"I will not allow books to prove anything": What Jane Austen's characters read (and why), part 5

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 am looking at each of Austen's canonical novels to see what this perspective can tell us in particular about her heroines. The previous installment, "Meaning to read more", looked at Emma Woodhouse's desultory reading in Emma. This final installment examines perhaps the most devoted reader in all of Austen's novels, Persuasion's Anne Elliot.

Learning romance: Anne Elliot, Scott, and Byron

In a famous description early in Persuasion, we are told that Anne Elliot "had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning" (Vol. I/III, Ch. IV). But we are not told, at least not immediately, how it is that she learned romance.

Bitter experience was surely one teacher: at 19, Anne had been persuaded to retract her acceptance of 23-year-old naval commander Frederick Wentworth by an older friend who occupies "the place of a parent" in her regard, Lady Russell:

Anne Elliot, with all her claims of birth, beauty, and mind, to throw herself away at nineteen; involve herself at nineteen in an engagement with a young man, who had nothing but himself to recommend him, and no hopes of attaining affluence, but in the chances of a most uncertain profession, and no connexions to secure even his farther rise in the profession, would be, indeed, a throwing away, which she grieved to think of! Anne Elliot, so young; known to so few, to be snatched off by a stranger without alliance or fortune; or rather sunk by him into a state of most wearing, anxious, youth-killing dependence! It must not be, if by any fair interference of friendship, any representations from one who had almost a mother’s love, and mother’s rights, it would be prevented. (Vol. I/III, Ch. IV)

Anne is now 27. In the eight years since she was convinced to withdraw her acceptance of Commander Wentworth she has received just one other offer of marriage, from Charles Musgrove. She refused him, and he married instead her younger sister Mary. Charles is amiable and well-off, but nothing like the naval hero who is described as being

full of life and ardour. . .such confidence, powerful in its own warmth, and bewitching in the wit which often expressed it. . .[a] sanguine temper, and fearlessness of mind. . .He was brilliant, he was headstrong. (Vol. I/III, Ch. IV)

Meanwhile, Wentworth has been promoted to captain and has become rich through the prize money he has received by capturing enemy ships in desperate battle. Lady Russell's fears have proved to be misplaced, and "Anne, at seven-and-twenty, thought very differently from what she had been made to think at nineteen . . .How eloquent could Anne Elliot have been! how eloquent, at least, were her wishes on the side of early warm attachment, and a cheerful confidence in futurity, against that over-anxious caution which seems to insult exertion and distrust Providence!" (Vol. I/III, Ch. IV)

Title page of the first edition of Northanger Abbey: and Persuasion: by the author of "Pride and Prejudice;" "Mansfield-Park," &c., 1818 (December 1817). Image source: HathiTrust.org.

"Impassioned descriptions of hopeless agony"

But in learning romance Anne has had other teachers, or at least has found reinforcement for her original feelings, in two of the greatest poets of the age: Walter Scott and George Gordon, Lord Byron.

We know that she is deeply familiar with their works because of a friendship she strikes up with a former shipmate of Captain Wentworth's, Captain Benwick. He had a long engagement with Fanny Harville, the sister of another naval colleague, which ended when she died before he could return to shore with the promotion and prize money that would have enabled him to marry her.

Captain Wentworth believed it impossible for man to be more attached to woman than poor Benwick had been to Fanny Harville, or to be more deeply afflicted under the dreadful change. He considered his disposition as of the sort which must suffer heavily, uniting very strong feelings with quiet, serious, and retiring manners, and a decided taste for reading, and sedentary pursuits. (Vol. I/III, Ch. XI)

Benwick now lives with Fanny's brother Captain Harville and his family in Lyme. When Anne meets them while visiting Lyme with a party that includes the Musgroves and Wentworth,

it fell to Anne’s lot to be placed rather apart with Captain Benwick; and a very good impulse of her nature obliged her to begin an acquaintance with him. He was shy, and disposed to abstraction; but the engaging mildness of her countenance, and gentleness of her manners, soon had their effect; and Anne was well repaid the first trouble of exertion. . .For, though shy, he did not seem reserved; it had rather the appearance of feelings glad to burst their usual restraints; and having talked of poetry, the richness of the present age, and gone through a brief comparison of opinion as to the first-rate poets, trying to ascertain whether Marmion or The Lady of the Lake were to be preferred, and how ranked the Giaour and The Bride of Abydos; and moreover, how the Giaour was to be pronounced, he showed himself so intimately acquainted with all the tenderest songs of the one poet, and all the impassioned descriptions of hopeless agony of the other. . . (Vol. I/III, Ch. XI)

Clearly, Anne is also intimately acquainted with these Romantic poems, which all share a common theme: they are about constancy in love.

Title page of Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field by Walter Scott, 1808. Image source: HathiTrust.org

In Walter Scott's Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field (1808), set in the time of the conflict between Henry VIII and James IV, Lord Marmion lusts after both the person and the lands of the beautiful Clara de Clare. Inconveniently for him, she loves and is betrothed to the knight Ralph De Wilton. Marmion forges documents implicating his rival in treason, and De Wilton is exiled. The way is now open for Marmion to marry Clara. However, rather than abandon her disgraced lover and submit to Marmion's desires, Clara flees to the protection of a convent. De Wilton returns, proves his innocence, fights heroically at the Battle of Flodden (where the guilty Marmion dies), and is finally united with Clara in marriage.

Title page of The Lady of the Lake: A Poem by Walter Scott, 1810. Image source: HathiTrust.org

Scott's The Lady of the Lake (1810) is set in the mid-1500s, during the reign of James V. Three men, the king (traveling in the Highlands in disguise as the knight Fitz-James), the rebel chieftain Roderick Dhu, and the exiled member of another clan, Malcolm Graeme, vie for the love of Ellen, the daughter of the exiled (but loyal) chieftain James Douglas. Although both Roderick and Fitz-James declare their ardent passion for her, Ellen remains steadfast in her love of Malcolm. Ultimately the rebels are defeated, Roderick dies, and Malcolm is imprisoned. Ellen goes to plead with King James for Malcolm's freedom, and discovers that the monarch she is petitioning is the man she has known as Fitz-James. He condemns Malcolm to be chained—by the bonds of matrimony with his true love.

Title page of The Giaour, A Fragment of a Turkish Tale by Lord Byron, 1813. Image source: HathiTrust.org

At the outset of his career Byron was "the poet of love and constancy" (quoted in Ford, p. 218). In The Giaour (The Infidel, 1813), Leila, a woman in the harem of Hassan, becomes enamored of the Giaour, the Christian hero. When Hassan discovers Leila's betrayal, he has her sewn into a sack and thrown into the sea. To revenge Leila's death, the Giaour kills Hassan, and then retreats to a monastery, where he "spends the rest of his life in monastic solitude, agonizing over the loss of Leila" (p. 215).

Title page of The Bride of Abydos. A Turkish Tale by Lord Byron, 1813. Image source: HathiTrust.org

Bryon's The Bride of Abydos (1813) features a love story between a couple raised as half-siblings, perhaps inspired by Byron's own affair with his half-sister Augusta Byron Leigh. The hero Selim, the supposed son of Pasha Giaffir, has been mistreated by him throughout his upbringing. Selim declares his love for the Pasha's daughter Zuleika, and she reciprocates his feelings. But their marriage is forbidden by the Pasha, who, it turns out, is a usurper: he killed his own brother to seize the throne. Selim is actually the true heir and the Pasha's nephew, making Zuleika his first cousin. When Selim rebels, the Pasha attacks and kills him. And when Zuleika hears of Selim's fate, she dies of sorrow rather than live without him.

Tellingly, all of the Romantic epics Anne and Captain Benwick discuss were published after 1806, the year Anne was parted from Wentworth by the force of Lady Russell's persuasion. The poems have provided her with stirring examples of steadfast fidelity persisting beyond separation and even death.

But we also know that Anne has not lived exclusively on the rich diet of Romantic poetry's heightened emotions. In their conversation on Scott and Byron, Captain Benwick

repeated, with such tremulous feeling, the various lines which imaged a broken heart, or a mind destroyed by wretchedness, and looked so entirely as if he meant to be understood, that she ventured to hope he did not always read only poetry, and to say, that she thought it was the misfortune of poetry to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly.

His looks shewing him not pained, but pleased with this allusion to his situation, she was emboldened to go on; and feeling in herself the right of seniority of mind, she ventured to recommend a larger allowance of prose in his daily study; and on being requested to particularize, mentioned such works of our best moralists, such collections of the finest letters, such memoirs of characters of worth and suffering, as occurred to her at the moment as calculated to rouse and fortify the mind by the highest precepts, and the strongest examples of moral and religious endurances. (Vol. I/III, Ch. XI)

Anne's reading has helped her to bear suffering and adversity through eight long years, although

Anne could not but be amused at the idea of her coming to Lyme to preach patience and resignation to a young man whom she had never seen before; nor could she help fearing, on more serious reflection, that, like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination. (Vol I, Ch. XI)

"I will not allow books to prove anything"

Reading is so important to Anne's understanding of herself and her situation that at the beginning of the book it is a metaphor for her perception of others, especially Wentworth. As her feelings are thrown into turmoil at their first meeting since his return, she asks herself, "Now, how were his sentiments to be read?" (Vol. I/III, Ch. IV).

