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Persuasions #11, 1989 Page 85-91 Secrets, Silence, and Surprise in Pride and Prejudice
BRUCE STOVEL
As literary concepts,
secrecy, silence, and
surprise are closely connected: they form a single entity at the very
heart of
the notion of a plot. A secret
consists of information generally unknown, yet understood by a select
few –
etymologically, something sifted out and set apart. A storyteller’s plot is built around a secret, but the
storyteller,
while continuing to narrate the tale, preserves silence on this secret
until the
time for divulging it with greatest effect – the time for surprise –
has
come. Once all the secrets have been
divulged, we can no longer be
surprised, and the plot is over: the author relapses into literal
silence. These ideas underlie the witty title which Henry Fielding gives
to Book I
of Tom Jones: “Containing as much of the Birth of the Foundling
as is
necessary or proper to acquaint the Reader with in the Beginning of
this
History.” On the one hand, the
author must not give away the nub of the matter: a game of
hide-and-seek is no
fun if we know the secret hiding-places right away. On the other hand, the reader must know a certain amount in
order to
begin playing the game at all. Narration
thus proceeds by indirection – but also moves in a definite, foreknown
direction. These ideas are implicit
in Aristotle’s notion that the best plots are those which build to a
simultaneous reversal and recognition (Poetics, Chapter XI). This
set of ideas plays an important part in Pride and Prejudice, as
we can
see in the little comic playlet that is enacted in the opening
paragraphs of the
novel. Mrs. Bennet pesters her
husband to visit their new neighbour, Mr. Bingley, so that Bingley will
be able
to marry one of their five daughters; during successive days of
badgering Mr.
Bennet replies with such masterful indirection that Mrs. Bennet finally
cries,
“I am sick of Mr. Bingley,” and now the time has come for Mr. Bennet,
the
concealed author of this little drama, to break his silence and reveal
his
secret: “ ‘I am sorry to hear that; but why did you not tell me
so
before? If I had known as much this
morning, I certainly would not have called on him.’ … the astonishment
of
the ladies was just what he wished’ (5).1 If
Mr. Bennet contrives this little comedy, which might be called “The
Visit,”
for his own rather cruel amusement, for an audience of one, Jane Austen
has
constructed the whole novel on much the same principles, though for a
much
larger audience and for a much more humane purpose. Secrets, silence, and surprise are of the utmost importance in Pride
and Prejudice; an attempt to define her handling of them in the
novel throws
some light on its plot, a construction that George Henry Lewes insisted
was more
artful, subtle, and economical than the much-praised plot of Tom
Jones.2 This approach further emphasizes what many readers and critics
have
noted: that despite the novel’s disposition into three volumes, its
plot falls
into two halves, separated by the novel’s central episode – Darcy’s
proposal, his letter the next morning, and Elizabeth’s ensuing
reflections. Before this Aristotelian reversal and recognition, Darcy and
Elizabeth
are separated by secrets; after this point, secrets unite them. Similarly, the teasing dialogues between Darcy and Elizabeth in
the first
half of the novel, a form of pseudo-silence similar to Mr. Bennet’s
ironic
rejoinders, in that speech has served to disguise meaning, is replaced
during
the second half of the novel, for the most part, by genuine silence:
Darcy and
Elizabeth are separated, and each now has the material, the
opportunity, and the
motive for introspection and moral change. Furthermore, the surprises that astonish Elizabeth in the first
half of
the novel are pseudo-surprises for the reader: beginning with Wickham’s
non-appearance at the Bingleys’ ball and climaxing in Darcy’s proposal,
each
of these developments has been clearly signalled in advance to us. Beginning with Darcy’s letter, however, which is a major
surprise to us as well as Elizabeth, the last half of the novel
contains a
series of marvellous comic surprises: events which we could never have
anticipated, which suddenly transform pain into pleasure, which cause
the sober
truth that Elizabeth has vowed to respect to astonish her.
If we examine the novel’s plot, five
secrets keep Darcy and Elizabeth apart during the first half of the
novel: each
secret is known by one of the central pair, but not by the other.
Darcy does not know that Jane Bennet, despite her placid demeanour, loves
his friend Bingley. Elizabeth is
ignorant of four crucial pieces of information: that Darcy had kept
from Bingley
the knowledge that Jane was in town; that Wickham is a detestable
hypocrite;
that Darcy is, against his will, increasingly in love with her; and
that she
herself is, against her will, increasingly in love with Darcy.3
Elizabeth does know what Darcy does not: that Jane loves Bingley.
Darcy clearly knows three of the four things that are hidden
from
Elizabeth – that he has kept Bingley ignorant of Jane’s presence in
London,
that Wickham is far from being a victim of the Darcy family, and that
he is in
love with Elizabeth (if against his will, his reason, and his character
[p.
