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Emma
Woodhouse is “handsome, clever, and rich” (5), but her
father can claim to share with his daughter only the third of these delightful
characteristics. Mr. Henry Woodhouse is a case study in hypochondria:
selfish, idle, feeble of mind and body. Derided or ignored by both
critics1 There was, of course,
no diagnosis of dyslexia when Austen wrote. The Oxford English Dictionary’s first usage occurs in 1883 as
“dyslexie” in a German medical publication. Modern data suggests,
however, that dyslexia is “the most common neurobehavioral disorder affecting
children, with prevalence rates ranging from 5 to 10 percent to 17.4 percent”
(Shaywitz 307). Although only recognized relatively recently, dyslexia
would have been present in similar rates in early-nineteenth-century England,
though less perceptible, given the lower rates of literacy.2 The International
Dyslexia Association promulgates the following working definition of dyslexia: Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in
origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent
word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These
difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of
language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and
the provision of effective classroom instruction. Secondary consequences
may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience
that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge. (Lyon 1) In addition to the secondary consequences listed
above, dyslexics may manifest deficits in other areas such as mathematics,
spelling and written expression, attention (Lyon 1), verbal memory (Shaywitz
307), and movement (Chaix 368-69). Such deficits have inevitable social
and emotional consequences such as anxiety and depression (Ryan) and “low
self-esteem and low perceived self-efficacy as a result of the cumulative
effects of failures during schooling. In extreme cases this can lead to
low achievement motivation . . . [and] learned helplessness” (Rack
68). Such potentially dyslexia-induced psychosocial problems are
essential constituents of Mr. Woodhouse’s character. The fact that dyslexia
affects language understanding first alerted me to Mr. Woodhouse’s possible
condition: “people with dyslexia have difficulty developing an awareness
that words, both written and spoken, can be broken down into smaller units of
sound and that, in fact, the letters constituting the printed word represent
the sounds heard in the spoken word” (Shaywitz 307). Mr. Woodhouse
does not like to read for himself; he prefers to have someone read to him, and
he needs to have that information read to him slowly and several times just to
be sure: Emma reads Mr. Elton’s charade “to him, just as he liked to have
any thing read, slowly and distinctly, and two or three times over, with
explanations of every part as she proceeded” (78). This passage is
telling for a potential diagnosis of dyslexia. Mr. Woodhouse’s reading
disability has taught him the slippery, evanescent qualities of text. He
does not believe that he will necessarily be able to retrieve the same meaning
from the text again, so he prefers to commit matters to what memory he has.
Presumably, his reading difficulties have also led him to develop the strategy
of seeking another opinion on the topics revealed in the text from someone he
trusts, for he does not trust himself to interpret such matters correctly. Although he has
developed strategies to counter his reading difficulties, Mr. Woodhouse is
often unaware of his linguistic weaknesses. There are further examples of
his problems with language that help us understand his anxiety to grasp
meaning. For instance, Emma and her father receive a reproachfully
pointed letter of leave-taking from Mr. Elton before he sets off for Bath to
encounter the winsome charms and adequate dowry of Miss Augusta Hawkins.
Emma is aware immediately of the intentional rudeness of the message, but her
father is undiscriminating: “Her father was quite taken up with the
surprize of so sudden a journey, and his fears that Mr. Elton might never get
safely to the end of it, and saw nothing extraordinary in his language” (141).
Mr. Woodhouse has little understanding of written language itself, without
repeated readings, and little sense of the nuances of language, which in Mr. Elton’s
missive are not especially refined and cannot be attributed to oversensitivity
on Emma’s part to matters of social protocol. Difficulties with
language also plague Mr. Woodhouse’s business dealings, again forcing him to
rely upon trusted others. Having greater linguistic facility than he, his
ancestors endowed the family with a handsome estate and considerable wealth to
manage. The Woodhouses are not a land-owning family who have made their
place through the labor of farming; their considerable fortune, “scarcely
secondary to Donwell itself,” comes from dubious sounding “other sources”
(136). This revelation suggests that Mr. Woodhouse’s ancestors were more
worldly, and almost certainly possessed more nous, for how otherwise is a good
fortune accumulated? George Knightley
is among those who provide Mr. Woodhouse with trustworthy guidance in matters
of business, and his behavior toward his future father-in-law further
demonstrates dyslexia as his neighbor’s likely impairment: “‘A very
pleasant evening,’ [Mr. Knightley] began, as soon as Mr. Woodhouse had been
talked into what was necessary, told that he understood, and the papers swept
away” (170). Mr. Woodhouse’s oral and written skills are questionable.
