6/7/00 Julie Grassi - [banya@bigpond.com] Sex and semantics Or: The Mysterious Case of the Wet Knickers ...

Reference: 6/6/00

Would it help at all if I were to use the term 'erotic', instead?  Now, there's a word that it would be difficult to argue with, personal taste in such areas being as various as it is.  While prefacing my comments by stating, once again, that it is impossible to argue on such matters, without descending, at last, to "'Tis! 'Tis'nt!", I will nevertheless persist in finding sexual tension, and a mild eroticism, in much of the dialogue between Darcy and Elizabeth, and Tracey and Hepburn.  In this case reading (and watching films) imitates life, as I find inarticulate people a bit of a chore (of course, there problem might in reality be one of trying to get a word in edgewise ...).  Anyway, there it is:  in my case, I will continue to assert "'Tis!", gentlemen, so there!

Reference: 6/6/00

I don't wish to quarrel with Edmund Bertram, but I see the novel differently.  Jane Austen was horrified by the Regency, and by the morals and manners of fashionable society: having read the biographies of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and of George III, I am inclined to agree with her. The Bertram family can be understood best, for me, if seen as representative of morals and standards under threat and in decline   I do believe that in Mansfield Park Jane Austen was trying to do more than write about 'five or six families in a country village'.  As for some of the dialogue that comes out of Edmund's mouth: much as I love her, I feel that Jane Austen's performance is at its worst (which is still very, very good), when she writes what might be described as 'heated' dialogue:  for instance, Jane Bennet: 'I must go to my mother.....I would on no account trifle with her affectionate solicitude.....':  that is a bit of a mouthful, coming as it does from one sister, to another sister, in all the heat and excitement of a new engagement.  Similarly with Edmund, and his 'modest loathings':  I don't think it comes across in quite the way it was meant to.  Edmund is not as articulate as the other male characters of the novel (Sir Thomas excepted)   nor is Fanny a match for the women (Lady Bertram excepted). However, he is not an unkind man, and I'm prepared to believe he will do an adequate job in his preferment.  As for Fanny:  well, she may not chat to the parishoners, but she is unlikely to be as miserly as her aunt, and perhaps that is more important?

On which articulate note
I remain,
Sirs,
Julie

6/8/00 Bruce - Erotic is fine

Dear Julie,

Jane Austen is not one of my favorite authors because I find her unstimulating.  I agree that the Darcy - Elizabeth relationship is charged with erotic tension.  You compare the eroticism very aptly to Tracey and Hepburn, because it is based on wit, a battle for dominance, and the fear of sexuality that is only natural for strong, independent people who realize that falling in love means losing one's independence.

I find the books stimulating abnd sexy myself.  I just think its as stretch to call them "sensuous" or "sensual", and, as I point out below, I'm not referring only to sex when I say that.

Also, lest I be misunderstood, I LOVE Mansfieled Park.  When I have more time, I'll get into my theory about Austen's "author reasons" for havind Edmund and Fanny turn out as they do, which I suspect might be more important than any social, political, or religious reasons.

6/8/00 John - Julie's Sex and Semantics

Dear Julie,

Erotic works for me. Some Austen passages exude the erotic atmosphere. Ask me again, anyone, for a one-word description of many passages in Jane Austen, and I will suggest that erotic is the very word.

6/7/00 Michael Mogen - [mmogen@packetengines.com] Re: Darcy's panic

Dear Mr Dennis,

Thanks for your reply. You begin your argument with this statement:
[That Darcy was panicked during that proposal is obvious.]
I disagree. It is not obvious. In fact your assertion is contradicted by the text.

"As he said this, she could easily see that he had no doubt of a favourable answer. He spoke of apprehension and anxiety, but his countenance expressed real security. Such a circumstance could only exasperate farther..."

I believe that Darcy is agitated because he believes proposing to Elizabeth violates his sense of rational self-interest. He is struggling against his own better judgement. This should not be confused with "panic," however. He felt no threat from Wickham or the Colonel. He is absolutely certain of Elizabeth's favorable reply. It is the "security" in his proposal as much as the insults to her family that angers her.

