"I am not a great reader": What Jane Austen's characters read (and why), part 2

The Reader by Marguerite Gérard and Jean Honoré Fragonard, c. 1786. Image source: The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

In her book What Jane Austen's Characters Read (and Why) (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024), Persuasions editor Susan Allen Ford examines the reading preferences of Austen's characters as a key to understanding them more deeply. The previous post in this series, "So rapturous a delight," discussed Marianne Dashwood's passion for poetry in Sense and Sensibility and Catherine Morland's taste for the "horrid scenes" in Gothic novels in Northanger Abbey. In this post it's the turn of Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Quotations below referenced by chapter are from Austen, while those with page numbers are from Ford's study.

Fordyce's Sermons to Young Women

There is a famous scene involving books in Pride and Prejudice. The clergyman Mr. Collins visits his cousins the Bennets, and is invited to read aloud:

Mr. Collins readily assented, and a book was produced; but on beholding it (for everything announced it to be from a circulating library) he started back, and, begging pardon, protested that he never read novels. Kitty stared at him, and Lydia exclaimed. Other books were produced, and after some deliberation he chose "Fordyce’s Sermons." (Ch. XIV)

"Protested that he never read novels." Illustration by Hugh Thomson for the "Peacock edition" of Pride and Prejudice, George Allen, 1894. Image source: Project Gutenberg

James Fordyce's Sermons to Young Women (1766) was a well-known "conduct book," whose essays cover "the attractions and dangers of the witty woman, the definition of the accomplished woman, and the depiction of the virtuous marriage and family" (p. 91). Before Mr. Collins has "with very monotonous solemnity, read three pages," Lydia, bored to tears, interrupts him to regale her mother and sisters with some gossip.

Lydia was bid by her two eldest sisters to hold her tongue; but Mr. Collins, much offended, laid aside his book, and said,—

"I have often observed how little young ladies are interested by books of a serious stamp, though written solely for their benefit. It amazes me, I confess; for certainly there can be nothing so advantageous to them as instruction." (Ch. XIV)

"A certain briskness of air and levity of deportment"

Mr. Collins, whose pomposity is only exceeded by his servility to Lady Catherine de Bourgh, is an object of Austen's sharpest satire. But Ford points out that "Jane Austen doesn't simply accept or reject conduct-book ideals" (p. 116). Instead of mocking Fordyce, Elizabeth echoes him when she warns her insufficiently vigilant father of Lydia's wayward behavior:

Our importance, our respectability in the world, must be affected by the wild volatility, the assurance and disdain of all restraint which mark Lydia’s character. . .If you, my dear father, will not take the trouble of checking her exuberant spirits, and of teaching her that her present pursuits are not to be the business of her life, she will soon be beyond the reach of amendment. Her character will be fixed; and she will, at sixteen, be the most determined flirt that ever made herself and her family ridiculous;—a flirt, too, in the worst and meanest degree of flirtation; without any attraction beyond youth and a tolerable person; and, from the ignorance and emptiness of her mind, wholly unable to ward off any portion of that universal contempt which her rage for admiration will excite. In this danger Kitty is also comprehended. She will follow wherever Lydia leads. Vain, ignorant, idle, and absolutely uncontrolled! Oh, my dear father, can you suppose it possible that they will not be censured and despised wherever they are known, and that their sisters will not be often involved in the disgrace?” (Ch. XLI)

Events prove Elizabeth's warning to be all too prescient. But Elizabeth herself is not a model of Fordycian docility, thankfully. Fordyce's Sermon III, "On Female Reserve," criticizes young women who have

contracted a certain briskness of air and levity of deportment. . .Such an air and deportment, I well know, are by many esteemed as marks of spirit. It may be so. I am willing at least to believe that no real harm is meant by numbers who affect them. But. . .I had rather a thousand times see a young lady carry her bashfulness too far, than pique herself on the freedom of her manners.

Ford notes that "Fordyce's caution against female wit impinges directly on Austen's construction of Elizabeth Bennet, who diverges from both the conduct-book pattern and Fordyce's criteria of bashful modesty and graceful reticence—a departure that encompasses both her flaws and her virtues" (p. 91).

While Elizabeth is staying at Netherfield to nurse Jane, Caroline Bingley "often tried to provoke Darcy into disliking her guest" by pretending that they are soon to be married. Sounding very much like Fordyce, Miss Bingley urges Darcy to "endeavour to check that little something, bordering on conceit and impertinence, which your lady possesses" (Ch. X). This language reflects that of another well-known conduct-book, Hester Chapone's Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, Addressed to a Young Lady (1773). Her Letter VIII, "On Politeness and Accomplishments," declares that "nothing is so disgusting in youth as pertness and self-conceit."

Elizabeth's "liveliness of mind," though, is what first attracts Darcy: "But there was a mixture of sweetness and archness in her manner which made it difficult for her to affront anybody, and Darcy had never been so bewitched by any woman as he was by her. He really believed that, were it not for the inferiority of her connections, he should be in some danger" (Ch. X).

Of course, he is in more danger (of happiness) than he realizes. Much later in the novel Elizabeth tries to explain to him how that danger arose, implicitly contrasting herself with Caroline Bingley:

"My beauty you had early withstood, and as for my manners—my behaviour to you was at least always bordering on the uncivil, and I never spoke to you without rather wishing to give you pain than not. Now, be sincere; did you admire me for my impertinence?"

"For the liveliness of your mind I did."

"You may as well call it impertinence at once. It was very little less. The fact is, that you were sick of civility, of deference, of officious attention. You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking, and looking, and thinking for your approbation alone. I roused and interested you, because I was so unlike them." (Ch. LX)

"Be not too hasty in drawing characters"

But of course, mutual interest and attraction is not how their relationship begins, or proceeds. In Sermon XIV, "On Female Meekness," Fordyce admonishes, "Be not too hasty to draw characters, in general companies especially. Whenever you do, be sure to touch on what is praiseworthy: something praiseworthy there is in every character. Over what is culpable throw the veil of charity as often as you can." Ford notes that from their very first meeting at the Meryton Assembly "both Elizabeth and Darcy move hastily towards judgments that they later must retract" (p. 92).

"She is tolerable[: but not handsome enough to tempt me]." Illustration by Hugh Thomson for Pride and Prejudice, 1894. Image source: Project Gutenberg

At the Assembly we witness Darcy early withstanding Elizabeth's beauty when Mr. Bingley urges him to dance with her:

. . .turning round, he looked for a moment at Elizabeth, till, catching her eye, he withdrew his own, and coldly said, "She is tolerable: but not handsome enough to tempt me; and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men. You had better return to your partner and enjoy her smiles, for you are wasting your time with me."

