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CMP#133  “Of course they must be vulgar”

2/27/2023

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This blog explores social attitudes in Jane Austen's time, discusses her novels, reviews forgotten 18th century novels, and throws some occasional shade at the modern academy. ​The introductory post is here.  My "six simple questions for academics" post is here.

CMP#133 "Of course they must be vulgar:" More portrayals of Bristolians in old novels
PictureHugh Thomson illustration of Mrs. Elton
   In previous posts, I reviewed a novel called Nobility Run Mad which actually focused more on the marital mishaps of a wealthy merchant family from Bristol than on nobility behaving badly. It is one of several novels from the long 18th century which portray Bristol merchants as nouveaux riche who were given to flaunting their wealth and revealing their ignorance of true gentility. Later, I’ll give some historical perspective on real-life Bristol merchants but for now I am focussing on how these merchants were portrayed in novels and plays.
   As I mentioned, I got interested in finding examples of this comic stock character because of Mrs. Elton in Emma. It seems to me that she is an exemplar of a vulgar Bristolian, and Austen makes a point of specifying she is from Bristol, “the very heart of Bristol.”
    As I find these novels, I am looking carefully for references to the slave trade and the attitude of the authors as revealed through their characters. While many a novel relies upon the sudden acquisition of a West Indian fortune as a plot device, they usually mention the West Indies without remarking on slavery at all, let alone the evils of slavery. The stereotypical Bristol merchant and his family are held up to criticism and ridicule in these novels--not because they were involved in the slave trade, but because they were vulgar and presumptuous...


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CMP#132 Nobility Run Mad, conclusion

2/21/2023

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This blog explores social attitudes in Jane Austen's time, discusses her novels, reviews forgotten 18th century novels, and throws some occasional shade at the modern academy. ​The introductory post is here.  My "six simple questions for academics" post is here.

CMP#132  Some nobility, but mostly Bristol vulgarity
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    ​In the last post, I introduced the 4-volume novel Nobility Run Mad, or, Raymond and His Three Wives (1802) as an example of the way Bristol merchants were portrayed in the novels of Austen’s era. I got as far as the middle of volume 3, when our noble hero Lord Raymond finally meets our heroine Theodosia. 
    Although the title promises the reader a story about nobility behaving badly, Lord Raymond's dissolute dad was just part of the backstory. In this book, we get more emphasis on portrayals of uncouth, small-minded people from the merchant class of Bristol, namely, miserly old Mr. Filmore, his grandson Samuel, and their friends the Middletons who have Theodosia in their clutches. That’s great for my purposes. I am exploring the hypothesis that in the novels of the long 18th century, the objection to Bristol merchants—such as Mrs. Elton’s father in Emma—is not that they were involved in the slave trade, it’s that they were not genteel. In the novels I've been exploring, Bristol merchants and their families are used as comic characters, as foils to the heroine, because of their vulgarity and presumptuous attitudes.
    To return to the novel: It seems our (anonymous) author found her comical and villainous characters to be intrinsically more interesting than her hero and heroine. Lord Raymond, says sententious things like: “It would very ill become me, Mr. Milner, to arraign my father’s conduct…” (Even though his dad was a complete waste of space who gambled away large fortunes before dying young in France and leaving huge debts behind him.) We have a sentimental storyline with Lord Raymond and Theodosia, but the more energetic storyline involves the Filmores. Young Samuel elopes with Lady Arabella, a scheming noblewoman. He assures Lady Arabella that Lord Raymond is dying, which means Samuel will succeed to the title. Samuel wants to get his hands on her fortune. Lady Arabella wants to get married to Samuel before he finds out she doesn’t have a fortune...


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CMP#131  Book Review: Nobility Run Mad (1802)

2/13/2023

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This blog explores social attitudes in Jane Austen's time, discusses her novels, reviews forgotten 18th century novels, and throws some occasional shade at the modern academy. ​The introductory post is here.  My "six simple questions for academics" post is here.

This post is about a forgotten four-volume novel, and is part of an exploration of portrayals of merchants from Bristol and their families in novels of this period. I'm interested in this topic because of Mrs. Elton.

CMP#131:  Nobility Run Mad (and some Bristol vulgarity)
PictureTanya Reynolds in the 2020 Emma
     In my previous post, I suggested that Mrs. Elton is ridiculed in Emma for being a pretentious social upstart. Yes, she comes from Bristol, a city that had enriched itself on the slave trade, but the slave trade is not Austen's target in her portrayal of Mrs. Elton. Mrs. Elton is a particularly well-drawn example of a stock character of the time: the vulgar Bristolian. To illustrate my argument, I've found some other novels which feature vulgar Bristolians and I'll present them in the next few posts. 
​    That brings us to the 1802 novel Nobility Run Mad: I decided to plow through all four volumes, not because I was interested in another story about the nobility behaving badly, (they usually behave badly), but because this book came up in a search for novels of this era that featured the words “Bristol” and “merchant.” I wanted to see if this novel, like some others I’ve read, portray Bristol merchants as being vulgar.


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CMP130A  What is Austen Saying with Mrs. Elton?

2/9/2023

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​Clutching My Pearls is about Jane Austen and the times she lived in. The opinions are mine, but I don't claim originality. Much has been written about Austen. Click here for the first in the series.

CMP#130-A  What is Austen saying with Mrs. Elton?
PictureChristina Cole in the 2009 Emma
     Bristol prosperity in the 18th century was built upon the slave trade. We know plantation owners were called "planters," but were slave-traders called "Bristol-merchants"? Does Mrs. Elton, the former Augusta Hawkins of Bristol, come from a family of slave-traders?
    We have Emma's musings about Mr. Elton's future bride in free indirect discourse, as she assures herself that Miss Hawkins cannot be the superior of Harriet in points of beauty or of bloodline: "
setting aside the 10,000 l.[dowry], it did not appear that she was at all Harriet’s superior. She brought no name, no blood, no alliance. Miss Hawkins was the youngest of the two daughters of a Bristol—merchant, of course, he must be called; but, as the whole of the profits of his mercantile life appeared so very moderate, it was not unfair to guess the dignity of his line of trade had been very moderate also." 
    What would a contemporary reader of Austen's infer from that description? First of course, that Emma is being a snob, because Miss Hawkins "brought no name, no blood, no alliance." That part is clear enough. Emma casually tosses aside the dowry, and elsewhere she suggests that the ten thousand figure is maybe exaggerated: "so many thousands as would always be called ten." Ten thousand pounds a year invested at five percent yields an annual income of 500 pounds, a significant addition to Mr. Elton's household and a guarantee that they will be able to live in a genteel way. Nothing to sneeze at, in other words.
     But what about the "Bristol--merchant?" Does that dash signify a sarcastic little "ahem"?  What word is being omitted in favour of "merchant"? 


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    About the author:

    I blog about my research into Jane Austen and her world, plus a few other interests. Welcome! My earlier posts (prior to June 2017) are about my time as a teacher of ESL in China (just click on "China" in the menu below). More about me here. 


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