Good collection - have not read them all yet ( )

JANE AUSTEN'S MORALIZING: Teasing and Terrorism In the Georgian Novel

Jane Austen lived from 1775 to 1817. Born at a time when 'the age of enlightenment' was in full flower, she accepted many enlightenment notions as she grew. Humanity's faith in humanity's ability to improve itself was never greater than during the 18th century. Realism had not yet darkened literary horizons.

Modern readers, new to Austen's fiction, certainly have some adjustments to make. Her stories may seem childish, until one reflects that this is a childish response. After all, what is wrong with a happy ending? One need not be ashamed to savor the taste of justice and, as we shall see at the end of all this, the cynic perusing Austen may be compelled to cultivate such a taste. For now let it be stated that I, having learned to appreciate 'Emma,' was better prepared to launch myself into 'Mansfield Park,' 'Persuasion,' and the others. Even so, my opinions of Austen the author were still taking shape and I was unable to decide precisely what she was up to.

For certain she was a relentless moralizer who repeatedly emphasized the salubrious effect of country living on the human spirit. City living, she obviously felt, too often corrupts. She admonished that quiet is good for us, and that virtue is arrived at through moderation in all things. She believed that one may be swayed to good or evil through the influence of one's friends and, accordingly, advised readers to choose friends carefully. She insisted that people should always be polite, no matter the provocation. But she was surely joking when she hinted that love conquers all, for Austen was an ardent feminist. We see that in the persistent commentary on the plight of women that colors much of what her heroines say and believe.

In view of those facts, it may be fairly stated that Austen's greatest accomplishment as a novelist was her ability to hold the reader's interest through volume after volume of 'the same old stuff.' Discovering and explaining how she was able to turn repetitious moralizing into great literature is the business of this review.

In every Austen novel, people are punished in appropriate, often identical ways. Consider the horrid marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Elton, in 'Emma.' Like them, Mr. Elliot and Mrs. Clay espouse an awful union in 'Persuasion.' In 'Mansfield Park' it is Maria and Mrs. Norris whose cohabitation assures the perpetual misery of both. Some villains are not sacrificed at the altar but are instead taxed with self-knowledge. For example, Tom, in 'Mansfield Park,' learns propriety from his misconduct and will chafe under the regrets that are often the price of self-knowledge. Mr. and Miss Crawford return to their former lives, but only to pine for what they threw away in forsaking the virtuous Fanny and Edmund. 'Persuasion' is unique because the villain there, Mr. Elliot, is incorrigible. But still readers are led to the certainty that Elliot regrets the loss of Anne (for mercenary reasons), and will live to rue his alliance with Mrs. Clay. One expects, also, that Lady Russell suffered for having learned the hard way not to put so much stock in appearances. The rest of Anne's family were too foolish to have learned 'any thing.'

Mention of Anne's family brings to mind a stereotype I find omnipresent in Austen's work. I'm thinking of the hapless person whom I like to call 'the ninny.'

Austen's ninnies are always trivial, ineffective people, but they are indispensable nevertheless. The common denominator in these constructs is an obsession with some aspect of materialism, and in this respect they serve not only as comic relief, but to illustrate Austen's concept of perfect ignorance. Emma's father, Mr. Woodhouse, was so preoccupied with his 'valetudinarianism' as to be aware of aught else. Lady Bertram was concerned about nothing but her own comfort and convenience, while Sir Walter and Elizabeth Elliot thought only of elegant appearances. That Austen pitied fools is plainly evident in the fact that she never saw fit to punish them.

If Austen has been taken to task by Marxist critics (she has) because she never questioned the concept of 'class,' the Marxists certainly can't complain that she didn't examine every other evil. And while she continually questioned values and parodied personal shortcomings, Austen was not condemnatory. The ninnies were never punished, remember. It seems she was ready to own that everyone has faults, and was more concerned with the reason for one's indulgence in them than in the fact of their existence. Indeed, Austen's judgments seem focused precisely on what it is that drives one to excess. There is room for a deal of discussion on that point, alone.