Mr. Bingley followed his advice. Mr. Darcy walked off; and Elizabeth remained with no very cordial feelings towards him. She told the story, however, with great spirit among her friends. . . (Ch. III)

We can get the flavor of her remarks to her friends and family from Mrs. Bennet's description of Darcy to her husband after the ball. Since Mrs. Bennet has had no encounter with Darcy herself (he has "declined being introduced to any other lady" than those in his party), her opinions must derive from Elizabeth's, although, without a doubt, characteristically heightened in vehemence and exaggerated in disdain:

"Lizzy does not lose much by not suiting his fancy; for he is a most disagreeable, horrid man, not at all worth pleasing. So high and so conceited, that there was no enduring him! He walked here, and he walked there, fancying himself so very great! Not handsome enough to dance with!. . .I quite detest the man." (Ch. III)

It is Jane Bennet who is a paragon of the qualities of modesty, reserve, dutifulness and forbearance that Fordyce extols in women. After the ball, Elizabeth and Jane are discussing Mr. Bingley:

"Well, he certainly is very agreeable, and I give you leave to like him. You have liked many a stupider person."

"Dear Lizzy!"

"Oh, you are a great deal too apt, you know, to like people in general. You never see a fault in anybody. All the world are good and agreeable in your eyes. I never heard you speak ill of a human being in my life."

"I would wish not to be hasty in censuring anyone; but I always speak what I think."

"I know you do: and it is that which makes the wonder. With your good sense, to be so honestly blind to the follies and nonsense of others! Affectation of candour is common enough; one meets with it everywhere. But to be candid without ostentation or design,—to take the good of everybody's character and make it still better, and say nothing of the bad,—belongs to you alone." (Ch. IV)

"It is undoubtedly our duty to cultivate the powers intrusted to us"

In Letter VIII of Letters on the Improvement of the Mind Hester Chapone writes that "the attainment of such branches of knowledge and such arts and accomplishments as are proper to your sex, capacity, and station, will prove so valuable to yourself through life, and will make you so desirable a companion, that the neglect of them may reasonably be deemed a neglect of duty." Her list of accomplishments is wide-ranging:

Dancing and the knowledge of the French tongue are now so universal that they cannot be dispensed with in the education of a gentlewoman. . .Italian would be easily learned after French. . .To write a free and legible hand, and to understand common arithmetic, are indispensable requisites.

As to music and drawing, I would only wish you to follow as Genius leads. . .As I look upon taste to be an inestimable fund of innocent delight, I wish you to lose no opportunity of improving it, and of cultivating in yourself the relish of such pleasures as will not interfere with a rational scheme of life. . .

But when it comes to the importance of reading for young women, our authorities diverge. Fordyce, in his Sermon VI, says that "nature appears to have formed the faculties of your sex for the most part with less vigour than those of ours; observing the same distinction here, as in the more delicate frame of your bodies. . .Whatever kinds of reading may contribute to your general improvement and satisfaction, as reasonable beings designed for society, virtue, and religion, will deserve your attentive regard," particularly history, "voyages and travels," and poetry. But, he admonishes young women, "Your business chiefly is to read Men, in order to make yourselves agreeable and useful."

For Mrs. Chapone, however, "With regard to accomplishments, the chief of these is a competent share of reading, well chosen and properly regulated. . .Whatever tends to embellish your fancy, to enlighten your understanding, and furnish you with ideas to reflect upon when alone, or to converse upon in company, is certainly well worth your acquisition."

At Netherfield, Charles Bingley, his sister Caroline, Darcy, and Elizabeth discuss accomplishments in women, and Darcy rather surprisingly concurs with Mrs. Chapone (and even refers to the title of her book):

"It is amazing to me,” said Bingley, “how young ladies can have patience to be so very accomplished as they all are."

"All young ladies accomplished! My dear Charles, what do you mean?"

"Yes, all of them, I think. They all paint tables, cover screens, and net purses. I scarcely know any one who cannot do all this; and I am sure I never heard a young lady spoken of for the first time, without being informed that she was very accomplished."

"Your list of the common extent of accomplishments," said Darcy, "has too much truth. The word is applied to many a woman who deserves it no otherwise than by netting a purse or covering a screen; but I am very far from agreeing with you in your estimation of ladies in general. I cannot boast of knowing more than half-a-dozen in the whole range of my acquaintance that are really accomplished."

"Nor I, I am sure," said Miss Bingley.

"Then," observed Elizabeth, "you must comprehend a great deal in your idea of an accomplished woman."

"Yes; I do comprehend a great deal in it."

"Oh, certainly," cried his faithful assistant, "no one can be really esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and, besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved."

"All this she must possess," added Darcy; "and to all she must yet add something more substantial in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading."

"I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women. I rather wonder now at your knowing any." (Ch. VIII)

Alas, by her own admission Elizabeth does not meet Darcy's rather exalted standards for female accomplishment. Although she loves dancing—"You excel so much in the dance, Miss Eliza," Sir William Lucas tells her when she refuses to dance with Darcy at Lucas Lodge, "that it is cruel to deny me the happiness of seeing you" (Ch. VI)—she is deficient in other areas.

We are told that, at the same party, when she is prevailed on by Charlotte Lucas to sing "a song or two" that "her performance was pleasing, though by no means capital" (Ch. VI).

"The entreaties of several [that she would sing again]." Illustration by Hugh Thomson for Pride and Prejudice, 1894. Image source: Project Gutenberg

We learn even more about the accomplishments she lacks when Lady Catherine de Bourgh questions her closely:

"Do you play and sing, Miss Bennet?"

"A little."

". . .Do your sisters play and sing?"

"One of them does."

"Why did not you all learn? You ought all to have learned. . .Do you draw?"

"No, not at all."

"What, none of you?"

"Not one."

"That is very strange. But I suppose you had no opportunity. . .Has your governess left you?"

"We never had any governess."

"No governess! How was that possible? Five daughters brought up at home without a governess! I never heard of such a thing. Your mother must have been quite a slave to your education."

Elizabeth could hardly help smiling, as she assured her that had not been the case. (Ch. XXIX)

No governess, of course, means that Elizabeth does not know French or Italian. As for English prose and verse, she tells the company at Netherfield, "I am not a great reader," although we know that her father has a collection of books and that the Bennet family subscribes to a circulating library from which they borrow novels, such as the one offered to Mr. Collins.

Elizabeth's lack of conventional female accomplishments serves to heighten the contrast between her and Darcy's social circle, and make her a less obvious choice for him as a wife. He is the master of a country home with a "delightful library" for which he is "always buying books" (Ch. VIII), and the picture gallery at Pemberley contains "many good paintings: but Elizabeth knew nothing of the art" (Ch. XLIII).

