| 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. Spoilers abound in my discussion of these forgotten novels, and I discuss 18th-century attitudes which I do not necessarily endorse. |
CMP#256 The debate about novels from Andrew Stuart
In my two-part synopsis of Andrew Stuart (1800), I mentioned that the heroine Isabella improbably gets into a debate about whether novels were good or bad for society--while she is being kidnapped by the burly henchman working for a venal nobleman. In case you were not aware, many people, especially religious or conservative people, mistrusted novels, as I discussed in an earlier series of posts. There was a sort of moral panic around the dangers of novels. Well, this authoress has her characters discuss the dangers of novel-reading in an extended sequence which begins when the burly captor has to rest the horses and get some food at an inn. (He's been instructed to convey Isabella from London all the way to Wales). How will he prevent her for screaming for help when they stop the carriage?
Illustrations by ChatGPT The debate--edited for length
The henchman “publicly announced to the hostess, that [Isabella] was arrested for the sum of five hundred pounds, and he was employed to lodge her safely in the county jail; therefore if they listened to any tale she might fabricate, and aided or abetted her to escape, they would make themselves liable to pay the whole sum. To convince them of the fact, he exhibited the writ.
This threat, so opportunely held forth to terrify the ignorant, and preclude the assistance of the mercenary, convinced the trembling, persecuted Isabella she must not flatter herself with any hopes of assistance... As she glanced a tearful eye around, io search of one commiserating countenance, it fell on that of an effeminate looking young man, with a blue apron tucked round his waist, and a napkin under his arm, who leant against. a door-post, intently perusing a [novel].
The vulgar unfeeling speech of Isabella’s jailer appeared to steal him from the contemplation of fancied, to the commiseration of real woes; when, on beholding the interesting face of the innocent victim of oppression, pallid from fatigue, and bathed in tears of despair and mortification, he started, hurried the book into his bosom, and emphatically exclaimed
“Angels and ministers of grace, defend me! do I hear aright ?—What heavenly softness! –who- could be deaf to thy plaintive moans? What obdurate creditor condemned to durance vile thy Sylph-like figure? Oh niggard Fortune—ill-fated Edward, why art thou not rich, that thou mightst present thy pocket-book, filled with unreckoned notes, to this charming incognita, to free her from the gripe of yon fell harpy!”
The henchman “publicly announced to the hostess, that [Isabella] was arrested for the sum of five hundred pounds, and he was employed to lodge her safely in the county jail; therefore if they listened to any tale she might fabricate, and aided or abetted her to escape, they would make themselves liable to pay the whole sum. To convince them of the fact, he exhibited the writ.
This threat, so opportunely held forth to terrify the ignorant, and preclude the assistance of the mercenary, convinced the trembling, persecuted Isabella she must not flatter herself with any hopes of assistance... As she glanced a tearful eye around, io search of one commiserating countenance, it fell on that of an effeminate looking young man, with a blue apron tucked round his waist, and a napkin under his arm, who leant against. a door-post, intently perusing a [novel].
The vulgar unfeeling speech of Isabella’s jailer appeared to steal him from the contemplation of fancied, to the commiseration of real woes; when, on beholding the interesting face of the innocent victim of oppression, pallid from fatigue, and bathed in tears of despair and mortification, he started, hurried the book into his bosom, and emphatically exclaimed
“Angels and ministers of grace, defend me! do I hear aright ?—What heavenly softness! –who- could be deaf to thy plaintive moans? What obdurate creditor condemned to durance vile thy Sylph-like figure? Oh niggard Fortune—ill-fated Edward, why art thou not rich, that thou mightst present thy pocket-book, filled with unreckoned notes, to this charming incognita, to free her from the gripe of yon fell harpy!”
Did we mention that the landlady is fat?
“Harp no harp upon me,” replied the well-fed iandiady; “ you are getting into your megrims again--you bad better mind your oven business, you stupid Numps, than trouble yourself about that of your customers... so don't stand hogling there, you oaf, but answer the bell... if the clapper was close to your car, when you are finishing one of the catastrophes of your confounded romancing nonsense.”
A fresh peal now sounding, he was compelled to answer the summons, and departed with a languishing look and a long drawn sigh.
Shocked at being made the public gaze of every passing ostler, Isabella had entered a parlour whose door stood open, while the talkative dame [went into a long monologue]
“I’m not to be coaxed out of my senses, or melted by her whimpering. I'm not so far gone in the patheticks us pour sappy-scull Neddy be; he's a mighty tinder-hearted spark—all sympathy, love, and pity, and so forth. don’t know where he got such notions of friendship, and kindness, and justice,. and charity—not from me, I’m sartin sure; I believe he bibes these idears from reading the Novel and Romance books... they does a deal: of mischief, filling young bodies heads with honour, and generosity, and valour, and such sort of high-flows stuff, that can’t belong to poor folk!”
