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July 26, 2025 • 40 mins
In honor of the centenary of Jane Austens death, W. H. Helm offers a beautiful reflection on the enduring charm of her work, emphasizing that despite the passage of time, her books remain as fresh and vibrant as ever. Helm takes readers on a journey through Austens literary influences, her contemporaries, and the prevalent themes in her work. He dives deeply into her fascinating ideas and beautifully crafted characters, providing a succinct compilation of thought-provoking quotes that capture the essence of Jane Austens genius. All insights are succinctly presented in this brief yet enlightening book. Join us as we celebrate the timeless brilliance of Austens work. Summary by Beth Thomas.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Chapter five of Jane Austen and Her Country House Comedy.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Jane Austen and Her Country House
Comedy by William Henry Helm, Chapter five, The impartial satirist?

(00:24):
What has woman done? Nature's sallik law? Women deficient in satire?
Some types in the novels, the female snob, the valetudinarian,
the fop, the too agreeable man, personal size and mental sorrow.
Knightley's opinion of Emma ashamed of relations, Missus Bennett, the

(00:50):
clergy and their opinions worldly life absence of dogma, authors
confused with their creations. It is a commonplace of those
who refuse to recognize the claims of woman to equal
treatment in spheres of activity where man has long held
a monopoly, to ask what great thing has woman done?

(01:13):
In any walk of life? One may talk in reply
of Sappho, of Joan of Arc, of George Sand, of
George Eliot, of Florence Nightingale, and two or three others,
and the retort, if the greatness of these must be admitted,
is that they are the exceptions that prove the rule.
It is difficult, impossible, perhaps to upset the man who

(01:37):
denies that anything of the greatest in art, or literature
or science has been achieved by a woman. The list
of women who have left an abiding fame as poets
or novelists or painters is soon exhausted, and there is
not a name that can, without reserve, be placed among
the Rembrandts and Turners, the Getas and Miltons, the Newtons

(02:01):
and Darwins of mankind. May be this deficiency is largely
due to lack of opportunity, since the gates were partly
open to woman. Within the lifetime of those who are
still not old, she has done enough to change the
opinions of many who held that rocking the cradle was
a sufficiently active share in the ruling of the world.

(02:22):
For the sex that produce the Maid of Orleans and
the Lady with the Lamp, such justly conspicuous success as
Madame Curie has attained in chemistry, or Missus Garrett Andersen
in medicine, or Missus Sharlibe in surgery, has compelled the
admission that even if woman were by nature unfitted to

(02:42):
reach the highest levels of intellectual achievement. She at least
could not be excluded from the learned professions on the
ground of inadequate mental equipment. Nature's old salik law, said Huxley,
will not be repealed, and no change of dynasty will
be effected. Jane Austen, at any rate, did not desire

(03:02):
to repeal it. She was among the most feminine of
the women writers who have left an enduring reputation. It
is something of a paradox, therefore, that the quality on
which her fame chiefly rests is one which is rare
among women, and in which most of those women who
have attained success in literature have been conspicuously lacking satirical humor.

(03:26):
Apart from physical disabilities, want of humor is woman's heaviest
handicapped in the conflict of life. Humor is the principal
ingredient of the philosophic temperament. Woman has courage and adversity.
She can suffer intensely without complaint, but she rarely possesses
the power of laughing at her own misfortunes. It has

(03:48):
been said, and the saying might not easily be gainsaid,
that none of the great jokes of the world was
made by a woman. There are perhaps fifty great jokes.
Spoke jokes, of course, are meant not those generally humorless
things known as practical jokes. And the good stories that
are told and received as novelties are save in the

(04:11):
rarest instances, merely new editions of some wheeze which was
already ancient when it was told to a circle of
meat drinkers round a fire. The smoke whereof or some
of it escape through the roof it is. There is
reason to believe no mere figure of speech that originally
most of the basic jokes were told round the galley