At a critical moment near the end of the novel, she will have the opportunity to literally read his sentiments. And a spoiler alert: if you have never read Persuasion, you may wish to skip to "Emulating the feelings of an Emma" below.

At the Musgrove's rooms at the White Hart in Bath, Anne encounters among the party Captain Harville and Captain Wentworth. Captain Harville has been given the unwelcome errand to have a miniature of Captain Benwick set for his new fiancée; characteristically, Captain Wentworth has offered to undertake the task himself in order to spare Captain Harville's feelings. While Wentworth is writing out a letter of instructions, Captain Harville and Anne debate constancy in men and women. In support of his arguments against women's fidelity, Captain Harville cannot resist referencing his own reading:

"Well, Miss Elliot," (lowering his voice), "as I was saying, we shall never agree, I suppose, upon this point. No man and woman would, probably. But let me observe that all histories are against you—all stories, prose and verse. If I had such a memory as Benwick, I could bring you fifty quotations in a moment on my side the argument, and I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men."

"Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything." (Vol. II/IV, Ch. XI)

When Harville speaks of his own joy at being reunited with his wife and children after a year at sea, Anne responds,

"I hope I do justice to all that is felt by you, and by those who resemble you. God forbid that I should undervalue the warm and faithful feelings of any of my fellow-creatures! I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachment and constancy were known only by woman. No, I believe you capable of everything great and good in your married lives. I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as—if I may be allowed the expression—so long as you have an object. I mean while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone."

She could not immediately have uttered another sentence; her heart was too full, her breath too much oppressed. (Vol. II/IV, Ch. XI)

Wentworth, of course, has overheard every word of their exchange. Under cover of writing the jeweler's instructions, he takes a new sheet of paper and pours out his still-ardent feelings for Anne, using the same metaphor of reading the beloved's feelings that Anne employed at the beginning of the novel when thinking of him:

"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan.—Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others.—Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in

F. W."

(Vol. II/IV, Ch. XI)

As a final indication of the importance of reading to Anne's self-understanding, it is through her reading of Wentworth's impassioned words that the misapprehensions that have kept them apart are dispelled and the two lovers are brought together again at last.

Amanda Root as Anne Elliot in Persuasion, adapted by Nick Dear, directed by Roger Michell, and produced by BBC Films, 1995. See Jane Austen proposal scenes, part 6: Persuasion.

"Emulating the feelings of an Emma"

Ford's book highlights an important dimension of Austen's characters that I had considered before only in the cases where well-known writers or books were explicitly mentioned (Cowper and Scott for Marianne Dashwood, Cowper and Inchbald for Fanny Price, Ann Radcliffe for Catherine Morland, and Scott and Byron for Anne Elliot). She illuminates many references that to me were obscure, especially the significance of conduct books in Pride and Prejudice and Madame de Genlis's Adelaide and Theodore in Emma.

To offer just one more example where Austen could assume that her contemporary readership would understand a reference that in our day requires explanation, when in Persuasion Anne volunteers to stay in Lyme to nurse Louisa Musgrove after her fall, she muses on a literary parallel: "Without emulating the feelings of an Emma towards her Henry, she would have attended on Louisa with a zeal above the common claims of regard, for his sake" (Vol. I/III, Ch. XII).

Emma and Henry are characters in Matthew Prior's poem Henry and Emma: A poem, upon the model of the nut-brown maid (1709), which was reprinted throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Title page of Henry and Emma by Matthew Prior, Manchester and London, 1793. Image source: Internet Archive

In the poem Henry woos and wins the beautiful Emma, but fears that she will be inconstant. Like Walter cruelly testing Griselda in Chaucer's "The Clerk's Tale," Henry decides to test Emma "by one great trial" (line 179). He pretends to be in love with another "younger, fairer" woman. Emma responds,

Yet let me go with thee, and going prove,
From what I will endure, how much I love.
   This potent beauty, this triumphant fair,
This happy object of our diff'rent care,
Her let me follow; her let me attend,
A servant: (she may scorn the name of friend). . . (lines 599–604)

Although Anne claims not to share Emma's feelings, at this point she is convinced that Wentworth and Louisa are sure to marry once she has recovered. Her willingness to care for Louisa "for his sake" indeed shows how much pain she is willing to endure out of love for Wentworth.

