Sarah Emsley's Blog, page 18
June 25, 2018
Jane Austen At Work: The Revision of Persuasion’s Ending
Today’s guest post is by Judith Sears, a freelance writer specializing in marketing and corporate communications. A few of her short plays have been given staged readings in the Denver, Colorado area. She says she’s a lifelong Jane Austen fan, and she’s made two pilgrimages to Bath. When she was rereading the ending of Persuasion, she tells me, “Elizabeth Elliot tapped me on the shoulder and wouldn’t stop talking until I wrote it down.” She sent me the story she wrote about Elizabeth’s vulnerability as a single woman, and I’m happy to share it here, along with her guest post on the cancelled chapters of Persuasion.
Jane Austen At Work: The Revision of Persuasion’s Ending
The original draft of the last two chapters of Persuasion is the only part of a manuscript that we have of a novel that Austen subsequently revised and intended to publish.
In his Memoir of Jane Austen, Austen’s nephew J.E. Austen-Leigh writes that she finished the novel in July, 1816, but was dissatisfied with the ending: “She thought it tame and flat, and was desirous of producing something better.” In her revision, Austen expanded Chapter 10 of Volume 2 into two chapters and turned the original Chapter 11 (with some editing and punctuation changes) into Chapter 12 of the finished novel (or Chapters 22, 23, and 24 in a single volume version).
While Jane Austen could hardly write anything “flat,” there is wide critical agreement that the revision is greatly superior to the original draft. The revision develops the novel’s ending much more fully, adding events and pulling in more characters.
In this post, I’ll focus on the simple fact that most of the main characters make an appearance in the revision, whereas in the original draft only Anne, Wentworth and the Crofts, mostly offstage, are involved.
(If you haven’t read the original ending, you can find it online at Mollands.net. You can see a facsimile of the original manuscript here: Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts: Two Chapters of Persuasion.)
The chapters in question tell the climactic events that determine whether Anne and Wentworth will be reunited. The first draft acts as if Anne and Wentworth are all that matters. Their reunion is accomplished in one chapter (Chapter 10/22) with one main scene that takes place immediately after Anne has left Mrs. Smith. The reconciliation scene with Wentworth isn’t “flat.” It’s tender and rather dramatic. But, it’s an awfully quick and easy resolution to an eight and a half year problem.
And, really, in what Jane Austen world does a couple’s union involve only them? Granted, Anne and Wentworth are now more mature, and with “one independent fortune between them” they can’t be stopped, as the narrator acknowledges in both versions (original Chapter 11/23; revised Chapter 12/24). But, that’s not the whole story.
Austen knew this and her revision expands the time frame for reconciliation to two days and involves most of the main characters. A flurry of events—the arrival of the Musgroves, visits, invitations, theatre plans, the sighting of Mrs. Clay and William Elliot—twist and twirl the action towards Wentworth’s decision to declare himself in a letter.
It’s like a lively, complicated country dance and it deeply embeds Anne and Wentworth in the social world of Persuasion. They must interact with multiple personalities and influences, instead of acting as two independent wills.
As to that social world—it’s primarily a contest between the Musgroves, spontaneous and warm, and the Elliots, callous and calculating. The Elliots’ entrance to the White Hart, where the Musgroves are staying, produces a “general chill,” just as their exit produces “ease and animation” (Chapter 11/22). Prior to this, the Musgroves have been a picture of genial confusion, and later, in Chapter 12/23, talkative, open-hearted Mrs. Musgrove’s burbling about Henrietta’s engagement produces a “conscious glance” from Wentworth.
All of the important action of the revised two chapters takes place within the Musgrove circle. This and the contrast in family atmospheres suggests that warmth, informality, and the simple affection of the Musgroves are essential for Wentworth and Anne to be able to find each other. It’s not enough for Anne and Wentworth to be more mature and have one independent fortune, although they are and do. Nevertheless, the sterile Elliot household will always hamper healthy growth, whereas the Musgroves support it.
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“Placed it before Anne,” by Hugh Thomson (Wikimedia)
As an aside, if this is Austen’s point, may we not raise an eyebrow when she gently ridicules Mrs. Musgrove’s “powerful whisper” which delivers “minutiae” (Chapter 12/23) when, in the next minute, she will make all of Anne’s happiness hang on Wentworth overhearing her conversation? (It must be admitted, however, that Austen certainly knows that openness and spontaneity can have advantages and disadvantages and the Musgroves are never presented as powerhouses of discernment.)
Incorporating more characters with more schemes inevitably puts more obstacles in Anne and Wentworth’s path—and this is another improvement of the revision. The convenient offices of Admiral Croft in the first draft are too convenient and force the moment on Wentworth and Anne.
In the revised chapters, both Anne and Wentworth must act and demonstrate their ability to successfully navigate the society that thwarted them nine years earlier.
For example, the revised chapters highlight the rumors about Anne and William Elliot, providing more fodder for Wentworth’s jealousy and worry that Anne may once again be persuaded to give way to familial ambitions. In a delicate social setting, Anne must act to downplay a possible link between herself and Mr. Elliot.
Elizabeth Elliot introduces a complementary obstacle: her insulting invitation to Wentworth raises Anne’s concerns that her family’s heartless snobbery will repel Wentworth. All of these complications, of course, also build suspense, which was short-circuited in the original.
It is interesting that there is one obstacle and one major character that does not appear in the revised chapters: Lady Russell. Lady Russell, who first persuaded Anne to break the engagement with Wentworth, isn’t even a bystander. Anne, whom Lady Russell consulted about budgetary reforms at Kellynch Hall, doesn’t even think about asking Lady Russell’s advice this time around and doesn’t prioritize telling her what she’s learned about Mr. William Elliot.
Lady Russell, who values Anne as the Musgroves do, but values rank, as the Elliots do, is simply presented with a fait accompli in the final chapter in both the first and revised versions. Anne now has the life experience to trust her own judgment and to trust Wentworth’s talents and character.
Anne and Wentworth’s “little history of sorrowful interest” was first introduced in six paragraphs in Volume 1, Chapter 4. The revised chapters recapitulate that history, showing us scene by scene how the second time around, Anne and Wentworth, “more tender, more tried . . . more equal to act, more justified in acting,” achieve their happy ending.
Quotations from Persuasion are from the Norton Critical Edition (second edition), edited and with a preface by Patricia Meyer Spacks (2013). The quotation from Austen-Leigh’s Memoir is from the Penguin edition of Persuasion, edited and with an introduction by D. W. Harding (1965).
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“With eyes of glowing entreaty fixed on her,” by C.E. Brock (Mollands.net)
Elizabeth’s Epilogue
“It would be well for the eldest sister if she were equally satisfied with her situation…”
– Jane Austen, Persuasion, Chapter 24
Dear Mary,
You think you have problems! Whilst you fret about your health—and, candidly, I advise you to take Mr. Robinson’s advice and cut back on the laudanum; if you’re going to complain about your health, at least do what the apothecary tells you!—I am dealing with some truly desperate developments. The Elliot name and estate are in dire jeopardy. And, before I forget, Father has been stricken, leaving me to cope with everything, and the physician urges you and Charles to come to Bath right away.
Shortly after the announcement of Anne’s engagement to Captain What’s-his-worth, Mr. William Elliot stopped calling, which was nothing, as I told everyone, but no sooner had he left Bath than this baggage—she has no surname of dignity, you know—that I had brought to Bath and introduced into the highest society told me that she was needed at home.
I begged her to stay, as the constant praise of Anne was getting oppressive. It was tiresome, having my friends, those few true ones who are left, congratulate me about my sister’s good fortune and her supposed second bloom. Then the gabsters would rave on about her Captain and what an eligible catch he was and ask me, me, if I was jealous.
The very idea. I snapped my fan shut quite sharply and stared down the chit that had the nerve to say that to my face, let me assure you. (It was the fan you admired with the pastoral drawing, trimmed in lace, quite sets off my eyes, so Mrs. Wallis tells me.) Elizabeth Elliot … jealous!
But that was all just annoying. Brace yourself, Mary, because the woman-who-has-no-surname-of-dignity left Bath and has since turned up in a London establishment under the protection of our cousin and the Kellynch heir, Mr. William Elliot.
For the last few months with one hand she fed me sweet lies that Mr. Elliot had intentions toward me—I hope you don’t think I’m such a simpleton as to fall for that, of course not!—whilst the other hand was caressing him.
The gorge rises in me as I write.
Fortunately, Lady Russell came running to tell us the news when it first broke. It was a trial listening to her everlasting concern for our family name until I sat up very straight and reminded her how pleased she’d been that the heir had reconciled with our father. The confused look on her face as she sipped her tea was my only satisfaction in this all-around dissatisfying turn of events.
At least Father and I had the opportunity to compose ourselves before putting in our appearance at the Pump room. How the fans flipped open and the heads bent toward each other to whisper when we entered! To be grist for the on dit of a bunch of frivolous Bath chits was galling, but we carried it off with heads held high.
The next morning, Father and I went immediately to wait on our cousins, the Dalrymples, to shore up our most distinguished connection.
Ominously, both Lady Dalrymple and Miss Carteret were indisposed. We left our cards. Later, at a café, Mrs. Wallis came by to “do me the favor” of telling me the Dalrymples are not pleased that it’s known that they received the woman-with-no-surname-of-dignity on our behalf.
Upon returning home, Father wrote a note to Lady D., explaining our shock and how awfully we were used. Just as he concluded the note, he suffered a terrible tightening in his chest and collapsed. He has not risen from his bed these three days. The doctor told me to summon the family, which is why I write, and prepare for the worst.
The worst? If Father dies while still in debt, I will be dependent on Mr. Elliot to ensure that the estate pays my dowry. Of course, he has the money, but only imagine the many difficulties and delays, such a conniving blackguard might introduce just to amuse himself.
And, suppose Mr. Elliot marries that wanton? If she has convinced him thus far, what else may she convince him of?
Just imagine it! That bounder and his convenient descending on Kellynch Hall as heirs! The woman who used to be beholden to my favor, my notice, now holding my place? Opening every ball as I have done for nigh on fourteen years? Entertaining as Lady Elliot? Freckled Lady Elliot!
It is not to be borne.
If I am not married, where will I go? I cannot be beholden to those two and the only thing worse than facing her condescension would be being the object of her charity. Unendurable.
But, it occurs to me that I must apply to Anne. I fancy she didn’t care much for the woman-with-no-surname-of-dignity. I shall remind her of my role in bringing Captain Who’sits into our circle. Without my having established the Elliot’s as the fashionable place to be in Bath, do you think he would have bothered with or noticed Anne?
Yes, I shall drop a few hints and I am sure she will be quick to recognize what she owes me. Perhaps the Captain has some unattached friends that would be grateful for an introduction to an heiress of noble name. A widower Admiral would be fine, although if he were very, very wealthy—much more than Anne’s Captain—I would deign to accept a Captain. And, unlike our father, I am quite liberal on the subject of appearance. The fortune will do.
I must close now and get to the Pump Room—more important than ever to see and be seen. Lady R. can sit with Father. You and Charles should hurry to Bath as Father may not last. By the bye, I’ve fired that fraud, Mr. Shepherd, and hired someone else to attend to our financial affairs, for how could we trust the father of such a strumpet? And that’s what I shall say to his face! Something to look forward to.
Anxiously,
E.
Here’s a photo from one of Judith’s trips to Bath, of the street where the last scene in the 1995 adaptation of Persuasion was filmed.
Thirty-first in a series of blog posts celebrating 200 years of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. To read more about all the posts in the series, visit “Youth and Experience.” Coming soon: guest posts by Marcia McClintock Folsom and Deborah Yaffe.
Subscribe by email or follow the blog so you don’t miss these fabulous contributions to the celebrations! And/or follow along by connecting with me on Facebook , Pinterest , or Twitter ( @Sarah_Emsley ).
June 22, 2018
Louisa, Fanny, and Sophy: Lives of Naval Wives
Sheila Johnson Kindred is the author of the first biography of Fanny Palmer Austen, Jane Austen’s Transatlantic Sister: The Life and Letters of Fanny Palmer Austen (McGill-Queen’s, 2017), which recently received the John Lyman Book Award for Naval and Maritime Biography and Autobiography.
