,and Sonnet 116 and the Anglican marriage vows, on the other. I was prompted to do so after noticing the word “impediment” used twice in a thematically significant way in Othello. However, it was only today that it occurred to me to check for usages of “impediment” in Sense & Sensibility. And why should that have occurred to me?

Because, as I wrote up my Shakespearean observations this past week, only six weeks ago, I wrote a post… http://tinyurl.com/jzehrh5…about the veiled Austenian allusion to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit Impediment. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds”), which Emma Thompson plucked from the subtext of S&S, and made explicit in her film adaptation of S&S.  

To be more specific, I suggested that Thompson recognized that JA deliberately echoed the keyword “alters/alteration” from Sonnet 116. As you’ll see, below, it turns out that Jane Austen left an additional textual hint in S&S pointing not only to Sonnet 116 and the Anglican wedding vows, but also to Iago’s match-breaking in Othello, all via the word “impediment”, in a way that Thompson does not appear to have recognized.

And that in turn led me to find and decode JA’s usage of “impediment” in Emma which I’ve hinted at in my Subject Line, which is so wickedly funny and subversive that I hope you’ll agree that JA’s imagination sufficed to “remove” all the “impediments” her society placed in her artistic path.

REMOVING IMPEDIMENTS TO MARRIAGE IN S&S

First, in Chapter 25, in Elinor’s throwing cold water on her mother’s enthusiasm for the elder Dashwood girls accepting Mrs. Jennings’s invitation to stay with her in London, we find the linked Shakespearean keywords “alteration”, “impediment” and “removed”, all three in very close textual proximity:

“  "I am delighted with the plan," [Mrs. Dashwood] cried, "it is exactly what I could wish. Margaret and I shall be as much benefited by it as yourselves. When you and the Middletons are gone, we shall go on so quietly and happily together with our books and our music! You will find Margaret so improved when you come back again! I have a little plan of ALTERATION for your bedrooms too, which may now be performed without any inconvenience to any one. It is very right that you should go to town; I would have every young woman of your condition in life acquainted with the manners and amusements of London. You will be under the care of a motherly good sort of woman, of whose kindness to you I can have no doubt. And in all probability you will see your brother, and whatever may be his faults, or the faults of his wife, when I consider whose son he is, I cannot bear to have you so wholly estranged from each other."

"Though with your usual anxiety for our happiness," said Elinor, "you have been obviating every IMPEDIMENT to the present scheme which occurred to you, there is still one objection which, in my opinion, cannot be so easily REMOVED."

Marianne's countenance sunk.

"And what," said Mrs. Dashwood, "is my dear prudent Elinor going to suggest? What formidable obstacle is she now to bring forward? Do let me hear a word about the expense of it."

"My objection is this; though I think very well of Mrs. Jennings's heart, she is not a woman whose society can afford us pleasure, or whose protection will give us consequence."

"That is very true," replied her mother, "but of her society, separately from that of other people, you will scarcely have any thing at all, and you will almost always appear in public with Lady Middleton."

"If Elinor is frightened away by her dislike of Mrs. Jennings," said Marianne, "at least it need not prevent myaccepting her invitation. I have no such scruples, and I am sure I could put up with every unpleasantness of that kind with very little effort.”

I see Elinor’s speech as an unwitting ironic allusion to Sonnet 116 and the Anglican marriage vows – ironic, because Elinor is not playing Cupid here, but, inadvertently, Iago! Sounds wild? Then consider. At this point in the story, Elinor knows that the torch Marianne is carrying for Willoughby, and therefore her wish to see him in London and rekindle their romance, remains brightly lit. Recall that neither of them is aware in Chapter 25 that Willoughby has already moved on to the heiress Miss Grey, whom they (and we) won’t hear about till Chapter 30.

And yet, Elinor, not once, but twice in Chapter 25, does her very best to put the kibosh on the proposed trip by her and Marianne to London---first by taking it solely upon herself, without consulting Marianne or their mother, to respond to Mrs. Jennings that they cannot leave Mrs. Dashwood,. Then, when Mrs. Jennings persists, and repeats her invitation, and that first objection is quickly disposed of by Mrs. Dashwood, Elinor does not give up her obstruction, but instead shifts to another argument, which is that Mrs. Jennings, despite good intentions, would be an unpleasant and unprotective host. This argument is, upon examination, transparently lame, in that, as between the two sisters, it would be Marianne, not Elinor, who would find Mrs. Jennings intolerable as a host, and Marianne has made it crystal clear that the contrary is the case.

Although a benign explanation of all this would be that Elinor wishes to spare Marianne a reopening of raw emotional wounds vis a vis Willoughby, one begins to suspect that what Elinor is really afraid of, in the aftermath of her learning about Edward’s secret engagement to Lucy, is not that Marianne will get her heart re-broken, but that Marianne will reconnect with Willoughby, and Elinor will then be left to wither on the proverbial vine alone with her mother and Margaret. In short, I believe JA means for us to suspect that Elinor is unaware of her own subconscious, but powerful, jealousy of Marianne!

And so in that regard, there is the unwitting irony of Elinor using verbiage, in that short speech in Chapter 25, associated with the marriage of true minds theme in Sonnet 116, and with the Anglican wedding vows echoed in Sonnet 116. There is irony because, instead of taking on the happy role of maid of honor, Elinor instead has assumed on the role of the curmudgeon in the pew who does the unthinkable- i.e., taking the rhetorical prompt of the presiding clergyman seriously, and voicing one objection after another to the marriage she is supposed to be celebrating! In other words, it is Elinor who is the “impediment” to the marriage of true minds that Marianne still believes, at that moment, she can have with Willoughby.

And, to reinforce this subversive reading, I believe JA also hinted to her readers who were as deeply steeped in Shakespeare as JA was, that Elinor was even going so far as unwittingly echoing the speech early in Othello which I wrote about in my post a few days ago, when Iago cynically fans the flames of Roderigo’s gold-digging ambition to marry Desdemona:

“Sir, [Cassio] is rash and very sudden in choler, and haply may strike at you: provoke him, that he may; for even out of that will I cause these of Cyprus to mutiny; whose qualification shall come into no true
taste again but by the displanting of Cassio. So shall you have a shorter journey to your desires by the means I shall then have to prefer them; and the IMPEDIMENT most profitably REMOVED, without the which there were no expectation of our prosperity.

There you have that same “impediment/removed” verbiage as we find in Elinor’s short speech, both referring to the removal of an impediment to a marital match. But Iago is insincere and depraved in egging Roderigo on, in referring to Cassio and Othello as the two-headed impediment to Roderigo’s hoped-for marriage to Desdemona, because the “removal” Iago lobbies for is the death of Othello.

Whereas Elinor is not Machiavellian, just utterly clueless about her own motivations.  Which fits with JA writing comedy rather than tragedy. In this reading, Elinor is a comic Iago, unwittingly scheming to prevent her sister from marrying Willoughby, the man whom Marianne (and maybe also Elinor?) loves.

Which brings me to the second half of this post, in which I will discuss the other passage in JA’s novels where “removal” of an “impediment” to marriage is before the reader.

REMOVING AN IMPEDIMENT TO MARRIAGE IN EMMA:

The following (edited) passage in Chapter 53 of Emmais all about the formidable  “impediment to the marriage of true minds” that faces Knightley and Emma after they become quasi-secretly engaged—of course I am referring to……poor Mr. Woodhouse!

“As soon as Mrs. Weston was sufficiently recovered to admit Mr. Woodhouse's visits, Emma having it in view that her gentle reasonings should be employed in the cause, resolved first to announce it at home, and then at Randalls.—But how to break it to her father at last!—She had bound herself to do it, in such an hour of Mr. Knightley's absence, or when it came to the point her heart would have failed her, and she must have put it off; but Mr. Knightley was to come at such a time, and follow up the beginning she was to make.—She was forced to speak, and to speak cheerfully too.,,,.

Poor man!—it was at first a considerable shock to him, and he tried earnestly to dissuade her from it. She was reminded, more than once, of having always said she would never marry, and assured that it would be a great deal better for her to remain single; and told of poor Isabella, and poor Miss Taylor.—But it would not do. Emma hung about him affectionately, and smiled, and said it must be so; and that he must not class her with Isabella and Mrs. Weston, whose marriages taking them from Hartfield, had, indeed, made a melancholy change: but she was not going from Hartfield; she should be always there; she was introducing no change in their numbers or their comforts but for the better; and she was very sure that he would be a great deal the happier for having Mr. Knightley always at hand, when he were once got used to the idea.—Did he not love Mr. Knightley very much?—He would not deny that he did, she was sure.—Whom did he ever want to consult on business but Mr. Knightley?—Who was so useful to him, who so ready to write his letters, who so glad to assist him?—Who so cheerful, so attentive, so attached to him?—Would not he like to have him always on the spot?—Yes. That was all very true. Mr. Knightley could not be there too often; he should be glad to see him every day;—but they did see him every day as it was.—Why could not they go on as they had done?”

So far, then, Mr. Woodhouse sounds alarmingly like Elinor: both give one reason after another in objection to the marriage of a close relative. Let’s go on:

“Mr. Woodhouse could not be soon reconciled; but the worst was overcome, the idea was given; time and continual repetition must do the rest.—To Emma's entreaties and assurances succeeded Mr. Knightley's, whose fond praise of her gave the subject even a kind of welcome; and he was soon used to be talked to by each, on every fair occasion.—They had all the assistance which Isabella could give, by letters of the strongest approbation; and Mrs. Weston was ready, on the first meeting, to consider the subject in the most serviceable light—first, as a settled, and, secondly, as a good one—well aware of the nearly equal importance of the two recommendations to Mr. Woodhouse's mind.—It was agreed upon, as what was to be; and every body by whom he was used to be guided assuring him that it would be for his happiness; and having some feelings himself which almost admitted it, he began to think that some time or other—in another year or two, perhaps—it might not be so very bad if the marriage did take place.”

And only after all stops are pulled out do Knightley and Emma even induce Mr. Woodhouse to agree that it could happen in a year or two.

And then, a paragraph later, we reach Jane Austen’s Shakespearean punch line:

“…And who but Mr. Knightley could know and bear with Mr. Woodhouse, so as to make such an arrangement desirable!—The difficulty of DISPOSING OF POOR MR. WOODHOUSE had been always felt in her husband's plans and her own, for a marriage between Frank and Emma. How to settle the claims of Enscombe and Hartfield had been a continual IMPEDIMENT —less acknowledged by Mr. Weston than by herself—but even he had never been able to finish the subject better than by saying—"Those matters will take care of themselves; the young people will find a way." But here there was nothing to be shifted off in a wild speculation on the future. It was all right, all open, all equal. No sacrifice on any side worth the name. It was a union of the highest promise of felicity in itself, and without one real, rational difficulty to oppose or delay it.”