Ford's elucidation of many references such as these, which a hasty (or in my case, ignorant) reader might simply pass over without understanding, reveals an important aspect of the almost infinite richness of Austen's fictional world. What Jane Austen's Characters Read (and Why) will increase the pleasure of anyone entering, or re-entering, that world.

Other posts in this series:

• "So rapturous a delight": Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey
• "I am not a great reader": Pride and Prejudice
• "To be a renter, a chuser of books!": Mansfield Park
• "Meaning to read more": Emma

"Meaning to read more": What Jane Austen's characters read (and why), part 4

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 am looking at each of Austen's canonical novels to see what this perspective can tell us in particular about her heroines. The previous installment, "To be a renter, a chuser of books!", looked at Fanny Price in Mansfield Park; this part will focus on Emma Woodhouse.

"Meaning to read more": Emma

Among Austen heroines, Emma is perhaps the least avid reader.

"Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawing-up at various times of books that she meant to read regularly through—and very good lists they were—very well chosen, and very neatly arranged. . .But I have done with expecting any course of steady reading from Emma. She will never submit to any thing requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding." (Vol. I, Ch. V)

It becomes apparent that the entire course of the novel involves Emma learning to subject her sometimes over-active imagination to her rational understanding.

Title page of Emma: A Novel. In Three Volumes. By the Author of "Pride and Prejudice," &c. &c., London, 1816. Image source: HathiTrust.org

When Emma, "handsome, clever, and rich," meets pretty Harriet Smith, "the natural daughter of somebody," she decides to manage Harriet's introduction into Highbury society. Miss Smith, thinks Emma,

wanted only a little more knowledge and elegance to be quite perfect. She would notice her; she would improve her; she would detach her from her bad acquaintance, and introduce her into good society; she would form her opinions and her manners. (Vol. I, Ch. III)

But Emma's program for Harriet's "improvement" is hardly a systematic one, reflecting her own haphazard education, overseen by her governess Miss Taylor. Although Emma has high-minded intentions, they are always undermined by her preferred inclinations:

Her views of improving her little friend’s mind, by a great deal of useful reading and conversation, had never yet led to more than a few first chapters, and the intention of going on to-morrow. It was much easier to chat than to study; much pleasanter to let her imagination range and work at Harriet’s fortune, than to be labouring to enlarge her comprehension or exercise it on sober facts. . . (Vol. I, Ch. IX)

Emma's own reading has presumably been made up almost entirely of fiction, rather than "sober facts." When Harriet mentions Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), Ann Radcliffe's The Romance of the Forest (1791), and Regina Maria Roche's The Children of the Abbey (1796), Emma seems to share knowledge of these books (Vol. I, Ch. IV). But with poetry, history, biographies, essays, and the like—"useful," that is, morally instructive, reading—we understand that little progress has been, or will be, made.

Madame de Genlis' Adelaide and Theodore

Emma mentions one book specifically, a hint, perhaps, of its significance. When towards the end of Austen's novel Mrs. Weston (the former Miss Taylor) becomes the mother of a little girl, Emma assures Mr. Knightley that the girl's education will be ideal, because of Mrs. Weston's former role as her teacher:

"She has had the advantage, you know, of practising on me," she continued—"like La Baronne d'Almane on La Comtesse d'Ostalis, in Madame de Genlis' Adelaide and Theodore, and we shall now see her own little Adelaide educated on a more perfect plan."

"That is," replied Mr. Knightley, "she will indulge her even more than she did you, and believe that she does not indulge her at all. It will be the only difference." (Vol. III, Ch. XVII)

Title page of Adelaide and Theodore; or, Letters on Education, by Madame de Genlis, Third Edition, London, 1788. Image source: HathiTrust.org

Adelaide and Theodore is the English translation of Adéle et Théodore (1782), and concerns the proper upbringing of children—particularly girls and young women. As Ford writes,

Adelaide and Theodore presents itself as a collection of "Letters on Education," like those of Madame de Genlis's model Samuel Richardson, blending practical and theoretical discourse with narrative, strictures on conduct with the pleasures of romance. It is the account of the twelve years devoted to the education of the Baron and Baroness d'Almane's children. (pp. 196–197)

Ford points out the importance of the concept of "perfection" in the education of girls, and that Jane Austen "laughs at the very notion of perfection for which Genlis provides the model."

Portrait of Madame de Genlis by Adelaide Labille-Guiard, 1790. Image source: LACMA.org

Ford writes, "As in Adelaide and Theodore, Emma's perfection is a central issue. Mr Knightley is 'one of the few people who can see faults in Emma Woodhouse, and the only one who ever told her of them'" (pp. 201–202).

