Jane Austen For Dummies (5 page)

Readers may love Dickens, but I never hear Dickens's fans calling him “Charles.” Yet Austen fans easily call Austen “Jane.” Jane is that wonderfully witty, wise, and well-spoken narrator who's a friendly and welcome companion as you read the novel.

For example, in Austen's early, frustrated attempt at getting published, the narrator in
Northanger Abbey
tells you of the marriage of the lovely and charming Eleanor Tilney to a presumably equally lovely and charming young Viscount, who never appears in the novel, but whose laundry lists do appear from Catherine Morland's snooping. Listen to the narrator:

The narrative voice you've just heard is attractive; it invited you into the book by saying “us all.” Keep in mind the obvious — that it's only in a novel that you encounter a narrator in whose company you read for hundreds of pages. Can you point to a narrator who's more lovely and charming than Austen?

Sometimes, however, “Jane, the friend” gets a little terse, but never with the reader. Instead, Austen uses her characters as the butts of her jokes. For example, in
Persuasion,
she sets up a conversation between Mrs. Musgrove and Mrs. Croft. Mrs. Musgrove exclaims to her new friend, “‘What a great traveler you must have been!'” and Mrs. Croft replies:

Now “Jane,” the narrative voice, enters: “Mrs. Musgrove had not a word to say in dissent;
she
could not accuse herself of having ever called them anything in the whole course of her life.” So much for Mrs. Musgrove's knowledge of geography! Although this narrative voice sounds like it has quite a little bite to it, remember that in
Pride and Prejudice,
Mr. Bennet's delightful sarcasm has to come from someone. And that someone, of course, is Austen.

The sarcasm that appears in the narrator's quip about Mrs. Musgrove's ignorance of geography and throughout Mr. Bennet's speech first appeared coming from Austen, herself, in the first full publication of her remaining letters in 1932 under the editorship of R. W. Chapman. These letters reveal an Austen who could be cynical, nasty, cruel, and sarcastic. Here are some examples:

Poor Mr. Hall: He's now down in history as having such a frightening face that his wife's glancing at him caused her to immediately bear a premature dead baby.

She was only 22 when she wrote that. But she didn't soften with age. Here she is at 32:

Not only does Austen make jokes about dead babies, but about dead ladies, too! And even in speaking of Mrs. Holder's death, Austen shows neither kindness nor sympathy for the recently deceased.

The same “Jane, the friend” who attracts armchair travelers to read and imaginatively travel back to “Jolly Olde England,” also attracts filmgoers and television viewers and thus film and TV producers.

Austen's novels offer characters and events in lovely English settings with the people dressed in attractive costumes of a previous era. How comforting to get away from life's daily hassles with such well-dressed characters and charming settings! But her novels provide comfort in another way: by presenting logical stories, where all the loose ends are tied up at the end. Logic is very comforting in an increasingly complex and often irrational world. Logic of this type — where everything is explained — is what makes television criminal investigation shows popular. Think about it: Character relationships on these shows are made secondary to solving the crime through the use of sophisticated scientific apparatus and forensic medical tests that uncover the guilty party. The solution of the crime returns temporary order to a disordered world. This is satisfying to the TV viewer.

What does a logically-presented story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, do? It appeals to the natural human desire for answers, for security, for assuredness. And what does an Austen novel do?
Emma,
for example, provides a thought-provoking plot with a surprise at the end, rendered through interesting and articulate (except for poor Harriet!) characters, dressed in lovely Regency attire. A second reading reveals that all the clues to the surprise were there in the book all along. But in following Emma's thinking, which was wrong, you were led down the wrong path. And there's no need for even a finger-print test, though Frank Churchill's distracting Emma from her Weymouth questions by calling her attention to Ford's Store and going inside to buy new gloves certainly covers his romantic handiwork. The surprise is explained at the end of the novel. Emma was “duped.” But she's wiser (or at least you hope so) and better for it.

Austen tells such a good story in
Pride and Prejudice,
where Elizabeth and Darcy begin as verbal sparring partners, that this novel, along with Shakespeare's Beatrice and Benedick of
Much Ado About Nothing
, provides the DNA for all those movies about antagonistic lovers who finally realize they belong together. Whether it's Tracy versus Hepburn or Jean Arthur versus Cary Grant, Austen's presence (and okay, Shakespeare's, too!) is hovering over the scene. And of course, Helen Fielding's
Bridget Jones
books and films are directly indebted to Austen's
Pride and Prejudice
— though Fielding's Bridget lacks all the self-possession, wit, and smarts of Elizabeth Bennet. Indeed, poor Bridget makes
Emma
's Harriet Smith look like she's ready for rocket science!

The observant Austen is a writer of witty dialogues that are the specialty of her novels. Each character's speech seems to match him or her perfectly. Austen puts those characters in conversations that you overhear in the reading. By doing this, she enables her readers to come to know the characters of her novels in the same way you know people in real life: by listening to what they say and picking up on how they say it. Sections of her novels read like little plays; for example, when Darcy, Bingley, Miss Bingley, and Elizabeth converse in
Pride and Prejudice
(PP 1:10), the pages of their conversation look almost like a script for a play. Even the first page of the same novel, with Mr. and Mrs. Bennet in dialogue, is filled with conversation, allowing the readers to make first impressions of the couple.

Showing the character in action, instead of telling the reader about the character, makes that character vivid. Austen lets her characters speak for themselves. For example, look at
Pride and Prejudice.
In the drawing room at Rosings, Elizabeth Bennet and Colonel Fitzwilliam are talking as they're seated at the pianoforte across the room from Lady Catherine. Lady Catherine abruptly interrupts them and calls out:

Even if you've never opened
Pride and Prejudice,
you know what Lady Catherine is like from this brief excerpt of her speech: rude, arrogant, selfish, controlling, egocentric. You know all that without Austen saying “Lady Catherine is rude, arrogant, selfish, controlling, and egocentric.” Austen shows Lady Catherine's personality through the action of the character.

Austen's observational skills and her eye for details give the readers characters who are as multifaceted as any of you are today. Here are a few examples: