Below is an almagamation of three messages from the
AUSTEN-L discussion list, lightly edited
for the addition of HTML mark-up; this is followed by
Sir William Mountague, a piece from Jane Austen's
juvenilia which perfectly illustrates
Moody's heroes of "type 2".
I would like to give it a try -- to defend Edmund Bertram [of Mansfield Park]. The problem is
that, while I think he is much more thoroughly and consistently developed than
Edward Ferrars [of Sense and
Sensibility], the defense would have to be based on scattered
passages, for the evolving consciousnesses of the books are those of the women.
We've talked [on AUSTEN-L] of how we don't
see sufficiently into Darcy's
change of heart, into Captain Wentworth's revolution in feeling. We are to
admire Edmund and Edward for what they are from the time we meet them; though
again, Edmund is an improvement on Edward, for he does evolve in front of us as
his courtship of Mary Crawford proceeds, is stymied, and is finally brought to
a dead close. What I like about Edmund is how, except in the case of Mary
(Cupid is blind!), he doesn't miss anything, and his kindness is based on the
subtlest of things, which is how it is in life. The little things count
so.
It would also have to be on moral grounds: he is good, kind, decent,
absolutely loyal, unwilling to wound, sensible. This too is, I think, true of
all Austen's heroes once we get to know them. There are also several long
scenes between Fanny Price and Edmund which we lack in Sense and
Sensibility; they go into the shrubbery too, like Emma & Knightley,
and he makes the best case for Henry Crawford that anyone in the novel does,
because he makes it based on Fanny's nature: his "cheerfulness" will
"counteract" Fanny's tendency, let's say, not to be cheerful; "He sees
difficulties no where; and his pleasantness and gaiety will be a constant
support to you" (Chapter 35). He sees they are unalike, but Crawford has
strengths Fanny lacks, which will help her and cheer her. He also finally
looks at her to see (because she is under a real strain emotionally, to have
to listen to this) "weariness and distress in her face, and immediately
resolved to forbear". Little phrases like this ring home. There is just so
much more about Fanny, funny ones too, as when she goes on about "the name
Edmund. It is a name of heroism and renown -- of kings, princes, and knights;
and seems to breathe the spirit of chivalry and warm affections" (Chapter 22).
Boy, has she got it bad! Henry hadn't a hope; Austen does say outright that
Fanny's was an absolutely "pre-engaged heart."
Edmund is nice to Fanny, but he is shallow -- I can't believe he
defended his father's wish for Fanny to live with Aunt Norris. He is
the one person I expected to stick up for Fanny, but he does not stand
up for her when she refuses Henry. He should have her values, her
insight, and strength to stand up for what he believes, if he is going
to be the kind of clergy he was lecturing Mary Crawford about. Does
he think gentlemen always treat their women as well as his father has?
I know he has had a sheltered life, but it should have occurred to him
that Henry might not be suitable for Fanny.
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 22:36:29 -0400
From: Ellen Moody
Subject: Edmund Bertram not a bad guy
I'd like to suggest Penny is too hard on Edmund Bertram; he is
self-centered; he sees the world in terms of his own desires and
values, and nothing in his life has taught him to think himself
insignificant, but he is no Mr. Collins. He is not witty, and doesn't
know how to flirt and play lightly, but he is not a hypocrite, not a
fawner, not a fool. I believe he is genuinely religious, and
genuinely takes a religious view of sexual behavior; he is horrified
at Maria and Henry's behavior. (Actually I get a stronger sense of
horror from his words than Fanny's; Fanny seems sorrowful, and more
concerned for her aunt and uncle and Edmund than radically appalled by
the "sin" -- not that she does not regard it gravely; she does).
Edmund is not a central character in Mansfield Park.
Like Fanny he has his faults, but they are not the major ones of
heartless selfishness and false values that many others in the book
either deliberately or unthinkingly act out.
I'll take up the question of why we like some Austen heroes better than
others. I don't think it's just a matter of having nothing to forgive them
for, because some things are easier to forgive than others, and when we
decide what we find easier to forgive, we are telling more about our own
morality vis-à-vis Austen's than Austen's own. Still, I'll
bite.