Regular readers of the blog may remember that Sheila and I have collaborated on several projects over the years, including a paper for the Jane Austen Society conference in Halifax last June, on “Charles and Francis: Jane Austen’s Sailor Brothers on the Royal Navy’s North American Station,” and a joint presentation at the JASNA AGM 2014, entitled “Among the Proto-Janeites: Reading Mansfield Park for Consolation in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1815” (published in Persuasions On-Line). We also created a walking tour of Austen-related sites in Halifax, which you can download here.
Sheila has done extensive original research on the life of Jane Austen’s naval brother Charles and his wife, Fanny, and she has written about the connections between their experiences and Austen’s naval novels, Mansfield Park and Persuasion. Her essays have been published in Persuasions, The Jane Austen Society Report, and the Journal of the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society, and in Jane Austen and the North Atlantic, a collection of essays I edited for the Jane Austen Society. She taught for many years in the Philosophy Department at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, and she has spoken at Jane Austen Society of North America AGMs in Quebec City, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, NY, and Washington DC, at the JASNA Chicago Region Spring Gala 2018, and at the Jane Austen Society (UK) conferences in Halifax (2005 and 2017) and Bermuda (2010). She lives in Halifax with her husband and their cat. I’m very happy to introduce her guest post for “Youth and Experience: Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.”
Naval officers’ wives during the Napoleonic Wars have long fascinated me—both the real-life ones and those found in fiction, such as in Jane Austen’s Persuasion. While researching the life of Fanny Palmer Austen, I came upon the story of Louisa Berkeley, who married a naval officer in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the same year Fanny Palmer married Charles, Jane’s younger naval brother, in Bermuda. Comparing Louisa’s actions as a naval wife with Fanny’s gave me insights into the significance of Fanny’s relationship with Charles within the naval world they shared. In the process, I discovered how aspects of Fanny’s married life found echos in Austen’s imagining of Sophy, wife of Admiral Croft, in Persuasion. Here are profiles of the diverging and diverting sea going lives of Louisa and Fanny that afforded me a greater understanding of the character of Sophy Croft in Persuasion.
Louisa Berkeley was the eldest daughter of Admiral Sir George Cranfield Berkeley, Charles Austen’s commander-in-chief on the North American Station of the navy, 1806-08. Fanny may even have met the vivacious Louisa, and her sisters, for Sir George brought his family out with him to the North American Station. After a whirlwind courtship in Halifax, Louisa married Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy in St. Paul’s Church on 16 November 1807. Hardy had been Admiral Nelson’s close friend, and captain of his flag ship, HMS Victory, at the Battle of Trafalgar, and had recently been made a baronet, accomplishments which presumably contributed to his attractiveness as a suitor. One wonders if Louisa had any clear idea of what life as a naval wife might entail. She was soon to find out.
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Lady Louisa Hardy
After the wedding, Sir Thomas was immediately sent to the Chesapeake Bay area, off the coast of Virginia, where the British navy was determined to contain French war ships already shut up in the Bay. According to a disgruntled Louisa, writing from aboard Hardy’s warship, the 74 gun Triumph, “we spent from December 1807 to April 1808 in the gloomy, desolate [Chesapeake] Bay not allowed to land as the Americans were in such an exasperated state that they might have been disagreeable” (quoted in Nelson’s Hardy and his Wife 1769-1877, by John Gore [1935]). During the whole winter the ship was kept perpetually ready for action and no fires were allowed. In these frigid and far from romantic circumstances, Louisa became pregnant with her first of three daughters. She had no regrets when “at last we were released and I returned to Bermuda where my family were, and soon after . . . [on the Triumph], we returned to England.”
It must have become very soon apparent to Louisa that sharing a naval life with Hardy would have limited attractions for her. They were mismatched in matters of personality and interests. He was a serious, unromantic and uncharismatic 38-year-old, wedded to his career in the navy, whereas she was nineteen, socially ambitious, and fun loving. She scarcely knew Hardy when she married him and their first months together on the Triumph, as she describes them, must have reduced any feelings of “fine naval fervour” that she might have originally felt. She found that she hated to be at sea and very early decided she was uninterested in her husband’s career. In subsequent years she often lived abroad with their three daughters, cultivated the friendship of foreign aristocrats and pursued a life of amusement and entertainment, unconcerned that Hardy was regularly posted on assignments at sea taking him far from England. Louisa was essentially a naval wife in name only.
Fanny held very different views and attitudes about her role as a naval wife. She had the advantage of getting well acquainted with Charles during the two years before they married. She knew him to be kind, caring, charming, entertaining, and very handsome. Beginning with their earliest days together, Fanny saw herself as Charles’s helpmate and supporter. As she lived in Bermuda, the southern base of the North American Station, she understood what the career of a serving naval officer entailed, and she willingly became a participant in naval life. She travelled with Charles on board his vessel the eighteen gun Indian between Bermuda and Halifax on a number of occasions. She experienced at least one horrific storm at sea, but this did not discourage her from sailing with him, including undertaking a North Atlantic crossing to England in 1811. She was attuned to the social role which she was expected to fulfill as flag captain’s wife in Halifax in the summer of 1810 and again during 1812-14 in England, when Charles was flag captain on the 74 gun HMS Namur, which was stationed at the Nore. During this later period, Fanny courageously accepted the challenge of making a home for their family of three daughters on board the Namur.
Some of Fanny’s naval experiences would have been known within the Austen family, and especially by Jane and Cassandra. Fanny had originally been introduced through correspondence within the Austen family and once she was in England, she and Charles paid regular visits to Chawton Cottage, where Jane and Cassandra periodically cared for their children. On one occasion when Fanny and Jane were both guests at Godmersham Park, the estate of Charles’s brother, Edward, Jane wrote to Cassandra, speaking of Fanny in familiar terms. She refers to her as “Mrs Fanny, “Fanny Senior,” “[Cassy’s] Mama”, and part of “the Charleses” (15 and 26 October 1813). She notes that Fanny appears “just like [her] own nice self,” words which suggest Jane had a warm and affectionate attitude towards Fanny. Contacts such as these allowed Jane Austen to learn about Fanny’s unique and diverse involvement as an officer’s wife in a naval world. Crucially, Fanny was able to articulate the complexities of naval life from a female point of view.
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Charles Austen, by Robert Field
Jane’s evident sensitivities to Fanny’s life as a naval wife likely influenced her creation of Sophy Croft in Persuasion. Certainly, there are some key differences between Fanny and Sophy in terms of age and appearance, perceptions of what counts as “comfortable” living on a war ship, and the absence of children to care for and nurture. However, there are striking similarities between the two women in terms of behaviour, attitudes and practical common sense.
Both woman made voyages with their husbands. Fanny sailed with Charles between the bases on the North American station and she travelled to England with him on his frigate Cleopatra in 1811. Sophy crossed the Atlantic four times and accompanied Admiral Croft on many other voyages as well. Additionally, Sophy was familiar with Bermuda, a clue that she has been with Admiral Croft on the North American Station, just as Fanny had been with Charles. Fanny periodically lived on four of Charles’s vessels; Sophy made her home on five of her husband’s ships. Both women staved off periods of sea sickness when under sail.
Both Fanny Austen and Sophy Croft were most content when sharing their husband’s lives. Fanny’s letters speak of her very great pleasure in being in Charles’s company. She frankly admits that she is “never happy but when she is with her husband” (4 October 1813). According to Sophy, “the happiest part of my life has been spent on board a ship. While we were together . . . there was nothing to be feared. Thank God!” Likewise, Jane Austen depicts the Crofts as a “particularly attached and happy” couple. Jane Austen’s appreciation of Fanny’s strong desire to support Charles, to find a community of friends, and to be his constant and affectionate companion, may have influenced her ascription of those traits to Sophy Croft.
In his biography of Jane Austen, Park Honan suggests that she drew on some aspects of[Fanny for Mrs Croft and that she admired Fanny’s “unfussiness and gallant good sense” (Jane Austen: Her Life [1997]). My research into Fanny’s articulate and candid letters written from the Namur, together with records and accounts in her pocket diary, supports this observation. They show her organizing domestic arrangements, acquiring food and necessities for her family at bargain prices and identifying books for the education of her five-year-old daughter, Cassy. In a similar vein, within her domestic sphere, Mrs. Croft proves to be practical and business-like in the matter of arranging for the tenancy of Kellynch Hall and effecting practical alterations once they are resident there.
The three naval wives in question, Louisa, Fanny, and Sophy, make up a diverse trio. Louisa proved to be largely absent from Thomas Hardy’s naval life, but Fanny supported Charles in his naval career with courage, spirit, and dedication. It is fortunate that Jane had a “sister” of Fanny’s ilk, whose richness of experience as a naval wife could contribute to Austen’s creativity when she came to draw the very likable and competent Sophy Croft in Persuasion.
Quotations are from the Penguin Classics edition of Persuasion, edited by D.W. Harding (1965), and the Oxford edition of Jane Austen’s Letters, edited by Deirdre Le Faye (4th edition, 2011).
It is likely that Jane’s sensitivities to Fanny’s naval experiences also influenced some aspects of Anne Elliot and Mrs. Harville. For a full discussion of the other naval wives and more about the resonances between Fanny and Sophy Croft, see Chapter 9 in Jane Austen’s Transatlantic Sister: The Life and Letters of Fanny Palmer Austen, by Sheila Johnson Kindred (2017).
Thirtieth in a series of blog posts celebrating 200 years of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. To read more about all the posts in the series, visit “Youth and Experience.” Coming soon: guest posts by Judith Sears, Marcia McClintock Folsom, and Deborah Yaffe.
Subscribe by email or follow the blog so you don’t miss these fabulous contributions to the celebrations! And/or follow along by connecting with me on Facebook , Pinterest , or Twitter ( @Sarah_Emsley ).
June 20, 2018
Learning to Speak
“It sometimes seems as if I had no sooner learned to talk than I was doing it wrong,” writes Rohan Maitzen in her guest post on Jane Austen’s Anne Elliot and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and “women’s long struggle to be heard on their own terms.” Rohan is an English professor and literary critic, and she lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Her essays and reviews have appeared in Open Letters Monthly, Quill & Quire, the Times Literary Supplement, and several other publications, and she blogs at Novel Readings. She created a free online guide called Middlemarch for Book Clubs, which you can find here. Rohan is an excellent guide to Middlemarch (which I know from personal experience because I took her class on George Eliot when I was a graduate student), and she recently won an award from Dalhousie University for her outstanding work as a teacher. It’s a pleasure to introduce her contribution to my blog series “Youth and Experience: Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.”
It sometimes seems as if I had no sooner learned to talk than I was doing it wrong. Over the years I have been mocked, criticized, disciplined—even, once, slapped in the face—for talking too much, or at the wrong time, or in the wrong tone of voice; at other times I have been pressured to say more, to share, to discuss, to explain, to justify. The more fluent I became with language, the more it became a double-edged sword: I have been praised for being articulate and blamed for being intimidating, applauded for arguing forcefully and shamed for “ranting.”
I eventually came to see my fraught relationship with speech—along with the experiences of other women I have seen silenced, suppressed, or (more rarely) boldly speaking out—as part of women’s long struggle to be heard on their own terms in a world that rarely welcomes their voices. History has provided the context, but it is novels—particularly Persuasion and Jane Eyre—that have given me both comfort and courage as I continue to navigate this difficult terrain.
These two novels perhaps seem an unlikely pairing: one, after all, is famous for its heroine’s reticence, the other for its heroine’s rage. For most of her novel, Anne Elliot says too little; often, in hers, Jane Eyre says far too much. Elizabeth Bennet is Jane’s more obvious cousin: from the beginning of Pride and Prejudice she says exactly what she thinks. For all the pleasure I take in Lizzie’s liveliness, though, there’s an element of fantasy to her fearless conversation. Persuasion, in contrast, offers a deeply moving representation of the suffering that comes from being unable to speak your mind, an all-too-common experience for women made all the more painful for Anne because in her world (as Louisa Musgrove’s fall from grace so clearly illustrates) self-control really is a virtue and desire truly can be a wayward force. It’s precisely because speech is so ethically and emotionally complicated for Anne that the scene at the White Hart is so suspenseful and, ultimately, so satisfying.
Jane initially errs in the opposite direction; her immoderate outbursts, her vehement demands for equality and justice, are as thrilling as Anne’s inhibitions are frustrating. But the violence of Jane’s speech proves as destructive as it is liberating; her struggle is to control it, to channel its energy so that, like Anne, she can lead a life that reconciles her desires with her principles. While Anne’s most significant speech finally breaks down the barriers set by principle and propriety, Jane’s asserts the primacy of morality over passion: “I care for myself,” she silently declares, in the face of Rochester’s urgent plea that she abandon “Conscience and Reason” in favor of their love (Volume 3, Chapter 1). Stirring as her earlier words to Rochester are—“Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless?” (Volume 2, Chapter 8)—this later moment reminds us that what we say to ourselves can be as powerful as what we say to others.
In both Persuasion and Jane Eyre, agency, not just self-expression, is the ultimate goal: the point is not for Anne and Jane simply to demand what they want, but for them to achieve what they need and deserve. “Power,” Carolyn Heilbrun observes, “is the ability to take one’s place in whatever discourse is essential to action and the right to have one’s part matter” (Writing a Woman’s Life [1988]). That’s what, in their complementary ways, Anne and Jane are seeking, and it’s what I’m after too. To an extent that might surprise those who know me and see only, or mostly, a confident and self-sufficient exterior, I still find it stressful deciding if, when, or how to speak up. I carry the psychological baggage of years of criticism, which now manifests as a tendency to brood, second-guess, and self-censor. That’s why I am inspired by women who emerge victorious from this ongoing struggle—by Anne and Jane, and even more by Austen and Brontë, who took the pen into their own hands to show us that whatever the hazards, we must and can find the words to speak for ourselves.
Quotations are from the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Jane Eyre, edited by Margaret Smith, with Introduction and revised notes by Sally Shuttleworth (2000).
Twenty-ninth in a series of blog posts celebrating 200 years of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. To read more about all the posts in the series, visit “Youth and Experience.” Coming soon: guest posts by Sheila Johnson Kindred, Judith Sears, and Marcia McClintock Folsom.
Subscribe by email or follow the blog so you don’t miss these fabulous contributions to the celebrations! And/or follow along by connecting with me on Facebook , Pinterest , or Twitter ( @Sarah_Emsley ).
June 18, 2018
Sir Walter Elliot: The Constant Reader
Susannah Fullerton has been President of the Jane Austen Society of Australia for twenty-two years. She’s the author of Jane Austen and Crime, A Dance with Jane Austen, Happily Ever After: Celebrating Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and, most recently, a memoir, Jane & I: A Tale of Austen Addiction. She runs popular literary tours to the UK, Europe, and the USA—and sometimes to Prince Edward Island, to visit Green Gables and other L.M. Montgomery-related sites—and her monthly newsletter, “Notes from a Book Addict,” is enjoyed by readers around the world. Her website is https://susannahfullerton.com.au.
A couple of years ago, Susannah contributed a guest post on “The Gypsies in Emma ” for my blog series “Emma in the Snow,” and I’m delighted to introduce her contribution to my current series, “Youth and Experience: Northanger Abbey and Persuasion .” [image error]
Jane Austen gives us several constant readers. Edward teases Marianne Dashwood about her devotion to Scott and Cowper, Fanny borrows favourite books from the library so she can read them with her sister, Mary Bennet rereads moralist works, while Catherine Morland is absorbed at least once by The Mysteries of Udolpho. But in my view, no character in Jane Austen is so totally devoted to one particular book as is Sir Walter Elliot and of course that book is The Baronetage.
The rank of Baronet was first created by King James I, who raised money for his wars by creating a new rank and selling it to men of good birth who had an annual income of ₤1000 from their estates. Many men were pressured into buying a Baronetcy. When Charles II came to the throne, he created 159 new Baronets. So with all these new titles, there was a need for a book which would provide details, estates and ranks. Several compendia of baronets and their genealogies were published from the 17th Century on. William Dugdale produced The Baronage of England (Dugdale is referred to in Persuasion: “how mentioned in Dugdale …” [Volume 1, Chapter 1]), Sir William Betham produced a Baronetage, and then John Debrett, son of a French Hugeunot who worked for a publisher, felt there was a need firstly for his 1769 New Peerage and then in 1808 his Baronetage of England. Jane Austen does not state it explicitly, but this is almost certainly what Sir Walter has lying about conveniently for his frequent perusal. It was the Who’s Who of its day and even listed extinct baronetcies—Sir Walter bewails the extinction of titles given out by Stuart Kings, and disapproves of its new titles.
He turns to this volume for consolation and to puff up his own importance, but the irony is that the rank of Baronet was not actually a very high one. His ancestors were loyal to the crown and were made baronets by Charles II, but the King sold baronetcies, so possibly Sir Walter’s ancestor bought his? The wife of a Baronet was given the honorific of Lady (Lady Russell, Lady Middleton, Lady Bertram are examples), but not with her first name (Lady Catherine keeps hers because she was daughter of an Earl) because being a baronet was one of the lower ranks. Yet Sir Walter is unjustifiably proud of being “Sir”: “nor could the valet of any new made lord be more delighted with the place he held in society” (Volume 1, Chapter 1). Jane Austen lowers his rank even further by hinting at his Scottish and Irish connections—the ranks of those countries were seen as inferior to English ones. The name Walter is Scottish, and their connections the Dalrymples are Irish.
So Jane Austen introduces us to Sir Walter as a man trapped in his own past, who constantly reads a book which fails to elevate him as much as he thinks it does. His entry in The Baronetage is given in full in the first chapter of Persuasion and contains many fascinating details. Stuart names—Mary and Elizabeth—are used again and again over the generations so as to evoke Charles II, there is reference to his ancestors “representing a borough” (Volume 1, Chapter 1), so clearly they have been Members of Parliament, and the heir presumptive is named. I find several details intriguing. The date on which Mary marries Charles Musgrove, 16 December, is Jane Austen’s own birthday. Is she showing that the future lies in the hands of women—she herself has produced novels to carry on her name, while Mary produces sons who do not bear the name of Elliot, but could inherit if William Elliot has no heir. Then there is that still-born son, born in 1789, a year which would have resonated with all contemporary readers. It was the year of the French Revolution, when legitimate male heirs were heading to the guillotine and society was overthrowing the old order. It was a year which resulted in a power vacuum, which of course Napoleon (a man of obscure birth and no rank at all) soon stepped in to fill. In England there was also a vacuum—the mad king had been incarcerated and the Regency given to his unsatisfactory son. Jane Austen wants us to think about the vacuum left by Sir Walter having no son. Will it be filled by William Elliot and perhaps the children he has with Mrs. Clay? Or will the Elliot daughters produce sons who might inherit? Loss in a family tree was a highly topical issue. Will the pen writing future entries in the Baronetage be in female hands? The Baronetage entry makes very clear that Sir Walter is the last in his direct patriarchal line, is powerless to alter the future, and is a man frozen in time, unable to adapt. All he can do is helplessly record what has happened. And the last entry we hear of him making “in the volume of honour” (Volume 2, Chapter 12) is that of Anne’s marriage to Captain Wentworth. Interestingly, Elizabeth, Mary and Anne are all names of Queens who ruled in their own right, not as spouses. Will Anne be the queen who shapes the future destiny of her family?
Elizabeth has also loved the volume and turned to it often. She and her father seem unchanging, their sterile looks still handsome and unlined. But Elizabeth is rapidly going off the precious book because it has not yet recorded her own “suitable marriage” to a man with “baronet-blood” (Volume 1, Chapter 1). She now pushes it away, with averted eyes—it pains her as it reminds her she has created no new entry in its pages.
Mary shares her father’s obsession with rank and worries that Captain Wentworth might be made a baronet which would give Anne precedence over herself. “It would be but a new creation, however, and I never think much of your new creations” (Volume 2, Chapter 12). But she moves on from the book because she has married into another family.
It is Anne, “only Anne,” who does not bother to look at The Baronetage, and who will at the end of the novel challenge all that such a book represents. She dislikes the empty ranks and titles which might have been bought. Instead, she reads the Navy List, the book of the future, in which men of energy and merit earn their ranks and face dangers, even if their complexions are ruined in the process. Anne speaks often throughout the novel of change and its effects. She herself changes during the novel—she is not fixed and sterile like her father. Sir Walter does not read the Navy Lists. He has no interest in a future in which he can see no important role for himself.
Reading is important in Persuasion—Benwick reads to lessen grief, Anne can read in Italian, she reads with joy a second proposal from the man she loves, Mary borrows library books but fails to read them and Elizabeth refuses to read what Lady Russell lends her. In Persuasion how and what one reads tells us a lot about character. Sir Walter is never mentioned as reading any other work than The Baronetage. We begin reading Persuasion by reading about a man reading his favourite book, but Jane Austen, by including The Baronetage in her novel, makes us think about who reads wisely and who reads foolishly. Who holds the pen and who will hold it in the future? Which books “make the richness of the present age”? Surely her Persuasion is one of them? Who reads works that reflect the reality of life and show what the future will hold? To read only of the past means being stuck with The Baronetage; the future is represented by the Navy List and the new poetry appearing on the scene.
The Baronetage is like a mirror for Sir Walter—he holds it up and sees reflected his own rank and title, his motto and coat of arms. But when a man of the Navy moves into Kellynch, one of the first things he does is remove a great mirror. Sir Walter’s mirror/book, Jane Austen indicates, is likely to go the same way. Jane Austen so appropriately includes in the pages of Persuasion a book which shows us the past, the present state of her most egotistical character, and also his future.
Quotations are from the Oxford illustrated editions of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (1946).
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“Few women could think more of their personal appearance than he did.” Illustration by C.E. Brock (from Mollands.net)
Twenty-eighth in a series of blog posts celebrating 200 years of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. To read more about all the posts in the series, visit “Youth and Experience.” Coming soon: guest posts by Rohan Maitzen, Sheila Johnson Kindred, and Judith Sears.
Subscribe by email or follow the blog so you don’t miss these fabulous contributions to the celebrations! And/or follow along by connecting with me on Facebook , Pinterest , or Twitter ( @Sarah_Emsley ).
June 15, 2018
Frightening Henry Tilney’s Housekeeper Out of Her Wits
Kim Wilson is the author of At Home with Jane Austen, Tea with Jane Austen, and In the Garden with Jane Austen. She’s a writer, speaker, editor, tea lover, and gardening enthusiast, a life member of JASNA, and the Regional Coordinator for JASNA Wisconsin. She lives in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and she often travels to give lectures on Jane Austen for the Road Scholars and other organizations. Her website is KimWilsonAuthor.com and she’s on Twitter @KimWilsonAuthor. She also has some Pinterest boards featuring Jane Austen, Regency, and Georgian pins. At Home with Jane Austen, “an enchanting biographical sketch” (Library Journal), was named the #1 Non-Fiction Austen-Inspired Title of 2014 by Austenprose.
When I hosted a celebration of Jane Austen’s Emma, Kim contributed a guest post on “Emma’s Accomplishments and Mrs. Elton’s Resources,” and I’m happy to welcome her back with today’s guest post on Henry Tilney’s housekeeper.
In Northanger Abbey, General Tilney proposes that he, his daughter, Eleanor, and Catherine Morland visit his son Henry’s parsonage for dinner, perhaps trying to impress Catherine with her future home if she marries Henry. “You are not to put yourself at all out of your way. Whatever you may happen to have in the house will be enough,” he tells Henry, claiming that Eleanor and Catherine will make allowance for “a bachelor’s table.” Henry knows his father, however, and returns that very day to the parsonage, telling Catherine that “no time is to be lost in frightening my old housekeeper out of her wits, because I must go and prepare a dinner for you” (Volume 2, Chapter 11). Why will the poor woman be so frightened of arranging for a dinner that includes only her master and three guests? The answer, of course, lies with the overbearing General Tilney himself.
Catherine has already observed that the general is “very particular in his eating” (Volume 2, Chapter 11). When she breakfasted with the Tilneys before leaving Bath, “never in her life before had she beheld half such variety on a breakfast‑table” (Volume 2, Chapter 5). At Northanger Abbey the same abundance prevails. The general, who loves good fruit, boasts to Catherine (in his indirect way) of the “valuable fruits” grown on his estate, especially pineapples, expensive to grow and worth as much as a guinea ($100 or more) each in London (Volume 2, Chapter 7). He drinks cocoa and coffee, both expensive articles, and at his table serves French bread, a fine, enriched bread made expensive by the inclusion of milk and eggs. The meals served to the Tilney family are obviously plentiful, varied, and expensive, and are no doubt the product of an excellent cook.
