What Matters in Jane Austen?: Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved (25 page)

There follow four more such exchanges, which structure the novel’s plot. Their effect will be to make the Bertrams, including Fanny, seem unconscious players in the Crawfords’ amusing game. Once the Bertrams and Crawfords have met, we go to the Parsonage again for more playful private talk. Does Henry really prefer Julia, asks Mary, ‘for Miss Bertram is in general thought the handsomest’ (I. v). ‘So I should suppose. She has the advantage in every feature, and I prefer her countenance; but I like Julia best; Miss Bertram is certainly the handsomest, and I have found her the most agreeable, but I shall always like Julia best, because you order me.’ Jesting is very quickly moving into something dangerous. Henry and Mary make clear that they already see that Maria does not care ‘three straws’ for Mr Rushworth, and that she is Henry’s likely prey. Later, after the diversions of Sotherton and the negotiations over the taking of parts in the play, we go back to the Parsonage for an unmonitored conversation between Mary Crawford and Mrs Grant.

‘I rather wonder Julia is not in love with Henry,’ was her observation to Mary.

‘I dare say she is,’ replied Mary coldly. ‘I imagine both sisters are.’

‘Both! no, no, that must not be. Do not give him a hint of it. Think of Mr. Rushworth!’

‘You had better tell Miss Bertram to think of Mr. Rushworth. It may do
her
some good.’ (I. xvii)

Mary has well-evidenced scorn for Mr Rushworth and knows just how well Maria has been entangled.

‘I would not give much for Mr. Rushworth’s chance if Henry stept in before the articles were signed.’

‘If you have such a suspicion, something must be done; and as soon as the play is all over, we will talk to him seriously and make him know his own mind; and if he means nothing, we will send him off, though he is Henry, for a time.’

Sir Thomas Bertram’s return means that Mrs Grant’s assertion will never be tested, though it hardly sounds as if, without Mary’s backing, much could have come of it.

Mary speaks to her half-sister in cold candour: Henry has caught both the Bertram girls, and has meant to do so. Mary speaks as if she has seen this kind of thing before. The exchange is shocking because it takes place in Fanny’s absence. If only she or the Bertrams could hear this! Fanny has observed Henry’s flirtations with alarm, but her suspicions hardly go far enough. Even more chilling is the next Parsonage conversation, between Henry and Mary alone. ‘Seeing the coast clear of the rest of the family’, he asks his sister with a smile, ‘And how do you think I mean to amuse myself, Mary, on the days that I do not hunt? . . . my plan is to make Fanny Price in love with me’ (II. vi). Mary’s reply is hardly good-hearted: ‘Fanny Price! Nonsense! No, no. You ought to be satisfied with her two cousins.’ To which her brother’s rejoinder is devilish. ‘But I cannot be satisfied without Fanny Price, without making a small hole in Fanny Price’s heart.’ Don’t make her ‘really unhappy,’ says Mary. He has only a fortnight, so ‘will not do her any harm’. He wants only to make her feel, when he leaves, ‘that she shall be never happy again’. ‘“Moderation itself!” said Mary.’

Fanny’s presence turns out to be a stronger charm than is allowed in her absence. In the final Parsonage conversation Henry Crawford takes his sister’s arm and tells her that his plans have changed. ‘I am quite determined, Mary. My mind is entirely made up. Will it astonish you? No: you must be aware that I am quite determined to marry Fanny Price’ (II. xii). ‘Lucky, lucky girl!’ exclaims his sister, assuming that she will naturally comply. As ever, her fate seems to be being decided out of her hearing.
Mansfield Park
is a novel about its heroine’s absence. When Fanny leaves Mansfield to go to Portsmouth, everything falls apart without her. We follow her, however, and in the whole of Volume III of the novel, there is not a scene or a dialogue from which she is absent – except, as fleetingly as could be, just after she has left, when we hear Lady Bertram’s reply to Mrs Norris’s opinion that Fanny will not be ‘wanted or missed’. ‘“That may be, sister,” was all Lady Bertram’s reply. “I dare say you are very right; but I am sure I shall miss her very much”’ (III. vi). With choice narrative irony, the only moment of Fanny’s absence is an expression of sincere regret about that absence. The Bertrams have to learn what Lady Bertram, in her vapid, selfish way, has always known: that they cannot do without her.