(04:32):
fire of the arc during the long dark evenings, after
the animals had been fed, the decks swept down and
the women had retired to their quarters. Thus may we
account for the otherwise inexplicably large proportion of seafaring and
animal tales among the mirth provoking yarns of man. A
woman might never make a joke and yet have a

(04:53):
keen sense of humor, while on the other hand, she
might make many jokes and have no sense of humor
at all. Most of the jokes that have any element
of freshness, are alive with fun and not with humor.
Who is more humorless than the notoriously funny man. Jane
Austen is not often funny and seldom makes jokes in

(05:16):
her novels. Her humor is of the essential kind, which
is so nearly akin to wit that it is often
most identical with it. Wit and humor, after all definitions,
are brothers who might be taken for one another by
those who do not notice that the one has colder
hands than the other. If you want to laugh heartily,

(05:38):
you must not trust to Jane's novels for a stimulant.
Her characters laugh but little among themselves, and are the
cause of intellectual joy rather than of physical contractions in
those who read about them. When after re reading many
of the novels we sit and think over their delights,
many are the admirable bits of character that come to

(06:00):
mind after we have thought of the heroines. The good
people in the common meaning of the word, do not
come back to us so readily as those who, if
not bad, are decidedly faulty. The Westons, the Gardeners, the Harvill's,
the Crofts, Lady Russell, the John Knightley's we recall when

(06:22):
we jog our memories after Elizabeth and Emma and Anne,
it is the appallingly tactless Missus Bennett, the odiously snobbish
Missus Elton, the race proud Lady Catherine, the entirely selfish
mister Collins, the lazy and thoughtless Lady Bertram, the mean

(06:42):
and tyrannical Missus Norris, the fatuous Sir Walter Elliot, These
and their like who throng into view. No writer, not
even Thackeray, has realized the female snob more knowingly than
Jane Austen and Missus Elton, whose common instant reference of
all matters of taste to the standard presented by maple

(07:05):
Grove and the Barouche Landau renders her as diverting to us,
as she was insufferable to Emma Woodhouse. A woman like this,
who is never betrayed into an unselfish action or a
noble aspiration, is happily not a common object in real life.
But there are enough of Missus Elton's great granddaughters about

(07:26):
the world to exculpate Jane from the charge of undue exaggeration.
Emma herself has been called a snob, and only the
other day was described as perpetually acting with bad taste.
But Emma's disdain for Robert Martin and her opinion of
the degradation of marrying a governess were due to prejudices

(07:47):
of convention, which thought under Knightley's influence dispelled. Missus Elton
was a snob at heart who reveled in her own
vulgarity of instinct. If the snow is portrayed to perfection
in Missus Elton, the voluditinarian is no less happily presented
in mister Woodhouse. My dear Emma. Suppose we all have

(08:09):
a little gruel and for a picture of an empty headed,
frivolous wife married to a rational and bearish husband, the
Palmers in sense and sensibility have few equals. As for
miss Bates, she is without a serious rival as an
inconsequential babbler. And though we may be and ought to be,

(08:31):
as angry with Emma for her rudeness at the boxail picnic,
as was mister Knightley himself, we must admit the ears
of Miss Bates's disjoined garrulity were some set off against
that gross breach of charity and good manners. Lady Catherine
de Burgh has been placed by some critical readers among

(08:51):
Jane Austen's obvious caricatures. Is she not an entirely credible,
if happily rare type. She is seen in a strong
light in her attempt to bully Elizabeth into a promise
not to marry Darthy with regard to the resentment of
his family, says Elizabeth, at last, or the indignation of

(09:13):
the world. If the former were excited by his marrying me,
it would not give me one moment's concern, and the
world in general would have too much sense to join
in the scorn. And this is your real opinion, replies
Lady Catherine, this is your final resolve. Very well, I

(09:33):
shall now know how to act. Do not imagine, Miss Bennett,
that your ambition will ever be gratified. I came to
try you. I hope to find you reasonable, but depend
upon it. I will carry my point in this manner.
Lady Catherine talked on till they were at the door
of the carriage. When turning hastily round, she added, I