"Why do you permit him,” answered Cerberus [ie Isabella's captor], "to fill his mind, and waste his tine in sucking in such goods for-nothing trash ? which has often-turned the heads of his-betters before now. We have had Quixotes of all sorts, and I suppose we shall now have a publican Quixote, Ile will be conceiting himself a hero, and imagine it a fine incident to assist my jmprisoned heroine to make her escape, and saddle you with her debts.”
“Why you must know, Sir, there's what they calls a Circulating Library in this place, and I finds there be now one in every village in the kingdom; and they be supplied with the new publications… such quantities, they have found out an engine, something like that invented in the cotton manufactory ; and that they have a Novel ay well as a spinning Jenny."—Here she shook her fat sides, in laughing at what she thought wit. “But Neddy says, a great many of these here stories are wrote by Young Ladies—I’m sartin their mothers might find them better employment to mend their clothes! It wasn't so in my days; girls could neither write nor spell then-—-they only learned to handle heir needles; but now they are always flourishing away with thelr pens, scribbling varses, up to their elbows in ink…
“Good lack! Good lack! what will this nation come to?—I’m quite astounded at what you tells me, It's all along, I verily think, of these here Sunday Schools, teaching the riff-raff of the parish to read and write: every bumpkin and milk-maid now spend their money in these book shops, and the public-houses are almost forsaken… [she goes on at some length then finally “waddled off”]...
“Harp no harp upon me,” replied the well-fed iandiady; “ you are getting into your megrims again--you bad better mind your oven business, you stupid Numps, than trouble yourself about that of your customers... so don't stand hogling there, you oaf, but answer the bell... if the clapper was close to your car, when you are finishing one of the catastrophes of your confounded romancing nonsense.”
A fresh peal now sounding, he was compelled to answer the summons, and departed with a languishing look and a long drawn sigh.
Shocked at being made the public gaze of every passing ostler, Isabella had entered a parlour whose door stood open, while the talkative dame [went into a long monologue]
“I’m not to be coaxed out of my senses, or melted by her whimpering. I'm not so far gone in the patheticks us pour sappy-scull Neddy be; he's a mighty tinder-hearted spark—all sympathy, love, and pity, and so forth. don’t know where he got such notions of friendship, and kindness, and justice,. and charity—not from me, I’m sartin sure; I believe he bibes these idears from reading the Novel and Romance books... they does a deal: of mischief, filling young bodies heads with honour, and generosity, and valour, and such sort of high-flows stuff, that can’t belong to poor folk!”
"Why do you permit him,” answered Cerberus [ie Isabella's captor], "to fill his mind, and waste his tine in sucking in such goods for-nothing trash ? which has often-turned the heads of his-betters before now. We have had Quixotes of all sorts, and I suppose we shall now have a publican Quixote, Ile will be conceiting himself a hero, and imagine it a fine incident to assist my jmprisoned heroine to make her escape, and saddle you with her debts.”
“Why you must know, Sir, there's what they calls a Circulating Library in this place, and I finds there be now one in every village in the kingdom; and they be supplied with the new publications… such quantities, they have found out an engine, something like that invented in the cotton manufactory ; and that they have a Novel ay well as a spinning Jenny."—Here she shook her fat sides, in laughing at what she thought wit. “But Neddy says, a great many of these here stories are wrote by Young Ladies—I’m sartin their mothers might find them better employment to mend their clothes! It wasn't so in my days; girls could neither write nor spell then-—-they only learned to handle heir needles; but now they are always flourishing away with thelr pens, scribbling varses, up to their elbows in ink…
“Good lack! Good lack! what will this nation come to?—I’m quite astounded at what you tells me, It's all along, I verily think, of these here Sunday Schools, teaching the riff-raff of the parish to read and write: every bumpkin and milk-maid now spend their money in these book shops, and the public-houses are almost forsaken… [she goes on at some length then finally “waddled off”]...
"Cerebus" is an educated man, not a thug
Her captor, after some time passed in silence, basically asks her what she’s thinking about and surmises that she must be wishing that Ned would rescue her. He tells her, “Such an appeal would have availed you little, had you been permitted to have made it, that fellow’s shallow brain is literally crazed, and his health destroyed, by poring over those baneful, heterogenous compositions ycleped Romances, Adventures, Historical Novels, Novels, and Novellettes!
“…the appearance of probability is not even attempted to be preserved ; the authors have only to excite surprise, astonishment, and terror, through the power of supernatural agency ; while the reader, by sacrificing the claims of sense to the delusions of fancy, embodies all the terrific chimeras raised by a vivid imagination, and gives to “airy nothings a local habitation and a name.”