Emma’s brief absences let us glimpse a narrative of Mr Knightley’s feelings, unfolding all the time alongside her own preoccupations.

In
Emma
, the heroine’s presence is so overweening that her absence, when it occurs, is a kind of shock. There are only four such scenes, all brief, in the whole novel. The first is in the fifth chapter, where we find Mr Knightley talking confidentially to Mrs Weston about Emma’s fate.

‘She always declares she will never marry, which, of course, means just nothing at all. But I have no idea that she has yet ever seen a man she cared for. It would not be a bad thing for her to be very much in love with a proper object. I should like to see Emma in love, and in some doubt of a return; it would do her good. But there is nobody hereabouts to attach her; and she goes so seldom from home.’ (I. v)

Mrs Weston listens but conceals ‘some favourite thoughts of her own and Mr Weston’s on the subject’. Austen is inviting discerning readers to trick themselves. We can infer that the Westons have Frank Churchill in mind as a possible husband for Emma and we will care even more, as they do, about his impending appearance. Meanwhile Mr Knightley’s rumination about the likelihood of Emma falling in love is a piece of calculated misdirection. Only on re-reading will we see that ‘nobody hereabouts’ draws attention to his own obtuseness about his deeper feelings for Emma. By taking place without the heroine, the exchange acquires a certain authority, and the misleading clues as to what is to come are made the stronger.

Emma is absent again only three times. The first of these absences is the most surprising, for it occurs when suddenly, in the third volume of the novel, the narration switches to Mr Knightley’s point of view to report his suspicions about Frank Churchill.

Mr. Knightley began to suspect him of some inclination to trifle with Jane Fairfax. He could not understand it; but there were symptoms of intelligence between them—he thought so at least—symptoms of admiration on his side, which, having once observed, he could not persuade himself to think entirely void of meaning, however he might wish to escape any of Emma’s errors of imagination. She was not present when the suspicion first arose. He was dining with the Randalls family, and Jane, at the Eltons’; and he had seen a look, more than a single look, at Miss Fairfax, which, from the admirer of Miss Woodhouse, seemed somewhat out of place. (III.v.)

We join him as he walks up to Hartfield and meets in the lane Emma and Harriet, and then Frank Churchill, Miss Bates, Jane Fairfax and the Westons. Emma is there, yet hardly present: as they reach the gates to Hartfield Mr Perry passes and Frank Churchill makes his blunder about knowing that Mr Perry is to set up a carriage; ‘Emma was out of hearing.’ Mr Knightley sees ‘confusion suppressed or laughed away’ in Frank Churchill’s face, but can’t catch Jane Fairfax’s response: ‘she was indeed behind, and too busy with her shawl’. For the rest of the chapter we watch Emma, Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax with Mr Knightley’s eyes. He sees them play their word game and detects ‘disingenuousness and double dealing’. In the very next chapter, Emma once more disappears, for a comic conversation between Mr Knightley and Mrs Elton in which the strawberry party at Donwell is suggested. We are again given access to Mr Knightley’s unspoken thoughts, seeing that his plans are shaped by his wish ‘to persuade Mr. Woodhouse, as well as Emma, to join the party’ (III. vi). But more than this: Emma’s absence is used to smuggle a new suggestion about Mr Knightley’s secret thoughts into the narrative. Politely deflecting Mrs Elton’s officious desires to issue the invitations, he says that only one woman will ever ‘invite what guests she pleases to Donwell’. ‘“—Mrs. Weston, I suppose,” interrupted Mrs. Elton, rather mortified. “No—Mrs. Knightley;—and, till she is in being, I will manage such matters myself.”’

Emma’s absences are used to show the true folly of her schemes: the secret understanding between Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax is not to be the complete surprise for the reader that it is for the heroine. But if this is the ostensible reason for these scenes, there is a deeper one too. Mr Knightley’s suspicions, which arose that evening at the Eltons’ when Emma ‘was not present’, have been ignited by the ‘early dislike’ that he has taken to Frank Churchill, ‘for some reason best known to himself’ (III. v). His hostile attention to Frank Churchill must be directed by jealousy. The deft irrelevance of his quip about some future ‘Mrs Knightley’ must be evidence of private thoughts about his own possible attachment. Emma’s brief absences let us glimpse a narrative of Mr Knightley’s feelings, unfolding all the time alongside her own preoccupations. There is one more such absence, a snatch of conversation when Mrs Weston, her baby on her knee, tells Mr Weston of Emma’s engagement:

the wonder of it was very soon nothing; and by the end of an hour he was not far from believing that he had always foreseen it.

