"Hurrying into the Shrubbery": the sublime, transcendence, and the garden scene in Emma. (The Country and the City).

IN HER NOVELS, Jane Austen frequently responded to the cult of the sublime with humor and irony. You will recall a few of the most memorable moments; for example, any of Catherine's imaginary gothic horrors in Northanger Abbey will suffice, and Marianne's "transporting sensations" (88) over dead leaves in Sense and Sensibility will raise a chuckle, and so will Sir Edward's literary blustering in Sanditon (396). These examples remind us that Austen's attitude towards the sublime was often rather leery. (1) I argue, however, that Austen did not always disparage the cult of the sublime, and in fact, could use it seriously and positively in narrating the sense of joy her protagonists experience in climactic scenes.

I wish to examine one such scene specifically, the garden encounter between Knightley and Emma in Emma (Volume III, Chapter XIII). Here Austen employs a tone and terminology that derive from the late eighteenth-century cult of the sublime. Emma and Knightley undergo a sublime transcendence in the garden, both of them going from very apprehensive emotional states, to sudden shock, to a heightened joy, to a kind of bliss.

Austen's indebtedness to the eighteenth-century rhetorician Hugh Blair has been well documented, (2) and a discussion of the sublime is a major theme in his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. The sublime, he explains, "produces a sort of internal elevation and expansion; it raises the mind much above its ordinary state, and fills it with a degree of wonder and astonishment, which it cannot well express. The emotion is certainly delightful; but it is altogether of the serious kind" (69). We can apply Blair's description of the emotion to that which Emma and Knightley experience in the garden when Knightley suddenly proposes (and Emma less suddenly accepts). Austen has, of course, her unique interpretation of the emotional moment; the awfulness is not quite so stirring, but the delight is felt by both characters and wonderfully expressed in her narrative--though not so well expressed by the characters themselves!

In her narration of the garden scene, Austen uses five conventions of the sublime aesthetic that were widely associated with the notion in her day. Two of them are conditions that must be met before the sublime can be experienced: the individuals must be morally good, and the location of the event must be out of doors. The event itself progresses in three stages. First, there is the fear or anxiety which precedes the transcendence; next, there is the sudden, unexpected striking of the sublime sensation; and finally, the individuals experience a transformation, if even momentarily, from common emotions to a sense of magnificence.

Knightley and Emma both satisfy the first pre-condition, that of being morally good. In his Lectures, Blair describes "the moral, or sentimental Sublime," something discovered mainly "under the name of Magnanimity or Heroism." He explains that "[h]igh virtue is the most natural and fertile source of this moral Sublimity" (66-68). Emma demonstrates such virtue at the end of chapter twelve. She is walking about her room, ruing her poor conduct to Jane Fairfax, the possibility that Harriet and Knightley would marry, and worse, that the marriage would be the result of her own doing. But she finds consolation, we remember, "in the resolution of her own better conduct, and the hope that, however inferior in spirit and gaiety might be the following and every future winter of her life to the past, it would yet find her more rational, more acquainted with herself, and leave her less to regret when it were gone" (423). Having made this resolution, Emma has reconfirmed the nobility of her character by humbling herself a nd choosing what is morally correct. She is prepared for the sublime experience in chapter thirteen. Knightley, meanwhile, has been going through his own trials down in London, worrying about the love he imagined Emma had felt for Frank Churchill. He arrives at Hartfield greatly perturbed, expecting to find Emma heartbroken and irrevocably beyond his reach. Nevertheless, as her friend he is willing to help her in her sadness, and he offers sympathy and his usual sound, mature advice, "'Time, my dearest Emma, time will heal the wound"' (426). Knightley reconfirms his nobility of character by doing what is morally correct: sacrificing his own desires, as Emma has done, and helping his friend despite the pain he might feel.

The second precondition that must be met is that the scene take place outdoors, and of course, Knightley proposes in the garden not long after stormy weather has passed. The tempest Austen describes in chapter twelve and in the first several lines of thirteen is a typical motif of an approaching sublime event. According to Blair, storms and foul weather are often harbingers of the sublime. "In general we may observe," he writes, "that great power and strength exerted, always raise sublime ideas: ... Hence the grandeur ... of tempests of wind; of thunder and lightening; and all the uncommon violence of the elements" (61). The clearing weather in chapter thirteen coincides with the moral decision Emma makes at the end of chapter twelve to better her conduct and to be "more rational, more acquainted with herself" (243). Also, as the weather goes from cloudy, lonely, and melancholy in the morning to softer and brighter in the afternoon, it foreshadows the transition that is to come in Emma's fortunes. Summer retu rns. Emma goes outdoors and begins to feel the relief which the transition in nature and in her behavior provide: "Never had the exquisite sight, smell, sensation of nature, tranquil, warm, and brilliant after a storm, been more attractive to her" (424). Her spirits are somewhat heightened and revived as she hurries into the shrubbery, but her slight peace is demolished with the sudden arrival of Knightley.

The sublime experience is building. The protagonists' moral goodness is confirmed and they are outdoors and the storm is past. Austen now employs the first of the three stages of the sublime event, fear and anxiety. Austen's narrative assumes a hurried, anxious pace as Knightley approaches:

[S]he had taken a few turns, when she saw Mr. Knightley passing through the garden door, and coming towards her.--It was the first intimation of his being returned from London. She had been thinking of him the moment before, as unquestionably sixteen miles distant.--There was time only for the quickest arrangement of mind. She must be collected and calm. In half a minute they were together. (424)

At Knightley's arrival we see the second stage of the sublime event: surprise.

