As an avid reader, I’m often struck by the fact that in many books fairly obvious devices are used to push the book along or support the plot. Some books would never be able to complete the story satisfactorily without these unlikely incidents.
All authors do it to a greater or lesser extent. I expect I do, whether unconsciously or deliberately. At the moment, since I’m writing historical novels based on Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, it is that book I am most focused on when considering out-of-character events.
In romantic novels, it’s an almost ubiquitous theme that the two lovers, whom you suspect from the outset are destined for one another, have some invented impediment put in their way which has to be surmounted before the couple can get together. It can be that they are opponents in business or some other area such as politics, or maybe some geographical gulf separates them, or their friends don’t like each other, or their families object, or there’s some racial issue, but there’s always something. The factor which keeps them apart can be something quite tame. I once read a book in which it was the woman’s mental health issues which made her cut herself off from the man. While this may well happen in real life, in a romantic novel, I found it an unsatisfactory, flimsy reason for one lover to reject the other.
In Pride & Prejudice, it’s largely Darcy’s stiff, unpleasant countenance and his fastidiousness, as Bingley describes it. On first attending an assembly in Meryton, Darcy utters in Elizabeth’s hearing the most blistering and frankly inexplicable put down in the form of those famous words: “She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me; and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men. You had better return to your partner and enjoy her smiles, for you are wasting your time with me.”
This crushing, hurtful insult has never been explained. As the wonderful book ‘Jane Austen ‒ The World of Her Novels’ by Deirdre Le Faye points out: ‘We are never in fact told why Darcy should behave in so uncivil a manner or refuse so rudely to dance with Elizabeth’. We do not learn that, for example, Darcy sometimes suffers from blinding headaches or had terrible toothache that evening. That Lizzy was able to make a joke of it to her friends the same evening and later to Colonel Fitzwilliam at Rosings Park is a testament to her good nature, but still the words used were unforgivable.
I cannot help thinking that such an obvious, surprising and very unlikely insult aimed at Elizabeth Bennet very early in the book was intended to create in the reader’s mind the impression that Elizabeth would never be able to like such a man. It must therefore be a deliberate device to create tension between the couple, a situation so beloved of romantic authors. This was subsequently strengthened by Wickham’s allegations about Darcy and Elizabeth’s great attraction to him. Readers at that point, not aware of the ending, might well assume that Elizabeth and Wickham would make a match. Elizabeth even talks about the possibility to her aunt Gardiner.
The following year, however, Darcy shows himself to be kind and generous; also shy in that after the Netherfield party return to Hertfordshire, he can barely bring himself to address Elizabeth, a great frustration for her. His real character as exemplified by this later behaviour makes it all the more likely that he would not have spoken so uncivilly to Elizabeth when first meeting her the previous autumn.
The second of these employed devices is, to my mind, the fact that, while at Rosings, Darcy told Elizabeth, a woman who had just emphatically rejected his marriage proposal, all about his young sister’s near elopement with Wickham and moreover that he did so in permanent written form. Had the letter fallen into the wrong hands and Georgiana’s actions become widely known, then her reputation would have been irredeemably tarnished. Think of the dire predictions made about Lydia’s future had Wickham not been persuaded to marry her. Similar would surely have been said of Georgiana; that she had risked such a terrible outcome herself.
Surely, Darcy could have given his account of Wickham’s character without mentioning Georgiana. He could have alluded to a similar invented episode involving a local, unnamed, well-born girl in Derbyshire, say. Bringing Wickham into it at that stage of course shows Elizabeth that Wickham was a bad lot, reinforced by his later elopement with Lydia. It makes for a good story that his victim was in fact Darcy’s own young sister. I know that it shows he trusted Elizabeth despite her rejection of his proposal which is quite sweet in its way. I just don’t think that a loving brother, especially one with such an attachment to propriety and disdain for social inferiors at that time would have disclosed his sister’s folly. I think most discreet people in any age of any class would have left their young relative out of it.
