“Do you think me most a knave or a fool?” 
    In the previous post I discussed the possibility, floated by Austen expert Robert Morrison, that Marianne Dashwood was hiding a secret pregnancy in Sense and Sensibility. After a careful re-read of the novel, I've concluded that making Marianne pregnant contradicts the central preoccupation of the main characters as reiterated throughout the conclusion of the novel. To explain what I mean, let's start by recapping the set-up for the dramatic scene when Willoughby arrives at Cleveland, the country estate of Mrs. Jenning's daughter, late at night.
    Marianne Dashwood fell seriously ill at Cleveland on her return trip from London. Her hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Palmer, leave the house so their baby does not catch Marianne's infection. Their other house guest, Colonel Brandon, hurries off in his carriage to fetch Marianne's mother. That leaves Elinor, Mrs. Jennings, and the servants.
​     Marianne is feverish and delirious, but fortunately she pulls through and falls into a restful sleep. Once she is pronounced out of danger by the apothecary, Mrs. Jennings goes to her own room "to write letters and sleep." Elinor is too happy to sleep, so she is sitting by Marianne's bedside when she hears a carriage arrive. She summons Betsy, Mrs. Jenning's maid, to stay with Marianne and she goes downstairs. To her shock, it's Willoughby, the cad who jilted her sister. He explains he came to Cleveland to persuade Marianne and Elinor to hate him "one degree less" than they surely must "do now."  He exclaims: "Tell me honestly... do you think me most a knave or a fool?”
   Who cares if Willoughby had the opportunity to rehabilitate his character? Who cares if we “hate [him] one degree less than [we] do now”? I know I wouldn't have given him the patient hearing that Elinor did, so I didn't miss the absence of this scene in the 1995 movie. However, as I carefully re-listened to the book, I finally get what Willoughby was driving at...

CMP#142  More (Unfounded) Theories about Hidden Stories in Austen

    In an earlier post, I discussed some theories about Austen's plots which struck me as being rather far-fetched. This post and the following post is a longer response to one of those theories.
    Last year, I attended a talk by Robert Morrison, a prominent expert on Austen and the Regency. (His book, The Regency Years, is an informative and entertaining survey of the Regency period.) I was quite surprised when he floated the theory that Marianne got pregnant in Sense and Sensibility. Further, he didn't claim that this interpretation was his own take on the novel, in which case I wouldn’t raise an objection. He attributes the idea to Jane Austen--he thinks Austen hinted that Marianne got pregnant.
     [Update: When I wrote this series of posts, I was only aware of Dr. Morrison's lecture, and was not aware of an article which makes the same arguments, authored by Rachel Feder and her students. This article gives the case for Marianne being pregnant, a case which I rebut on textual and other grounds here andin the next post.]
​    If it was worth Professor Morrison's time to devote a full lecture to this idea, it's worth my time to lay out the reasons why I disagree. And I am glad that mulling over his ideas gave me a good reason to re-read Sense and Sensibility, because I noticed things I hadn't paid any attention to before. That's mostly for my next post. Briefly, my rebuttal is: 

• The text doesn’t support the theory that Marianne got pregnant, but rather contradicts it. 
• The tenor of the times wouldn’t allow for such a book to be published, because you can't have a girl of good family have sex outside of marriage without also being explicit about the consequences which would befall her.

     The longer rebuttal is below. But first, let's look at the textual evidence in favor of the theory. The timeline of the novel doesn’t contradict the possibility that Marianne had a bun in the oven...

    ​As many scholars of Austen have long pointed out, Jane Austen intended to use Sanditon to explore the social and moral consequences of capitalism. Sadly, Austen laid the manuscript aside during her final illness. Interrogating Austen through a critical lens reveals that she was a committed anti-capitalist who was determined to fight back in the only way she could--through her pen.
    I am not referring to Austen's well-known portrayals of the landed gentry and the lesser nobility, but rather, her subtle attacks on the pernicious influence of consumerism. To a startling extent, the buying and selling of things and the rise of the urban bourgeoisie forms a backdrop to her so-called marriage plot novels. Scholar David Daiches called Austen "a Marxist before Marx." 
      It is no exaggeration to say that Austen shows us whether a character is good or bad by their reaction to consumerism. Two of Austen’s heroines never step inside a store--Elizabeth Bennet and Fanny Price. And, significantly, the heroines who do go shopping always live to regret the experience. It is only the fops and fools who like to shop, as we will see. Austen’s message could not be clearer: Capitalism is the root of all evil. Let’s critically take the novels one by one...

     A book that got a lot of attention last year was published by a 90-year-old Australian lady. What an accomplishment to acquire a doctorate AND become a mainstream published author at such an advanced age! The Jane Austen Remedy tells how Jane Austen helped its author, Ruth Wilson, find her own voice. I gather she is referring to a lifetime of subsuming herself in her roles of wife and mother. A fortuitous family inheritance, she said, enabled her to buy her own cottage in the country away from her husband of 50 years. Money changes everything, as the song goes.
     That reminds me of something I plan to explore in a future blog -- the absolute freedom and independence enjoyed by widows with money in Jane Austen's books. Sense and Sensibility, supposedly a subversive protest against the disempowerment of women, is chock-a-block with empowered women, most of whom abuse their power. It features two old ladies who use their wealth to tell the men in their life what to do--Mrs. Smith of Allenham, who cracks the whip over Willoughby, and Mrs. Ferrars, Edward's despotic mother. Mrs. Jennings also has wealth and complete independence but she is not a despot. Fanny Dashwood has her husband wrapped around her little finger.
   At any rate, The Jane Austen Remedy is about the author's personal relationship with the works of Jane Austen, and there is actually an entire sub-genre of books of this type.  I don't know of any author who has the honour of being the subject of so many books. I think many devoted Austen fans could wax lyrical on what she's meant to them.
       Most of these books I haven't read, some of them I have just sampled, but I list them for your interest....