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Rebelling Against the Regency: Jane Austen and Margaret Drabble

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Rebelling Against the Regency: Jane Austen and Margaret Drabble Rebelling Against the RegencY: Jane Austen and Margaret Drabble NORA FOSTER STOVEL AB T6G 2E5 Department of English, University of Alberta' E'dmonton' an ambivalent Contemporary British writer Margaret Drabble has expressed and condemnation in attitude to Jane Austen, vacillatin[between admiration an f,.. commentaries. As i novelist, Drabble has also enjoyed "rl,i.uf relationship with her literary predecessor' fluctuating between writer' "-Uigr"rtimitation of her rectory precursor and reiellion against the Regency Bennett sisters con- Her first novel, A Summer Bird-Cag,e (1963), is about (1964')' is i"-piu,i"g marriage, and her novel, The Gqrrick Year '"tond In The uUoi u sEtf-deceived heroine named Emma considering adultery' i,'iiirion of Women's Fiction (1982), Drabble acknowledges: after Jane Austen When I began writing, in my innocence I called my characters Bennett which is characters. In a Summer ni.d-cage the characters are called unconsciously' the Bennet from Pride and PreJudice. I did this completely (93) im*a in The Garrick lear is aiso a Jane Austen character' ,.The Dower House at Austen frames Drabble's Career' for her latest fiction, for the 1993 6iitr.t," an original short story that she composed especially iesie it Late Louise, is a sequel to Austen's novel Persuasion.ln -"",ing "All my irr" qr"trl", pltoa following her reiding, she acknowledged' nor"it are a dialogue with Jane Austen"' Austen in enthusias- As a critic, Drablle has expressed her admiration for edition of tic introductions to Austen's works, beginning with the Penguin laneAusten:LailySusan,TheWatsons-,Sanditioninlg74'andconcluding of Austen's most recently witir her introductions to the new virago editions no,el,.oraruteopensherlgT4introductionbyassertingthat..Therewould by Jane ;;;";" genuine rejoicing at the discovery of-a complete new novel A;;, tiun uny &h". [t.ru.y discovery, short of a new major play by all Janeites would Shakespeare, that one can imagine" (7)-lasentiment that illustrate aouu,r"rr share. Drabble's introductions to the virago editions_also rebound off one that enthusiastic note, as they demonstrate how "The books mind as she was another, and offer contrasts that must have been in Austen's so writing;' (Persuasion v)' Drabble's attitude to Austen was not always enthusiastic,-gu.rvuarirersofDrabblecomparedthefledglingnovelisttoJaneAusten, however' was urrr-irg that the young writer's imitation of her literary predecessor author the deliberate result of ronscious admiration, but the contemporary In a 1968 BBC *u, no, pleased by the comparison with the Regency-writer' vehemently: interview with British critic Bernard Betgonzi, Drabble rebels people say that I.obviously I rather dislike Jane Austen, and I get upset when Also deeply admire her because I find her soJial aititudes deplorable. lm ends with a happy suspicious of the way every single one of her novels of course' *arriage, and none of them tan describe one' Enjoyers of Austen' delight"in the Regency novelist's classically happy endings' 162 Persuasions No. 16 When Elizabeth Bennet laments in Pride and Prejudice that "no such happy marriage [between herself and Mr. Darcy] could now teach the admiring multitude what connubial felicity really was" (PP 312), do we not all feel perfect confidence that Austen will succeed in engineering that very out- come? As Drabble herself states, "The story ends with both their marriages, an indication of their subsequent happiness, and an eventual reconciliation with Lady Catherine" (OCEL'787). Indeed, the Janeite's delight in Austen's comic genius lies precisely in the satisfaction of observing the skill with which the author succeeds in over- coming all obstacles to the joyful union of her hero and heroine. P e r s ua s i o n, for example, concludes with the following question (248): Who can be in doubt of what followed? When any two young people take it into their heads to many, they are pretty sure by perseverence to calry their point, be they ever so poor, or ever so imprudent, or ever so little likely to be necessary to each other's ultimate comfort. This may be bad morality to conclude with, but I believe it to be truth; and if such paties succeed, how should a Captain Wentworth and an Anne Elliot, with the advantage of maturity of mind, consciousness of right, and one independent fortune between them, fail of bearing down every opposition? Author and reader are almost in collusion to achieve the comic conclusion of matrimony. Near the end of Northanger Ahbey, for example, Austen con- siders the fate of Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney in this early parody of the Gothic romance: The anxiety, which in this state of their attachment must be the