At first, as I read this passage, I thought it was only another “impediment” winking at Sonnet 116. But then, as I reread the words “The difficulty of disposing of poor Mr. Woodhouse had been always felt in her husband’s plans and her own, for a marriage between Frank and Emma,” I suddenly realized what Jane Austen, that wicked satirist, was really winking at---“disposing of” being code for “killing”!

And that made me LOL, as I realized that this passage is the bookend to the subtext eight chapters earlier in Chapter 45, that Leland Monk first discovered WAY back in 1990, and which I first learned of in early 2005 from a passing comment in Janeites: the notion that when we read that “a sudden seizure of a different nature from any thing foreboded by her general state, had carried her off after a short struggle. The great Mrs. Churchill was no more”, this is Jane Austen’s wickedly clever code for  “Frank Churchill murdered his aunt, Mrs. Churchill, in order to remove the single, major impediment between him and the financial independence that would allow him to marry the penniless Jane Fairfax.”

Now I see that plotting to “dispose of” uncooperative elderly “impediments” to marriage is a Weston family predilection----the only difference being, apparently, that Mr. Weston merely planned a “disposition” of Mr. Woodhouse, which turned out to be unnecessary when Frank and Emma ceased to be “an item”, whereas Frank, under the exigencies of the moment, actually “removed” the “impediment” that was Mrs. Churchill, forever.

Think I’ve really gone too far this time, imagining a dark meaning of “dispose of” that Jane Austen could never have intended? Well, what if I tell you that I have found the literary source where Jane Austen got the idea to use “dispose of” to refer to “murder”? 

Here’s a giant hint, see if you can guess which speech it is:

I’m thinking of a speech in the first scene of a Shakespeare play, spoken by a rich, cruel, selfish widower father who unashamedly asserts his right to stymie his daughter’s desire to marry the young man she loves, and who loves her; and then, immediately afterward, there is a speech spoken by that very same young man to the rich man’s daughter, in which that young man bemoans their dim marital prospects with this famous line:  “The course of true love never did run smooth” ----which just happens to be a line which every Janeite knows which is quoted by Emma to Harriet!

So, what play, who is the father, and who are the lovers?

Of course, every Bardolater, and many Janeites, know that I am talking about A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which Egeus is the father, Hermia is the daughter, and Lysander is the lover. And here’s the speech—please pay particular attention to Egeus’s final four lines:  

Full of vexation come I, with complaint
Against my child, my daughter Hermia.
Stand forth, Demetrius. My noble lord,
This man hath my consent to marry her.
Stand forth, Lysander: and my gracious duke,
This man hath bewitch'd the bosom of my child;
Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes,
And interchanged love-tokens with my child:
Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung,
With feigning voice verses of feigning love,
And stolen the impression of her fantasy
With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gawds, conceits,
Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats, messengers
Of strong prevailment in unharden'd youth:
With cunning hast thou filch'd my daughter's heart,
Turn'd her obedience, which is due to me,
To stubborn harshness: and, my gracious duke,
Be it so she; will not here before your grace
Consent to marry with Demetrius,
I beg the ancient privilege of Athens,
As she is mine, I may dispose of her:
Which shall be either to this gentleman
Or to her death, according to our law
Immediately provided in that case.

“As she is mine, I may DISPOSE OF HER…either to this gentleman or TO HER DEATH….”

Which casts a pretty dark light on “disposing of poor Mr. Woodhouse”, doesn’t it?  And it also makes us wonder what Mr. Weston meant by:

“Those matters will take care of themselves; the young people will find a way." ---Frank certainly “finds a way” to do away with Mrs. Churchill.

“But here there was nothing to be shifted off in a wild speculation on the future.” --- In other words, don’t leave the future to a game of chance depending on an older relative to die a natural death.

“It was all right, all open, all equal. No sacrifice on any side worth the name.” --- as in a sacrifice of Mr. Woodhouse!

Q.E.D.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

A special bicentennial Emma quiz

March 22, 2016, 5:59 pm

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In honor of the bicentennial of Emma, which is now in full swing around the world, here is a special quiz about Emma which I was inspired to devise, after researching and writing the second half of my previous post about “disposing of poor Mr. Woodhouse”.  The quiz question is very simple----What is the single extrinsic allusive source that connects all of the following excerpts (mostly pertaining in some way to Mr. Woodhouse and/or Frank Churchill) which I copied from 18 different chapters in Emma?

I’ll give you one hint – this is an allusive source which has previously been connected to Emma by a few other Austen scholars in a general way, as well as by myself in a more specific way several years ago—but writing my previous post made me see that connection in much sharper focus, and to connect it directly to the shadow story of Emma.

I believe there’s a good chance that the answer will be deduced by at least a few of you reading this post,  from carefully reading these 18 different excerpts and giving your imagination a chance to work on my little “riddle”! Just notice the patterns that emerge in your mind, and think about how they might fit together.

I plan to disclose the answer on Thursday evening PST, so I ask anyone who figures out the answer before then to email me at arnieperlstein@gmail.com  so as not to spoil the quiz for others before Thursday evening. In my followup post, I will include any correct answers I receive.

So, as Colin Firth aka Mr. Darcy says to Bingley at the end of P&P2, “Go to it!”

9: [Mr. Woodhouse to Emma] "Ah! it is no difficulty to see who you take after! Your dear mother was so clever at all those things! If I had but her memory! But I can remember nothing;—not even that particular riddle which you have heard me mention; I can only recollect the first stanza; and there are several….”

11:  [Isabella re Frank] "I have no doubt of his being a most amiable young man. But how sad it is that he should not live at home with his father! There is something so shocking in a child's being taken away from his parents and natural home! I never could comprehend how Mr. Weston could part with him. To give up one's child! I really never could think well of any body who proposed such a thing to any body else."

15: [John to Mr. Woodhouse] “…Another hour or two's snow can hardly make the road impassable; and we are two carriages; if one is blown over in the bleak part of the common field there will be the other at hand. I dare say we shall be all safe at Hartfield before midnight."

18: [Knightley to Emma re Frank] "I suspect they do not satisfy Mrs. Weston. They hardly can satisfy a woman of her good sense and quick feelings: standing in a mother's place, but without a mother's affection to blind her […] If Frank Churchill had wanted to see his father, he would have contrived it between September and January. A man at his age—what is he?—three or four-and-twenty—cannot be without the means of doing as much as that. It is impossible…It is not to be conceived that a man of three or four-and-twenty should not have liberty of mind or limb to that amount. He cannot want money—he cannot want leisure. We know, on the contrary, that he has so much of both, that he is glad to get rid of them at the idlest haunts in the kingdom. We hear of him for ever at some watering-place or other. A little while ago, he was at Weymouth. This proves that he can leave the Churchills…There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do, if he chuses, and that is, his duty; not by manoeuvring and finessing, but by vigour and resolution. It is Frank Churchill's duty to pay this attention to his father. He knows it to be so, by his promises and messages; but if he wished to do it, it might be done. A man who felt rightly would say at once, simply and resolutely, to Mrs. Churchill—'Every sacrifice of mere pleasure you will always find me ready to make to your convenience; but I must go and see my father immediately…Depend upon it, Emma, a sensible man would find no difficulty in it. He would feel himself in the right; and the declaration—made, of course, as a man of sense would make it, in a proper manner—would do him more good, raise him higher, fix his interest stronger with the people he depended on, than all that a line of shifts and expedients can ever do. Respect would be added to affection. They would feel that they could trust him; that the nephew who had done rightly by his father, would do rightly by them; for they know, as well as he does, as well as all the world must know, that he ought to pay this visit to his father; and while meanly exerting their power to delay it, are in their hearts not thinking the better of him for submitting to their whims. Respect for right conduct is felt by every body. If he would act in this sort of manner, on principle, consistently, regularly, their little minds would bend to his."

[Emma] "I rather doubt that. You are very fond of bending little minds; but where little minds belong to rich people  in authority, I think they have a knack of swelling out, till they are quite as unmanageable as great ones…He ought to have opposed the first attempt on their side to make him slight his father. Had he begun as he ought, there would have been no difficulty now."

[Knightley] "Yes; all the advantages of sitting still when he ought to move, and of leading a life of mere idle pleasure, and fancying himself extremely expert in finding excuses for it. He can sit down and write a fine flourishing letter, full of professions and falsehoods, and persuade himself that he has hit upon the very best method in the world of preserving peace at home and preventing his father's having any right to complain. His letters disgust me."

23: And at last, as if resolved to qualify his opinion completely for travelling round to its object, [Frank] wound it all up with astonishment at the youth and beauty of [Mrs. Weston’s] person.

"Elegant, agreeable manners, I was prepared for," said he; "but I confess that, considering every thing, I had not expected more than a very tolerably well-looking woman of a certain age; I did not know that I was to find a pretty young woman in Mrs. Weston."

"You cannot see too much perfection in Mrs. Weston for my feelings," said Emma; "were you to guess her to be eighteen, I should listen with pleasure; but she would be ready to quarrel with you for using such words. Don't let her imagine that you have spoken of her as a pretty young woman."

"I hope I should know better," he replied; "no, depend upon it, (with a gallant bow,) that in addressing Mrs. Weston I should understand whom I might praise without any danger of being thought extravagant in my terms."

[…..]

[Emma’s] own father's perfect exemption from any thought of the kind, the entire deficiency in him of all such sort of penetration or suspicion, was a most comfortable circumstance. Happily he was not farther from approving matrimony than from foreseeing it.—Though always objecting to every marriage that was arranged, he never suffered beforehand from the apprehension of any; it seemed as if he could not think so ill of any two persons' understanding as to suppose they meant to marry till it were proved against them. She blessed the favouring blindness. He could now, without the drawback of a single unpleasant surmise, without a glance forward at any possible treachery in his guest, give way to all his natural kind-hearted civility in solicitous inquiries after Mr. Frank Churchill's accommodation on his journey, through the sad evils of sleeping two nights on the road, and express very genuine unmixed anxiety to know that he had certainly escaped catching cold—which, however, he could not allow him to feel quite assured of himself till after another night.

24: Some of the objects of [Frank’s] curiosity spoke very amiable feelings. He begged to be shewn the house which his father had lived in so long, and which had been the home of his father's father; and on recollecting that an old woman who had nursed him was still living, walked in quest of her cottage from one end of the street to the other; and though in some points of pursuit or observation there was no positive merit, they shewed, altogether, a good-will towards Highbury in general, which must be very like a merit to those he was with.

