Back to the Classics #17

I read this book for my second round of the reading challenge Back to the Classics 2020.

Classic by a Woman. Ken Kesey said, “We go to concerts to hear a piece by Bach not because we want to be intellectuals or scholars or students of Bach, but because the music is going to help us keep our moral compass needle clean.” It’s a good reason to read Austen too. She is writing about moderation and self-knowledge in Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility.  She’s writing about respecting people and being fair in Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Mansfield Park. Jane Austen writes about gratitude and triumph in this one: “… she went to her room, and grew steadfast and fearless in the thankfulness of her enjoyment.” Resolute and brave – boy, are we gonna need those in the next six months.

August 9, 1787 is Anne Elliot’s birthday. May the next 233 years be as inspiring.

Persuasion – Jane Austen

The novel tells the story of Anne Elliot, 27 years old and still unmarried, not a great age or martial status for a female in Regency England. Seven years earlier, she was persuaded by her silly father and a narrow-minded mother-figure to break off an engagement with navy man Frederick Wentworth.

She was persuaded to believe the engagement a wrong thing: indiscreet, improper, hardly capable of success, and not deserving it. But it was not a merely selfish caution, under which she acted, in putting an end to it. Had she not imagined herself consulting his good, even more than her own, she could hardly have given him up.

Anne breaks off the engagement with Wentworth because she’s persuaded that it’s her duty to do so and at only 19 she is too young to disrespect authority. Also, she’s persuaded herself she does this for his own good. Fred doesn’t see it that way and feels ill-used but he doesn’t stop loving her. In the Navy, Fred becomes rich by taking prizes from the tyrant Bonaparte and after seven years returns home, causing Anne to wonder if old flames can be rekindled.

Thus, the story is about as simple as simple gets. The attraction is that Austen peoples the novel with great characters, both naughty and nice. The nice people are candid and brave and wise and don’t stand on ceremony. Admiral and Mrs. Croft and the Harvilles are ideal married couples. The awful people are comically awful in their selfishness, vanity, and treatment other people as if they were trinkets. Youngest sister Mary in particular is hilarious as a whining hypochondriac, jealous of any attention given to other people.

Yes, I made the best of it; I always do: but I was very far from well at the time; and I do not think I ever was so ill in my life as I have been all this morning: very unfit to be left alone, I am sure. Suppose I were to be seized of a sudden in some dreadful way, and not able to ring the bell! So, Lady Russell would not get out. I do not think she has been in this house three times this summer.

Calling to mind Fielding and Smollett, Austen has an 18^th century bluntness.

The real circumstances of this pathetic piece of family history were, that the Musgroves had had the ill fortune of a very troublesome, hopeless son; and the good fortune to lose him before he reached his twentieth year; that he had been sent to sea because he was stupid and unmanageable on shore; that he had been very little cared for at any time by his family, though quite as much as he deserved; seldom heard of, and scarcely at all regretted, when the intelligence of his death abroad had worked its way to Uppercross, two years before.

And she has the satirist’s ear for lawyerly wheedling and oleaginous obsequiousness:

I presume to observe, Sir Walter, that, in the way of business, gentlemen of the navy are well to deal with. I have had a little knowledge of their methods of doing business; and I am free to confess that they have very liberal notions, and are as likely to make desirable tenants as any set of people one should meet with. Therefore, Sir Walter, what I would take leave to suggest is, that if in consequence of any rumours getting abroad of your intention; which must be contemplated as a possible thing, because we know how difficult it is to keep the actions and designs of one part of the world from the notice and curiosity of the other; consequence has its tax; I, John Shepherd, might conceal any family-matters that I chose, for nobody would think it worth their while to observe me; but Sir Walter Elliot has eyes upon him which it may be very difficult to elude; and therefore, thus much I venture upon, that it will not greatly surprise me if, with all our caution, some rumour of the truth should get abroad; in the supposition of which, as I was going to observe, since applications will unquestionably follow, I should think any from our wealthy naval commanders particularly worth attending to; and beg leave to add, that two hours will bring me over at any time, to save you the trouble of replying.

The next attraction is the inescapable feeling of “in the world” in this novel. That is, Austen deftly moves her puppets about rooms, concert halls, inns, streets, pubs. Motion and bustle and agitation are constant. Caused by high spirits, the collarbone injury of Mary’s older son and the traumatic brain injury sustained by lively Louisa bring about key plot turns.

In this novel, we feel the half-comfort, half-discomfort of close proximity to our fellow creatures, so like us, but not us, that pleasant but unpleasant  sensation we get whenever we detect somebody else’s warmth on a just-vacated chair. People move close to each other on couches, on concert benches or on seats in carriages.

For example, the Crofts see that Anne is worn out by the death march the Regency English called a walk, and they assure her there is room in their carriage and proceed to “compress themselves into the smallest possible space to leave her a corner.”

In a street scene the Admiral tells Anne, “Yes, yes we will have a snug walk together, and I have something to tell you as we go along. There, take my arm; that's right; I do not feel comfortable if I have not a woman there.” In our days of physical distancing, how we envy nearness.

As for the end of physical reality in life – the big sleep, if you will – the off-stage body count soars in this novel: Anne’s mother, Lady Russell’s husband, Mrs. Clay’s husband, William Elliot’s wife, Captain Benwick’s wife, the Musgrove’s son, Mrs. Smith’s husband, Lady Dalrymple’s husband. Though I think if you survived infancy and childhood you had good chance to live many years, it took until 1820 for life expectancy in England to break 40.

It’s not just physical-ness in this novel, however. Another attraction is that Austen knows that feelings are intricate, hard to handle, and liable to change with time. Managing feelings through rationality is a self-care method that isn’t easy or timely or 100% effective. When Fred returns after seven years have gone down the pike, Anne recognizes deep feelings for Wentworth have not just gone away.  “Anne hoped she had outlived the age of blushing; but the age of emotion she certainly had not.”  Numerous times in hustle-bustle Anne has to get away and find space and time to reflect on how she should respond what she is feeling. Maybe Anne will reincarnate as a cognitive behavioral therapist, helping  her clients dispute nutty feelings.

Highly recommended. Poor Anne is the smart reader, imposed upon and disregarded in every sense by her family of foolish spendthrifts. One wonders if we hardcore readers connect with Austen’s readers because we too have heard from the Marys, “He will sit poring over his book, and not know when a person speaks to him, or when one drops one's scissors, or anything that happens,” and been starved for a kind word as so many people, not just readers, are in what we laughingly call the real world. We like Austen’s message that knowing ourselves, though it’s a hard ongoing process in a money-mad world always in flux, goes a long way toward a flourishing life.