portion of Henry and Catherine, and of all who loved either, as to its {inal event, can hardly extend, I fear, to the bosom of my readers, who will see in the tell-tale compression of the pages before them, that we are all hastening together to perfect felicity. (NA 250) And Austen is as good as her word, for, just as Lady Catherine De Bourgh's attempt to separate Elizabeth and Darcy merely succeeds in helping to bring them together in Pride and Prejudice, so every obstacle is turned to advan- tage at the end of Northanger Abbey, as Austgn concludes: Henry and Catherine were married, the bells rang and every body smiled; and, as this took place within a twelve-month from the first day of their meeting, it will not appear, after all the dreadful delays occasioned by the General's cruelty, that they were essentially hurt by it. To begin perfect happiness at the respective ages of twenty-six and eighteen, is to do pretty well; and professing myself moreover convinced, that the General's unjust interference, so far from being really injurious to their felicity, was perhaps rather conducive to it, by improv- ing their knowledge of each other, and adding strength to their attachment, I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concem, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parentai tyranny, or reward filial disobedience. (252) Even when the obstacles, traditionally represented by patronizing patri- archs and grotesque guardians, are internalized in the form of pride and prejudice, for example, Austen's psychological insight and narrative skill succeed in overcoming stubbom self-deception and proud perversity. In Emma, for example, Drabble notes that, "although Emma Woodhouse is Stovel: Rebelling Against the Regency 163 high spririted, she is also vain and self-deceiving" (-/A 23); nevertheless, "Mr. Knightly in the end proposes to the humbled and repentant Emma" (OCEL 316), and Emma ends with this quintessentially comic conclusion: Mr. Elton was called on. within a month from the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Martin, to join the hands of Mr. Knightley and Miss Woodhouse....the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union. (Emma 484) But this perfect felicity is precisely what Drabble dislikes. As she explains to Bergonzi, she disapproves of Austen's "fairy-tale endings" where couples marry and live happily ever after: I really feel that Jane Austen shouldn't have left her books on such a happy note, and that there's something really immoral in writing a novel in those terms. She might have just hinted delicately that perhaps these perfect matches might not have been so perfect. I can't understand how she can lead her heroines up to the altar in that way and then leave them there, when clearly they were all extremely difficult women and were not in for a happy life. I find this lack of realism rather distressing. Austen's preference, however, was for comedy: at the end of Mansfield Park, she writes: "Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore every body, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest" (MP 461). Generations of Janeites have applauded her preference for comic closure. Drabble prefers Persuasion because "it is much more open-ended" (v), as she observes in her introduction to the Virago edition of Austen's last completed novel, offering "the possibilities of another, freer world" (xi), and "welcoming the possibility of a new order" (xv)-in response, perhaps, to "the new spirit of the Romantic movement" (xii). Drabble notes that "Austen gives us a rare portrait of a mature and happy marriage" (ix) in the Crofts. Drabble also applauds Austen for rejecting her original ending as being "too 'tame and flat' (an objection levelled against the endings of several of her other works)" (xiii), and approves the "fuller, warner and more natural eclaircissement" (xiv) ofthe revised version. She concludes, "I find fPersua- sionl perhaps most remarkable for its unexpected generosities and for its welcoming of the possibility of a new order," in which Anne Elliot "is released from the 'quiet, confined' female existence" (xv). Drabble seems happiest with Sense and Sensibility precisely because it presents a more problematic approach to the potential happiness of the protagonists, especially Marianne, because, of all Jane Austen's heroines, she observes, "she seems temperamentally most resolutely set for an un- happy ending, and the conventional denouement must disturb and disap- point" (xvii). She opens her Virago introduction by observing, "Sense and Sensibility is without doubt Jane Austen's most painful and disturbing novel. It is the fashion these days to look for the painful and disturbing side ofevery comedy and light romance" (v). Perhaps she does: she judges that "a dark interpretation seems unavoidable" because "it is an unhappy, almost tragic 164 persuasions No.
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