He is incapable of understanding business matters that are written down.
These must be delivered orally, and he must be told at some point in the
explanations that he has understood, even when patently he has not. Dyslexics
tend to do poorly in tests of verbal memory, such as recalling a sentence or a
narrative they have just been told (Shaywitz 309). Mr. Woodhouse’s need
to have texts of any sort explained and re-explained is a function of his
extremely poor verbal memory that could be symptomatic of dyslexia. This
account of Mr. Woodhouse’s business practice reinforces some of the strategies
that he and others have developed to cope with his reading/language disability.
He is read to; he is told things; he has matters recast for him to facilitate
understanding; he is prepared to be told he understands by those near to him
whom he trusts. His family and close friends understand his
difficulties—although they lack the word dyslexia
to apply to him—and are prepared to undertake the tasks of interpretation and
reassurance. As a consequence of these
difficulties in cognition and memory, dyslexics are also likely to suffer from
depression, which tends to manifest in the following ways: they have
negative self-image; they view the world negatively and find it difficult to
enjoy positive experiences; and they feel little hope for the future,
foreseeing lives of continuing failure (Ryan). These symptoms suggest Mr.
Woodhouse’s view of life, and we are aware of them from the opening pages of
the novel, following the lamented departure of the newly married Mrs. Weston
for Randalls: “His spirits required support. He was a nervous man,
easily depressed; fond of every body that he was
used to, and hating to part with them; hating change of every kind” (7).
The character analyzed here fits well with the late-twentieth-century clinical
experience of the effects of dyslexia. Mr. Woodhouse is extremely
tentative and dislikes change, even such positive change as Miss Taylor’s good
fortune in finding a husband and living within easy walking distance of her former
employer and her greatest friends. Moreover, ongoing support and
encouragement are essential for dyslexics to operate successfully in the world,
for it is an extremely variable condition with often daily fluctuations in
performance (Ryan), and its inconsistencies are confusing both to the sufferer
and to those in close contact with him or her. While it is debatable
whether or not Mr. Woodhouse can be described as “operating successfully,” he
certainly functions at a reasonably high level in his world but, as Austen’s
narrator hints, only with the considerable assistance of his household and
friends. As the novel progresses,
we increasingly notice that Mr. Woodhouse relies on routine as a coping
mechanism—as, for example, with his daily three turns about the garden that
constitute his “winter walk.” Mr. Woodhouse repeats himself fussily to
Mr. Knightley about these three turns; clearly, this practice is of great
importance to him, hence the emphasis upon the precise number of turns to be
undertaken. Mr. Woodhouse’s reactions to atypical activity can be
extreme, as Emma’s relation of his response to her sketching enthusiasm reveals:
“There is my father—another of my father—but the idea of sitting for his
picture made him so nervous, that I could only take him by stealth; neither of
them very like therefore” (45). Mr. Woodhouse is a superb candidate for
artist’s model since posing requires no exertion on his part and is most
unlikely to cause harm. Yet his fear of the unaccustomed, rendered almost
superstitious here, overpowers rational thought, and he becomes subject to his
nerves to the extent that he is unable to comply with his daughter’s simple
request. Such obtuseness could be construed as congenital laziness, and,
indeed, dyslexics are often accused of idleness (Ryan) because of their anxiety
response to new situations, which may result in another episode of failure.
Mr. Woodhouse’s indolence could be interpreted as dyslexic avoidance-behavior. Just as Mr. Woodhouse
does not welcome change to his social patterns, so he avoids dietary change—manifested
notably in his great and often remarked fondness for “‘a nice basin of gruel’”
(100), which he recommends to all visitors to Hartfield. A digestive
complaint compelling him to eat plain foods does not seem to be part of his
condition3 Dyslexia is recognized
as having what the early-nineteenth-century inhabitant might call a
“constitutional” origin. Twenty-first-century neurobiologists are able to
state that there is a heritable component to dyslexia: the brain
structure dysfunction that results in dyslexia can be passed on to the
sufferer’s children, implying that the adult dyslexic may now observe his/her
child enduring the same learning difficulties: “Family history is one of
the most important risk factors, with 23 percent to as much as 65 percent of
children who have a parent with dyslexia reported to have the disorder”
(Shaywitz 307). Dyslexic parents tend to respond in one of two ways to
their child’s problems: They may deny the existence of dyslexia and believe if the child would
just buckle down, he or she could succeed. Or, the parents may relive their
failures and frustrations. . . . [T]his brings back powerful and
terrifying emotions, which can interfere with the adult’s parenting skills.