(09:56):
will take no leave of you, Miss Bennett. I said,
no compliments to your You deserve no such attention. I
am most seriously displeased. Elizabeth made no answer, and, without
attempting to persuade her ladyship to return into the house,
walked quietly into it herself. Thus ends one of the

(10:16):
great scenes of Jane Austen, a bit of duelog which
gives us the natures and capacities of two remarkable people,
a charming, clear headed, self reliant girl and a blustering,
stupidly proud old woman. Sir Walter Elliot is the companion
figure more highly colored of Lady Catherine. This man, a

(10:39):
vain fop who has not sense enough to govern his
own affairs, regards professional men as contemptible, if necessary, adjuncts
of society, And at a time when only the splendid
services of our sailors had saved England from disaster, he
thus babbles about the Navy. Yes, it is in two

(11:00):
points offensive to me. I have two strong grounds of
objection to it, first as being the means of bringing
persons of obscure birth into undue distinction and raising men
to honors which their fathers and grandfathers never dreamt of,
And secondly, as it cuts up a man's youth and
vigor most horribly. A sailor grows old sooner than any

(11:23):
other man. I have observed it all my life. A
man is in greater danger in the navy of being
insulted by the rise of one whose father his father
might have disdained to speak to, and have becoming prematurely
an object of disgust himself, than in any other line.
One day last spring in town, I was in company

(11:45):
with two men striking instances of what I am talking of,
Lord Saint Ives, whose father we all know to have
been a country curate without bread to eat. I was
to give place to Lord Saint Ives and a certain
admirable ball Oldwin, the most deplorable looking personage. You can
imagine his face, the color of mahogany, rough and rugged

(12:07):
to the last degree, all lines and wrinkles, nine gray
hairs of a side, and nothing but a dab of
powder at top. In the name of Heaven, who is that,
old fellow? Said I to a friend of mine who
was standing near Sir Basil Morley. Old fellow cried, Sir Basil,
it is Admiral Baldwin. What do you take his age

(12:29):
to be? Sixty? Said I, or perhaps sixty two forty
replied Sir Basil forty and no more picture to yourselves
my amazement. I shall not easily forget Admiral Baldwin. I
never saw quite so wretched an example of what a
seafaring life can do. But to a degree I know

(12:51):
it is the same with them all. They are all
knocked about and exposed to every climate, at every weather,
till they are not fit to be seen. It is
pity they are not knocked on the head at once
before they reach Admiral Baldwin's age. There have been such
fools as Sir Walter Elliot, but as a type he
is overdrawn. Jane loved the navy so much that her

(13:14):
anger with those who disparaged it gave her pens speed
and added color to the ink. Anne's cousin, William Eliot,
whose attentions to her helped to revive Wentworth's affection, is
more closely studied by the author than any of her heroes.
Everything united in him, good understanding, correct opinions, knowledge of

(13:36):
the world, and a warm heart. He had strong feelings
of family attachment and family honor, without pride or weakness.
He lived with the liberality of a man of fortune,
without display he judged for himself in everything essential, without
defying public opinion in any point of worldly decorum. He
was steady, observant, moderate candidate, never run away with by

(14:01):
spirits or by selfishness, which fancied itself, strong feeling, and
yet with a sensibility to what was amiable and lovely,
and a value for all the felicities of domestic life,
which characters of fancied enthusiasm and violent agitation seldom really possess. Anne, however,

(14:22):
was not long in discovering grave defects in this outwardly
model person. She saw that while he was rational, discreet, polished,
he was not open. There never was any burst of feeling,
any warmth, of indignation or delight at the evil or
good of others. This, to Anne was a decided imperfection.

