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Jane Austen and Her Country-house Comedy

E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
Englisch
Copycaterschienen am02.12.2019
This work presents a fresh perspective on Jane Austen in the context of Balzac and Charlotte Bronte and her impact and influences. Helm discusses Austen's procedure, humor, characteristics of her writing style, and the origins of her matchmaking and marrying characters. Jane Austen was an English writer pioneer in giving the novel its unique modern character through her portrayal of ordinary people in everyday life. She distinctly depicted English middle-class life during the early 19th century. Her six famous works played a major role in defining the novel of manners and became timeless classics. Jane Austen and Her Country-House Comedy is a critical monograph on Jane Austen, based on her novels and letters. The author first examines the dominant qualities in Jane Austen's works, emphasizing her enduring freshness and comparing her with Balzac and Charlotte Bronte. He then examines her methods, discussing her education and her preparation for writing.mehr

Produkt

KlappentextThis work presents a fresh perspective on Jane Austen in the context of Balzac and Charlotte Bronte and her impact and influences. Helm discusses Austen's procedure, humor, characteristics of her writing style, and the origins of her matchmaking and marrying characters. Jane Austen was an English writer pioneer in giving the novel its unique modern character through her portrayal of ordinary people in everyday life. She distinctly depicted English middle-class life during the early 19th century. Her six famous works played a major role in defining the novel of manners and became timeless classics. Jane Austen and Her Country-House Comedy is a critical monograph on Jane Austen, based on her novels and letters. The author first examines the dominant qualities in Jane Austen's works, emphasizing her enduring freshness and comparing her with Balzac and Charlotte Bronte. He then examines her methods, discussing her education and her preparation for writing.
Details
Weitere ISBN/GTIN9788028233235
ProduktartE-Book
EinbandartE-Book
FormatEPUB
Format HinweisePub Wasserzeichen
Verlag
Erscheinungsjahr2019
Erscheinungsdatum02.12.2019
SpracheEnglisch
Artikel-Nr.9914227
Rubriken
Genre9200

Inhalt/Kritik

Leseprobe





"'Have you been long in Bath, madam?'

"'About a week, sir,' replied Catherine, trying not to laugh.

"'Really!' with affected astonishment.

"'Why should you be surprised, sir?'

"' Why, indeed!' said he, in his natural tone; 'but some emotion must appear to be raised by your reply, and surprise is more easily assumed, and not less reasonable, than any other.'"




This bit of dialogue recalls a remark in a letter written by Jane to Cassandra: "Benjamin Portal is here. How charming that is! I do not exactly know why, but the phrase followed so naturally that I could not help putting it down."

Mr. Collins is one of the most finished of Jane's studies of men. He comes near to the impossible at times, but she makes him a living creature. The speech in which he offers his hand and advantages to his cousin Elizabeth has often been quoted, and its charms can never fade. Only a page of it is necessary to tempt the reader to turn-again or for the first time-to Pride and Prejudice in order that he may find the rest of the inimitable scene-




"My reasons for marrying are, first, that I think it a right thing for every clergyman in easy circumstances (like myself) to set the example of matrimony in his parish; secondly, that I am convinced it will add very greatly to my happiness; and, thirdly, which perhaps I ought to have mentioned earlier, that it is the particular advice and recommendation of the very noble lady whom I have the honour of calling patroness. Twice has she condescended to give me her opinion (unasked too!) on this subject; and it was but the very Saturday night before I left Hunsford-between our pools at quadrille, while Mrs. Jenkinson was arranging Miss de Bourgh's footstool-that she said, 'Mr. Collins, you must marry. A clergyman like you must marry. Choose properly, choose a gentlewoman for my sake, and for your own; let her be an active, useful sort of person, not brought up high, but able to make a small income go a good way. This is my advice. Find such a woman as soon as you can, bring her to Hunsford, and I will visit her.' Allow me, by the way, to observe, my fair cousin, that I do not reckon the notice and kindness of Lady Catherine de Bourgh as among the least of the advantages in my power to offer. You will find her manners beyond anything I can describe; and your wit and vivacity, I think, must be acceptable to her, especially when tempered with the silence and respect which her rank will inevitably excite."




The immediate consequences of Elizabeth's refusal are delightfully imagined and described. The moment Mrs. Bennet hears of it, she rushes to her husband's room-




"'You must come and make Lizzy marry Mr. Collins, for she vows she will not have him; and if you do not make haste he will change his mind and not have her.'

"Mr. Bennet raised his eyes from his book as she entered, and fixed them on her face with a calm unconcern, which was not in the least altered by her communication.

"'I have not the pleasure of understanding you,' said he, when she had finished her speech. 'Of what are you talking?'

"'Of Mr. Collins and Lizzy. Lizzy declares she will not have Mr. Collins, and Mr. Collins begins to say that he will not have Lizzy.'

"'And what am I to do on the occasion? It seems a hopeless business.'

"'Speak to Lizzy about if yourself. Tell her that you insist upon her marrying him.'

"'Let her be called down. She shall hear my opinion.'