Mr. Knightley's arrival unsettles Emma. The narrative of the greeting ritual mirrors that unsettled feeling. "The 'How d'ye do's,' were quiet and constrained on each side." The moment begins with an uneasy constraint creating a tension that continues rising by Austen's use of third person where the first is required and by her blend of dialogue and narration. She confuses the reader's expectations and mirrors the confusion felt by the characters as they make small talk. Emma "asked after their mutual friends; they were all well.--When had he left them?--Only that morning. He must have had a wet ride.--Yes.--He meant to walk with her, she found. 'He had just looked into the dining-room, and as he was not wanted there, preferred being out of doors'" (424). The juxtaposition between indirect and direct speech and the use of the third person where the first is logically required, as well as the unusual switch in narrative point of view between dialogue and narrative are all techniques typical of Austen, but in th is case they leave the reader with a sense of foreboding, one heightened by the vocabulary, "fears, pained, silent, dread, unnatural," that Austen uses.

As Knightley and Emma talk and clarify matters inadvertently, they experience a series of emotional shocks. Nothing is planned; they are at the mercy of their own anxieties. Knightley stumbles, hesitates, and propels himself into the proposal, speaking alternately to himself, then Emma:

"As a friend!"--repeated Mr. Knightley.--"Emma, that I fear is a word--No, I have no wish--Stay, yes, why should I hesitate?--I have gone too far already for concealment.--Emma, I accept your offer--Extraordinary as it may seem, I accept it, and refer myself to you as a friend.--Tell me, then, have I no chance of ever succeeding?" (429-30)

Austen's narration here captures the turbulence of mind the characters experience through the hesitancy expressed in both narrative and dialogue--the stopping, the starting, the dashes and pauses. In describing what makes writing sublime, Blair is succinct: "Wherever ... a very magnanimous and exalted affection of human mind is displayed; thence, if you can catch the impression strongly, and exhibit it warm and glowing, you may draw the Sublime" (94). Drawing the sublime is exactly what Austen is doing in this exchange.

This point is the third stage of the sublime event, the transcendence. A full understanding, a kind of ecstasy, strikes the individual. Emma, "almost ready to sink under the agitation of this moment" is shocked, and afraid "of being awakened" (430). Shock, sudden surprise, a strike like lightning--it's how her original audience would expect a sublime event to occur. "While he spoke, Emma's mind was most busy, and, with all the wonderful velocity of thought, had been able--and yet without losing a word--to catch and comprehend the exact truth of the whole" (430). As Emma's mind races over Harriet's misfortune, the vocabulary recalls words used in the earlier part of the chapter, the pre-proposal part, with items like "groundless, mistake, delusion, nothing, agitation, doubts, reluctance, discouragement." For Emma's good fortune, we have words such as "glow, happiness, rejoice," and of course, "sublimity"--though Austen is having fun with this last term. While capturing the sublimity of the event, Austen still enjoys her irony. We recall that Emma does not avail herself of the "simple sublimity" of refusing Knightley's proposal for Harriet's sake, not for a moment.

Yet as the scene winds down and each character reviews what has occurred--the fear, astonishment, and possibilities--we read of the transcendence which has taken place in terms very usual in discussions of the sublime. Knightley can hardly believe his sudden transformation. "Within half an hour, he had passed from a thoroughly distressed state of mind, to something so like perfect happiness, that it could bear no other name (432). Emma can hardly believe her transformation, either. The moment where she discovers his love, and Knightley discovers himself professing his love, is a sublime moment: at first one full of foreboding; then, astonishment where everything is understood suddenly; then, an uplifting of spirits and a sense of perfect happiness. Austen's description of the garden scene owes much to Blair's definition of what sublime writing should be both in the technique of narration and in the object of narration. Blair wrote that the object must not only, in itself, be sublime, but it must he "set befor e us in such a light as is most proper to give us a clear and full impression of it; it must be described with strength, with conciseness, and simplicity" (76). Austen always enjoyed poking fun at Blair's rhetoric and the cult of the sublime, but, with "strength, with conciseness, and simplicity," she has written a sublime passage of a thoroughly sublime event.

NOTES

(1.) See Lorrie Clark, "Transfiguring the Romantic Sublime in Persuasion," in Juliet McMaster and Bruce Stoval eds., Jane Austen's Business: Her World and Her Profession (New York: St. Martin's, 1996) 30-41. In her analysis of Louisa Musgrove's fall on the Cobb at Lyme, Clark discusses Austen's objections to the cult of the sublime, the main two being the safe risk of death and the aesthetic enjoyment of a such a scene.

(2.) See especially Elaine Bander, "Blair's Rhetoric and the Art of Persuasion," Persuasions 15 (1993) 124-30.

WORKS CITED

AUSTEN, JANE. The Novels of Jane Austen. Ed. R. W. Chapman. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1933.

BLAIR, HUGH. Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. New York: Garland Publishing, 1970.

David MacWilliams recently earned his Ph.D. in English from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Besides nineteenth-century British literature, his interests include composition and ESL. He is an Assistant Professor at Adams State College, Alamosa, Colorado.