READER RESPONSE TO AUSTEN'S
NOVELS
Jane Austen is generally acknowledged to be one of
the great English novelists, so it is no surprise that her novels have
remained continuously in print from her day to the present.
Contemporary reviewers found much to praise in them. Reviewing Emma
for the Quarterly Review (1816), Sir Walter Scott characterized
its strengths and weaknesses:
The author's
knowledge of the world, and the peculiar tact with which she presents
characters that the reader cannot fail to recognize, reminds us
something of the merits of the Flemish school of painting. The subjects
are not often elegant, and certainly never grand; but they are finished
to nature, and with a precision which delights the reader....
Her merits
consist much in the force of a narrative conducted with much neatness
and point, and a quiet yet comic dialogue, in which the characters of
the speakers evolve themselves with dramatic effect. The faults arise
from the minute detail which the author's plan comprephends. Characters
of folly or simplicity, such as those of old Woodhouse and Miss Bates,
are ridiculous when first presented, but if too often brought forward
or too long dwelt upon, their prosing is apt to become as tiresome in
fiction as in real society.
George Henry Lewes, writing in 1852, accorded her
the status and identified issues that critics would be repeating and
arguing about for the next century and a half:
First
and foremost let Austen be named, the greatest artist that has ever
written, using the term to signify the most perfect mastery over the
means to her end. There are heights and depths in human nature Miss
Austen has never scaled nor fathomed, there are worlds of passionate
existence into which she has never set foot; but although this is
obvious to every reader, it is equally obvious that she has risked no
failures by attempting to delineate that which she has not seen. Her
circle may be restricted, but it is complete. Her world is a perfect
orb, and vital. Life, as it presents itself to an English gentlewoman
peacefully yet actively engaged in her quiet village, is mirrored in
her works with a purity and fidelity that must endow them with interest
for all time.
Appreciation of her greatness snowballed with the
publication of James Edward Austen-Leigh's Memoir and Richard
Simpson's perceptive critical essay, both in 1870. Macaulay, for
instance, called her a prose Shakespeare because of "the marvellous and
subtle distinctive traits" of her characterizations.
Austen's novels have aroused intense emotional
attachments among readers. E.M. Forster admitted to reading and
re-reading her with "the mouth open and the mind closed." Some readers
carry admiration to the point of sentimental adoration; for them, her
characters are beloved friends and Austen is dear Aunt Jane, a proper,
sedate, kindly Victorian old maid. Such readers are often called Janeites, after a short story called The
Janeites which Rudyard Kipling wrote in 1924.
Not every reader has responded positively to
Austen, however. Perplexed, Joseph Conrad wrote H.G. Wells asking,
"What is all this about Jane Austen? What is there in her? What is it
all about?" Probably the most famous rejection of Austen was penned by
Charlotte Bronte:
Anything like warmth or enthusiasm,
anything energetic, poignant, heartfelt, is utterly out of place in
commending these works: all such demonstrations the authoress would
have met with a well-bred sneer, would have calmly scorned as outré
or extravagant. She does her business of delineating the surface of the
lives of genteel English people curiously well. There is a Chinese
fidelity, a miniature delicacy, in the painting. She ruffles her reader
by nothing vehement, disturbs him with nothing profound. The passions
are perfectly unknown to her: she rejects even a speaking acquaintance
with that stormy sisterhood ... What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves
flexibly, it suits her to study: but what throbs fast and full, though
hidden, what the blood rushes through, what is the unseen seat of life
and the sentient target of death--this Miss Austen ignores....Jane
Austen was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete and
rather insensible (not senseless woman), if this is heresy--I
cannot help it.
Bronte's preference for passion over reason in
fiction is not uncommon. Horace Walpole suggested a principle that
explains the differing responses of Austen and Bronte to life and
writing novels: "This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy
to those who feel." Building on this comment, Ian Watt suggested that
Jane Austen's novels, which are comedies, "have little appeal to those
who believe thought inferior to feeling." Not all readers agree with
Bronte, however, that Austen's novels lack emotion. For Virginia Woolf,
Austen was "a mistress of much deeper emotion than appears on the
surface. She stimulates us to supply what is not there."