I think the key to Darcy's state of mind during the first proposal is set up by this crucial passage just before it occurs when Darcy and Elizabeth walk in the park together. I quote it in full:

"MORE than once did Elizabeth in her ramble within the Park, unexpectedly meet Mr. Darcy. -- She felt all the perverseness of the mischance that should bring him where no one else was brought; and to prevent its ever happening again, took care to inform him at first that it was a favourite haunt of hers. -- How it could occur a second time, therefore, was very odd! -- Yet it did, and even a third. It seemed like wilful ill-nature, or a voluntary penance, for on these occasions it was not merely a few formal enquiries and an awkward pause and then away, but he actually thought it necessary to turn back and walk with her. He never said a great deal, nor did she give herself the trouble of talking or of listening much; but it struck her in the course of their third rencontre that he was asking some odd unconnected questions -- about her pleasure in being at Hunsford, her love of solitary walks, and her opinion of Mr. and Mrs. Collins's happiness; and that in speaking of Rosings, and her not perfectly understanding the house, he seemed to expect that whenever she came into Kent again she would be staying there too. His words seemed to imply it. Could he have Colonel Fitzwilliam in his thoughts? She supposed, if he meant any thing, he must mean an allusion to what might arise in that quarter. It distressed her a little, and she was quite glad to find herself at the gate in the pales opposite the Parsonage."

My interpretation:
Elizabeth takes special care to let Darcy know where she walks so he can avoid her. Darcy interprets this as Elizabeth desiring his company and attentions. Darcy meets and walks with her on three different occasions. Darcy thinks he is pleasing her. Elizabeth thinks it perverse mischance or, possibly, ill-will on Darcy's part.

On their third walk, Darcy talks of her staying in the main house on her next visit. She interprets this as implying that the Colonel is considering asking for her hand. For Darcy, it is very clear. Elizabeth is welcoming his attentions. She has asked him to walk with her. They have talked about Mr. and Mrs. Collins and happiness in marriage. He has spoken of her living in the main house with him. He has explained the layout of the upstairs rooms where she would be staying. Elizabeth is agreeable throughout, if somewhat quiet and distant. He supposes she is contemplating what these changes will mean for her. Perhaps she is overwhelmed by them. At any rate, in Darcy's mind, they seem to have an understanding.

(Notice how clever Jane Austen is in this description. Elizabeth is distracted. She doesn't give herself the "trouble of talking or listening much." The reader now has some basis to accept a very implausible proposal of marriage where each of the participants has absolutely no idea what the other is feeling or thinking!)

(Also, that fact that Darcy believed Elizabeth was expecting his offer is borne out later, after the second proposal. Elizabeth asks, "Had you then persuaded yourself that I should?" Darcy answers, "Indeed I had. What will you think of my vanity? I believed you to be wishing, expecting my addresses.")

For Darcy there was no panic or threat from others. Only an internal struggle with himself. And when he was refused, he was shocked, because he thought he understood that she was expecting his proposal.

6/8/00 Ashton - Your Darcy is obtuse

Dear Mr Mogen,

I think that Julie Grassi must be pleased; our Tasmanian friend has been assaulting me for years with this orthodox view of Darcy and now she has an ally. However, those bashings only left me battle hardened; so, I am able to once again take on the task of struggling with orthodoxy in order to defend all that is right and good. I am going to try to show that your Darcy - the Darcy you share with Julie - is a dunce and, at the same time, I will describe the other Darcy that I think Jane Austen invented.

It amuses me to imagine the orthodox Darcy skipping along, unawares, to the Parish to sweep Elizabeth off her feet. It saddens me to think of the real Darcy so panicked that he is headed there to propose - of all things, to propose. It was a great Jane-Austen masterstroke to have him go there, because that was what was called for. However, a calm Darcy - the Darcy we see so often in the novel - would have gone there to declare himself to Elizabeth and to ask for her friendship, and for nothing else and for no other consideration. He would have asked her to make her complaints explicit, and then attempted to deal with them. His true ambition might then have been realized eventually, but it would have taken patience and some luck. I say all this because Darcy knew the level of disapprobation that Elizabeth held for him. No, not that dummy you and Julie describe; I am talking about the alert and intelligent Darcy that Jane Austen described throughout the novel, the one worthy of Elizabeth Bennet, the one who was truly, "the best man she ever knew".