"Mrs. Bennet rang the bell, and Miss Elizabeth was summoned to the library.

"'Come here, child,' cried her father as she appeared. 'I have sent for you on an affair of importance. I understand that Mr. Collins has made you an offer of marriage. Is it true?' Elizabeth replied that it was. 'Very well-and this offer of marriage you have refused?'

"'I have, sir.'

"'Very well. We now come to the point. Your mother insists upon your accepting it. Is it not so, Mrs. Bennet?'

"'Yes, or I will never see her again.'

"'An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.'"




There is nothing "commonplace" about this. What matter that the characters are only middle-class and "respectable," if they can afford material for such excellent wit?

In one respect, judged by the present standard in fiction, Jane Austen's work assuredly is "commonplace." No novelist was ever less troubled in the search for names. She merely took those of people she had heard of or met, preferring the common to the unusual. Bennet, Dashwood, Elliot, Price, Woodhouse-names that the modern "popular" novelist would reject at sight, served her turn, a Darcy or a Tilney being her highest flights in nomenclature. As for the Christian names, they are of the most ordinary and are used over and over again. In Sense and Sensibility, for example, three of the prominent characters are named John-John Dashwood, John Middleton, and John Willoughby. There are two Catherines in Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeths, Fannys, Annes, Marys, Henrys, Edwards, Roberts, "fill the bills," and such a name as Frank Churchill seems recondite. It is much the same in the letters, the truth being that the Gwladyses, and Evadnes, and Marmadukes of those days were very rare, and almost unknown in rural society. The burden which her sister Cassandra bore must have strengthened Jane's determination that her heroes and heroines should not have unusual names, and so we have our Elinors and Elizabeths, and Fannys, with their Edwards and Edmunds, and Henrys. The Darcys are almost the only exceptions that try the rule; "Fitzwilliam" and "Georgiana" are more in the style of the ordinary novel of "high life."

So much for names. How are the men and women who bear them "introduced" to us? When a Colonel Newcome, or an Alfred Jingle, or a Sylvain Pons comes upon the scene, we hear a good deal about his personal appearance, his manner of dress, his bearing, and those who introduce him have a huge circle of men and women to bring before us with similar formalities. Jane Austen, like a casual hostess at a modern dance, leaves us, as often as not, to make acquaintance in any way we can. Scott, with his wealth of character-studies among high and middle and low, his kings and cavaliers and covenanters and crofters, was the most generous giver of types among Jane Austen's contemporaries; Maria Edgeworth in depicting the gentry and peasantry of Ireland, and John Galt the small shop-keepers and their customers in the Scottish country-towns, managed to present us to a large circle of new acquaintances, of various classes and occupations. Jane had no use for characters, or centres of social life, that required to be specially described for a particular purpose. Only in one of her novels (Sense and Sensibility) is the busy life of London made the subject of any but the most casual description, and even then it is but the transference of the country people to town, and of the two or three towns-people back to their London houses from their country visits that is effected. (The general life of the metropolis, its theatres, parks, and bustle are left, to all intent, unnoticed. Yet, as we know from many passages in her letters, Jane during her visits was a keen spectator of the pageantry of life in a city which, she jestingly declared, played havoc with her character. "Here I am once more in this scene of dissipation and vice," she writes from Cork Street in August 1796, "and I begin already to find my morals corrupted." And in the next month she sends this little message to Mr. Austen: "My father will be so good as to fetch home his prodigal daughter from town, I hope, unless he wishes me to walk the hospitals, enter at the Temple, or mount guard at St. James'." She was not "prodigal"-save in gloves and ribbons-but she enjoyed the delights of the country-cousin in town. She went very often to the play, so often at times as to be weary of it. The Hypocrite (Bickerstaff's "alteration" of Cibber's "adaptation" of Tartuffe) "well entertained" her, Dowton and Mathews being the chief actors; and she saw Liston, Miss Stephens, Miss O'Neill, and Kean at the outset of his fame. "The Clandestine Marriage" was a favourite piece, and on one occasion she notes that her nieces, whom she sometimes took to the theatre, "revelled last night in Don Juan, whom we left in hell at half-past eleven." Such joys, however, did not move her mind enough to seduce her from the country as a source of inspiration for her work.

"All lives lived out of London are mistakes more or less grievous-but mistakes," said Sydney Smith, adapting, consciously or not, the saying of Mascarille to the Précieuses: "Pour moi, Je tiens que hors de Paris, il n'y a point de salut pour les honnetes gens." The life of Jane Austen, whose humour the author of the Plymley Letters, the father and uncle of a hundred diverting anecdotes, so greatly enjoyed, may serve to show the weakness of such unreserved generalization. Her subjects were found in the restful backwaters of life, not in the crowded centres where mankind is more and more bewildered by the failure of wisdom to keep pace with the advance of knowledge.

It is one of Jane's qualities as a writer that she shows little hospitality to the stock phrases of ordinary people. Lord Chesterfield told his son: "If, instead of saying that tastes are different, and that every man has his own peculiar one, you should let off a proverb, and say, that 'What is one...
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