"But I beg your pardon, Miss Woodhouse, you were speaking to me, you were saying something at the very moment of this burst of my amor patriae. Do not let me lose it. I assure you the utmost stretch of public fame would not make me amends for the loss of any happiness in private life."

28: [Frank] "I have been assisting Miss Fairfax in trying to make her instrument stand steadily, it was not quite firm; an unevenness in the floor, I believe. You see we have been wedging one leg with paper…”

29: [Mr. Woodhouse] “….That young man (speaking lower) is very thoughtless. Do not tell his father, but that young man is not quite the thing. He has been opening the doors very often this evening, and keeping them open very inconsiderately. He does not think of the draught. I do not mean to set you against him, but indeed he is not quite the thing!"

39: Harriet was soon assailed by half a dozen children, headed by a stout woman and a great boy, all clamorous, and impertinent in look, though not absolutely in word.—More and more frightened, she immediately promised them money, and taking out her purse, gave them a shilling, and begged them not to want more, or to use her ill.—She was then able to walk, though but slowly, and was moving away—but her terror and her purse were too tempting, and she was followed, or rather surrounded, by the whole gang, demanding more. In this state Frank Churchill had found her, she trembling and conditioning, they loud and insolent. By a most fortunate chance his leaving Highbury had been delayed so as to bring him to her assistance at this critical moment. 

41: Disingenuousness and double dealing seemed to meet [Knightley] at every turn. These letters were but the vehicle for gallantry and trick. It was a child's play, chosen to conceal a deeper game on Frank Churchill's part. With great indignation did he continue to observe him; with great alarm and distrust, to observe also his two blinded companions. He saw a short word prepared for Emma, and given to her with a look sly and demure. 

43: [Frank] “…Here are seven of you, besides myself, (who, she is pleased to say, am very entertaining already,) and she only demands from each of you either one thing very clever, be it prose or verse, original or repeated—or two things moderately clever—or three things very dull indeed, and she engages to laugh heartily at them all."

"Oh! very well," exclaimed Miss Bates, "then I need not be uneasy. 'Three things very dull indeed.' That will just do for me, you know. I shall be sure to say three dull things as soon as ever I open my mouth, shan't I? (looking round with the most good-humoured dependence on every body's assent)—Do not you all think I shall?"

Emma could not resist.

"Ah! ma'am, but there may be a difficulty. Pardon me—but you will be limited as to number—only three at once."

44: [Miss Bates to Jane] 'My dear,' said I, 'you will blind yourself'—for tears were in her eyes perpetually. One cannot wonder, one cannot wonder. It is a great change; and though she is amazingly fortunate—such a situation, 

45: A sudden seizure of a different nature from any thing foreboded by her general state, had carried her off after a short struggle. The great Mrs. Churchill was no more. It was felt as such things must be felt. Every body had a degree of gravity and sorrow; tenderness towards the departed, solicitude for the surviving friends; and, in a reasonable time, curiosity to know where she would be buried. 

47: How inconsiderate, how indelicate, how irrational, how unfeeling had been [Emma’s] conduct! What blindness, what madness, had led her on! It struck her with dreadful force, and she was ready to give it every bad name in the world….She was bewildered amidst the confusion of all that had rushed on her within the last few hours. Every moment had brought a fresh surprize; and every surprize must be matter of humiliation to her.—How to understand it all! How to understand the deceptions she had been thus practising on herself, and living under!—The blunders, the blindness of her own head and heart!—

49: [Emma to Knightley re Frank & Jane] “My blindness to what was going on, led me to act by them in a way that I must always be ashamed of, and I was very foolishly tempted to say and do many things which may well lay me open to unpleasant conjectures, but I have no other reason to regret that I was not in the secret earlier…. He was the son of Mr. Weston—he was continually here—I always found him very pleasant—and, in short, for (with a sigh) let me swell out the causes ever so ingeniously, they all centre in this at last—my vanity was flattered, and I allowed his attentions. Latterly, however—for some time, indeed—I have had no idea of their meaning any thing.—I thought them a habit, a trick, nothing that called for seriousness on my side. He has imposed on me, but he has not injured me. I have never been attached to him. And now I can tolerably comprehend his behaviour. He never wished to attach me.It was merely a blind to conceal his real situation with another.—It was his object to blind all about him; and no one, I am sure, could be more effectually blinded than myself—except that I was not blinded—that it was my good fortune—that, in short, I was somehow or other safe from him."

51: [Knightley] had been thinking it over most deeply, most intently; he had at first hoped to induce Mr. Woodhouse to remove with her to Donwell; he had wanted to believe it feasible, but his knowledge of Mr. Woodhouse would not suffer him to deceive himself long; and now he confessed his persuasion, that such a transplantation would be a risk of her father's comfort, perhaps even of his life, which must not be hazarded. Mr. Woodhouse taken from Hartfield!—No, he felt that it ought not to be attempted. But the plan which had arisen on the sacrifice of this, he trusted his dearest Emma would not find in any respect objectionable; it was, that he should be received at Hartfield; that so long as her father's happiness—in other words, his life—required Hartfield to continue her home, it should be his likewise.

Of their all removing to Donwell, Emma had already had her own passing thoughts. Like him, she had tried the scheme and rejected it; but such an alternative as this had not occurred to her. She was sensible of all the affection it evinced. She felt that, in quitting Donwell, he must be sacrificing a great deal of independence of hours and habits; that in living constantly with her father, and in no house of his own, there would be much, very much, to be borne with. She promised to think of it, and advised him to think of it more; but he was fully convinced, that no reflection could alter his wishes or his opinion on the subject. He had given it, he could assure her, very long and calm consideration; he had been walking away from William Larkins the whole morning, to have his thoughts to himself.

53: The difficulty of disposing of poor Mr. Woodhouse had been always felt in [Mrs. Weston’s] husband's plans and her own, for a marriage between Frank and Emma. How to settle the claims of Enscombe and Hartfield had been a continual impediment—less acknowledged by Mr. Weston than by herself—but even he had never been able to finish the subject better than by saying—"Those matters will take care of themselves; the young people will find a way." But here there was nothing to be shifted off in a wild speculation on the future. It was all right, all open, all equal. No sacrifice on any side worth the name. It was a union of the highest promise of felicity in itself, and without one real, rational difficulty to oppose or delay it.

And there you have it all, good luck!

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

The answer to my special bicentennial Emma quiz

March 24, 2016, 9:20 pm

≫ Next: Iago’s “enematic” Clyster-Pipes, the Clown’s wit re Shrovetide flatulence, & Othello’s “windy” Trumpet

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Now I’m ready to reveal my answer to the special quiz about Emma I posted two days ago. The quiz question was very simple:

“What is the single extrinsic allusive source that connects all of the following excerpts (mostly pertaining in some way to Mr. Woodhouse and/or Frank Churchill) which I copied from 18 different chapters in Emma? “

I hinted that this was an allusive source which has previously been connected to Emma by a few other Austen scholars in a general way, as well as by myself in a more specific way several years ago—but writing my previous post about “disposing of poor Mr. Woodhouse” made me see that connection in much sharper focus, and to connect it directly to the shadow story of Emma.

And the answer is…..Oedipus Rex by Sophocles!

To be more specific, I suggest that the below quoted passages (from 18 different chapters in Jane Austen’s Emma)  collectively constitute a subliminal, sophisticated, tragicomic parody of Sophocles’s ancient masterwork, in which:

OEDIPUS is represented by Frank Churchill, who was given away by his biological father as a young child, and then by his adoptive father as a boy—and Oedipus is secondarily represented by Emma, who is, as every Janeite knows, the quintessence of clueless blindness about what happens around her;

LAIUS, Oedipus’s biological father, is represented by Mr. Woodhouse---and NOT Mr. Weston, who, in the shadow story, was Frank’s first adoptive father (and Mr. Churchill was his second adoptive father). This dovetails with eerie precision with my prior claims… http://tinyurl.com/p4hdc6s  …that Mr. Woodhouse was a lifelong incestuous pedophile, based in part on other incestuous fathers as well: the Biblical Lot and King Antiochus in Shakespeare’s Pericles (which itself is clearly based in part on Oedipus Rex);

JOCASTA, Oedipus’s biological mother, is represented by Mrs. Weston, who, when she was Miss Taylor, an unmarried teenager, was molested and impregnated by the lecherous Mr. Woodhouse, and who, as a young middle-aged woman, is found so attractive by her own biological son, Frank; and

THE CHORUS, whose repeated warnings are ignored by Oedipus, is represented by Miss Bates, whose constant stream of choric commentary is ignored by Emma, even though she speaks about what is actually happening.

And this masterful veiled allusion by Jane Austen to Oedipus Rex is carried forward throughout the novel by a liberal sprinkling of the word “BLIND”, because Oedipus Rex isa foundational text in Western literature on that very theme of blindness, both literal and metaphorical, with Hamlet and Freud’s Oedipal Complex as its most intellectually influential “children”.

Beyond that short encapsulation, I think the easiest way to elaborate on my interpretation will be to first present a brief synopsis of Oedipus Rex for those not familiar with it, and then repeat those 18 excerpts (plus two others I’ve since spotted) from Emma, but this time with the keywords which point to Oedipus Rex in ALL CAPS, and brief “translations” of JA’s parody of Sophocles in each passage. No one of them is sufficient to support my reading—it’s the aggregation of all of them that, in my opinion, constitutes proof. Then, at the end of my post, I’ll sum up these findings one last time.

So first, here is that synopsis of Oedipus Rex:

“A son is born to King Laius and Queen Jocasta of Thebes. After Laius learns from an oracle that "he is doomed/To perish by the hand of his own son", he tightly binds the feet of the infant together with a pin and orders Jocasta to kill the infant. Hesitant to do so, she orders a servant to commit the act for her. Instead, the servant takes the baby to a mountain top to die from exposure. A shepherd rescues the infant and names him Oedipus (or "swollen feet"). (The servant directly hands the infant to the shepherd in most versions.) The shepherd carries the baby with him to Corinth, where Oedipus is taken in and raised in the court of the childless King Polybus of Corinth as if he were his own.

As a young man in Corinth, Oedipus hears a rumour that he is not the biological son of Polybus and his wife Merope. When Oedipus questions the King and Queen, they deny it, but, still suspicious, he asks the Delphic Oracle who his parents really are. The Oracle seems to ignore this question, telling him instead that he is destined to "Mate with [his] own mother, and shed/With [his] own hands the blood of [his] own sire". Desperate to avoid his foretold fate, Oedipus leaves Corinth in the belief that Polybus and Merope are indeed his true parents and that, once away from them, he will never harm them.

