Frank irritations and Jane Austen
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By Denis Bunbury
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My reading goal over the recent holidays was to re-acquaint myself with the novels of Jane Austen.
I love the way that Jane Austen focuses on character and relationships, with perception and ‘wit’. Page after page reveals she has an unwavering eye, which she uses to observe social situations with telling irony.
Nothing seems to escape her view. Take this paragraph, for example, from Emma:
“The whole party walked about, and looked, and praised again; and then having nothing else to do, formed a sort of half circle round the fire, to observe in their various modes, till other subjects were started, that, though May, a fire in the evening was still very pleasant.” (Vol III, ch 2.)
The ‘party’ she refers to is the group of people who have been asked to survey the preparations for a ball. While we all no doubt engage in conversation that passes the time of day, there is more than a hint here that this group rarely lends itself to doing much more. They literally have “nothing else to do”.
Or this excerpt from Mansfield Park:
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“In all the important preparations of the mind she (Maria Bertram) was complete; being prepared for matrimony by a hatred of home, restraint, and tranquillity; by the misery of disappointed affection and contempt of the man she was to marry.” (Vol II, ch 3.)
In the darkest of her novels, Jane Austen straightforwardly, so very straightforwardly, points out what is in Maria’s mind and heart. When I first read this paragraph I had to pause and ask myself had I understood correctly. But yes, there can be no doubt. Maria is about to give her life away. Is she, am I, up to acknowledging the simple truth of it?
But typically Austen does not leave us with just what is missing in human relations. By book’s end, two people will be so genuinely in love that I cannot but feel a sense of gladness. The more so, because, for the characters involved, usually there has been a painful transformation to be endured before the love is sealed, or maybe even recognised.
In Emma, Austen lets us into the hearts of Emma and Mr Knightley as they experience the surprising joy of their love. Mr Knightley, after quarrelling so often with Emma over her behaviour, has risked letting her know of his feelings for her. The best he might hope for, he thinks, is that Emma will not reject outright his hopes. Austen the narrator continues:
“…he had only, in the momentary conquest of eagerness over judgement, aspired to be told that she did not forbid his attempt to attach her. The superior hopes which were gradually opened were so much the more enchanting. The affection, which he had been asking to be allowed to create if he could, was already his! Within half an hour he had passed from a thoroughly distressed state of mind, to something so like perfect happiness, that it could bear no other name.
Her change was equal. This one half hour had given to each the same precious certainty of being beloved, had cleared from each the same degree of ignorance, jealousy, or distrust.” (Emma, Vol III, ch 13.)
As I observe the ways that the characters influence one another in the story, the counsellor in me wants also to observe how I might be being influenced as I read. This after all is an important instrument as I work with clients: as I listen to their story it is very helpful to become aware of how I am being affected.
The above quote, from near the end of Emma, provided a clue. The narrator says that “each” had been cleared from the same degree of ignorance, jealousy, or distrust. Here I had to stop and think. Emma herself cleared from these traits? --Yes! I remembered a comment from earlier in the novel that a major fault in Emma was that she believed herself to be without fault. So such an improvement in her is easily considered.
But Mr Knightley? Previously I had seen him as the most characterful person who had walked the village of Highbury. He seemed a man of the loftiest qualities, most concerned for the true development of his protégé Emma. Now I perceive that he has had his own share of ignorance, jealousy, and distrust.
Then I realised that my view of Mr Knightley was Emma’s. Emma might oppose Knightley and argue with him, but she still looked up to him and sought his approval, and I had allowed myself to follow her lead.
I realised that I am just as likely as any character in the novel to ‘see’ another person completely through the eyes of another (or some others), and at the same time hold the illusory belief that I am in fact seeing through my own eyes.
Knightley himself is oblivious during most of the novel to his affection for Emma. He comes to recognise his feelings only after a Mr Frank Churchill, offering his attentions to Emma, has aroused his jealousy. Our author comments: “On his (Knightley’s) side, there had been a long-standing jealousy, old as the arrival, or even the expectation, of Frank Churchill. He had been in love with Emma, and jealous of Frank Churchill, from about the same period, one sentiment having probably enlightened him as to the other”. (Vol III, ch 13.)
Emma ‘finds’ her feelings for Mr Knightley in much the same way, through the agency of Harriet Smith announcing that she thinks (wrongly, as it turns out) that Knightley has a romantic interest in her.
Thank goodness for our heroine and hero that they are so intruded upon by a Harriet Smith and a Frank Churchill. It forces both of them into a process very much resembling repentance, and as a result they are able to come to a much more truthful view of the other and of their own self. It is from here that their mutual love springs.
Not so for Maria Bertram in Mansfield Park. She steadfastly stays with a gaze fashioned through the eyes of others, and so, embittered by disappointed affection, marrying a man she dislikes, she places her hopes in what others appear to value so dearly: financial wealth, grand homes in the country and in London, and beautiful furniture.
I am, however, coming to the conclusion that perhaps the greatest irony encountered in Jane Austen is the one directed off the page at myself the reader.
I too like to claim a self-directed view of things, but to what extent am I simply under an illusion, the sort of illusion from which Emma and Mr Knightley (in Emma), Elisabeth Bennett and Mr Darcy (in Pride and Prejudice) emerge?
Perhaps the Frank Churchills I meet are the irritants I need to prompt me to look again, to recognise how much I am influenced by the dominant views to which I am unknowingly subject.
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