Reading and teaching our way out of Jane Austen novels (naval options).
THE NOVELS OF JANE AUSTEN are as important for their historical value as they are for their literary merit. As Christopher Kent states in his essay, "Learning History with, and from, Jane Austen," "The French Revolution ushered in the age of historicism. Jane Austen lived and wrote at the threshold of this new era of and for history" (59). Austen's characters inhabit fringe social positions in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British society; moneyed members of the growing middle class begin to challenge knights, baronets, and other lower members of the gentry for power and influence in this increasingly acquisitive society. In her characters we see a changing of the guard where money now has the potential to eclipse--or at least compete--with landed status for social power and influence. Austen reveals "the first genuine consumer culture in history," a world where social climbing--either through marriage, trade, or military success--enables characters to advance up the social ladder (Copeland 34). Correspondingly, those Austen characters who do increase their social stock are virtuous members of this new and improved social order. Characters who lack righteous and honorable intentions are usually villainous members of the gentry or aristocracy whose social stock is decreasing, or at best stagnant.When reading Austen's novels, however, we are faced with a dilemma: Austen is painstakingly selective about the British society she reveals. Due perhaps to her gender and position in society, Austen's novels are limited in their ability to represent the total experience of British culture at the turn of the nineteenth century. Capitalism fueled by industrial and consumer revolutions, Britain's growing dependence on colonial endeavors, and the Napoleonic War are not easy to locate in her work. Although Austen's marriage plots are rich in texture, complicated, entertaining in plot, and provocative in their development of character and gender identity, her world is indeed less British than it is English. During a time when enclosure, war, and revolutionary ideology are creating change of a magnitude that this society had never before experienced, the Austen reader is pondering marriage, social etiquette, English country dancing, card games, country estates, fidelity and infidelity in marriage, English gardens, carriage rides, dowry, inheritance, courting rituals, landed titles, class distinctions, education, and the entail. The content of Austen's novels is substantial, but shouldn't we also know that concurrent with the history that Austen records in her novels, millions are being forced into cities with no choice but to participate in backbreaking labor--poor women and children forced into factory work, and thousands of common sailors with no alternative but to enlist or be conscripted into the Royal Navy?
THE CHALLENGE
Austen's novels reveal, as Franco Moretti argues, "two Englands," "the industrializing Great Britain of Austen's years; [and] the small homogeneous England of Austen's novels" (14). The challenge then is this: How can we read the one England, the presence, and at the same time locate the other England (Great Britain), the absence? How can we read and teach our way out of Jane Austen novels? I decided to meet this challenge in the college classroom. Could a group of freshmen find their way out of the provincial early nineteenth-century English country towns that populate Austen's tales and reemerge in the wider sphere of the early nineteenth-century British Empire? I wasn't sure, but I was encouraged by Julia Prewitt Brown, who claims that the first question her students ask when they read Austen is "In what sense are Jane Austen's novels historical?" (57).
The course I proposed was appropriately entitled "Jane Austen's Great Britain," and the description read as follows: "The novels of Jane Austen present us with many themes to consider from the standpoint both of literature and of history. They are stories, rich in literary invention and imagination, but they also reflect and are influenced by late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century historical events. In this sense, Jane Austen and history composed her novels. On the surface the society she describes appears to be a stable one that reinforces the position of the English country elite, but she provides the reader with many clues to the changes that are beginning to affect British society and shift it from a society of status to one of wealth. Specifically, Austen's novels chart the progress of the new moneyed English middle class. With a focus on the relationships, occupations, and pocketbooks of Austen's characters, our class will discuss, investigate, and write about the relationships that exist between literature and history. We will also read between the lines of Austen's stories in order to locate the wider sphere of early nineteenth-century British history--the Napoleonic War, the age of Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution."
My approach to the class was new historical, viewing the literary text as an historical document. As Louis Montrose states about the critical practice of new historicism, "literary texts are products of historical, social, political, and economic environments once deemed 'outside' the text." The new historicist "reads all traces of the past as texts, narratives to be interpreted." Additionally, new historicism emphasizes the "historicity of texts and the textuality of history." (1) Accordingly, a literary text like Austen's Pride and Prejudice is as much an historical document as it is a piece of fiction. I refrained from confusing my students with the theoretical new historical verbiage, but I explained that no one creates art in a bubble; on a daily basis we influence and are influenced by our environments and surroundings. In this sense Jane Austen and history wrote the novels, just as William Shakespeare and history wrote the plays.
