Austen, Persuasion: Moral Judgements

Following the previous post on the characters of Anne and Wentworth, here are a few thoughts on the moral appraisal going on in the novel. These are some of the attitudes, it seems to me, that we get through Austen's narrator. But her narrative voice is wonderfully sly and elusive at time, so feel free to disagree! It's important to rememebr, too, that all these judgments are dramatised, woven into the rhythms and emotional arcs of the story. Reduced to critical paraphrase, they always seem dry.

Persuasion and the depiction of human vices

(Page references are to Oxford World Classics edition.)

The literary form known as the novel is, among other things, an instrument for the moral analysis of people in society. This is especially the case with the novels of Jane Austen, in which the narrating voice always comes over as that of a shrewd, reasonable observer of human affairs. Even when the narration is generally sympathetic to the heroine – as it evidently is in Persuasion – there is still some detachment. To give a cool and balanced judgment, the third-person narrator needs to be at some distance from the stage on which the events take place.

Austen is in the classical eighteenth-century tradition of the rational narrator, concerned for the cohesion of society through traditional values and customs. Persuasion shows some new tendencies in England – the new class of rich naval officers, new style of marriage illustrated by the Crofts, impulsive and romantic young people – being absorbed into the social fabric without revolutionary upheaval. Writing at a time of social and political turmoil in Europe, Austen is finally a conservative novelist, concerned to preserve traditional family and social structures by reforming, Rather than overturning, what is decadent and corrupt.

In Persuasion, Austen portrays a variety of human qualities and follies, virtues and vices. She does so with a variety of novelistic techniques. Here are some examples:

Vanity

The opening of the novel makes clear Sir Walter’s appalling vanity over his pedigree and his looks. Just in case we miss this, we are told about it explicitly:

Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot’s character; vanity of person and of situation. (10)

This trait is comically emphasised throughout, making him virtually a caricature of this vice alone.  But Sir Walter’s vanity (and Elizabeth’s) is not only there to be laughed at. Austen is also interested in the consequences of this defect. It blinds him to reality: he does not realize how far he has fallen, and he deludes himself that he is a person of great distinction in Bath. Sir Walter’s self-importance also makes him irresponsible, not living up to the conduct required by his place in society.

Here were funds of enjoyment! Could Anne wonder that her father and sister were happy? She might not wonder, but she must sigh that her father should feel no degradation in his change; should see nothing to regret in the duties and dignity of the resident land-holder; should find so much to be vain of in the littleness of a town … (112)

So ludicrous is his self-adoration that he passes judgment on the bad looks of everyone he meets, and is easily persuaded that the admiring looks of the women when he passes by with Colonel Wallis are intended for him (115). Both he and Elizabeth are easily flattered (indeed, it is often the only way to communicate with them, as Mr Shepherd discovers) and fail to see the designs of Mrs Clay. Vanity has clouded their moral judgment and prevents them from behaving rationally, in a manner useful to society.

Austen probably does not mean us to see Sir Walter as typical of his class. The novel does not lead us to think all such landholders are dreadful snobs who should be overthrown. Rather, the message seems to be that the privileges of an inherited name and estate carry with them certain duties – among them, to mange money prudently and to be a responsible landlord. As Lady Russell puts it:

We must be serious and decided – for, after all, the person who has contracted debts must pay them; and though a great deal is due to the feelings of the gentleman, and the head of a house, like your father, there is still more due to the character of an honest man. (16)

(Note that gentleman is here used to describe Sir Walter’s social position.) The message is that honesty and dignity are the true signs of nobility of character, not an entry in Burke’s Peerage. Sir Walter is an irresponsible landlord (the misery this might have caused his tenants is kept offstage) and does not behave in the manner his position in society dictates. It is not that his class as a whole is corrupt: it is that Sir Walter has betrayed the trust and failed to meet the expectations which come with membership of that class.

Duplicity

In a society where manners and customs are highly prized, there is an evident danger that some people will use a pleasing external manner to cloak their real intentions. Central to Austen’s world is the distinction between the social exterior – the ‘mask’ we put on in company – and interior thoughts and feelings. The two characters who use social manners to disguise immoral intentions to deceive and manipulate are Mrs Clay and Mr Elliot.

Mrs Clay

Anne sees through Mrs Clay very quickly:

Mrs. Clay had freckles, and a projecting tooth, and a clumsy wrist, which he [Sir Walter] was continually making severe remarks upon, in her absence; but she was young, and certainly altogether well-looking, and possessed, in an acute mind and assiduous pleasing manners, infinitely more dangerous attractions than any merely personal might have been. (33)

(Note that personal means ‘physical’ here.)

Anne fears that Mrs Clay is scheming to lure Sir Walter into a second marriage with her. This would be an indignity too far (note that Anne herself has a sense of what is proper to her class), and Sir Walter’s lack of self-knowledge leaves him vulnerable to such a plan.

Mr Elliot

There is a possible warning that Mr Elliot is not all he seems on his very first appearance at Lyme:

It was evident that the gentleman, (completely a gentleman in manner) admired her exceedingly. (87)

The parenthetical comment, with the telling phrase in manner, hints that he may not be a gentleman in character.