I mentioned earlier that, in 'Persuasion,' Mr. Elliot is unique because he is incorrigible. He is as close as one gets, in Austen, to the archetypal, absolute villain. In that noteworthy position, then, Elliot merits close examination. By administering such, and by comparing Elliot to Fanny Price, readers can see what Austen believed were the best and the worst of all human motives.

Mr. Elliot was repeatedly described as being deliberate. He was suave, poised, a man in complete control of himself. Lady Russell felt him to be a man of 'the most correct opinions and well regulated mind.' The irony in that assessment becomes apparent when the reader learns, with the help of Mrs. Smith, what inspired Elliot to gracious conduct. He was willfully self-serving, a man so bent on advancing his ambitions that he wouldn't stoop to help a penniless widow - a woman whose husband had been his greatest friend and benefactor - despite the fact that the service she required of him would cost virtually nothing. Here is premeditated, selfish cruelty such as one does not expect to encounter in polite society. He knew exactly what he wanted; he had no illusions about it. Wealth and title were his only desires, and he was prepared to do anything to obtain and sustain them. Beneath his polished exterior dwelt a true sociopath. He lacked even the capacity to love.

Therein lies a paradox: Given the perverse nature of what moved Elliot, it is therefore odd that his 'correct opinions and well regulated mind' should be what links him to Fanny Price, the angelic heroine of 'Mansfield Park.' Both characters exhibit those attributes as well as a persistence, a constancy of purpose to which most of us can only aspire. Just as Elliot is unique in his baseness, Fanny is unique in her goodness. While it is not hard to find fault with Emma Woodhouse or even with Anne Elliot, one looks almost in vain for a flaw in Fanny. If William Elliot is Austen's Rasputin, Fanny is Austen's Ruth. From her dealings with Crawford and Edmund and the other characters surrounding her, we learn that Fanny is Elliot's equal in self-knowledge and self-control. But where Elliot won't lift a finger for any but his own advancement, Fanny is always helping someone -- even those who don't deserve it, like Mrs. Norris. It is possible that Fanny is too good, that she carries goodness to a fault, but she does so with no thought of personal profit. She personifies true generosity, a selfless kindness that is saintly in its essence. Fanny loves everyone.

The singular nature of those two individuals, Fanny Price and William Elliot, to me can only signal that Austen felt them to be singularly important. They were surely meant to represent what she considered the best and the worst of all humankind. We see there that while Austen believed self-knowledge and self-control the most desirable of personal assets, it must be the nature of what governs those qualities that she felt truly important.

If Fanny and Elliot are exceptional in their mastery of self-knowledge and self-control, Austen's ninnies are marked, as I earlier hinted, by not owning those attributes at all. It is therefore the complete absence of those qualities which constitute pure foolery in the mind of Jane Austen. Her other characters are either more or less fortunate, depending on the size and nature of their personal weaknesses. Henry Crawford is a slave to his insatiable ego. His sister, Mary, is preoccupied with wealth and status. Mrs. Norris is blinded by her love for Maria Bertram. Lady Russell, we have seen, is overly concerned with appearances. Emma Woodhouse (not quite an Oedipus) is too clever by half; Knightley is a bit too reserved. Captain Wentworth is too proud, and this list grows too long already.

But see my point: Excepting William Elliot and Fanny Price, the troubles of every character in the fiction of Jane Austen are rooted in the fact that each of them has some blind spot in his or her self-knowledge, some weakness in their self-control. It is therefore self-knowledge and self-control, directed toward honorable ends and motivated by a loving kindness, that Jane Austen most desired her fellow creatures to display. The same two assets, moved by premeditated, selfish cruelty, she considered the absolute worst. She kept after this theme through every one of her novels so persistently and in ways so predictable that, had she been one jot less skillful, she might have found it impossible to publish.

Austen constantly called attention to her feminist beliefs, nor were her signals muted. In 'Persuasion,' for instance, Captain Wentworth's sister delivers him a broadside: 'But I hate to hear you talking so, like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures.' Miss Woodhouse sauces Mr. Knightley in 'Emma,' declaring that all men want is a pretty face. In the course of this spat, it comes out that Miss Woodhouse has neglected her education because she deems it a waste of time. The attitudes of men, she feels, make the acquisition of social dexterity more important than higher learning for women. After pondering instances like those and the fact that Austen herself never married, one feels certain she kept tongue-in-cheek while composing the appallingly sweet, confectionary resolutions of which she seems to have been so fond. It becomes yet more certain after considering the understanding of human nature we noted above. Jane Austen surely knew that few marriages are made in heaven.

Still, she must have felt that a good marriage was women's best option. In 'Persuasion,' Anne debated with Captain Harville. Books, she asserted, would not be admitted as evidence in the discussion because books were all written by men; higher education had been men's exclusive privilege. Women were thus excluded from writing and from all other professions. In 'Emma,' Miss Woodhouse tells a naive Harriet Smith that women marry as frequently for money and respectability as for love. Emma had money; money buys respectability; therefore, she could afford to hold out for love. And Emma was most fortunate in that. Jane Fairfax, who had no money, stoically faced being doomed to the life of a governess, should Frank Churchill's fortune become unavailable to her. One could easily see Anne Elliot and Fanny Price in the same dilemma, given their respective, similar circumstances. Both were educated, and therefore able to teach. Anne had a noble lineage, but no money. Fanny had neither money nor title. The failure of either woman to win the love of a moneyed man meant that she had but a few, unattractive alternatives. One of those was to become a governess. The thing to be avoided at all costs was to end up like Mrs. Smith, in 'Persuasion.' Mrs. Smith (unlike the Bates women, in 'Emma') lacked the advantage of a wide and charitable acquaintance upon which to draw, and would have died in wretched poverty and sickness at a very early age, had it not been for Anne Elliot. Small wonder that Austen's heroines were so desirous of marriage. That, Jane Austen would have us know, was the condition of women in 'the age of enlightenment.'

All of that moralizing sprang from an insightful study of human nature and society at large, but by giving way to so much of it Austen came close to the same overindulgence she sought to warn the reader against. How did she get away with it? The answer to that question is not easy, but it is rooted in the possibilities of the language that she used. What saved Jane Austen's fiction from tedium was her use of irony, and the fact that she was not strident. She did not sermonize or lecture but taught like Aesop or Jesus, in parable. Austen was an absolute stranger to violence and vulgarity.

The debate between Anne Elliot and Captain Harville, previously alluded to, is a case in point. It was over the relative emotional capacity of women and men: To what degree is either sex capable of deep feelings and how long do they hold them?

That is a perennial source of contention between the sexes which, in recent years, has tended to get ugly. In boorish circles, the argument uses a hideous, pseudo-scientific Darwinism to support the assertion that one sex is, for genetic reasons, superior to the other. In effect, it denies the humanity of those against whom it is directed. The idea is obscene; small wonder that the argument is so frequently punctuated by obscenities. The language is repulsive; it destroys sensitivity by grating upon the ears of one's soul. Those who seek to evoke in the reader a true understanding of their feelings, a respect for their position, should study Jane Austen well.

Hers is the flowery, gracious, articulate language of an age which knew not the camera. It was a time when pictures, laboriously produced and expensive, were often and of necessity painted with words. Such a language could be used to discuss the most divisive, sensitive subjects decently, in a quiet manner, because it was capable of expressing the nicest nuances of meaning and emotion in a courteous, considerate way. But even this wonderful language did not gain for Anne the concord of Captain Harville. They eventually agreed, more sensibly than those in recent debates, that the issue was one which admitted no proof. Anne did win from Harville a very respectful sympathy for her feelings and the deepest love he could give her as a friend. She accepted that gratefully, perhaps because she knew it is a poor soul indeed who would rather be right than be loved. Once again, Austen never condemned anyone. But she exercised an ironic wit in such a way that her justice can be exquisitely painful, as I learned in my first experience with her work.