But Darcy lacks social ease with people he doesn't know. During a gathering at Lady Catherine's, Elizabeth makes a pointed comparison between her keyboard playing and Darcy's reserve in company:

"I certainly have not the talent which some people possess," said Darcy, "of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done."

"My fingers," said Elizabeth, "do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women's do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault—because I would not take the trouble of practising." (Ch. XXXI)

The ideal marriage

Each of them has things to learn from the other, which Elizabeth grows to realize just when the unlikely possibility of marriage to Darcy is seemingly destroyed completely:

She began now to comprehend that he was exactly the man who, in disposition and talents, would most suit her. His understanding and temper, though unlike her own, would have answered all her wishes. It was an union that must have been to the advantage of both: by her ease and liveliness, his mind might have been softened, his manners improved; and from his judgment, information, and knowledge of the world, she must have received benefit of greater importance. (Ch. L)

In Sermon VII, "On Female Virtue, with Intellectual Accomplishments," Fordyce writes of the impermanence of solely physical attraction:

Nothing can detain affection or fix esteem, but that kind of beauty which depends not on flesh and blood. The least degree of understanding will be disgusted at petulance, caprice, or nonsense, even in the fairest form. External allurements are continually losing; internal attractions are continually gaining. . .The power of a face to please, or indeed to displease, is diminished every time it is seen. When appetite does not predominate, and appetite cannot predominate always, the soul will seek a soul; it will refuse to be satisfied with any thing less. If it find none, in vain shall the brightest eye sparkle. In vain shall the softest smile entice. But if a mind appear, and, wherever it resides, a mind will appear, it is recognized, admired, and embraced; even though the eye should possess no lustre, and smiles should at the moment be banished by sorrow.

As Ford notes, "Both Darcy's attraction to Elizabeth and, in contrast, the Bennets' unequal marriage are captured in this description" (p. 95).

"Mr & Mrs Bennet." Illustration by Hugh Thomson for Pride and Prejudice, 1894. Image source: Project Gutenberg

Perhaps surprisingly for a man of his time, however, Fordyce warns not only against unions based solely on physical attraction, but also against those based on the desire for social or material gain. Instead he insists that marriage must be founded on true affection: "No rules of duty can oblige you to involve yourselves in misery and temptation, by entering into engagements to love and to honour, where your hearts withhold their consent" (Sermon XII, "On Good Works").

It is Jane who first expresses this note of Fordycian caution when told by Elizabeth of her engagement to Darcy:

"Good heaven! can it be really so? Yet now I must believe you," cried Jane. "My dear, dear Lizzy, I would, I do congratulate you; but are you certain—forgive the question—are you quite certain that you can be happy with him?"

"There can be no doubt of that. It is settled between us already that we are to be the happiest couple in the world. . ."

". . .And do you really love him quite well enough? Oh, Lizzy! do anything rather than marry without affection. Are you quite sure that you feel what you ought to do?"

"Oh, yes! You will only think I feel more than I ought to do when I tell you all." (Ch. LIX)

Her father also follows Fordyce's precepts. After mentioning his first suspicion, that she is marrying for money—"you may have more fine clothes and fine carriages than Jane. But will they make you happy?"—he warns her of the unhappiness of a partnership not based on mutual love and esteem:

"Lizzy," said her father, "I have given him my consent. . .I now give it to you, if you are resolved on having him. But let me advise you to think better of it. I know your disposition, Lizzy. I know that you could be neither happy nor respectable, unless you truly esteemed your husband, unless you looked up to him as a superior. Your lively talents would place you in the greatest danger in an unequal marriage. You could scarcely escape discredit and misery. My child, let me not have the grief of seeing you unable to respect your partner in life. You know not what you are about."

Elizabeth, still more affected, was earnest and solemn in her reply; and, at length, by repeated assurances that Mr. Darcy was really the object of her choice, by explaining the gradual change which her estimation of him had undergone, relating her absolute certainty that his affection was not the work of a day, but had stood the test of many months' suspense, and enumerating with energy all his good qualities, she did conquer her father's incredulity, and reconcile him to the match.

"Well, my dear," said he, when she ceased speaking, "I have no more to say. If this be the case, he deserves you. I could not have parted with you, my Lizzy, to anyone less worthy." (Ch. LIX)

As Ford writes, "the intertextual play generated" by the conduct books Austen references "draws particular attention. . .to the model of virtue and romance that Elizabeth and Darcy represent. In effect, in Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen writes a different kind of conduct book—in which her readers, her heroine and her hero might all be said to collaborate" (pp. 116–17).

The wedding parties leaving the church. Illustration by Hugh Thomson for Pride and Prejudice, 1894. Image source: Project Gutenberg

Next time: "To be a renter, a chuser of books!": Mansfield Park

"So rapturous a delight": What Jane Austen's characters read (and why), part 1

The Reader by Marguerite Gérard and Jean Honoré Fragonard, c. 1786. Image source: The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

In her book What Jane Austen's Characters Read (and Why) (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024), Persuasions editor Susan Allen Ford examines the reading preferences of Austen's characters as a key to understanding them more deeply. In this post series I will look at each of Austen's canonical novels to see what this perspective can tell us in particular about her heroines, along with a few other major characters.

". . .her favourite authors were brought forward and dwelt upon with so rapturous a delight": Sense and Sensibility

Reading is crucially important, of course, for Sense and Sensibility's Marianne Dashwood, whose headlong passion for Willoughby is fueled by their common enthusiasm for the poetry of James Thomson, William Cowper, and Walter Scott:

. . .she proceeded to question him on the subject of books; her favourite authors were brought forward and dwelt upon with so rapturous a delight, that any young man of five and twenty must have been insensible indeed, not to become an immediate convert to the excellence of such works, however disregarded before. Their taste was strikingly alike. The same books, the same passages were idolized by each—or if any difference appeared, any objection arose, it lasted no longer than till the force of her arguments and the brightness of her eyes could be displayed.

. . .His society became gradually her most exquisite enjoyment. They read, they talked, they sang together; his musical talents were considerable; and he read with all the sensibility and spirit which Edward [Ferrars] had unfortunately wanted. . .

Marianne began now to perceive that the desperation which had seized her at sixteen and a half, of ever seeing a man who could satisfy her ideas of perfection, had been rash and unjustifiable. (Ch. X)

Marianne imagines herself to be a Romantic heroine, only to plummet from "so rapturous a delight" into the depths of life-threatening despair when Willoughby proves himself to be conventional after all: insincere, inconstant, callous.

"[Marianne came hastily out of the parlour] apparently in violent affliction." Illustration by Hugh Thomson for Sense and Sensibility, Macmillan and Co., 1896. Image source: Project Gutenberg

It says a great deal about the importance of books to Marianne that when she undertakes to cure herself from excessive imaginative engagement with her favorite authors, she intends to do so through more reading. She tells Elinor,

I have formed my plan, and am determined to enter on a course of serious study. . .there are many works well worth reading at the Park; and there are others of more modern production which I know I can borrow of Colonel Brandon. By reading only six hours a-day, I shall gain in the course of a twelve-month a great deal of instruction which I now feel myself to want. (Ch. XLVI)

"Craving to be frightened": Northanger Abbey

Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey also over-identifies with her reading. Her vivid imagination is filled with "horrid scenes" from Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and other Gothic novels. "To say the truth," she tells new acquaintances Eleanor and Henry Tilney, "I do not much like any other" (Ch. XIV). And when General Tilney invites her to the family's ancient home, her thrilling fears run rampant:

The night was stormy; the wind had been rising at intervals the whole afternoon; and by the time the party broke up, it blew and rained violently. Catherine, as she crossed the hall, listened to the tempest with sensations of awe; and, when she heard it rage round a corner of the ancient building and close with sudden fury a distant door, felt for the first time that she was really in an abbey. Yes, these were characteristic sounds; they brought to her recollection a countless variety of dreadful situations and horrid scenes, which such buildings had witnessed. . .

The storm still raged, and various were the noises, more terrific even than the wind, which struck at intervals on her startled ear. The very curtains of her bed seemed at one moment in motion, and at another the lock of her door was agitated, as if by the attempt of somebody to enter. Hollow murmurs seemed to creep along the gallery, and more than once her blood was chilled by the sound of distant moans. Hour after hour passed away, and the wearied Catherine had heard three proclaimed by all the clocks in the house before the tempest subsided or she unknowingly fell fast asleep. (Ch. XXI)

Ford points out insightfully that, absorbed in her own dark fantasies, Catherine "doesn't notice that Eleanor, clothed always in white, is the real gothic heroine of the Abbey" (p. 57): motherless, isolated and alone, forcibly separated from her betrothed, and compelled to obey her domineering father's imperious, angry commands, circumstances that result in her "habitual suffering" (Ch. XXXI).

"General Tilney was pacing the drawing room." Illustration by Hugh Thomson for Northanger Abbey, Macmillan and Co., 1897. Image source: Internet Archive

Like Marianne Dashwood, Catherine must also be "cured" of her excessive imagination. In Catherine's case, it is not through a self-administered course of rational study, but rather a sudden humiliating sense of her own folly. When Henry Tilney discovers that she suspects that his father, like the villain of a Gothic novel, has had a role in his mother's death, he gently chastens her:

"If I understand you rightly, you had formed a surmise of such horror as I have hardly words to—Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. . .Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. . .Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting?"

They had reached the end of the gallery, and with tears of shame she ran off to her own room.

"'Mr. Tilney!' she exclaimed." Illustration by Hugh Thomson for Northanger Abbey, 1897. Image source: Internet Archive

The visions of romance were over. Catherine was completely awakened. Henry’s address, short as it had been, had more thoroughly opened her eyes to the extravagance of her late fancies than all their several disappointments had done. Most grievously was she humbled. Most bitterly did she cry. It was not only with herself that she was sunk—but with Henry. Her folly, which now seemed even criminal, was all exposed to him, and he must despise her forever. . .She hated herself more than she could express.

. . .Her thoughts being still chiefly fixed on what she had with such causeless terror felt and done, nothing could shortly be clearer than that it had been all a voluntary, self-created delusion, each trifling circumstance receiving importance from an imagination resolved on alarm, and everything forced to bend to one purpose by a mind which, before she entered the abbey, had been craving to be frightened. She remembered with what feelings she had prepared for a knowledge of Northanger. She saw that the infatuation had been created, the mischief settled, long before her quitting Bath, and it seemed as if the whole might be traced to the influence of that sort of reading which she had there indulged.

Charming as were all Mrs. Radcliffe’s works, and charming even as were the works of all her imitators, it was not in them perhaps that human nature, at least in the Midland counties of England, was to be looked for. (Ch. XXIV–XXV)

Interestingly, when Henry urges Catherine to "consult. . .your own observation of what is passing around you," it is an echo of Walter Scott's praise of Austen in an unsigned review of Emma published in the The Quarterly Review of October 1815. Her novels, he wrote,

proclaim a knowledge of the human heart. . .presenting to the reader, instead of the splendid scenes of an imaginary world, a correct and striking representation of that which is daily taking place around him. . .The narrative of all her novels is composed of such common occurrences as may have fallen under the observation of most folks; and her dramatis personæ conduct themselves upon the motives and principles which the readers may recognize as ruling their own and that of most of their acquaintances. . .All [of her characters'] entanglements bring on only a train of mistakes and embarrassing situations. . .in which the author displays her peculiar powers of humor and knowledge of human life.

The endings to both Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey may make some think that Austen is suggesting that women must renounce their imaginative lives as a precondition to be considered fit for marriage by their future husbands. But I don't think that's so. We learn of Catherine and Henry, 

it will not appear, after all the dreadful delays occasioned by the General’s cruelty, that they were essentially hurt by it. . .the General’s unjust interference, so far from being really injurious to their felicity, was perhaps rather conducive to it, by improving their knowledge of each other, and adding strength to their attachment. (Ch. XXXI)

"Improving their knowledge of each other" does not sound as if Catherine is suppressing vital parts of herself or trying to fit into her partner's preconceived ideas of female perfection, but rather that each is learning to appreciate the other as they are, "adding strength to their attachment."

And as for Marianne?

Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to discover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract, by her conduct, her most favourite maxims. . .Instead of falling a sacrifice to an irresistible passion, as once she had fondly flattered herself with expecting, instead of remaining even for ever with her mother, and finding her only pleasures in retirement and study, as afterwards in her more calm and sober judgment she had determined on,—she found herself at nineteen, submitting to new attachments, entering on new duties, placed in a new home, a wife, the mistress of a family, and the patroness of a village.

Far from her vivacity being crushed, it seems that Marianne has a greater influence on Colonel Brandon than he on her. Formerly "silent and grave" and suffering under an "oppression of spirits" due to deep emotional wounds resulting from a long-lost love, Colonel Brandon finds that

in Marianne he was consoled for every past affliction;—her regard and her society restored his mind to animation, and his spirits to cheerfulness; and that Marianne found her own happiness in forming his, was equally the persuasion and delight of each observing friend. Marianne could never love by halves; and her whole heart became, in time, as much devoted to her husband, as it had once been to Willoughby. (Ch. L)

Perhaps Austen is suggesting that love and imagination are not entirely incompatible.

