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The Voices of Men in Praise of Jane Austen
Messages on the
Bulletin Board - c. Nov. 22, 2001
9-11
Dear Voices,
This is an evening prayer written by Jane for use in her family. I have taken the liberty of editing it to reflect this particular Thanksgiving Season.
Father of Heaven! ... Teach us Almighty Father, to consider this solemn truth, as we should do, that we may feel the importance of every day, and every hour as it passes, and earnestly strive to make a better use of what thy goodness may yet bestow on us, than we have done in the time past.
Give us grace to endeavour after a truly Christian spirit to seek to attain that temper of forbearance and patience of which our blessed saviour has set us the highest example and which, while it prepares us for the spiritual happiness of the life to come, will secure to us the best enjoyment of what this world can give, incline us Oh God! To think humbly of ourselves, to be severe only in the examination of our own conduct, to consider our fellow-creatures with kindness, and to judge of all they say and do with that charity which we would desire from them ourselves.
We thank thee with all our hearts for every gracious dispensation, for all the blessings that have attended our lives, for every hour of safety, health and peace, of domestic comfort and innocent enjoyment. We feel that we have been blessed far beyond any thing that we have deserved and though we cannot but pray for a continuance of all these mercies, we acknowledge our unworthiness of them and implore thee to pardon the presumption of our desires.
...
May thy mercy be extended over all mankind, bringing the ignorant to the knowledge of thy truth, awakening the impenitent, touching the hardened. Look with compassion upon the afflicted of every condition, assuage the pangs of disease, comfort the broken in spirit.
More particularly do we pray for the safety and welfare of our own family and friends wheresoever dispersed, beseeching thee to avert from them all material and lasting evil of body or mind and may we by the assistance of thy holy spirit so conduct ourselves on earth as to secure an eternity of happiness with each other in thy heavenly kingdom. Grant this most merciful Father, for the sake of our blessed saviour in whose holy name and words we further address thee.
With a heart overflowing with gratitude I send to you all,
Love from
Linda
The original was posted by Ken Roberts.
You can find links to other prayers and interesting things at his web site.
Linda
Dear Ash,
I find her more hilariously awful, than even Mr. Collins. But every critic either seems to dislike her, and dislike Austen for creating her, or tries to justify Austen, by explaining that Fanny is not so bad.
The other five novels, and the letters, all suggest that Austen disliked cant, and prigs. The most discerning critics, consider Fanny a prig. We know Austen believed that a novelist can teach only by example, not by preaching. So what is more likely: that she created a prig so we would dislike her, and thus dislike priggishness and cant, or that she intended us to admire Fanny?
The ending of MP is marked by a strikingly different pace some have called it 'hurried'. It contains a direct statement from the author to the reader: "Let other pens dwell.." Henry Crawford runs off with a married woman he doesn't like, for no apparent reason. I believe this ending is intended to be recognized by the reader as an improbable contrivance.
Curiously, MP has similarities to "Frederic & Elfrida", written by Austen at age 12. Both novels have cousins raised together who loved each other, and both have a girl "whose character was a willingness to oblige every one." This girl received the following epitaph:
Dear Sandy,
I am so pleased to make your acquaintance. You are obviously intelligent, knowledgeable, and lively. I hope you will join our community, we will be the gainers.
The best news of all is that we have much to talk about. Fanny Price is obviously a heroine and is more heroic than Elizabeth Bennet might have been and certainly more heroic than Emma Woodhouse could ever have imagined. I put together a very long treatment of Fanny Price and Mansfield Park. Here is a link to the table of contents for that. Although, I can't imagine why you might look there in your frame of mind, so I will give a far shorter version here. I hope we will discuss this further.
Fanny was only ten years old when sent away from her parent's. Why should she have been glad? All she knew was that she was the only child sent away. Would she have felt anything but rejection? At Mansfield, she came under the direction of two aunts, one hopelessly indifferent and the other obsessively controlling. Her female cousins were supercilious and the oldest boy was self-involved - all the children were older than Fanny. She was constantly reminded of her lowly status within the family and there were times when it must have been impossible for her to have discerned much difference between herself and some of the servants.
Fanny Price was not a weakling - Fanny Price was in a hopelessly weakened position and she was placed in that position as a child. And yet Fanny tries to make her way; she establishes herself in a schoolroom no one else wants any longer, she advocates for her brother William, she satisfies herself with the few crumbs of consideration from Edmund and those little instances of notice from her Aunt Bertram. Fanny Price survives - Bravo!
Let us make a bargain: you decide who are the prigs (I fear I will make your list) and I will announce the pigs. Henry Crawford is a swine. And just as Fanny seems to her uncle to be the most defiant and ungrateful, Fanny is, instead, trapped by circumstances. She easily could have explained her refusal of Crawford, but only at the expense of exposing her cousin Maria. She does not expose Maria, although she had precious little cause for generosity in that direction. Fanny chose instead to be a loyal and faithful cousin/sister.
