Jane Austen among Women Kaplan, Deborah Published by Johns Hopkins University Press Kaplan, Deborah. Jane Austen among Women. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. Project MUSE. doi:10.1353/book.68486. https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/68486 [ Access provided at 24 Sep 2021 16:36 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. HOPKINS OPEN PUBLISHING ENCORE EDITIONS Deborah Kaplan Jane Austen among Women Open access edition supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities / Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. © 2019 Johns Hopkins University Press Published 2019 Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. CC BY-NC-ND ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-3347-9 (open access) ISBN-10: 1-4214-3347-8 (open access) ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-3345-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-4214-3345-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-3346-2 (electronic) ISBN-10: 1-4214-3346-X (electronic) This page supersedes the copyright page included in the original publication of this work. JANE AUSTEN AMONG WOMEN DEBORAH KAPLAN Jane Austen among Women � THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS BALTIMORE & LONDON ForMy Mother and Father © 1992 The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Johns Hopkins Paperbacks edition, 1994 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96 9 5 94 5 4 3 2 l The Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4319 The Johns Hopkins Press Ltd., London Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kaplan,Deborah, 1950 - Jane Austen among women / by Deborah Kaplan. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-8018-4360-X ISBN 0-8018-4970-5 (pbk.) I. Austen,Jane, 1775-1817. 2. Novelists, English-19th century­ Biography. 3. Woman and literature-England-History-19th century. I. Title. PR4036.K3 1992 823'.7-dc20 91-41186 A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Bliss Domestic, Inward Peace, These attend, how e'er I roam, These can throw, though Years encrease, Rays of Comfort 'round my Home. Children, best of earthly treasures, Soothe us with their tender smiles, Heartfelt, genuine, purest pleasures, Free from Vice or worldly Wiles. Who'd exchange such Joys as these, Simple Whims, & Infant Play, Artless Efforts form'd to please, Fond endearments, Spirits gay, Who'd exchange their infant prattle, Innocent & fondling kiss, For the World's incessant rattle, Languid substitute for bliss? Blest with these, and tried Affection, Let us hail the heav'nly throne; Trusting to Divine protection; Not our Will but God's be done! From a birthday tribute to Anne Powlett, written by her husband, Charles Powlett June 7, 1814 CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IX INTRODUCTION PART ONE Divided Loyalties 1. Genteel Domesticity 17 2. Compliant Women 43 3. The Women's Culture 62 PART Two Portraits of the Woman Writer 4. Circles of Support 89 5. Assuming Spinsterhood 109 PART THREE Representing Two Cultures 6. The Juvenilia: Convenient Ambiguities 133 7. The "Middle" Fictions: Visible Conflicts 155 8. Pride and Prejudice: Cultural Duality and Feminist Literary Criticism 182 NOTES 207 INDEX 239 [ vii ] ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ART of Chapter 7, in a somewhat different form, was published in 29, no. 2 ( 1987 ): 163-78; a portion of Chapter 4, also P Criticism in a somewhat different form, appeared in Persuasions, no. 10 ( 1988): 65-69. Chapters 2 and 3 revise and expand the argument originally made by "Representing Two Cultures: Jane Austen's Letters," in The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women'sAutobiographical Writings, ed. Shari Benstock (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1988), 2n-29. I thank the publishers of these works for allowing me to reprint material from them here. For permission to quote from their manu­ script collections, I gratefully acknowledge, in England, the Hamp­ shire Record Office, the Centre for Kentish Studies, the National Maritime Museum, the Jane Austen Memorial Trust, and, in New York, the Pierpont Morgan Library. I thank as well the Lord Brabourne, the Lord Harris, Joan Impey, Helen Lefroy, Rear-Admiral P. F. Powlett, and one of the great-great grandsons of Charles Austen. Jean Bowden, Curator of the Jane Austen House, facilitated my re­ search there; the Right Honorable the Earl St Aldwyn allowed me to consult his family archive; George Holbert Tucker helped me to gain access to some Austen family papers; and Deirdre Le Faye answered all my inquiries. Archivists and librarians at the institutions listed above, as well as, in England, the Public Record