On the road to Thebes, he meets Laius, his true father, with several other men. Unaware of each other's identities, Laius and Oedipus quarrel over whose chariot has right-of-way. King Laius moves to strike the insolent youth with his sceptre, but Oedipus throws him down from the chariot and kills him, thus fulfilling part of the oracle's prophecy.

Shortly after Oedipus solves the riddle of the Sphinx, which has baffled many diviners: "What is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three in the evening?" To this Oedipus replies, "Man" (who crawls on all fours as an infant, walks upright later, and needs a walking stick in old age), and the distraught Sphinx throws herself off the cliffside. Oedipus's reward for freeing the kingdom of Thebes from her curse is the kingship and the hand of Queen Dowager Jocasta, his biological mother. The prophecy is thus fulfilled, although none of the main characters knows it.

And now, here are those same 20 excerpts from Emma:

2: Captain Weston, who had been considered, especially by the Churchills, as making such an amazing match, was proved to have much the worst of the bargain; for when his wife died, after a three years' marriage, he was rather a poorer man than at first, and WITH A CHILD TO MAINTAIN. From the expense of the child, however, he was soon relieved. The boy had, with the additional softening claim of a lingering illness of his mother's, been the means of a sort of reconciliation; and Mr. and Mrs. Churchill, having no children of their own, nor any other young creature of equal kindred to care for, OFFERED TO TAKE THE WHOLE CHARGE OF THE LITTLE FRANK soon after her decease. Some scruples and some reluctance the widower-father may be supposed to have felt; but as they were OVERCOME BY OTHER CONSIDERATIONS, the child was given up to the care and the wealth of the Churchills, and he had only his own comfort to seek, and his own situation to improve as he could….

[I claim that Captain Weston took baby Frank from Miss Taylor for money, and then “sold” Frank to the Churchills for more money at his first opportunity, and so Isabella is spot-on to question this in Chapter 11, see below!]

9: [Mr. Woodhouse to Emma] "Ah! it is no difficulty to see who you take after! Your dear mother was so clever at all those things! If I had but her memory! But I CAN REMEMBER NOTHING;—not even THAT PARTICULAR RIDDLE which you have heard me mention; I can only recollect the first stanza; and there are several….”

[The Sphinx’s riddle that “Laius” can’t remember, but he knows it’s important!]

10: They now walked on together quietly, till within view of the vicarage pales, when a sudden resolution, of at least getting Harriet into the house, made her again find something very much amiss about her boot, and fall behind to arrange it once more. She then BROKE the LACE off short, and dexterously THROWING IT INTO A DITCH, was presently obliged to entreat them to stop, and acknowledged her inability to put herself to rights so as to be able to walk home in tolerable comfort.

"Part of my LACE IS GONE," said she, "and I do not know how I am to contrive. I really am a most troublesome companion to you both, but I hope I am not often so ill-equipped. Mr. Elton, I must beg leave to stop at your house, and ask your housekeeper for a bit of ribband or string, or any thing just to keep my boot on."[This is JA at her punning best. Emma “broke the LACE” and threw it into a ditch—Oedipus “broke” LAIUS, and threw his corpse into a ditch!-LACE/LAIUS, get it?]

11:  [Isabella re Frank] "I have no doubt of his being a most amiable young man. But HOW SAD it is that he should NOT LIVE AT HOME WITH HIS FATHER! There is something SO SHOCKING IN A CHILD’S BEING TAKEN AWAY FROM HIS PARENTS and natural home! I never could comprehend how Mr. Weston could part with him. TO GIVE UP ONE’S CHILD! I really never could think well of any body who proposed such a thing to any body else."

[Oedipus’s being sent off to die by his father is shocking and sad!]

15: [John to Mr. Woodhouse] “…Another hour or two's snow can hardly make the road impassable; and we are two CARRIAGES; if one is BLOWN OVER in the bleak part of the common field there will be the other at hand. I dare say we shall be all SAFE AT HARTFIELD before midnight."

[Laius’s fatal carriage ride when he encounters Oedipus on the road]

18: [Knightley to Emma re Frank] "I suspect they do not satisfy Mrs. Weston. They hardly can satisfy a woman of her good sense and quick feelings: standing in a mother's place, but WITHOUT A MOTHER’S AFFECTION TO BLIND HER […]If Frank Churchill had wanted to SEE HIS FATHER, he would have contrived it between September and January…We hear of him for ever at some watering-place or other. A little while ago, he was at Weymouth. This proves that he can leave the Churchills…There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do, if he chuses, and that is, his duty; not by manoeuvring and finessing, but by vigour and resolution. It is Frank Churchill's duty to pay this ATTENTION TO HIS FATHER. He knows it to be so, by his promises and messages; but if he wished to do it, it might be done. A man who felt rightly would say at once, simply and resolutely, to Mrs. Churchill—'Every SACRIFICE of mere pleasure you will always find me ready to make to your convenience; but I must go and SEE MY FATHER immediately…They would feel that they could trust him; that the nephew who had DONE RIGHTLY BY HIS FATHER, would do rightly by them; for they know, as well as he does, as well as all the world must know, that he ought to pay this VISIT TO HIS FATHER…;

[Emma] "I rather doubt that. You are very fond of bending little minds; but where little minds belong to rich people  in authority, I think they have a knack of SWELLING OUT, till they are quite as unmanageable as great ones…He ought to have opposed the first attempt on their side to make him SLIGHT HIS FATHER. Had he begun as he ought, there would have been no difficulty now."

[Knightley] "Yes; all the advantages of sitting still when he ought to move, and of leading a life of mere idle pleasure, and fancying himself extremely expert in finding excuses for it. He can sit down and write a fine flourishing letter, full of professions and falsehoods, and persuade himself that he has hit upon the very best method in the world of preserving peace at home and PREVENTING HIS FATHER’S HAVING ANY RIGHT TO COMPLAIN. His letters disgust me."

[Oedipus’s return home to his father does not end well----and his name means “SWELL-foot”!]

23: And at last, as if resolved to qualify his opinion completely for TRAVELLING ROUND to its object, [Frank] wound it all up with astonishment at THE YOUTH AND BEAUTY OF [Mrs. Weston’s] PERSON.

"Elegant, agreeable manners, I was prepared for," said he; "but I confess that, considering every thing, I had not expected more than a very tolerably well-looking woman of a certain age; I did not know that I was to find A PRETTY YOUNG WOMAN IN MRS. WESTON."

"You cannot see too much perfection in Mrs. Weston for my feelings," said Emma; "WERE YOU TO GUESS HER TO BE EIGHTEEN, I should listen with pleasure; but she would be ready to quarrel with you for using such words. Don't let her imagine that you have spoken of her as A PRETTY YOUNG WOMAN."

"I hope I should know better," he replied; "no, depend upon it, (with a gallant bow,) that in addressing Mrs. Weston I should understand whom I might praise without any danger of being thought extravagant in my terms."

[Of course Frank as latter-day “Oedipus” would think that the much older “Jocasta”is looking fine!]

[…..]

[Emma’s] OWN FATHER’S PERFECTION EXEMPTION FROM ANY THOUGHT of the kind, THE ENTIRE DEFICIENCY IN HIM OF ALL such sort of penetration or SUSPICION, was a most comfortable circumstance. Happily he was NOT farther from APPROVING MATRIMONY than from foreseeing it.—Though always objecting to every marriage that was arranged, he never suffered beforehand from the apprehension of any; it seemed as if he could not think so ill of any two persons' understanding as to suppose they meant to marry till it were proved against them. She blessed THE FAVOURING BLINDNESS. He could now, WITHOUT the drawback of a single UNPLEASANT SURMISE, without a glance forward at ANY POSSIBLE TREACHERY IN HIS GUEST, give way to all his natural kind-hearted civility in solicitous inquiries after Mr. Frank Churchill's accommodation on his journey, through the sad evils of sleeping two nights ON THE ROAD, and express very genuine unmixed anxiety to know that HE HAD CERTAINLY ESCAPED catching cold—which, however, he could not allow him to feel quite assured of himself till after another night.

[Mr. Woodhouse, as Laius, has no clue who Oedipus is when he encounters him on the road outside Thebes as Oedipus unwittingly returns home!]

24: Some of the objects of [Frank’s] curiosity spoke very amiable feelings. He begged to be shewn THE HOUSE WHERE HIS FATHER HAD LIVED in so long, and which had been THE HOME OF HIS FATHER’S FATHER; and on recollecting that AN OLD WOMAN WHO HAD NURSED HIM was still living, walked in quest of her cottage from one end of the street to the other; and though in some points of pursuit or observation there was no positive merit, they shewed, altogether, A GOOD-WILL TOWARDS HIGHBURY in general, which must be very like a merit to those he was with.

"But I beg your pardon, Miss Woodhouse, you were speaking to me, you were saying something at the very moment of this burst of my AMOR PATRIAE. Do not let me lose it. I assure you the utmost stretch of PUBLIC FAME would not make me amends for THE LOSS OF ANY HAPPINESS IN PRIVATE LIFE."

[Oedipus comes back to Thebes where he was born and achieves “public fame” but “loses happiness in private life”, to put it mildly!]

28: [Frank] "I have been assisting Miss Fairfax in trying to make her instrument stand steadily, it was not quite firm; an unevenness in the floor, I believe. You see we have been WEDGING ONE LEG with paper…” 

[The pianoforte is the elderly man in the Sphinx’s riddle, with weak legs requiring support from a cane—and the sexual innuendo of “making the instrument stand steadily” fits with the sexual innuendo of the “third leg” in the Sphinx’s Riddle]

29: [Mr. Woodhouse] “….That young man (speaking lower) is very thoughtless. DO NOT TELL HIS FATHER, but THAT YOUNG MAN IS NOT QUITE THE THING. He has been opening the doors very often this evening, and keeping them open very inconsiderately. He does not think of the draught. I do not mean to set you against him, but indeed HE IS NOT QUITE THE THING!"

[Naturally, “Laius” would say not nice things about “Oedipus”!]