Anne later suspects that Mr Elliot is hiding something behind his smooth manner. Her suspicions of his nature are reported on p.130-31:

There was never any burst of feeling, any warmth of indignation or delight, at the evil or good of others. This, to Anne, was a decided imperfection. Her early impressions were incurable. She prized the frank, the open-hearted, the eager character beyond all others …

…Mr. Elliot was too generally agreeable. Various as were the tempers in her father’s house, he pleased them all. He endured too well, - stood too well with everybody. (131)

From this point Mr Elliot is no real temptation to Anne, taking a potential tension away from the novel (ie will she make the right choice, the good man or the cad?). Later, the vices of misleading others are called by their name, in the conversation with Mrs Smith:

‘Yes,’ said Anne, ‘you tell me nothing which does not accord with what I have known, or could imagine. There is always something offensive in the details of cunning. The manoeuvres of selfishness and duplicity must ever be revolting, but I have heard nothing which really surprises me. (167)

Here the sins are usefully listed: cunning, selfishness, duplicity. They contrast with the openness and straightforwardness which Anne prizes, and make Mr Elliot the opposite of the emotional Captain Wentworth.

Dullness

Sometimes praise itself can carry an undertone of criticism. In the passage describing the Musgroves (37-38), we have this description of Henrietta and Louisa

… who had brought from a school at Exeter all the usual stock of accomplishments, and were now, like thousands of other young ladies, living to be fashionable, happy, and merry. Their dress had every advantage, their faces were rather pretty, their spirits extremely good, their manners unembarrassed and pleasant; they were of consequence at home, and favourites abroad. Anne always contemplated them as some of the happiest creatures of her acquaintance …

Airheads, in other words. Anne can’t avoid the realization that her mind is superior:

But still, saved as we all are by some comfortable feeling of superiority from wishing for the possibility of exchange, she would not have given up her own more elegant and cultivated mind for all their enjoyments;

Yet she does acknowledge that they have a much better relation with each other than she does with her silly snobbish sisters:

And envied them nothing but that seemingly perfect good understanding and agreement together, that good-humoured mutual affection, of which she had known so little herself with either of her sisters.

This passage is a good example of rational judgement in action: first praise, then implied criticism, then balancing praise. This is balanced judgment, setting one thing against each other. It is reflected in the shape of the sentences: the rhythm is even and unhurried, slowing down towards the end. This evokes a calm and scrupulously attentive mind. The vocabulary is full of abstract words denoting personal qualities: fashionable, happy, merry, pretty, good (spirits), unembarrassed, pleasant, of consequence; elegant, cultivated (mind). These are the kinds of terms by which characters in Austen are analysed. Which of them perhaps have negative connotations?

Selfishness, Self-Pity

Anne’s sister Mary is an epitome of selfishness and self-pity, though this seems to be foolish rather than malicious. We get a clear account of her character failings in Chapter 5:

Though better endowed than the elder sister, Mary had not Anne’s understanding or temper. While well, and happy, and properly attended to, she had great good humour and excellent spirits; but any indisposition sunk her completely; she had no resources for solitude; and inheriting a considerable share of the Elliot self-importance, was very prone to add to every other distress that of fancying herself neglected and ill-used. (35)

Note the praise then criticism shape of the writing again. Mary’s self-pity is then shown in her first speech:

 ‘So, you are come at last! I began to think I should never see you. I am so ill I can hardly speak. I have not seen a creature the whole morning!’ (35)

Of course she gets better very rapidly (37). Mary’s pathetic lack of resourcefulness when alone, and whingeing self-pity, makes her the contrast to Mrs Smith, who has borne her troubles alone with great fortitude.

Charles is felt not to have made a very good match to Mary, who has prevented him from developing as he might have done (40). Later, there is a set-piece scene in which both she and Charles justify leaving their injured child behind so they can go to dinner at Uppercross (Chapter 7, pages 49-51). This is a marvellous example of showing, not telling. Mary’s letter to Anne (vol 2, chapter 3, pages 132-33) continues the tone.

Snobbishness

Sir Walter of course is a terrible snob, and this vice is inherited by Elizabeth and Mary, but not by Anne. Mary insists that as an Elliot she should have pride of place at the table at Uppercross (41); the rank-obsessed Musgrove girls complain about this. She also feels very superior to the Hayters (their social position is described in Chapter 9, 63-64; see also Charles’s speech about them on 65):

She looked down very decidedly upon the Hayters, and thought it would be quite a misfortune to have the existing connection between the families renewed – very sad for herself and her children. (65)

When the young people go for a walk (Chapter 10) and chance to arrive at Winthrop, the Hayters’ house, Mary does not want to visit. Her snobbery earns the contempt of Captain Wentworth, as Anne observes:

            ‘It is very unpleasant, having such connexions! But I assure you, I have never been in the house above twice in my life.’

            She received no other answer, than an artificial, assenting smile, followed by a contemptuous glance, as he turned away, which Anne perfectly knew the meaning of. (73)

Cant

Cant, in the sense of insincere feeling, earns particular scorn. One cannot help sensing Austen’s own impatience with pretension and sentimentality. This leads to a passage which can still seem quite shocking, in which Mrs Musgrove’s laments are described as ‘her large fat sighings over the destiny of a son, whom alive nobody had cared for.’ (Chapter 8, p.59). This is followed by a paragraph saying that bulky blubbers just do look ridiculous, however unfair that is:

But, fair or not fair, there are unbecoming conjunctions, which reason will patronize in vain, - which taste cannot tolerate, - which ridicule will seize.