In addition to the question of passion, one of
the most frequent criticisms of Austen is the narrowness of her subject
matter. Her characters' interests and Austen's interests may seem
trivial, unimportant, particularly since she wrote at a time when
England was engaged in a life and death struggle with the French and
Napoleon. Though she focuses on the everyday lives and concerns of a
few families in a small country circle, her novels still have a
profound effect on many readers. Lord David Cecil offered one way to
resolve this paradox; Austen's
is a profound vision. There are other
views of life and more extensive; concerned as it is exclusively with
personal relationships, it leaves out several important aspects of
experience. But on her own ground Jane Austen gets to the heart of the
matter; her graceful unpretentious philosophy, founded as it is on an
unwavering recognition of fact, directed by an unerring perception of
moral quality, is as impressive as those of the most majestic novelists.
Another common criticism of Austen is her
complacent acceptance of the class structure of her society, its
values, and its mores. One response to this charge is to find implicit
social criticism in her novels. D.W. Harding theorized that because
Austen was torn between her perception of the cruelties and corruptions
of her society and her strong emotional attachments to family and
friends, she expressed her criticisms of society in ways that were not
necessarily conscious; he calls this covert criticism "regulated
hatred." Arnold Kettle in effect dismissed the charge of Austen's
complacency by finding its source in a historical change in society and
in literary practice:
...after Jane Austen, the great novels
of the nineteenth century are all, in their different ways, novels of
revolt. The task of the novelists was the same as it had always
been--to achieve realism, to express (with whatever innovations of form
and structure they needs must discover) the truth about life as it
faced them. But to do this, to cut through the whole complex structure
of inhumanity and false feeling that ate into the consciousness of the
capitalist world, it was necessary to become a rebel... The great
novelists were rebels, and the measure of their greatness is found in
the last analysis to correspond with the degree and consistency of
their rebellion. It was not of course always a conscious,
intellectualized rebellion; very seldom was it based on anything like a
sociological analysis. It was, rather, a rebellion of the spirit, of
the total consciousness, and it was only indirectly reflected in the
lives the writers led. Emily Bronte, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad,
outwardly appearing to conform to the accepted standards of their day,
sensed no less profoundly than the radicals Dickens and George Eliot
and Samuel Butler the degradation of human existence in Victorian
society.
THEMES IN AUSTEN'S NOVELS
In her completed novels, Austen generally explores
the same issues or questions, though she explores them from different
perspectives, under different situations, and with varied consequences.
However, this does not mean that the endings are necessarily different;
being comic novels, they all end with at least one marriage.
The
individual and society
- What is the proper relationship of the
individual to society and to others? What are the consequences for the
individual, for others, and for society when the individual ignores or
even deliberately transgresses society's rules? What are the
consequences when the individual conforms?
- How should conflict between the individual's
desires and the individual's responsibility to society be resolved? How
are the individual and society affected by the resolution, which may
range from self-fulfillment to self-sacrifice?
- Are the society and the values which Austen
presents
a portrayal of actual society, or are they an idealization, goals to be
striven for?
- Does Austen uncritically accept the values and
attitudes of her society? If so, does her acceptance of society give
her the freedom to show the limitations and perhaps even the corruption
and cruelties of her society?
- Is she concerned with the social responsibility
of the privileged? If so, does she idealize their responsibilities and
show the consequences of not fulfilling them?
- How is individual worth perceived and
determined in a class-conscious society? What is proper consciousness
of class difference and what is snobbery in Austen's view? (Modern
readers may also ask the question, is there such a thing as proper
consciousness of class difference, or is such consciousness merely one
expression of snobbery?) What are the proper class responsibilities of
the individual?
- How may concern for others be properly
expressed?
