Jane Austen (RLE Jane Austen)

A French Appreciation

Léonie Villard, R. Brimley Johnson, Verronica Lucas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136697975
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism for Women Authors
• Index: Literature

First published in 1924, this unique title provides an extremely valuable early Twentieth Century perspective on Jane Austen, offering analysis from both sides of the channel. The book includes both a translated study of Jane Austen by French academic Léonie Villard, and a study by influential biographer and critic, R. Brimley Johnson.

Johnson's study, made with particular reference to the unpublished epistolary novel, Love and Friendship, seeks to redress the balance of contemporary criticism of Austen, challenging the established links between Austen and Nineteenth Century realism, and suggesting instead that her work owes a great deal to the conventions of romance. He also demonstrates how her art transformed from the parody of Nothanger Abbey to the portraiture of the later novels.

Léonie Villard's ambitious work analyses a variety of topics relating to Austen's work, including women and marriage, psychology, satire, the gentry and the lasting value and scope of the novels. All in all, a very engaging, informative and insightful reissue.

JANE AUSTEN AND HER WORK

BY

LÉONIE VILLARD

CHAPTER I

WOMEN, LOVE AND MARRIAGE

SMILING and very much alive, sometimes half-concealing her grace beneath a veil of shyness, or cloud of melancholy, a young girl is invariably the heroine of a novel by Jane Austen.

Around her there gravitates a small collection of idle or useless persons, friends or relations, suitors who are to be taken seriously and others who can only be laughed at, while across the background figures are seen to pass rapidly by, figures which have been dashed off with one stroke, yet always interesting, and sometimes deliciously comic. If nearly all the characters of Jane Austen seem to belong to reality because their gestures, attitudes and conversations are all true to life, none but the heroines yield up their full personality to us.

With the heroine alone we penetrate to the secret of the mind.

We may hear her debating with herself, she lets us know the secrets that she dare not formulate aloud, her opinions of those around her, the fluctuations of their opinions, in a word we are made aware in her of everything by which consciousness prepares for action, renders it possible, then inevitable.

Emma, Elizabeth and Fanny think aloud before us and thus we receive involuntary confidences about things which no one would ever suspect, not even the girl’s best friend, he who later on is to become the companion of her life.

Living in surroundings which vary only very slightly, resisting outside influences with the different powers of different characters and personalities reacting according to the law of her temperament and of her natural bent, each heroine gives us a fresh attitude in the face of reality.

She possesses a distinctive physiognomy, at the decisive hours of her life she can find a novel and original solution to her own problems. Yet we find beneath the variations and fine shades of personality a sort of spiritual relationship which links her with the other young creations of Jane Austen.

The fact is that in spite of the very subtle shades of difference which give Emma Woodhouse and Anne Elliot a rather higher social rank than Elizabeth Bennet or Ellinor Dashwood, the heroines of the six novels belong to the same class, that of the “gentry.”

And what is still more significant, they belong to the same moral family, represent and express the same feminine ideal.

There is no doubting that they belong to their period, as much by their clothes as by their mental processes, their prejudices and their scruples.

They wear the fashions of a certain epoch—even more—of a certain year with a discreet elegance which has exactly the right note, not only in their gowns but in the preferences of their minds and hearts.

In 1798 they read Cowper, and are astonished that anyone can hear the verses of their favourite poet without deep emotion.

They discuss the theories of picturesque beauty and of romance in the style of Mrs. Radcliffe : in 1814 they acclaim the valour of the Navy, speak of Mr. Scott and Lord Byron, hesitate as to whether they prefer Marmion to the Lady of the Lake, and can quote the beauties of the Giaour or of the Bride of Abydos.

But though much of their charm belongs exclusively to their own day, the freshness of their beauty, the upright and noble moral character of their souls, their force of personality belong to all time.

The ideal woman of the English race has always been dowered with these same qualities by the imagination of poets and novelists. And these heroines of Jane Austen, girls of average conditions of life, who know nothing of tragedy, nor of great agonising passion ; flowers of the open air growing in a garden which is sheltered from the wild winds of heaven, are yet closely related to the noble creatures ; princesses from afar, and faery queens created by the genius of Shakespeare.