You seem to forget just how poor his relationship with Elizabeth had become before that first proposal. Darcy could not have forgotten because he had battled her all the while and with even more cleverness than she could muster herself. During her stay at Netherfield, Elizabeth had sneered at him at a time when he, in fact, was trying to defend her against the barbs of the Miss-Bingley party, those snide remarks about her reading instead of playing cards. The next night, she called Darcy hateful and he countered that she deliberately misunderstood his meanings - right on! Later at the Netherfield Ball, she danced with him only because the invitation took her by surprise. As the dance began, Elizabeth immediately attacked by insinuating his natural reticence meant that he was unsociable. She goes on and on and on about this. She thinks she is so clever as she speaks abominably to him while hiding it with the device of including herself in the accusation, "We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, ..." - yakety-yak. Jane Austen then wrote one of the cruelest remarks in all her novels when she has Darcy reply, "This is no very striking resemblance of your own character I am sure, ...". Well, that was a low blow - but then, Darcy did warn us all, early on in the novel, that he had a bad temper. However, the best put-down of all comes at the end of the dance when he loses his temper once again and makes the remark for which Elizabeth does not have a come-back. Elizabeth was willing to say anything at this point, even that she was trying to make out his character because she had heard "such different accounts of it". - Good Lord! Darcy gave up on her forever with that (well, for a few months anyway) and snapped back, "... and I could wish, Miss Bennet, that you were not to sketch my character at the present moment, as there is reason to fear that the performance would reflect no credit on either of us." A comment as much about the anger he was feeling as about her prejudice.

Later, at Rosings, Darcy tried to approach Elizabeth while she was seated at the piano and flirting with his cousin. She immediately indicated to him that he was unwelcome and then attempted to embarrass him in front of Fitzwilliam, she intensified her flirtation and talked to Fitzwilliam about Darcy in the third person - disgusting. (That would have finished me off.) But Darcy is no coward - Jane Austen did not intend a coward in this character, so she wrote rejoinders for Darcy, sufficient, once again, to silence his beloved tormentor.

After all that, you and Julie would have him go to the Parish in full confidence? I don't think so, not for a minute. I think you two make the same mistake as so many others; you keep Elizabeth's first impression of Darcy long after she has disowned it. Your reading of the novel is logical and therefore valid, but it is a mediocre sort of novel that you read - little wonder that Julie does not much care for it.

6/7/00 John - Re: Religious Ideals

Dear Julie,

We must play fair.

I did not say that Tilney was Austen's ideal clergyman, only that Edmund Bertram was her exemplar.

As for Tilney, I do not know that he was living at the Abbey. He was there because Catherine was there, but even so he seemed to be living in his rectory. In Northanger Abbey, the Gothic novel was the subject of Austen's pen, not the clergy of the Church of England.

I wonder at Bruce's throwing stones ("priggish") at Edmund Bertram. What can be his ideal clergyman? Is it a man who would agree that Henry must be rescued socially so far as possible and hang the clergyman's religion. How would he be different from a policeman who abetted, say, the crimes against the people he has been sworn to serve and protect? Is a policeman determined to stop burglars, muggers and rapists merely a priggish ass? Is a politician determined to reveal corruption in his fellow legislators a mere hypocrite.?

Bruce offers me the non sequiter of Christ and the woman he treated kindly. What does he say about Christ driving the moneylenders from the Temple?

It is only lately that FAnney Price has found many champions to defend her against the criminal charge of being insipid. How long before Edmund has a legion of supporters upholding his duty to proclaim "Here, I stand."

6/7/00 Bruce - Sin and forgiveness

Dear John,

Edmund reviles Mary Crawford for failing to have a sense of "horror" and "modest loathings" about Henry and Maria’s adultery.

How is Christ’s reaction to Adultery a "non-sequitur"?  Shouldn’t a Christian minister try to "imitate Christ"?   Isn’t adultery precisely the sin toward which Edmund wants Mary to react in "horror"?  It seems to me that the money-lending and the temple is the non-sequitur.  It would be difficult to accuse the worldly Henry and Maria of hypocrisy, or of defiling the temple.

I certainly don’t expect Edmund to condone sin ­ I expect him to forgive it.  Mary is right to think of how to do what is best for Henry and Maria, and Edmund and Sir Thomas are wrong to exile Maria and refuse to have anything to do with her.  Are Clergyman Edmund and his father less willing to associate with an adulteress than Jesus was?

If, as a worldly father, Sir Thomas is unwilling to be seen with his sinful daughter, how does he expect the Heavenly Father to be seen with him?

What does the policeman example have to do with anything?  I don’t expect Edmund to condone sin, or cavort with Satan.  I expect him to be willing to accept sinners in a loving way (as opposed to a "loathing" way).  If  Ed banishes ALL sinners from his church, it is going to be empty.

"Is there anyone here who condemns you?" Jesus asked the adulteress, after he had driven her accusers away with the "first stone" bit.  "Than neither do I condemn you."  Edmund not only condemns his sister, but he even condemns Mary Crawford for refusing to condemn her brother.