- Is constraint or limitation a condition of
living in society? (Some critics find this issue at the heart of
Austen's achievement: Martin Price suggests, "The larger irony that
informs all of Jane Austen's comic art is a sense of human
limitations." And Walter Allen believes, "Dickens recognizes no limits
at all; the art of Jane Austen is made possible precisely by the
recognition of limits.")
- Are the rigid rules of conduct in the society
Austen depicts necessary to protect the weak and the powerless and to
control aggression and violence?
- A formal cole of behavior or manners prescribes
conduct and distances feelings. But do the individuals in a society
with such a code feel less, or are they merely less able to express
emotion freely and openly? What are the advantages and the drawbacks of
living in such a society as Austen presents them? The advantages and
drawbacks may seem quite different from the perspective of a
twenty-first century reader.
- What use does the individual make of freedom,
with what consequences?
Imagination/fancy versus reason/judgment
- What are the consequences of yielding to
imagination, which may take the form of prejudice, rather than
listening to the dictates of reason?
- Do Austen's protagonists generally learn their
errors through experience and, as a result, reform? (May such a change
also be described as movement from innocence to rational experience?)
- Are any of her characters held up as flawless
models, or is even the most rational character flawed?
Love, courtship, and marriage
- What is proper love? Is it intelligent love,
and does Austen understand love "in the fullest sense," as Lionel
Trilling suggests? If so, do her protagonists naturally have the
ability to love intelligently, or do they develop it?
- What qualities and behavior lead to a happy
marriage?
EMMA
Though critics generally regard Emma as Austen's most carefully
crafted or skillfully written novel, most readers prefer Pride and
Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility. Austen herself
acknowledged that Emma might present a problem for readers, "I
am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like." And
much about Emma is indeed unlikable; she is snobbish, vain,
manipulative, power-hungry, self-deluded, often indifferent to the
feelings of others, and on at least one occasion scathingly cruel.
But do these traits necessarily make her
unlikable? Do her admirable traits redeem her, such as her love for her
father, her wit, her good judgment, her sense of social responsibility,
and her gradual admission of error? Does the comedy of watching Emma
the Egoist get her comeuppance through a series of errors and admit she
deserved her comeuppance make her likable? Although Emma knows what the
right thing to do is, she still behaves badly; does this all too common
human trait make her sympathetic because readers can identify with her?
The attitude of the narrator is another
consideration in evaluating Emma. Though most of the novel presents
Emma's point of view, an omniscient narrator tells the story. Do the
narrator's choice of language, her tone, the details she adds, and her
comments upon both Emma and the action affect the way we feel about
Emma? The narrator clearly presents Emma's faults and her misguided
behavior and unsparingly identifies them as such, but does the narrator
also suggest a sympathy or even an affection for Emma that helps to
moderate the reader's negative response to her? Or is even the
narrator's attitude unable to overcome the negative effect of her
faults and irresponsible behavior?
The last question I would like to raise about the
reader's response to Emma is this: even if Emma is unlikable
or unsympathetic, is the novel automatically unlikable or flawed?
AUSTEN WEB SITES
Jane
Austen Information Page
A miscellany, this site contains hypertext annotated
early novels; e-text of passages from novels, whole novels, light
verse, and letters; biography; jokes about Austen; critical
articles;images of Austen; link to the Jane Austen Society; and
bibliographies. Search engine of Austen_L archives and texts of all six
novels. Note: I find this site is often not accessible.
Jane
Austen Page (Mitsuhara Matsuoka)
Extensive list of links to Austen home pages and to
discussion groups, Austen chronology, works and e-texts, "academic
resources," and discussion and images of Hampshire (Austen country).
On
Liking Emma
A lecture from an honors course, Comedy and Society.
The Republic of Pemberley
Discussion group, film adaptions of the novels,
links to other Austen sites, quotes from authors about Austen, Austen's
letters, criticsm, biography, and calendars behind the novels. Check
out the Jane Austen Information Page, which includes a sensual scene, the answers to
the riddles and charades in Emma, and geneology charts for
the characters.
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