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CMP#15  Civility and Civilization

11/30/2020

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Explicit Values in Austen:  Civility and Civilization
PictureMarianne heartbroken over Willoughby
 ​  It’s clear that good manners are very important to Jane Austen. She makes this explicit in Sense & Sensibility through the contrasting behaviour of the Dashwood sisters. Marianne's romantic notions about authenticity lead to careless, even rude, behavior. A modern novel might feature a heroine who "finds" herself. Marianne is a heroine who must learn to find happiness through thinking of others besides herself.
   Big sister Elinor wants Marianne “to treat our acquaintance in general with greater attention.” Evidently she’s brought this failing up often enough so that Edward Ferrars is aware of it, after having lived with the family a few weeks. During his later visit to Barton Cottage, he teases, "'You have not been able to bring your sister over to your plan of general civility. Do you gain no ground?'
​   'Quite the contrary,' replied Elinor, looking expressively at Marianne."
​    Marianne falls in love with the dashing Willoughby and is heartbroken when he leaves. She has no patience for company, and gives offense by turning down Lady Middleton’s offer of a card game: “Marianne... with her usual inattention to the forms of general civility, exclaimed, 'Your Ladyship will have the goodness to excuse ME—you know I detest cards. I shall go to the piano-forte..."
​    Elinor catches Lady Middleton’s reaction, and tries to smooth things over with a compliment:

   "'Marianne can never keep long from that instrument you know, ma'am, and I do not much wonder at it; for it is the very best toned piano-forte I ever heard.'" 
     Marianne is being honest and Elinor is possibly exaggerating and saying what she says merely to placate her hostess, but in Austen's moral universe, Elinor is the better person.

PictureMarianne avoids company, especially Colonel Brandon
     Hoping to be re-united with Willoughby, Marianne eagerly accepts an invitation from the kindly but vulgar Mrs. Jennings to go to London. Her behaviour en route gives Elinor a clear preview of the type of house guest her sister will be. “She sat in silence almost all the way, wrapt in her own meditations, and scarcely ever voluntarily speaking, except when any object of picturesque beauty within their view drew from her an exclamation of delight exclusively addressed to her sister. To atone for this conduct therefore, Elinor took immediate possession of the post of civility which she had assigned herself, behaved with the greatest attention to Mrs. Jennings, talked with her, laughed with her, and listened to her whenever she could…”
   When the faithless Willoughby breaks Marianne’s heart. She wants to go home instantly – “tomorrow.”
  "To-morrow, Marianne!" [Elinor exclaims] "It would be impossible to go to-morrow. We owe Mrs. Jennings much more than civility; and civility of the commonest kind must prevent such a hasty removal as that."
   Grief-stricken Marianne even accuses others of incivility. She complains of Mrs. Jennings: "Her kindness is not sympathy… All that she wants is gossip, and she only likes me now because I supply it.” And when Colonel Brandon visits, she snaps, “A man who has nothing to do with his own time has no conscience in his intrusion on that of others."

   Marianne’s indulgence in her emotions nearly leads to her death. After her recovery, she apologizes to Elinor, and one of the offenses she charges herself with is leaving Elinor to do all the heavy lifting in their social interactions: “Whenever I looked towards the past, I saw some duty neglected… Your example was before me; but to what avail?... Did I imitate your forbearance, or lessen your restraints, by taking any part in those offices of general complaisance or particular gratitude which you had hitherto been left to discharge alone?—No;—not less when I knew you to be unhappy, than when I had believed you at ease, did I turn away from every exertion of duty or friendship...”
    Sometimes the ”post of civility” is an exertion, and Austen doesn’t pretend otherwise. It's even referred to as something you "pay" in Emma, when Emma inwardly groans at the burden of being nice to Jane Fairfax: "She was sorry to have to pay civilities to a person she did not like! - to be always doing more than she wished, and less than she ought!"
    Austen herself, from what we can gather, devoted many a tedious hour to chatting with people, especially during her residence in Bath, when she would have preferred to be doing almost anything else. Her compensation was making catty remarks in her letters to Cassandra: "Wednesday. -- Another stupid party last night; perhaps if larger they might be less intolerable, but here there were only just enough to make one card-table, with six people to look on and talk nonsense to each other."
      Austen doesn’t insist upon smiling, gracious behaviour to everyone and in all circumstances. Elinor speaks sternly and bluntly to Willoughby when talking over his treatment of Marianne and Eliza. Sometimes Elinor  says nothing, as when Edward's brother Robert did not deserve “the compliment of rational opposition.” And then there is her little dig at Lady Middleton’s children, "I confess that while I am at Barton Park, I never think of tame and quiet children with any abhorrence."
PictureAnthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671 - 1713)
   As Paula Marantz Cohen points out in a 2019 Wall Street Journal article, other Austen characters -- like Mr. Elton in Emma and Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park -- drop their assumed pose of civility when they are angry and embarrassed. Their true nature is revealed “when their guard is down or when they are no longer invested in getting what they want… In Austen, manners for bad people are only skin deep.”
    Professor Cohen sees the questions of civility and good manners in Austen as being more than skin deep, more than superficial. Good manners are a reflection of our inner character. Cohen thinks our own “longing for civility in an age of coarseness and meanness” is “central to [Austen’s] popularity."
     Austen's belief in the moral importance of civility probably owes something to Lord Shaftesbury. Austen might never have read Shaftesbury's works, but his ideas were diffused in the culture, just as we know about Darwin’s theory of evolution without actually reading his books. Shaftesbury argued that people did not always act out of self-interest, that we are born with an instinct for benevolence -- doing good for others brings us pleasure. He saw civility as more than a mere gloss on behaviour, though he uses the analogy of a polished stone to describe how civility works to improve human interaction in society:
    "We polish one another, and rub off our Corners and rough Sides by a sort of amicable Collision. To restrain this, is inevitably to bring a Rust upon Men’s Understanding. ‘Tis a destroying of Civility, Good Breeding, and even Charity itself…” ​​
   Historian Christine Zabel explains: “For Shaftesbury, it is clear, politeness was a concept that went far beyond mere rules of good conversation or behavior… politeness was directly linked to political liberty” and freedom of speech. Civility was a mark of civilized society.
     But not all academics today take such a positive view of civility, or its effect on society.  