General Tilney almost certainly employs a “man-cook” rather than a woman, though perhaps not the “two or three French cooks at least” that Mrs. Bennet thinks Mr. Darcy must have in Pride and Prejudice (Volume 3, Chapter 12). A man-cook, said Sarah and Samuel Adams (who were “Fifty years Servants in different Families”), was “in all respects the same as that of a female Cook,” but was nevertheless “a requisite member in the establishment of a man of fashion,” and was thought to possess “a peculiar tact in manufacturing many fashionable foreign delicacies, or of introducing certain seasonings and flavours in his dishes.” Supported by “several female assistants . . . employed in roasting, boiling, and all the ordinary manual operations of the kitchen,” the man-cook’s attention was “chiefly directed to the stew-pan, in the manufacture of stews, fricassees, fricandeaux, &c.” He was frequently paid “twice or thrice the sum given to the most experienced female English Cook” (The Complete Servant [1825]).
The Northanger Abbey kitchen is as efficient and modern a kitchen as any chef could wish. The general has done “every thing that money and taste could do, to give comfort and elegance” to his residence; in the kitchen the “General’s improving hand had not loitered [and] every modern invention to facilitate the labour of the cooks, had been adopted” (Volume 2, Chapter 8). Among the features of the abbey’s kitchen are modern stoves and “hot closets,” which are heated cabinets with shelves to keep cooked dishes hot, “a great acquisition in Kitchens, where the Dinner waits after it is dressed,” according to the famous Regency gourmet William Kitchiner (The Cook’s Oracle [1822 edition]).
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“Puff Paste,” by Thomas Rowlandson, c. 1810 (Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University)
Jane Austen paints an appealing picture of hero Henry Tilney’s parsonage, a “new-built substantial stone house” standing “among fine meadows” in the “pretty” village of Woodston. General Tilney, who believes “there are few country parsonages in England half so good,” has taken care to make it a residence worthy of his son. There are such elegant modern features as a “semi-circular sweep” driveway and “windows reaching to the ground” in the “prettily-shaped” drawing room, which smitten Catherine Morland thinks is “the prettiest room in the world.” The dining parlour is “of a commodious, well proportioned size, and handsomely fitted up,” and there is “an excellent kitchen-garden,” stocked by the general himself (Volume 2, Chapters 7 and 11). No doubt the general has also outfitted the parsonage kitchen with conveniences, so Henry’s cook is able to prepare meals on the best modern equipment.
Henry’s “old housekeeper” may hold the office of cook as well as housekeeper, a likely occurrence, said John Perkins (“Cook to Earl Gower, Sir Matthew Lamb, and Lord Viscount Melbourn”). “The station of house-keeper is so frequently joined with other employments in the family . . . as for instance, house-keeper and lady’s maid, or house-keeper and cook” (Every Woman Her Own House-keeper [1796]). But as Henry has an income of “independence and comfort” (Volume 2, Chapter 16), he possibly employs a cook as well as a housekeeper, though she may be only a respectable woman from the village who is not highly trained. The Austens were well aware of the difficulty of finding a cook who was competent in all aspects of cookery. At their Southampton house, Molly sent up a boiled leg of mutton “underdone even for James,” Jane reported to her and James’s sister, Cassandra. “Our dinners have certainly suffered not a little by having only Molly’s head and Molly’s hands to conduct them; she fries better than she did, but not like Jenny” (7-8 January 1807). At Chawton they had better luck, Jane thought. “I continue to like our old Cook quite as well as ever. . . . Her Cookery is at least tolerable;—her pastry is the only deficiency” (31 May 1811). Indeed, as William Kitchiner noted, “such is the endless variety of culinary preparations, it would be . . . vain . . . to expect to find a cook who was equally perfect in all the operations of the spit, the stewpan, and the rolling-pin” (The Cook’s Oracle [1817 edition]).
Henry’s housekeeper has a great deal expected of her, even if she is not also the cook. John Perkins wrote that “she must be well acquainted with the business of a cook and confectioner.” In addition to shopping for food and other household commodities,
a house-keeper must be able also to form the plan of an entertainment, to draw up a bill of fare, and to order the courses for every different table; she should know what is most liked of all sorts of entries, soups, roast dishes, and side ones. . . . When an entertainment is to be made . . . she ought to form a regular plan of the whole entertainment, and make a draught of each course, as well as the dessert; ranging every one in its proper place, observing well the sizes of the dishes, and what they are to contain (Every Woman Her Own House-Keeper [1796]).
Samuel and Sarah Adams pointed out that a housekeeper was not only responsible for such planning and for directing the cook (unless she also happened to occupy that office herself), but also for “the elegant and tasteful arrangement of the table” and to see that the butler or footman had placed the dishes properly on the table to “form a pleasing, inviting, and well-grouped picture” (The Complete Servant [1825]).
Henry and his housekeeper must necessarily plan the menu according to the season. The day of the Woodston Parsonage dinner, April 8 (Jane Austen Society of North America – Wisconsin Region “A Year with Jane Austen 2018” calendar), occurs at “such a dead time of year, no wild fowl, no game,” complains General Tilney (Volume 2, Chapter 11). There is also little fresh fruit and produce available in the spring. Henry knows his father’s tastes, but John Simpson (“Cook to the late Marquis of Buckingham”) noted that “Young Men and Women Cooks are frequently at a loss in writing Bills of Fare” (A Complete System of Cookery [1813]). To assist, cookbook authors such as Simpson and Duncan MacDonald (“Late Head Cook at the Bedford Tavern and Hotel, Covent Garden”) provided sample bills of fare and “Lists of the various Articles in Season—Fish, Flesh, Fowl, Fruit, &c. for every Month in the Year” (The New London Family Cook [1808]). See accompanying figures.
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Articles in Season in April. From The New London Family Cook, by Duncan MacDonald (1808).
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Suggested bill of fare (menu) for April 8. From A Complete System of Cookery, by John Simpson (1813).
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Suggested bill of fare for April. From The New London Family Cook, by Duncan MacDonald (1808).
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A form of a dessert for winter, suitable for winter and spring, when there is little fresh fruit available. From The New London Family Cook, by Duncan MacDonald (1808).
General Tilney expects dinner to be on the table at 4:00 sharp. As the time of dinner approaches, the housekeeper, cook, and other servants would grow more anxious. The Adamses describe the nerve-wracking scene:
It requires not only great skill but the utmost attention and exertion to send up the whole of a great dinner, with all its accompaniments, in perfect order. . . . A scene of activity now commences, in which you must necessarily be cool, collected, and attentive.—Have an eye to the roast meat, and an ear to the boils,—and let your thoughts continually recur to the rudiments of your art, which at this moment must be called into practical requisition. You will endeavour that every kind of vegetable, and of sauce, be made to keep pace with the dishes to which they respectively belong—so that all may go up stairs smoking hot together, and in due order. (The Complete Servant [1825])
With so many dishes to cook and coordinate, it’s no wonder that Henry’s cook becomes distracted at one point and ruins one dish, the melted butter. Melted butter is actually melted butter sauce, a base sauce that can be flavored in many ways. How to make it properly to avoid its “oiling” (breaking down and losing its emulsion) was the subject of much debate and distress for Georgian and Regency cooks. Still, Henry and his staff must be quite relieved by how well most of the dishes turn out. Catherine sees that the dinner is a success: “She could not but observe that the abundance of the dinner did not seem to create the smallest astonishment in the general; nay, that he was even looking at the side table for cold meat which was not there. His son and daughter’s observations were of a different kind. They had seldom seen him eat so heartily at any table but his own, and never before known him so little disconcerted by the melted butter’s being oiled” (Volume 2, Chapter 11).
Quotations are from the Oxford editions of Northanger Abbey and Pride and Prejudice, edited and with an introduction by R.W. Chapman (3rd edition, reprinted 1988) and the Oxford edition of Jane Austen’s Letters, edited by Deirdre Le Faye (4th edition, 2011).
Twenty-seventh in a series of blog posts celebrating 200 years of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. To read more about all the posts in the series, visit “Youth and Experience.” Coming soon: guest posts on Persuasion by Susannah Fullerton, Rohan Maitzen, and Sheila Johnson Kindred.
Subscribe by email or follow the blog so you don’t miss these fabulous contributions to the celebrations! And/or follow along by connecting with me on Facebook , Pinterest , or Twitter ( @Sarah_Emsley ).
June 11, 2018
General Tilney, the Ogre of Northanger Abbey
“In an age when we are examining sexual predation and male power as never before, it may be revealing to cast a cold eye upon Jane Austen’s ogreish character, General Tilney,” writes Diana Birchall in today’s guest post for “Youth and Experience: Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.” Diana recently retired from her career as a story analyst, reading novels for Warner Bros Studios. She is the author of several Jane Austen-related novels, including Mrs. Darcy’s Dilemma and Mrs. Elton in America, and of plays which have been performed at JASNA events as well as at Chawton House Library. She has also written a literary biography of the first Asian American novelist, Onoto Watanna (Winnifred Eaton), who was her grandmother. Originally from New York City, she lives in Santa Monica with her poet husband Peter, librarian son Paul, and their three cats Pindar, Martial, and Catullus.
A couple of years ago, Diana contributed a story called “Mrs. Elton’s Donkey” to my “Emma in the Snow” blog series, and when I hosted a celebration of Austen’s Mansfield Park, she sent me a story about “The Scene-Painter.” Welcome back, Diana! Thank you for your essay on General Tilney, and also for sharing with us, at the end of this post, an excerpt from your work-in-progress, The Bride of Northanger.
In an age when we are examining sexual predation and male power as never before, it may be revealing to cast a cold eye upon Jane Austen’s ogreish character, General Tilney. Jane Austen knew her ogres. As a young author she was as familiar with Gothic horror tales as her still younger heroine, Catherine Morland could be. General Tilney is her parodic Gothic villain, the ironic joke being that his sensibilities do not hark back to lurid crimes of the 15th century. Rather, he is a thoroughly modern man, chiefly interested in money, materialism, and his own superiority. Far from being confined to an historical romance, he is so prevalent a type, that we can see him in many places of power even today, as if two centuries had not passed since Jane Austen wrote him into existence.
Catherine, with her imagination full of “horrid” novels, and very little knowledge of the world, has not the experience to know what to make of such a man, and misreads him at every stage, which parallels her deluded assumption of Northanger Abbey as an edifice of Gothic fiction. Her artless assumptions are one of the first things Henry Tilney notices about her, evidently finding her innocence and simplicity refreshing after a lifetime of watching his father’s signature unpleasantness and double dealing machinations.
General Tilney’s premier technique for manipulation is a florid insincerity, using repeated, empty praise, protesting one thing while doing another. The reader (if not Catherine) sees through him quickly, his false graciousness revealing him as the domestic tyrant he is. His officiousness is sulfurously on display, as when proposing a family visit to Henry’s parsonage, he says airily: “There is no need to fix. You are not to put yourself at all out of your way” (Volume 2, Chapter 11). Then he quickly switches off that hokum, and dictates his own terms rigidly arranged down to the quarter hour.
Used to this sort of thing as Henry is, it is no wonder that Catherine’s innocence and honesty are as appealing to him, as perhaps, his profession as clergyman is a solace. He smilingly tells her: “How very little trouble it can give you to understand the motive of other people’s actions…. With you, it is not, How is such a one likely to be influenced, What is the inducement most likely to act upon such a person’s feelings, age, situation, and probable habits of life considered” (Volume 2, Chapter 1).
That is what he has witnessed all his life, and it explains why such a clever man should like a pellucidly simple girl: manipulative thinking like his father’s could not be farther from the workings of Catherine’s mind. Yet Catherine is increasingly bewildered by her own growing dislike of the delightful Henry’s father. She notices how his mere presence is a troubling damper to his children:
That he was perfectly agreeable and good-natured, and altogether a very charming man, did not admit of a doubt, for he was tall and handsome, and Henry’s father. He could not be accountable for his children’s want of spirits, or for her want of enjoyment in his company. (Volume 2, Chapter 1)
Catherine’s uneasiness about her future father-in-law fuels her Gothic fantasies, as in her imaginings she builds him into a murderer, who may have killed his wife. She connects him with the evil Signor Montoni of The Mysteries of Udolpho:
And, when she saw him in the evening, while she worked with her friend, slowly pacing the drawing–room for an hour together in silent thoughtfulness, with downcast eyes and contracted brow, she felt secure from all possibility of wronging him. It was the air and attitude of a Montoni! (Volume 2, Chapter 8)
In a way she is not wrong, for General Tilney, although wealthy himself, is a fortune-hunter, his motives not dissimilar from that of his prototype Montoni. He notes Henry’s liking for Catherine only as a way to promote the match and secure the fortune he believes her to possess, led on by the rattle of John Thorpe. When he learns from the same unreliable source that there is no fortune, he dismisses Catherine with shocking rudeness, proving that he cares nothing for her or his son’s happiness. He also shows his own credulity, in believing such a rattle as Thorpe in the first place. Even when he finally ungraciously assents to the marriage, he expresses himself in contemptuous terms, giving Henry permission for him “to be a fool if he liked it!” (Volume 2, Chapter 16). Yet he himself has been the fool, or the tool of one.