Romantic Imagination

Anne is not exempt from Austen’s critical eye. In any case, heroes and heroines who never make mistakes are unbelievable, and those who are constantly good can be dull. However, when Anne is being held up to gentle laughter, we obviously cannot see it from her point of view, which is the main one in the novel. The moments when she is less than perfect are easy to miss.

If there is a flaw in Anne, it is that on occasions she lets her dramatic, romantic side get the better of her reason. When she is told that Wentworth finds her ‘altered beyond his knowledge’ (Chapter 7), she seems to be acting out a part of almost insane virtue. It is not very convincing:

‘So altered that he should not have known her again!’ These were words which could not but dwell with her. Yet she soon began to rejoice that she had heard them. They were of sobering tendency; they allayed agitation; they composed, and consequently must make her happier. (54)

The short sentences suggest her own violent emotions. Rejoice is wildly over the top, and the list of assertions and conclusion that the words must make her happier suggest that this is a record of her inner thoughts – that is, it does not necessarily mean she did rejoice etc., but that this is what she told herself to try to make herself think this way. Austen’s analysis of character recognises that much of the time we are internally acting out parts, and trying to persuade or console ourselves.

Towards the end of the novel, when Anne has realized she still loves Wentworth and certainly does not love Mr Elliot, we get another description of her thoughts, in which she seems to be imagining herself as a heroine in a romantic novel:

How she might have felt, had there been no Captain Wentworth in the case, was not worth enquiry; for there was a Captain Wentworth in the case: and be the conclusion of the present suspense good or bad, her affection would be his for ever. Their union, she believed, could not divide her more from other men, than their final separation. (vol 2, Chapter 9, p.155).

The subjunctive (be the conclusion) and the extravagant her affection would be his for ever here mark this as corny elevated style. The novelist / narrator comments wryly on Anne’s little private performance:

Prettier musings of high-wrought love and eternal constancy, could never have passed along the streets of Bath, than Anne was sporting with from Camden-place to Westgate-buildings. It was almost enough to spread purification and perfume all the way. (155)

            A final imaginative flurry comes in the conversation with Mrs Smith (vol 2, chapter 5), when Anne fantasises about the heroic scenes in sick rooms which nurse Rooke must be privileged to witness:

What instances must pass before them of ardent, disinterested, self-denying attachment, of heroism, fortitude, patience, resignation – of all the conflicts and all the sacrifices that ennoble us most. A sick chamber may often furnish the worth of volumes. (126)

Yes, well. We are surely meant to agree with Mrs Smith’s dry reply:

            ‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Smith more doubtingly, ‘sometimes it may, though I fear its lessons are not often in the elevated style you describe . Here and there, human nature may be great in times of trial, but generally speaking it is its weakness and not its strength that appears in a sick chamber; it is selfishness and impatience rather than generosity and fortitude, that one hears of. (127)

It is impossible to read this without remembering that Jane Austen herself knew about sick rooms and was seriously ill when she was writing this novel.  But aside from biography, this exchange reminds us that Austen is a realist in the sense of wanting to portray and examine people as they really are, and not falsify them by sentimentality or melodrama (though arguably she does this with the description of Mr Elliot as a device for tying up the plot).

Austen, Persuasion: Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth

Following the recent post on Revision guides to Persuasion, here are some entry-level notes on Anne and Wentworth (looking only at Volume One in the case of the latter).

Anne Elliot

1.                  Anne Elliot is clearly the heroine of the novel. Persuasion is the story of a struggle in which she is the protagonist. How does she come to break with conservative family and social tradition by marrying a naval officer, without causing a complete rupture with the family circle?

2.                  As a heroine, Anne is

·         The moral centre of the novel: she is the touchstone by which we judge other characters

·         The most fully realized character, whose dilemmas and feelings we are shown

·         The dominant (but not the only) point of view in the novel.

3.                  The novel is a classic self v. society story, with Anne on one side and her immediate social world on the other.

                              Anne                           Society

                              Romance                     Prudence

                              Feeling                        Judgement

                              Individual worth         Snobbery

                              Life and vitality          Materialism

                              Personal emotion         Social pressure (persuasion)   

These polarities are illustrated in Vol 1,ch.4 where we are told about her former attachment to Wentworth and how Lady Russell persuaded her to break off the engagement. There is a basic difference in how the two evaluate Wentworth as a prospective husband.

Sometimes Anne’s romantic side is the object of gentle authorial humour, as in her conversation with Mrs Smith in Vol.2, ch.5, where the more experienced lady undercuts her heightened language.

4.                  Anne is introspective – we see a great deal of her thinking – and thus we witness her internal conflicts: a key scene in developing her character is Vol 1, ch.7, describing the meeting with Wentworth. What is the authorial perspective here?

5.                  Anne develops from a largely silent and introspective character into a more talkative and articulate one. In Bath, her speeches are longer (e.g. discussions with Mrs Smith), culminating in her conversation with Captain Harvill, in which she speaks up for women’s constancy. This increasing speech marks her growing confidence and independent judgment. It shows her becoming more resolved – symbolised in her making the first move in the Assembly Rooms (Vol 2, ch.8).

6.                  Age: Anne is an unusually old Jane Austen heroine. She represents constancy over the years. She is a character who has ‘outlived the storms’ – like the nut described by Captain Wentworth.