A minister should work to prevent sin, just as a policeman works to prevent crime.  But the clergyman is called to also forgive sin, and love sinners, and I hardly agree that when he does so he is like the policeman who aids and abets crime.

6/8/00 John - Sin and forgiveness

Dear Bruce,

Christ did not say to the woman that she should leave her husband and continue the adulterous relationship. He did not condone the act. Condemn here refers to a decision to stone her to death. Christ did not say that he did not contemn her action, but that he also would not condone stoning her to death.

Condemn and contemn are two words that Henry Tilney would have merrily distinquished.

You are asking Edmund, Sir Thomas, and Fanny to forgive the continuing evil relationship which has defiled and continues to defile the temple of marriage. That is part of their religion. The essential parts of the marriage ceremony go back an unknown number of centuries before Christ. They have stood the test of time.Your religion may be different from theirs, but it is not rational to smear their characters simply because they follow their religion. If you object to their religion then object to it--but I hope not in this place.

Jane Austen has written novels set in a certain world view that includes her religion. Criticism is rubbish that takes a work of art out of its context. Cardinal Newman said that he didn't like Jane's clergymen, but he did not say that she was a poor or bloodless writer. Obviously, Jane also did not like her clergymen, at least, not all of them. So far the cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church and Jane seem to be in agreement.

The point is that Maria refuses to ask forgiveness. How does one give full pardon to one who remains in a state of contempt for one's greatest values. Sir Thomas did make provision for an establishment for her. Many parents in England would have given her over to the hedgerows.

The third sentence of your second citation ends with Austen's statement of Anne's exhaustion. She is spent. The context is both paragraphs. She is spent because of the actions of the boy and her feelings about Wentworth. It is all one scene. Exhaustion is something that one feels overwhelmingly.

We do not in the slightest agree on the use of the word sensuous. You use it to mean sensual. I use it to mean the aesthetic experience offered by a work of art, an awareness of the sensual experience being described. Anne's sensual awareness is very great. You do not think so. We are reading quite different books.

6/7/00 John - Dictionaries

Dear Bruce,

A dictionary is useful tool, but like all tools it can do harm if it is misapplied.

You say that Henry Tilney would agree with you. I do not think so. Tilney made fun of the sloppy, faddish, and wrong use of words. He would insist that sensuous pertains to an aesthetic moment: what the reader or viewer or hearer or smeller or toucher or taster experiences. We see through Jane's art that Anne feels the small hands around her neck, the weight bearing her head forward and down. That is sensual. We witness a sensual act. The writing is sensuous in that it causes us to feel what Anne feels.

Then Anne understands that Wentworth had relieved her of the boy who was demanding attention. What she felt from the boy's hands and arms, and body, his breathing, his warmth, his urgent insistence, his clasping all came in reaction to the force of Wentworth's hands. She had felt Wentworth through the child. It was Wentworth's quick act that let loose the flood of primitive energy in the boy. Anne was overwhelmed. Wentworth withdrew to the other side of the room, Anne breathless, emotionally overpowered, exhausted and confused, was spent and in needed time to recover her control.

The writing is sensuous and what the writing described was the sensual experience of the actors in this drama. Wentworth, the man whom Anne desired both passionately and rationally to be her husband, had touched her so powerfully that she could never again be what she had been.

In other contexts, the two words may have more or less extreme meanings.

A dictionary must not be used the way some people use a thesaurus. In both of these literary tools there are few exact synonyms, and in the thesaurus the seeker is reminded of the range of meanings available and recognizes the word that meets his purpose. (I often damn the thesaurus to hell because it too often does not have the word I mean to use. It remains on the tip of my tongue and cannot be displaced for use by the sight of it.)

We were not going beyond the sensuous description of sensualities in Jane Austen's writing. To do so, we could indulge in lewd, carnal, lascivious and pornographic imaginings. But that would be tasteless. And ugly. And bad reading. We have enough to do in surrendering ourselves to Jane's creative imagination.

6/7/00 Bruce - The Sensuous Island of Switzerland

Dear John,

John give us a more sensuous description of Wentworth’s rescue of Anne than Austen does. Let’s go Austen’s text:

"There being nothing to eat, he could only have some play  and as his aunt would not let him tease his sick brother, he began to fasten himself upon her, as she knelt, in such a way that, busy as she was about Charles, she could not shake him off. She spoke to him, ordered, entreated, and insisted in vain. Once she did contrive to push him away, but the boy had the greater pleasure in getting upon her back again directly.

'Walter,' said she, 'get down this moment. You are extremely troublesome. I am very angry with you.'