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Her early impressions were incurable. She prized the frank, the
open hearted, the eager character above all others. Warmth and
enthusiasm did captivate her. Still, she felt that she could
so much more or depend upon the sincerity of those
who sometimes looked or said a careless or hasty thing

(15:06):
than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose
tongue never slipped. Mister Elliot was too generally agreeable various,
as were the tempers in her father's house. He pleased
them all. He endured too well, stood too well with everybody.
Those who accused Jane Austen of hardness have sometimes relied

(15:28):
on her treatment of Missus Musgrove's sorrow over her ne'er
do well son long after his death to support this charge.
Anne and Wentworth, whose mutual liking was just beginning to
bloom again, were actually on the same sofa, for Missus
Musgrove had most readily made room for him. They were
divided only by Missus Musgrove. It was no insignificant barrier. Indeed,

(15:54):
Missus Musgrove was of a comfortable, substantial size, infinitely more
fitted by nature to express good cheer and good humor
than tenderness and sentiment. And while the agitations of Anne's
slender form and pensive face may be considered as very
completely screened, Captain Wentworth should be allowed some credit for

(16:16):
the self command with which he attended to her large
fat signs over the destiny of a son whom, alive
nobody had cared for. And then the author stops in
her narrative to observe that personal size and mental sorrow
have certainly known necessary proportions. A large bulky figure has

(16:36):
as good a right to be in deep affliction as
the most graceful set of limbs in the world. But
fair or not fair, there are unbecoming conjunctions which reason
will patronize in vain, which taste cannot tolerate, which ridicule
will sees. She thus bluntly expresses what almost every satirist

(16:57):
merely implies, but she underrates her own powers. The ordinary
writer might or might not be able to describe the
grief of a large bulky figure without offense to the
ordinary taste. Genius could assuredly do this thing. Shakespeare, with
whom Wathley, McCauley and Tennyson compared, Jane Austen, made one

(17:19):
of his greatest characters, fat and scant of breath. But
when Hamlet says to his friend, thou wouldst not think
how ill all's here about my heart? We do not
find it ridiculous that this, too, too solid flesh, should
be joined with a mind weighted with such poignant sorrow.
In any case, whether she mistrusted her own powers or

(17:42):
wanted Missus Musgrove to be slightly ridiculous, which seems more
likely Jane did not strive here to achieve what she
pointedly tells us. It would be beyond reason to expect.
The character of Emma is described with unusual fullness, But
the description is placed in the man of George Knightley,
her candid admirer, who was perhaps not guiltless of the

(18:05):
fault which Feinaul attributed to Mirabel of being too discerning
in the failings of his mistress. Missus Weston, Miss Taylor
that was has said that Emma means to read. With
Harriet Smith, Emma has been meaning to read more ever
since she was twelve years old, replies mister Knightley. I

(18:27):
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, sometimes alphabetically and sometimes by
some other rule. The list she drew up when only fourteen,
I remember thinking it did her judgment so much credit

(18:50):
that I preserved it sometime, and I dare say she
may have made out a very good list now. But
I have done with expecting any course of steady reads
from Emma. She will never submit to anything requiring industry
and patience and a subjection of the fancy to the
understanding where Miss Taylor failed to stimulate. I may safely

(19:12):
affirm that Harriet Smith will do nothing. You never could
persuade her to read half so much as you wished.
You know you could not, I dare say, replied missus Weston, smiling,
that I thought so then. But since we have parted,
I can never remember Emma's omitting to do anything I wished.
There is hardly any desiring to refresh such a memory

(19:35):
as that, said mister Knightley feelingly, and for a moment
or two he had done. But I, he soon added,
who have had no such charm thrown over my senses,
must still see, hear and remember. Emma is spoiled by
being the cleverest of her family. At ten years old,
she had the misfortune of being able to answer questions

(19:58):
which puzzled her sister. At seven, she was always quick
and assured, Isabella slow and diffident, And ever since she
was twelve, Emma has been mistress of the house and
of you all. In her mother she lost the only
person able to cope with her. An unhappy condition of
most of Jane's heroines is that they are, of necessity