7.                  Despite being a romantic figure, Anne is also rational and practical: she knows what is the proper thing to do at Kellynch (though her advice is ignored) and she is cool-headed and stable in response to the two accidents – Charles Musgrove’s and Louisa Musgrove’s, in contrast to the hysterical reactions of the other ladies. Her own dignity is contrasted to the pride of her father and sisters.

8.                  Anne is also a skilful mediator between people (e.g. at Uppercross) and kind to others. She is particularly sympathetic to those who have themselves undergone emotional trauma – Captain Benwick and Mrs Smith.

Further Reading

Richard Gill and Susan Gregory, Mastering the Novels of Jane Austen (Palgrave)

Vivien Jones, How to Study a Jane Austen Novel (Palgrave), useful chapter on Persuasion

Captain Wentworth

Volume One

1.            Captain Frederick Wentworth might properly be said to be the protagonist of the novel, rather than Anne:

•             A protagonist needs to be able to do things. As a woman, Anne does not have enough opportunity of action to make important events happen. Her role is passive: she observes, considers, suffers (usually in silence), thinks. Her active roles are providing harmony between family members, and above all speaking – articulate and intelligent women can affect events through the power of persuasion. When she steps forward to Wentworth at the Assembly rooms ‘making yet a little advance’ (p.146), that is a significant action in context.

•             Wentworth, however, is active in the traditional sense of a novel’s hero. Indeed, we might consider the novel as his story:

A young, confident naval officer proposes marriage but is turned down because the woman is persuaded that his prospects are not sufficiently secure. He thinks the woman lacks courage, goes off and is successful (though neither he nor she succeed in forgetting their love). When he meets Anne again, he realizes that she has qualities which he failed to recognize before and reassesses his own judgments. He learns from all this, becomes morally better, realizes he still loves her, proposes and they get married. So the novel is about him and his moral and emotional education. The treatment of the story, however, shows it all from the woman’s point of view.

2.            As the male protagonist (in conflict with the traditional views of Lady Russel), Wentworth must have qualities to make him worthy of the virtuous Anne. These qualities develop over the course of the novel; the key events are those which educate him. We shall take these in turn.

3.            Before the action of the novel starts, at the time of the engagement. Wentworth is introduced in Vol 1 , ch. 4. In 1806 he was ‘a remarkably fine young man, with a great deal of intelligence, spirit and brilliancy’ (26) – the inner qualities which Anne prizes. However, as Lady Russel sees it, he has ‘nothing but himself to recommend him, and no hope of attaining affluence … without alliance or fortune’ (27).  How could he support Anne? What future could he give her? He is ‘confident that he would seen be rich’ and ‘full of life and ardour’ (27), but this only makes Lady r more suspicious, and Anne yields to her advice. We might see Wentworth as a ‘new man’, making his way in a new profession, impatient of traditional expectations, and perhaps unfair in expecting Anne to join him when the future is so uncertain.

4.            Wentworth takes it badly. He is ‘totally unconvinced and unbending’ and feels he is ‘ill-used by so forced a relinquishment’ (28). He leaves the country. How do we judge this reaction? Is it fair to Anne?

5.            He goes on to enjoy great success (29), making Anne’s refusal seem over-cautious in retrospect.

6.            Anne learns, in great agitation, that Wentworth is to visit Uppercross (45). He is made to seem more attractive in contrast to the pathetic story of Richard Musgrove.

7.            Louisa and Henrietta give delighted reports of Wentworth (48), a very eligible bachelor.

8.            I.7: the meeting between Anne and Wentworth after 8 years  (52-53). We see this entirely from Anne’s point of view. The language expresses her violent agitation (‘She had seen him. They had met’). She learns that he has found her altered beyond recognition (53). At last we leave Anne’s perspective and learn what Wenworth thinks: ‘He had not forgiven Anne Elliot. She had used him ill; deserted and disappointed him; and worse, she had shewn a feebleness of character in doing so, which his own decided, confident temper could not endure’ (54). Notice the return of that key word confident. Wentworth is a man of strong will and strong opinions. We learn that he is on the lookout for a wife. He has tried toconvince himself that his earler feelings for Anne are dead.  The stage is set for a psychological novel about how Anne and Wentworth come to learn more about themselves and each other.

9.            I.8 starts with a description of how they get on after the 8-year gap, from Anne’s perspective. Pages 59-61 is the scene in which Wentworth declares he would never take women on board (decided), although he has (inconsistent), and describes his exploits. He’s very reserved towards Anne: ‘His cold politeness, his ceremonious grace, were worse than anything’ (62).

10.          I.9. Key scene: Wentworth relieves Anne of the child Walter (compassionate, strong, resolute), p.68-69, with Anne’s reaction on 69.

11.          I.10 – the visit to Winthrop. Anne overhears Wentworth’s conversation behind the hedge with Louisa. (73-75). Here we learn what kind of qualities Wentworth admires (my italics): ‘Woe betide him … when it comes to things of consequence, when they are placed in circumstances, requiring fortitude and strength of mind, if she have not resolution enough to resist idle interference in such a trifle as this.’ Louisa, he says, has a character of ‘decision and firmness’. Wentworth dislikes ‘too yielding and indecisive a character’. Presumably he found Anne wanting in resolve to stand up to Lady Russel all those years ago. His speech on the nut, though, hints that he may yet come to appreciate Anne, whose beauty of character is hidden under a kernel, and who has ‘outlived all the storms of autumn’ (74).