At the Box Hill excursion, for example, Mr. Weston attempts to flatter Emma by posing a riddle: "What two letters of the alphabet are there, that express perfection?" The answer is "M. and A.—Em-ma—Do you understand?" (Vol. III, Ch. VII). This riddle comes just after Emma has directed a cutting remark to Miss Bates, humiliating her in front of the group—hardly an example of Emma's perfection. Ford notes that Mr. Weston's "'very indifferent piece of wit'. . .only points to the illusiveness, even the fraudulence, of such an ideal. Mr. Knightley's irony further underscores Emma's very real distance from the ideal and mocks human attempts to define that ideal: 'Perfection should not have come quite so soon'" (p. 202).

The Box Hill incident echoes one in Adelaide and Theodore. Young Adelaide hangs a satirical drawing of her governess, Miss Bridget, in her room; when Miss Bridget sees it she is mortified. Adelaide's mother remonstrates with her:

No joke can be innocent that is offensive. . .You, who owe friendship, respect, and gratitude to Miss Bridget, you make her uneasy, you laugh at that which gives her pain, and you wish to make her appear ridiculous. . .She cannot read [your feelings] in your heart; she can only judge from from your actions; and you have treated her with so much ingratitude!. . .I confess to you your behaviour has both surprized and afflicted me, I had an opinion so different of you! (Vol. I, pp. 181–183)

Compare Mr. Knightley's "scolding" of Emma:

How could you be so unfeeling to Miss Bates? How could you be so insolent in your wit to a woman of her character, age, and situation?—Emma, I had not thought it possible. . .Her situation should secure your compassion. It was badly done, indeed! You, whom she had known from an infant, whom she had seen grow up from a period when her notice was an honour, to have you now, in thoughtless spirits, and the pride of the moment, laugh at her, humble her—and before her niece, too—and before others, many of whom (certainly some,) would be entirely guided by your treatment of her. (Vol. III, Ch. VII)

When her mother expresses her disappointment in her behavior, "Adelaide burst into tears" (p. 181); in the carriage after parting with Mr. Knightley, "Emma felt the tears running down her cheeks almost all the way home" (Vol. III, Ch. VII).

This scene is not the only parallel to Adelaide and Theodore that Ford discerns in Emma. Genlis' novel includes a chapter devoted to the "Course of Reading pursued by Adelaide, from the Age of Six years, to Twenty-two" (Vol. III, pp. 284–292), no doubt the origin of the "great many lists" Emma draws up of her intended reading.

"Course of Reading pursued by Adelaide, from the Age of Six years, to Twenty-two," from Adelaide and Theodore, or, Letters on Education, by Madame de Genlis, Vol. III, Third Edition, London, 1788. Image source: HathiTrust.org

Adelaide tells her mother that she "should like better to marry an amiable man of thirty-seven, than a young man of three and twenty" (Vol. III, p. 172); Frank Churchill just happens to be "three-and-twenty" (Vol. I, Ch. XI), while Mr. Knightley is "a sensible man about seven or eight-and-thirty" (Vol. I, Ch. I). Ford details many other echoes between the two works, with a key difference: "What Genlis lays out with instructive gravity, Austen plays ironically" (p. 197).

But the novel that Austen wrote after Emma is, perhaps, her least ironic.

Next time: "I will not allow books to prove anything": Persuasion

Other posts in this series:

• "So rapturous a delight": Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey
• "I am not a great reader": Pride and Prejudice
• "To be a renter, a chuser of books!": Mansfield Park

"To be a renter, a chuser of books!": What Jane Austen's characters read (and why), part 3

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 am looking at each of Austen's canonical novels to see what this perspective can tell us in particular about her heroines.

Last time, in "I am not a great reader," it was the turn of Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. This week: Fanny Price in Mansfield Park. Ford covers both Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey in a single chapter, discussed in "So rapturous a delight"; it's an indication of Mansfield Park's complexity that she devotes two chapters to it (the only novel that receives more than one).

The Mansfield Park theatricals

Ford's first Mansfield Park chapter is devoted to the private theatricals involving the Bertram siblings, their cousins Henry and Mary Crawford, and their neighbors Mr. Yates and Mr. Rushworth. Much has been written about the significance of the choice of play, Elizabeth Inchbald's Lovers' Vows, a translation and adaptation of August Kotzebue's scandalous Das Kind der Liebe (The Love-Child).