(Ryan) Such an anxiety could be responsible for Mr.
Woodhouse’s inability to control Emma and for his pronounced fears for Isabella
and her children. While Emma does not
suffer from dyslexia, Isabella may have inherited aspects of the condition.
She does not manifest such severely disabling effects of dyslexia as her father;
nonetheless she is described in similar terms: affectionate and gentle,
but literal-minded, and sharing his preoccupation with health. Isabella,
however, writes and reads more than her father. She sends bulletins to
Hartfield and receives letters from there in turn; for instance, she and Emma
arrange Harriet’s visit to London through letters, and, once Harriet is
installed in Brunswick Square, Emma receives reports of her protégée’s progress
from her sister. Whether the next
generation has inherited the familial tendency to dyslexia is unknown. We
learn little of how Isabella’s children are faring with reading, apart from the
fact that the older boys have been provided with a reading activity: the
alphabets, hand-lettered by Emma, which Frank Churchill cunningly deploys to
apologize secretly to Jane Fairfax. We must hope, for the sake of Emma’s
children, that the Knightley genes ameliorate the Woodhouse genes at the dyslexia susceptibility loci that linkage studies
have identified on chromosomes 6 and 15 (Shaywitz 307). Dyslexia is a possible
reason for the manifold symptoms that Mr. Woodhouse exhibits: his
difficulty with language understanding, especially the written word; his poor
verbal memory; and his fearful insistence upon cleaving to routine.
Although dyslexia did not exist as a named condition in Austen’s time, and the
charge of “chronological snobbery”4 NOTES 1. For
example, Mary Lascelles explores the kinship between Mr. Woodhouse and
Shakespeare’s fools, characters who, unable to come to terms with life,
construct terms for themselves (143-45); Marvin Mudrick classifies him as “an
old woman” with “no single masculine trait” (192-93); Christopher Gillie
characterizes him simply as “gentle and pliable” (135); Mark Schorer briefly
analyzes him as a comical, “malingering egoist” (Watt 108); Terry Castle terms
him “selfish as well as feeble-minded” (xxv). 2.
In 1755 the literacy rate in England was approximately 50%, rising to 60% by
1840 (West 9). 3. Ted
Bader suggests Mr Woodhouse’s food faddism may be due to hyperthyroidism, a
condition where enlargement of the thyroid gland in the neck causes difficulty
swallowing (Bader par. 11). 4. See
chapter 13 of C. S. Lewis’s Surprised by Joy. WORKS CITED Austen, Jane. Emma. Ed. R. W.Chapman. 3rd ed. Oxford:
OUP, 1933. Bader, Ted. “Mr. Woodhouse is Not a
Hypochondriac!” Persuasions On-Line
21.2 (2000). Castle, Terry. Introduction. Emma. Ed. James Kinsley.
Oxford: OUP, 1998. vii-xxviii. Chaix, Yves, et al. “Motor Impairment in
Dyslexia: The Influence of Attention Disorders.” European Journal of Paediatric Neurology 11 (2007): 368-74. Gillie, Christopher. A Preface to Jane Austen. London: Longman, 1985. Lascelles, Mary. Jane Austen and her Art. 1932. Oxford: OUP, 1965. Lewis, C. S. The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914-1963). Ed.
W. Hooper. New York: Macmillan, 1979. _____. Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life.
London: Bles, 1955. Lyon, G. Reid, et al. “Defining Dyslexia, Comorbidity, Teachers’
Knowledge of Language and Reading, a Definition of Dyslexia.” Annals of Dyslexia 53 (2003): 1-14. Mudrick, Marvin. Jane Austen: Irony as Defense and Discovery. Princeton: PUP,
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Developmental Dyslexia in Adults: Theoretical and Applied Perspectives.” Journal of Research in Reading 20.1
(1997): 66-76. Ryan, Michael. “Social and Emotional Problems
Related to Dyslexia.” 2004. Learning
Disabilities Online. 28 Nov. 2007
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