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THE NOVELS OF JANE AUSTEN
by George Henry Lewes (1859)
From Blackwood's Magazine.
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This was written over a century and six decades ago, a few decades after the time of Jane Austen's books being read first; they were successful as soon as they were published, but her name was not known in connection with them except to her intimate circle, that of her family - it wasn't published then. Her books were read widely, her esteem grew, but it took time before her name was known. This author begins with this phenomenon.
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"For nearly half a century England has possessed an artist of the highest rank, whose works have been extensively circulated, whose merits have been keenly relished, and whose name is still unfamiliar in men's mouths. One would suppose that great excellence and real success would inevitably produce a loud reputation. Yet in this particular case such a supposition would be singularly mistaken. ... Mention the name of Miss Austen to a cultivate dreader, and it is probable that the sparkle in his eye will at once flash forth sympathetic admiration, and he will perhaps relate how Scott, Whately, and Macaulay prize this gifted woman, and how the English public has bought her works; but beyond this literary circle we find the name almost entirely unknown; and not simply unknown in the sense of having no acknowledged place among the remarkable writers, but unremembered even in connections with the very works which are themselves remembered. ... "
"That Miss Austen is an artist of high rank, in the most rigorous sense of the word, is an opinion which in the present article we shall endeavour to substantiate. That her novels are very extensively read, is not an opinion, but a demonstrated fact; and with this fact we couple the paradoxical fact, of a fine artist, whose works are widely known and enjoyed, being all but unknown to the English public, and quite unknown abroad. The causes which have kept her name in comparative obscurity all the time that her works have been extensively read, and her reputation every year has been settling itself more firmly in the minds of the better critics, may well be worth an inquiry. It is intelligible how the blaze of Scott should have thrown her into the shade, at first: beside his frescoes her works are but miniatures; exquisite as miniatures, yet incapable of ever filling that space in the public eye which was filled by his massive and masterly pictures. But although it is intelligible why Scott should have eclipsed her, it is not at first so easy to understand why Miss Edgeworth should have done so. Miss Austen, indeed, has taken her revenge with posterity. She will doubtless be read as long as English novels find readers; whereas Miss Edgeworth is already little more than a name, and only finds a public for her children's books. ... Quarterly tells us that "her fame has grown fastest since she died: there was no éclat about her first appearance: the public took time to make up its mind; and she, not having staked her hopes of happiness on success or failure, was content to wait for the decision of her claims. Those claims have been long established beyond a question; but the merit of first recognising them belongs less to the reviewers than to the general readers." There is comfort in this for authors who see the applause of reviewers lavished on works of garish effect. Nothing that is really good can fail, at last, in securing its audience; and it is evident that Miss Austen's work must possess elements of indestructible excellence, since, although never "popular," she survives writers who were very popular; and forty years after her death, gains more recognition than she gained when alive. ... But the fact that her name is not even now a household word proves that her excellence must be of an unobtrusive kind, shunning the glare of popularity, not appealing to temporary tastes and vulgar sympathies, but demanding culture in its admirers. Johnson wittily says of somebody, "Sir, he managed to make himself public without making himself known." Miss Austen has made herself known without making herself public. There is no portrait of her in the shop windows; indeed, no portrait of her at all. But she is cherished in the memories of those whose memory is fame."
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"As one symptom of neglect we have to notice the scantiness of all biographical details about her. Of Miss Burney, who is no longer read, nor much worth reading, we have biography, and to spare. Of Miss Bronte, who, we fear, will soon cease to find readers, there is also ample biography; but of Miss Austen we have little information. In the first volume of the edition published by Mr. Bentley (five charming volumes, to be had for fifteen shillings) there is a meagre notice ... "
Over a century and half later - in fact, since over a half a century ago, and perhaps through the twentieth century for that matter - things have changed, and how! Charlotte Bronte is popular, but mostly amongst younger women, schoolgirl teenagers looking for a read tad more serious than the Mills and Boon etc; while other female contemporaries of Jane Austen are almost unknown, George Eliot is universally respected; and Emily Bronte has shot to much more of an eminence over the other siblings, who began - one suspects - to be looked into, as Emily Bronte began to be known. Jane Austen meanwhile has her works grow and become a monument straddling the line demarcation border between popular and critically regarded high, and one suspects that lack of a universal acknowledgement of her stature is largely due to a vast misogyny, widely prevalent in U.S., which denigrates women authors to a diminutive, disdained category labelled with a word at once known derogatory.
