R. Brimley Johnson

“ Watson’s theories on life and marriage are particularly characteristic:
“I would rather do anything than be a teacher at a school. I have been at school, Emma, and know what a life they lead; you never have. I should not like marrying a disagreeable man any more than yourself; but I do not think there are many very disagreeable men; I think I could like any good-humoured man with a comfortable income. I suppose my aunt brought you up to be rather refined.”
Emma Watson, in fact, like all Jane Austen’s heroines, shines by comparison with the rest of her family. ”

“ In reality we are chiefly interested in the possible effects of the girl’s folly upon her elder sisters—will it, or will it not, separate them for ever from the men they love? It is only a few quiet words of unselfish sympathy from Jane, easily forgotten by most of us, that reveal the sentiments of the authoress on such questions—with which, apparently, she holds that fiction has little concern.
Primarily, however, we are attracted by Pride and Prejudice as a work of art. The unfailing humour and pointed wit, the marvellous aptness of every polished phrase, hold us spellbound. ”

“ He is singularly pure-minded, preposterously domestic, and very confident about the natural supremacy of man. It is the immense amount of tender detail, the infinite number of soft touches which convict the author of femininity. Her hero, however, is no knight of romance, no Bayard of the drawing-room, no love-lorn youth of dreams, no “fine gentleman,” the mate of a girl’s sensibility. He is not all soul and heart. ”

“ Catherine is Evelina in miniature; the real ingénue whose country breeding exposes her to the most diverting distresses in a Society amazingly mixed. Hovering between Thorpes and Tilneys, like Evelina between Mirvans and Branghtons, she enters each circle with the same innocence, enthusiasm, and naïveté. Miss Austen’s sly boast of originality in allowing her heroine to fall in love without stopping to ascertain “the gentleman’s feelings,” is but gentle raillery at a similar presumption in Miss Burney. ”

“ Either Jane Austen was lacking in the more robust humour of Thackeray and his predecessors, who seem to revel in the gaiety of the heartless; or she recognised the limitations of country life, where the artificial can never prosper for long; or she had, in her own quiet way, too much principle to countenance, even in fiction, any permanent happiness for the wicked.
However it be, the result is unique. Lady Susan stands alone as a heroine. As we have seen, the full depths of her criminality lurk beneath the surface: her power is rather hinted at than described. ”

“ I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachment and constancy were known only by woman. No, I believe you capable of everything great and good in your married lives. I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as—if I may be allowed the expression—so long as you have an object. I mean while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one: you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone. ”

“ Northanger Abbey has very much the appearance of juvenile effort, possibly recast in maturity. If not actually written in girlhood, it must be regarded as the flower of a true holiday spirit, blossoming in sheer fun. Fresh from the excited perusal of some novel by the terrifying Anne Radcliffe, whom I believe Miss Austen enjoyed as keenly as her own Catherine, she must have thrown herself into the composition of this delightful parody, just to renew its thrills, to linger over its absurdities. It is all pure farce, exaggeration cheerfully unrestrained. ”

“ It is a picture of an ideal, stammeringly defined by Edgar: “The utmost vivacity of sentiment, all the charm of soul, eternally beaming in the eyes, playing in every feature, glowing in the complexion, and brightening every smile.”
Obviously hero and heroine are born for each other. He admires her above all women, himself has every perfection. ”

“ There are few prophets in the world, few sublimely beautiful women, few heroes. I can’t afford to give all my love and reverence to such rarities: I want a great deal of those feelings for my everyday fellow-men, especially for the few in the foreground of the great multitude whose faces I know, whose hands I touch, for whom I have to make way with kindly courtesy. Neither are picturesque lazzaroni or romantic criminals half so frequent as your common labourer, who gets his own bread, and eats it vulgarly but creditably with his own pocket-knife. ”

“ I would not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who could create a world so much better than this, in which we get up in the morning to do our daily work, that you would be likely to turn a harder, colder eye on the dusty streets and the common green fields—on the real breathing men and women who can be [Pg 205] chilled by your indifference or injured by your prejudice, who can be cheered and helped onward by your fellow-feeling, your forbearance, your outspoken, brave justice. ”

“ It is for this rare, precious quality of truthfulness that I delight in many Dutch paintings; which lofty-minded people despise. I find a source of delicious sympathy in these faithful pictures of a monotonous, homely existence, which has been the fate of so many more among my fellow-mortals than a life of pomp or of absolute indigence, of tragic suffering or of world-stirring actions. ”

“ Guy’s faults, on the other hand, are all on the surface; but his exalted saintliness is even more superhuman than the other’s unerring morality. Both exemplify a feminine ideal; though Philip has only one worshipper, her faith is unfaltering. His, indeed, is the type that lives to hold forth, to inform, and to dogmatise. Woe to the woman who ventures to think for herself. The power or charm of Guy is unconscious. They love his passionate outbursts, his generous impetuosity, his childish remorse and “sensibility.” ”