169]) – and he, ironically, is fully convinced of the fourth, of
Elizabeth’s
love for him. He can see in her
behaviour to him what she can not: “I believed you to be wishing,
expecting my
addresses,” he tells her at the novel’s end (328). The proposal scene and its result,
Darcy’s letter, are thus pivotal. The
proposal, itself a secret between them, reveals three of the five
secrets:
Jane’s love for Bingley, Darcy’s separation of Bingley from Jane, and
Darcy’s love for Elizabeth. Darcy’s
ensuing letter, also a secret between Elizabeth and Darcy, throws
further light
on all three of the secrets just revealed to Elizabeth.
It is especially eloquent on the third secret, Darcy’s love.
For, despite its haughty opening and its cool tone, it is really
a love
letter – in its appeal to Elizabeth to share with him in reaching a
mutual
understanding of their situation, in its painful efforts to be honest
and
precise, in its trust in her intelligence and ability to keep his
confidence.
Furthermore, the letter reveals a fourth secret, Wickham’s past. By the time Elizabeth has read and absorbed
the letter, only
one of the five original secrets is unknown to her: her own love for
Darcy.
That love will slowly become apparent to her as she moves in a
series of
steps accelerated by her encounter with a transformed Darcy at Pemberley, from
credence to respect to approval to esteem to gratitude to affection
and,
finally, the realization that “he was exactly the man who, in
disposition and
talents, would most suit her” (275). From
the proposal and letter onwards, then, Darcy and Elizabeth are united
by their
secret knowledge. This is even more
evident when a new secret emerges in the second half of the novel:
Wickham and
Lydia have eloped and disappeared! The
elopement has often been treated with disdain by critics; Tony Tanner
considers
that it presents us with “externalities … mere melodrama.”4
The elopement in itself may have been melodramatic, but Jane Austen
carefully
limits her presentation of it to its effects upon the other characters,
which
are not. Elizabeth, moved by
impulses that she cannot explain and later regrets, spontaneously tells
Darcy
about the elopement right after reading Jane’s letters announcing it. By entrusting him with this secret she reciprocates the trust in
her
revealed by his disclosure to her of Wickham’s intended elopement with
his
sister; perhaps even more important, she conveys to him the message
that her
love for him has been strengthened, not destroyed, by the battering
each gave
the other at Hunsford. Mutual
confidences and mutual confidence have grown up together. And, of course, her disclosure allows Darcy to demonstrate
exactly the
same strengthened love for her: he secretly rescues Lydia and the
Bennet family
by arranging (and paying for) a marriage which almost guarantees that
he will
not only be allied to the Bennets, but also have Wickham as a
brother-in-law, if
he proposes again to Elizabeth. Darcy’s
secret rescue of the Bennet family has further significance in the
plot, since
it is only when Elizabeth takes the initiative and thanks him for it
that he
finds himself able to ask for her hand again. But before that Elizabeth guarantees Darcy’s return to Longbourn
by her
refusal to divulge a secret – a refusal that, if unsatisfying to Lady
Catherine, itself discloses Elizabeth’s secret to Darcy. Two
additional points might be made. The
first is that the secrets that separate Elizabeth and Darcy in the
first half of
the novel are really pseudo-secrets: the characters may be ignorant,
but we
easily see the true state of affairs. Unlike
the question of Tom Jones’ parentage, which is a secret the author
carefully
conceals from all but the preternaturally acute reader, Jane Austen has
put us
in a position to be in on these pseudo-secrets. We know, of course, of Jane’s love for
Bingley, since Jane
confides in
Elizabeth and Elizabeth is the point-of-view character. We also know, though less explicitly, that Elizabeth is
remarkably obtuse
on each of the four remaining questions. She
refuses to believe that Bingley has left Longbourn for
good because she is convinced that he loves Jane and that “a young man
so
totally independent of every one” (108) will do just what he wants. She is correct on the first count, Bingley’s love for Jane, but
wildly
mistaken on the second, Bingley’s independence: to adapt the words of
Colonel
Fitzwilliam to Elizabeth just minutes before Darcy’s proposal at Hunsford,
Elizabeth has lessened the honour of Darcy’s triumph very sadly (165). Similarly, Elizabeth can see clearly after reading Darcy’s
letter just
how self-contradictory Wickham’s posture of offended virtue has been. As for Darcy’s growing love for Elizabeth, Jane Austen leaves
Elizabeth’s viewpoint several times during Volume One to give us direct
glimpses of both his love and his struggle against it, and during her
stay at
Hunsford in Volume Two, though we remain within Elizabeth’s
perspective, we
can see increasingly clear signs that the struggle is going to be in
vain. And, in fact, Darcy’s growing love
for her is further
evidence to us of the fourth secret, that she is falling in love with
him,
though without realizing it; E. M. Halliday makes the interesting point
that
Darcy’s secret love for Elizabeth, whom we like immensely, makes him
worthy of
her love, at least in our eyes.5
A second important point about these
secrets, or more accurately pseudo-secrets, is that Darcy and Elizabeth
cannot
penetrate them because of their pride and prejudice.