I had high hopes that the class would be filled with enthusiastic, bright-eyed Janeites. I anticipated that half of the students would have read two or three Austen novels and be familiar with several of the Austen films, and the others would have at least seen and appreciated a few of the films. When I first met the group, I questioned class members about their interest in Austen, when had they first discovered her novels/films, how many novels had they read and films had they seen, and which were their favorites? I couldn't wait for that first student to ask, as Brown had all but promised some would, "In what sense are Jane Austen's novels historical?" (57). But they didn't. In fact, on that first day we didn't discuss much beyond the cast of Hollywood characters that populates Austen's films. Then I realized my challenge was doubled: Before we could find our way out of Jane Austen novels, we first had to find our way into them. I needed to convince these resistant freshmen that Austen novels were valuable literary and historical documents in addition to being downright entertaining. If they agreed, I then had to inspire them to look beyond the scope of Austen's world at the larger picture of British history. When that first class ended, I took solace in another comment of Brown's, that "The student who begins by hating Jane Austen ... usually ends by learning more from her than does the budding Janeite" (57). Fortunately for me, Brown was correct.
We began at the beginning, with the marriage plot--the most obvious and structurally central element in Austen's novels. As Pamela Bromberg states, "Marriage is the primary ... institution through which female protagonists in the nineteenth-century novel achieve identity" (127). Following the threads of fictional marriage plots, students became acquainted with myriad historical aspects of the gentle and homogenous English society. (2) From the first line of Mansfield Park, Austen begins weaving the marriage plot, emphasizing the importance to women of a union with a well placed gentleman: 'About Thirty years ago, Miss Maria Ward of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the country of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet's lady, with all the comforts and consequences of an handsome house and large income" (3). The line foreshadows the main event of the novel: Fanny Price marries Edmund Bertram (Maria Ward's son). She increases her social status and becomes Lady of Mansfield Park. From the outset, the door is open to discuss many social issues, including class hierarchy, rank distinctions, marriages, social alliances, the benefits of marrying well, the consequences of not marrying well, and the consequences of not marrying at all.
Once students became engaged with Austen's domestic world and the many topics surrounding the marriage plot, I had them read excerpts from Franco Moretti's Atlas of the European Novel. I wanted them to contemplate the difference between Austen's England and Great Britain, and Moretti appropriately establishes the juxtaposition between the two through the marriage plot. When Moretti charts the geography of the marriages in Austen's novels (the origins and destinations of husbands and wives), a map emerges that represents but a tiny portion of the totality of Great Britain and the British Empire. Moretti notices that Austen's plots "join together--'marry'--people who belong to different counties" (14-15). The marriages thereby expose "Two Englands"--the southern region closest to the sea (Bath, London, Lyme, Twickenham, Ramsgate, and Brighton), which is a universe of" infatuations, scandals, slanders, seductions, elopement--disgrace" (18), what Moretti calls the "mobile, urbanized group of seducers" (20), and the other England, the rural one a little further north that belongs to the landed gentry, "the elite that has preserved its rural and local roots" (20). Plotting the geography of Austen's marital arrangements reveals a world of exclusion. Austen's plots focus predominantly on an England that is outside the realm of the pain, hardship, and suffering of the Industrial Revolution--the third England (if you will). Not represented here is the Industrial Great Britain that includes Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall. As Moretti argues, "toward the end of the eighteenth century a number of processes come into being (the final surge in rural enclosures; the industrial take-off; vastly improved communications; the unification of the national market; mass conscription) that literally drag human beings out of the local dimension, and throw them into a much larger one" (17). Students began to see that as readers of any text, we must pay careful attention to both the absence and the presence. The information between the lines--"in the hidden places of negotiation and exchange"--provides compelling evidence of the marriage between history and literature, where omissions might be just as important to investigate as additions (Greenblatt 13).