Perhaps some are disturbed by Fanny's reaction to the family home at Portsmouth. It disturbed Fanny as well. But, after all, is this not Gulliver's reaction upon his return from his life among the Houyhnhnms? Personally, I know what that kind of home is like - it drags you down. Fanny is honest about that and that honesty motivates her rescue of a younger sister - good for Fanny. Fanny Price must be grateful to her parents for bringing her into the world and she must feel and offer them her respect - and she does. However, that does not mean that she must blind herself to the kind of life they have created.
Clearly, the youthful Fanny was in love with her cousin; but, I don't think that Edmund was in love with Fanny. I think him in love with Mary Crawford. Jane Austen rewards him with the better marriage much as our Lady performed the same service to Marianne Dashwood.
Dear Sandy,
I tend to look at the fact that all of JA's heroine's have deliberate faults placed there by their creator. Elizabeth Bennet is proud and unseeing, Marianne Dashwood is theatrical, Elinor Dashwood's reserve serves her ill; Emma thinks she knows everything, Catherine Morland is gullible and Anne Elliot is too cautious. Should we be led by a vocal minority to believe that Fanny Price stands alone in her perfection?
Fanny shares many faults with JA's other heroines but none of their more likeable qualities. Maybe this is why most of us are drawn more to Mary Crawford. Mary acts from her "truly good nature" (I'm paraphrasing here), a trait both charming and disarming. Fanny acts out of fear, duty, or piety. The latter two are admirable but not endearing while the first suggests she's either a coward or perhaps a paranoid nutcase. (Ashton will tell you her refusal of Crawford is a display of courage. Do not be fooled, it is merely a display of selfishness.)
To me it seems obvious that Fanny's lack of an epiphany indicates that JA was looking to write a new kind of novel. The fact that Mansfield Park excites more discussion than any of her other works suggests that she suceeded.
Dear Folks,
In her biography, The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft, Claire Tomalin makes frequent reference to Mary Hays (1760-1843). Hays was a good friend of both Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin (unlike many others, she remained a good friend to the very end.) I want to discuss this woman writer and political radical in this, my continuing series of posts on the feminism of Jane Austen's time.
I must say that, after reading of the extent and depth of feminism in that period, it is very difficult to support a commonly held view that Jane Austen was a crypto-feminist. I mean that the spirit of the times were such that I cannot understand why Jane Austen might have felt a need to encrypt anything. - If she were the feminist that some people hope for, she could have let it all hang out as did, say, Mary Hays and so many others. Of course, to me, feminists are the counterparts - the exact mirror images of misogynists, and I contend that Jane Austen had no such prejudice against men. Jane Austen was not one of the Bronte sisters!
I believe that Mary Hays primarily was thought of as a novelist in her own days. That means that an excellent resource for you is the web site maintained by Cathy Decker. In particular, see Ms Decker's page on British women novelists in the Late Georgian and Regency periods. To save you the trouble of linking over there immediately, I have extracted a list of Hays's novels and those of Ms. Decker's comments that I could find. Ms. Tomalin annotated her bibliography, including references to Hays's novels; so, I can append Tomalin's comments as well.
As you can see, Mary Hays's literary period overlapped that of our Lady (1811-1818).
My own focus will be different; I will focus on Mary Hays's Appeal to the Men of Great Britain in Behalf of Women. That might seem impossible because, as Tomalin tells us in her biography, no copy of that philosophical work survives.* However a contemporary review of Hays's feminist tract appeared in The Analytical Review (July, 1798); that does survive; and, Ms. Tomalin kindly placed that review in an appendix for us.
The "review" is written in the voice of a man and seems to be very negative in nature. Personally, I doubt the sincerity of the reviewer in both instances; especially so, given where it was published. (The reviewer is identified only as "A.G.") I am sincerely negative, but I may not serve you best by debating principles with a woman no longer able to defend her position. However, I will contrast Mary Hays's representations of men, women, and the situation of women with those same things as we find them in Jane Austen's novels.
Apparently, Hays's Appeal was divided into four sections, I will quote Hays from the introduction and each of these sections. I am, of course, excerpting from the excerpts I found in the "review". Begin with an
Appeal to the Men of Britain:
"I address myself to you, oh man, clothed with the authority of your own assuming, and clothed with the strength to maintain what you have assumed. You maintain it by the same law by which the strong oppresses the weak, and the rich the poor; and by which the great and powerful, crush the friendless, and him who has none to help him."
Jee-eeze! Well, this is a worldview that was not unique in Jane Austen's time. For example, see the view expressed by Tom Paine. Notice that Paine wrote that some 23 years before Mary Hays. Let us continue with Hays's polemic.