12.          I.10 p.77. Wentworth makes sure Anne has a place in the carriage. Her interpretation of this act: ‘It was a remainder of former sentiment …’.

13.          I.12. Louisa’s accident at Lyme. This is the central episode of the whole novel, for the light it casts on the various characters. As Wentworth comes to see later, Louisa’s strength of will can just be irrational stubbornness. In contrast to her sisters, Anne is quick, practical and helpful. Anne overhears Wentworth again:’ if Anne will stay, no one so proper, so capable as Anne’ (95). This change of attitude brings Volume One to an end.

Austen, Persuasion: Revision and Study Guides

A short post on materials for studying and revising Jane Austen's Persuasion - activities which are, needless to say, logically secondary to reading and thinking about it independently. There seem to be plenty of materials of one sort or another out there, as a search for 'Austen study Persuasion' on Amazon revealed.

Online

Study Guide published on the Cross-Ref it site

Diana Mitchell's  Penguin Teacher's Guide suggests class activities for teachers, but is useful for individual study, keeping our eye on characters and themes with chapter-by-chapter questions.

Sparknotes

Plenty of links from this Jane Austen blog

Set of study questions

The Republic of Pemberly site is a hub for Austen, with some busy discussion boards around Persuasion.

This lecture by April Bernard covers many key aspects of the novel: Austen's background and time; the context of English class and revolutionary europe; her debt to Samuel Johnson; the use of free indirect discourse; and the elements of the novel which make it a 'fairy-tale for grown-ups'. The lecture is half an hour, followed by Q&A. Link here.

Book
Roger Gard's book on Emma and Persuasion for Penguin Masterstudies (out of print) is excellent.

Richard Gill and Susan Gregory, Mastering the Novels of Jane Austen. Substantial chapters on each of the novels.

Annotated Texts
Annotated editions are an ideal way to study a novel, especially for a writer like Austen, where we need help in picking up the references and understandings that would have been second nature at the time: Robert Morrison's sumptuous Persuasion: An Annotated Edition (Harvard) will be the edition of choice for carraige folk; David M Shaphard's Annotated Persuasion is available in printed form but much cheaper in Kindle format. From the sample pages I have seen it looks very handy. There are a lot of privately published notes and commentaries on the novel for Kindle. I haven't used them - still not quite in the Kindle community - so I can't recommend any but I'd be interested to learn of any good ones.

Austen, Persuasion: The Economic Background

Below are some notes drawn on a lecture by Sandie Byrne, ‘Pride and Prejudice in Persuasion’, given at an A Level Conference in London in 2005. I thought the lecture gave some useful suggestions on things to look out for in the novel, and follow up in further reading.

Text and Context

We should not try to read off early 19^th century history from novels: they are fiction, not accurate history books.

But we should know about context – what was going on in the period. Texts cannot help being products of their times.

Regency

When Jane Austen was young, George III was on the throne. He was an obstinate moralist, and court protocol was rigidly observed: courtiers stood in his presence.

His heir the Prince ran a more relaxed household. Heirs provide a focus for dissent. Prince George, the Regent, initially allied himself with the Whigs. He was satirised as an ageing roué. We know from a letter that Austen hated the Prince Regent.

Class Structure

The upper rank of English society was the aristocracy, marked by land ownership. The ‘ton’ was the upper 10,000. To be in the ton you needed land, name and money. The higher rank was being infiltrated by arrivistes, who had land but not an ancient name.

A keyword is estate – this means both your land and property, and also your marital state.

The Estate of a man was evaluated by these questions: does he have an old name? Land (providing income from rents)? Money?

The Estate of a woman depends on her reputation. A woman’s market value depends on her marriageability.

Industrial Revolution

This brought important social changes. Rich capitalist industrialists, like mill owners and factory bosses, wanted to join higher social ranks. To bury your origins in trade, you need servants. Women servants are cheapest, so male servants are even more of a badge of gentility. Don’t be seen doing manual labour. Get some land. New lords acquired land to support their title.

Navy

The navy was a good place for a second son to rise. Unlike the army, you didn’t have to purchase your commission. You could be a midshipman at 13+. Captains could reasonably hope to become admirals. Any time you captured an enemy ship, you could make a lot of prize money [note Sir Walter's laboured joke on the word 'prize'].

An officer in a ship of the line could make a fortune. Sir Walter deplores this, since it allows the undeserving to rise to higher rank and prominence. Admiral Croft rebukes Wentworth for complaining about his first ship: Wentworth did not have much ‘interest’, i.e. family interests, patronage – he was lucky to get what he did.

So both the Industrial Revolution and the Armed forces provided some social mobility. There was old money and new money.

Gentry

Jane Austen was not in the ‘ton’. She was in the gentry (knights baronet, clergy) – people who might have some land, but were not in the oldest, ‘best’ families. Two of her brothers were naval officers.

Characters in the Novel

New Money                             Old Names                  New Poverty

Crofts                                      Sir Walter E                The Elliotts (sliding downwards)

Wentworth                              Mr E

                                                Lady Russell

                                                Mrs Dalrymple

Lady Russell may be the best of the old names – she is good and well-meaning.