(20:19):
ashamed of their nearest relations. Anne Elliot felt his trouble
keenly when at length she and Wentworth decided to take
the happiness which she had refused years before. Anne satisfied
at a very early period of Lady Russell's meaning to
love Captain Wentworth, as she ought, had no other alloy

(20:40):
to the happiness of her prospects than what arose from
the consciousness of having no relations to bestow on him
which a man of sense could value. There she felt
her own inferiority keenly. The disproportion in their fortune was nothing.
It did not give her a moment's regret. But to
have no foun family to receive and estimate him properly,

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nothing of respectability, of harmony, of good will to offer
in return for all the worth and all the prompt
welcome which met her and his brothers and sisters, was
a source of as lively pain as her mind could
well be sensible of. Under circumstances of otherwise strong felicity,
one can readily understand her regret. Her father was a fool.

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Her elder sister, Elizabeth, a slave of convention with few
rational ideas of her own, and her younger sister an
erotic egotist who grudged to others the simplest pleasures if
she did not feel able or disposed to share them.
Fanny Price was ashamed of the Slovenly home at Portsmouth,
to which Henry Crawford so inopportunely penetrated. Elizabeth Bennett's mother was,

(21:52):
of course more nearly impossible even than Lady Catherine had
so pointedly suggested, for her dear effects were far worse
than those of obscure birth. This terrible woman, who kept
her elder daughters constantly on the rack by her fatuous chatter,
who always said the wrong thing, who had no desire

(22:13):
for her children's welfare, but to marry them to anybody
with money, if possible, or without it, rather than not
at all, made one of her usual quick changes. When
she heard the surprising news of Elizabeth's engagement to Darthy.
She began at length to recover, to fidget about in
her chair, get up, sit down again, wonder and bless herself,

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good gracious lord, bless me only think dear me, mister Darcy,
who would have thought it? And is it really true? Oh,
my sweetest Lizzie, How rich and how great you will be?
What pin money, what jewels, what carriages you will have?
Jane's is nothing to it, nothing at all. I am

(23:00):
so pleased, so happy, such a charming man, so handsome,
so tall. Oh, my dear Lizzy, pray apologize for my
having disliked him so much before. I hope he will
overlook it. Dear dear Lizzy, A house in town, everything
that is charming, three daughters married, ten thousand a year, O, Lord,

(23:25):
what will become of me? I shall go distracted. This
was enough to prove that her approbation need not be doubted,
and Elizabeth, rejoicing that such an effusion was heard only
by herself, soon went away. But before she had been
three minutes in her own room, her mother followed her.
My dearest child, she cried, I can think of nothing else.

(23:48):
Ten thousand a year and very likely more. Tis as
good as a lord and a special license. You must
and shall be married by a special license. But my
dearest love, tell me what dish mister Darcy is particularly
fond of that I may have it tomorrow. This was
a sad omen of what her mother's behavior to the

(24:10):
gentleman himself might be. And Elizabeth found that, though in
the certain possession of his warmest affection, and secure of
her relation's consent, there was still something to be wished for.
Of Catherine Morland, we are told that her whole family
were plain, matter of fact, people who seldom aimed at

(24:31):
wit of any kind, her father at the utmost being
contented with a pun, and her mother with a proverb.
Having given us this little apursue of mister and missus Morland,
the author MORSEUU adds the information they were not in
the habit therefore of telling lies to increase their importance,

(24:52):
nor of asserting at one moment what they would counterdick
the next. If we seek in our memories for scenes
of particular excellence, we shall recall with renewed pleasure, the
rehearsals Mansfield Park, the encounters between Elizabeth and mister Collins,
and Elizabeth and Lady Catherine, Pride and prejudice, the second

(25:13):
and last proposal of Wentworth to Anne Elliot, Persuasion, the
picnic at Box Hill, and the dance at the Crown
Emma In all of these, the spontaneity of the narrative,
the vitality of the talk, and the vividness with which
the circumstances are realized with the smallest amount of description