Next time: "I am not a great reader": Pride and Prejudice

Fingersmith

Cover of the U.S. edition of Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (Riverhead, 2002). Image source: Underground Books on Abebooks.com

The story may sound familiar to anyone who has seen Park Chan-wook's The Handmaiden (2016): a man plots to cheat a sheltered heiress out of her inheritance by marrying her, getting control of her money, and then committing her to an insane asylum. To further his scheme he recruits a young woman, a thief, to go to work under a false identity as the heiress's maid and become her confidant and advisor. Contrary to plan, the maid falls in love with the heiress. But who will wind up betraying whom?

Park's film was based on Sarah Waters' third novel, Fingersmith (2002). "Finger-smith" is 19th-century slang for pickpocket or petty thief, but it has the broader connotation of someone adept with their fingers, which can also be interpreted sexually (as Waters, whose first novel also had a Victorian slang title with a sexual meaning, Tipping the Velvet (1998), surely intended).

From Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1937, p. 277. [1] Image source: Internet Archive

Fingersmith is set around the time of Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White (1860), from which, along with his Fallen Leaves (1879) and The Dead Secret (1857), as well as Dickens' Oliver Twist (1838), the novel draws elements of its plot.

Sue Trinker, an orphan who has just turned 17, has been raised in Mrs. Sucksby's Lant Street lodging-house in London's gritty Southwark. Lant Street existed at the time the novel is set, and still does. In the 1860 map below, it is outlined in blue.

Smith's New Map of London (detail) showing Lant Street, by C. Smith & Son, 1860. Image source: Library of Congress

Lant Street was where, in the mid-1820s, an impoverished 12-year-old boy lodged in an attic room so that he could visit his father in Marshalsea Prison, just a few hundred yards away across the Borough High Street next to St. George the Martyr Church. [2] His father was imprisoned for debt—a sentence that could end only after the debt was paid—and the boy sustained himself as far as he was able by working grueling hours in Warren's Blacking Factory across the River Thames at Hungerford Stairs. As you may have realized, the boy was named Charles Dickens. He would later write a novel, Little Dorrit (1857), which features a father imprisoned in Marshalsea for debt and a child, his youngest daughter Amy, who works long days as a seamstress to support both herself and him.

Illustration by Phiz (H[ablot]. K[night]. Browne) on the title page of Dickens' Little Dorrit showing Amy leaving Marshalsea Prison. The Chapman & Hall edition has no date, but the illustration is from the first edition published by Bradbury & Evans in 1857. Image source: HathiTrust

So Waters does not choose Lant Street at random as the location for Mrs. Sucksby's house. And as her Dickensian name suggests, Mrs. Sucksby is a baby-farmer, a woman who takes in other women's (often illegitimate) children for a fee. Sue herself was one of the infants left in her care; her mother never returned because, as Mrs. Sucksby has told her, her mother was a thief, and was arrested, convicted and hanged for a stabbing death that took place during a robbery.

As Sue relates of her life in Lant Street in Part One of the novel,

All about me other infants came, and stayed a little, then were claimed by their mothers, or found new mothers, or perished; and of course, no-one claimed me, I did not perish, and instead I grew up, until at last I was old enough to go among the cradles with the bottle of gin and the silver spoon, myself. (pp. 11–12)

Gin, laudanum or paregoric (both of the latter were solutions of opium in alcohol) were often used by baby-farmers to quieten a baby's cries of hunger. It's an early hint to the reader of what lies beneath Mrs. Sucksby's genial and matronly demeanor.

"Baby-Farming," British Medical Journal, 21 December 1867. [3] Image source: HathiTrust.org

Sue has not only survived, she has become a favorite of Mrs. Sucksby's. Like her compatriots in the household, the lodger couple Jack and Dainty, she has been trained from childhood as a beggar and pickpocket and sent out into the streets of London. The money, handkerchiefs, rings, and watches they bring home to Mrs. Sucksby are sold on to Mr. Ibbs, a dealer in stolen goods whose locksmith shop occupies the ground floor of the lodging-house. Stealing is a dangerous business: in the 1850s and -60s children caught stealing could be sentenced to months of hard labor, while as they grew older the penalties could stretch into years. (For children, hard labor and reformatories had replaced the punishment of confinement to prison hulks and transportation to a penal colony that were common in the 1830s, when adult thieves could be hanged.)

"Oliver amazed at the Dodger's mode of going to work." Illustration by George Cruikshank for Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist (1837–39). Image source: Internet Archive

Richard Rivers, a thief, card-sharp and con man known as "Gentleman" because he claims to be the disowned son of a lord, is also part of Mrs. Sucksby's criminal family. One night he comes to Lant Street with some news. He's discovered the existence of an orphaned young woman, Maud Lilly, who lives on the crumbling estate of Briar as the ward of her uncle. The uncle collects books and prints, and has hired Gentleman, who has certain artistic talents, to come live at Briar and prepare his precious prints to be bound into albums. While there, Gentleman has discovered that Maud stands to inherit £15,000 if she marries—but will be left penniless if she remains unwed.

Back at Lant Street Gentleman outlines his plan: on his recommendation, Sue will be hired as a lady's maid to Maud; once she gains Maud's confidence, she will encourage her to trust in Gentleman's assurances and agree to his plan to elope. After they are married, Gentleman will dispose of Maud by committing her to an insane asylum, pay Sue £2000 (or so he says), and keep the rest of Maud's inheritance for himself.

Dainty looked at him then. . .She said, in a whisper:

"Ain't it terribly wicked, Gentleman, what you mean to do?"

I don't believe any of us had thought it, before that moment. Now Dainty said it, and I gazed about me, and nobody would catch my eye. (p. 28)

But after bargaining her share up to £3000, Sue agrees—an early sign to the reader, along with her dosing the babies with gin, that Sue has been in training to become another Mrs. Sucksby.

Once Sue agrees to play a role in Gentleman's scheme, things move rapidly. For the first time in her life she travels out of London, arriving at looming mansion of Briar on a cold, dark, windswept night (Waters employs the Gothic tropes effectively and knowingly). Sue has come to serve Maud with the intention of betraying her, but as time passes she discovers a sympathy for a fellow orphan that grows into a stronger emotion. One night in bed together the innocent Maud asks Sue to instruct her in a wife's duties to her husband on her wedding night. An embrace leads to a kiss that leads to another, and the women spend an impassioned night together.