The heroes who are often not liked, not favorites, are those who are
deeply moral; let us call them the Ashley Wilkes [of Gone with the
Wind] types: sensitive, kind, loyal, impeccably behaved from the
standpoint of true tact, gentility, and altruism, and very conventional in
their sense of what a gentleman is; Austen of course plays tricks on us, and
adds to this weak soup characteristics like reserve, manly hauteur in order to
protect the self (how I see some of George Knightley's behavior to Emma), and being
more than a little gauche, very bad at gay repartée -- for which many of
Austen's readers cannot forgive Edmund Bertram, Edward Ferrars, Colonel
Brandon, and George Knightley. As Rhett Butler says, they're gentlemen caught
in a world which worships handsomeness, suavity, the man who can master
others. Edward Ferrars and Colonel Brandon are weak in that battle of
domination between people that is perhaps the essence of life, as in "life is a
war of nerves", "a battle".
These types are "dolts", "dull", "prigs", "starchy", common epithets thrown
at Austen heroes of a certain type, no? But Austen thinks these are men who,
when also intelligent and loving and constant -- and with that competent
income -- make women happy, especially when the natures and tastes of the two
are alike -- witness Elinor Dashwood and Edward Ferrars, Fanny Price and
Edmund Bertram. I'd say Knightley does not really fall in here, because he's
not weak in that battle of mastery; he just shares some of the qualities of
Edward Ferrars, Edmund Bertram, and Colonel Brandon, for which some readers
have had a hard time forgiving him. Well, I am fond of Edward Ferrars and
Edmund Bertram, though I wouldn't want to marry them; they'd bore me to tears;
and to be truthful, I don't really believe in Colonel Brandon. He's an
escapee from a Gothic fiction, great, theatrical, effective, but not
persuasive ultimately; even the flannel waistcoat does not disguise the
origin.
Now the heroes who are also villains, we may call the Rhett Butler type;
though to be less anachronistic, and get closer to the fundamental archetype,
we have our softened Lovelaces:
Willoughby, Wickham, Henry Crawford,
Frank Churchill, perhaps William Walter Elliot (though he's not rounded out, as
Persuasion is truncated and
unfinished -- I hold to my theory, argued this past summer, that the novel
was meant to have a third volume). These are alluring males, alluring
precisely because they are dangerous, fun to be with, amusing, handsome
(though Mr. Elliot is, to be sure, as Sir Walter says, a bit "underhung,"
but then everyone's ravaged by time in Persuasion). What do we
have to forgive here? Disloyalty, having sex with another woman,
insouciance, a certain callous indifference in order to make a joke,
selfishness, the ability to be endlessly idle, and, more important, the
inability to look into themselves and see they're wrong and ought to change,
because they cannot feel the kind of joy intense love, and all that comes
with it, can bring. Love here includes love of people other than the
individual with whom one is sexually involved.
That Austen seems to suggest that as a group these men are very shallow in their
emotions is interesting, because the
Lovelaces and Rhett Butlers of novels are
given an intensity of emotion that is overpowering. Austen won't allow that;
that's the delicious poison we drink down to our own destruction. I'd say a
lot of people don't have all that much trouble forgiving the above faults, but
Austen thinks such men are, you should excuse the expression, bad husband
material; and I suggest that the one quality she can't forgive is the
unfeelingness and inconstancy of these men. But what fun such people are,
never a dull moment with Willoughby -- though if read carefully, I think he
may be seen to be ultimately shallow and selfish. He's the boy who's not
sorry he's had a good time, but terribly sorry he's not to have his candy
after all. And Henry Crawford is given possibilities; we are led to feel that
maybe he could have become the third type, though I doubt it -- he'd have been
bored to tears with poor Fanny (and indeed, it would have been poor
Fanny had she married him).