Jane Austen presents a masterly exhibit of masculine, patriarchal abuse of power in her magnificently hollow portrait of General Tilney. There is also a subtle element of sexual predation, as he woos Catherine through Henry. He treats his own daughter as a submissive and slave until she is elevated to Vicountess. And he makes love to Catherine with gross flattery and subterranean sexual appeal. Catherine sees that he is “a very handsome man, of a commanding aspect, past the bloom, but not past the vigour of life” (Volume 1, Chapter 10), as he looks at her with interest. “Confused by his notice, and blushing . . . she turned away her head.” Later, she breaks rules of propriety by bursting into the Tilneys’ drawing-room. Perhaps in response to this unconventional entrance, General Tilney, alone with her for the first time, grasps the opportunity for oily gallantry with a sexual tinge, alluding to the “elasticity of her walk” (Volume 1, Chapter 13).
Whatever General Tilney’s sexual predilections, he is not a byword for open misbehavior like the Admiral Crawford of Mansfield Park. Catherine never fears for her chastity at his hands, yet she is wrong again, for he throws her out with as much attack and as little concern as if she was a discarded sexual creature.
Catherine’s overbearing host turns out to be no Gothic fancy, but tyrant enough. She concludes that “in suspecting General Tilney of murder or shutting up his wife she had scarcely sinned against his character, or magnified his cruelty” (Volume 2, Chapter 16).
The critical attention of this ill-tempered man is a nightmare to anyone not his equal in status (“Dinner to be on table directly!” [Volume 2, Chapter 6]). Perhaps it is in rising to be a General that he imbibed martinet ways, bringing his command home to his family, and illustrating in his own person and home what tyranny is. He is gracious only to his perceived peers (“They are a set of very worthy men. They have half a buck from Northanger twice a year; and I dine with them whenever I can” [Volume 2, Chapter 11]).
Northanger Abbey was written after the French Revolution, and years of riots and unrest that affected Austen’s own family. We may wonder what General Tilney’s professional role was during these turbulent years, but Austen tells us almost nothing about his past. It may be that the readers of her day would not need to have the familiar explained.
A rare clue is when Mrs. Allen learns from a friend that the Tilneys are “very rich . . . [Mrs. Tilney] had a very large fortune; and, when she married, her father gave her twenty thousand pounds, and five hundred to buy wedding-clothes” (Volume 1, Chapter 9). In Georgian England, such an heiress would not have married a pauper. And a young and wealthy married man would not be likely to go out to fight in the American Revolution, or to the India of Warren Hastings.
However the General became a General, it is not the purpose of my inquiry to try to construe his career; we may infer that he at one time enjoyed power, and is now, in retirement, abusing it in his own family. With no more active work to do, and his own approach to old age, he occupies himself with consumerism and improvements of the most aggressive forward-thinking modernity, in amusing contrast with the fantasies of Catherine, who “cared for no furniture of a more modern date than the fifteenth century” (Volume 2, Chapter 8).
One of my favorite passages shows off the General’s materialism. With his taste for having the latest things, he is absurdly self-deprecating, and suggestive to Catherine:
The elegance of the breakfast set forced itself on Catherine’s notice when they were seated at table; and luckily, it had been the General’s choice. He was enchanted by her approbation of his taste, confessed it to be neat and simple, thought it right to encourage the manufacture of his country; and for his part, to his uncritical palate, the tea was as well flavoured from the clay of Staffordshire, as from that of Dresden or Sêve. But this was quite an old set, purchased two years ago. The manufacture was much improved since that time; he had seen some beautiful specimens when last in town, and had he not been perfectly without vanity of that kind, might have been tempted to order a new set. He trusted, however, that an opportunity might ere long occur of selecting one—though not for himself. Catherine was probably the only one of the party who did not understand him. (Volume 2, Chapter 7)
Here is a snippet from my own parody-of-a-parody work-in-progress, The Bride of Northanger:
“It is the happiest day I ever spent,” Catherine declared, as they sat down to tea at their own table, spread with their own new china set, General Tilney’s wedding-present, which Catherine had not before seen.
He was a connoisseur in china, as in many other things, and Catherine could not but admire the delicate gold-and-white dishes and cups, in their prettiness and abundance, however empty was the sentiment behind the sending.
“Happiness is a very proper state in a new bride,” observed Henry, “and I may take the opportunity to tell you that I am happy, too. Upon my word, my father did us well; that is a set that might last us all our lives, even if we have as large a family as yours.”
Catherine blushed at this reference, and then felt it ungracious to have a secret hope that using the china would not always make her think of the giver.
“The gold leaves are very pretty,” she said, taking up a cup. “I never saw any thing like these little symbols woven round the edges. What do you think they signify?”
“I do not know. I had not observed,” said Henry, examining a saucer closely. “You are right, however, they look almost like letters, do they not?”
“Not in any language I ever saw. Is it Russian? Is it Hebrew? Is it Arabic?”
Henry squinted at length, and finally said, “No. I perceive they are English letters, but they are so very small, I do not think they can possibly be read without a magnification glass. We have not one here. I should have to send to Cambridge for such a thing.”
“Well, I wish you would. If there is some secret writing on our china, I should like to know what it says. Do you think your father knows about it?”
“Most certainly. My father does nothing without deliberation. And he had this china made up especially for you—he told me so, in the letter that accompanied it. I can’t think what he means by this.”
“Perhaps the letters are a motto of some sort,” suggested Catherine. “My mother has a set of plates that have a blessing on them, and the words, Hunger is the Best Sauce.”
“Somehow I feel it is not that,” said Henry dryly.
The eyes of the young husband and wife met.
“’Tis very strange,” said Catherine. “Are you quite sure you cannot make out any words at all? I could not, but then I only know English.”
“It does not look like any thing else,” said Henry doubtfully, “it might be Latin, but so tiny…. Does this look like the letter T to you?”
“Not very much—oh, yes, perhaps it might.”
“I think it is English. T, C, I . . . something . . . L, A, M, I believe, only the size of pinpoints.”
“But that does not mean any thing, Henry.”
“I cannot tell,” he said slowly, “but I think the letters may be written backwards. Then it could be—Maledict. No, surely not. I cannot make out any more.”
He put the saucer down, rather hard.
“That does not sound much like a blessing,” Catherine faltered.
The young couple sat silent, as they each thought of what the words might mean, and what was the opposite of a blessing.
“I suppose I must write to thank your father,” said Catherine reluctantly, “but Henry, I hope you will not take it amiss if I say I prefer not to use this set of china.”
“No, I’d like to break every piece,” he said savagely.
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“It was the air and attitude of a Montoni!” Illustration by C.E. Brock (from Mollands.net)
Quotations are from the Oxford edition of Northanger Abbey, edited by R.W. Chapman, reprint edition of 1983.
Twenty-sixth in a series of blog posts celebrating 200 years of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. To read more about all the posts in the series, visit “Youth and Experience.” Coming soon: guest posts by Kim Wilson, Susannah Fullerton, and Rohan Maitzen.
Subscribe by email or follow the blog so you don’t miss these fabulous contributions to the celebrations! And/or follow along by connecting with me on Facebook , Pinterest , or Twitter ( @Sarah_Emsley ).
June 8, 2018
Coincidence in Persuasion
“Coincidence can be an important element in the novelist’s armoury, providing it is handled with discretion,” writes Maggie Lane in today’s guest post for my blog series celebrating 200 years of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. Maggie is the author of many books, including Jane Austen’s World, Jane Austen and Food, and Jane Austen and Names. Her most recent books are Growing Older with Jane Austen (Hale, 2014), which is about the concept of ageing and older characters in Jane Austen’s work and times, and On the Sofa with Jane Austen (Hale, 2016), a selection of essays first published in Jane Austen’s Regency World magazine on topics as diverse as hairstyles and heroes, nature and needlework. Maggie is Editor of the Jane Austen Society (UK) Newsletters and Annual Reports. It’s my pleasure to introduce her guest post on coincidence in Persuasion.
Coincidence can be an important element in the novelist’s armoury, providing it is handled with discretion. “Mrs. Smith had been able to tell her what no one else could have done” (Volume 2, Chapter 10). The episode towards the end of Persuasion, when Anne Elliot calls on an old schoolfellow with whom she has lost touch, only to find that she is the widow of Anne’s cousin’s intimate friend, and can give information about Mr. Elliot’s shady past and dubious morals that Anne could not have obtained from any other source, has been found unsatisfactory by many readers. Objections can be made on two counts. The fact of the relationship itself may seem too far-fetched. To counter this, it could be argued that within a much smaller national population, of whom the gentry formed only a tiny part, it was inevitable that such chains of acquaintance and coincidence should emerge quite often. This is what we might call the “small world” phenomenon. Known even to ourselves, Jane Austen’s contemporaries may not have found it at all unlikely.
The second more specific objection, the plausibility of Mrs. Smith’s being able to produce corroborating evidence in the form of a letter, is less easy to defend. Here, surely, Jane Austen is stretching credulity, and hoping to get away with it at a point in her story where a dramatic denouement is the convention, the pace of reading quickens, and critical faculties may be laid aside in the excitement of nearing the end. Mrs. Smith gives the best explanation she can, though it is a rather feeble one: the letter from Mr. Elliot to Mr Smith “happened to be saved; why, one can hardly imagine” (Volume 2, Chapter 9).
We know that Jane Austen was suffering debilitating illness as she wrote Persuasion, and though she completed it and moved on to begin a new novel, she strangely did not submit it to her publisher—nor did she plan to do so for “a twelvemonth” as she told her niece Fanny Knight (13 March 1817). The best explanation for this delay is that she was dissatisfied with her own work. If so, she is more likely to have been dissatisfied with later than earlier passages, as her weakness took hold. What is certain is that Persuasion begins at a measured pace, taking its time to introduce us to a new imaginative world, with situations and characters promising a novel quite as long as Emma or Mansfield Park, but that it seems to come to a conclusion in a rush of quickly tied loose ends. This theory is well supported by comparing the coincidence of the Mrs. Smith narrative with the way Austen handles an even greater coincidence at the beginning of the novel, without arousing the least uneasiness in her readers.
Consider how we would react if Austen had written an opening chapter focussing on the heroine’s emotional history (as many a novelist might indeed have begun such a story) in which we learnt about the broken engagement to Captain Wentworth; and if this had been followed, a chapter or two later, by his sister turning up as the new tenant of Anne’s home. Too much of a coincidence, we would feel, spoiling the story from the start. But Austen has cleverly avoided that trap. While she gives us the outline of Elizabeth’s disappointment in Mr. Elliot early on, along with much other family history, she withholds the equivalent back story of Anne. We are introduced to Anne, we see through her eyes the tragicomedy of her father’s retrenchments and reluctant agreement to let Kellynch, we warm to her delicate personality. But it is only after the Crofts have presented themselves as likely tenants that we learn the most important thing about the heroine, the regrets and enduring love for one man which have clouded her youth.
This “little history of sorrowful interest” (Volume 1, Chapter 4) is so deeply involving that we are carried beyond the fact of the Kellynch tenancy and give it no great critical thought as we anxiously anticipate what this will mean for Anne. It helps, too, that Anne herself does not regard the Crofts’ coming as an unlikely coincidence, only as an event of painful emotion. The complex opening chapters of Persuasion have not always been credited with the high level of control, the fine artistic judgement, which Austen here displays. In August 1815, when she began this novel, she was surely writing at the height of her powers.