“ None has dwelt more persistently on the trivial details of everyday life, the conquests of observation. Whether concerned, like Miss Burney, with the Comedy of Manners; or, like George Eliot, with the Analysis of Soul; they have one and all found their inspiration in human nature. And, in reality, this was the main progress achieved in fiction between Richardson and the nineteenth century—the growth on which the true modern novel was built up. ”

“ All honour and reverence to the divine beauty of form! Let us cultivate it to the utmost in men, women, and children—in our gardens and in our houses.... Paint us an angel if you can, with a floating violet robe, and a face paled by the celestial light; paint us yet oftener a Madonna, turning her mild face upward and opening her arms to welcome the divine glory ”

“ I turn, without shrinking, from cloud-borne angels, from prophets, sibyls, and heroic warriors, to an old woman bending over her flower-pot, or eating her solitary dinner, while the noonday light, softened perhaps by a screen of leaves, falls on her mob-cap, and just touches the rim of her spinning wheel, and her stone jug, and all those cheap common things which are the precious necessaries of life to her ”

“ There is, indeed, a touch of melodrama in the sharp contrast exhibited between their proud prickliness towards mankind and their idolatry of The Man. Few women have written more bitterly of our idle vanity, our heartless neglect and supreme selfishness, our blind folly, and our indifference to moral standards. None has spoken with more biting emphasis of woman’s natural superiority, or of the grinding tyranny which, for so many generations, she is herein shown to have stupidly endured. ”

“ She took life seriously, like her heroines: acutely sensitive to words and looks; caring nothing for what did not personally affect her. No doubt there is something Irish, something too of the grim moorlands, in that mysterious instinct which fired Charlotte, and her sisters, to their perpetual questionings of Providence, their burning protests against the harshness and hypocrisy of the world. Circumstances stifle them and they must speak. Speaking, they must strike.
Charlotte Brontë, indeed, lived almost as much aside from the world as Jane Austen. ”

“ We can only marvel that he could ever determine whether Clementina or Miss Harriet Byron were a more worthy mate for “the perfect man.” Verily they were all as men made them; exquisite creatures, born for our delight, but regulated by our taste in loveliness and virtue. That marvellous little eighteenth-century tradesman understood their weaknesses no less than their perfections; but the fine lines of his brush show through every word or expression: the delicacy of outline is deliberately obtained by art. ”

“ Neither the author, nor her heroine, would have ever imagined it possible to criticise this prince of gentlemen. It really pained them when persons of inferior breeding or less exalted morality occasionally ventured to oppose his will or question his judgment. His praise, and his love, were alike a mighty condescension; his mere notice an honour almost greater than they could bear.
This is the modern, civilised notion of knighthood; the personification (in terms of everyday life) of that pure dream which has haunted, and will ever haunt, the musings of maidenhood ”

“ He who paints from le beau idéal, if his scenes and sentiments are striking and interesting, is in a great measure exempted from the difficult task of reconciling them with the ordinary probabilities of life: but he who paints a scene of common occurrence, places his composition within that extensive range of criticism which general experience offers to every reader. The resemblance of a statue of Hercules we must take on the artist’s judgment; but every one can criticize that which is presented as the portrait of a friend, or neighbour. ”

“ The real character of Miss Austen almost defies analysis. Contemporary evidence, of any discrimination, is practically non-existent; her life presents no outstanding adventure; and it is very dangerous to assume identity between any expression in the novels and her experience or opinion. As a matter of fact, she never even states a truth, exhibits an emotion, or judges a case except by implication. Even the apparent generalisations or author’s comments on life are really attuned to the atmosphere of the particular novel in which they appear. ”

“ Charlotte Brontë did not go beyond her own circle, save in imagination. But George Eliot, no less certainly, studied mankind for copy. It is true that she made more direct use of her own family and friends than they. Maggie Tulliver is no less autobiographical than Lucy Snowe. True also that for description and atmosphere she depended largely on memory. But even here the treatment is that of a self-conscious artist, composing and presenting from outside, studying effects, grouping types; always alive to a comparison between life and literature. ”

“ The imitators who rushed in crowds upon each path in which the great masters of the art had successively led the way, produced upon the public mind the usual effect of satiety. The first writer of a new class is, as it were, placed on a pinnacle of excellence, to which, at the earliest glance of a surprised admirer, his ascent seems little less than miraculous. Time and imitation speedily diminish the wonder, and each successive attempt establishes a kind of progressive scale of ascent between the lately deified author, and the reader, who had deemed his excellence inaccessible. ”

“ There is little other power in Madame D’Arblay’s novels than that of immediate observation; her characters, whether of refinement or vulgarity, are equally superficial and confined. The whole is a question of form, whether that form is adhered to or infringed. It is this circumstance which takes away dignity and interest from her story and sentiments, and makes the one so teasing and tedious, and the other so insipid. The difficulties in which she involves her heroines are too much ‘Female Difficulties’; they are difficulties created out of nothing. ”

“ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) has no place in the development of women’s work in fiction, since her one novel, Frankenstein, belongs to no type that has been attempted before or since, though it is often roughly described as a throw-back to the School of Terror. The conception of a man-made Monster, with human feelings—of pathetic loneliness and brutal cruelty—was eminently characteristic of an age which hankered after the byways of Science, imagined unlimited possibilities from the extension of knowledge, and was never tired of speculation. ”