So that leaves my third type, into which I'd suggest Henry Tilney
somewhat falls -- what shall we call them? In a way, Austen is one of the
novelists who invented this type; I can't think of such a male character
before her works, though I've got lots to cite afterwards, especially from the
Victorian novelists influenced by her, as Trollope and George Eliot. (Though
Charlotte Brontë would not
like it, I'd say her Rochester falls into this group.) I shall call them the
Frederick Wentworth type (giving the game away).
What we have to forgive them for is what we might have to forgive any
human being who's fundamentally decent and loving and intelligent and also
capable of interesting conversation -- time and circumstances have not been
altogether on their side. That is so for Darcy, although he has been called a
millionaire playboy. If he's that, he's not having much fun sitting next to
Miss Bingley. Darcy has been the
object of continual sycophancy, overindulgence, and the utterly cold heartless
materialistic proud values of the
Lady Catherine de Bourghs of
the world. He must look into his heart and change. He does. We must forgive
him snubbing someone, arrogance, saturnine dour dark pessimism about human
nature, a veneer of coldness (this hauteur we find also in Type 1, as outlined
above, and is a part of Knightley who is very careful, very wary, very cautious
about whatever he does). I have the hardest time forgiving Darcy's first two
faults; but he gives them up. This group includes Wentworth, maybe my ultimate favorite of all the
heroes; yes his letter "you pierce my soul" sends a thrill into mine, even if
overwritten. When he lifts Anne into the carriage, pulls the boy off her
back, drops his pen, I am a goner. (Though I grant you, in his give-and-take
conversations with Elizabeth, it's more than hinted that Darcy may be more fun
you-know-where).
Some later Type 3 heroes who seem to hark back to Frederick Wentworth in
some ways: Tertius Lydgate in Middlemarch; Phineas Finn in
Trollope's two books of that name; the hero of New Grub Street;
and many of the attractive and strong but vulnerable males of the 19th century
novel. This type moves into the early 20th century in the novels of
E.M. Forster and others.
Henry Tilney also has not had all things on his side -- as witness his
tyrannical father; but his mother was apparently very good (as was Anne
Elliot's mother), and the boy has the happiness of that independent income
which frees (as Oscar Wilde said, "It is better to have a permanent income
than to be fascinating"). In truth, though, there's nothing to forgive;
however, we don't have a hard time forgiving him this deplorable lack of
faults, perhaps because he is so young and gay and so human -- and so I place
him in Type 3, the new type Austen invented, the gentleman who has it all, all
the things that charm woman and is good husband material into the bargain.
Let me end on George Knightley, because Knightley suffers from the flaw I perceive
in Tilney -- there's nothing to forgive -- but in his case, alas poor man, we
can't forgive him his perfection, for unlike the others of Type 1 he's not
weak, not a dolt, not gauche (though, as he says, he can't talk love-talk very
well). But, let us recall, we are seeing him through Emma's eyes, and this
may be why he seems so self-righteous (after all who does he think he is
anyway to be preaching to Emma, whom we all identify with in this novel, will
we nill we). But I love Knightley; I do; I love his tact, his courtesy, his
chivalry, his right-thinking, I don't mind his strong moral uprightness one
little bit. I've an idea it might not be boring. There is just that element
of play and strength in his dialogues with Emma which entrances.
We can set up continuums between Austen's types of heroes and those of
others, sometimes before her but mostly after. Both
Lovelace from Samuel Richardson's
Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison from his novel of the same
name, play an important role as background and influences on Austen's fiction.
It seems to me beyond doubt that Richardson's exemplary hero Sir Charles
Grandison played a role in Austen's formulation of her heroes; someone has
pointed out the close resemblances in various ways between Austen's George
Knightley and Richardson's Sir Charles; the difference between them is
sometimes not simply a matter of insight into what is really humane, but plain
old tact. Richardson is tactless because his main aim is didactic, and what
he pushes as good is sometimes just authoritarian, "let's obey the
establishment, whatever it tells us to do, because it's always right". Austen
says, well, it's prudent anyway. Richardson's presentation of Sir Charles
also plays a role in the characterization of
Darcy; Darcy resembles Sir
Charles more than is often noticed. The austerity, the dark pessmism (Sir
Charles is not an optimist), the curious hardness and insistence on strength
as an important quality in a man, the lack of sentimentality that we find in
Austen's Darcy, has a similar kind of formulation in Richardson's making of
his Sir Charles.
