"To tbe Great Detriment of tbe Post Office Revenue" An analysis ofJane Austen's early narrative development through her use and abandonment ofepistolary fiction in 'Lady Susan' David Owen Ph.D. Thesis directed by Professor Andrew Monnickendam Departament de Filologia Anglesa, F aeultat de Filosojia i Lletres Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona March2006 For my parents, Tom & Audrey Owen 'The Rice Portrait' by the English e 18 miniaturist Ozias Humphrey (1742-1810), possibly of Jane Austen in her early adolescence. The painting is tentatively dated c.1790. , '" ... .... 1 , ""'"" ~ . , ' ~4~~ " '1cll'O'\ .. ".. ' ·T • > CI"",..~ r /;::;~ Ji:..&;¡:;. ~a...- .,.~_. h .. ; . " . ,:. :~ M:&. ~ -, ~~,-; , &-· ~~ . r;;,-;¿_ c; .. ·'~:. ~ . ~y~~ , ..YJ,.v/~ A',...e~~_..... .~ / &. <.~ é."o.... &~:. ;..u;~ .--' .~~ ~ d~~~~._~ < . ¿r~~ . c:/'ái:~.. ~ ~-- ~ /'" .. ~~ . ¿é¿ ~e...e.~C! - ~ k-~ ~ ~. ~~tx' ,J6,~2... 1''''.~t- ~~~A. : ;t ~ .~. ., ~ ' #.. :";':.-. " ~ r . "- . ,'. ~ ~:'" k'_~ ...... }-"" ~ aL.:.~~. ./ - ~~. r"'l' "'"',, _... .61 . ...... • , .¿. < . • • t/. ' .... • "',:00. .: ~~ ~-r~ ~- :<~.~ . .¿"y ~ ./¿z.~ :/-.J2'L.. III!' .... <4,_ ~;,/~-;, '. ' '. • • /o /47y /~~"-~ J' ..r.n~ ....... ~ .....:¿ ~ . "-,, /..,. .,..,. L/z.,..d;,...""." ttI'_,.T. .., .- \ .../ "This Correspondence, by a meeting between sorne 01 the Parties & a separation between the others, could not, to the great detriment olthe Post office Revenue, be continued longer". First section ofthe direct-narrative conclusion to Lady Susan, interrupting and terminating the epistolary fonn used tbroughout the rest ofthe novella (p. 151, facsirnile of Austen's fair copy). Acknowledgements It is my pleasure to give my sincere thanks to Professor Andrew Monnickendam for the invaluable support and detailed guidance he has provided me from the very outset of this thesis. 1 am particulady grateful for his admirable-indeed enviable-ability throughout to unfailingly point me towards surer critical ground whilst never impinging on the thesis writers' need to discover for themselves the demands and implications oftheir own work. 1 would also like to express my thanks to my departmental col1eague, Dr Joan Curbet, for kindly reading an early draft of the thesis, for the perceptiveness of his comments and for his infectious enthusiasm. My thanks, too, go to Professor Christine Alexander ofthe University ofNew South Wales, Australia, for inviting me to co-edit with her the Juvenilia Press edition of Lady Susan (published in autumn 2005). The opportunity that this afforded me of gaining an intimate knowledge of Austen's early text has been of enormous value in shaping many of the arguments set out in this thesis. 1 thank Professor Laurie Kaplan of Goucher College in the United States, for her considerable generosity in reading several parts of the thesis and for her meticulous comments. 1 am grateful for her kind and constructive encouragement, and for patientIy allowing me frrst-hand access to the opinions and insight of a renowned Austen specialist. Final1y, it should never go without saying that my greatest debt of gratitude-one that 1 am deeply privileged to record here-lies with my long-suffering family, Sonia, Tom and Max (current1y waiting in the wings). Without their understanding and support, both of which have been given readily, unconditionalIy and with unfailing good humour, this entíre undertaking could never have gone beyond being the merest shadow of an idea. March2006 Formatting This thesis has been written in general accordance with the guidelines established by the MLA Handbook lor Writers 01 Research Papers (Fifth Edition), except for the placing of notes, which are situated at the foot of each page for ease of reference. "Novels in letters were assuredly more popular in the eighteenth century than tbey have been since; but abandonment of an unfashionable form does not automatically entail artistic advance ...". (Hugh McKellar, "Lady Susan: Sport or Cinderella?" 208). "A newly born genre never supplants or replaces any already existing genres. Each new genre merely supplements the old ones, merely widens the circle of already existing genres. For every genre has its own predominant sphere of existence, in which it is irreplaceable". (Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems ofDostoevsky's Poetics 271). Contents INTRODUCrION ._................................................................ ~ ...................._ ......." ...................................................... _ •••• 1 THESIS OurUNE ••• "", •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• "..................................................... 16 1. TIrE EPISTOLARY: THEORETlCAL INTEREST & CRITICAL ATTENTION .................................................... 