Jane Austen has been much on my mind.  Every time I’ve run across her name, for the past couple of months, it has seemed that too much time has gone by since the last time I read one of her novels — Persuasion, I think it was. It’s harder now than it used to be to re-read things; despite my earnest attempts at pruning, my reading interests ramify, and I hear so much about so many more books than I used to do.

I bought the Penguin edition of Northanger Abbey and tucked it into my shoulder bag, as something to read if I ever got stuck somewhere without anything else. Needless to say, the book went unopened. Six or eight months went by, with Northanger Abbey going in and coming out of the shoulder bag at least once a week. Finally, it stayed out, along with the Everyman Library paperback of The Ambassadors, which I had actually dipped into. These two very different productions kept to a pile of their own, with late James lending an aura to early Austen that made it possible to think of Northanger Abbey as a classic, which it is not. 

What finally got me to open the book and re-read it for the first time since my teens was a sequence of nudges. The first was Colm Tóibín’s essay, “The Importance of Aunts,” which I wrote up two weeks ago. I picked up the second nudge as a result of the first: at the Museum, I came upon a little book on the sale table that I’d never have looked at ordinarily — for who needs “an appreciation of Jane Austen,” as the book is subtitled, by an Oxford don of whom one has never heard? The title, A Fine Brush on Ivory, seemed somewhat precious; and, in the event, it doesn’t really comport with the author’s robust grasp of Jane Austen’s vigor. There is nothing (or little) that is rough about Jane Austen, but there is also nothing that is mincing. Like any great comedian, Austen is very sure of her sense of humor, and if she laughs at her characters’ strained efforts, she makes few of her own.

The book’s dust jacket was irritating. Ladies simpering with parasols in a Regency garden; Cassandra Austen’s comparatively crude portrait of her sister in an oval below; and the title in the sort of typeface that Tiffany would sample with the words, “Mrs John Low Venable requests the pleasure of your company….” — this is all that one flies from in connection with Jane Austen. But I am not going to blame Richard Jenkyns for his book’s cover art. Among the many excellent points that he makes is one to the effect that Austen’s fictional world is generally less grand than the one into which she was born. Unlike almost everybody who toils in her shadow, Austen’s imagination works in a slightly downmarket direction, confined, with the exception of Persuasion, to the gentry. She has no intention of introducing her readers to scenes of social prominence, which, as Northanger Abbey richly suggests, she finds almost as silly as the “horrid” settings of The Mysteries of Udolpho. 

The third nudge was a comment that Ellen Moody made, at Reveries Under the Sign of Austen, to the effect that Andrew Davies’s 2007 adaptation of A Room With a View, which I’d never heard of, much less seen, highlights the novel’s imitation of Northanger Abbey. That did it. But by then, I’d read A Fine Brush on Ivory, and with the greatest pleasure. As books about books go, it’s one of the greatest. Jenkyns has a lot of good things to say about Austen, but what sets him apart from the many others who also have a lot to say about her is the pleasure that he takes in reading her and talking about her. The key to the book (not that it’s needed) lies in the Acknowledgments. 

For many years I have talked from time to time about Jane Austen’s novels, as about other books, with friends, without having the slightest idea that I would ever write anything about her, and I probably owe more to long forgotten conversations than I now realize. 

He goes on to thank a number of those friends, and a lucky crew I hope they felt themselves to be, because if his conversation were anything like his writing, they must have enjoyed some very fine evenings. 

Jenkyns, a classics scholar at Oxford, begins by apologizing for concentrating on three of Austen’s six completed novels. A long chapter on Austen’s  nderstanding of character, taking examples from all the novels but rooted in Pride and Prejudice, is followed by an ardent defense of Fanny Price. I don’t know that his arguments will win Fanny any new friends among that quarter of Austen’s fandom that regards Miss Price as a prig; the danger might be that he proves their point. Even if he does, though, he also makes the book even more interesting.

The subterraneous plot pattern in Mansfield Park is that of the successful adventuress, who rises from humble beginnings to social triumph, seeing off anyone who gets in her way. It is a splendid irony, both witty and touching, that this role is handed to so gentle and self-effacing a creature. Fanny is, as it were, the good stepsister to Becky Sharp and Undine Spragg, and in the end more fully successful than either. She becomes the cuckoo who kicks the other offspring out of the next. Edmund calls her “my only sister now” (not of course quite what she wants to hear). For Sir Thomas she becomes “the daughter that he wanted.” The weakliest of the heroines has become the most potent. 

This passage will have me re-reading Mansfield Park sooner rather than later. The final big chapter, “The Prisoner of Hartfield,” is one of the most delightful romps that I’ve ever encountered in the form of literary criticism. Jenkyns presents pathetic old Mr Woodhouse as the villain — nay, the monster! — of Emma. And what he has to say is perfectly plausible. 

He is an octopus whose tentacles draw others towards himself. His rank and wealth enable him to “command the visits of his own little circle.” He has succeededin making the world revolve around his person: everyone must spend time and trouble thinking about him. When the Westons, for example, want to give a dinner party, it is he who determines that the hours must be early and the numbers few, his “habits and inclination being consulted in every thing.” It is not enough for him to have his own comforts satisfied: his employment is to destroy the pleasure of others. in his own words, “the sooner every party breaks up, the better.” At the Donwell strawberry party, he is supplied with a comfortable room set up for his convenience. “Books of engravings, drawers of medals, cameos, corals, shells” and other curios are produced to entertain him, but it is not enough: to complete his pleasure he must damage that of others. Mrs Weston must sit with him, deprived of the enjjoyment of the sunny summer gardens, until Emma (a sign, incidentally, of her unobtrusive kindness) comes to relieve her. 

I don’t know when I’ve had so much fun, imagining Mr Woodhouse as a wicked Klingsor ensorcelling poor Emma in his Magic Shrubbery. An octopus, indeed!  I feel easy about agreeing with everything that Jenkyns says without having to give up an inch of my long-cherished picture of Mr Woodhouse as an ineffectual ninny who is gently teased behind his back and all but encouraged to cultivate his stupefying solipsism. (Mr Woodhouse is a tyrant in the way that a very large pet is a tyrant, and no more conscious of being one.) For all I know, Jenkyns is teasing me, daring me to agree with an outrageously contrarian reading. He has got hold of a plausible line of argument, and you almost want to thank Jane Austen for taking the trouble to provide him with the occasion for shining. 

 I have no intention of evaluating Jenkyns’s commentary, beyond insisting, that is, that his delivery is both delightful and (evidently!) provocative. There is no need to append further commentary reflecting what I think about Jane Austen. It’s enough that those thoughts will be somewhat more ample, thanks to the ones that I’ve borrowed from this book. What’s over and above — what makes reading Jenkyns sublime at times — is the reminder, made not so much by his remarks as by his brio, that books are there to be enjoyed, and that thinking about them can be a great deal of fun.  

About Northanger Abbey, I have only one thing to say: from start to finish, the book is a mother-lode of snark.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 5th, 2011 at 6:00 pm.