Title page of Lovers' Vows, from the German of Kotzebue, by Mrs. Inchbald, London, 1798. Image source: Internet Archive

A brief synopsis of Inchbald's version:

A young soldier on his first leave in years, Frederick, goes back to his home village and discovers his mother Agatha begging by the side of the road. She has been ill, and is now homeless and starving. Frederick has returned for a copy of his birth certificate so that he can leave the army and apprentice himself to learn a trade, but his mother reveals to him that his birth was never registered. Twenty years earlier she was seduced and abandoned by a soldier, who went on to marry a rich woman and become Baron Wildenheim; Frederick is his illegitimate son.

Frederick finds Agatha nourishment and shelter, and, having spent his last pennies on her, goes out to beg on her behalf. A passing rich man gives him a pittance and refuses more; when in desperation Frederick tries to rob him, he is seized and imprisoned. The rich man is, of course, the Baron.

The Baron, now widowed, has been approached by the wealthy Count Cassel, who is seeking to marry his daughter Amelia. The Count describes himself as "a gay, lively, inconsiderate, flimsy, frivolous coxcomb," and the Baron calls him "an idiot." The Baron has tasked Amelia's tutor Anhalt, a clergyman, with sounding out his daughter about this socially advantageous marriage. Instead, Amelia reveals to Anhalt that she loves him, but he rebuffs her because he knows that the Baron will never agree to the match—the social distance between them is too great.

All ends happily for everyone except the Count. When the virtuous Anhalt discovers the identities of Frederick and his mother, he reunites them with the Baron. And at Anhalt's urging, the Baron agrees to marry Agatha and recognize his son. Anhalt himself is then rewarded by the reformed Baron with Amelia's hand, to their mutual delight.

The Baron, Agatha and Frederick are reconciled as Amelia and Anhalt look on. Image source: Project Gutenberg

Its themes of seduction, sex outside of marriage, and forbidden love across class barriers made Lovers' Vows notorious (and also very popular). When Fanny learns that it is to be the play performed at Mansfield Park, "the first use she made of her solitude was to take up the volume which had been left on the table, and begin to acquaint herself with the play of which she had heard so much." Finding it "totally improper," the modest Fanny reads the entire play straight through:

Her curiosity was all awake, and she ran through it with an eagerness which was suspended only by intervals of astonishment, that it could be chosen in the present instance, that it could be proposed and accepted in a private theatre! Agatha and Amelia appeared to her in their different ways so totally improper for home representation—the situation of one, and the language of the other, so unfit to be expressed by any woman of modesty, that she could hardly suppose her cousins could be aware of what they were engaging in; and longed to have them roused as soon as possible by the remonstrance which Edmund would certainly make. (Ch. XIV)

Edmund does remonstrate with his brother Tom and his sisters for their choice of play, to no effect. And soon, to avoid even greater impropriety, the moralistic clergyman Edward agrees to play the moralistic clergyman Anhalt. The role of the spirited, flirtatious Amelia is taken by the spirited, flirtatious Mary Crawford.

Meanwhile, her youthful and impulsive brother Henry plays the youthful and impulsive Frederick, while the sisters Maria and Julia Bertram vie for the role of Frederick's mother Agatha just as they vie for Henry's attentions offstage. Maria wins the role, which has several tender scenes with Frederick. The man she will marry, Mr. Rushworth, takes the part of the Count, and is similarly fashion-conscious and empty-headed.

As these assignments suggest, the play is improper not only for its language and situations, but because (as I wrote in "Two recent books on Jane Austen," following Paula Byrne's The Genius of Jane Austen) "the roles that the family members and neighbors take on in Lovers' Vows parallel and comment on their romantic attractions outside the rehearsals."

And despite her disapproval of the play, by degrees Fanny becomes drawn into the theatricals. Her own quiet refuge, the East Room, is invaded by Mary and Edmund, who seek Fanny's help to run their key third-act scene together:

The whole subject of it was love—a marriage of love was to be described by the gentleman, and very little short of a declaration of love be made by the lady. . .Fanny was wanted only to prompt and observe them. . .To prompt them must be enough for her; and it was sometimes more than enough; for she could not always pay attention to the book. In watching them she forgot herself; and, agitated by the increasing spirit of Edmund’s manner, had once closed the page and turned away exactly as he wanted help. It was imputed to very reasonable weariness, and she was thanked and pitied; but she deserved their pity more than she hoped they would ever surmise. (Ch. XVII)

Meanwhile, Maria and Henry are taking every opportunity to rehearse the emotional scenes between Agatha and Frederick. The passions expressed through the characters will later erupt catastrophically into real life, and Maria will become the "fallen woman" she enacts onstage.

"Does it not make you think of Cowper?"

