Jane Austen (15 page)

A clue that Jane may have had Eliza in mind when she was writing her novel
Mansfield Park
, is given by the fact that the fictitious Lady Bertram possesses a dog by the name of ‘Pug’, whom she dotes on and spoils unutterably. Eliza also possessed a pug (this being the generic name for a breed of toy dog) and treated the creature with the same indulgence. She came by it in the following way. On 7 November 1796 Eliza reminded her cousin Philadelphia Walter (‘Phylly’) that she had promised to acquire a dog for her. Eliza says, ‘I live in hope of dear Pug’s arrival. Pray get him for me if possible’. By the following month it is clear that Phylly has obliged, because Eliza states that she is now in possession of her Pug and ‘shall joyfully receive as many more as you can provide for me’. Not only that, but Eliza has consulted her doctor about the dog and the administration of ‘Vapour Baths, which he has prescribed for him’.
1
Eliza did, in fact, go on to possess several pug dogs. However, it was not Lady Bertram who Jane had in mind for Eliza, but another of the principal characters in the story: Mary Crawford.

What similarities are there between the real life Eliza and the fictional Mary? Eliza, from her portrait, is an attractive woman with long, wavy, auburn hair and large brown eyes reminiscent of a painting by Rubens, but not, perhaps, a classical beauty; Mary is ‘remarkably pretty’. Eliza is comfortably placed, thanks to the generosity of Warren Hastings; Mary is ‘possessed of
£
20,000’. Both have good connections: Eliza is accustomed to mixing in the upper echelons of society at both the French and the English Courts; Mary’s brother Henry has ‘a good estate in Norfolk’. Both ladies are fond of London (and in Eliza’s case, Paris also); both play the harp and the pianoforte and love to sing; both participate in amateur theatricals. Moreover, both are strong-minded characters used to having their own way.

Both Mary and Eliza are essentially townspeople who are not altogether comfortable in the countryside. For example, when Mary complains that she cannot find a wagon or cart for hire in the village on which to transport her harp, Edward feels obliged to point out that yes, indeed, this would be difficult in the middle of harvest time. How different this is from London, says Mary, where ‘every thing is to be got with money’. As for Eliza, she was accustomed to the French Court and later to the English Court, and yet her letters to Phylly indicate that in later years she had become more attuned to country living.

Just as Eliza has lived in France and speaks the language fluently, so too in Mansfield Park does Mary show that she has a knowledge of that country and its people. Mary says, in reference to the vanity of a former French King:

And Mary tells her sister Mrs Grant:

(Is this Jane telling us in code that Eliza had tried, without success, to find a suitable English husband before she married the Count?) Apart from these superficial similarities, there is evidence that Mary was like Eliza in more fundamental ways.

Mary declares that, ‘A large income, is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of’. And Fanny Price says of Mary, ‘She had only learnt to think nothing of consequence but money’. The obvious way to achieve wealth was, of course, to marry and this was exactly what Mary had in mind. ‘Matrimony was her object, provided she could marry well’. Her advice was that ‘every body should marry as soon as they can do it to advantage’. However, Mary warns that for those like herself, who marry for money, there are pitfalls. She says:

Is this Jane telling us that Eliza (Mary) was disappointed in her marriage to the Comte? After all, Jean-François Capot was not a genuine count. He was

For Mary, there are certain classes of people who it would be folly to marry. For example, she is dismissive of Edmund’s intention to become a clergyman and declares, ‘A clergyman
is nothing’, by which she meant that a man of the cloth, by virtue of his position in life, cannot aspire to wealth. When Mary declares to Edmund her intention to become very rich, he in turn declares that his intentions are only ‘not to be poor’. To this, Mary replies:

Mary also demonstrates her disdain for the clergy by expressing the opinion that, in former times, ‘parsons were very inferior even to what they are now’.

According to Mary, Edmund’s salvation would be if his brother Tom were to die, thereby leaving him to inherit Mansfield Park. Edmund would then be a much more attractive proposition as a husband. At this, the horrified Fanny remarks dryly, ‘Edmund would be forgiven for being a clergyman, it seemed, under certain conditions of wealth’.

Was Mary Crawford a flirt, as Eliza was alleged to be? No, because for Jane this would have been a step too far, as she would have risked offending both Eliza, who would certainly have recognised herself in the novel, and her husband Henry. Instead, she makes Mary’s brother Henry the flirt. As previously quoted, Mary says:

So who is there, in Mansfield Park, to counteract the influence of Mary? Why, Fanny Price, of course, who in turn is undoubtedly a vehicle for Jane’s own thoughts and feelings.
When Mary played the harp to Fanny (as Eliza undoubtedly did to Jane), the latter is described as being ‘so full of wonder at the performance’.