Goes on to condemn all types of publications, including political pamphlets, “they ought to be grubbed up, root and branch, and thrown into the fire! I know not why we load with praises, and hold in such high estimation the first inventor of printing.”
When Isabella asks him what he thinks about the invention of gunpowder, he responds sarcastically, “you are one of the enlightened females of the eighteenth century—you have been a reader, and I suppose think yourself sufficiently gifted to confute received opinions of religion, discuss knotty points of law, explore the depths of science, and, by the aid of meta-physical sophistry, plunge boldly into political disquisitions! You can, no doubt, astronomise, botanize, moralize,and philosophize, dash at every thing to gain publicity … a pupil of the new school, whose disciples are employed in settling the moral order of things; while their children are slighted, and the family province neglected, their husbands creditors are striking a docket against their goods and chattels !—Dr. Johnson once said, women were to be envied because they could employ their time in hemming a handkerchief; had he lived to this era, he would have been shocked to perceive how very few of his fair countrywomen are inclined to avail themselves of such a sexual privilege.”
He challenges her to defend “the present mania for reading.” But first he goes on to complain that novel-reading turns the heads of the lower orders, girls expect to marry their masters and become unfit for “the menial offices for which they were originally designed by Nature and education; [he goes on at some length including saying that many of these deluded females end up as prostitutes. He gives the example of a shop girl who is so busy reading her novel that he steals “a card of lace… valued at ten pounds.”
Her captor, after some time passed in silence, basically asks her what she’s thinking about and surmises that she must be wishing that Ned would rescue her. He tells her, “Such an appeal would have availed you little, had you been permitted to have made it, that fellow’s shallow brain is literally crazed, and his health destroyed, by poring over those baneful, heterogenous compositions ycleped Romances, Adventures, Historical Novels, Novels, and Novellettes!
“…the appearance of probability is not even attempted to be preserved ; the authors have only to excite surprise, astonishment, and terror, through the power of supernatural agency ; while the reader, by sacrificing the claims of sense to the delusions of fancy, embodies all the terrific chimeras raised by a vivid imagination, and gives to “airy nothings a local habitation and a name.”
Goes on to condemn all types of publications, including political pamphlets, “they ought to be grubbed up, root and branch, and thrown into the fire! I know not why we load with praises, and hold in such high estimation the first inventor of printing.”
When Isabella asks him what he thinks about the invention of gunpowder, he responds sarcastically, “you are one of the enlightened females of the eighteenth century—you have been a reader, and I suppose think yourself sufficiently gifted to confute received opinions of religion, discuss knotty points of law, explore the depths of science, and, by the aid of meta-physical sophistry, plunge boldly into political disquisitions! You can, no doubt, astronomise, botanize, moralize,and philosophize, dash at every thing to gain publicity … a pupil of the new school, whose disciples are employed in settling the moral order of things; while their children are slighted, and the family province neglected, their husbands creditors are striking a docket against their goods and chattels !—Dr. Johnson once said, women were to be envied because they could employ their time in hemming a handkerchief; had he lived to this era, he would have been shocked to perceive how very few of his fair countrywomen are inclined to avail themselves of such a sexual privilege.”
He challenges her to defend “the present mania for reading.” But first he goes on to complain that novel-reading turns the heads of the lower orders, girls expect to marry their masters and become unfit for “the menial offices for which they were originally designed by Nature and education; [he goes on at some length including saying that many of these deluded females end up as prostitutes. He gives the example of a shop girl who is so busy reading her novel that he steals “a card of lace… valued at ten pounds.”
Isabella's turn
“[Y]our virulent attacks upon every species of literature [especially] modern Novels… [you] give them, in my opinion, a false consequence, when you positively avow the doctrines they disseminate are capable of overthrowing Church and State, and shaking mighty empires to their foundation! In a country like this, where the liberty of the press has been for centuries its bulwark and its boast… “ As to Circulating Libraries being prejudicial, I am convinced the contrary is the fact ;—that they have enabled the larger mass of the community to read books they could no other way have obtained… the poor man is equally precluded from the advantages to be derived by knowledge, as he is from the gratifications to be procured by riches! - Even according to the account of Neddy's mother, the lower order of young, people, that’ used to waste their time and money in sottish idleness, now spend both in rational amusement j--allowing your inference to be right, that it renders them romantic, is it not better they should rise into fancied heroes, than by drunkenness degenerate into beasts?
“(In those receptacles, which I aver are of. public utility, are to be found the works of many fair authors, and not a few of your own sex, who have exerted their talents, taste, and knowledge of the world, to polish and edify the rising generation ; whose volumes will be ever read with pleasure by those young people, who must feel and acknowledge their obligations, for the instruction they have derived. from the religion, morality, honour, and truth they inculcate by precept, and render impressive by example. Under the form of amusement, the mind, left to. make its own election, imperceptibly imbibes sentiments-of. propriety and a love of virtue; which, perhaps, it never would have received from the rigid doctrines of a formal gouvernante, or the dictatorial lessons of a frowning pedagogue.”