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" ... the charming novel, Northanger Abbey ... did not appear in print until after her death; and this work, which the Quarterly Review pronounces the weakest of the series (a verdict only intelligible to us because in the same breath Persuasion is called the best!), is not only written with unflagging vivacity, but contains two characters no one else could have equalled—Henry Tilney and John Thorpe. ... Between 1811 and 1816 appeared her three chefs-d'oeuvre—Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma. The applause these met with, gratified her, of course; but she steadily resisted every attempt to "make a lion of her," and never publicly avowed her authorship, although she spoke freely of it in private. ... "
" ... We may picture her as something like her own sprightly, natural, but by no means perfect Elizabeth Bennett, in Pride and Prejudice, one of the few heroines one would seriously like to marry.
"We have no means of ascertaining how many copies of these exquisite pictures of English life have been circulated, but we know that the number is very large. Twice or thrice have the railway editions been out of print; and Mr. Bentley's edition is stereotyped. This success implies a hold on the public, all the more certainly because the popularity is "not loud but deep." We have re-read them all four times; or rather, to speak more accurately, they have been read aloud to us, one after the other; and when it is considered what a severe test that is, how the reading aloud permits no skipping, no evasion of weariness, but brings both merits and defects into stronger relief by forcing the mind to dwell on them, there is surely something significant of genuine excellence when both reader and listener finish their fourth reading with increase of admiration. The test of reading aloud applied to Jane Eyre, which had only been read once before, very considerably modified our opinion of that remarkable work; and, to confess the truth, modified it so far that we feel as if we should never open the book again. The same test applied to such an old favourite as Tom Jones, was also much more damaging than we should have anticipated—bringing the defects and shortcomings of that much overrated work into very distinct prominence, and lessening our pleasure in its effective, but, on the whole, coarse painting. ... This is at any rate our individual judgment, which the reader is at liberty to modify as he pleases. In the course of the fifteen years which have elapsed since we first read Emma, and Mansfield Park, we have outlived many admirations, but have only learned to admire Miss Austen more; and as we are perfectly aware of why we so much admire her, we may endeavour to communicate these reasons to the reader."
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September 12, 2021 - September 13, 2021.
Jane Austen
The Novels of Jane Austen,
by George Henry Lewes.
Audiobook
Published November 11th 2016 by Librivox
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"If, as probably few will dispute, the art of the novelist be the representation of human life by means of a story; and if the truest representation, effected by the least expenditure of means, constitutes the highest claim of art, then we say that Miss Austen has carried the art to a point of excellence surpassing that reached by any of her rivals. Observe we say "the art;" we do not say that she equals many of them in the interest excited by the art; that is a separate question. It is probable, nay certain, that the interest excited by the Antigone is very inferior to that excited by Black-eyed Susan. It is probably that Uncle Tom and Dred surpassed in interest the Antiquary or Ivanhoe. It is probable that Jane Eyre produced a far greater excitement than the Vicar of Wakefield. But the critic justly disregards these fervid elements of immediate success, and fixes his attention mainly on the art which is of eternal substance. Miss Austen has nothing fervid in her works. She is not capable of producing a profound agitation in the mind. In many respects this is a limitation of her powers, a deduction from her claims. But while other writers have had more power over the emotions, more vivid imaginations, deeper sensibilities, deeper insight, and more of what is properly called invention, no novelist has approached her in what we may style the "economy of art," by which is meant the easy adaptation of means to ends, with no aid from extraneous or superfluous elements. Indeed, paradoxical as the juxtaposition of the names may perhaps appear to those who have not reflected much on this subject, we venture to say that the only names we can place above Miss Austen, in respect of this economy of art, are Sophocles and Molière (in Les Misanthrope). And if anyone will examine the terms of the definition, he will perceive that almost all defects in works of art arise from neglect of this economy. When the end is the representation of human nature in its familiar aspects, moving amid every-day scenes, the means must likewise be furnished from every-day life: romance and improbabilities must be banished as rigorously as the grotesque exaggeration of peculiar characteristics, or the representation of abstract types. it is easy for an artist to choose a subject from everyday life, but it is not easy for him so to represent the characters and their actions that they shall be at once lifelike and interesting; accordingly, whenever ordinary people are introduced, they are either made to speak a language never spoken out of books, and to pursue conduct never observed in life; or else they are intolerably wearisome. But Miss Austen is like Shakespeare: she makes her very noodles inexhaustibly amusing, yet accurately real. We never tire of her characters. They become equal to actual experiences. They live with us, and form perpetual topics of comment. ... The heroines—at least Elizabeth, Emma, and Catherine Morland—are truly lovable, flesh-and-blood young women; and the good people are all really good, without being goody. Her reverend critic in the Quarterly says, "She herself compares her productions to a little bit of ivory, two inches wide, worked upon with a brush so fine that little effect is produced with much labour. It is so: her portraits are perfect likenesses, admirably finished, many of them gems; but it is all miniature painting; and having satisfied herself with being inimitable in one line, she never essayed canvass and oils; never tried her hand at a majestic daub." ... She belongs to the great dramatists; but her dramas are of homely, common quality. It is obvious that the nature of the thing represented will determine degrees in art. Raphael will always rank higher than Teniers; Sophocles and Shakespeare will never be lowered to the rank of Lope de Vega and Scribe. It is a greater effort of genius to produce a fine epic than a fine pastoral; a great drama than a perfect lyric. There is far greater stain on the intellectual effort to create a Brutus or an Othello, than to create a Vicar of Wakefield or a Squire Western. The higher the aims, the greater is the strain, and the nobler is success.
