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CMP#34 Two Pictures of Perfection

3/23/2021

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Clutching My Pearls is about Jane Austen and the times she lived in. Click here for the first in the series. 
"Pictures of perfection, as you know, make me sick and wicked."  -- Jane Austen

CMP#34 Two Pictures of Perfection
PictureFanny Burney's Evelina -- practically perfect in every way
    In previous posts, we looked at the utterly virtuous heroines of 18th century literature, the prescribed role models for impressionable young novel readers. We also asked whether Fanny Price is too perfect, or intended to be perfect, and whether she has any faults. 
​    Creating a perfect heroine is an artistic challenge. First, without faults to overcome, it’s hard for a character to have a character arc. The perfect heroine has to struggle against circumstances that are none of her own making – she is an orphan, or an outcast, she is treated unjustly, she is misunderstood, she is the victim of jealousy or selfishness. And if she is a perfect 18th century female, it’s hard to give her any agency. She can’t travel on her own or earn her own money or give anybody a dressing-down. More typically, the 18th-century heroine weeps her way through her travails until she gets to her happy ending. However, I’ve recently encountered two heroines who are not entirely ridiculous: one is Adela Cleveland in Sarah Burney’s Traits of Nature (1812) and the other is the mother in Jane West’s The Advantages of Education (1793).  


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CMP#33  Misunderstanding

3/16/2021

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Clutching My Pearls is about Jane Austen and the times she lived in. Click here for the first in the series.  

CMP#33   The 18th-century Novelist's Toolkit: Misunderstanding
PictureDarcy and Elizabeth get it sorted out
     What keeps Darcy and Elizabeth apart for most of Pride & Prejudice?  Pride on his side, and prejudice on hers. Early on in their acquaintance, there is this exchange:
     “Implacable resentment is a shade in a character." [says Elizabeth] "But you have chosen your fault well. I really cannot laugh at it. You are safe from me.”
     “There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil—a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.”
     “And your defect is to hate everybody.”
​     “And yours,” he replied with a smile, “is willfully to misunderstand them.”
      And even when pride and prejudice are cleared away, there still a little delay caused by residual embarrassment and doubt. Once they are happily engaged, Elizabeth asks Darcy about it:
     “What made you so shy of me, when you first called, and afterwards dined here? Why, especially, when you called, did you look as if you did not care about me?”
      “Because you were grave and silent, and gave me no encouragement.”
     “But I was embarrassed.”
     “And so was I.”
     “You might have talked to me more when you came to dinner.”
      “A man who had felt less, might.”


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CMP#32  Coincidence

3/9/2021

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Clutching My Pearls is about Jane Austen and the times she lived in. Click here for the first in the series.
[On Anne Elliot bumping into Mr. Elliot in Lyme] "This passage serves to prove that without some degree of coincidence, a fictional world would not draw together so satisfyingly. A novel is art, not life, and we expect from it the unity and closure that often elude in real life, without the author seeming to manipulate the puppet strings too much.     
​                                                                            
-- Maggie Lane, On the Sofa with Jane Austen

CMP#32     Death and Coincidence, part two
    One of my favourite passages from Austen’s juvenilia is the scene in Love and Freindship when Lord St. Clair, alighting at an inn, encounters four of his long-lost grandchildren within a few moments of each other. This scene is Austen’s send-up of a common scenario in 18th century novels – the amazing coincidence which reunites long-separated siblings or friends.
  
    In my previous post, I talked about how death solved a lot of plot conflicts for 18th century authors. So much so, that by the time I got to the fifth volume of Sarah Burney’s Traits of Nature, I was wondering, okay, is the author going to resolve her story with death or with coincidence? The inconvenient first wife has already died, do we need to clear off the disapproving father as well? No, we went with the amazing coincidence, or “isn’t this a small world” route. After Adela's brother falls in love with the sister of the man she loves, it's a happy ending for everybody.
PictureEvelina stops a stranger from doing something desperate
   In Fanny Burney’s Evelina, the heroine impulsively goes to the aid of an impoverished Scottish poet, who turns out to be her half-brother. Burney’s sister Sarah Burney gave us Clarentine, who assists a destitute refugee from the French Revolution, who turns out to be her aunt.  Adela, mentioned above, also bumps into an old childhood friend who has fallen on hard times, and his landlady's friend just happens to be the gigolo who married Adela's disgraced mother. 
     Charlotte Smith’s orphan heroine Celestina doesn’t know who her parents are, but the mystery is solved when the man she loves gets lost in the Pyrenees. He stumbles into the only peasant cottage in all of Europe where he could learn the answer to the mystery. Celestina is in fact the daughter of a blue-blooded French nobleman.
   In Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda, we meet Virginia, a beautiful, innocent, artless, girl. She is a secret ward of the hero; he has financially supported her ever since she was left alone in the world. The hero intends to marry her in time, but she is infatuated with a picture of a handsome young lieutenant. Well, what do you know: thanks to a string of amazing coincidences, we find the mystery man and her missing father (and dad's rich!) and everyone gets married to the person they really love.    


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CMP#31  Death and Coincidence, part 1

3/1/2021

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Clutching My Pearls is about my take on Jane Austen. Click here ​for the first in the series.

Death and Coincidence, part one 
PictureThe widowed Mr. Elliot in mourning black, Persuasion
  The 1796 Monthly Review quotes Dr. Johnson on the novelist’s difficulties around coming up with new but plausible plots: “every man who has tried knows how much labour it will cost to form such a combination of circumstances as shall have at once the grace of novelty and credibility, and delight the fancy, without violence to reason.” 
    In an earlier post, I discussed the theory that Sense & Sensibility was written as a protest against primogeniture – the practice of giving the entire estate to the oldest son, while the other sons and daughters received much less, if anything. The novel begins with the death of old Uncle Dashwood, followed a paragraph later by the death of his son and heir, and soon the Dashwood sisters and their widowed mother are out the door with nothing much besides the best breakfast china set.
   I’ve already discussed (and rejected) the suggestion that Austen invented this plot point specifically as a protest against primogeniture. But really, we ought to look around us and ask – was Austen unique in featuring death and inheritance in her plots? Do her novels stand out from her contemporaries in this respect? Was this an improbable or controversial "combination of circumstances"? 
​
     Well, one thing I can tell you after a swift survey of authors whom Austen is known to have read, the answer is – 18th novels depended heavily on death and coincidence for their plots. The deaths of parents and guardians in the first chapter (usually as backstory) gives us the isolated, forsaken, disinherited heroine who must battle through tribulations and misunderstanding. And coincidence gives us situations where characters meet or reunite under remarkably improbable circumstances. More on coincidence later, let’s do death first, because it is amazing how many novels start with death and rely upon death.


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    About the author:

    More about me here. 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 recent posts focus on my writing, as well as Jane Austen and the long 18th century. Welcome!


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