In a similar way, Jane’s youngest brother Charles is represented by Fanny’s older brother William, who is a sailor in the Royal Navy and who makes his sister the present of an amber cross.

Referring to Mary, Fanny says, ‘She might love, but she did not deserve Edmund by any other sentiment’. Fanny believed there was scarcely a second feeling in common between them [which she follows up with the words]: ‘She loves nobody but herself and her brother’.

In
Mansfield Park
Jane mirrors the Stevenson amateur theatrical performances which Eliza enjoyed so much. When the Honourable John Yates, a friend of Tom Bertram, arrives on the scene and suggests that they ‘raise a little theatre’ – i.e. put on a play, Edmund has reservations, believing that were they to do so, this would ‘show great want of feeling on my father’s account, absent as he is’. Edmund also believes that the particular play they have chosen,
Lovers’ Vows
, is ‘exceedingly unfit for private representation’. (This was a real life play by the German August von Kotzebue, written in 1780 and entitled
Das Kind der Liebe
– ‘Child of Love’, and adapted by actress, novelist and dramatist Elizabeth Inchbald. As the title suggests, it featured seduction and an illegitimate birth.)

In
Mansfield Park
, although it is not Mary who chooses the play which is to be performed, when the choice is made she condones it, and eagerly expresses the wish to participate in it. Perhaps the real life Eliza did actually choose some of the plays which were performed at Steventon – notably the more risque ones, and perhaps this offended Jane and one or more of her brothers. It may even have come to the notice of the Revd Austen who, like his fictitious counterpart Sir Tomas
Bertram, would have considered such plays to be inappropriate and unseemly.

Jane, typically, could not portray Mary as being all bad, and when the latter comforts Fanny, after her Aunt Norris pressurises her [unsuccessfully] to accept the hand of Mary’s brother Henry, Jane writes: ‘Fanny did not love Miss Crawford; but she felt very much obliged to her for her present kindness’. Perhaps this was how Jane viewed Eliza, who had shown her acts of kindness but whom she could not bring herself to love.

Due to the prolonged periods which Eliza spent with the Austens at Steventon, it is likely that Jane was familiar with her views on the subjects discussed above. However, it is unlikely that she challenged her cousin on these views. After all, there was a disparity in their ages, Eliza being more than a decade her senior, and in their position, Eliza had rubbed shoulders with royalty and aristocracy, both English and French. Nevertheless, to hear Eliza being disparaging about the clergy, cynical about marriage and concerned with personal gain rather than with true love, must have caused Jane a certain amount of anguish.

Instead, Jane, as Fanny Price, made Eliza, as Mary Crawford, her protagonist in
Mansfield Park
, and in doing so she was not only able to give vent to her emotions, but also to create that tension between two opposites which is essential for the success of any novel. How paradoxical, therefore, that Eliza, with whom Jane had little or nothing in common in a spiritual or moral sense, became pivotal to the narrative of
Mansfield Park
.

Eliza was left ‘friendless and alone’. On the other hand Mary, who had suffered ‘disappointment in the course of the last half year’ (largely because of the irresponsible behaviour of her brother), had the good fortune to be taken in by her half-sister Mrs Grant. As for Henry, his punishment was to suffer ‘wretchedness’ and ‘vexation’ for tampering with Fanny’s feelings,
and thereby destroying any chance which he may have had of winning her heart.

As already mentioned, Eliza died in April 1813 and
Mansfield
Park
was published the following year. The timing of the publication was probably not a coincidence in that Jane, for obvious reasons, would probably not have wished the novel to be published while Eliza was still alive.

Eliza had married, only to become a widow when her husband the Comte was executed. She had finally married Jane’s brother Henry. When Eliza died, Jane was aged only 37. Would Jane herself find a partner, albeit belatedly? If so, unlike her cousin, she would surely marry for love.

Emma
was written between 21 January 1814 and 29 March 1815, and published in 1816 by John Murray. The heroine, Emma Woodhouse, is described as ‘handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition’. However, she is lacking in the ability to judge character, which will become apparent in due course. Emma lives at Hartfield with her father, who is described as ‘most affectionate’ and ‘indulgent’. She has an elder sister Isabella, who is married to Mr John Knightley, the brother of the hero of the story, Mr Knightley of Donwell Abbey. Isabella lives in London.

