I. Persuasion
http://books.google.com/books?id=VY65sMlgyi4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=jane+austen+letters&lr=
A few thoughts: Benwick, as perhaps the most learned character of Persuasion, is the only one to have a real connection of intelligence with Anne. She is as well read as he, if not better as evidenced by her ability to make so many suggestions for prose, as you will see below. Could it not be argued that Anne is indeed learned? But what does this mean exactly, when Benwick is already considered effeminate for his reading. I think Austen, in opposition to her point that the writing of books have been in the hands of men, is perhaps re-gendering book learning — and learnedness — right here in Persuasion.
P. 143-145 This is when Anne gets stuck talking to Benwick when Captains Wentworth and Harville bring him for a visit. They end up discussing poetry (Anne is just as fluent in reading, it would seem, as Benwick) and when Anne realizes how much pain his grief has caused him (which is why he so well understands poetry –why does she understand poetry?) she suggests he try some prose.
P. 143/4 – “she was emboldened to go on; and feeling in herself the right of seniority of mind, she ventures to recommend a larger allowance of prose in his daily study; and on being requested to particularize, mentioned such works of our best moralists, suck collections of the finest letter, such memoirs of characters of worth and suffering, as occurred to her at the moment as calculated to rouse and fortify the mind by the highest precepts and the strongest examples of moral and religious endurances.”
P. 144 Anne as Moralist? – “nor could she help fearing, on more serious reflection, that, like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent to a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination.”
P. 219 About Nurse Rooke – “She is a shrewd, intelligent, sensible woman. Hers is a line for seeing human nature; and she has a fund of good sense and observation, which as a companion, make her infinitely superior to thousands of those who, having only received ‘the best education in the world’ know nothing worth attending to. Call it gossip, if you will, but When Nurse Rooke has half an hour’s leisure to bestow on me, she is sure to have something that makes one know one’s species better.”
P. 210-213 This entire conversation may prove useful as an example of an Austen character thinking for herself and against the grain of those around her. The characters surrounding Anne are largely preoccupied with rank and station. While Lady Russel and the Elliots are kissing up to these well to-do Dalrymples, trying to earn back the admission of their relation, Anne is less than impressed. Further it is Lady Dalrymple’s lack of self possession (her own ideas) that make her unattractive to Anne.
P. 211 — “Anne was ashamed. Had Lady Dalrymple and her daughter even been very agreeable, she would have still been ashamed of the agitation they created, but they were nothing. There was no superiority of manner, accomplishment, or understanding. Lady Dalrymple has acquired the name of ‘a charming woman,’ because she had a smile and a civil answer for everybody. Miss Carteret, with still less to say, was so plain and so awkward, that she would never have been tolerated at Camden Place but for her birth.”
P. 313 This is a sort of interesting take on the gendering of reading and/or genre. We have found before that Benwick is unlike his male associates because of his reading, but is it reading itself or is it poetry? Charles Musgrove says to Anne – “and Benwick sits at her elbow, reading verses, or whispering to her all day long…and I hope you do not think me so illiberal as to want every man to have the same objects and pleasures as myself. I have a great value for Benwick; and when one can but get him to talk he has plenty to say. His reading has done him no harm, for he has fought as well as read. He is a brave fellow…We had a famous set-to at rat-hunting all the morning in my father’s great barns; and he played his part so well that I have liked him the better ever since.”
P. 332-337 The famous “no examples of books” conversation between Anne and Captain Harville occupies these 5 pages. They discuss the differences between men and women based on their ability to be constant in love. They begin both by arguing for their own sex as the one who is more loyal with their longings.
P. 333 First, Anne comments on the social construction of gendered nature, “WE certainly do not forget you as soon as you forget us. It is, perhaps, our fate rather than our merit. We cannot help ourselves. We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us. You are forced to exertion. You have always a profession, pursuits, business of some sort or other, to take you back into the world immediately, and continual occupation and change soon weaken impressions.”
