Thursday, March 11, 2010

Elinor comes along ...

... and seems determined to spoil everything.
"Well, Marianne," said Elinor, as soon as he had left them, "for one morning I think you have done pretty well. You have already ascertained Mr. Willoughby's opinion in almost every matter of importance. You know what he thinks of Cowper and Scott; you are certain of his estimating their beauties as he ought, and you have received every assurance of his admiring Pope no more than is proper. But how is your acquaintance to be long supported, under such extraordinary dispatch of every subject for discourse! You will soon have exhausted each favourite topic. Another meeting will suffice to explain his sentiments on picturesque beauty, and second marriages, and then you can have nothing farther to ask -- -"
And here we have a short version (only two names) of that familiar list poets again. These same poets come up for young Anne Shirley a century later. No one reads them now but they had very impressive staying power in their day. I'd guess the Beatles—coming up on fifty years now—will not last nearly as long in the public consciousness.

And then there is that new name. Alexander Pope does noes not feature much in the imaginations of Romantically inclined girls. And Marianne, as a good Romantic, has been sure to determine that Willoughby does not admire Pope too much.

Pope's most famous work is The Rape of the Lock. It's interesting because it makes much comedy out of girls like Elinor and Marianne. It's also interesting because it trades on the theft of a lock of hair. Pretty soon in our story we are going to have three girls obsessing about locks of hair that may or may not have been obtained by theft.

The "rape" of the lock is about a crime against a symbol. The lock symbolizes the girl's body and the theft of it is, therefore, symbolic rape. Pope teases the targets of his satire for taking the symbolic act as having the same moral consequence as the real thing. It's a mistake we could see Elinor and Marianne having in this story except that neither is offended at the thought when it happens. Quite the opposite in fact. (BTW: I'll come back to this but I'd say Austen means to be critical of Pope too albeit for different reasons than Marianne. Her point will be that symbolic sexual exchanges are very important indeed and not something to be laughed off as the product of silly girls' imaginations.)

Which brings us to that perennial question: Does Marianne put out or doesn't she? As I've said before, I think you can read it either way. What you can't do is to read it both ways at the same time. It's like one of those optical illusions that is either a woman sitting at her vanity with a mirror or a skull. You can alternate but you can't see both images simultaneously.

Austen plainly wants us to think about sex here. It is in the bit I cite above that the issue of second loves—a major sticking point for Marianne—comes up for the first time. By having Elinor say "second marriages" with the implication of consummated love, Austen tips the scales in a decided way.

But not so far as to oblige us to imagine there is actual sex between Willoughby and Marianne. What we have to have to accept is the tension. They are headed that way and given enough time, they would.

Elinor can see this. Marianne, as her reaction will now show does not. All she sees is a sort of foolish decorum that doesn't apply to a heroine like herself:

"Elinor," cried Marianne, "is this fair? is this just? are my ideas so scanty? But I see what you mean. I have been too much at my ease, too happy, too frank. I have erred against every common-place notion of decorum! I have been open and sincere where I ought to have been reserved, spiritless, dull, and deceitful. Had I talked only of the weather and the roads, and had I spoken only once in ten minutes, this reproach would have been spared." 

No comments:

Post a Comment