READING OUR WAY OUT OF JANE AUSTEN NOVELS (NAVAL OPTIONS)
In Mansfield Park and Persuasion, Austen provides subtle but compelling opportunities to look past the margins of the text and beyond the homogenous and polite English society, out to the wider sphere of Great Britain and the British Empire. She accomplishes this with the help of naval officers, characters who connect the domestic estates of the landed gentry to the realm of Empire. The fact that Austen understands the naval profession so well came as a surprise to my students. Two of Austen's brothers, Sir Francis William (1774-1865) and Charles John (1779-1852), both had distinguished careers at sea, each rising to the position of admiral. Her brothers' experiences taught her how difficult it was to advance in the naval profession and correspondingly to rise in polite society. Austen used the example of her brothers' experiences when charting the careers of her fictional naval officers. As she provocatively demonstrates in both Mansfield Park and Persuasion, success at sea could not be achieved without determination and hard work, but healthy quantities of good luck, good timing, and good contacts are also required. Correspondingly, achieving success on land in polite society depended upon the accumulation of capital. Using Austen's own terminology, the gentleman officer owed some portion of his success to luck and connections, nepotism being the most frequent means through which sailors became made officers. (3) A sailor had to be lucky enough to receive a commission and lucky again to see lucrative military action, which would enable him to accumulate prize money. Although the possibility did exist for a young man to climb the social ladder (on land) by increasing his rating (rank at sea), the instances were exceptions rather than the rule. Mansfield Park's William Price serves as an example of the precariousness of this process. After suffering a great deal of anxiety about promotion (249-50), he finally attains a commission as a lieutenant (298). The experience of Persuasion's Dick Musgrove, who failed to raise his rank above midshipman before he perished at a young age, and whose life is summed up as a "pathetic piece of family history," is a more common example of naval reality (50).
Before introducing students to the successful, gallant, and heroic naval officers who star in Persuasion, a novel that is set after the Napoleonic War, I had them first investigate examples of naval reality in Mansfield Park, which is set before the heroic Napoleonic War period. Juxtaposing the two naval representations underscores the relationship between history and literature. During an historical period when public morale regarding the navy is low, Austen's naval officers are predominantly shadowy, marginal characters standing well outside the spotlight (excepting William Price). However, after the Royal Navy has defeated Napoleon's France, naval officers become central heroes in the dramatic action of her text.
One of the well known examples of sordid naval information that comes to us in Mansfield Park is delivered by the unlikely character of Mary Crawford. She presents readers with a rude bit of gossip about the wider world of the British Navy. Mary's connection to the navy results from her upbringing in the home of her aunt and uncle, Admiral and Mrs. Crawford. Presumably the Admiral's influence on both his niece and nephew has been damaging, and there are several references to that effect. The most shocking evidence of the Admiral's influence surfaces during a conversation Mary is having with Fanny Price and Edmond Bertram. Mary absolutely crosses the line of decency when she reminds her companions that sailors are well known for homosexual behavior. She jokes, "'my home at my uncle's brought me acquainted with a circle of admirals. Of Rears and Vices, I saw enough. Now, don't suspect me of a pun, I entreat'" (60). There is some debate about Austen's intention in having Mary deliver these lines. I tend to agree with Kathryn Sutherland, who notes: "Mary Crawford may deny any intention to pun, but her witticism (in fact, a rather filthy joke) draws attention to the Royal Navy's wartime reputation for homosexual activity." (4) In part the class focused on the Admiral's inappropriate influence on Mary and her brother, Henry Crawford. In several instances, Admiral Crawford is blamed for "tainting" his niece and nephew (269). Edmund's diagnosis of Mary as "injured" and "tainted" fits a pattern of language use woven into the text that centers on infection and disease. That is, the Admiral's influence is represented as something insidious and transmittable--as a conduit between the navy and the domestic space. Mary herself calls the Admiral's influence on her brother a "contagion" and fears he might "contract" something from him (295). Additionally, Mary's jaw-dropping comment prompted students to view her from a feminist perspective, seeing her belligerent remark as liberating in its determination to break rules and social conventions.
Another naval character the class explored in detail was Fanny's father, Mr. Price. Fittingly, we locate him via the marriage plot; however, Mr. Price served as an example to the class of a bad choice of husband--of not marrying well. Earlier we learned about Maria Ward's successful marriage to the baronet, Sir Thomas Bertram. Her younger sister, Frances, was not so lucky. Austen states that Frances
fared yet worse.... But Miss Frances married, in the common phrase, to disoblige her family, and by fixing on a Lieutenant of Marines, without education, fortune, or connections, did it very thoroughly. She could hardly have made a more untoward choice. Sir Thomas had interest, which, from principle as well as pride, from a general wish of doing right, and a desire of seeing all that were connected with him in situations of respectability ... but her husband's profession was such as no interest could reach; and before he had time to devise any other method of assisting them, an absolute breach between the sisters had taken place. (3-4)
Frances's low marriage to a Lieutenant of Marines is intriguing and useful in the classroom on several levels: We had the opportunities to discover more about his rank in the navy, the stipend he receives for his injury, his relatively low social position, the reason(s) why Sir Thomas is unable to assist him in reaching a better position, and finally, Mr. Price's behavior prompted the class to discuss naval discipline--topics seemingly outside the pale of Austen's polite world. Austen tells her reader that Mr. Price is "not the less equal to company and good liquor" (4), and that he is physically violent. When he discovers in the newspaper that Sir Thomas Bertram's daughter, Maria, has left her husband, Mr. Rushworth, and run into the arms of Henry Crawford, Price thunders, "'I don't know what Sir Thomas may think of such matters; he may be too much of a courtier and fine gentleman to like his daughter the less. But by G--if she belonged to me, I'd give her the rope's end as long as I could stand over her. A little flogging for man and woman too, would be the best way of preventing such things'" (439-40). Mr. Price's violent response to Maria's transgression alludes to the navy's traditionally violent (often described as sadistic) methods of discipline and punishment. His preference for flogging as a means of solving domestic problems locates Price on the margins of polite society, far from the gentlemanly behavior of the baronet.