“ But this tale of Marianne and her Willoughby has one element entirely absent from Pride and Prejudice, and never again attempted by Jane Austen. It may be said to border on melodrama. The young people’s ingenuous revels in emotion, whether of joy or grief, surprise one in so balanced a writer, and reveal powers we should not otherwise have suspected. Marianne, indeed, is the very personification of that sensibility, so dear to “elegant females” of the old world, so foreign to modern ideals. ”

“ It would beg to be considered merely as what it calls itself, a Family Chronicle—a domestic record of home events, large and small, during those years of early life when the character is chiefly formed, and as an endeavour to trace the effects of those aspirations which are a part of every youthful nature. That the young should take the hint, to think whether their hopes and upward breathings are truly upwards, and founded in lowliness, may be called the moral of the tale. ”

“ Despite its apparent inconsequence, the desultory nature of the narrative, and its surprising innocence of plot, the work is composed with an almost perfect sense of dramatic unity. In reality every event, however trivial or serious, every shade of character, however subtle or obvious, is at once subordinate and essential to the character of the heroine. A heroine, “not far short of sixty, whose looks were against her,” may not attract the habitual novel-reader; but unless we submit to the charm of Miss Matty’s personality, we have misread Cranford. ”

“ Most of us, I fancy, would think better of John without Phineas at his elbow, if he were less supremely self-conscious, less given to that analysis of his own acts and emotions which is essentially feminine. But Mrs. Craik will not let her hero alone. She thrusts him upon us without mercy, till we are driven to cry “halt.” We are convinced that no human being could comfortably carry about with him so heavy a burden of perfectibility. He is (as women have often fancied us) not what we are but what she would have us be; and here, as elsewhere, even the Ideal does not please man. ”

“ Delvile again, like Lady Catherine, based her appeal on the “honour and credit” of the young man she was so anxious to release; but her insolence was tempered by affection, and disguised by high-sounding moral sentiments. Cecilia was softened, as Elizabeth had not been, by a sense of gratitude for past kindness and by a strained notion of respect for the older lady. Mrs. Delvile, except in her pride, is intended to inspire us with genuine respect; Lady Catherine is always treated with amused contempt. ”

“ The wily governess has all the audacity of a born diplomatist. She simply informs Sir Hugh, who always believes everybody, that Edgar is “practically” engaged to her pet pupil. The old man regards the matter as settled, and, in perfect innocence, encourages her machinations to make a fact of her desire—the girl herself being flattered into an indifferent accomplice.
Now Camilla had acquired the habit, quite becoming to girlhood, of looking to Edgar, more or less consciously, for guidance through life, and of actually asking his advice on all delicate, or doubtful, occasions. ”

“ Of what must seem, to our thinking, the extraordinary licence permitted to persons accounted gentlemen, Miss Burney avails herself to the utmost; and Evelina is scarcely less often embarrassed or distressed by Willoughby’s violence and the insolence of Lord Merton, than by the stupid vulgarity of the Branghtons and “Beau” Smith. We have primarily the sharp contrast between Society and Commerce—each with its own standards of comfort, pleasure, and decorum; and secondarily, a great variety of individual character (and ideal) within both groups. ”

“ Hers is an intimate humour, dependent on shades, not contrasts, of character. Even the more boisterous figures of fun, even Catherine’s ridiculous applications of Udolpho, are complete in themselves, needing no foil. Miss Austen possesses a humorous imagination, where Miss Burney could only observe. A mere list of her quaint characters would fill a chapter, and no one of them is only comic. They are human beings, not mere puppets set up to laugh at. Moreover, the humour of them is derived from the polished phrase. ”

“ You may have observed persons, who delight so much in this sort of sensibility to sentiment, that they turn from the distressed, and because their sufferings are painful to be contemplated, do not endeavour to relieve them. How despicable is that humanity which can be contented to pity where it might assuage!”
And we are finally disposed to question whether Miss Burney herself were actually conscious of the subtlety with which she has allowed her heroine to reveal, in every sentence, the scarcely perceptible advance of her unsuspected “partiality.” ”

“ Jane Austen, planting her challenge in the very title of her first novel, extols sense. Marianne, and—more subtly, perhaps—her mother, remain to secure our affection for a vanishing feminine grace; but, evidently, the type cannot survive the century. For, though few writers have actually said less about the rights of women or the problems of sex, no one has established with more undaunted conviction the progress to a new position. ”

“ At times we can detect indignation behind the laughter: her scorn is often most biting, she indulges in cynicism. But, in the main, her object is plainly derisive: the sheer joy of merriment, the consolation of meeting folly with a gay heart. And analysis will prove that, in her opinion, hypocrisy and pose are the sins unforgivable, the only legitimate occasion of joy to the jester. Elizabeth may turn off her discomfiture with a joke, but in reality she is honest, and wise enough to know that Darcy is unassailable by reason of his good qualities. ”