Her masterly touch is in evidence again halfway through the novel on the first appearance of Mr. Elliot in person. Undeniably, it is a coincidence that he should be on the shore at Lyme at exactly the same time as Anne. But what the circumstance loses in implausibility, it gains in dramatic power. A mysterious stranger, an openly admiring glance, the rekindling of Captain Wentworth’s feelings for Anne as a result of another man’s admiration: all this is achieved by the clever stroke of bringing Mr. Elliot to Lyme. True, Austen could have invented a passing stranger, never heard of again, if Captain Wentworth’s reaction were all that mattered; but the passage has an afterlife. What Anne later thinks of as “a cousinly little interview” (Volume 1, Chapter 12) before they are aware of their relationship gives them a warmer interest in one another when their real acquaintance develops in Bath. This extends to the reader: Mr. Elliot interests us more, seems a more serious suitor for Anne, than if he appeared first as the protégé and intimate of Sir Walter and Elizabeth. By virtue of this prior meeting he seems to belong to Anne, and it is she who must assess his worth and withstand his pursuit. And when Captain Wentworth follows her to Bath, the jealousy he quickly conceives of Mr. Elliot has its foundation in the scene on the beach. By linking Anne’s Lyme experiences with those she will encounter in Bath, Austen weaves the parts of her story together. For all these reasons, this use of coincidence is artistically justified.
This passage serves to prove that without some degree of coincidence, a fictional world would not draw together so satisfyingly. A novel is art, not life, and we expect from it the unity and closure which often elude in real life, without the author seeming to manipulate the puppet strings too much. So we should not be surprised to find coincidence in some form or other in most of Austen’s novels. Only in the circumstance of Mrs. Smith’s box of old papers, brought with her to Bath, does it jar. And, I suggest, Jane Austen knew it.
Quotations are from the Cambridge University Press edition of Persuasion, edited by Janet Todd and Antje Blank (2006), and the Oxford Edition of Jane Austen’s Letters, edited by Deirdre Le Faye (4th Edition, 2011).
Twenty-fifth in a series of blog posts celebrating 200 years of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. To read more about all the posts in the series, visit “Youth and Experience.” Next week, we’ll turn back to Northanger Abbey, with guest posts by Diana Birchall and Kim Wilson, and then we’ll have two more weeks on Persuasion before the series ends with a guest post by Deborah Yaffe on Captain Wentworth’s letter.
Subscribe by email or follow the blog so you don’t miss these fabulous contributions to the celebrations! And/or follow along by connecting with me on Facebook , Pinterest , or Twitter ( @Sarah_Emsley ).
June 4, 2018
L.M. Montgomery’s Halifax: A Literary Soirée, June 18th
L.M. Montgomery lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, when she was a student at Dalhousie University in 1895-96 and then when she worked as a journalist at the Halifax Daily Echo in 1901-1902. I’m helping organize an event in Halifax on June 18, 2018:
L.M. Montgomery’s Halifax: A Literary Soirée, in support of Project Bookmark Canada
Women’s Council House, 989 Young Avenue, Halifax, NS, 7pm
If you happen to be in Halifax then, I hope you’ll consider joining us![image error]
Download an invitation here.
All are welcome, and the suggested donation is $20. Our Halifax Reading Circle for Project Bookmark is celebrating the first three Bookmarks in the Maritimes, for No Great Mischief, by Alistair MacLeod (2015), Barometer Rising, by Hugh MacLennan (2017), and “The Gable Window,” by L.M. Montgomery. The Montgomery Bookmark plaque will be unveiled in Cavendish, PEI on June 24th. We’re also keen to see more Bookmarks in the Maritimes, and we’ve been reading works by Rita Joe, Budge Wilson, George Elliott Clarke, and others, to find passages to recommend to Project Bookmark for consideration.
At our celebration on June 18th, Alexander MacLeod, Associate Professor of English at Saint Mary’s University, is going to talk about connections among the first three Bookmarks in the Maritimes. Kate Scarth, Chair of L.M. Montgomery Studies at the University of Prince Edward Island, will talk about Montgomery’s time as a student at Dalhousie University and as a journalist at the Daily Echo. Budge Wilson, author of Before Green Gables, and Mike Hamm of Bookmark II Halifax will read from L.M. Montgomery’s work, and I’ll read from her journals and talk about her love of Point Pleasant Park. Laurie Murphy, Executive Director of Project Bookmark, will describe the literary trail of Bookmark plaques across Canada. The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia is co-sponsoring the event with our Halifax Reading Circle, and Marilyn Smulders, Executive Director of the WFNS, will be our emcee. There will be live music, tea and squares, and raffles for Elly MacKay “Anne” prints, Tundra editions of the Anne novels, tickets to Anne of Green Gables, The Musical, and more.
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Women’s Council House, Halifax
Please join us on June 18th to celebrate L.M. Montgomery and writing set in the Maritimes! We’d love to know if you’re able to attend—here’s the link to the Facebook event, so you can let us know you’re coming.
If you’re not able to be there in person, but you’d like to donate to help build more Bookmarks in the Maritimes, you can make a donation on the Project Bookmark Canada website.
I’m excited about the event, and about future Bookmarks in our region and throughout Canada. Regular readers of my blog will know about my interest in travelling across Canada (I wrote about my road trip “From Halifax to Vancouver and Home Again” a couple of years ago, and about my pilgrimage to see the Carol Shields Bookmark in Winnipeg). I love the idea of a “literary Trans-Canada highway,” to borrow Kristen den Hartog’s phrase, and it’s been a pleasure to volunteer for Project Bookmark over the past few years.
For more information:
A Bookmark for Prince Edward Island: Lucy Maud Montgomery’s “The Gable Window,” at Project Bookmark
An article by Hughena Matheson about the Halifax Reading Circle
An article about the No Great Mischief Bookmark, which I wrote for the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia newsletter Eastword
My “L.M. Montgomery in Nova Scotia” page
Here are a few of the photos I took last week at the Old Burying Ground in Halifax, which Montgomery fictionalized as “Old St. John’s Cemetery” in Anne of the Island:
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Kingsport (aka Halifax) “has other historic spots also, which may be hunted out by the curious, and none is more quaint and delightful than Old St. John’s Cemetery at the very core of the town…. ‘I’m going across to Old St. John’s after lunch,’ said Anne. ‘I don’t know that a graveyard is a very good place to go to get cheered up, but it seems the only get-at-able place where there are trees, and trees I must have. I’ll sit on one of those old slabs and shut my eyes and imagine I’m in the Avonlea woods.’ Anne did not do that, however, for she found enough of interest in Old St. John’s to keep her eyes wide open. They went in by the entrance gates, past the simple, massive, stone arch surmounted by the great lion of England.”
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I find it fascinating to read about places in Halifax Montgomery disliked (there are many) and places she liked (a few, including the Public Gardens and Point Pleasant Park). For example: “Halifax is the grimiest city in Canada—I know it is!!” (March 16, 1902). We thought about using that line on the invitation for the literary soirée, but we settled on “Even Halifax is pretty now. The trees are respectably leafy and every grass plot is gay with dandelions” (June 2, 1902).
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June 1, 2018
Anne Elliot’s Journeys of Body and Mind
Hazel Jones says she is “a confirmed Austen addict, having fallen in love with Henry Tilney at the age of 11,” although she tells me she has “since been unfaithful to him with Mr. Darcy, Captain Wentworth and Mr. Knightley.” Hazel tutors adult residential courses and she has lectured at various venues across the UK as well as speaking at Austen events in Australia, the USA and the Netherlands. Her first book, Jane Austen & Marriage, was published in 2009 and it was reissued in paperback in 2017. Jane Austen’s Journeys was published in 2014 and her new book, The Other Knight Boys: Jane Austen’s Dispossessed Nephews, is due out later this year. I’m very happy to introduce her contribution to “Youth and Experience.”[image error]
“One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it,” Anne Elliot claims near the end of Persuasion, and by then where has she not suffered? Yet Jane Austen delineates subtle alterations in the intensity of her heroine’s suffering in each location and the gradual widening of physical and mental horizons on her journey from passive acceptance to active engagement. For Anne to progress beyond regret for what might have been, she must re-learn cheerfulness and confidence, to trust in her own powers of self-determination and self-expression. It proves a slow and painful process, but on the journey from the deadening insularity of Kellynch to the busy streets of Bath, the inextricably linked miseries of Anne’s past and present assume an increasingly hopeful, thrillingly romantic potential.
Compared to Jane Austen’s other heroines, with the exception of Emma Woodhouse, Anne can justifiably describe herself as “at home, quiet, confined” (Volume 2, Chapter 11), a confinement as much psychological as physical. The association of place and character is always significant in Austen’s fiction and change of location a test of integrity, calling for adaptation while keeping faith with self-esteem and principles. Wherever Austen’s heroines happen to be, they are essentially what they always were; they none of them “perform to strangers.” Through their journeys they learn something of the world and discover where, and with whom, they do and do not belong. This is true for Anne Elliot too, but with a distinct difference. She is at least six years sadder and wiser than previous heroines and in her case it is a matter of giving up where she thinks she belongs and regaining the man with whom she already knows she belongs. For Anne, geographical change, though largely within one county, breaks the cycle of isolation and stasis in which she is trapped. Her journeys between Kellynch Hall, Uppercross, Winthrop, Lyme, Kellynch Lodge and Bath ease her away from a present damaged by past events towards hope.
Wherever Anne Elliot travels within the physical boundaries of Somerset, her “little history of sorrowful interest” accompanies her, colouring inner and outer landscapes in shades of autumn and winter. The vocabulary of suffering and loss dominates the first four and a half chapters based at Kellynch, where Anne”s existence is expressed in negative terms: of “inferior value” to her father, she is “haggard … faded and thin” a “nobody” whose word carries “no weight.” Disappointments and oppositions, miseries and regrets, proliferate. The positives – love, happiness, “exquisite felicity”—are limited to two short paragraphs in Chapter Four, emphasising their transience and obliteration eight years previously. Small wonder Anne Elliot never smiles. Kellynch Hall, valuable to Sir Walter and his eldest daughter as a possession conferring privilege and status, is precious as a “beloved home” to Anne alone, the only place she has ever experienced happiness, albeit in the past. In fact, Kellynch is closely identified with looking back: Sir Walter’s copy of the Baronetage records the Elliots’ rise to honour and property in the seventeenth century, when a baronet might live like a baronet without incurring huge bills. While Sir Walter finds a temporary refuge from his financial predicament in his book of books, Anne finds some consolation in hers, the Navy List.
The novel’s insistence on time passing serves to mark the characters’ moral preoccupations—Sir Walter’s pride in his perennial handsomeness “amidst the wreck of the good looks of every body else,” his ruinous self-indulgence and gradual descent into debt; Elizabeth’s thirteen years of “laying down the domestic law at home,” taking precedence at balls, unsuccessfully advertising her eligibility during the London season and inwardly seething over her rejection by the heir to the Kellynch estate (Volume 1, Chapter 1). Seasons at Kellynch come and go with monotonous regularity, effecting little change. Anne’s suffering dates from the same period, but apart from thirteen years of missing a mother, almost eight of mourning a lost lover have exacted a greater toll, in “an early loss of bloom and spirits.”
It was no creed of Jane Austen’s that “such sort of Disappointments kill anybody” (Letter 109, 18-20 November 1814), a no-nonsense attitude evident throughout her novels, but in Persuasion, Anne’s relinquishing of Wentworth is a kind of death, a “sacrifice” of future happiness, occasioned by being “forced into prudence” at the age of nineteen. Anne is the victim of that “youth-killing dependence” predicted by Lady Russell as the certain consequence of an engagement to Wentworth; with one form of dependence, on a naval officer who had yet to make his fortune, exchanged for another, on a father thoughtlessly squandering his. Eight years in one location, with “no aid … given in change of place” (Volume 1, Chapter 4), have failed to accomplish a “sufficient cure” for Anne’s heartache. The significance of that one word “sufficient” becomes apparent in a single, precious shred of hope—“in favour of his constancy, she had no reason to believe him married.”
Anne’s painful existence has become habitual, but at the same time sustaining. Suffering reminds her that she is alive, that love was once possible, a state of mind preferable to Elizabeth’s cold insouciance and sense of ill-usage. Kellynch, redolent with a lover’s passion and the misery of parting, and freighted with past pleasure and present sorrow, is the only place Anne can connect with Wentworth. She visualises him there when the Crofts take over the lease, “and many a stroll and many a sigh were necessary to dispel the agitation” (Volume 1, Chapter 4). The idea of a Captain Wentworth in the flesh rather than as a “softened down” memory, revives all of Anne’s former pain in full force.