39: Miss Smith, and Miss Bickerton, another parlour boarder at Mrs. Goddard's, who had been also at the ball, had walked out together, and TAKEN A ROAD, the Richmond road, which, though apparently public enough for safety, had led them into alarm.—About half a mile beyond Highbury, MAKING A SUDDEN TURN, and deeply shaded by elms on each side, it became for a considerable stretch very retired; and when the young ladies had advanced some way into it, they had suddenly perceived at a small distance before them, on a broader patch of greensward by the side, A PARTY OF GIPSIES. Harriet was soon assailed by half a dozen children, headed by a stout woman and a great boy, ALL CLAMOROUS, and IMPERTINENT IN LOOK, though not absolutely in word.—More and more frightened, she immediately promised them money, and taking out her purse, gave them a shilling, and begged them not to want more, or to use her ill.—She was then able to walk, though but slowly, and was moving away—but her terror and her purse were too tempting, and she was followed, or rather surrounded, by the whole gang, demanding more. In this state FRANK CHURCHILL HAD FOUND HER, she trembling and conditioning, they loud and insolent. By a most fortunate chance his leaving Highbury had been delayed so as to BRING HIM to her assistance AT THIS CRITICAL MOMENT.   

[Of course this is a comic parody of Laius’s fatal encounter with Oedipus at the crossroads outside Thebes!]

41: Disingenuousness and double dealing seemed to meet [Knightley] at every turn. These letters were but the vehicle for gallantry and trick. It was A CHILD’S PLAY, chosen to conceal A DEEPER GAME ON FRANK CHURCHILL’S PART. With great indignation did he continue to observe him; with great alarm and distrust, to observe also HIS TWO BLINDED COMPANIONS. He saw a short word prepared for Emma, and given to her with a look sly and demure. 

[The boardgame is a parody of the Sphinx’s riddle, and a wink at the self-blinded Oedipus]

43: [Frank] “…Here are seven of you, besides myself, (who, she is pleased to say, am very entertaining already,) and she only demands from each of you either one thing very clever, be it prose or verse, original or repeated—or two things moderately clever—or three things very dull indeed, and she engages to laugh heartily at them all."

"Oh! very well," exclaimed Miss Bates, "then I need not be uneasy. 'Three things very dull indeed.' That will just do for me, you know. I shall be sure to say three dull things as soon as ever I open my mouth, shan't I? (looking round with the most good-humoured dependence on every body's assent)—Do not you all think I shall?"

Emma could not resist. "Ah! ma'am, but there may be a difficulty. Pardon me—but you will be limited as to number—only three at once."

[This is a parody of the three part structure of the Sphinx’s riddle, and Miss Bates as the ignored Chorus]

44: [Miss Bates to Jane] 'My dear,' said I, 'you will BLIND yourself'—for tears were in her eyes perpetually. One cannot wonder, one cannot wonder. It is a great change; and though she is amazingly fortunate—such a situation, 

[Again, blinding and a homophonic pun on the “tears”—i.e., gashes--Oedipus causes in his own eyes]

45: A sudden seizure of a different nature from any thing foreboded by her general state, had carried her off after a short struggle. The great Mrs. Churchill was no more. It was felt as such things must be felt. Every body had a degree of gravity and sorrow; tenderness towards the departed, solicitude for the surviving friends; and, in a reasonable time, curiosity to know where she would be buried. 

[Echo of the death of Jocasta, plus a hint at hypothetical Mr. Woodhouse’s parricide in Ch. 53, below]

47: How inconsiderate, how indelicate, how irrational, how unfeeling had been [Emma’s] conduct! What BLINDNESS, what madness, had led her on! It struck her with dreadful force, and she was ready to give it every bad name in the world….She was bewildered amidst the confusion of all that had rushed on her within the last few hours. Every moment had brought a FRESH SURPRIZE; and every surprize must be matter of humiliation to her.—How to understand it all! How to understand the DECEPTIONS SHE HAD BEEN PRACTISING ON HERSELF, and living under!—The BLUNDERS, the BLINDNESS of her own head and heart!—

[Oedipus’s tragic madness-causing realization of his own blindness]

49: [Emma to Knightley re Frank & Jane] “My BLINDNESS to what was going on, led me to act by them in a way that I must always be ashamed of, and I was very foolishly tempted to say and do many things which may well lay me open to unpleasant conjectures, but I have no other reason to regret that I was not in the secret earlier…. He was THE SON OF MR. WESTON—he was continually here—I always found him very pleasant—and, in short, for (with a sigh) let me SWELL OUT the causes ever so ingeniously, they all centre in this at last—my vanity was flattered, and I allowed his attentions. Latterly, however—for some time, indeed—I HAVE HAD NO IDEA OF THEIR MEANING ANY THING.—I thought them a habit, a trick, nothing that called for seriousness on my side. He has imposed on me, but he has not injured me. I have never been attached to him. And now I can tolerably comprehend his behaviour. He never wished to attach me.It was merely a BLIND to conceal his real situation with another.—It was his object to BLIND all about him; and no one, I am sure, could be more effectually BLINDED than myself—except that I was not  BLINDED—that it was my good fortune—that, in short, I was somehow or other safe from him."

[And still more of “Oedipus’s” tragic realization of his own blindness]

51: [Knightley] had been thinking it over most deeply, most intently; he had at first hoped to induce Mr. Woodhouse to remove with her to Donwell; he had wanted to believe it feasible, but his knowledge of Mr. Woodhouse would not suffer him to deceive himself long; and now he confessed his persuasion, that SUCH A TRANSPLANTATION would be A RISK OF HER FATHER’ S COMFORT,  perhaps even of his life, which must not be hazarded. MR. WOODHOUSE TAKEN FROM HARTFIELD!—No, he felt that it ought not to be attempted. But the plan which had arisen on the SACRIFICE of this, he trusted his dearest Emma would not find in any respect objectionable; it was, that he should be received at Hartfield; that so long as HER FATHER’S HAPPINESS—IN OTHER WORDS, HIS LIFE—required Hartfield to continue her home, it should be his likewise.

Of their all removing to Donwell, Emma had already had her own passing thoughts. Like him, she had tried the scheme and rejected it; but such an alternative as this had not occurred to her. She was sensible of all the affection it evinced. She felt that, in quitting Donwell, he must be SACRIFICING a great deal of independence of hours and habits; that in living constantly with her father, and IN NO HOUSE OF HIS OWN, there would be much, very much, to be borne with….

[Prelude to the parricide of Mr. Woodhouse, who must be “disposed of” before Emma can marry]

53: The difficulty of DISPOSING OF POOR MR. WOODHOUSE had been always felt in [Mrs. Weston’s] husband's plans and her own, for A MARRIAGE BETWEEN FRANK AND EMMA. How to settle the claims of Enscombe and Hartfield had been a CONTINUAL IMPEDIMENT—less acknowledged by Mr. Weston than by herself—but even he had never been able to finish the subject better than by saying—"Those matters will take care of themselves; the young people will find a way." But here there was nothing to be shifted off in a wild speculation on the future. It was all right, all open, all equal. No SACRIFICE on any side worth the name. It was a union of the highest promise of felicity in itself, and without one real, rational difficulty to oppose or delay it.

[And here is the crucial parricidal reference vis a vis Mr. Woodhouse (“Laius”) and Frank (“Oedipus”). What droll irony that “Those matters will take care of themselves; the young people will find a way” means, Oedipus will murder Laius, marry Jocasta, and tragedy ensues!]

So, if I am right about Oedipus as a source for Emma, what is its significance? In the 11 years since I began decoding the shadow story of Emma, the trickiest part of that task has been to bring coherence to the very murky pre-story of the novel. I.e., there’s no mention whatsoever of the parents of the Knightley brothers, nor of the parents of Mr. and Mrs. Weston. Plus, the strange stories of Frank’s and Jane’s ancestries both involve early parental deaths. Nor is there any mention of Harriet’s mother, nor are we ever told the name of Harriet’s father. All of that collective narrative silence is, for me, deafening, and demands investigation.

I’ve been of the opinion for several years that Mr. Woodhouse, whose first name is Henry, is just like his infamous namesake Henry the Eighth in one crucial way---I believe he’s not only the progenitor of Isabella and Emma, but also of most, if not all, of those parentless characters: the Knightley brothers, Frank, Jane, and Harriet.  

I’m not the first to enter this minefield of speculation. Edith Lank, way back in the 1985 Persuasions, http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/printed/number7/lank.html , famously (at least, among Janeites) opined that Miss Bates was actually the biological mother of Harriet Smith --- I’ve always found that claim persuasive, and now it can be fit into a larger pre-story context—Miss Bates, like Miss Taylor, was a sperm donee from Mr. Woodhouse.

It was only yesterday, when I revisited the allusion to Oedipus in Emma that I first took note of in 2005, that I was finally able to connect the dots among a single biological triad of a father (Mr. Woodhouse) and a mother (Miss Taylor), as the parents of one of those parentless adult children (Frank).  And it fits the situation at Hartfield twenty-few years earlier.

First, Miss Taylor would’ve been a teenaged servant at Hartfield, where a much younger Mr. Woodhouse would’ve been her master. And when one thing led to another, and she became pregnant, the baby would have been farmed out discreetly.  

Second, the recently widowed young Captain Weston was ready, “for good and valuable consideration” to acknowledge the baby boy as his own, and to keep him for a short while. But then, the pragmatic young officer saw a chance to double dip, and to flip the boy (like a house in a rising real estate market), for good and valuable consideration, to the rich childless inlaws of his late wife---so Isabella Knightley was spot-on to wonder about all of that, wasn’t she?

And finally, I see yet another ancient Greek source for all of the above: Mr. Woodhouse as Egeus the cruel father from A Midsummer Night’s Dream (as I wrote about in my post earlier this week) has as another source the Plutarchian account of Theseus and the death of his father Aegeus:  “Theseus, in his forgetfulness and neglect of the command concerning the flag, can scarcely, methinks, by any excuses, or before the most indulgent judges, avoid the imputation of parricide.”  So, the comic suggestion of parricide in “disposing of Mr. Woodhouse” which I wrote about earlier this week suggests Knightley as Theseus and Mr. Woodhouse as Aegeus, in addition to the Oedipus Rex subtext I’ve already outlined.

And that all fits perfectly with how Mr. Knightley’s famous reflections about the validity of his suspicions about Jane and Frank have been claimed to be derived in part from Shakespeare’s Theseus’s famous speech about the role of imagination in perception. And so, that supports my notion that Knightley is Mr. Woodhouse’s biological son (perhaps Mrs.  Bates or Mrs. Goddard is his bio mother?).

In short, we begin to see the branches of the concealed family tree in Highbury! And there you have it all as I see it today----I’d love to hear feedback about my above heresies…..

I ADDED THE FOLLOWING P.S. ON 3/25/16 at 10:12 am:

In response to my post about the pervasive allusion to Oedipus Rex that I see in Emma, a good friend pointed me to an amazing article I had been unaware of:

“Oedipus Crux: Reasonable Doubt in Oedipus the King” by Kurt Fosso 

College Literature Vol. 39, #3, Sum. 2012   ppg 26 et seq.