Section I: The erroneous ideas which men have formed, of the characters and abilities of women
"Queens may at all events be fairly stated against kings, and I believe will lose little by the comparison. ... of the few females who have been permitted to wield the scepter, most of them, nay nearly all of them, have made themselves remarkable ... That [Royalty] is particularly fitted for the purpose of comparing to each other, is obvious; because both sexes of this class generally receive an education the nearest upon an equality of any other. And what have been the consequences?--Just what reasonably speaking, was to be expected; that their capacities and talents appear to be nearly so likewise.
...That there is something unbending and inflexible either in the natural or acquired character of man, which by no means belongs to, nor is at all affected by the other sex, nobody pretends to deny. But it is rather wonderful that they should pride themselves upon this rugged quality of the mind ... since it is equally tenacious of right or wrong--And since it unfits men from enjoying happiness themselves, or communicating it to those about them on easy terms, or in all situations.
... the minds of women are more pliable, and yield more readily to the pressure of circumstances, without sinking under them ... That elasticity in their animal spirits, which has a constant tendency to restore them to their natural state, and which supports them wonderfully, under many a trying scene, we should almost be tempted to rank high among the virtues, from its analogy to philosophy and common sense, as well as its influence on general happiness--but that it seems to be rather a felicity of constitution,--a gift of nature,--given to counterbalance many of the evils of life."
Oh yeah? So, "the minds of women are more pliable, and yield more readily to the pressure of circumstances" do they? Well that judgement certainly applies to Jane Bennet and Harriet Smith, but what about Mrs. Bennet, Lady Catherine, or Mary Musgrove? One of my great difficulties with feminist thinking is that it always springs from sweeping generalities and stereotypes that are never supported with objective observation.
Let us move on to
Section II: What men would have women to be
On the conduct exacted from the wife on the occasion of the husband's infidelity: "Here is one of those absurdities of which I accuse men in their system of contradictions. They expect that this poor weak creature, setting aside in a moment, love, jealousy, and pride, the most powerful and universal passions interwoven in the human heart, and which even men, clothed in wisdom and fortitude, find so difficult to conquer, that they seldom attempt it--that she shall notwithstanding lay all these aside as easily as she would her gown and petticoat, and plunge at once into the cold bath of prudence, of which though the wife only is to receive the shock, and make daily use of, yet if she does so, it has the virtue of keeping both husband and wife in a most agreeable temperament. ... Dear generous creatures!"What a chaos!--What a mixture of strength and weakness,--of greatness and littleness,--of sense and folly,--of exquisite feeling and total insensibility,--have they jumbled together in their imaginations, and then given to their pretty darling the name of woman! ...
... in the composition of man's woman, wisdom must not be spoken of, nay nor even hinted at, yet strange to tell! there it must be in full force, and come forth upon all convenient occasions. This is a mystery which, as we are not allowed to be among the initiated, we may admire at an awful distance, but can never comprehend."
... Woman ... is the sport, of the vices and infirmities of her tyrant; and however formed by nature to virtue and benevolence,--however trained by education,--here she finds all this against her. Here she finds that her time and endeavours would have been much more happily employed, in strengthening the opposite habits of selfishness and uncharitableness. ..."
Hm-mm, "more happily employed"? I have noticed that some wives are the first to make themselves "happy" - before the husband thinks to act in that way. Think about Jane Austen's Maria Bertram or Eliza Williams. Does the picture that Hays paints of wives apply in all cases? I mean, another woman is involved in the infidelity of the husband, so how does that woman fit into Mary Hays's generalizations?
The next Section begins with a theoretical underpinning that is remindful of the analysis that DuBois would later advance for the state of mind of the subjugated African-American.
Section III: What women are
"... any class of rational beings,--though by no means inferior originally in intellectual endowments,--may be held in a state of subjection and dependence from generation to generation, by another party, who, by a variety of circumstances, none of them depending on actual, original superiority of mind, may have established an authority over them. And it must be acknowledged a truth equally infallible, that any class so held in a state of subjection and dependence, will degenerate both in mind and body. ... we have only to bring home the application to the state of woman in general, who, degraded and humiliated in society, and held in a constant state of dependence,--can it be wondered, that they have lost even the idea of what they might have been, or what they might still be? ... they are likewise bound by chains, of such enormous weight and complicated form, that the more they are considered, the less hope remains of being able to unloose them by perseverance, or break them through by force. Or if impelled by an ardent love of liberty, by genius, or by despair, 'burst their bonds asunder, and cast their cords away'--Alas! the consequences too often are--Ruin to the individual, without benefit to the whole.