[Although she concludes that society must use “discretion”]
[Looking over the past,] the “people most ferocious, barbarous, and unmanageable, are those whose minds, uncultured, have not been expanded by learning ; who have never felt the vivifying rays of knowledge; whose senses, kept in impervious darkness, have not been taught to claim the privilege of their species, to reason, compare, act, and think for themselves ! In this enlightened era… the more man understands his incumbent duties, and the claims society has upon him, the better he will perform them… the better he will perform his part as a. worthy member, and a loyal subject !”
The narrator breaks in to point out that Isabella herself had been raised in a parish poor-house, she had been saved from it, and taught to read by the kind attention of her first humble friends, and after, by the worthy Curate, instructed how to estimate the gift, by making a proper use of her méntal faculties.. she had dedicated all her leisure hours to study, by which she had improved her understanding, polished her manners, and strengthened her judgment. ;
[When Isabella finishes speaking, she realizes her captor, having eaten his dinner and rank heavily, was asleep and snoring.]
The narrator then breaks in to add that “poverty loses half its sting, when instruction has enable the victim to extract patience, comfort, hope, and pleasure from the never-failing reservoir of a well-cultivated imagination."
“[Y]our virulent attacks upon every species of literature [especially] modern Novels… [you] give them, in my opinion, a false consequence, when you positively avow the doctrines they disseminate are capable of overthrowing Church and State, and shaking mighty empires to their foundation! In a country like this, where the liberty of the press has been for centuries its bulwark and its boast… “ As to Circulating Libraries being prejudicial, I am convinced the contrary is the fact ;—that they have enabled the larger mass of the community to read books they could no other way have obtained… the poor man is equally precluded from the advantages to be derived by knowledge, as he is from the gratifications to be procured by riches! - Even according to the account of Neddy's mother, the lower order of young, people, that’ used to waste their time and money in sottish idleness, now spend both in rational amusement j--allowing your inference to be right, that it renders them romantic, is it not better they should rise into fancied heroes, than by drunkenness degenerate into beasts?
“(In those receptacles, which I aver are of. public utility, are to be found the works of many fair authors, and not a few of your own sex, who have exerted their talents, taste, and knowledge of the world, to polish and edify the rising generation ; whose volumes will be ever read with pleasure by those young people, who must feel and acknowledge their obligations, for the instruction they have derived. from the religion, morality, honour, and truth they inculcate by precept, and render impressive by example. Under the form of amusement, the mind, left to. make its own election, imperceptibly imbibes sentiments-of. propriety and a love of virtue; which, perhaps, it never would have received from the rigid doctrines of a formal gouvernante, or the dictatorial lessons of a frowning pedagogue.”
[Although she concludes that society must use “discretion”]
[Looking over the past,] the “people most ferocious, barbarous, and unmanageable, are those whose minds, uncultured, have not been expanded by learning ; who have never felt the vivifying rays of knowledge; whose senses, kept in impervious darkness, have not been taught to claim the privilege of their species, to reason, compare, act, and think for themselves ! In this enlightened era… the more man understands his incumbent duties, and the claims society has upon him, the better he will perform them… the better he will perform his part as a. worthy member, and a loyal subject !”
The narrator breaks in to point out that Isabella herself had been raised in a parish poor-house, she had been saved from it, and taught to read by the kind attention of her first humble friends, and after, by the worthy Curate, instructed how to estimate the gift, by making a proper use of her méntal faculties.. she had dedicated all her leisure hours to study, by which she had improved her understanding, polished her manners, and strengthened her judgment. ;
[When Isabella finishes speaking, she realizes her captor, having eaten his dinner and rank heavily, was asleep and snoring.]
The narrator then breaks in to add that “poverty loses half its sting, when instruction has enable the victim to extract patience, comfort, hope, and pleasure from the never-failing reservoir of a well-cultivated imagination."
Speaking of stealing from haberdashers--in 1799, Jane Austen's wealthy aunt Mrs. Leigh Perrot was accused of stealing a card of lace from a shopkeeper in Bath, for which she was arrested and held for trial, an incident which made the national news and was the subject of several pamphlets.
This portrait of Mrs. Leigh Perrot was taken during her trial. She was found innocent. Some theorize that she was the victim of a shakedown attempt by an unscrupulous shop owner; others suspect that she was a kleptomaniac.
This portrait of Mrs. Leigh Perrot was taken during her trial. She was found innocent. Some theorize that she was the victim of a shakedown attempt by an unscrupulous shop owner; others suspect that she was a kleptomaniac.
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