This is not, however to say that either my Type 1 or Type 3 are Sir Charles.
Edward Ferrars and Edmund Bertram are just too soft, too awkward, too what the
19th century novelist might have called "unmanly". I can't imagine either of
them going off for a duel. Sir Charles is, when sufficiently bothered,
willing to duel out of his passion; that he does not is just another way in
which he is so very exemplary, but he's violent when need be. And Frederick
Wentworth is just too vulnerable; Sir Charles is never vulnerable, never the
victim of circumstance or luck. In fact, Sir Charles is never a victim;
Richardson couldn't see his way to finding out that such a character is truly
admirable; they are always slighly scorned in his fictions (as in the case of
Charles Hickman from Clarissa, or Charlotte Grandison's
long-suffering husband). In a way, I'll say Austen's Type 1 is as original
her with as what I called Type 3.
She is daring for presenting men who are not violent, not masterly, not
having all those alluring Rhett Butler or Lovelace qualities, and still
insisting we should find in them true heroes.
an unfinished performance
is humbly dedicated to Charles John
Austen Esqre., by his most obedient humble
Servant
THE AUTHOR
SIR WILLIAM MOUNTAGUE was the son of Sir Henry Mountague, who was
the son of Sir John Mountague, a descendant of Sir Christopher
Mountague, who was the nephew of Sir Edward Mountague, whose ancestor
was Sir James Mountague, a near relation of Sir Robert Mountague, who
inherited the Title & Estate from Sir Frederic Mountague.
Sir William was about 17 when his Father died, & left him a
handsome fortune, an ancient House, & a Park well stocked with Deer.
Sir William had not been long in the possession of his Estate before
he fell in Love with the 3 Miss Cliftons of Kilhoobery Park. These
young Ladies were all equally young, equally handsome, equally rich &
equally amiable -- Sir William was equally in Love with them all, &
knowing not which to prefer, he left the
Country & took Lodgings in a
small Village near Dover.
In this retreat, to which he had retired in the hope of finding a
shelter from the Pangs of Love, he became enamoured of a young Widow
of Quality, who came for change of air to the same Village, after the
death of a Husband, whom she had always tenderly loved & now sincerely
lamented.
Lady Percival was young, accomplished & lovely. Sir William adored
her & she consented to become his Wife. Vehemently pressed by Sir
William to name the Day in which he might conduct her to the Altar,
she at length fixed on the following Monday, which was the first of
September. Sir William was a Shot & could not support the idea of
losing such a Day, even for such a Cause. He begged her to delay the
Wedding a short time. Lady Percival was enraged & returned to London
the next Morning.
Sir William was sorry to lose her, but as he knew that he should
have been much more greived by the Loss of the 1st of September, his
Sorrow was not without a mixture of Happiness, & his Affliction was
considerably lessened by his Joy.
After staying at the Village a few weeks longer, he left it & went
to a freind's House in Surry. Mr. Brudenell was a sensible Man, & had
a beautifull Neice with whom Sir William soon fell in love. But Miss
Arundel was cruel; she preferred a Mr. Stanhope: Sir William shot
Mr. Stanhope; the lady had then no reason to refuse him; she accepted him,
& they were to be married on the 27th of October. But on the 25th Sir
William received a visit from Emma Stanhope, the sister of the
unfortunate Victim of his rage. She begged some recompence, some
atonement for the cruel Murder of her Brother. Sir William bade her
name her price. She fixed on 14 shillings. Sir William offered her
himself & Fortune. They went to London the next day & were there
privately married. For a fortnight Sir William was compleatly happy,
but chancing one day to see a charming young Woman entering a Chariot
in Brook Street, he became again most violently in love. On enquiring
the name of this fair Unknown, he found that she was the Sister of his
old freind Lady Percival, at which he was much rejoiced, as he hoped
to have, by his acquaintance with her Ladyship, free access to Miss
Wentworth........