'Walter,' cried Charles Hayter, 'why do you not do as you are bid? Do not you hear your aunt speak? Come to me, Walter, come to cousin Charles.'

But not a bit did Walter stir.

In another moment, however, she found herself in the state of being released from him; some one was taking him from her, though he had bent down her head so much, that his little sturdy hands were unfastened from around her neck, and he was resolutely borne away, before she knew that Captain Wentworth had done it."

Such is the description of the event.  A more straight forward, less sensuous description would be difficult to conceive.  There is no, "Anne felt the brief touch of Wentworth’s hands on her back".  Indeed, there is no hint of sensuality or sensuousness in this description ­ it is merely a workmanlike description of an event, and barely even that.  The description is so curtailed, that we readers are never told exactly how the boy was clinging to Anne, we are never told how he attached himself.  Did he jump on her from behind as he knelt?  Did he approach her from the side?  As usual, Austen is frugal with these descriptive details, and allows the reader to provide them.  Her concentration is on the emotional aspects of the scene, not the sensuous ones.

Let’s see how the novel continues:

"Her sensations on the discovery made her perfectly speechless. She could not even thank him. She could only hang over little Charles, with most disordered feelings. His kindness in stepping forward to her relief, the manner, the silence in which it had passed, the little particulars of the circumstance, with the conviction soon forced on her by the noise he was studiously making with the child, that he meant to avoid hearing her thanks, and rather sought to testify that her conversation was the last of his wants, produced such a confusion of varying, but very painful agitation, as she could not recover from, till enabled by the entrance of Mary and the Miss Musgroves to make over her little patient to their cares, and leave the room. She could not stay."

Tell me, John, is this the segment you call "sensuous"?  Where does Austen say, "The thrill of being so near to Wentworth lingered on Anne’s bare skin"?  No.  Austen describes instead the disorder of Anne’s emotions created NOT by Wentworth’s touch, but by his "kindness", his "wish to avoid thanks", etc.  It is sweet that Ashton and John find the scene sensuous, and they are certainly within their rights as readers to see sensuality in this scene ­ but it is their imaginations and not Austen’s writing which have put it there.

John claims: "(Tilney) would insist that sensuous pertains to an aesthetic moment: what the reader or viewer or hearer or smeller or toucher or taster experiences. We see through Jane's art that Anne feels the small hands around her neck, the weight bearing her head forward and down. That is sensual. We witness a sensual act. The writing is sensuous in that it causes us to feel what Anne feels."

We do?  As I pointed out above, a LESS sensuous description of this event would be hard to imagine.  Austen describes how Anne feels in every way EXCEPT the sensuous way.  She describes her emotions, how she thinks of Wentworth, etc., but does NOT describe Anne’s sense of touch except as "a state of being released from him".  This is sensuous writing?

In fact, I think I understand the meaning of the word "sensuous" in almost the same way as No Name does.  But I understand the scene differently.  Here is John’s description of the scene: "What she felt from the boy's hands and arms, and body, his breathing, his warmth, his urgent insistence, his clasping all came in reaction to the force of Wentworth's hands. She had felt Wentworth through the child. It was Wentworth's quick act that let loose the flood of primitive energy in the boy. Anne was overwhelmed. Wentworth withdrew to the other side of the room, Anne breathless, emotionally overpowered, exhausted and confused, was spent and in needed time to recover her control."

Now this is a reasonable interpretation of the scene, and if John wants to read all this sensuality into the scene: fine.  In fact, if Austen had used words like "breathless" or "exhausted" to describe Anne, or had described Anne feeling Wentworth’s "body, his breathing, his warmth" through the boy, then anyone would be required to call the scene "sensuous".  However, Austen’s description of the scene uses no such words, the physical aspect of the scene is described sparingly, and I can hardly think the scene would have been improved by John’s breathless, sensual approach.

The same is true throughout Austen ­ there are no descriptions of delicious meals as in Buddenbrooks; there is no description of cold or exhaustion as in Kidnapped; there is, in fact, less of an explicitly sensuous or sensual nature in Austen’s novels than in practically any other novel.

Yet John insists that Austen is a sensuous writer, and that I use a dictionary "as a thesaurus".  Malarky.  By any reasonable definition of "sensuous" Austen is not a sensuous writer, and although there is (I suppose) a "sensuous" aspect to the above scene it is as little emphasized in Persuasion as any such scene could possibly be.

Oh, well. Perhaps I should just give up.  Austen is a sensuous writer, and Switzerland is an island.