Office, the British Library, the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts and, in the United States, the Library of Congress and Fenwick Library at George Mason University have also given me valuable assistance in locating materials for this study. Work on this book was supported by an Andrew Mellon Post-Doc­ toral Fellowship at the Center for the Humanities at Wesleyan Uni­ versity, by a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for College Teachers and Travel to Collections grant, and by a Faculty Study Leave and other timely research grants from George Mason University. Past and present George Mason English department chairpersons Michael Sundell, Jan Cohn, and Hans Bergmann have fostered my research. In the time that I have worked on this manuscript, I have also been aided by Sharon Cameron's and Helen Lefroy's wise counsel, [ ix ] Acknowledgments Dina Copelman's and Jack Breihan's wide-ranging knowledge of Brit­ ish history, and Debora Greger's serendipitous yard-sale discoveries. The Kaplan and Rosenzweig families have helped by putting up with me and this project for many years. I thank them for their care and patience. Several people read all or most of this book. I have benefited from the encouragement and tried to profit from the insights and erudition of Jean-Christophe Agnew, Elizabeth Blackmar, Devon Hodges, Lorna Irvine, David Kaufmann, and Catherine Parke. Juliet McMaster understood my intentions and gave me invaluable substantive and stylistic advice on two drafts of the manuscript. Four other people, over a number of years, have also scrutinized successive drafts of this book and have sustained me through the process of writing them. Barbara Melosh provided incisive and eloquent comments on the chapters and taught me to relish the peculiar and comic aspects of academic life. For m;my years Patricia Spacks has helped me to pursue my research interests. She encouraged this project from its inception, and her exhilarating conversation and illuminating criticism of the chapters were crucial resources all along the way. Having exchanged work with Eileen Sypher for more than ten years, I cannot imagine publishing anything that she has not first read-and reread. Her in­ tellectual companionship gave purpose to my efforts and enabled me to finish this book. Roy Rosenzweig, to whom I owe the greatest debt, had faith in and empathy for my work at all stages. He offered astute, challenging criticism of my chapters; inspired me both to imagine and to seek out readers; and heartened me with his wit, common sense, generosity, and optimism. [ X ] INTRODUCTION N the late 1780s Jane Austen's Hampshire neighbor at Hackwood, I the Duchess of Bolton, was organizing a private entertainment, a performance of Nicholas Rowe's 1714 play, The Tragedy of Jane Shore. Lady Catherine Paulett, a daughter of the Duchess, was to play the pitiful heroine. For the other female role, the passionate Alicia, the two women turned to their friend Anne Lefroy, living nearby at Ashe. Lefroy, wife of the rector of that parish, wanted neither to act the part nor to disappoint her titled friends. In an effort to appease, she fash­ ioned an answer to the Duchess in heroic couplets: All to the Task unused my faultering Tongue Would mar the tuneful strains that Rowe has sung Can I a Wife, a Mother, tread the stage Burn with pale fire and glow with mimic Rage, Quit of domestic peace the calm retreat As mad Alicia teach my Heart to beat. And while my Bosom bleeds for Shore's sad Fate Spurn the dejected Mourner from my Gate? Too well her woes by Catherine exprest. Compassion's sighs would heave my artless Breast. Ah spare me then unable to withstand, When lovely Catherine asks and you command. 1 Anne Lefroy wished to decline because she could not reconcile her roles as wife and mother with the part of a woman furious at her lover, Lord Hastings, and wildly jealous of the woman he has come to prefer, Jane Shore. The role of Alicia requires expressions of rage, but Lefroy was "unused" to such outbreaks. Her female identity was felt in the body ("tongue," "heart," "bosom," "breast"), and she would have to "teach" it to feel and to act out anger. She doubted that she would be successful, indeed that she would be able to act at all. Her customary feeling and expressions-" compassion's sighs"- "would heave" her "artless breast," overriding the role's called-for fury. Although Anne Lefroy thought she would not succeed in the role of Alicia, she apparently thought Lady Catherine would make a fine Jane Shore, expressing the character's "woes" only "too well." What might seem a compliment to Lady Catherine's acting was more likely [ l ] Jane Austen among Women praise of her friend's female identity.