Jane Austen at Play: Self-Consciousness, Beginnings, Endings
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Ann Arbor, MI 48106 NOTE TO USERS THE ORIGINAL DOCUMENT RECEIVED BY U.M.I. CONTAINED PAGES WITH SLANTED PRINT. PAGES WERE FILMED AS RECEIVED. THIS REPRODUCTION IS THE BEST AVAILABLE COPY. JANE AUSTEN AT PLAY: SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, BEGINNINGS, ENDINGS by Kuldip Kaur Kuwahara A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Greensboro 1990 Approved by APPROVAL PAGE This dissertation has been approved by the following committee of the Faculty of the Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Dissertation Adviser Committee Members _ /f&*t t MjiA—4 -y ^AaAuory Date of Acceptance by Committee "3c«iUd/y 3/t Date of Final Oral Examination • • 11 1990/ by Kuldip Kaur Kuwahara KUWAHARA, KULDIP KAUR, Ph.D. Jane Austen at Play: Self- Consciousness, Beginnings, Endings. (1990) Directed by Dr. James E. Evans. 223 pp. It is because Jane Austen takes her art seriously that she can play. A self-conscious novelist, she„ delights in playing with reality and illusion, and the conventions of fiction-making. Her ironic perspective on individual consciousness and social interaction explains a lively interest in the comedy of manners. Irony underlines the paradox between her self-consciousness as an artist and her impersonality and control of aesthetic distance. Austen treats art as an expression of what her contemporary, Schiller, termed the "Spieltrieb" or "play drive." Schiller's argument for the need of the "play drive" to unite the "form drive" (associated with man's rational nature) with the "sense drive" (associated with man's sensuous nature) to express the ideal aesthetic experience, provides a useful framework for my study of Austen's playfulness. She seems to make the ironic suggestion that life can be most fully experienced through art. I have focussed on Austen's self-consciousness, and the beginnings and endings of her six completed novels, to illustrate this. Each novel begins and ends with a journey and triumphantly celebrates a "happy ending." The heroines and heroes are growing, developing characters who, in achieving balance and harmony within themselves and in their relationship, learn to play. In Persuasion. her last completed novel, Austen challenges her readers with a different kind of "happy ending." The hero and heroine leave the security and stability of life on land for the vast, threatening sea. They provide definitions of freedom and beauty. Austen creates aesthetically satisfying works of art and reaches a point of perfect equilibrium to play with an ideal world. Yet her ideal world is clearly rooted in the finite world with its limitless possibilities. Her fiction enriches and enlarges our perception of the significance of play; it liberates those who fully respond to her art. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am most grateful to my dissertation advisor Dr. James Evans and to the members of my advisory committee: Dr. Randolph Bulgin, Dr. Keith Cushman, Dr. Donald Darnell, and Dr. William Goode. Their guidance and teaching throughout the program have been appreciated. I also acknowledge the advice and comments of Dr. Amy Charles who was a member of my advisory committee but did not live to see the completed dissertation. Dr. Steven Lautermilch•s lectures and class discussion were helpful in formulating my ideas. My husband, Kazuhide Kuwahara, provided invaluable support and assistance in editing and printing; three-year- old Rita Kuwahara's playfulness added a new perspective to the significance of my subject. Finally, I thank my family in India, specially my mother, Sudershan Kaur, for her enthusiastic support of what I set out to accomplish. • • • 111 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page APPROVAL PAGE ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii CHAPTER I. Introduction 1 II. Self-Consciousness in Austen's Fiction 19 III. On Austen's Beginnings 65 IV. Happy Endings 141 V. Conclusion 205 BIBLIOGRAPHY 217 iv 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The agreeable, the good, the perfect, with these man is merely in earnest; but with beauty he plays. Schiller: On the Aesthetic Education of Man A novelist at play, Jane Austen delights in making fictions. She treats art as an expression of what her contemporary, Friedrich Von Schiller, termed the "play drive" (423). Seriously preoccupied with the nature of the aesthetic experience, Austen achieves an artistic poise through her ability to play. She delights the reader and raises her or him to a state of triumphant freedom and a possible world of harmony and beauty. The reader, so awakened, grasps the ideal, only to be more aware of the real and its limitless possibilities. Though in some ways a realistic novelist, Austen paradoxically presents the ideal through her ability to play. It is her ironic stance that gives her the freedom to play with opposites: the ideal and the real, the objective and the subjective. She is both involved in and removed from the action. She plays with the conventions of fiction-writing, and her self-conscious delight in her craft finds most triumphant expression in her use of irony. 2 Austen seems to make the ironic suggestion that life can be most fully experienced through art. She creates ideal patterns because she is most realistic. In Pride and Prejudice, for instance, the hero and heroine are growing, developing characters who achieve harmony (between reason and emotion) within themselves as well as in their relationship. In coming together, they perfect a pattern, and one can expect it to lead to perfection in marriage. Questions—such as "Are the endings of Jane Austen's novels really as perfect as she makes them out to be?" or "Will the lovers live happily ever after?"—help emphasize the fact that if these characters continue to transcend what Schiller calls "the form drive" (associated with man's rational nature) and the "sense drive" (associated with man's sensuous nature) to express the "play drive" (a synthesis of the "sense drive" and the "form drive"), such perfection is possible (423). In life, however, this result is less likely to happen. One can be tempted to read the "perfect" endings of these novels as being parodic in structure or as social and moral satire. However, these readings, by themselves, would lead to a limited interpretation of what-Austen is trying to do. She creates a perfect fictional world in response to a more philosophical issue—the nature of art as aesthetic experience. Her fiction suggests that a perfect aesthetic experience is possible and that one can experience life as a perfect whole only aesthetically? the implication being that 3 life as it is, is not perfect and so can never be completely satisfying. Thus, in making the ironic suggestion about the possibility of life being most fully experienced through art, Jane Austen, the novelist at play, triumphs in her freedom to shape ideal patterns. Austen's playfulness includes but goes beyond the more usual uses of the word "play." She explores playfulness as an activity that expresses wholeness and balance in human beings and sets them free to realize their full potential. One is a happier, more playful person for having read Austen's novels. She expresses what Robert Alter calls a "joyful self- consciousness" in her ability to play with her fictional world (Fielding 202). She also shows her central characters developing to the point where they can free themselves from limitations and be capable of play. The reader—having observed Austen show her heroes and heroines finally emerge, beautiful and free—also learns to play through having experienced the ideal and perfect moment. It is this ideal and perfect moment that constitutes the "perfect ending" of Austen's novels. At the close of each novel, the reader gets the sense of a completed whole that he can, as it were, hold in the palm of his hand. At the same time, like mercury, it eludes the touch. The harmony Austen achieves at the end of her novels is compelling.