The first journey Anne makes away from familiar physical and psychological territory, is undertaken reluctantly, but her spirits are “improved by change of place and subject, by being removed three miles from Kellynch” (Volume 1, Chapter 6). At Uppercross a mental readjustment is necessary within the “cheerful character” of the little commonwealth of both houses at Uppercross, where Kellynch preoccupations are no concern of the Musgroves. They live very much in their own all-encompassing present; the past that paralyses Kellynch exercises no authority here, except, at first, over Anne. She feels her own “nothingness” within this self-absorbed family circle, yet this is not what her experiences at Uppercross should be teaching her. Her worth to the Musgroves is clear to them, if not to Anne. She is adaptable and sympathetic, a ready, if reluctant ear for everyone’s complaints and counter-complaints.
Thankfully, this state of anaesthetised tranquillity cannot last. She is “electrified” out of her comfort zone by Wentworth’s arrival at Uppercross. From this point on, she is shocked into recognising an insistent, trembling life force tingling through every nerve. The passive suffering of her Kellynch existence is jolted into “agitation,” “shudderings,” “confusion” and blushing as her body reacts in ways contrary to the mind’s directives. To begin with, she persuades herself that she will learn to be “insensible” to Wentworth’s close proximity, but her acute agitation, echoed in Austen’s agitated vocabulary and syntax, is betrayed by her mental and bodily responses on their first meeting:
a thousand feelings rushed on Anne, of which this was the most consoling, that it would soon be over … she heard his voice—he talked to Mary; said all that was right; said something to the Miss Musgroves, enough to mark an easy footing: the room seemed full—full of persons and voices—but a few minutes ended it …
“It is over! it is over!” she repeated to herself again, and again, in nervous gratitude. “The worst is over!” (Volume 1, Chapter 7)
Far from being over, painful encounters with Wentworth are only just beginning. They repeat the same cycle, moving from despair to hope, to repression, but physical responses prove barely controllable and hope sneaks in under the radar. Anne’s vain attempt to impose rational thought on her emotional and bodily reactions, extends to a kind of painful satisfaction in his dismissive words on her appearance:
“So altered that he should not have known her again!” These were words … of sobering tendency; they allayed agitation; they composed, and consequently must make her happier. (Volume 1, Chapter 7)
When Wentworth makes electric physical contact in removing little Walter’s sturdy arms from around her neck, “a confusion of varying, but very painful agitation” succeeds, which only “a long application of solitude and reflection” quietens (Volume 1, Chapter 9). This is hardly a sober allaying of emotional or physical turbulence. She might be silent, but her body language speaks volumes.
The “pleasures” on the walk to Winthrop reflect Anne’s frame of mind— “the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges” and the recalling of various poetic lines redolent of autumnal change and decay. As a distraction technique, it fails. She cannot escape the conversation going on between Wentworth and Louisa, in particular on the subject of love:
The sweet scenes of autumn were for a while put by—unless some tender sonnet, fraught with the apt analogy of the declining year, with declining happiness, and the images of youth and hope, and spring, all gone together, blessed her memory. (Volume 1, Chapter 10)
Not the kind of blessing most heroines would welcome, and the narrative voice hints that indulging in such comforts might be counter-productive. Brighter prospects, possible after a little active intervention, are evidenced in the image of the farmer preparing the fallow ground, “counteracting the sweets of poetical despondence, and meaning to have spring again.” If the pains of the present are rooted in Anne’s past mistake, so are the hopes for the future and autumn proves more promising at Uppercross than Anne could possibly have imagined. In the case of the Winthrop walk, she hears enough to detect a “degree of feeling and curiosity about her” in Wentworth’s questioning of Louisa and on the way back to Uppercross, he assists her into the Crofts’ gig. There are signs that Anne, too, will be granted spring again, but her interpretation is cautious—she cannot allow herself the luxury of hope: “He could not forgive her,—but he could not be unfeeling” (Volume 1, Chapter 10). The events of the year ’06, known only to themselves, generate both intimacy and estrangement. On the journey towards reconciliation, they move forwards and backwards in time simultaneously. Daily encounters with her former lover revive Anne’s suffering in full force—her feelings “so compounded of pleasure and pain, that she knew not which prevailed”—but in altered proportions to the unremitting hopelessness experienced at Kellynch. The physical removal to Uppercross effects a mental shift, but still not sufficient to overcome Anne’s accustomed pessimism and allow her to acknowledge Wentworth’s returning interest.
Something must happen to dispel Anne’s debilitating lack of energy to reclaim the man she loves and the transformation begins at Lyme. A seventeen-mile journey transports her into a promising, unfamiliar environment, of high cliffs, “green chasms,” “romantic rocks” and “luxuriant growth.” In only two chapters, smiles come more easily as she experiences “amusement” on three separate occasions, together with “pleasant feelings” and “great pleasure.” Jane Austen’s love of Lyme, formed over two holidays there in 1803 and 1804, suffuses the description of the place and its immediate environs, but it is in the scenes she goes on to describe that the worth of Lyme comes to be understood in terms of Anne Elliot’s returning confidence. This is the desired cure, rather than the fading out of her lingering constancy to Wentworth, although at Lyme, opportunities for a second attachment present themselves. Anne’s body as well as her mind responds to the curative properties of the sea, thus increasing her physical appeal. She is earnestly appraised by Mr. Elliot on the seashore, receives a “bright look” from Wentworth and is the conscious object of “some dawning tenderness” in Captain Benwick. Male admiration serves, in collaboration with the sea breeze, to improve Anne’s complexion and animate her spirits.
Greater pleasure is experienced in Lyme than in any location so far, but along with the peaks come the troughs. Anne’s dual loss, of Kellynch and of Wentworth, brings into sharp focus what home and companionship constitute for others. For the sociable Musgroves at Uppercross it is open house and everyone welcome. For the Crofts, wherever they are together is home. In the Harvilles’ cramped but ingeniously fitted up lodgings at Lyme, Anne’s head and heart respond to “the picture of repose and domestic happiness” it presents and she experiences “a great tendency to lowness” as she believes that the chance has gone for closer ties with Wentworth’s brother-officers (Volume 1, Chapter 11).
She is drawn to James Benwick in particular by the strength of a common grief, his worn on his sleeve, hers hidden. Here is a man whose very recent loss appears as irrevocable as her own; Fanny Harville dead, Frederick Wentworth dancing attendance on Louisa Musgrove, as good as. She foresees future hope in Benwick’s life, while denying it in her own: “‘he has not, perhaps, a more sorrowing heart than I have. I cannot believe his prospects so blighted for ever … He will rally again, and be happy with another’” (Volume 1, Chapter 11).
Acting on this perceptive premise, she attempts to reason him out of his addiction to the kind of poetry “which imaged a broken heart, or a mind destroyed by wretchedness.” The fortifying selection of prose she recommends is of course familiar to her, from her eight year struggle against similar afflictions at Kellynch, but it is less than a week since the walk to Winthrop, when she herself conjured up poetic lines on declining happiness and withered hope. The subject raises, for the first time, a touch of humour, as Anne reflects on the irony of “coming to Lyme to preach patience and resignation … nor could she help fearing … she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination” (Volume 1, Chapter 11).
At last we see signs that Anne Elliot is capable of eloquence, but not yet in her own interests. She is listened to with gratitude and interest by Captain Benwick and if Harville is aware of her sympathetic exertions, so is Wentworth, but he and Anne never communicate beyond “the common civilities.”
Louisa’s fall from the Cobb causes widespread suffering. Anne alone stays rational; although her “wretchedness” is mentioned, it is not elaborated. She has enough to do in directing operations. Her decisive actions win Wentworth’s admiration, “‘if Anne will stay, no one so proper, so capable as Anne!’” spoken “with a glow, and yet a gentleness, which seemed almost restoring the past” (Volume 1, Chapter 12). Anne blushes with emotion at the intimacy implied in the use of her first name, and on the journey back to Uppercross, Wentworth’s appeal to her judgement is interpreted as “a proof of friendship, and of deference for her judgement, a great pleasure.” Even though she persuades herself that “she was valued only as she could be useful to Louisa,” she does at least recognise that she is valued.
A return to the familiar, unchanging landscape of Somerset threatens to undo the rejuvenating aspects of the sea, with Anne’s final days at Uppercross following the same pattern of self-effacing usefulness as the first. Alone on a wet November day, convinced that Louisa will recover and marry Wentworth, she indulges in the most desolate view of the future to date:
A few months hence, and the room now so deserted, occupied but by her silent, pensive self, might be filled again with all that was happy and gay, all that was glowing and bright in prosperous love, all that was most unlike Anne Elliot!
The hopes raised at Lyme seem buried, but they are robust enough to surface again. As she leaves, her thoughts are the usual compound of pain and pleasure:
Scenes had passed at Uppercross, which made it precious. It stood the record of many sensations of pain, once severe, but now softened; and of some instances of relenting feeling, some breathings of friendship and reconciliation, which could never be looked for again, and which could never cease to be dear. (Volume 2, Chapter 1)
A brief period at Kellynch Lodge acts as a watershed between the dramatic events at Lyme and the removal to Bath; between the lowest point of Anne’s despondency and a lightening of spirits. Anne is on familiar territory once more, but with altered perceptions. Lady Russell notices and compliments her improved looks and Anne has “the amusement of connecting them with the silent admiration of Mr. Elliot, and of hoping she was to be blessed with a second spring of youth and beauty” (Volume 2, Chapter 1). She becomes aware of a mental change in attitude to her former home. Superseded by Uppercross and Lyme concerns, Kellynch affairs are now of secondary interest. The Crofts prove more responsible caretakers than her father and, in Anne’s opinion, painful though the thought may be, deserve to occupy her former home. No longer is suffering attached to the thought of Wentworth at the Hall; there is a greater degree of apprehension in imagining an encounter taking place under Lady Russell’s eagle eye. From this point, having learnt to leave Kellynch regrets behind her, Anne begins to focus on redressing her own situation.
Of all the locations Anne loves or comes to love, Bath is where she suffers least and achieves most. Her ingrained dislike stems from the circumstance of having been three years at school in the city after her mother’s death and from passing a winter season there with Lady Russell following the break with Wentworth. It is a sign of Anne’s altered mentality that in Bath, the deadening weight of the past loses much of its influence, although it appears at first that she will be subject to the same kind of stultifying confinement experienced at Kellynch, since exclusivity is still Sir Walter’s chief preoccupation. He and Elizabeth congratulate themselves on the lofty situation of their house in Camden Place, from where they look down on the city spread beneath them and attend none but the most prestigious private parties. Lady Russell has a house in slightly lower Rivers Street; the Crofts are lower still, in Gay Street, leading off the Circus. The Musgroves are in the centre of things, at the White Hart Hotel and Mrs. Smith in Westgate Buildings on the edge of gentility, close to the hot bath. Viscountess Lady Dalrymple leases a house in Laura Place, on the fashionable eastern side of the river. Sir Walter’s rank-obsessed vision appears to dominate character placement in the city, but a more democratic Bath belongs to the sociable Musgroves and Crofts, who are happy where they are, able to take full advantage of the pleasures on offer: the theatre, the shops, the lively public spaces.
Bath’s winter season provides Anne with company and several escape routes—to Mrs. Smith’s lodgings, to the White Hart, to the thronged streets, where she frequently sees the Crofts—allowing an autonomy impossible at Kellynch. Rather than closing life down, as Anne had anticipated, Bath facilitates an opening up and her previous anxieties are succeeded by more pleasant concerns. To begin with, Wentworth is relegated to the background, as Mr. Elliot occupies centre stage in Anne’s thoughts and conjectures. She smiles frequently at and with him and feels “agreeable sensations” when told of his admiration. Because he listens to her, she speaks with growing confidence and at greater length. At Camden Place, Anne is able to smile at her father and elder sister’s foibles, the first time she is described as taking their attitude lightly.
In Austen’s cancelled chapter 10, Anne sighs over the fate of her father’s house in the hands of her disreputable cousin, but only once in the final version of the text does she consider Kellynch in connection with the future. Presented with a picture of herself occupying her mother’s place as the next Lady Elliot, Anne’s imagination and heart, we are told, are “bewitched,” but the charm fades when she thinks of the impossibility of marrying Mr. Elliot. This is the final stage in her growing away from Kellynch. She relinquishes it with hardly a backward glance.