In the spirit of reconstructing history from the bottom up, I introduced students to excerpts from William Robinson's text, Jack Nasty face: Memoirs of a Seaman, wherein the author, a common sailor from the Napoleonic War period, informs that "Any person who has been on board a ship of war, must be aware that discipline and subordination is necessary, but the extent to which cruelty was carried on under the name of discipline, on board many ships during the late war [Napoleonic War], is not generally known, nor will the British public believe that any body of men would submit to such marks of degradation as they were compelled to undergo" (138). Robinson describes various naval punishments including: flogging through the fleet, running the gauntlet, flogging at the gangway or on the quarter-deck, starting, and gagging. For Robinson, naval conditions were so bad that he abandoned the Royal Navy and in the process forfeited all of his pay. He finally resurfaced in British society (with his narrative) in the mid-1830s, when he believed he would be immune to charges of desertion. Adding to the interplay between history and literature, the naval information enlightened students to the fact that from the top ranking officer to lowly common sailor, all men on board these ships were intimately acquainted with discipline: Some ordered floggings, some dispensed them, many received them, and everyone observed them. All of Jane Austen's naval officers, heroic and otherwise, along with her sailor brothers would have been well acquainted with the lash.
Austen's brother Francis was questioned about shipboard violence during his command of the ship Elephant in 1813 (the same year Austen completed Mansfield Park). Francis was interrogated by his superior, Rear-Admiral George Hope, about the excessive number of floggings (ninety-eight) administered and recorded in the ship's log during that voyage. Francis's justification for the number and frequency of floggings was that "The 'germ' of drunkenness ... was 'introduced' into the Elephant from the very beginning, before she was fitted out and 'before a regular system of discipline could be established.'" (5) Francis may not have discussed the matter with his sister, for these aspects of the navy were certainly not discussable in polite company. However, Jane Austen was familiar with the horrors of naval violence, for she implants in Mr. Price an unmistakable tendency towards sadistic cruelty. Mr. Price's intimate knowledge of naval violence translates ominously on land into a reflex response--a means of solving domestic problems. In this way, naval dysfunction cannot be contained at sea, but spills over onto the shores of Portsmouth Harbor and beyond.
Investigating the naval officers of Persuasion is a different experience altogether because success in war has transformed some of them into Romantic heroes. Much attention has been paid to the honorable character of these men and to the heroic battles they fought. Accordingly, the class seized opportunities to chart the progress of the English Navy during the engagement at Trafalgar and other famous sea battles of the war. We viewed excerpts from the recent motion picture, Captain and Commander, so students could get a sense of what sea battles during this period were like.
Approaches to teaching the naval component of this novel are numerous. Since it is beyond the scope of this survey to catalogue them, suffice it to say that I complicated the heroic perspective of the naval officers by having the class investigate Austen's numerous and overt references to the monetary value of these men. Their monetary success seems to bring with it a kind of social validation. So much so that the desire for money potentially overshadows any praise for patriotism. For example, Austen informs that as the Napoleonic War comes to its conclusion, the peace "will be turning all our rich Navy Officers ashore. They will all be wanting a home. Many a noble fortune has been made during the war" (17). With so much emphasis placed on money and incentives, the door is open to question the morals of these officers. I asked students to pursue these monetary threads and British naval moneymaking practices like prize money, head money, and freight money. When Austen has Persuasion's Louisa Musgrove indicate that Wentworth will arrive at the Musgroves' estate as soon as he is "paid-off, or something'" she unwittingly refers to the captain's receipt of 25,000 £ of prize money, the system of incentives in the English Navy paid for the sacking of enemy vessels (50). Students became confused, however, when Wentworth refers to his prize gathering experiences as an "entertainment," a "lovely cruise." He is cavalier, almost nonchalant, about his "adventures," which I suggested might inform his priority: profit before patriotism. (6) During one of his tours of duty he brags, "'Ah! Those were pleasant days when I had the Laconia! How fast I made money in her'" (67). Wentworth's speech emphasizes the fortune-hunting incentive that potentially defines his motivation for participating in the navy. Students noticed that he does not speak of duty to country but boasts exclusively of personal gain.