Mr Knightley is described as ‘a sensible man about seven or eight – and – thirty’ who was ‘a very old [longstanding] and intimate friend of the family’. He was also ‘one of the few people who could see faults in Emma Woodhouse, and the only one who ever told her of them’.

Miss Taylor, Emma and Isabella’s governess for a period of sixteen years, has recently left the household to be married to Mr Weston of nearby Randalls. Mr Weston’s first wife was Miss Churchill, ‘of a great Yorkshire family’. The couple had a son Frank, but three years after the marriage his mother died whereupon the boy was adopted by his uncle and aunt, the Churchills; since then he has not visited his father. At the age of 21, Frank adopted the surname of Churchill, rather than Weston.

When Emma boasts to Knightley that it was she who brought Mr Weston and Miss Taylor together, he denies it,
saying that this was simply due to ‘a lucky guess’ on Emma’s part. When Emma suggests that she now intends to look for a wife for Mr Elton, the vicar of Highbury, Knightley’s advice to her is, ‘Invite him to dinner, Emma, and help him to the best of the fish and the chicken, but leave him to chuse his own wife’.

In the evenings, Emma’s father Mr Woodhouse enjoys playing cards with the Westons, Mr Knightley, Mr Elton, Mrs Bates (the widow of the former vicar of Highbury) and her daughter Miss Bates, and Mrs Goddard (mistress of a boarding school). To one of these social gatherings Mrs Goddard asks if she can bring Miss Harriet Smith, a 17-year-old who is a pupil at her school. Harriet is described as being ‘not clever’, but with ‘a sweet, docile, grateful disposition; was totally free from conceit; and only desiring to be guided by any one she looked up to’.

Emma finds Harriet pleasing both in her manners and in her person, and is ‘quite determined to continue the acquaintance’. But she disapproves of the farming family, the Martins, with whom Harriet has been associating and whom she assumes ‘must be coarse and unpolished. The yeomanry are precisely the order of people with whom I feel I can have nothing to do.’ Instead, Emma is determined to introduce Harriet ‘into good society’, where she ‘would form her opinions and her manners’. She says to Harriet:

Furthermore, it is Emma’s view that, while farmer Robert Martin is ‘remarkably plain’ and ‘very clownish’, Mr Elton, in comparison, is ‘good humoured, cheerful, obliging, and
gentle’. The latter becomes, therefore, ‘the very person fixed on by Emma for driving the young farmer out of Harriet’s head’.

With regard to the intimacy between Emma and Harriet, Mr Knightley has serious reservations. In fact, he believes that Harriet is:

Emma proceeds to use every means within her power to bring Harriet and Mr Elton together. When she makes a sketch of Harriet, and Mr Elton volunteers to take it to London to have it framed, Emma hopes this will endear the clergyman to the subject of her portrait. There is a stumbling block to Emma’s plans, however, when Harriet receives a letter from Robert Martin containing ‘a direct proposal of marriage’. Emma puts doubts in Harriet’s mind about the suitability of Robert, and tells her that if she has any reservations, ‘she certainly ought to refuse him’. Finally, she smiles sweetly and says: ‘Not for the world, would I advise you either way. You must be the best judge of your own happiness.’

On the strength of this advice, Harriet decides to refuse Robert. Knightley takes the opposite view and describes Robert as an excellent young man. In fact, when the latter comes to ask his advice, Knightley has no hesitation in advising him to marry. Therefore, when Knightley hears that Emma has persuaded Harriet to refuse Robert, he is appalled. Despite this, Emma maintains that, even though

Knightley guesses that Emma has decided on Elton as being a suitable partner for Harriet, but thinks that her efforts in this direction ‘will be all labour in vain’. He says, ‘Elton may talk sentimentally, but he will act rationally … I am convinced that he does not mean to throw himself away’. Emma becomes more and more convinced of Mr Elton’s interest in Harriet, not realising that it is she, Emma, who is the subject of his affection. Emma demonstrates that she is not totally devoid of feeling when she asks Knightley to reassure her that Robert ‘is not very bitterly disappointed’ at Harriet’s refusal of him; Knightley disappoints her by replying, ‘A man cannot be more so’.

Emma pursues her own ambitions by turning her attentions to Mr Frank Churchill. ‘If she [Emma] were to marry, [then] he was the very person to suit her in age, character and condition’. But she is disconcerted when, on a return journey from a dinner party with the Westons at Randalls, Mr Elton seizes her hand, makes a declaration of his hopes, fears and adoration, and states that he is ready to die if she refuses him. With regard to Harriet as a potential partner Elton says scornfully: ‘I never thought of Miss Smith in the whole course of my existence’.