"These, it may be said, are truism; and so they are. Yet they need restatement from time to time, because men constantly forget that the dignity of a high aim cannot shed lustre on an imperfect execution, though to some extent it may lessen the contempt which follows upon failure. It is only success which can claim applause. Any fool can select a great subject; and in general it is the tendency of fools to choose subjects which the strong feel to be too great. If a man can leap a five-barred gate, we applaud his agility; but if he attempt it, without a chance of success, the mud receives him, and we applaud the mud. This is too often forgotten by critics and artists, in their grandiloquence about "high art." No art can be high that is not good. A grand subject ceases to be grand when its treatment is feeble. It is a great mistake, as has been wittily said, "to fancy yourself a great painter because you paint with a big brush;" and there are unhappily too many big brushes in the hands of incompetence. ... It is twenty times more difficult to write a fine tragedy than a fine lyric; but it is more difficult to write a perfect lyric than a tolerable tragedy; and there was as much sense as sarcasm in Beranger's reply when the tragic poet Viennet visited him in prison, and suggested that of course there would be a volume of songs as the product of this leisure. "Do you suppose," said Beranger, "that chansons are written as easily as tragedies?"
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The following brings a smile towards end -
" ... The secret is, Miss Austen was a thorough mistress in the knowledge of human character; how it is acted upon by education and circumstance, and how, when once formed, it shows itself through every hour of every day, and in every speech of every person. ... in Miss Austen's hands we see into their hearts and hopes, their motives, their struggles within themselves; and a sympathy is induced which, if extended to daily life and the world at large, would make the reader a more amiable person; and we must think it that reader's own fault who does not close her pages with more charity in his heart towards unpretending, if prosing worth; with a higher estimation of simple kindness and sincere good-will; with a quickened sense of the duty of bearing and forbearing in domestic intercourse, and of the pleasure of adding to the little comforts even of persons who are neither wits nor beauties." It is worth remembering that this is the deliberate judgment of the present Archbishop of Dublin, and not a careless verdict dropping from the pen of a facile reviewer. There are two points in it to which especial attention may be given: first, the indication of Miss Austen's power of representing life; and, secondly, the indication of the effect which her sympathy with ordinary life produces. ... introducing a striking passage from one of the works of Mr. George Eliot, a writer who seems to us inferior to Miss Austen in the art of telling a story, and generally in what we have called the "economy of art;" but equal in truthfulness, dramatic ventriloquism, and humour, and greatly superior in culture, in reach of mind, and depth of emotional sensibility. ... "
Obviously Mr Lewes is far from a misogynist- he's completely unaware of identity of George Eliot, and assuming it's a male, despite being aware no doubt, that Charlotte Bronte wrote and published under a male name, Currer Bell, he is judging Jane Austen superior to what he unquestionably assumes is a male author, George Eliot- which a misogynist insect such as Firkins would not dream of doing.
"But the real secret of Miss Austen's success lies in her having the exquisite and rare gift of dramatic creation of character. Scott says of her, "She had a talent for describing the involvements, and feelings, and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big bow-wow strain I can do myself like any one now going; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied me. What a pity such a gifted creature died so early!"[96] Generously said; but high as the praise is, it is as much below the real excellence of Miss Austen, as the "big bow-wow strain" is below the incomparable power of the Waverley Novels. Scott felt, but did not define, the excellence of Miss Austen. The very word "describing" is altogether misplaced and misleading. She seldom describes anything, and is not felicitous when she attempts it. But instead of description, the common and easy resource of novelists, she has the rare and difficult art of dramatic presentation: instead of telling us what her characters are, and what they feel, she presents the people, and they reveal themselves. In this she has never perhaps been surpassed, not even by Shakespeare himself. If ever living beings can be said to have moved across the page of fiction, as they lived, speaking as they spoke, and feeling as they felt, they do so in Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Mansfield Park. ... "
" ... If the reader fails to perceive the extraordinary merit of Miss Austen's representation of character, let him try himself to paint a portrait which shall be at once many-sided and interesting, without employing any but the commonest colours, without calling in the aid of eccentricity, exaggeration, or literary "effects;" or let him carefully compare the writings of Miss Austen with those of any other novelist, from Fielding to Thackeray.
