Thursday, December 31, 2009

Isabella's vices

A now we're getting to the fun stuff because what could be more fun that tear Isabella to little shreds?

But it is so complicated. Consider, for example, the pedagogical relationship. The what you say? The pedagogical relationship; there is one in every Austen novel. In Northanger Abbey it is between Catherine and Miss Tilney, in Sense and Sensibility it is between Marianne and Elinor, in Pride and Prejudice it is (big shift here*) between Elizabeth and Darcy, in Emma it is Emma and Mr. Knightly and in Mansfield Park it is between Fanny and Edmund.

So what you say? Well lets have a look ahead to Chapter 10 wherein Catherine meets Miss Tilney (and we can't help but notice that she is not nearly so quick to move to Christian names as Isabella was) at the Pump-room. And there she has a conversation towards the end of which Catherine "artlessly" blurts out that Miss Tilney's brother dances well. The conversation carries on in a like manner fora while and concludes with the following summation by our author:
... and they parted — on Miss Tilney's side with some knowledge of her new acquaintance's feelings, and on Catherine's, without the smallest consciousness of having explained them.
All of which tells me that it is time to learn to suck eggs again. Why? Because what Catherine has unconsciously achieved with Miss Tilney is exactly the thing that Isabella is trying to achieve consciously over and over again. Beginning with her gentle sigh over the clergy and her partiality to young men in the profession on, Isabella repeatedly tries to get Catherine to be able to read her feelings.

What exactly is so wrong about what Isabella does and what is so right about Catherine herself does in her pedagogical relationship with Miss Tilney?





* It's not just that the pedagogical relationship is between a man and a woman in love from P & P on, it is also reciprocal with each party having as much to learn from the other. Miss Tilney, OTOH, learns nothing from Catherine and while Elinor might learn something from Marianne she does not profit nearly so much as her sister from the relationship.

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