What Fosso is saying about Oedipus Rex is very close to what I say about Shakespeare's plays (most of all Hamlet) and Austen's novels (most of all Emma). I.e., they all were written to allow for counter-readings in which the opposite of what appears to be so at the end of the story, is so. However, Fosso did not reach the idea of a double story, which can be read plausibly in either of two ways.

All the same, he has hit a grand slam home run in his article, because he took the prior scholarly sightings of this unrecognized ambiguity in Oedipus Rex (a tradition begun by Voltaire, it appears) seven leagues further than any of them, and made an overwhelming case for this counterintuitive reading of Oedipus Rex.

I particularly loved Fosso’s final paragraph:

“…the play shifts from being a drama about divine fate to being one about questioning the validity of all sources of truth, from oracles and prophets to custodial, etiological, and other tales. If people cannot place their trust in such traditional sources, the play implies, then the "golden thread of reason" followed by Socrates and company may be what's left. Yet Oedipus himself is largely a negative example, losing his reasoned way by accepting inadequate evidence of his guilt of incest and, via that charge, of parricide. He assembles his self-convicting narrative from a patchwork of prophecies, rumors, testimony, and interpretation. Oedipus is shone in this light to be the first mis-reader of his own myth (and complex), and to be complicit in slavishly imposing Delphi's master narrative upon himself, his family, and city. In reading this tragedy about seeing and not seeing, what some students come to see is that nothing should be taken for granted, neither fact nor theory, not least what is at one's feet.”

I love it because it can easily be adapted to describe Emma at the end of Emma, when she has, in the shadow story, been talked or tricked out of every single suspicious event she has (correctly) observed during the entire novel.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Iago’s “enematic” Clyster-Pipes, the Clown’s wit re Shrovetide flatulence, & Othello’s “windy” Trumpet

April 4, 2016, 5:12 pm

≫ Next: The baddest Iago of Pride & Prejudice ain’t Wickham, it’s the guy who (says he) abhors disguise of any kind!

≪ Previous: The answer to my special bicentennial Emma quiz

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Ten days ago, I wrote the first of what has turned into a series of posts about my discovery that the Clown who appears in Act 3, Scene 1, and then again in Act 3, Scene 4, of Othello is actually Iago in disguise. Here is a link to that initial post:

"'I (really) am not what I am': The true identity of Othello’s Clown" http://tinyurl.com/zvk7dc8 

Subsequently, as a result of responses I received in the Shaksper listserv, I wrote a few shorter, followup posts on that same subject, which I’ve collected here:  http://tinyurl.com/zaj6yda

I’m back again today, because, over the weekend just passed, I took a closer look at one key aspect of my claim that the Clown is really Iago in disguise, which I had only touched on in passing in my prior posts. Specifically, I zeroed in on how extraordinarily closely the Clown’s specific sexual innuendoes echo the specific sexual innuendoes which Iago utters at other points in Othello. And so, today I’ll show that these echoes only make sense if they are the intentional acts of Iago, whether spoken openly by Iago as himself, or in disguise as the Clown.

I start with a series of short quotations from prior scholarly analyses of the Clown’s and Iago’s sexual punning, interspersed with my brief comments as to their significance for my claim that these are all Iago speaking.  After these scholarly quotations, I’ll revisit the text of relevant excerpts in Othello to tie it all together:

“ ‘A wording poet’: Othello among the mountebanks” by Bella Mirabella [in Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England,  Vol. 24 (2011), p150 et seq.]:

“When in an aside, Iago, commenting on Cassio's kissing Desdemona's hand remarks, "Yet again, your fingers to your lips? would they were clyster-pipes for your sake" (2.1.176), the audience would have understood the complexity of this remark. Not only is this moment a lewd allusion to flatulence and rectums, which was one staple of mountebank humor, the mention of clysters and pipes is also a reference to mountebank cures….The long harangue that Act 3 encompasses begins with a bawdy, musical skit like any mountebank performance, which explains the occurrence of the comic routine in Othello, between a Clown and a musician, who pun on "wind instruments," clyster-pipes, and flatulence (3.1.6). The skit refers back to th[at] earlier scene with Desdemona….”

Shakespeare’s Feminine Endings  by Philippa Berry (1999) at p29:

“ …a chain of carnivalesque and scatological imagery in the play which has been very convincingly elucidated  by Francois Laroque….He points out that the wind imagery that runs through Othello draws on this carnivalesque tradition of fertilizing bodily winds…..in the motions of bodily wind or flatulence, evoked  both in Iago’s scatological medical figuration of the kiss between Cassio and Desdemona in terms of ‘clyster pipes’ (2.1) and in the Clown’s jesting depiction of the human body as a ‘wind instrument’ with ‘a tail’ (3.1)….”

Shakespeare’s Festive World, by Francois Laroque, trans. By Jane Lloyd (1991) at p. 47:

“The ‘circulation of blasts of air” comprises the custom of consuming flatulent foods on Shrove Tuesday and then breaking wind in a way that suggested a correlation between the microcosm of the human body and the cosmic forces as a whole. During this festival period, people were recommended to stuff themselves to bursting point, so as to be at one with the natural elements…”

Significance: Iago pushing Cassio, Roderigo et al into overconsumption of drink is a cruel parody of these Shrove Tuesday traditions.

“The ‘Double Time’ Crux in OthelloSolved” by Steven Sohmer ELR 32.2 (Spring 2002) p214:

“Above, I offered to identify one other important way in which Shakespeare construedOthello

 as a sequel to Merchant. The central action in both plays concerns a contract sealed at Shrovetide, a debt which goes unpaid, and the dire consequences ensuing. In Merchant, the contract is a loan. InOthello the contract is a marriage contract, and chaos ensues when the marital debt goes unpaid. Desdemona, according to the dying testimony of her intimate servant,lived and died ‘chaste,’ meaning as chaste as the Portia of Merchant, ‘as chaste as Diana’ (Merchant1.2.103), a virgin enwheeled by the grace of heaven, before, behind, and on every hand (2.1.85-7).

Time, Narrative, and Emotion in Early Modern Englandby David Houston Wood (2016), p.78:

“…the Shrove Tuesday (Gregorian) which confronts us in Act 1 of Othello becomes five weeks later in the integration of the two calendars, according to Sohmer, the identical Shrove Tuesday (Julian) which confronts us in Act 2 of the play, in Cyprus (17-21)….”

Significance: Shakespeare wants us to realize that Iago, human antichrist that he is, is in effect forcing Othello and Desdemona into an involuntary Lent (the period of abstinence that immediately Shrove Tuesday), since his entire project is designed to destroy their marriage before it can even be consummated!

Early Modern Theatricality by Henry S. Turner (2014) p.216:

“In both Rich and Phillips, social mobility is cleverly critiqued by contrasting the improprieties of class crossing with the appropriateness of pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. Shakespeare, too, draws on the pancake bell’s associations with issues of social class to parody the verbal affectations of courtiers….In All’s Well, when Lavatch wittily asserts that “O Lord sir” is an “answer that fits all questions”, he insists that the phrase is as ‘fit” as “a pancake for Shrove Tuesday”. In both plays, Shrove Tuesday pancakes are mentioned by clowns offering jabs at those who act above their proper station by mimicking aristocratic behaviour…”

Significance: Iago as the Clown in Othello is another example, but this time veiled, of this same point—I.e., Iago is parodying Cassio’s social-climbing affectations.

“’Then Murder’s Out of Tune’: The Music and Structure of Othello” by Rosalind King

Shakespeare Survey 39 (1987): ppg149-58:

“…[Iago] perverts the former innocent though overdone courtesies to a gross anal sexuality [clyster pipes] However, when he likens the embrace between Othello and Desdemona to a well-tuned instrument…he is describing no more than the truth….Roderigo has already drunk ‘potations pottle deep” and Iago “has flustered with flowing cups” the three remaining guards (2.3).

…These musicians are playing wind instruments or ‘pipes’. This is a neat visual and aural pun on the ‘clyster pipes’ that Iago has already said should be at Cassio’s lips, and the bawdy jokes made by the Clown on the nature of anal wind music in this scene indicate that the connection is deliberate…”

Signficance: If you’re wondering why King says “clyster pipes’ are so bawdy, read this:

The Mystery of Hamlet: A Solution  by Myron Stagman (2009) p.39:

“…For good measure, Cassio and the Clown both say “honest friend”, the person which practically everyone in the play considers Iago to be. What does the resonance [between 2.1 and 3.1] communicate to us? The key: Iago’s “clyster pipes” remark is filthy. He refers to a syringe for injecting an enema. The Clown echoes this obscenity. His entire patter represents a dirty echo of a filthy remark.

“Wind-instruments” alludes to the posterior. “Tale” means “tail”. “Nose”, because that’s what gets wind of the gaseous substance which emanates therefrom. “Put up your pipes in your bag” corresponds to the modern “Shove it!”, and it refers to the allied employment of Iago’s clyster pipes. “Vanish into air” indicates the dissolution of that gaseous substance into the atmosphere. This kind of humor was not intended to be nice. In delivering it, the Clown acts as a surrogate Iago. Hence his ‘posterior”-humor is sinister. Who—or what—is this Clown who acts on behalf of Othello, echoes Iago, and makes a lewd reference to ‘nose’, anticipating Othello’s “O I see that nose of your [D’s] But not that dog I shall throw’t to. The clown is a materialization of Othello’s Iago-influenced mind…”

Significance: Stagman was sooooooooo close to taking that final step to seeing the Clown as Iago in disguise!

02/12/09 “Iago’s Foul Music” by Matt Wallace

“Act 3, Scene 1…As the musicians perform, the Clown enters the scene to pick up where Cassio leaves off and to serve as his proxy. He begins with the first of his insults:

“Why, masters, ha’ your instruments been in Naples, / that they speak i’th’ nose thus?” (3.1.3-4).

A note to the text explains that the Clown is asking why the instruments “sound so nasal” and suggests that this is “a reference to venereal disease, often associated with Naples, or a phallic or anal joke”. The Clown appears to be suggesting that the musicians are so bad because they are playing with diseased instruments, read infected penises.

…After the Musician asks for clarification, the Clown continues with the second of his insults:

“Are these, I pray you, wind instruments?” (3.1.6).