Within the park palings, or the old paternal home, these young girls who know nothing of the world, but are kind, upright and sensible, seem to us to be the rather bourgeoise and formal little sisters (charming and refined, however) of Rosalind, Silvia or Beatrice, whose lofty beauty, and tender, witty, haughty grace bloomed in some enchanted garden-setting of Italy, or in the green woods, the forest of Arden.

In writing her first books Jane Austen spontaneously adopted a method of procedure which later on in the full maturity of her talent she recommended to one of her nieces : that of passing rapidly over the childhood and awkward age of her heroine, for according to one of her letters, she believed that the charm and interest of the book could not be fully developed until the heroine became a young girl who has “come out” and is considered grown-up.

She borrowed nothing from those authors, forgotten to-day, of many ephemeral romances which wiled away leisure hours at Steventon. But at least she learnt to avoid their errors of form, thanks to the long, slow, fastidious descriptions of the character and education of the heroes of them. When the unfolding of the plot demands it, or when it is necessary to lay particular stress on some point of character, Jane Austen will give a rapid sketch of the heroine’s childhood.

Thus, in Northanger Abbey, Catherine Morland’s education forms the subject of the first chapter, and in Mansfield Park we see how Fanny Price, abruptly transplanted from Portsmouth to the country, becomes gradually acclimatised to her new surroundings.

We have only very slight information as to the lives of the other heroines before the moment that they are presented to us.

By a sort of dramatic short-cut which give her novels the very flavour of reality, the past, the influences of education, the reaction of environment on character and personality, do not seem to be dead and distant things, but live forces which make Elizabeth Bennet, Fanny or Emma what they are at the very moment we watch them move before our eyes.

Putting aside passing fantasies born of sentimentality, these girls are all perfectly natural, lively or pensive according to the greater or smaller element of joy in themselves or their lives. But gaiety, serenity, hope and good humour are almost invariably the dominant notes of their characters.

It is as if a sunbeam shone from their glances and smiles. They are happy not only because life is kind to them, but because they are perfectly adapted to their environment, and because they accept their pleasant but monotonous destinies without one vain desire or useless aspiration. Their fine mental and physical equilibrium does not admit of anxiety or impatience. They can amuse themselves with very little, and can fill their days with still less : with a walk, a gossip, or some reading.

In Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse the two gayest and most brilliant heroines, whose joy in living is tempered by the pleasure of learning and by the effort to understand life, we find the qualities which characterise their race at its happiest moments.

Like Rosalind in As You Like It, and Portia, in The Merchant of Venice, they are only “untutored, unlessoned” girls and yet by the power of intuition they are enabled to realise the marvel of choosing and desiring the very things which are for their true well-being. Like Beatrice, in Much Ado about Nothing, a star danced when they were born.

These creatures are made for happiness and therefore are able to create it by instinct. Elizabeth, with nothing better to amuse her than the society of Merryton, finds material both for reflection and for making fun in the ridiculous sides of Sir William Lucas and Mr. Collins.

Emma Woodhouse, living with an old father who is subject to harmless obsessions, with no friend of her own age, believes herself the most fortunate of girls and cannot conceive of any pleasanter form of existence.

Yet this joyful harmony which so largely makes up the characters of Elizabeth and Emma is far removed from any resemblance to the vulgar, sanctimonious passive satisfaction which a less delicate and intelligent nature might feel.

Lydia, Elizabeth’s younger sister, and Harriet Smith, Emma’s protegee rather than friend, make us fully aware of the difference between the pleasure of going out into society prettily dressed and adequately admired by pleasant young men, and the pleasure which is derived from intelligent observation of the spectacle of life.

Ellinor Dashwood, Fanny Price, and Anne Elliot give evidence of possessing the same sort of tastes and qualities as Elizabeth and Emma, but they are expressed and given vent to with less brilliance and enthusiasm.

To the lustre of Emma and Elizabeth, the other three add the poignant charm of pliable grace, the charm of fragility. The too uniform tone all through Pride and Prejudice (which Jane Austen noticed herself), also to be observed in lesser degree in Emma, is due to the fact that plot and characters alike are marked in without enough shadow, or half-tone, all in crude colours in a high key, without reflections and without depth.