Respecting the frivolous propensities imputed to the sex, it is well remarked, 'taking women on the footing they now are, and on which they will probably remain for some time at least, the tide of their passions must waste itself on something; and thus being forced into wrong channels, there it flows ... Thus many a good head is stuffed with ribbons, gauze, fringes, flounces, and furbelows that might have received and communicated, far other and more noble impressions. And a fine imagination has been exhausted upon these, which had they been turned to the study of nature, or initiated into the dignified embellishments of the fine arts, might have adorned, delighted, and improved society."
At first, one might guess that Jane Austen's Mrs. Allen is an excellent example of the kind of "stuffed" head that Mary Hays is describing. On the other hand, after reading Jane Austen's letters, one comes away with the impression that the Austen daughters thought a great deal about "ribbons, gauze, fringes, flounces, and furbelows"; while, at the same time, it can said that the younger "adorned, delighted, and improved society." And Jane Austen did that far better than any of Mary Hays's acquaintance ever did or could have done.
Here is one final excerpt from Section III:
"... And though it is often alleged, that the public influence of the men, is balanced by the private influence of the woman; yet if there is truth in this remark at all, it is that kind of back stair influence, which is enjoyed by the unworthy, than the virtuous part of the sex."
Well, the sad truth is that the vast majority of men have no "public influence" whatsoever and no prospect of same. And yet, the wives will dominate the homes. Boys are raised by women - first by mother, aunts, and neighborhood women and then by teachers - er, governesses. Some few young boys have a masculine influence, but those are the few lucky ones. - Most dads are too exhausted and too frustrated by their encounters with the world to be the men they would prefer to be. This supposed other influence - this public influence - is a product of Hays's imagination. A necessary invention for her polemic, but totally meaningless in the real world.
Think about the female dominance in Jane Austen's novels. Lady Catherine rules Collins with an iron hand, and only in part because she controls his professional advancement - it is a natural consequence of the personalities involved. She tries to control Darcy, but he is too strong and too clever for that. And Collins married only where Charlotte Lucas led him. One senses that a struggle for power will someday break out between Lady Catherine and Charlotte, and Collins will be a casualty of that conflict. Who, in truth, controlled Mansfield Park? Clearly, it was Aunt Norris who directed the development of the children until it became obvious just what her policies had wrought. It was only Fanny Price and Mary Crawford who saw what was happening - Sir Thomas was clueless and helpless. Take a real male bastard, like Willoughby, and consider his influences and influence. Hays might have us believe that Willoughby is a product of patriarchal society and his actions are encouraged and approved by other men. The truth is that Brandon tried to put a bullet into him. Even a Willoughby is controlled by women. He is beholding to his wealthy cousin, Mrs. Smith, for his inheritance and when she disowns him, he marries a wealthy woman, who so controls him that he submits to allow her to dictate his letter to Marianne.
If you study Jane Austen's letters, you will discover that she rarely complained about the men in her family. Where she did, she most often complained that they had let their wives become too dominant.
Here is Hays's final section.
Section IV: What women ought to be
"... from such an attention to improving the minds, and forming the characters of women, as I propose; consequences of the highest importance will ensue.-- ...
Notwithstanding then that men have planned every thing in their own way, ... the consequences are not equal to their hopes or expectations; for they complain bitterly both in public and private, of the folly, the inconsistency, the extravagance, and the general relaxation of manners amongst women. ... when it is at any time argued and proved that to bring about reformation, the first step ought to be, the reformation of the moral conduct of the men themselves; and the next that of educating women on a more liberal and unprejudiced plan, and putting them on a more respectable footing in society; then it is that the generality of men fly off, and are not ashamed to declare, that they would rather a thousand times take women as they are;--weak, frail, dependent creatures. ...
...The consequences from the liberation of women reasonably to be expected, are, such as seldom fail to ensue, when any individuals or societies, or classes of mankind are restored to their natural rights; that is to say when they find themselves at ease in their proper places; not degraded nor fettered by unnecessary confinement, but bound by such wholesome restraints, as prevent liberty from degenerating into licentiousness. In such a situation, all will perform their appropriate parts. with redoubled ability, cheerfulness, and alacrity; ...
... Of this however we are certain, that if universal justice were to prevail among mankind,--in which of course we include womankind,--that we should then be on the high road to happiness; of which we might reasonably hope to taste a competent share in this world, and might safely trust to a good providence for the perfection of it in another."
If you wish to pursue this further, Linda has found some links for you. This is the link to a Mary Hays Web Site. And, here is a link to a Mary Hays biography at that same site.
*Or, so it seemed when Tomalin published in 1974. Linda managed to find a copy on sale, online, at worldbookdealers.com for a mere $30,000. Drat! Linda just informed me that this copy has just been sold! Anyway, here is the data:Mary Hays Appeal to the Men of Great Britain in behalf of Women, London:
Printed for J. Johnson, St. Paul's Church-yard; and J. Bell, Oxford Street. 1798.
Links