By contrast, Lady Dalrymple does not fulfil the responsibilities of her position.

The Musgroves are respectable – they are of the gentry class, but with no aspirations to higher gentry. They are approved by the narrative voice, but not quite high enough for an Austen heroine.

The Musgroves and Lady Russell are static: thy represent the way things used to be.

Mr Shepherd is also (probably) static.

Mrs Clay chooses another form of social mobility.

The novel’s values

Tradition rather than revolution

Austen is not demanding social revolution: rather, the novel supports traditional values such as responsibility and duty.

Real rather than fake

Anne stands for what is real and solid.

London was associated with sham and show.

Pretence, deceit and duplicity are strongly criticised in the novel.

Country and town represent old and new: in Kellynch Anne can walk about unchaperoned. This is much harder in Bath.

Sir Walter prides himself on his appearance – this shows he has done no work in his life. This is perhaps the most ‘revolutionary’ element of the novel, since it portrays aristocrats as languid and effete.

Sexual values

On the whole, during the Regency sexual conduct was loose, though it was more restrained in the middle ranks of society. Women preserved their good name; men went to prostitutes, servants (rarely, perhaps), or married women.

Work and Money

There is less fear of social mobility in Persuasion than there is in other Austen novels such as Mansfield Park. In Persuasion, mobility is a result of one’s own endeavours, the Protestant work ethic.  The novel does not echo contemporary criticism of money from trade, for example from India, where undesirable people are making fortunes.

Austen approves of money-making. Persuasion is moving towards the Victorian utilitarian idea of climbing the ladder. But it is allied to a solid morality, without pretension and deceit. Wentworth’s new money is acceptable, since it is a result of his willpower and the service of his country.

Theme of Persuasion

Persuasion means being rhetorically convinced, but also belief, judgment, as in ‘I am persuaded that ...’. In this latter sense, Mary, for example, is persuaded that she is ill and hard done by.

Instances of the other kind of persuasion: Wentworth doesn’t persuade Anne; Lady Russell persuades Anne; Mrs Smith persuades Anne; other people try to persuade Anne to persuade Mary to be more sensible.

So the novel is both about what your persuasions are, and how you go about persuading other people.

Eighteenth-Century Taste

In Jane Austen's Persuasion (1818) we are told that the heroine, Anne Elliott, is "an extremely pretty girl, with gentleness, modesty, taste and feeling". It is one of those lists of epithets in Austen that seems at first comfortingly familiar, and then elusive. What does it mean in this world to have 'feeling'? What kinds of behaviour make up 'gentleness'? And what would the first readers have understood by 'taste'? Any one of these words can start us on an archaeological dig into the various concepts at work int he novel: we need to investigate them, because it is against these values that we make sense of the action. On the subject of taste, I found a programme in the In Our time archive very helpful, and I offer some notes on it here. But better still, listen to the programme directly: there's a link at the end of this post. 

In the early eighteenth century Britain was commercially successful, surpassing its nearest rival Holland. There was new wealth pouring in, and much of it was spent by the newly wealthy on luxuries. Over the centuries, these consumables ranged in style from classical and gothic to Venetian, Indian and, of course, chinoiserie. All this money and luxury led to some concerns, not only the perennial anxiety over arrivistes enjoying a status previously reserved for those of noble blood (returning to Persuasion, we might think of Sir Walter's dislike of naval officers for just this reason a century later). It was also feared in some quarters that the enjoyment of luxuries would lead to a moral decline: Britain was the greatest empire since Rome, and a parliamentary democracy, superior to the effete court of absolutist France. Would this identity be threatened by cultural borrowings? Would the manly Brits go soft, stroking their new lace fabrics instead of staffing the empire?

With so much new stuff (literally and figuratively) coming in, and merchants climbing up the class ladder, some principle of discrimination seemed desirable. How do you know what is really good, how do you separate quality from tat? The ability to do this is taste, French 'le gout', "a capacity for discriminating beauty". There was more openness for debate about such matters in Britain: in France the court basically set the rules, while in Britain since the Glorious Revolution of 1688 the court was much weaker and there was room for other authorities to emerge.

Writers were one such source of authority. As they became interested in the question of taste, they gave the notion an intellectual basis. One of the most important intellectuals was the gentleman philosopher, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713; in the first half of the 18th century the nobility had an important role as the arbiters of taste). He brought aesthetics (the study of beauty) to the centre of philosophy. Shaftesbury made a link between beauty and religion: he believed that we commune with God by looking at beauty, which is characterised by order, harmony, and proportion. These ordering design elements are in turn analogous to the internal ordering needed for the virtuous life. Hence discriminating perception works together with ethical judgement. Virtue is our sense of moral order and perfection, analogous to our intuitive approval of the rightness of a building's facade. The enjoyment of beauty, the moral life, and the understanding of the divine are all linked.

From this analogy drawn between moral and aesthetic judgement, it followed that it was desirable to develop one's powers of perception and discrimination, to become cultivated. For Addison (1692-1719), in his essays in The Spectator, this quality was fundamental to a civilised person. Acquiring a sense of the elegant, polite and refined arts was higher than the mere pursuit of pleasure: it was the distinguishing mark of the modern, polished citizen.