(25:34):
show the author's art in its most delightful vein. It
is often in little touches generally satirical, that Jane Austen
reveals the characters of her people. Lady Middleton, whose reserve
was a mere calmness of manner, with which sense had
nothing to do. Mary Bennett, whom, when her sisters visited

(25:56):
her they found, as usual deep in the study of
thorough base and human nature, and had some new extracts
to admire, and some new observations of threadbare morality to
listen to. The gushing Louisa Musgrove, who declared that if
she loved a man, as missus Croft loved the Admiral,

(26:16):
she would always be with him, nothing should ever separate them,
and that she would rather be overturned by him than
driven safely by anybody else. Mister Allen, a country gentleman
of fortune who did not care about the garden and
never went into it. And General Tilney, pouring over pamphlets

(26:37):
when he ought to be in bed, blinding his eyes
for the good of others who would never benefit in
the least by his exertions. The heartless and humbugging Missus Norris,
whose plentiful talk about helping her poor child burdened sister
ended at her writing the letters, while others sent substantial assistance.

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These and many other entertaining people live for us largely
from such casual peeps into their natures and sentiments. Jane
Austen rarely describes a man or woman as possessing qualities
which are not justified by the evidence she offers. Almost
the only notable exceptions are Missus Dashwood, of whom we

(27:19):
are told that a man could not very well be
in love with either of her daughters without extending the
passion to her, but who does not herself give us
any reason to regard her as other than an affectionate,
well meaning, and injudicious person. And Captain Wentworth, who is
stated to have been witty, but who usually manages to

(27:40):
restrain his wit when we happen to meet him. The
many parsons of the novels are at once too steady
and too prosperous to be in accord with either of
the types of eighteenth century clergy most frequently conveyed by
the literature of their period. They may not have done
much for their parishioners beyond preaching to them once or
twice a week and sending them soup occasionally, but they

(28:04):
set them good examples by conducting themselves decently and soberly
of their views. We know little. Indeed, few things are
more remarkable in these novels in the light of later
fiction than that almost complete absence of any reference to
dogmatic religion, to which attention has already been drawn. You

(28:24):
may hunt through them all and hardly find two definite
statements that, except to see what the vicar's bride was like,
any of the characters went to church. We know that
the parsons preached, but whether there was anyone to hear
their sermons we are usually left in doubt. In fact,
as doctor Weitely puts it, the author's religion is not

(28:45):
at all obtrusive. His favorable view of Jane Austen's influence
may be contrasted with Robert Hall's of Maria Edgeworth's In
point of tendency, I should class her books among the
most irreligious. I have ever read. She does not attack religion,
nor inveigh against it, but makes it appear unnecessary by

(29:06):
exhibiting perfect virtue without it. It has frequently been said
that the atmosphere of Jane Austen's books is Church of England,
and this is in a sense true. She assumes that
the squires of whom she writes are adherents of church
and state, much as a provincial clergyman wrote recently in

(29:27):
his parish magazine. It is generally taken for granted that
church is the only possible religion for an English gentleman.
We meet with no Romish priests or Methodist preachers, not
so much as a member of the Society of Friends.
But on the other hand, we meet with no one
who talks against faith. It was a period when the

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church itself had become apathetic, when pluralists abounded, and when
many rectors lived comfortably on their great tithes, far from
the parishes, which they left to the care of curates,
who were often worse off than their gamekeepers. A young
man went into the church if there was a good
living to be had, just as he went to the

(30:09):
bar if his uncle was a flourishing attorney or into
the navy if his friends had influence with the Board
of Admiralty. Many parsons, if they were well to do
and fond of society, did not even wear any distinctive dress.
One meets vicars and curates to day in summer time
wearing green ties and gray tweed suits. And even a

