Some Words of Jane Austen - Softcover

Tave, Stuart M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 022663339X ISBN 13: 9780226633398

Verlag: University of Chicago Press, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

Jane Austen’s readers continue to find delight in the justness of her moral and psychological discriminations. But for most readers, her values have been a phenomenon more felt than fully apprehended. In this book, Stuart M. Tave identifies and explains a number of the central concepts across Austen’s novels—examining how words like “odd,” “exertion,” and, of course, “sensibility,” hold the key to understanding the Regency author’s language of moral values. Tracing the force and function of these words from Sense and Sensibility to Persuasion, Tave invites us to consider the peculiar and subtle ways in which word choice informs the conduct, moral standing, and self-awareness of Austen’s remarkable characters.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Stuart M. Tave is the William Rainey Harper Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago.

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Some Words of Jane Austen

By Stuart M. Tave

The University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 1973 The University of Chicago
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-226-63339-8

Contents

Foreword, 
1. Limitations and Definitions, 
2. The Expectations of Catherine Morland, 
3. The Sensibility of Marianne and the Exertion of Elinor Dashwood, 
4. Affection and the Mortification of Elizabeth Bennet, 
5. A Proper Lively Time with Fanny Price, 
6. The Imagination of Emma Woodhouse, 
7. Anne Elliot, Whose Word Had No Weight, 

CHAPTER 1

Limitations and Definitions

Jane Austen was fond of dancing and excelled in it ("Biographical Notice," NA 5). She often writes about it in her letters. It is the sort of thing one might expect, that enjoyment and ability in moving with significant grace in good time in a restricted space. In the earliest letter of hers that survives, written when she was twenty, she says, "I danced twice with Warren last night, and once with Mr. Charles Watkins, and, to my inexpressible astonishment, I entirely escaped John Lyford. I was forced to fight hard for it, however" (L 2). There is a lot of action going on in that small space. Even more important, three years later we find that she did dance with John Lyford, on an evening when she had what she calls an odd set of partners. "I had a very pleasant evening, however," she tells her sister, "though you will probably find out that there was no particular reason for it; but I do not think it worth while to wait for enjoyment until there is some real opportunity for it" (L 56). She does not fight for escape but makes the best use of the conditions, and if that's not the whole of art at least that is where it begins and that is where it ends. We need not fret or labor to refute them who think her novels limited because their dimensions are limited. It was never a problem that bothered her. She knew better. Those lines, forever quoted — about the little bit of ivory two inches wide and the work with so fine a brush as produces little effect after much labor — are not a serious account of her own art; they are quite other, an ironic contrast of her chapters with those of her schoolboy nephew who, in her affectionate fun, writes "strong, manly, spirited Sketches, full of Variety and Glow" (468–69). She knew that she had made the choice not of weakness and the merely female, but the choice of difficulty, originality, and meaning. She had always known the absurdity of an art that thinks it is strong and full and large because it tries to run in a large world.

Before she was fifteen she wrote that economic and wicked parody entitled "Love and Freindship," where the heroine of the "novel" begins her account with this: "My Father was a native of Ireland and an inhabitant of Wales; my Mother was the natural Daughter of a Scotch Peer by an italian Opera-girl — I was born in Spain and received my Education at a Convent in France" (MW 77). That is nicely done. It spears with delight and efficiency the wordy pretensions of the romance to move us rapidly through wide kingdoms of life, and it suggests that the origin is not quite legitimate. In fact, in a romance the characters don't know where they are or when they are. They cannot handle space and time. "Our neighbourhood was small," the heroine tells her correspondent, "for it consisted only of your Mother." Well, that is small, though "small" doesn't seem to be quite the right word; but then what could be when "neighbourhood" has made the whole situation irretrievable? This one neighbor, however, seems to have been a valuable friend to expand the heroine's vision, because "Isabel had seen the World." That is, "She had passed 2 Years at one of the first Boarding-schools in London; had spent a fortnight in Bath and had supped one night in Southampton." Time and space seem to have evaporated in the course of that sounding sentence. We cannot have much faith in the wisdom Isabel can bring from these experiences, whether it be the first glorious generality — "Beware of the insipid Vanities and idle Dissipations of the Metropolis of England"; or the second and less grand admonition — "Beware of the unmeaning Luxuries of Bath"; or the concluding highly specific and personal memory — "and of the stinking fish of Southampton" (78–79). The heroine fears that there is no probability of her ever tasting these dissipations, luxuries, or fish, doomed as she is to waste her youth and beauty in a humble home in Wales, when there comes a violent knocking on the outward door of her rustic cot. This brings on a quick-fire dialogue, as the family discuss interminably the need for urgent action — "'Shall we go now?' (said my Mother,) 'The sooner the better.' (answered he.) 'Oh! let no time be lost' (cried I.)" and so forth (79–80). It is the hero, who, as one might expect, has "lossed" his way. He has, in noble manliness, scorned his father and has mounted his horse to set forward to his aunt's house. His father's house is situated in Bedfordshire, he says, his aunt's in Middlesex, "and tho' I flatter myself with being a tolerable proficient in Geography, I know not how it happened, but I found myself entering this beautifull Vale which I find is in South Wales" (81). That young man needs one more lesson before he is tolerable.

The simple geography joke is a Jane Austen kind of joke. She uses it again in "Catharine" (MW 199–200) and it turns up much later in Harriet Smith's question, "Will Mr. Frank Churchill pass through Bath as well as Oxford?" Frank Churchill is on his way from Yorkshire to Surrey, but Harriet's mind is on Bath because that is where Mr. Elton is, Mr. Elton whom she loved in vain and who is now with his bride in Bath. Emma, who had been hoping that the coming of Frank Churchill would put an end to the talk of Mr. Elton, is disappointed. "But neither geography nor tranquillity could come all at once, and Emma was now in a humour to resolve that they should both come in time" (E 189). It is amusing when a weak-minded female like Harriet has difficulty locating herself and others (and she is not the only one of her kind in Jane Austen), but even in an instance like this there is evidently something more at work than an absence of elementary information. A correct knowledge of geography — to know where one is — and tranquillity of the right sort — to live satisfactorily where one is — seem to be related virtues; both, if they come, come as earned acquisitions, in time. Harriet is ignorant and because she is ignorant she wistfully inquires after a geography that will meet her desires. With varying degrees of foolishness and awareness there are many characters in Jane Austen who do the same thing, reshape the space and time they inhabit to make it a creation of their own wishes. In that same scene of Harriet's there is Mr. Weston, a goodhearted man but one who is always reinterpreting what happens so that "every thing has turned out exactly as we could wish" (188); Mr. Weston is making the days and hours of Frank's visit, and the distances, what will best meet his idea of the happiest combinations. At a later point in the novel he makes the difference between Frank at London and Frank at Richmond the whole difference between seeing him always and seeing him never. Richmond is only nine miles and what were nine miles to a young man? — an hour's ride (so he says), where London is sixteen miles — nay eighteen — it must be a full eighteen and that's a serious obstacle. Before he is finished London might as well be in...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of Chicago Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 022663339X
• ISBN 13: 9780226633398
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 300
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchbär; info@buchbaer.de; ; Weberstr. 67; Osnabrück; 49084; Deutschland