This begins an exchange which, as the textual note indicates, “depends on the connection between wind instruments, flatulence, and ‘tale/tail’”. After the Musician affirms the Clown’s observation, the Clown replies: “O, thereby hangs a tail”. The Clown is clearly referring to the anus, thus suggesting that the musicians’ playing sounded like flatulence, hence it also stunk. The Musician fails to distinguish between the homonyms and asks: “Whereby hangs a tale, sir?”. The Clown recognizes the homonym and retorts: “Marry, sir, by many a wind instrument that I know”. The Clown is relying on the notion of talking out of one’s hindquarters, the uttering of falsehoods ranging from simple exaggerations to outright lies, all of which have their own peculiar stench about them. With the second compound insult, Shakespeare uses flatulence as a metaphor for the lies used to manipulate sexuality, especially the lies of Iago.”
 

I think you get the picture by now just how gross and foul the Clown’s and Iago’s joking on wind instruments and flatulence really is, and how there are traces of Iago everywhere in that joking. And now, in light of all the above, let’s first reread Iago’s aside right after his exchange with Desdemona in 2.1:

IAGO: [Aside] He takes her by the palm: ay, well said, whisper: with as little a web as this will I ensnare as great a fly as Cassio. Ay, smile upon her, do; I will gyve thee in thine own courtship. You say true; 'tis so, indeed: if such tricks as these strip you out of your lieutenantry, it had been better you had not kissed your three fingers so oft, which now again you are most apt to play the sir in. Very good; well kissed! an excellent courtesy! 'tis so, indeed. Yet again your fingers to your lips? would they were clyster-pipes for your sake!

Trumpet within

The Moor! I know his trumpet.

Viewed in the context of all that Shrove Tuesday flatulence, Shakespeare means for us to understand that “The Moor! I know his trumpet” is Iago’s witty suggestion that Othello is also a social climber whose trumpet is yet another “wind instrument” --- This is nothing less than the grotesque but somehow still hilarious image of Othello’s arrival being announced by a colossal fart!  And doesn’t that just about sum up, in a single sound/smell, what Iago really thinks about Othello?

And now seems an opportune moment to respond to what Harry Berger wrote on Friday in that Shaksper thread:

”Looking for hidden meanings? Is that what we do today?   I didn’t know that. I thought we were doing this: The play text represents the character as trying to say one thing. At the same time his language “says” more than she/he is trying to say. When we read the play’s text we try to put these two together to see what it shows about the character. Does this = “looking for hidden meanings”?”

Harry, in the case of the Clown’s scatological punning in 3.1 of Othello, I think you’re begging the most important question when you write “his language ‘says’ more than she/he is trying to say”- i.e., if the Clown really were just a random, minor character inserted by Shakespeare for some unfunny comic relief or some other comparably nonthematic purpose, then your description would be accurate—indeed we’d be left with trying to figure out why Shakespeare chose to have the Clown unwittingly echo Iago’s crude sexual wordplay so closely, as I have elaborated, above.

But…to me that would diminish Shakespeare’s artistry greatly, if he felt he had to resort to such a gambit, which damages verisimilitude to real life, by relying on an unrealistic coincidence of word usage between two seemingly unrelated characters, in order to amplify Iago’s repellant sexual innuendoes. In Othello, we are not in the fantastical, unrealistic worlds of the late Romances, or of A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Titus Andronicus, or even of the comedies with their absurdly improbable coincidences bringing the couples together at the end. Strongly coincidental echoes shouldn’t happen without some plausible reason for them within the fictional reality of the play.

Othello strikes me as being among the most realistic of Shakespeare’s plays—which makes it all the more tragic and horrifying, because we can see how a malevolent being in the real world, like Iago, without assistance from ghosts, witches, soothsayers or other supernatural powers, really could, using ingenuity and psychological acuity, do tremendous harm to other people. Whereas, if it really is Iago disguised as the Clown in 3.1 and 3.4, then, using your terminology, the character is knowingly saying exactly what he means to say, even though the major characters he speaks to (first Cassio, then Desdemona) have no idea that it is really Iago, or what he means.

Now, as I suggested in my first post in this thread, I believe Iago pops in as the Clown in 3.1. and 3.4 for the primary purpose of delaying first Cassio and then Desdemona in their movements, so as to prevent them from actually meeting with each other before Iago’s “handkerchief” gambit has time to work.

But the content of what Iago says is irrelevant to that primary purpose, and so Iago can choose whatever topic he wants for his exchanges with the Musicians, Cassio and Desdemona, as long as he keeps things going long enough. And, being the malevolent being that he is, he elects to vent his ugly sexual spleen on two of his victims, as a kind of sadistic private joke for his own amusement. In a way, he’s like the hunter who gives his prey a fair chance to get away, because that spices up the hunt for the hunter—he gets to have a private chuckle at the obtuseness of Cassio and Desdemona, who don’t hear the echoes of Iago in the “Clown’s” joking.

And these two scenes then perfectly complement all other scenes in the play in which Iago works his evil manipulations on others—both the scenes in which he is not disguised and presents himself as the “honest friend” of the very people he is trying to destroy, and also the scenes (like when he slanders Othello while hidden in the crowd outside Brabantio’s estate).when he achieves anonymity by being hidden in a crowd at a distance from the character he is working on—and when he advises Roderigo to don actual disguise to do Iago’s bidding in Cyprus.

Best of all, I suggest that the above analysis provides an extraordinary positive transcendence of the apparent paradox of the question of reading vs. seeing Shakespeare. I believe it would make a spectacular bit of stagecraft if, in 3.1., the Clown delivers his speeches and then starts to leaves the stage in 3.1, but then, just before completing his exit, and while in full view of the audience, but not of Cassio, he quickly sheds his beard, wig, and dirty clothes to reveal……Iago in his normal attire, who then immediately enters and starts talking to Cassio. I think it would elicit a collective gasp, if the clothing, body movement, and voice disguise were really effective (and I’d guess Robert Armin would have excelled at them all). They’d gasp because, suddenly armed with the knowledge that the Clown had been Iago all along in 3.1, they’d start wondering, why has Iago done this? And so then when the Clown reentered in 3.4, the audience would already know right from the start that he was Iago in disguise, and therefore this would add an extraordinary extra oomph to the Clown/Iago’s verbal parrying with Desdemona.

In particular, the audience would be wondering, why has Iago chosen to come back a second time as the Clown and to engage in this crude sexual banter with Desdemona—and that is when they’d surely recall that this was a dark reprise of the relatively mild, witty sexual banter between Iago and Desdemona in 2.1, when Cassio kisses her hand, and then Desdemona playfully invites Iago to say how he would praise her.

I think it clear that this becomes a much more powerful scene if it is Iago, disguised as the Clown, who is using his disguise to safely vent his ugly sex-based anger at Desdemona, than if a servant who is otherwise peripheral to the action of the play suddenly appears and inexplicably starts doing this.

And…one final artistic payoff on stage—when the audience hears the following exchange in 4.1….

Iago. Lie--

Oth. With her?

Iago. With her? On her; what you will.

Oth. Lie with her? Lie on her? We say lie on her, when they belie her. Lie with her! (4.1.34-38)

…they will not merely recall the Clown’s riffing on “lie” in 3.4, they will understand that Iago is reprising his owncrude sexual punning, this time with Othello instead of Desdemona, as if to fulfill the arc that runs from 2.1. to 3.4 to 4.1 that I have just outlined. It pulls the whole thread together---instead of leaving the audience puzzled as to why the Clown was in the play in the first place, which is the very question that a number of Shakespeare scholars have wondered over the years.

To conclude: I wonder whether there has ever been a production of Othello in which the above scenario has been enacted—if so, I have searched the Internet and all relevant databases and cannot find evidence of same, but I would not be surprised to find out that it has been done. The best evidence, of course, would have been to know what was done when Othello was first staged, presumably under the direction of Shakespeare himself----but alas, we don’t have such precious data at hand, and probably never will.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

The baddest Iago of Pride & Prejudice ain’t Wickham, it’s the guy who (says he) abhors disguise of any kind!

April 8, 2016, 12:57 pm

≫ Next: “eight and twenty years” &“four times seven years”: Darcy & Iago the “honest” 28-year old deceivers

≪ Previous: Iago’s “enematic” Clyster-Pipes, the Clown’s wit re Shrovetide flatulence, & Othello’s “windy” Trumpet

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I’ve been quiet in Austen discussions of late, as I’ve been taking a short break from my Austen obsession, and delving deeply into Shakespeare, especially Othello---- in particular sussing out all the nuances of my discovery that Shakespeare played a clever game with his readers/audience by not telling us that the acerbic Clown who appears only in Act 3, Scenes 1 and 4, is actually Iago in disguise. Here is the link to my latest post in that regard, but I have another two or three coming, before I’m done mining that rich vein of ore: http://tinyurl.com/j5ywhh2

As I’ve often noted, Jane Austen was speaking for herself when she wrote the following dialog for Henry Crawford:

“Shakespeare one gets acquainted with without knowing how. It is a part of an Englishman's constitution. His thoughts and beauties are so spread abroad that one touches them everywhere; one is intimate with him by instinct. No man of any brain can open at a good part of one of his plays without falling into the flow of his meaning immediately."

She was only disingenuous in that fishy bit about “without knowing how” --- she knew exactly how she got so intimately acquainted with Shakespeare – it was (paraphrasing another Austenian reader) by something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading…of the entire Shakespearean canon!

And so, I’m not surprised that my exploration of Iago in disguise as the Clown in Othello has now led me from Shakespeare right back to Jane Austen. I happened upon an unexpected wormhole between the two, while reading the following exchange between Iago and Desdemona early in Othello, which occurs while they stand on the dock in Cyprus, and Desdemona worriedly watches for Othello’s ship to arrive. Iago, obnoxious misogynist that he is, segues from Cassio’s courtly kiss of Emilia’s lips, to Emilia’s big mouth, whence ensues some extended witty repartee between Iago and Desdemona on the theme of the ideal woman:

IAGO

Sir, would [Emilia] give you so much of her lips
As of her tongue she oft bestows on me,
You'll have enough.

DESDEMONA  Alas, she has no speech.

IAGO

In faith, too much;
I find it still, when I have list to sleep:
Marry, before your ladyship, I grant,
She puts her tongue a little in her heart,
And chides with thinking.

EMILIA  You have little cause to say so.

IAGO

Come on, come on; you are pictures out of doors,
Bells in your parlors, wild-cats in your kitchens,
Saints m your injuries, devils being offended,
Players in your housewifery, and housewives' in your beds.

DESDEMONA  O, fie upon thee, slanderer!

IAGO

Nay, it is true, or else I am a Turk:
You rise to play and go to bed to work.

EMILIA  You shall not write my praise.

IAGO   No, let me not.

DESDEMONA  What wouldst thou write of me, if thou shouldst praise me?

IAGO

O gentle lady, do not put me to't;
For I am nothing, if not critical.

DESDEMONA  Come on assay. There's one gone to the harbour?