(30:30):
bishop has been known to abandon his episcopal uniform when
he was away on a holiday. But to take an
instance from the novels, Catherine Morland, who has met Henry
Tilney at a dance in Bath and meets him again
at the pump room or elsewhere, does not know he
is a clergyman until she is told the church was

(30:50):
merely a profession for most of those who entered it.
Did Henry's income depend solely on his living, says General Tilney,
he would not be well provided for. Perhaps it may
seem odd that with only two younger children, I should
think any profession necessary to him, And certainly there are
moments when we could all wish him disengaged from every

(31:11):
tie of business. The most conscientious clergyman in the Austin
comedy is Edmund Bertram, who really seems to have wished
to do his duty, and thereby damaged his chance of
marrying Mary Crawford. The scanty reference to the observances of
religion in the novels bears on the worldly life of
the age as we know it from those who were

(31:32):
of it and saw it at the center of activity
London society. Doctor Warner, George Selwyn's chaplain, who attracted large
congregations by his eloquent preaching, and who was an avowed
skeptic away from church, who toadied the rich and noble
and told stories that delighted the Duke of Queensbury, was

(31:52):
no rare type of the clergy of his time, and
we may be pretty certain that Jane Austen's mister Collins,
who was not at all likely to tell an improper
story himself, would have found it very difficult to believe
that so exalted a personage as old Q was unfit
for the society of clergymen. Jane frankly admitted that she

(32:13):
knew too little of literature, philosophy, and science to allow
her adequately to draw the character of a scholarly and
serious parson. The comic side of the character I might
be equal to, but not the good The enthusiastic the literary.
Such a man's conversation must be at times on subjects
of science and philosophy of which I know nothing, or

(32:36):
at least occasionally abundant in quotations and illusions which a
woman who like me knows only her own mother tongue
and has read little in that would be totally without
the power of giving. According to her brother and her nephew,
Jane was better educated than she here makes out, knowing
French and a good deal of Italian. Whether we belie

(33:00):
leave her or not about her literary and linguistic limitations,
we can have small doubt that she knew very little
indeed about science and philosophy, in spite of being so
much of a philosopher. In those days when Cuvier was
bringing his genius in paleontology to bear on the recovery
of lost types and preparing away for Darwin, whose own

(33:22):
grandfather was bravely aiding in the clearance of paths in
hitherto trackless jungles of prejudice and obscurantism, science was scarcely
regarded as a decent subject of conversation before ladies in
country drawing rooms, and it never obtrudes itself at Hartfield
or at Mansfield Park. If we may read through every

(33:43):
word of Jane's novels without discovering any expression of dogmatic belief,
we may equally find no direct evidence unless in that
one story of Eleanor and Willoughby, of acceptance of the
chilly deism which had eaten so deeply into the intellects
both of laymen and clergy. The unrest, both moral and physical,

(34:05):
which had spread from Paris, from Holland, and from Switzerland
over the whole of Western Europe at that time, finds
little place for its fidgeting in the families to whom
we are here introduced. People with the rare exceptions of
a Wickham or Willoughby, are born, live and die in
peace with the world and in general harmony with their environments.

(34:28):
Admirable is Jane Austen's picture of country life in house
and garden are they are not to be accepted as
literal transcripts. She was, before all else an artist, and
the more an artist is devoted to finicking reproduction of
exact details, the further is he removed from art. Almost

(34:49):
every author, if he writes with sincerity, must draw his
own moral portrait in his best work. In a literal sense,
there is no reason to suppose that novelists o often
give us studies of themselves in any degree comparable with
the self portraits of Rembrandt, Velasquez, Madame vij Lebrun, or
the moderns in the Affitzi gallery. Sometimes, of course, as

(35:13):
in Villette and Delphine, an author reports episodes in his
life almost as they happened, And it is certain, save
in the rarest cases, that something of an author's mental
process is reproduced in all his creatures, bad as well
as good. Though he is more likely to show his
own temperament and experience in a prominent and sympathetic character