But unbeknownst to Sue, Maud is not quite as pure a lily as her name implies. Her uncle's books are pornographic, and since the age of 12 she has been made to read them aloud to gatherings of his fellow aficionados. Now, at 17, Maud sees Gentleman as her first means of escape from her uncle's obsessions; but at the same time she also perceives his essentially fraudulent nature. So while Gentleman spends his time with Maud trying to seduce her, she pretends to be a demure, naïve girl who is hesitant to accede to his wishes.

Title page of Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure Vol. I [by John Cleland], "From the original corrected edition with a set of elegant engravings," London, 1766. Image source: Internet Archive

After her night with Sue, which was initially part of this charade, Maud is torn. But she realizes that her newly awakened feelings for Sue will have to be suppressed if she is to elope with Gentleman and claim her inheritance. Sue is also deeply conflicted, but to escape her own prison of poverty and danger she steels herself to carry out Gentleman's plot and help him condemn Maud to spend the rest of her life in a madhouse.

Waters writes energetically and vividly about life in mid-Victorian London, the vitality of the teeming city contrasting with the hunger and poverty of so many living there. Among those who must eke out an existence on the margins, Waters portrays camaraderie and solidarity, but also duplicity and treachery, and a casualness about human life perhaps to be expected in those for whom it is generally nasty, brutish and short.

She has mastered the art of the dramatic dilemma and the startling plot twist as well as any of her Victorian models: deceptions abound, and none of the main characters turns out to be quite what they seem. She also provides her characters with comprehensible, if criminal, motives for their often-abhorrent actions in the brutal struggle for survival. Waters' deployment of tropes from sensationalist novels is expert, and shows her deep immersion in and profound enjoyment of her Victorian predecessors. Fingersmith is highly recommended, and sure to be one of my favorite books of 2025.

Coda: The 2005 BBC TV series

Sally Hawkins (Sue), Elaine Cassidy (Maud), and the back-silhouette of Rupert Evans (Gentleman) in Fingersmith.

In 2005, Fingersmith was adapted as a three-episode BBC TV series starring Sally Hawkins (Zena Blake in Tipping the Velvet, 2002) as Sue Trinker, Elaine Cassidy (Katherine Glendenning in The Paradise, 2012–13) as Maud Lilly, Rupert Evans (Frank Churchill in Emma, 2008) as Gentleman, Charles Dance (Mr. Tulkinghorn in Bleak House, 2005) as Maud's uncle Christopher Lilly, and Imelda Staunton (Miss Pole in Cranford and Return to Cranford, 2007–09) as Mrs. Sucksby. It was adapted by Peter Ransley and directed by Aisling Walsh (Miss Austen, 2025).

As this list suggests, the casting is spot-on. Hawkins is a superb actress, of course, but everyone is perfectly suited to their roles. (Charles Dance is an even creepier and more domineering Uncle Christopher than in the novel, where he is a somewhat shadowy character.) The locations evoke almost too viscerally the crowded slums of Victorian London and the decaying grandeur of Briar. And Aisling Walsh's direction brings out many fleeting subtleties and nuances in the interactions among the characters. (A word of caution: the series, like the book, features some disturbing and violent scenes.) Brilliant work all around—but I recommend seeing it after you've read the novel. 

---

1. Abbreviations used in Partridge's Dictionary of Slang: C: century; low: low slang; Vaux: sourced from J.H. Vaux's "Glossary of Cant, 1812"; c: cant, or underworld slang; — 1823: in use before 1823; ob: obsolescent; Egan's Grose: sourced from Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, edited by Pierce Egan, 1823. For a definition of "tipping the velvet," see "velvet, tip the" in Partridge.
2. On the map St. George the Martyr is the black rectangle just above the word "Church" (for Church Street) to the right of the blue highlight box; Marshalsea was the building just north of the church that begins at the first "R" in Borough High Street.
3. Mrs. Jagger was a baby farmer exposed in late 1867 under whose care during the previous three years several dozen infants had died of starvation. Charlotte Windsor or Winsor was convicted in 1865 of taking in and murdering an infant boy for a fee; "testimony revealed that Mrs. Winsor conducted a steady trade of boarding illegitimate infants for a few shillings a week or putting them away for a set fee of 3 to 5 pounds." From "Bastardy and Baby Farming in Victorian England" by Dorothy L. Haller, p. [6].

Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the abolition of the British slave trade

Amazing Grace DVD cover. Image source: Amazon.com

Amazing Grace (2006) tells the story of William Wilberforce and the abolitionist campaign in Britain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Directed by Michael Apted (the Up series (1963-2019)), the film has a cast that is, well, amazing:

• Ioan Gruffudd (Phillip Bosinney in The Forsyte Saga (2002), to choose just one earlier role) as William Wilberforce:
  
  
  
  
  A note on his depiction: Portraits of Wilberforce from the 1790s generally show him with powdered hair or a powdered wig; unpowdered natural hair would seem to date from a somewhat later period.
  
  
  
  
  
  Portrait of William Wilberforce by Karl Anton Hickel, 1794. Image credit: Wilberforce House Museum/Bridgeman Images. Image source: Art UK
  
  
• Romola Garai (Gwendolen Harleth in Daniel Deronda (2002)) as his wife Barbara Spooner Wilberforce:
  
  
  
  
  Costume designer Jenny Beavan and the hair stylists seem to be modelling Barbara Wilberforce's look on Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, with her big hair. . .
  
  
  
  
  
  Portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (detail), by Thomas Gainsborough, 1783. Image source: National Gallery of Art 1937.1.93

  . . .and big hats:

  
  
  
  
  
  
  Portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (detail), by Thomas Gainsborough, 1784. Image credit: Kensington Palace Crown to Couture exhibition.
  
  Georgiana Cavendish would have been several rungs above Barbara Spooner Wilberforce on the social ladder, and so the Duchess's style was probably quite a bit grander. This is confirmed by what must be the wedding portrait of Barbara Spooner, which shows her in a relatively simple empire-waisted dress and without an elaborate coiffure.
  