"It is probably this same dramatic instinct which makes the construction of her stories so admirable. And by construction, we mean the art which, selecting what is useful and rejecting what is superfluous, renders our interest unflagging, because one chapter evolves the next, one character is necessary to the elucidation of another. In what is commonly called "plot" she does not excel. Her invention is wholly in character and motive, not in situation. Her materials are of the commonest every-day occurrence. Neither the emotions of tragedy, nor the exaggerations of farce, seem to have the slightest attraction for her. The reader's pulse never throbs, his curiosity is never intense; but his interest never wanes for a moment. The action begins; the people speak, feel, and act; everything that is said, felt, or done tends towards the entanglement or disentanglement of the plot; and we are almost made actors as well as spectators of the little drama. One of the most difficult things in dramatic writing is so to construct the story that every scene shall advance the denouement by easy evolution, yet at the same time give scope to the full exhibition of the characters. In dramas, as in novels, we almost always see that the action stands still while the characters are being exhibited, and the characters are in abeyance while the action is being unfolded. ... "
"So entirely dramatic, and so little descriptive, is the genius of Miss Austen, that she seems to rely upon what her people say and do for the whole effect they are to produce on our imaginations. She no more thinks of describing the physical appearance of her people than the dramatist does who knows that his persons are to be represented by living actors. ... It is impossible that Mr. Collins should not have been endowed by nature with an appearance in some way heralding the delicious folly of the inward man. Yet all we hear of this fatuous curate is, that "he was a tall, heavy-looking young man of five-and-twenty. His air was grave and stately, and his manners were very formal." Balzac or Dickens would not have been content without making the reader see this Mr. Collins. Miss Austen is content to make us know him, even to the very intricacies of his inward man. It is not stated whether she was short-sighted, but the absence of all sense of the outward world—either scenery or personal appearance—is more remarkable in her than in any writer we remember.
"We are touching here on one of her defects which help to an explanation of her limited popularity, especially when coupled with her deficiencies in poetry and passion. She has little or no sympathy with what is picturesque and passionate. This prevents her from painting what the popular eye can see, and the popular heart can feel. The struggles the ambitions, the errors, and the sins of energetic life are left untouched by her; and these form the subjects most stirring to the general sympathy. ... Passion and adventure are the sources of certain success with the mass of mankind. The passion may be coarsely felt, the romance may be ridiculous, but there will always be found a large majority whose sympathies will be awakened by even the coarsest daubs. Emotion is in its nature sympathetic and uncritical; a spark will ignite it. Types of villainy never seen or heard of out of books, or off the stage, types of heroism and virtue not less hyperbolical, are eagerly welcomed and believed in by a public which would pass over without notice the subtlest creations of genius, and which would even resent the more truthful painting as disturbing its emotional enjoyment of hating the bad, and loving the good. The nicer art which mingles goodness with villany, and weakness with virtue, as in life they are always mingled, causes positive distress to young and uncultivated minds. The mass of men never ask whether a character is true, or the events probable; it is enough for them that they are moved; and to move them strongly, black must be very black, and white without a shade. ... "
" ... Miss Austen is such a novelist. Her subjects have little intrinsic interest; it is only in their treatment that they become attractive; but treatment and art are not likely to captivate any except critical and refined tastes. Every reader will be amused by her pictures, because their very truth carries them home to ordinary experience and sympathy; but this amusement is of a tepid nature, and the effect is quickly forgotten. Partridge expressed the general sentiment of the public when he spoke slightingly of Garrick's "Hamlet," because Garrick did just what he, Partridge, would have done in presence of a ghost; whereas the actor who performed the king, powerfully impressed him by sonorous elocution and emphatic gesticulation: that was acting, and required art; the other was natural, and not worth alluding to.
"The absence of breadth, picturesqueness, and passion, will also limit the appreciating audience of Miss Austen to the small circle of cultivated minds; and even those minds are not always capable of greatly relishing her works."