The characters of Ellinor, Fanny and Anne Elliot, on the contrary, are painted with rare subtlety of tone.

With the exception of Anne Elliot, these heroines are as young as Elizabeth and Emma, but they are more truly women, because they have richer and more complex personalities.

Elizabeth’s somewhat biting conversation, like the reasoning and deduction of Emma, reduces itself more or less to variations on one theme, while with Ellinor and Anne we are in communication with intelligence and sensibility, far more diversified and more delicately shaded. Ellinor is not only, as one might gather from the book’s title, the incarnation of balance and common sense. Gracious and gentle, as well as sensible, she shows us that Reason in a young Athene, dressed in the fashions of 1798, is essentially an amiable quality.

Ellinor can look gently on the faults and follies of the people around her.

She can be amused, without getting contemptuous and enjoying her contempt.

She can smile indulgently on stupidity ; she can even smile in the face of disillusion and the bitterness of disappointed love.

Reserve and self-respect are her armour against the scurvy tricks of a rival, or the caprice of Destiny, and among all her charming sisters Ellinor is the girl who best expresses in herself that innate modesty in the expression of emotion, which so often guards the inmost heart and mind of an Englishwoman from careless eyes.

To the pride of Ellinor Dashwood, Fanny Price adds the exquisite grace of a being whose moral force is inevitably united with a touching demand on another’s greater strength, a great need of tenderness and protection.

The charm of a woman and the sweetness of a child are combined in her, and if we cannot but be fond of all Jane Austen’s heroines, Fanny Price alone hears the caressing words of love, tender words which lull and console.

Facing life unarmed, delivered up to the influence of wills stronger than her own, because of her natural timidity and the subjection in which she has been brought up, she makes use of her own gentleness to disarm her uncle, and to repel the advances of a suitor whom she cannot love. To be reasonable, full of common sense, or noble, are the qualities most admired in other heroines ; but an almost child-like innocence and timidity endear to us this “white violet” which has flowered in the shady copses of Mansfield Park.

The same creative inspiration which made Ellinor Dashwood a heroine of romance, yet enlightened by unusual good sense, makes Fanny Price far more than a soft and passive creature, only fit to be cherished or scolded alternately by those who have rights over her.

Whether she is moving about the great rooms of the manor house, or amid the sordid setting of her father’s home, Fanny passes silently and with light footstep on her way, occupied with something useful, never ceasing to pursue her only aim with all the energy and intelligence at her command, that of gaining, if not the passionate love, then at least the affection of the man to whom she has given her heart.

The heroine of Persuasion, that Anne Elliot, whose beauty is slightly faded by the passing of the years, is not the less touching on that account, indeed gains in complexity thereby.

The radiant but perhaps rather fixed smile of Elizabeth Bennet or Emma, the grave, proud grace of Ellinor, the sweetness of Fanny, every variation of the exclusively feminine qualities are to be found in the character of this Anne Elliot, whom the author considered “almost too perfect.” Too perfect she is not, since she brought herself through rather cowardly submission to the wishes of an old friend to reject the great love that was offered her, and since she knew the pangs of regret and almost of jealousy when in her turn she found herself disdained.

A unique example of her kind in Jane Austen’s fiction, this heroine who is no longer very young, who is made to expiate the suffering she has caused in another before reaching happiness herself, appears to us, as though subtly moulded by experience and refined by life itself.

For this reason her beauty, though less dazzling, is far more deeply significant.

Elizabeth, Fanny, Emma or Ellinor, in spite of their youthful wisdom, have the fine sturdy confidence in themselves and everything else which belongs to those who have never felt grief. Anne Elliot, on the contrary, holds the memory of bitterness, of disillusion, in the depths of her eyes, and one may read it in the delicate line of her mouth.

With the younger girls we see the budding, the blossoming, of the heart, but in Anne we are shown a still more stirring marvel, the second blooming of beauty and joy.

Passing from the faith in life of these first heroines to the rather saddening charm of Anne Elliot, Jane Austen is not so much giving us opposing aspects of woman’s cha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• New Study of Jane Austen
• Jane Austen and her Work