P.334 In response, Captain Harville attempts to make the argument that Benwick is proof that it is not a matter of acculturation but that it is in nature, indeed, it is physiological (congruous with popular misogynist beliefs of the time), “I believe in a true analogy between our bodily frames and our mental; that as our bodies are the strongest, so are our feelings; capable of bearing most rough usage, and riding out the heaviest weather.”
Anne quickly dispels the logic of this belief, “Your feelings may be the strongest…but the same spirit of analogy will authorize me to assert that ours are the most tender. Man in more robust than woman, but he is not longer lived; which exactly explains my view of the nature of their attachments.”
They are interrupted by the noise of a falling pen (no doubt an allusion to the pen Austen will soon refer to as the pen in men’s hands, literally now, in the hand of Captain Wentworth).
P. 335 The lines that literally follow this interruption is Captain Harville’s assertion, “But let me observe all histories are against you – all stories, prose and verse. If I had such a memory as Benwick, I could bring you fifty quotations in a moment on my side of the argument, and I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon women’s inconstancy. Songs and proverbs all talk of woman’s fickleness. But perhaps you will say, they were all written by men.”
This is exactly how Christine de Pizan begins the City of Ladies and this is exactly why Hays began FB. But notice the fact that Benwick is said to be the authority on books, (stories, prose, and verse) when it has already been set up for us that Anne is the one who is better read in these categories. She was the one to tell him what to read of these categories!
P. 335/6 Then Anne delivers her famous line, which really only continues her point that gender is a product of culture/society rather than nature, “Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.”
P. 337 Anne continues to explain that neither side shall ever be proved because it is a difference of opinion and does not admit to proof. There is no real ontological binary of the sexes (gender is constructed) and that makes her absolutely proto feminist. Austen brings it to another level likening herself to Hays and Wollstonecraft when she highlights the fact that men and women are, after all, both human, “I hope I do justice to all that is felt by you, and those who resemble you. God forbid that I should undervalue the value the warm and faithful feelings of any of my fellow-creatures!”
Pride and Prejudice
http://books.google.com/books?id=vKYBAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA46&dq=do+you+prefer+reading+to+cards#PPP1,M1
P. 44 The petty Bingley sisters remark about Elizabeth having walked so far to attend her bed ridden sister. Their concerns: hair, dress, appearance, juxtaposed with Elizabeth’s loyalty to Jane comments on these gendered concerns. Elizabeth is celebrated for her independence and fortitude, “To walk three miles, or four miles, or five miles, or whatever it is, above her ankles in dirt, and alone, quite alone! What could she mean by it? It seems to me to show an abominable sort of conceited independence, a most country-town indifference to decorum.”
P. 46-48 I believe in this passage Austen is alluding to the complexities of the issues surrounding women and reading. I think that it is clear Elizabeth does prefer reading to cards. She chooses to read a book, and then is drawn to a table with more books, instead of playing cards with the others. When Elizabeth is asked if she prefers reading to cards, Miss Bingley answers for her with antagonism, “Miss Eliza Bennet…despises cards. She is a great reader and has no pleasure in anything else.”
To be accused of being a great reader is very different from Elizabeth identifying herself as not a reader on her own. When someone is accused of anything it is only natural defend oneself. When Elizabeth replies, “I deserve neither such praise nor such censure,” she illustrates how reading for a woman can indeed be considered either or both.
P. 49 Darcy and Elizabeth have their argument about what makes for an accomplished woman. This time it is Darcy who brings up reading but unlike Miss Bingley, he exalts the woman who reads extensively. An accomplished woman is one who does more that net purses but makes the concerted effort to improve her mind.
Later, on P. 68, we find Miss Bingley, since learning Darcy’s opinion of women readers, feigning her own reading while really trying to engage Darcy in conversation.
P. 204 Elizabeth exercises her bold and independent mind with Lady Catherine who is surprised, if not scandalized, by the freedoms Elizabeth takes, “Upon my word…you give your opinion very decidedly for so young a person.” … “Lady Catherine seemed quite astonished at not receiving a direct answer; and Elizabeth suspected herself to be the first creature who had ever dared to trifle with so much dignified impertinence.”
Keywords: jane austen, persuasion, pride and prejudice
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