  
  
  
  
  Portrait of Barbara Spooner Wilberforce by John Russell, ca. 1797. Image source: Wikimedia Commons
  
  This portrait was used by Beavan as a model for Barbara Spooner's wedding dress in the film, though the movie version is less demure and there is no veil:
  
  
  
  
  
• Benedict Cumberbatch (Freddy in Tipping the Velvet (2002)) as Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger:
  
  
  
  
  Cumberbatch is good physical casting for this role, as can be seen from the portrait below. Pitt was in his mid-twenties in 1783, the year of his appointment as Prime Minister:
  
  
  
  
  
  Portrait of William Pitt the Younger (detail) by George Romney, c. 1783. Image source: Tate Gallery
  
  
• Nicholas Farrell (Edmund Bertram in Mansfield Park (1983)) as Henry Thornton, anti-slavery evangelist, Member of Parliament for Southwark, and cousin of Wilberforce:
  
  
  
  
  Henry Thornton in a mezzotint from 1802:
  
  
  
  
  
  Henry Thornton (detail), mezzotint by James Ward, after a portrait by John Hoppner, 1802. Image source: National Portrait Gallery NPG D14768
  
  
• Sylvestra Le Touzel (Fanny Price in Mansfield Park (1983)) as his wife Marianne Sykes Thornton:
  
  
  
  
  Marianne Sykes Thornton is the only one of the major characters for whom I couldn't find a contemporary likeness.
• Albert Finney (Dr. Austin Sloper in Washington Square (1997)) as John Newton, evangelical priest, former slaveship captain, and writer of the words to the hymn "Amazing Grace":
  
  
  
  
  Contemporary portraits show John Newton to be a weatherbeaten but conventionally attired clergyman, not the hair-shirted wigless penitent portrayed by Finney:
  
  
  
  
  
  Portrait of the Rev. John Newton by John Russell, 1788. Image source: Hymnology Archive
  
  
• Michael Gambon (Squire Hamley in Wives and Daughters (1999)) as Charles Fox, Whig leader in the House of Commons:
  
  
  
  
  A contemporary portrait of Fox:
  
  
  
  
  
  Portrait of Charles James Fox (detail), by an unknown artist, ca. 1790–95. Image credit: Parliamentary Art Collection. Image source: Art UK
  
  
• Ciaran Hinds (Captain Frederick Wentworth in Persuasion (1995)) as (not yet) Lord Tarleton:
  
  
  
  
  Portrait of then-Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton in the year of the Parliamentary debate on the American War of Independence depicted in Amazing Grace; Hinds definitely captures Tarleton's military bearing and intense gaze.
  
  
  
  
  
  Portrait of Colonel Tarleton (detail), by Joshua Reynolds, 1782. Image source: National Gallery NG5985
  
  
• Toby Jones (Smee in Finding Neverland (2004)) as the Duke of Clarence, (not yet) King William IV:
  
  
  
  
  Miniature of the Duke of Clarence around the time he entered Parliament in 1789:
  
  
  
  
  
  Portrait of King William IV [the Duke of Clarence] (detail), by Richard Cosway, circa 1789. Image source: National Portrait Gallery NPG L176
  
  
• Youssou N'Dour (the Senegalese pop star) as the formerly enslaved writer and antislavery activist Olaudah Equiano:
  
  
  
  
  Equiano's appearance seems to be based in part on the famous portrait in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM) in Exeter:
  
  
  
  
  
  Portrait of a Man in a Red Suit, attributed to Allan Ramsay. Image credit: RAMM. Image source: Wikimedia Commons
  
  
• Bill Paterson (Mr. Gibson in Wives and Daughters (1999)) as (not yet) Lord Dundas (i.e., Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville after 1802), a proponent of gradual abolition:
  
  
  
  
  Henry Dundas in 1782, after a portrait by Joshua Reynolds:
  
  
  
  
  
  Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville (detail), mezzotint by John Raphael Smith, after portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1782. Image source: National Portrait Gallery NPG D19829
  
  
• Rufus Sewell (Will Ladislaw in Middlemarch (1995)) as Thomas Clarkson, the advocate of abolition:
  
  
  
  
  The appearances of Sewell and Finney seem to be the designers' greatest departures from the guidance provided by historical portraiture. All likenesses of Clarkson that I've seen show him in a powdered wig or in shortish natural hair, not with Sewell's flowing locks:
  
  
  
  
  
  Portrait of Thomas Clarkson (detail) by Carl Fredrik von Breda, 1788. Image source: National Portrait Gallery NPG 235
  
  

But despite the excellence signalled by the director and cast, as well as the evident care taken with many of the costumes and settings, the screenplay by Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things (2002)) undermines the entire enterprise. It simplifies, and at times falsifies, the complex history of abolition in Britain.

Meanwhile, its frequent jumps in time and place can be confusing. The main action occurs over a 25-year span (1782–1807), but to my inexpert eye the characters all look roughly the same ages in nearly every scene. As a result it's often not immediately apparent when or where a scene is taking place. As one example among many, in the first scene of the film Wilberforce meets Barbara Spooner in Bath. Their marriage doesn't occur until 80 minutes later in this nearly two-hour long movie. It feels as though their courtship must have gone on for years. So I was surprised to learn that in actuality they had a whirlwind courtship: they met on 15 April 1797 and Wilberforce proposed eight days later; they were married on 30 May.

The movie portrays Wilberforce in heroic terms; early in the film Marianne Thornton calls him "the most committed abolitionist in Britain." While Wilberforce was the leading Parliamentary advocate of ending the horrific slave trade, the bills he brought before the House of Commons beginning in 1791 did not actually address the abolition of slavery or the emancipation of the enslaved. 

The House of Commons 1793–1794, by Karl Anton Hickel. Image source: National Portrait Gallery NPG 745

It's important to look at Wilberforce's attitudes and actions in the context of his own era. Wilberforce and his allies moved to end the slave trade while leaving slavery untouched, no doubt, because they believed ending the slave trade was at the limit of what was politically possible. But at the time there were committed abolitionists who fought to end slavery completely in the British colonies. A Quaker petition submitted to Parliament in 1783 in support of an earlier bill on the slave trade stated,

Under the countenance of the laws of this country, many thousands of these our fellow-creatures, entitled to natural rights of mankind, are held, as personal property, in cruel bondage.

The petition, which carried 273 signatures, is clearly a call for ending the "cruel bondage" of slavery, not only the slave trade, and restoring to the enslaved the "natural rights of mankind." Quakers would continue to be among the leaders of the anti-slavery movement in Britain (as well as the U.S.), which also involved Anglicans, Catholics, and others.

In Amazing Grace this social background to Wilberforce's actions is largely absent, and several important figures, such as the advocate Granville Sharp, the poet William Cowper, and the former slave Ignatius Sancho, are missing entirely. Other major abolitionists such as Thomas Clarkson and Olaudah Equiano are given merely supporting roles.

Clarkson and Sharp, along with Josiah Wedgwood (also absent from the film), were among the founding members of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787. Wedgwood's medallion "Am I Not a Man and a Brother?" was created for the members of the Society.

"Am I Not A Man And A Brother?" Jasperware medallion produced for the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, designed by Josiah Wedgwood, c. 1787–1790, originally modelled by William Hackwood. Dimensions: 1.13" wide by 1.25" high. Image source: Clark Art Institute, 2021.11.1

Equiano's 1789 autobiography went through nine editions over the five years following its first publication. He embarked on speaking tours, and was also a founder of the Sons of Africa, an abolitionist organization of formerly enslaved men that also included Ottobah Cugoano. As you may have guessed, neither the Sons of Africa nor Cugoano is mentioned in the movie.

