Notes on Jane Austen - The Six Novels

 

 

 

W. A. Craik, Jane Austen: The Six Novels. 1965. London: Methuen & Co., Ltd. 1977. 210 p.

Notes taken by José Ángel García Landa (c. 1983).

Introduction

(2) "Her greatness lies less in the way in which she combines the artist and the moralist; hers is a perfect, because a natural, reconciliation of the two, and in none of her six completed novels does either the artist or the moralist have to give way." Jane Austen appeals to all reasonable and rational qualities of the reader.

1. Northanger Abbey

Literary burlesque and social & moral comment come eventually into opposition: an unsatisfactory work. Austen is unwilling to take on much personality as a narrator [!]. Action is seen through the mind of an immature and ignorant but raturally right-thinking heroine. Austen is exceptional in presenting congruous scenes with serious and comic characters and being equally happy with them. Use of cliché by characters, vs. minds governed by cliché in her best achievements. In Northanger Abbey there is little interplay between minor figures, (21) "a fault of the plot is that as Catherine's character becomes more psychologically interesting, it becomes less so as a liteary force". [Aristotelian] unity. She depicts the steady passage of time over a short time without momentuous incidents—all are momentuous through selection. Little detail of scenery, no inanimate (or indeed animate) objects are described, no symbolic values added — only as they act as characters. Little need to describe physical features or expression; conversation renders character. The style lacks in personal mannerisms: it is Augustan, precise and easy. The humorous characters confuse important and trivial matters and do not advance the conversation. (31) "Jane Austen can make the most apparently commonplace topic reveal the discussion of personal principles and conduct, both social and moral, which is at the heart of all ther novels." 

(2) Sense and Sensibility

(32) "Sense and Sensibility resembles Mansfield Park in being in places not only serious but solemn." Irony is confined to lesser figures. Elinor is a faultless character, too much weight is placed on her. The plot requires the main character to be passive, which is a serious drawback. Elinor is an ideal balance of sense and sensibility. The novel is based on a patterning of character, symmetries, etc. Jane Austen guides the reader, Elinor is her main mouthpiece; Brandon is used to comment on her. Willoughby becomes suspect when his character is not commented on. The best way of using minor characters: "she uses a few traits and applies them to a wide variety of subjects" and functions. Rank or wealth are not estimable in themselves for Jane Austen, but only because of the opportunities they allow. All the characters are gentry: there is no place for servants in Jane Austen's literary schemes. Character and plot are balanced in Jane Austen's novels—but the plot of Sense and Sensibility is more mechanical and there are some coincidences and improbabilites (less than in Dickens, Hardy, etc.). The settings and the weather are used as an organizing force—they are not symbolic, though. A strong sense of time and place. (57): "An abrupt opening to a scene is therefore clearly deliberate (...) Jane Austen's own abruptness emphasizes Lucy's awkwardness." Money concerns, with figures, etc. —equivalents only in Trollope. (61): "Jane Austen does not merely analyse a situation, she reproduces it so that the time it takes the reader to grasp its implications appears to delay the narrative no more than it would arrest the action in real life." 

3. Pride and Prejudice

More compressed, vicacious and active than Sense and Sensibility. Jane Austen here is a lively commentator on the main characters, whe Elizabeth (with limited judgement) cannot present the material. An ironical novel (similar to Emma, versus Mansfiel Park and Persuasion). Minor and limited characters, as well as Elizabeth, often do the narrator's work of evaluation. (66): "Mr Darcy is the first hero Jane Austen tackles seriously or at much length. He develops like Elizabeth from complacency to self-knowledge and reformation." (69): "What the author tells us, what the heroine perceives, and the conclusions the heroine draws are so mingled that they are hardly separable". Elizabeth, (78) "Like Elinor before her she is a lens through which the action is seen, and like Emma after her she is a lens with a flaw." Scenes are presented through her eyes or ears. (79): "During and after her stay in Lambton, Elizabeth is presented—like Catherine Morland after her disillusion, an like Emma as a whole—by the kind of reported thought-process which is Jane Austen's most original method." (79): "In the second part of the novel, after she has realized the errors her prejudice has led her into, her judgment is directed inwards on herself rather than outwards on to other people, and more of the action takes place in her own mind, less in actual events." A new use for some minor characters—to reveal the situation (of the heroine) rather than their own personality. Sensitive to place. No tours de force as in Sense and Sensibility. Pride and Prejudice resembles Emma (a fault in judgement in the heroine) while Sense and Sensibility  looks forward to Mansfield Park, where the consciously virtuous heroine cannot control the circumstances, and the hero fails.