IAGO  Ay, madam.

DESDEMONA

I am not merry; but I do beguile
The thing I am, by seeming otherwise.
Come, how wouldst thou praise me?

IAGO

I am about it; but indeed my invention
Comes from my pate as birdlime does from frize;
It plucks out brains and all: but my Muse labours,
And thus she is deliver'd.
If she be fair and wise, fairness and wit,
The one's for use, the other useth it.

DESDEMONA  Well praised! How if she be black and witty?

IAGO

If she be black, and thereto have a wit,
She'll find a white that shall her blackness fit.

DESDEMONA  Worse and worse.

EMILIA  How if fair and foolish?

IAGO

She never yet was foolish that was fair;
For even her folly help'd her to an heir.

DESDEMONA  These are old fond paradoxes to make fools laugh i'the alehouse. What miserable praise hast thou for her that's foul and foolish?

IAGO

There's none so foul and foolish thereunto,
But does foul pranks which fair and wise ones do.

DESDEMONA

O heavy ignorance! thou praisest the worst best.
But what praise couldst thou bestow on a deserving
woman indeed, one that, in the authority of her
merit, did justly put on the vouch of very malice itself?

IAGO

She that was ever fair and never proud,
Had tongue at will and yet was never loud,
Never lack'd gold and yet went never gay,
Fled from her wish and yet said 'Now I may,'
She that being anger'd, her revenge being nigh,
Bade her wrong stay and her displeasure fly,
She that in wisdom never was so frail
To change the cod's head for the salmon's tail;
She that could think and ne'er disclose her mind,
See suitors following and not look behind,
She was a wight, if ever such wight were,--

DESDEMONA  To do what?

IAGO  To suckle fools and chronicle small beer.

DESDEMONAO most lame and impotent conclusion! Do not learnof him, Emilia, though he be thy husband. How sayyou, Cassio? is he not a most profane and liberal counsellor?

I’d been focused on this passage, because of the witty poem that Iago recites at the end of it, which reminded me very much of the witty risqué fooling that Feste the Clown entertains Olivia with in Twelfth Night. Seeing Iago assume the role of a truth-telling clown in this scene of course fits perfectly with my seeing him as assuming the physical disguise of an actual Clown in 3.1 and 3.4.

But then, in my mind’s ear, I heard yet another echo behind that Shakespearean one, from a different witty repartee—in the Netherfield salon, and only three chapters after another, even more famous dialog about the attributes of “an accomplished woman”:

“Miss Bingley made no answer, and soon afterwards she got up and walked about the room. Her figure was elegant, and she walked well; but Darcy, at whom it was all aimed, was still inflexibly studious. In the desperation of her feelings, she resolved on one effort more, and, turning to Elizabeth, said: "Miss Eliza Bennet, let me persuade you to follow my example, and take a turn about the room. I assure you it is very refreshing after sitting so long in one attitude."

Elizabeth was surprised, but agreed to it immediately. Miss Bingley succeeded no less in the real object of her civility; Mr. Darcy looked up. He was as much awake to the novelty of attention in that quarter as Elizabeth herself could be, and unconsciously closed his book. He was directly invited to join their party, but he declined it, observing that he could imagine but two motives for their choosing to walk up and down the room together, with either of which motives his joining them would interfere. "What could he mean? She was dying to know what could be his meaning?"—and asked Elizabeth whether she could at all understand him?

"Not at all," was her answer; "but depend upon it, he means to be severe on us, and our surest way of disappointing him will be to ask nothing about it."

Miss Bingley, however, was incapable of disappointing Mr. Darcy in anything, and persevered therefore in requiring an explanation of his two motives.

"I have not the smallest objection to explaining them," said he, as soon as she allowed him to speak. "You either choose this method of passing the evening because you are in each other's confidence, and have secret affairs to discuss, or because you are conscious that your figures appear to the greatest advantage in walking; if the first, I would be completely in your way, and if the second, I can admire you much better as I sit by the fire."

"Oh! shocking!" cried Miss Bingley. "I never heard anything so abominable. How shall we punish him for such a speech?"

"Nothing so easy, if you have but the inclination," said Elizabeth. "We can all plague and punish one another. Tease him—laugh at him. Intimate as you are, you must know how it is to be done."“

Specifically, I realized that Miss Bingley’s responding to Darcy’s display of naughty wit, by playfully asking Eliza how to punish him, must have been directly inspired by Desdemona’s responding to Iago’s display of naughty wit, by playfully advising both Emilia and Cassio not to listen to Iago.

And that, in turn, led me to a more disturbing parallel.  Eliza, like Desdemona, has a lively and playful wit, and takes pleasure from sparring with Darcy, and giving him as every bit as good as she gets from him in that department---just as Desdemona derives obvious pleasure (and also temporary relief from her anxiety about Othello’s safe return from war with the Turks) from sparring with Iago.

But we in the audience who already know how Othello ends feel a shiver when they watch Desdemona match wits with Iago, because we know that she is playing with (hell) fire, she has no idea that her husband’s “honest friend” is neither honest nor friend, and is already in that scene busy at work destroying her marriage to Othello. And at least part of Iago’s motivation perhaps arises from wishing to teach Desdemona a terrible lesson, for the “crime” of having overridden his complaint about his own wife Emilia’s big mouth, and showing him that she herself was not afraid to speak her own mind to a man. Iago, bitter angry man that he is, is not about to allow Othello or Desdemona to find happiness in a “marriage of true minds” [as I‘ve also posted of late, the famous Sonnet 116 is nothing less than Shakespeare’s code book for describing the marital storms that Iago, Prospero-like, sets loose on the frail ship of Othello’s marriage], a happiness that Iago and Emilia have not found with each other.

And that same disturbing dynamic of a man destroying the spirit and resistance of a lively young woman is at play in the shadow story of Pride & Prejudice which I’ve been writing about the past decade. I.e., as in Othello, we ought to similarly feel a shiver when we read Eliza match wits with Darcy, because we also know that she is playing with (hell) fire---she has no idea that Darcy, the proud, handsome aristocrat whom she feels a strange attraction to, is also not the honest abhorrer of disguise of any kind he claims to be. She, like Iago, has no foresight as to what he will do after she thwarts his desires. Which is to carefully stage manage a completely false experience for her during her trip north with the Gardiners, with a carefully doctored portrait of Darcy’s character at the center of this deception.

So, while most Janeites would immediately aver that the smooth-tongued deceiverWickham was the Iago of P&P, I’m suggesting that the baddest Iago of the shadow story of Pride & Prejudice is none other than Mr. Darcy!

Before I close, I want to present you with one last Austenesque echo of the above-quoted scene in Othello which I also heard as I was writing this post, an echo suggesting that Jane Austen was very interested in Iago over 16 years before she published P&P. It is in the following passage in Jane Austen’ Letter 7 dated 9/18/1796, which she wrote to sister Cassandra when Jane was the same age as Eliza Bennet --- not one-and-twenty years:

“This morning has been spent in doubt and deliberation, in forming plans and removing difficulties, for it ushered in the day with an event which I had not intended should take place so soon by a week. Frank has received his appointment on board the " Captain John Gore," commanded by the "Triton," and will therefore be obliged to be in town on Wednesday; and though I have every disposition in the world to accompany him on that day, I cannot go on the uncertainty of the Pearsons being at home, as I should not have a place to go to in case they were from home. ..If I have no answer at all on Tuesday, I must suppose Mary is not at home, and must wait till I do hear, as, after having invited her to go to Steventon with me, it will not quite do to go home and say no more about it. My father will be so good as to fetch home his prodigal daughter from town, I hope, unless he wishes me to walk the hospitals, enter at the Temple, or mount guard at St. James'. It will hardly be in Frank's power to take me home—nay, it certainly will not. I shall write again as soon as I get to Greenwich.

What dreadful hot weather we have I It keeps one in a continual state of inelegance. If Miss Pearson should return with me, pray be careful not to expect too much beauty. I will not pretend to say that on a first view she quite answered the opinion I had formed of her. My mother, I am sure, will be disappointed if she does not take great care. From what I remember of her picture, it is no great resemblance. I am very glad that the idea of returning with Frank occurred to me; for as to Henry's coming into Kent again, the time of its taking place is so very uncertain that I should be waiting for dead men's shoes. I had once determined to go with Frank to-morrow and take my chance, &c., but they dissuaded me from so rash a step, as I really think on consideration it would have been; for if the Pearsons were not at home, I should inevitably fall a sacrifice to the arts of some fat woman who would make me drunk with small beer….”

The main topic of Letter 7 is the young adult Jane Austen’s uncertain plans about accompanying beloved brother Frank on a road trip from Rowling in Kent to London, whence he will shortly thereafter head out to sea to assume his next naval appointment.  Frank is leaving a week earlier than expected, and that creates a problem for Jane, who clearly has no desire to stay one minute longer in Kent with brother Edward and his unfriendly wife, after Frank leaves. In the end, Jane bows to family pressure and reluctantly agrees to stay on at Rowling, but her parting shot is classic Austen absurdist irony, as she mocks the “risks” she would have run had she gone to London with Frank:

“for if the Pearsons were not at home, I should inevitably fall a sacrifice to the arts of some fat woman who would make me drunk with small beer….”

So, you ask, where’s the echo in Letter 7 to Iago and Desdemona’s battle of wits on the dock in Cyprus in Othello?

Of course, it’s in the punch line of Iago’s little poem about the qualities of a good woman”

She that could think and ne'er disclose her mind,
See suitors following and not look behind,
She was a wight, if ever such wight were,--

DESDEMONA  To do what?

IAGO  To suckle fools and chronicle SMALL BEER.

Jane was not only remembering Iago’s ironic summary of the destiny of the ideal woman when she wrote “fall a sacrifice to the arts of some fat woman who would make me drunk with SMALL BEER”, she was also recalling Iago’s arts successfully practiced on Cassio, whom, later in Act 2, Iago made very drunk on potent beer, with horrific ultimate consequences not only for Cassio, but for Othello and Desdemona as well.

So, even at the age of not quite one-and-twenty, Jane Austen was already a Shakespeare savant, with a particular awareness of the subtleties of Shakespeare’s most intelligent (and dangerous) villain, Iago. And, now that I think about it, Jane Austen actually wrote a character very very similar to Iago at pretty much the same time as she wrote Letter 7 in 1796. Of course, I am referring to Lady Susan, who wraps other people around her fingers exactly the same way Iago does!

Which is why the echo of Iago in Mr. Darcy in January 1813, after Jane had another 16 years to understand Iago even better…..did not bode well for Elizabeth!

Cheers, ARNIE

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