21 1.1 LITERA.RY THEORY AND THE LE1TER-FoRlvl ..................................................................................... t-••• 22 1.2 CRITICAL WORK ON THE EPISTOURY••••••• III ••••••• "'IIt ..........................................................................".1Ii 44 1.3 CRlTICAL LIMITATlONS AND DEVELOPING AREAS IN THE EPISTOLARY............................................... S8 1.4 CRlTICALATTENTIONTOAuSTEN'sEpISTOLARY WRITING ._............................................................ 61 1.5 AUSTEN'S Rh~L AND FICTIONAL LETTERS ....... iI.iI ................"' .......u ..................••••••••••••••••• , •••••••••••••••• 78 2.DIRECTNARRATlVEANDTHE EPISTOLARY: 'CA THARlNE , AND 'LADYSu SAN' ....................................... 88 2.1 "CATHA'RlNE OR THE BOWER' ............................................................................................................. 89 2.2 "LADYSUSAN' •••••••••••••••••••• ,,11\ •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• iIIO ••••••••••••••••••••••••• III ••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 116 2.2 .. 1 CRITICAL VOleEs OF DlSSENT................................................ ......................u ...................... 120 2.2.2 CRlTIC~ VOleES OF ASSENT •••••••• _ ........................................................................................ 196 2.2 .. 3 IMPROVING ON ICATHARJ.NE 1 ••••••••••• 1.. 10 •• "' ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• , ••••••••••••••••••••••• 207 3. AUSrrEN'S ABANDONMENT OF THE EPISTOLARY .......................,. ........."' .........................u .......................... 225 3 .. 1 THEINFLUENCE OF FORM•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• ............................................................. 226 3 .. 2 THE INFLUENCE OF READING "' •••••••••••••••••••••••• 1",.' ••••••••••••••••••••••••• , ••••••• " ••••••••••••• ,' ••••••••••••••••••••••••• 111 231 3,,3 THE INFLUENCE OF POLITICS ........................................................................................................ 247 3.4 THE INFLUENCE OF COMMERCIAL CONCERlIIS ............................................................................... 267 4, CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS ., ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• " .............................. ,. 280 5. FURTHER "REsE,ARCH ."' ......................................... _ •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 297 WORKS CITED AND CONSULTED ......................................................................................................................... 302 Introduction Introduction "[TJbe conventional "take" on wby Ansten stopped nsing tbe epistolary mode ••• bas becn sbaped by teleological assnmptions about tbe development of narrative forms, tbe view associated witb lan Watt's Rise 01 the Novel, tbat from tbe beginning of tbe 18th c., prose fiction was tending towards tbe "realist" novel, and Austen's later use of free indirect speecb clincbes tbe crucial tecbnological advance towards an iIIusion ofnarrative transparency. 1 tbink there's a different way to tell the story••• ". 1 In Epistolary Rodies, Elizabeth Heckendom Cook suggests that not only Ian Watt's seminal work on the novel (1957) but also subsequent work on the same subject such as the , influential studies by Michael McKeon or Nancy Armstrong (both 1987) have given support to the· notion that epistolary writings are the "imperfect precursors of nineteenth- century works" and "cul-de-sacs of [the] evolutionary model" (Heckendom Cook, 20), in turn shaping views on the novel itself and limiting critical recognition of the importance of epistolary form within the development of the novel? Such a view, consequentIy, is reflected in assessments of Jane Austen's own styIistic development, from the juvenilia through to the mature fiction. It has been common 1 EJizabeth Heckendorn Cook, private correspondence, 23/0612003. 2 Heckendom Cook's point in referring to McKeon and Arrnstrong is to suggest that even revisionist work produced in the wake of Watt's study nevertheless continues to put forward the idea of a 'discarded image'. However, this notion predates Watt; it was posited at least as early as the 1930s and 1940s by Singer, Lascelles and Blaek. It is of interest bere to note that within Watt's 'triple-rise theory' (the growth of a middle class led to an inerease in literaey that, in turn, led to the rise of the novel), put forward in Rise, specific eomrnents on the epistolary are very few, and almost entirely in exclusive referenee to Richardson (see for example Rise 195 and 201). For further discussion of MeKeon's work in opposition to that of Watt, see, Heckendorn Cook, 187, n. 28. For further and comparative discussion