Frontispiece and title page of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself, Vol. I (London, 1789). Image source: Internet Archive

And Cowper's poem The Negro's Complaint (1788) was reprinted for decades. The following illustration is from an 1826 edition:

Image source: Internet Archive

The poem reads in part,

Forc'd from home and all its pleasures,
Afric's coast I left forlorn;
To increase a stranger's treasures,
O'er the raging billows borne;

Men from England bought and sold me,
Paid my price in paltry gold;
But though slave they have enroll'd me
Minds are never to be sold.

Still in thought as free as ever,
What are England's rights, I ask,
Me from my delights to sever,
Me to torture, me to task?

Also missing from Amazing Grace is Chief Justice Lord Mansfield.

Portrait of William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, in his official robes as Lord Chief Justice (detail), by John Singleton Copley, 1783. Image source: National Portrait Gallery NPG 172 

Mansfield's opinions in the Somerset and Zong Massacre cases were celebrated among abolitionists. He and his wife also raised their mixed-race niece, Dido Elizabeth Belle, on equivalent terms with her white cousin Elizabeth Murray.

Dido Elizabeth Belle and Elizabeth Murray (detail), by David Martin, c. 1776. Image source: Kenwood House

More than four decades later Mansfield was still so well-known that a novel set on the English estate of a slave-owner referenced him in its title: Mansfield Park.

All this is not to diminish Wilberforce's crucial role in the abolition of the British slave trade. He was a remarkable man who advocated for the end of the inhumane shipment of kidnapped Africans, as property, to the plantations of the New World, a stance shared by a distinct minority of those who held political power at the time. But Wilberforce did not almost single-handedly bring about the abolition of the slave trade. Far more attention should have been paid to the social movements that shaped and supported him.

Beyond this distortion, though, Knight's screenplay depicts incidents that either did not happen as shown, or could not have happened at all. Early in the film we see a 1782 debate in the House of Commons about the continuing war against American independence. In that debate Wilberforce, opposing the continuation of the war, engages with the Duke of Clarence (the future King William IV) and Lord Tarleton, a former military commander wounded in that war. Afterwards, during a card game between Wilberforce and the Duke at a gentleman's club, the Duke attempts to wager ownership of his black coachman (and the script has him use the n-word).

Toby Jones as the (future) Duke of Clarence in 1782.

However, the Duke of Clarence and Wilberforce could not have debated in the House of Commons in 1782, or ever, because the Duke sat in the House of Lords, which he didn't join until he received his dukedom in 1789 or 1790. Another small detail: in 1782 then-Prince William, the future Duke of Clarence, was only 17; Toby Jones, the actor who plays him, was 40 at the time of filming.

Prince William, later Duke of Clarence, future King William IV (detail), by Thomas Gainsborough, 1782. Image source: Royal Collection Trust RCIN 401010

Finally, Prince William could not have wagered ownership of his black coachman in a card game, because he did not have an enslaved coachman: Lord Mansfield's decision in the 1772 Somerset case was widely interpreted as banning slavery in England. As Cowper wrote in The Timepiece, Book II of The Task (1785):

Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free,
They touch our country and their shackles fall.

But perhaps the most ironic error in the film occurs in the scene where Wilberforce sings the hymn "Amazing Grace," which, of course, gives the film its title. The words were written by the former slaveship captain John Newton, a friend and collaborator of the missing Cowper. But the familiar tune Wilberforce sings was not associated with Newton's words until several years after Wilberforce's death; the hymn had been sung to perhaps 20 different tunes during his lifetime.

"Amazing Grace," I. Chronicles. XLI. Faith's review and expectation. Chap. xvii. 16. 17. From Olney Hymns by the Rev. John Newton (New York, 1808), p. 38. Image source: Internet Archive

The movie is also extremely partial in its portrayal of Wilberforce, who was a rich landowner who used his position to oppose political reform and increase his own wealth. In 1815 he supported the passage of the Corn Laws, which imposed minimum prices and import tariffs on grains; higher prices on agricultural commodities benefited owners of farmland and harmed wage-laborers. As a direct result of the Corn Laws the price of staple foods such as bread and oats rose significantly and hunger became widespread. (The legislation would not be overturned until 1846, the second year of a devastating famine in Ireland.)

In 1819 workers held a mass rally in Manchester's St. Peter's Field calling for universal manhood suffrage. Their ultimate aim was to ensure that their voices would be represented in Parliament and the Corn Laws repealed. The unarmed crowd was attacked by cavalry regiments that hacked at them with swords and trampled them with their horses. More than a dozen people, including women and a two-year-old child, were killed. The event came to be known as Peterloo, a reference to the mass slaughter on the fields of Waterloo.

Peterloo Massacre, Manchester, print published by Richard Carlile, 1819. Image credit: Manchester Libraries. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

In the aftermath of the Peterloo Massacre, Wilberforce supported the repressive Six Acts that restricted or suspended civil liberties. Wilberforce may have been a passionate advocate for the end of the trade in slaves, but once the formerly enslaved joined the ranks of wage-laborers they would be free to starve along with their fellow workers.

In 1833, on his deathbed, Wilberforce was informed that a bill to abolish slavery in Britain and its colonies was sure to pass in Parliament. "Thank God," he is reported to have said, "that I should have lived to witness a day in which England is willing to give twenty millions sterling for the abolition of alavery." It should be noted, though, that the £20 million he referred to was not given as reparations to emancipated slaves descended from generations of men, women and children who had been kidnapped or born into bondage, and whose grueling labor had been compelled by force for the benefit of their masters. Instead, it was given to slave owners as compensation for the loss of their property. Also, abolition did not take full effect until 1840; even then, exceptions were made for India, Ceylon, and the island of Saint Helena off the west coast of Africa.

These moral compromises may have been thought to be politically necessary for passage of the Slavery Abolition Act. However, as historian Eric Williams has argued, slavery and the plantation economy it supported were becoming less profitable by the decade. It's hard not to see this action as self-dealing by those who held power and derived much of their wealth, directly or indirectly, from slavery.

Amazing Grace ignores such contradictions and offers in their place a simplified view of Wilberforce's character and actions. Perhaps only someone such as Ken Loach or Mike Leigh (writer and director of Peterloo (2018)) could do greater justice to the complexity of the movement for abolition and the failings, inconsistencies, and conflicts, as well as the courage and rectitude, of those who ultimately brought an end to British slavery.