FINAL THOUGHTS
My students learned quickly the extent to which Jane Austen's novels are historical. We made rewarding connections between history and literature by pursuing the subtleties in Austen's novels and by keeping track of both who is present and who is not. As a result, it did not take long to find our way out of the novels. Austen's novels are an excellent place to begin this kind of critical training. Once readers get hooked on the plots and identify with her characters, the pursuits of historical reading and research become welcomed experiences. Austen studies provide readers and educators with so many ways to access the novels: film, web pages, journals, clubs, organizations, and events. These abundant resources continually provide evidence that Austen's novels are vital, engaging, and still evolving--even for college freshmen. Who knows what readers will discover when they explore the moment when Emma's Harriet Smith is harassed by a group of gypsy children, or when Pride and Prejudice's Darcy pompously utters that "'Every savage can dance.'"
WORKS CITED
Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park. Ed. R. W. Chapman. 3rd ed. Oxford: OUP, 1933.
--. Persuasion. Ed. R. W. Chapman. 3rd
--. ed. Oxford: OUP, 1933.
--. Pride and Prejudice. Ed. R. W. Chapman. 3rd ed. Oxford: OUP, 1933.
Bromberg, Pamela. "Teaching About the Marriage Plot." Approaches to Teaching Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Ed. Marcia McClintock Folsom. New York: MLA, 1993.
Brown, Julia Prewitt. "The 'Social History' of Pride and Prejudice." Approaches to Teaching Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Ed. Marcia McClintock Folsom. New York: MLA, 1993.
Copeland, Edward. Women Writing About Money: Women's Fiction in England, 1790-1820. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995.
Greenblatt, Stephen. The New Historicism. New York: Routledge, 1989.
Kent, Christopher. "Learning History with, and from, Jane Austen." Jane Austen's Beginnings: The Juvenilia. Ed. David Grey. Ann Arbor: U Microfilms International Research P, 1989.
Lewis, Michael. A Social History of the Navy, 1793-1815. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1960.
Montrose, Louis. Qtd. in A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory. Ed. Michael Payne. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.
Moretti, Franco. Atlas of the European Novel, 1800-1900. London and New York: Verso, 1998.
Robinson, William. Jack Nastyface: Memoirs of a Seaman. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1973.
Rodger, N.A.M. The Wooden World: Anatomy of the Georgian Navy. London and New York: W. W. Norton, 1986.
Southam, Brian. Jane Austen and the Navy. London and New York: Hambledon and London, 2000.
Sutherland, Kathryn, Ed. Mansfield Park. By Jane Austen. London: Penguin, 1996.
NOTES
(1.) Louis Montrose is quoted in A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory, 369-70.
(2.) The first novel we read was Pride and Prejudice, and our focus was mainly on the marriage plot. Since there has been so much attention paid to that novel, I omit it here and begin with Mansfield Park.
(3.) In The Wooden World: Anatomy of the Georgian Navy, 273, N.A.M. Rodger argues that the lion's share of promotion opportunities were reserved for members of the nobility and gentry, but there did exist opportunities based on merit for a "substantial minority" of men.
(4.) In Kathryn Sutherland's Notes to Austen's Mansfield Park (Penguin Edition), 396.
(5.) Francis Austen is quoted in Brian Southam's Jane Austen and the Navy, 283.
(6.) For more information on the ethics of British naval officers during the Napoleonic War, see Michael Lewis's A Social History of the Navy, 1793-1815.
Robert G. Dryden is an Assistant Professor of English at University of Hartford's Hillyer College, where he teaches writing and British literature. His work includes articles on Jane Austen, John Gay, and Rosario Ferre.
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| Author: | Dryden, Robert G. |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal |
| Geographic Code: | 4EUUK |
| Date: | Jan 1, 2005 |
| Words: | 4389 |
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