Next post: Civil and Servile

   In my short story "By A Lady," Elizabeth and Darcy have been happily married for several years. They are invited to Rosings by Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Elizabeth is determined to make amends to Anne de Bourgh, who she feels she slighted in the past.
​   "“My conscience does not reproach me on the score of what I did,” [Elizabeth tells Darcy], “but of what I thought. I was uncharitable. I was unkind... I derived more pleasure from disliking her and building on my prejudice than in trying to draw her out. I could easily have made the attempt. Instead I told myself she was stupid, dull, and haughty.” 
   "By A Lady" is part of the Yuletide anthology and makes a great Christmas gift for the Janeite on your list. Proceeds from the e-book and paperback go to Chawton House, the Center for Early Women Writers.
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"Caught in the act of greatness"

11/26/2020

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   Virginia Wolf famously said of Jane Austen that "of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness." 
  Perhaps, but we can certainly catch her in the act of cleverness -- for example, in the way she uses weather to shape events.
​  "Austen makes her plots turn on the weather," writes John Mullan in his insightful and delightful What Matters in Jane Austen?  "Having arranged her characters and defined their situations, having planned her love stories and hatched the misunderstandings that might impede them, she lets the weather shape events. It is her way of admitting chance into her narratives."
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   The weather naturally plays a important part in Regency life and in Austen's novels. In a world where roads were unpaved, and a large portion of the population were farmers, and there was no central heating and double-glazed windows, people were not as isolated from the effects of a rainy day or a hot day as we are today.
    But Jane Austen subtly, cleverly, uses the weather to bring events about. Professor Mullan illustrates this with the example of the rainy day in Bath when Anne Elliot, her sister Elizabeth and the artful widow Mrs. Clay go shopping on Milson Street with Mr. Elliot. It begins to rain and Austen arranges matters so that after some bustle about carriage rides and errands, Anne and Captain Wentworth encounter one another in a shop. He  watches as Anne walks off with Mr. Elliot in the "manner of the privileged relation and friend." The captain's walking companions remark on how Mr. Elliot is obviously taken with his cousin Anne. 
    (And I think -- after all the punishment Anne has endured, watching Captain Wentworth thoughtlessly flirt with the Musgrove girls -- I think she has the right to take a little pleasure in his discomfort.)
    Another example of using weather to shape events is the light snowfall in Hartfield on the night of the Westons' dinner party which results in Mr. Elton being alone in a carriage with Emma.
     A further example, which was so subtle I hadn't noticed it, occurs also in Persuasion. Near the end of the novel, the rain prevents Anne from setting out for the White Hart Inn to meet the Musgroves, where she knows she will also encounter Captain Harville and Captain Wentworth. 
   Austen uses the rain to "arrange her characters" and bring about the emotional climax of the novel:

   [Anne] could not keep her appointment punctually, however; the weather was unfavourable, and she had grieved over the rain on her friends' account, and felt it very much on her own, before she was able to attempt the walk. When she reached the White Hart, and made her way to the proper apartment, she found herself neither arriving quite in time, nor the first to arrive. The party before her were, Mrs Musgrove, talking to Mrs Croft, and Captain Harville to Captain Wentworth; and she immediately heard that Mary and Henrietta, too impatient to wait, had gone out the moment it had cleared, but would be back again soon, and that the strictest injunctions had been left with Mrs Musgrove to keep her there till they returned. She had only to submit, sit down, be outwardly composed..."
    Because Mary and Henrietta had gone out, Anne does not sit and talk with them. The climax of the book can only happen because Anne is free to hear the conversation between Mrs. Croft and Mrs. Musgrove, and is free to talk with Captain Harville by the window, and be overheard by Captain Wentworth. If Henrietta and Mary had been in the room, that wouldn't be possible. Henrietta would be talking about her wedding, Mary would be complaining about something. Both of them would be demanding Anne's attention. ​ 
​     Instead, Anne is free to hear Mrs. Croft decidedly pronounce: "To begin without knowing that at such a time there will be the means of marrying, I hold to be very unsafe and unwise, and what I think all parents should prevent as far as they can."
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"Anne found an unexpected interest here. She felt its application to herself, felt it in a nervous thrill all over her; and at the same moment that her eyes instinctively glanced towards the distant table, Captain Wentworth's pen ceased to move, his head was raised, pausing, listening, and he turned round the next instant to give a look, one quick, conscious look at her."
   Then, of course, follows the interesting conversation with Captain Harville, Anne's confession that women love longest, when existence or when hope is gone, followed by what is known in Austenlandia as The Letter.
    But none of that could have happened in that way, without a little rain shower!

The rainy day on Milsom Street also features in my short story about Mrs. Clay in the Rational Creatures anthology, but it is told from Mrs. Clay's point of view. Click here to see more about Rational Creatures.
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    About the author:

    I'm a writer and a teacher of English as a Second Language.  "Laowai" means foreigner. Check further down for tags for specific subjects. My earlier posts (prior to June 2017) are about my time in China, more recent posts focus on my writing. Welcome!

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