Fanny's small library of books, "of which she had been a collector from the first hour of her commanding a shilling," are kept in the East Room (Ch. XVI). We can identify at least some of the contents of her library from her references to the poets it must contain. Among them is William Cowper, whose book-length poem The Task (1785) is quoted by Fanny in a scene in which Mr. Rushworth describes the changes he is intending for the grounds at his estate, Sotherton. Those "improvements" involve cutting down trees planted at the time of Elizabeth I:

". . .There have been two or three fine old trees cut down, that grew too near the house, and it opens the prospect amazingly, which makes me think that Repton, or anybody of that sort, would certainly have the avenue at Sotherton down: the avenue that leads from the west front to the top of the hill, you know," turning to Miss Bertram particularly as he spoke. But Miss Bertram thought it most becoming to reply—

"The avenue! Oh! I do not recollect it. I really know very little of Sotherton."

Fanny, who was sitting on the other side of Edmund, exactly opposite Miss Crawford, and who had been attentively listening, now looked at him, and said in a low voice—

"Cut down an avenue! What a pity! Does it not make you think of Cowper? 'Ye fallen avenues, once more I mourn your fate unmerited.'" (Ch. VI) [1]

Title page of The Task, A Poem In Six Books by William Cowper, 1787. Image source: Hathitrust.org

Cowper's poem describes his wanderings around the estate of "Benevolus," his patron, and the musings the landscape inspires:

Ye fallen avenues! once more I mourn
Your fate unmerited, once more rejoice
That yet a remnant of your race survives.
How airy and how light the graceful arch,
Yet awful as the consecrated roof
Re-echoing pious anthems! (The Task, Book I)

Cowper compares the avenue's arched canopy of leaves to that of a church. When the Bertram household and the Crawfords form a party to visit Sotherton, they are shown its family chapel, and Fanny is unimpressed.

"I am disappointed," said she, in a low voice, to Edmund. "This is not my idea of a chapel. There is nothing awful here, nothing melancholy, nothing grand. Here are no aisles, no arches, no inscriptions, no banners. No banners, cousin, to be 'blown by the night wind of heaven.' No signs that a 'Scottish monarch sleeps below.'"

Fanny references not only Cowper's poem, but also quotes Walter Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), undoubtedly another book in her small collection. Her love of Scott hints at the romantic feelings she conceals behind her modesty and reserve.

Title page of The Lay of the Last Minstrel by Walter Scott, 1806. Image source: Hathitrust.org

Cowper's poem continues,

. . .while beneath,
The chequered earth seems restless as a flood
Brushed by the wind. So sportive is the light
Shot through the boughs, it dances as they dance,
Shadow and sunshine intermingling quick,
And darkening and enlightening, as the leaves
Play wanton, every moment, every spot. (The Task, Book I)

It's not only the shadows of the leaves that play wanton on the grounds of Sotherton. The visitors are being given a tour of Sotherton by Mr. Rushworth and his mother, "when the young people, meeting with an outward door, temptingly open on a flight of steps which led immediately to turf and shrubs, and all the sweets of pleasure-grounds, as by one impulse, one wish for air and liberty, all walked out" (Ch. IX).

After this escape into the garden Edmund jokes about "feminine lawlessness," but we and Fanny soon witness transgressions by both Maria Bertram and Mary Crawford. From the house the group had "looked across a lawn to the beginning of the avenue immediately beyond tall iron palisades and gates." After walking through Mr. Rushworth's planned "wilderness" they find the gates locked. While Fanny sits on a bench awaiting their host's arrival with a key, Maria determines, with Henry's help, to "get out":

". . .that iron gate, that ha-ha, give me a feeling of restraint and hardship. 'I cannot get out,' as the starling said." As she spoke, and it was with expression, she walked to the gate: he followed her. "Mr. Rushworth is so long fetching this key!"

"And for the world you would not get out without the key and without Mr. Rushworth’s authority and protection, or I think you might with little difficulty pass round the edge of the gate, here, with my assistance; I think it might be done, if you really wished to be more at large, and could allow yourself to think it not prohibited."

"Prohibited! nonsense! I certainly can get out that way, and I will." (Ch. X) [2]

Maria's quote about the starling is from a scene in Laurence Sterne's popular A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768), in which Sterne's narrator Mr. Yorick compares a starling in a cage to a prisoner in the Bastille; perhaps this is another book on Fanny's shelf (or at least on Sir Thomas's).