Knightley expresses his disapproval of Frank Churchill, whom he considers to be negligent in that he has failed to visit his father. He feels sure that if Frank wished to see his father, then ‘he would have contrived it’. When Emma makes excuses for Frank, Knightley remains unmoved. ‘There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do, if he chuses and that is, his duty’.

Emma and Harriet visit Mrs and Miss Bates, where Emma is told, by the latter, that her [Miss Bates’] niece Jane Fairfax, is shortly to come and stay with her. Jane is an orphan, whose adoptive parents, the Campbells, are soon to make a visit to Ireland. When Emma is duly introduced to Jane she finds
her very reserved. Meanwhile, Mr Elton marries the wealthy Augusta Hawkins of Bath.

Frank finally arrives at Randalls to visit his father Mr Weston. Emma is introduced to Frank and forms a good opinion of him. However, this opinion is ‘a little shaken’ when she hears ‘that he was gone off to London, merely to have his hair cut’. Mr Knightley considers Frank to be a ‘trifling, silly fellow’. When Frank returns home to Yorkshire, Emma persuades herself that he has fallen in love with her.

As time goes by, Emma values Harriet’s affection more and more. ‘There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart’, she says. ‘There is nothing to be compared to it’. And she confesses that, although her ‘dear father’ possesses it, and her sister Isabella, and Harriet all possess it, she herself does not, even though she knows ‘how to prize and respect it’.

Emma suspects that Mr Knightley may be in love with Jane Fairfax. He denies it saying that although Jane is a very charming young woman, ‘she has not the open temper which a man could wish for in a wife’. In other words, he finds Jane too reserved.

A ball is held at The Crown Inn at which Harriet, who has no partner, is snubbed by Mr Elton. When Knightley comes to her rescue by asking her to dance, Emma is gratified, and even more so when he declares that Harriet ‘has some first-rate qualities which Mrs Elton is totally without’.

When Harriet goes for a walk and finds herself surrounded and threatened by some gypsy children, it is Frank Churchill who comes to her rescue. On an outing to Box Hill, Frank declares that he is too hot. Emma, who interprets this as a feebleness of character, says to herself, scornfully:

Nonetheless, Frank indulges in a little flirting with Emma, who in turn insults Miss Bates, implying that her conversation is limited to saying only ‘dull things’. At this, Knightley is not amused:

At this, Emma is filled with remorse. She resolves to pay a visit to Miss Bates in order to apologise for her behaviour.

When Frank asks Emma if she will choose a wife for him, it is Harriet who immediately springs to Emma’s mind as being a suitable partner. And when Frank’s aunt Mrs Churchill dies, Emma believes that this has removed an impediment to Frank and Harriet becoming attached to one another. However, Emma is horror-struck when Mrs Weston tells her that Frank has announced that he is already engaged to Jane Fairfax, and has been for some time. Emma is now concerned for Harriet, whom she had tacitly encouraged to love Frank. But she need not have worried, for Harriet declares that she does not care for Frank at all. ‘Dear Miss Woodhouse, how could you so mistake me?’ she asks, and then confesses that she is in love with someone who is ‘infinitely superior’. Emma, to her consternation, deduces that she is speaking of Knightley:

Knightley is under the impression that Emma is attached to Frank, but she denies it. However, she does admit that she
was ‘tempted by his attentions’ and allowed herself ‘to appear pleased. He has imposed on me but he has not injured me,’ she says. Knightley then proposes to Emma, and she accepts him.

Frank then writes a long letter to Mrs Weston, explaining that he was obliged to keep his engagement to Jane Fairfax secret because he knew that his aunt, Mrs Churchill, would disapprove of the marriage. Jane apologises to Emma, explaining the reason why her manner had been so cold and artificial. Knightley is magnanimous about Frank, believing that his character will improve and, acquire from Jane’s ‘the steadiness and delicacy of principle that it wants’. Emma forgives Frank, and wishes him joy when he finally marries Jane.

Knightley complains that Emma always calls him ‘Mr Knightley’. At this, she promises to call him George, but only once, and that will be on their wedding day. All ends well for Harriet too, when, with Knightley’s contrivance, she marries Robert Martin – her first love.

The lesson to be learned from Emma is obvious: Do not behave as Emma did and meddle in other peoples love affairs!