‘It is to be a secret, I conclude,’ said he. ‘These matters are always a secret, till it is found out that every body knows them. Only let me be told when I may speak out.—I wonder whether Jane has any suspicion.’ (III. xvii)

It is the completion of a circle: in that first scene without Emma we glimpsed the Westons’ schemes for her marriage to Frank Churchill; in this last one they discover how much better it is that she marry Mr Knightley. In this novel of secrets, their earlier hope that Emma would marry Frank will remain a secret.

Persuasion
is arguably the Austen novel that most shares its heroine’s experiences and feelings, yet in its opening chapters she only slowly becomes present to us. We come to her via her family’s vanities and follies – ‘she was only Anne’. She speaks for the first time in the third chapter, to express her admiration of the navy for reasons that are wholly unclear. A few pages later she speaks for only the second time, showing herself unaccountably well-informed about Admiral Croft’s position in the navy and his war service. Only Mr Shepherd’s forgetfulness at the end of the chapter about the name of Mrs Croft’s brother – ‘the gentleman who lived a few years back, at Monkford. Bless me! What was his name?’ – forces an answer from Anne – ‘“You mean Mr. Wentworth, I suppose,” said Anne’ – an exchange that unleashes her feelings and forces her story on our attentions. Thus far the novel has been mimicking her family’s neglect of her. After this opening there are only three moments in the novel when Anne is absent. The first comes just after Mary tells her that Captain Wentworth has found her ‘so altered he should not have known you again’ (I. vii). The narrative then switches to Captain Wentworth, to tell us that he had indeed ‘used such words’ and to show him discussing his interest in marriage with his sister.

He had been most warmly attached to her, and had never seen a woman since whom he thought her equal; but, except from some natural sensation of curiosity, he had no desire of meeting her again. Her power with him was gone for ever.

It was now his object to marry. (I. vii)

It is an audacious turning aside from the heroine. We briefly penetrate directly into Captain Wentworth’s thoughts for the only time in the novel, in order to be told something about him that is entirely untrue: ‘Her power with him was gone for ever.’ It is self-delusion masquerading as narrative fact. He tells himself that Anne’s power over him is ‘gone for ever’ because he would like to believe it to be true.

Anne is absent only twice more. In the first instance, we briefly see the Musgrove sisters at the window, looking out for Captain Wentworth, as Charles Hayter drones on about the Uppercross curacy (I. ix). It is a glimpse of the half-comic turmoil that Captain Wentworth is causing in the lives of the sisters, and of Charles Hayter, Henrietta’s now displaced admirer. And finally there is the strange little scene much later in a shop (Molland’s) in Bath. Anne has taken shelter from the rain with Elizabeth and Mrs Clay. Captain Wentworth enters with a party of others. They have some awkward conversation. Then Mr Elliot arrives to take Anne off. But we do not leave with her; we stay in the shop. The ladies of Captain Wentworth’s party chat about Anne.

‘. . . One can guess what will happen there. He is always with them; half lives in the family, I believe. What a very good-looking man!’

‘Yes, and Miss Atkinson, who dined with him once at the Wallises’, says he is the most agreeable man she ever was in company with.’

‘She is pretty, I think; Anne Elliot; very pretty when one comes to look at her. It is not the fashion to say so, but I confess I admire her more than her sister.’

‘Oh! so do I.’

‘And so do I. No comparison. But the men are all wild after Miss Elliot. Anne is too delicate for them.’ (II. vii)

It is an unobtrusively brilliant use of dialogue. Nothing is said of Captain Wentworth’s thoughts, but we listen to this exchange only because he is listening. In Anne’s absence, we hear about her likely engagement to Mr Elliot with all Captain Wentworth’s silent attention. We hear the verdict on her looks with all his silent interest. We feel his jealousy aroused and Anne’s allure, her ‘power over him’, confirmed. It is appropriate that this happens once she has left the scene. For Austen often lets you understand her heroines by allowing you to glimpse things in their absence. Anne is removed so that we can feel her influence. It is fictional proof that we know someone best when we can see them in their absence, when we believe in them when they are not there.