To one unfamiliar with it, Austen's prose can be maddeningly slow. There seems to be no action whatever. In 'Emma,' the reader is quite literally dragged along as witness to several dozens of dinners and card parties - all involving the same people and all held at one or another of three houses in a town so small it hardly warrants a name. The characters are elaborately polite, exhibiting that typical British reserve so maddening, at times, to the foreigner. And all these people do is just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk!

The plot is ridiculously simple. I guessed, almost as soon as I was acquainted with all the players, that Emma Woodhouse would marry Knightley and that Harriet would eventually marry Mr. Martin. Nor was it hard to conclude that Frank Churchill sent Jane Fairfax that stupid pianoforte and that, such being the case, Frankenfax would soon be an item. Anybody would spot Mr. Elton for an unsavory type; Knightley, who is never wrong, pronounced him one such. Miss Woodhouse, the heroine, is a beautiful, intelligent, cheeky young woman. She is inexperienced, though, and thinks she knows a great deal more about people than she actually does. She spends a lot of time judging the others, figuring out who should marry whom and why they should do so. One laughs at her because all the time she is minding others' business it never occurs to her to mind her own. The silly twit doesn't even know she's in love with Knightley. Emma and the others seem trivial, materialistic, class-conscious, self-concerned, and smug as all get-out. For that reason, I found it easy to dislike the lot of them. They seemed wholly predictable, ludicrous and boring. But I soon found that feeling so was a trap.

What happened to me is that Austen led me to make assessments of Emma Woodhouse and her friends just as Emma made assessments in the book. Like Emma, I cared for my opinions more than I cared for Austen and her characters. Because I took them all for granted, I learned to care for them as Emma learned to care for Knightley - all unawares. I was smug, sure in my judgment of Emma and her fate, superior to the characters and the author. So it was that Austen set me up. I had become an unknowing participant in an Austen morality play.

Her timing and her aim were both perfect, then, when she delivered her peripetia, a thing of which I, in my smugness, never suspected she was capable. I was thrown into a spasm of disbelief and confusion (as was Emma Woodhouse) by Austen's suggestion that Knightley would marry Harriet Smith. Struck by the sudden realization that I actually cared what happened to Emma, I was able to identify minutely with her as she was torn between her just-realized love for Knightley and her sisterly affection for Harriet. I pitied Emma while her feelings for her two friends swayed to-and-fro between noble, heart-felt loyalty and the bitter gall of jealousy and spite. After that episode, the resolution was cathartic.

But while Emma's anagnorisis was already accomplished, my own had to wait for two days. During that time I fretted over why it was that such a seemingly silly novel had affected me so profoundly. When, by and by, I finally made the connection that all the while I had been sneering at Emma and her friends, I had been sneering at myself - that their faults were my own - then I realized the depth to which Jane Austen had cut me with her wit. Left, as I was, mentally agape, I was certain that she laughed in her grave.

No author capable of dealing me such a slap in the face will have trouble holding my attention in the future. Austen's moralizing be damned! I've been enlightened by a Georgian terrorist.

A similar harrowing awaits those who buy this splendid Barnes & Noble edition. It contains all seven of Austen's novels, complete and unabridged. Read it if you've got the nerve and if you get cut up like I did, remember: I told you so. ( )

I am so incredibly bored by Austen and all of the "intrigue" that she cushions her silly characters within. That said, I recognize that she was revolutionary within the form of the novel, and in the context of having mostly female lead characters.

I can see the writing, and that it is "good", but oftentimes when you get behind the language, the plots of the novels seem trite. "Girl gets married" seems to fit most of them.

Important, but I don't think they're very fun or entertaining. ( )

This is a great book that includes 7 of Jane Austen's novels: Sense and Sensibility
Pride and Prejudice
Mansfield Park
Emma
Northanger Abbey
Persuasion
Lady Susan

Jane Austen has kept me entertained through many cold and rainy Pacific Northwest winter days with her complex characters in small-village settings. She re-opens for me a time that has passed, but one which I feel I might have liked to have known better. ( )

This is a great book. ( )