4. Mansfield Park

More solemn than the rest. Jane Austen plays a large part as narrator and . Fanny is not a lens, (92): "there are many important scenes in which Fanny does not appear at all". Analysis of motives and emotions. (92): "The subject is no longer the reform of a single heroine (Fanny has really no faults to lose), it is the breakdown and subsequent reform a whole highly organized society—the society formed by those who live at Mansfield Park, after the influence of the corrupting Crawfords. Fanny is much less of a heroine, with a sound but limited judgement (unlike Elinor she does not have an old head). The reader does not feel Fanny is an equal. All themes are clear since the opening chapter. Fanny is the pivot of action but not a heroine: she is solemn, has no humour, and is passive throughout. Jane Austen does not clarify enough the moral damage of the play. Confusion results, and it is a liability. Edmund tries to prevent the love between Henry Crawford and Maria, but he is not supposed to know about it [This is not correct - JAGL.]. Henry and Mary Crawford decide. Comments by Lady Bertram unconsicously reveal the truth of the situations. Pity for Mrs Norris: cf. George Eliot's grotesque suffering characters. Episodes of the play and Sotherton are tours de force: revelation of the situations, symbols of Maria's future elopement, etc. The Crawfords are attractive: there is real affection between them, but they are condemned nevertheless. Henry Crawford retains propriety; he is not an instrument of the plot like the earlier seducers. Jane Austen has made it impossible for either Mary or Henry to marry the right ones. A story of how heroes avoid wrong marriages, rather than a story of their own marriage. mary and Edmund's watch episode: a symbol of her unwillingness to come to terms with the inescapable truth; the same as with his ordination. Fanny is the standard of perfection in Edmund's unconscious. The theme of Mary and Edmund is not sufficiently developed: the novel is both too long and with too much material. The conjunction of Edmund and Fanny is necessary to guide the reader (both are fallible). Austen uses an introduction of characters by degrees, and in relationship to all other main characters (not only to the heroine). Portsmouth scenes: a very late introduction of new characters, which is new. Too much commentary: a danger of character being dissociated from immediate surroundings, one of Jane Austen's best skills, being suppressed. The novel covers a long space but most of it is devoted to a single year.  With a kind of "sub-plots." The novel is faulty but impressive, and sometimes excels Emma. 

 

(5) Emma

The most perfect of Jane Austen's novels. (125): "readers find difficulties and imperfections where none exist except what their own preconceptions create". An intrincate plot without any sensational events. (126): "Jane Austen appears much less in person as narrator because here we need to know scarcely anything that Emma cannot tell us, consciously or unwittingly; the unity of the plot and character is therefore much closer than ever before." (126): "The whole plot, as well as the character of Emma herself, would be spoilt if we saw any more." In a first reading, the reader does not draw the right inferences, and merely reconsiders past hints with Emma herself. Emma is deluded but not ridiculous; equal to us. Many characters comment validly and unconsciously (ironically) on the action. Most are presented and seen through other characters. Character is used as relief, or as a compression of useful information (e.g. Miss Bates), presented paradoxically as rambling discourse. Mr. Knightley is one of the few characters, apart from Emma, whose thoughts are reported. Emma, when at her worst, is similar to Mary Crawford. An ironic use of romantic cliché in all novels. The conclusion is smoother than in Mansfield Park. The presentation of late-comers is prepared early on by talk about them. Secondary cahracters are often presented (162) "in a third-person version of their own words, which has all its personal, rhythmical and idiomatic trait, without its immediacy [sic]". Emma's speeches often comment on themselves, so there is no need for Jane Austen's commentary.

6. Persuasion

Persuasion is unfinished, and lacks development of a secondary plot. Jane Austen's tone is at her most assured. More direct narrative than ever before, vs. conversations or characters used to transmit information. But she still understates her points and minor characters still reveal themselves ironically, even thought she uses more serious and moral characters.The heroine is nearest to the author: Jane Austen's comments slide into Anne's. It is her least dramatic work in terms of plot surprise and method of presentation. Mrs. Clay, a flatterer, similar to Mrs. Norris, etc. Mr. Eliot similar to Henry Crawford; subtler presentation than in the case of Wickham. Cliché is used to reveal insincerity in Jane Austen; but now wit does not equal sense. Social propriety no longer equals virtue, either. (As against Pride and Prejudice). (186): "Emma's exclamatory method of retailing thought is largely done away with because Anne's idiom and style are not clues to her meaning; there is generally little difference in style between what Anne say and what Jane Austen says, and it is sometimes both difficult and unnecessary to decide which one is speaking." (187): "Anne generally appears more by what she thinks than what she does"; she is passive. The passage of time begins with large sections and ends with particular days (vs. Austen's usual method). Settings are now relevant to character, symbolic. Johnsonian influence.  (196): "Jane Austen in Persuasion  is concerened with states of mind aroused by events, rather than with the events themselves. Her method here is to select what is of universal application from her material, rather than—as in Emma—to let the universal emerge ironically by contrast with her particular topic." An aphoristic style, with less conversation. Maybe (200) "Persuasion shows that Jane Austen was moving towards a more introspective kind of writing, towards a study of the individual and of his moral growth within himself, rather than within society."

 

 

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