In any period, ideas develop in opposition to other ideas. This was the case with taste in the eighteenth century, which was conceived partly in opposition to religious enthusiasm, as practised by non-conformists such as the Methodists. On the one hand there is balance, order, design, perspective, reason, stability; on the other there is the baroque, the unlicensed, wild, effusive. For the proponents of taste, the first set is identified with Englishness, making the second alien and a little suspicious. Taste thus provides a vocabulary for both the inner and outer life: it indicates an ordered religiosity within, and governs the way you comport yourself in society. And it identifies you as a loyal Englishman.

Unlike the political arts, which could only be practised in public, by men, the art of acquiring taste could be pursued and expressed in the home, the territory of women. It was possible for women to demonstrate taste through their choice of decoration, their manners, how they walked. The objects and rituals of the home - teatime served in Wedgewood China, Chippendale furniture - all betokened taste. It was not the privileged domain of the aristocracy, or even the gentry: in Richardson's novel Pamela (1741), the eponymous heroine shows a higher standard of discrimination than those of higher social standing. You can advertise your taste simply by behaving in accordance with certain rules, and rules are not expensive. Culture was more available: this was the age of the first public libraries, household pianos, printed sheet music, the novel, public pleasure gardens. Nature itself was perceived through eyes educated by taste in paintings: so under William Gilpin's instruction, travellers learned to search for 'picturesque' landscapes, nature which looked like a picture; while landholders could have their parks remodelled by 'Capability' Brown (so-called because he assessed lands for their 'capability', that is potential for landscape treatment) to suit the idea of what the countryside would look like if it was tastefully designed.

Cultivation was no longer the hobby of the wealthy elite. Fanny Burney's Evelina (1778) depicts a London where cultural pleasures are readily available. Indeed, vulgar aristocrats were mocked: Pope's Epistle to Burlington satirises a vulgar country estate (and in so doing implicitly praises Burlington's refined neoclassical sensibilities, as exemplified by his Palladian house at Chiswick). The nouveaux riches and their fancy houses at Twickenham and Clapham all came in for a bit of bashing too. (We could add that Gilpin was himself satirised in Thomas Rowlandson's Doctor Syntax drawings.) Beneath it all was an unresolved question: could culture simply be acquired by anyone with sufficient income? Or did you have to be born into it?  Which middle class groups have got it right? Who are the tasteful and who are the vulgarians? The new form of the novel was itself hard to pin down: Richardson teaches the proprieties, yet as a mere tradesman - he was a printer of humble background - he was regarded as an impertinent upstart by aristocrats like Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762). In the early nineteenth century, judgements of taste course through the novels of Jane Austen.

The British Empire was a source of this diversity and confusion. The British colonies allowed for self-creation, unstifled by hierarchy. At home, a more mobile society allowed for self-invention too. The basic story of the eighteenth century novel is someone become a lady or gentleman, displaying the taste and attitudes necessary for that status. the But there was always a need for an authorised code of what was tasteful and decorous. And once that code is known it can be deployed to exclude others. In the nineteenth century, the obsession with taste fades.

An interesting discussion, though as one contributor mentions, it somewhat collapses chronology in teasing out the big themes. It  leaves us with the question of where we are today, taste-wise. Can 'good taste' be taught? Is 'tasteful' - as Amanda Vickery says right at the end - today's ultimate put-down? The word itself, like all evaluative terms in England, is inevitably involved with class and money, and is often avoided for that reason. But it seems to me that, whatever term we employ, taste is still operative, though in discrete areas, not as a universal code. The communities around rap music, opera, handbags and National Trust houses will all have their ideas of what's proper, what's cool or naff, and individuals will absorb this code more or less consciously. We still define ourselves by what we like: do you find Downton Abbey a Sunday evening pleasure, or ghastly soft heritage, for example? Do you pronounce your refinement through not going to Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes films, or is that the attitude of a self-important snob? We'd like to think we at least have our own answers to such questions, but I suspect we look around us for the 'right answer' just as much as our eighteenth-century forbears did. Our identity is to a large extent constructed by society, or the bit of it we find ourselves in, and many of our opinions are consequently the received opinions of that group. Perhaps it is a romantic fallacy to think things could be otherwise.

The reading list on the In Our Time page makes me feel very ignorant, but one book I have read, and would recommend is John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination. Not in the reading list is Shaftesbury's Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711).

Amos Oz

Amos Oz is a distinguished Israeli writer, whose work includes novels, poetry, political commentary and memoir. The Story Begins is his masterclass in close reading of fiction. There are ten short chapters, each dealing with the style of a story or novel, and the way that the beginning takes us into the work.  Authors examined include Fontane, Gogol, Chekhov, Kafka, Márquez and Carver. There are also critiques of Hebrew writers who some of us may not be so familiar with: Shmuel Agnon, S Yizhar, Yaakov Shabtai. But for the purposes of enjoying The Story Begins it isn't necessary to have read any of the works Oz considers, since his main concern is with how the fictions get going (and plot developments are summarised when necessary).

Oz is interested with the 'contract' any fiction implies at the outset between reader and writer. The brilliant first essay takes the opening of Fontane's Effi Briest, which seems to a modern reader a standard bit of descriptive scene-setting, the kind we have little patience with these days. Then he shows how every detail in the scene contributes through symbol and atmosphere to the development of the story. He shows us how to read Gogol by picking up the mad bureaucratic style, and explains how Márquez (in The Autumn of the Patriarch) dissolves the sense of time on which novels usually depend. A Carver story requires us to look for the emotional life of the characters beneath the surface, in the interstices of the writing. Oz picks up words, phrases and sentence shapes and relates them to the larger life of the story or novel under scrutiny. Each writer requires us to 'tune in', to pick up a series of codes and understandings that makes the reading experience work.