Title page of A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy by Mr. Yorick, by Laurence Sterne, 1768. Image source: Internet Archive

Maria and Henry have soon squeezed past the gate, and as Fanny looks on aghast, "by taking a circuitous, and, as it appeared to her, very unreasonable direction to the knoll, they were soon beyond her eye" (Ch. X). Soon Maria will go even further, and pass beyond Mr. Rushworth's authority and protection for good.

Maria is not the first to seek a way out. When Mary and Edmund arrive with Fanny at the gate, Mary soon contrives a way to leave Fanny behind so she can have Edmund's company to herself: "a sidegate, not fastened, had tempted them very soon after their leaving her, and they had been across a portion of the park into the very avenue which Fanny had been hoping the whole morning to reach at last, and had been sitting down under one of the trees" (Ch. X). Another temptation yielded to, and more wanton flirtation among the shadows. As with the Mansfield Park theatricals, Fanny's unhappy experiences reflect and echo the books she has read.

"To be a renter, a chuser of books!"

When the morally unreliable but well-off Henry Crawford proposes to Fanny, she refuses him, "perfectly convinced," as she tells Sir Thomas, "that I could never make him happy, and that I should be miserable myself" (Ch. XXXII). This severely disappoints Sir Thomas, for whom the basis for a woman's choice of husband is primarily his income and social standing. He decides to send her back to her parents' cramped, unkempt, and ill-managed home in Portsmouth for an extended visit:

. . .his prime motive in sending her away had very little to do with the propriety of her seeing her parents again, and nothing at all with any idea of making her happy. He certainly wished her to go willingly, but he as certainly wished her to be heartily sick of home before her visit ended; and that a little abstinence from the elegancies and luxuries of Mansfield Park would bring her mind into a sober state, and incline her to a juster estimate of the value of that home of greater permanence, and equal comfort, of which she had the offer.

It was a medicinal project upon his niece’s understanding, which he must consider as at present diseased. A residence of eight or nine years in the abode of wealth and plenty had a little disordered her powers of comparing and judging. Her father’s house would, in all probability, teach her the value of a good income; and he trusted that she would be the wiser and happier woman, all her life, for the experiment he had devised. (Ch. XXXVII)

Fanny is indeed dismayed by what she finds in Portsmouth. But she finds a purpose and consolation in her visit by taking her 14-year-old sister Susan under her wing:

The intimacy thus begun between them was a material advantage to each. By sitting together upstairs, they avoided a great deal of the disturbance of the house; Fanny had peace, and Susan learned to think it no misfortune to be quietly employed. . .[Fanny] often heaved a sigh at the remembrance of all her books and boxes, and various comforts there [at Mansfield Park]. By degrees the girls came to spend the chief of the morning upstairs, at first only in working and talking, but after a few days, the remembrance of the said books grew so potent and stimulative that Fanny found it impossible not to try for books again. There were none in her father’s house; but wealth is luxurious and daring, and some of hers found its way to a circulating library. She became a subscriber; amazed at being anything in propria persona, amazed at her own doings in every way, to be a renter, a chuser of books! And to be having any one’s improvement in view in her choice! But so it was. Susan had read nothing, and Fanny longed to give her a share in her own first pleasures, and inspire a taste for the biography and poetry which she delighted in herself. (Ch. XL)

Messrs. Lackington Allen & Co., Temple of the Muses, Finsbury Square. Plate 17 from Rudolph Ackermann, The Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions and Politics, Vol. 1, London, 1809. Image source: Internet Archive

Fanny had been introduced to those first pleasures by Edmund, and she is now taking on the role of tutor and guide that he had assumed when she first came to Mansfield Park. As she tells Edmund, "You taught me to think and feel," and now she is filling that role in Susan's life. Susan is getting a later start, and has a different character from Fanny. But through Fanny's tutelage, Susan's life will be transformed, as Fanny's has been, by a love of reading, and the imaginative engagement with the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of others that it brings.

But not every Austen character loves reading books.

Next time: "Meaning to read more": Emma

Other posts in this series:

• "So rapturous a delight": Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey
• "I am not a great reader": Pride and Prejudice
• "I will not allow books to prove anything": Persuasion

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1. "Repton" is the garden designer Humphry Repton, who in his designs emphasized vistas and showcased the situation of manor houses.
2. A "ha-ha" is a deep ditch, invisible from a short distance, that prevents wild deer or grazing livestock from wandering onto the grounds. Its advantage over a fence or wall is that it does not interrupt the prospect with a visual barrier.

"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

Other posts in this series:

• "So rapturous a delight": Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey
• "To be a renter, a chuser of books!": Mansfield Park
• "Meaning to read more": Emma
• "I will not allow books to prove anything": Persuasion