(35:37):
than in any other. Very few writers follow the example
of Milton, of whom Coleridge declared his Satan, his Adam,
his Raphael. Almost all his eve are all John Milton.
The common mistake, a mistake so obvious that we may
wonder at its continuance, is such a close identification of

(36:00):
the author with any one of his creations. Thus, because
Vivian Gray is Disraeli himself, Disraeli is to be credited
with the strange experiences of that uneasy hero. Among foreign
politicians and card sharpers. And because Jane Eyre is Charlotte Bronte,
Charlotte Bronte must at least have wished to unite herself

(36:23):
with a wild man whose wife had gone mad. There
were no doubt readers of Guta's Faust, who, ignoring the legend,
thought the author had bargained with Mephisto. And it goes
without saying mary Anne Dashwood is not within hearing that
Hamlet is Shakespeare. Such arbitrary reasoning may account for the

(36:46):
general confusion of Frankenstein with the creature that he made
among the widest traps. Indeed, for those who love to
see a romano clef in every novel, is this identification
of the author with one or other of his characters.
Some people have convinced themselves that Cassandra and Jane Austen

(37:07):
were the originals of Eleanor and Maryanne Dashwood. Such an
idea could only be held by those who had not
seen Jane's letters. Marianne, sentimental, romantic, disagreeable in a quite
serious way, and usually inattentive to the forms of general civility,
could not be Jane, and as certainly not Cassandra, as

(37:30):
we know her, and while eleanor the patient, long suffering
Girl might in some ways represent either of the Austin sisters,
she is very far from being a portrait. Yet, If
neither eleanor Dashwood nor Mary Anne is to be described
as a likeness of Jane, the elder sister in her
philosophical submission to what she believed to be the loss

(37:53):
of her lover, and the younger in her literary tastes
in her impatience with people who talk without things, may
fairly be regarded as in part reflecting the author's personality.
None of her heroines is Jane, but there is much
of her also in Elizabeth Bennett, an Emma Woodhouse, and

(38:14):
a good deal in Anne Elliott, though she admitted that
Anne was too nearly perfect to be altogether after her heart.
The simple little souls of Fanny Price and Catherine Morland,
so dependent on the direct assistance of others in the
formation of their feelings, are in very small degree expressions

(38:34):
of the author's temperament. We may, i think, regard Emma
Woodhouse as the nearest approach to a portrait of the
artist who painted her, But nearest is a relative superlative.
Many people do not care for Emma. A strong expression
of recent disapproval was quoted a few pages back. Jane

(38:54):
Austen anticipated objections. I am going, she said, when she
was beginning the book, to take a heroine whom no
one but myself will like much. Whether or not we
may see in Emma a good deal of Jane herself,
we may fairly be certain that none of her characters
is an intentional copy of anyone in the circle of

(39:17):
her friends and acquaintances. She herself declared her opinion, which
tallies with all that we know of her, that the
introduction of living people as actors in a work of
imagination is a breach of good manners, and that propriety apart.
She was too proud of her characters to admit that

(39:37):
they were only Missus A or Colonel B. How far
she made use of individuals in the composition of such
strongly marked figures as Missus Elton, Mister Collins, and Sir
Walter Elliot, we cannot, of course know the point for
what it is worth could have been better elucidated if
Miss Austin's circle had been less far remove moved from

(40:00):
the world wherein the raxalls the grenades and the Grevilles
listen and watch. We know that whenever the degree of
similitude Disraeli's Rigby offers a recognizable likeness to Croker Dickens,
Boythorne to landor Stephenson's ware of Hermiston to Braxfield. Excepting
Jane Austen's denial of the deliberate introduction of real persons

(40:23):
in her novels, we cannot tell how many of her
Hampshire acquaintances served intellectually for her pictures of country society,
as the maidens of Crotona served physically for the picture
of Helen by Zuxis. We may be certain that all
unconsciously they gave her of their best, each according to

(40:44):
his means. End of Chapter five
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