Lewes, while far from anywhere near misogyny, still obliterated women, as most males do from what they consider their world - and forgets that women, too, read. Whats more, most women are concerned about questions of love, marriage, normal life, for not only themselves but for their daughters, granddaughters, sisters, nieces, and yes, sons and nephews too. This is the region of Jane Austen's writing, keeping out what does not concern most people, especially most women. Did anyone ever challenge anyone about an anonymous survey regarding who appreciated which works of Shakespeare's? It's possible on internet, and if done properly, neither Hamlet nor Othello will be high, but Romeo and Juliet will. Jane Austen might just do better, with matters of concern for women treted within framework of their normal life. The only way she could have done better was if she'd dealt satisfactorily with the question of dealing with abusive husband, or elders of a young girl. People might not realise it, but this is the only point where Charlotte Bronte started ahead in Jane Eyre - a helpless young girl dealing with an abusive elder in control.
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Lewes gives views of Charlotte Bronte and Walter Scott about Jane Austen's writing, which agree on her work being likened to pleasant cottages with little flower gardens, lacking romance, grandeur or serious problems. This is not true, and obviously neither could put their self in place of even Elizabeth Bennet, much less Elinore Dashwood or Fanny Price. Each of these is a character who has either lost a love, or refused at least one suitor who, if accepted, could secure her life. And this refusal has been on ethical, moral grounds, not necessarily those of actual dislike or repugnance. They have, moreover, subsequently faced desolation, looking forth to an empty life, of not only limited means or uncertain future, but a possibility of dire circumstances. If this does not border on difficulty, much less horror or tragedy, the reader is a comfortably situated person who never could imagine himself or herself in those circumstances. It isn't a pleasant cottage with a little flower garden, at all. One can only object to the word 'indifferent', when Lewes says -
"Miss Austen has generally but an indifferent story to tell, but her art of telling it is incomparable. Her characters, never ideal, are not of an eminently attractive order; but her dramatic ventriloquism and power of presentation is little less than marvellous. Macaulay declares his opinion that in this respect she is second only to Shakespeare. "Among the writers," he says, "who, in the point we have noticed, have approached nearest the manner of the great master, we have no hesitation in placing Jane Austen, a woman of whom England is justly proud. She has given us a multitude of characters, all, in a certain sense, commonplace—all such as we meet every day. Yet they are all as perfectly discriminated from each other as if they were the most eccentric of human beings…. And all this is done by touches so delicate that they elude analysis, that they defy powers of description, and that we only know them to exist by the general effect to which they have contributed.""
None of the stories by Jane Austen are indifferent - and in fact, they have an appeal far more universal beyond Shakespeare, whose one or two works are as timeless.
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"We have thus endeavoured to characterise, in general terms, the qualities which her works display. It is less easy to speak with sufficient distinctness of the particular works, since, unless our readers have these vividly present to memory (in which case our remarks would be superfluous), we cannot hope to be perfectly intelligible; no adequate idea of them can be given by a review of one ... Her characters are so gradually unfolded, their individuality reveals itself so naturally and easily in the course of what they say and do, that we learn to know them as if we had lived with them, but cannot by any single speech or act make them known to others. Aunt Norris, for instance, in Mansfield Park, is a character profoundly and variously delineated; yet there is no scene in which she exhibits herself to those who have not the pleasurable disgust of her acquaintance; while to those who have, there is no scene in which she does not exhibit herself. Mr. Collins, making an offer to Elizabeth Bennet, formally stating the reasons which induced him to marry, and the prudential motives which have induced him to select her, and then adding, "Nothing now remains for me but to assure you, in the most animated language, of the violence of my affection. To fortune I am perfectly indifferent, and shall make no demand of that nature on your father, since I am well aware that it could not be complied with; and that one thousand pounds in the four-per-cents, which will not be yours till after your mother's decease, is all that you may ever be entitled to. On that head, therefore, I shall be uniformly silent; and you may assure yourself that no ungenerous reproach shall ever pass my lips when we are married;" and after her refusal, persisting in accepting this refusal as only what is usual with young ladies, who reject the addresses of the man they secretly mean to accept, "I am therefore by no means discouraged by what you have just said, and shall hope to lead you to the altar ere long;"—this scene, ludicrous as it is throughout, receives its exquisite flavour from what has gone before. We feel morally persuaded that so Mr. Collins would speak and act. The man who, on taking leave of his host, formally assures him that he will not fail to send a "letter of thanks" on his return, and does send it, is just the man to have made this declaration. ... "
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September 12, 2021 - September , 2021.
Jane Austen
The Novels of Jane Austen,
by George Henry Lewes.
Audiobook
Published November 11th 2016 by Librivox
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