Finally, a surprising event to me was Wickham’s absconding from the army, with or without taking a girl with him. It was an incredibly foolhardy thing to do when one considers that his actions would have amounted to desertion, a wrong potentially severely punishable. After all, the country was at war. If utter foolhardiness was an aspect of Wickham’s character, then the book does not make this obvious. He was able to conduct himself in public in a gentlemanly manner. Yes, he lied to gain favour, but he does not come over as a total halfwit. Indeed, his character is, if anything, calculated.
In the letter from Mrs Gardiner to Elizabeth, she says that Wickham told Darcy during the negotiations aimed at persuading him to marry Lydia that it was an ambition of his to make a marriage to a rich woman. At that time, this was not unusual or particularly reprehensible, any more than was Darcy’s natural disdain of Elizabeth’s family and background given the behaviour of her mother and some of her sisters. Wickham’s ambition would have been a quite natural desire on the part of a man of no means. His earlier dalliance with Georgiana was similarly motivated. It isn’t indicative of a complete rogue or reckless person as the book rather attempts to paint him.
Wickham’s bad behaviour is talked of in Meryton in exaggerated terms, although Elizabeth ‘did not credit above half of what was said’, which throws doubt on the extreme accounts of his behaviour.
We know that Wickham was in debt. Something over a thousand pounds according to Mrs Gardiner in her letter to Elizabeth, including presumably the debts incurred in Meryton. The debt, including gambling debts, is given as the main reason for Wickham absconding but I find this to be a not entirely convincing incentive for a man to desert the army and possibly have to go to ground, disappear completely. Gambling was rife at the time, as was living on credit. (Indeed, both are still to this day.) The debts run up by many well-known and supposedly wealthy people of the era were astronomical, for example the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Derbyshire. However, gambling was illegal and gambling debts could not be legally enforced, therefore to desert on account of them seems unlikely.
Therefore when writing about the episode in Georgiana’s London Season, I had to invent a more credible reason for Wickham’s desertion which was that Lydia’s presence in Brighton and attentions towards Wickham effectively prevented him from following through on his plan to marry a rich woman. Essentially, she got in the way. I also added that Wickham and Lydia had already been intimate and he realised that they could hardly carry on their liaison to the knowledge of other soldiers and those in the town with whom the officers associated. Thus, according to my version, Wickham felt that he was hemmed in and had no alternative but to leave Brighton.
Mrs Gardiner’s letter to Elizabeth suggests that Wickham tried to protect Lydia and not give the impression that it was she who was wholly responsible for the remove from Brighton. He blamed his ‘pressing’ debts as much as Lydia folly. So, yes, debts were a factor in the book, but I still do not think that they would alone have been enough to bring about the desertion from the army. Another solution to his problems would have been to borrow money from a money lender to satisfy some of his debts and keep his creditors at bay for the time being until Lydia had left Brighton (after all she could not stay there forever) and he could resume his pursuit of marriage to a rich woman.
But the elopement of Lydia and Wickham provides the eventual means by which Elizabeth and Darcy get together and marry, so there had to be a desertion and elopement even if not entirely realistic.
The book also contains a fair number of coincidences (Charlotte Lucas marrying a rector whose patron was Darcy’s aunt and Darcy returning a day early to Pemberley being the main ones) without which the ending probably wouldn’t have been possible, but let us not dwell on those.
I’m not sure whether I’ll post this on any of the Facebook groups devoted to Jane Austen, her books or historical fiction generally for fear of the outcry it might cause. Jane Austen has an almost saint-like place in literature for some people. Many of her advocates refer to Pride & Prejudice as ‘canon’ which I find rather pompous.
For sure, the book is immensely enjoyable and excellent, especially for its day and I like it much more than her other novels. I’m not criticising it, merely pointing out that Jane Austen used devices to push her stories along like any other author and I don’t find anything wrong with that, but neither do I think that one should be afraid to comment on it.
I hope to be able to publish Georgiana’s London Season in September. The attached image by Austen-Leigh, J. E. (1798-1874) is of Steventon Rectory where Jane Austen grew up.
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