In a postscript, Oz expresses his frustration at dry academic criticism, which takes the pith out of literary texts. He emphasises the fundamental importance of getting lost in a book and picking up the particular pleasures it gives us. (Words like 'examined' and 'scrutiny' above suggest this dessicated world of joyless analysis, and don't do justice to his irresistibly enthusiastic approach: the chapters are based on lectures at high school and university and we hear the ebullient teacher's voice here.) Reading for pleasure doesn't mean being unthinking or unobservant, or falling into belle-lettristic complacency; but it does mean reading slowly and finding our way around in the new and strange world any good fiction writer takes us to. The Story Begins is top notch lit crit, and a writer's introduction tothe art of slow reading. Five stars.

James Wood, How Fiction Works

James Wood is one of the liveliest critics around. His essays always give a sense that the whole business of reading closely really matters, as part of our experience of life, not simply as an academic exercise. Most of his writing takes the form of essays (several are collected in The Irresponsible Self and The Broken Estate).  How Fiction Works is a book-length study of the techniques we find in writers from Fielding to David Foster Wallace. It really is about how good novels and stories work, what makes them go, what makes them work their magic on us. We strat with a lesson on narrative, and in particular the uses of the free indirect style, where we often float between the minds of the narrator and the characters (Consider: 'Sir Richard listened patiently to the scruffy clerk's explanation' - here we are looking at Sir Richard from the outside, shown the action by the third-person narrator, yet at the same time we are also inside Sir Richard's mind, as he congratulates himself on his patience and finds the clerk scruffy' - it's a simple trick, yet marvellous effects come from it). There are chapters on other aspects of the fiction-writer's trade such as characterization, imagery, dialogue. It is all refreshingly undidactic and reads like an enthusiastic reader sharing his findings. Woods is averse to dogmas like show-don't-tell and 'characters should be rounded' and well equipped to point out how great writers regularly break these notional  'rules'. In conclusion he considers the claim that the realist novel is outmoded in the modern age, and feels this is mistaken, or pedantically over-insistent. In any case, he argues, serious writing is not about the construction of reality but about the search for truth. How Fiction Works is constructed in short, fragmentary sections - each one an observation, usually based on a particular passage. (And the passages are nicely complete in themselves: there is no need to have read all the novels he cites to follow the discussion.) How Fiction Works has a personal style and taste, which makes it very readable. It is unblemished by jargon, opinionated, lively, not stifled by reverence and altogether highly recommended to anyone studying literature, or simply anyone who likes reading literary novels and wants to read them better (let us assume that anyone in the first of these categories also belongs to the second).

And Other Stories

Interesting piece by Jenny Diski in the latest LRB on 'The Future of Publishing'. This introduced me to And Other Stories, a 'Community Interest Company' (CIC - a new one to me) which publishes books on a not-for-profit basis. It works by subscription: after subscribing, you get what And Other Stories decide to publish (their editorial decision, fed by a network of reading groups). £20 gets you two books, £35 gets you four. Obviously books already ont heir list can be got from the usual distributors. Several Spanish books (Juan Villalobos, Down the Rabbit Hole a recent successful example) reflecting the Hispanic interestes of company founder Stefan Tobler. It seems a refreshingly different approach to the big brands, and a good opportunity for libraries, schools, and reading groups, as well as individual readers, to get involved with new literary fiction.

La Ciudad de los Prodigios

Eduardo Mendoza is a Barcelona novelist and La Ciudad de los Prodigios (1986) is a hymn to his native city. It follows its hero Onofre Bouvila between the dates of the two Barcelona Great Exhibitions of 1888 and 1929. Onofre is a thoroughly amoral character, and his adventures see him involved in anarchism, gang warfare, profiteering, dodgy property deals, deals of all kinds - all leading to fame and relative respectability. Bouvila is surrounded in this picaresque novel by a cast of suitably colourful characters drawn from all social backgrounds. Just as fielding introduces his chapters with a short essay, Mendoza pauses the story from time to time to give us fascinating digressions on such matters as the Ciutadella, the financing of Exhibitions, the early days of film, aviation, and through both story and history we get a wonderful view on the life of this city at its time of greatest expansion and change. Key dates come and go: the end of the colonies in 1898 and the consequent crisis; the 'Tragic Week' of 1909, the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. Real historical figures like Rius i Taulet, de Rivera, King Alfonso XIII, and (briefly) Gaudí cohabit with fictional characters. There are stunning descriptions, such as the port when Bouvila first sees it, or the depiction of life in a small village, or the shantytowns aroung the Expo of '29. Mixed in with the history are artful inventions (a hilarious account of an alternative scheme to the Eixample is just one of them), and touches of magical realism. This mixture of elements is the 'memoria colectiva' that the novel mentions at the end, a blend of history, myth, fact, fiction and dream which make up the City of Marvels of the mind.  La Ciudad de los Prodigios is a colossal work, compulsory reading surely for anyone interested in Barcelona and the modern Spanish novel.