A whole month passes before news of Uppercross, Lyme and Wentworth reaches Camden Place. When it does, and Benwick’s engagement to Louisa bursts upon Anne, near-ecstasy succeeds astonishment. In Bath, Anne’s suffering dissipates and now, filled with excited anticipation, she allows herself to hope:
Anne’s heart beat in spite of herself, and brought the colour into her cheeks when she thought of Captain Wentworth unshackled and free. She had some feelings which she was ashamed to investigate. They were too much like joy, senseless joy! (Volume 2, Chapter 6)
Bath’s opportunities for social interaction in a multiplicity of public places encourage a certain liberation and boldness in Anne. From Molland’s pastry shop, she sees the newly-arrived Wentworth before he sees her and determines to make contact. In a crucial passage, Anne’s consciousness takes up the dual struggle between her confident and her cautious self:
She now felt a great inclination to go to the outer door; she wanted to see if it rained. Why was she to suspect herself of another motive? Captain Wentworth must be out of sight. She left her seat, she would go, one half of her should not be always so much wiser than the other half, or always suspecting the other of being worse than it was. She would see if it rained. (Volume 2, Chapter 7)
Her initial response to the sight of him is “overpowering, blinding, bewildering,” and even given preparation time, “she had enough to feel! It was agitation, pain, pleasure, a something between delight and misery.” The following day, Wentworth is spotted in Great Pulteney Street from Lady Russell’s carriage, tantalisingly close, but unapproachable. The Bath that brings together can also, for purposes of novelistic suspense, keep apart.
On the evening of the concert, Anne is filled with a kind of desperate courage to act on the next opportunity that offers. Taking the bold initiative of stepping resolutely away from her family into Wentworth’s path as he enters the Assembly Rooms brings him to a standstill by her side. This buzzing public space accommodates a very private exchange. Wentworth’s clear conviction on the subject of constancy encompasses their past shared experiences at Kellynch, Uppercross and Lyme, but he speaks also of the present and future—“‘A man does not recover from such a devotion of the heart to such a woman!—He ought not—he does not.’” Anne is “struck, gratified, confused, and beginning to breathe very quick, and feel an hundred things in a moment,” but she keeps control of herself and of the conversation, encourages him to talk of Lyme and creates an opening to say something of her own feelings:
“The last few hours were certainly very painful, … but when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure. One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering — which was by no means the case at Lyme … I have travelled so little, that every fresh place would be interesting to me — but there is real beauty at Lyme: and in short” (with a faint blush at some recollections) “altogether my impressions of the place are very agreeable.” (Volume 2, Chapter 8)
She moves into the concert with “exquisite, though agitated sensations” and a growing confidence that Wentworth “must love her.” But neither they nor the reader are “hastening together towards perfect felicity” just yet. Mr. Elliot’s too close attentions cause Wentworth’s hasty exit, leaving an exquisitely gratified but anxious Anne to wonder, “How was such jealousy to be quieted? How was the truth to reach him?”
The answer to those questions lies in her own agency. In a place that encourages autonomy, she must be more proactive.
Austen’s first attempt to finish Persuasion allows Admiral Croft to take control over Anne’s movements as she hurries home from Westgate Buildings. He ushers her into his lodgings in Gay Street, where she is left alone with Captain Wentworth to refute the report of an engagement to her cousin. The power of speech is assumed by the Admiral, then Wentworth. Anne voices only brief denials, adopting a largely passive role in the ensuing reconciliation entirely at odds with her growing determination to clear Wentworth’s suspicions. Fortunately, Austen realised that this unsatisfactory conclusion negated the distance her heroine had travelled, in terms of body and mind.
The rewritten scenes unequivocally confirm Bath’s role in Anne’s future. Two opportunities are created for her to act and although she must try as usual to stay calm in Wentworth’s presence, this time physical and mental control has the opposite purpose to concealment—she must speak and speak to be heard. On the first occasion, she voices indifference to Mr Elliot’s comings and goings, Wentworth “listening with his whole soul.” Next morning, back in the Musgroves’ bustling rooms at the inn, Mrs. Croft and Captains Harville and Wentworth are already in attendance when Anne arrives, to find herself
plunged at once in all the agitations which she had merely laid her account of tasting a little before the morning closed. There was no delay, no waste of time. She was deep in the happiness of such misery, or the misery of such happiness, instantly. (Volume 2 Chapter 11)
Mrs. Musgrove and Mrs. Croft audibly canvass the undesirability of long engagements, a subject guaranteed to ignite a “nervous thrill” in Anne and for Wentworth to pause in writing his letter. This is their own sad history with an unexpected twist and in that instant the past exerts a more positive force, as Wentworth returns Anne’s instinctive glance with “one quick, conscious look.” She joins Captain Harville at the window, to speak emotionally but eloquently on the collective burden of female constancy. Yet she can only judge by and speak of her own past suffering—loving longest when all hope is gone. That it is past she already knows; Wentworth’s protestations of constancy in the Upper Rooms have convinced her of that. He alone hears and understands the personal reference to Anne’s pain and reciprocates with heartfelt eloquence on paper.
The almost unbearable tension trapped within one small room is released as Anne, her “spirits dancing in private rapture” is accompanied alone by Captain Wentworth, into Union Street. Away from the busy scenes at the inn and in the crowded streets, in the “comparative quiet and retired gravel-walk” on the long way home to Camden Place, the lovers’ reconciliation becomes “a blessing indeed” and promises “all the immortality which the happiest recollections of their own future lives could bestow.” Present and future merge as they create in the here and now happy memories for the years ahead. The painful past also has its place, in the recognition that their earlier relationship, that had developed primarily because Anne had no one to love and Wentworth nothing to do, has been strengthened—“more tender, more tried, more fixed in a knowledge of each other’s character”—by eight years and a half of “division and estrangement” (Volume 2, Chapter 11). Encounters at Uppercross and Lyme, distressing and pleasurable alike, have contributed to that deeper knowledge, making those places precious, but Bath, of all the locations in Persuasion, holds and will continue to hold a special position in Anne and Wentworth’s hearts and minds.
In the late spring of 1816, the second volume of Persuasion almost complete, Jane Austen made the longest journey of her final year, travelling seventy-seven miles from Chawton to Cheltenham. Various unpleasant health disorders had begun to manifest themselves and a spa water cure proposed. After a fortnight, she returned to Hampshire by way of Kintbury, where family friends noted Austen’s physical deterioration. She never travelled any great distance again. It is sadly ironic that she was working on Persuasion at this time, creating characters who had sailed the world’s oceans and opening up travel opportunities for Anne Elliot as her own were closing down. As the wife of a naval officer, Anne can expect to experience the kind of unsettled life, on land and perhaps at sea, in favour of which well-travelled Mrs. Croft argues with vigorous energy: “‘We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.’” Jane Austen herself had claimed to look forward to a less fixed existence in one place as a benefit of the move from Steventon in 1801: “there is something interesting in the bustle of going away, & the prospect of spending future summers by the Sea … is very delightful.—For a time we shall now possess many of the advantages which I have often thought of with Envy in the wives of Sailors” (Letter 29, 3-5 January 1801).
At the resolution of Jane Austen’s five earlier novels, we imagine the heroines breathing a sigh of relief as they settle into secure, largely uneventful married lives. On Anne’s marriage, she is welcomed into a community of brothers and sisters, Wentworth’s blood relatives and naval friends. She gains the family she both desires and deserves, but no safe-haven equivalent of Donwell, Mansfield Parsonage, Pemberley, Woodston or Delaford. Jane Austen’s most moving novel ends fittingly with the heroine learning that home is not a geographical entity, but an emotional certainty, located wherever the heart belongs.
Quotations are from the Cambridge University Press edition of Persuasion, edited by Janet Todd and Antje Blank (2006) and the Oxford University Press edition of Jane Austen’s Letters, edited by Deirdre Le Faye (4th edition, 2011).
Twenty-fourth in a series of blog posts celebrating 200 years of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. To read more about all the posts in the series, visit “Youth and Experience.” Coming soon: guest posts by Maggie Lane, Judith Sears, and Sheila Johnson Kindred.
Subscribe by email or follow the blog so you don’t miss these fabulous contributions to the celebrations! And/or follow along by connecting with me on Facebook , Pinterest , or Twitter ( @Sarah_Emsley ).
May 25, 2018
What Women Most Desire: Anne Elliot’s Self-discovery
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you may remember Maggie Arnold’s guest posts on Mansfield Park and Emma , along with one she wrote last fall on L.M. Montgomery’s novel The Blue Castle . Welcome back, Maggie!
Maggie and I read Pride and Prejudice together in a high school English class—and I remember discussing Persuasion with her not long after that, on a walk through Point Pleasant Park (which happens to have been one of L.M. Montgomery’s favourite places in Halifax).
The Rev. Dr. Maggie Arnold is the Associate Rector at Grace Episcopal Church in Medford, Massachusetts. Her book Christ’s Chosen Preacher: Mary Magdalene in the Era of Reformation will be published this fall by Harvard University Press. She lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, with her husband and children.[image error]
According to Chaucer’s famous pronouncement, what women most desire is to get their own way in everything. At first glance, it would seem that this is what Anne Elliot gains through her perseverance in Persuasion: keeping faithful to Captain Wentworth despite rejection of the relationship by her family and friends, until at last he proposes again and she can marry the man of her own choosing. And yet, there is more at stake than a mere triumph of the will in Persuasion, or an exercise in delayed gratification. Over the course of the eight and a half years between their first love affair and their ultimate marriage, Anne comes to know her place in the world, she finds a sense of her own usefulness, and it is this discovery that allows her to accept Captain Wentworth and to make a life of her own, with him.
The agency of her choice is confirmed, at the end of the novel, by her assertion that she was, in fact, right to refuse Captain Wentworth initially. A simpler treatment of her character as being too influenced by others would have had her show regret for the wasted time they had spent apart. Instead, she maintains that she was right to have mistrusted their brief relationship, and to have relied on the judgement of her family and especially of Lady Russell. She concludes in her defense that “a strong sense of duty is no bad part of a woman’s portion.” She and Captain Wentworth were certainly in love when she was nineteen, but he was a young naval officer who had not yet proved himself—his early promise and energetic temperament were as yet untried. Anne herself was inexperienced, a weakness which only time could correct, as she comes to know more people and to witness their failures and successes.
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Maggie Arnold, collage, 2016
Over the years she observes the effects of the interaction of character and circumstances. She sees her father and sister’s family pride and vanity undermine their financial situation, causing them to lose the stability of Anne’s childhood home. They have failed in their vocation as landed gentry, neglecting the stewardship of their inheritance, their leadership in the community. She watches the only example of marriage available to her in her family circle, that of her younger sister, Mary, and is disappointed by Mary’s selfishness, seeing how it erodes the respect of her husband and her judgment as a parent. Anne’s developing insight leads her to withhold approval from Mr. Elliot when he comes on the scene, though her family and Lady Russell are seduced by his wealth and elegant manners. Her ambivalence is justified by the story of her friend, Mrs. Smith, who inspires Anne with her courage and industry in the face of illness, poverty, and loneliness.
The opposite of Anne’s idle and vain family, useless to themselves and others, is demonstrated in the group of Navy families that surrounds Captain Wentworth. Admiral Croft and his wife are devoted to one another, models of a union in which each partner values the other’s gifts and both serve the best interests of the family’s chosen calling, traveling together to keep up morale, bravely exploring in the far-flung ports where they are posted. In the crisis of Louisa’s injury, Captain and Mrs. Harville are hospitable and supremely capable, efficiently nursing the patient in stark contrast to Mary, who is hysterical and must be taken out on walks by Captain Benwick so that she does not get in the way in the small but ship-shape house.
All of these impressions combine with Captain Wentworth’s professional stature so that Anne can clearly see the path of her desire as the life to which she can commit herself, now with the maturity of “a collected mind.” She knows her own worth, and others acknowledge it, too: “Mrs. Musgrove’s real affection had been won by her usefulness when they were in distress” (Volume 2, Chapter 10). Like her husband-to-be and his colleagues and friends, she is steady and resourceful, a member of an emerging aristocracy of merit, those on whom the world will rely. In choosing her heart’s desire, a marriage and a life in which she can be useful, Anne is able to move beyond the pettiness and provinciality of her small, local sphere, to a life of duty and service to the nation and the dawning empire.
Quotations are from the Penguin edition of Persuasion, edited by Gillian Beer (2003).
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Jamaica Pond, Massachusetts. Photo by Maggie Arnold.
Twenty-third in a series of blog posts celebrating 200 years of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. To read more about all the posts in the series, visit “Youth and Experience.” Coming soon: guest posts by Hazel Jones, Maggie Lane, and Judith Sears.
Subscribe by email or follow the blog so you don’t miss these fabulous contributions to the celebrations! And/or follow along by connecting with me on Facebook , Pinterest , or Twitter ( @Sarah_Emsley ).