Darcy cannot see Jane’s love for Bingley because he is
determined not
to: he confesses in his letter to the belief that the Bennet family,
except for
Jane and Elizabeth, have so little propriety that the match would be “a
most
unhappy connection” (176); he does not admit, in the letter or
afterwards,
what Caroline Bingley has suggested in her letter to Jane: that Darcy
is
prejudiced in his assessment of Jane by his desire to arrange a
marriage between
Bingley and his sister. Similarly,
Elizabeth does not want to admit to Darcy’s power over Bingley, to
Darcy’s
moral superiority to Wickham, to Darcy’s evident admiration for her,
and to
her own feelings toward him, all for the same reason: to do so would be
to lose
her independence and her conviction of her own superiority.
There is room for growth and change on each side.
The final words regarding Bingley and Jane in Darcy’s letter
contain an
unintended precision: “though the motives
which governed me may to you very
naturally appear insufficient, I have not yet learnt to condemn them”
(177).
Not yet, perhaps, but he will eventually. It
takes more than five months, but, as Darcy explains to Elizabeth, “On
the
evening before my going to London, I made a confession to [Bingley],
which I
believe I ought to have made long ago” (329).
In the same way, Elizabeth’s understanding of her errors and
their
cause undergoes a long, slow change, culminating, perhaps in her
reaction to the
news from Mrs. Gardiner that Darcy has secretly arranged the Lydia-Wickham
match: “For herself, she was humbled; but she was proud of him” (289).
Elizabeth, like Darcy, has learned to condemn her earlier
certainties. What I have said about secrets in the
novel
also applies to the related notion of silence.
The relationship of Elizabeth and Darcy during the first half of
the
novel consists largely of pseudo-silence: Elizabeth may believe that
Darcy is a
man of silence, and twit him repeatedly for being so, but actually
their
relationship during this section of the novel is a talkative one.
All of this is nicely symbolized when Elizabeth finds herself
dancing
with Darcy at Netherfield: “She began to imagine that their silence was
to
last through the two dances, and at first was resolved not to break it;
till
suddenly fancying that it would be the greater punishment to her
partner to
oblige him to talk, she made some slight observation on the dance” (p.
81).
Of course, the key word is “fancying”: Elizabeth grasps neither
Darcy’s devotion to her nor why she is so determined to punish him.
In short, their talk during the first section of the novel is
the
equivalent of Mr. Bennet’s evasiveness on the subject of visiting Bingley: it
is a confusing disguise, but moves indirectly in a desired direction.
The proposal scene and the letter put Elizabeth and Darcy into
direct
communication, and, as we have seen, this central episode is followed,
at least
for the most part, by a long period of genuine silence, introspection,
and
change on the part of each. It is
worth pointing out that Elizabeth has had no interest in introspection
in the
first half of the novel: her attention has been focused on her attempts
to
account for the mysterious events that are happening around her.
On the other hand, we readers are much less uncertain about
events than
Elizabeth, since what is secret to her is only apparently secret to us,
and as a
result our attention is drawn to what Elizabeth is determined to
ignore: her own
motives for her judgements and attitudes. The
final sentence in Elizabeth’s apostrophe to herself after reading
Darcy’s
letter – the bottom line, as it were – is, “Till this moment, I never
knew
myself” (185). To put this another way, Elizabeth
begins
the novel as someone determined to talk, because she knows exactly what
to
think. Darcy’s proposal, his
letter, and their ensuing separation force her to choose to be silent,
even to
Jane, on some matters, and to understand the value of silence. Her first act in the plot is to entertain
everyone with the
story of what she has overheard Darcy say to Bingley about her; her
decisive act
at the end of the novel, when Lady Catherine sweeps up in her chaise
and four,
shows how much she has learned. Elizabeth
has become more like Darcy during the course of their relationship,
just as he
has gained some of her liveliness and poise. Secrets and silence lead to surprise.
It seems to me that there are five major surprises within the
first half
of the novel, culminating in Darcy’s proposal to Elizabeth, but that
these
surprises are actually pseudo-surprises – events that catch Elizabeth,
but not
the novel’s readers, unprepared. These
surprises are all disturbing shocks to Elizabeth, brought on by her
delusions.
In the second half of the novel, however, beginning with Darcy’s
letter
and culminating in Lady Catherine’s descent upon Longbourn, there are
another
five surprises, but of a very different kind: each is pleasant, and
each is a
genuinely astonishing turn of events that no one, neither Elizabeth nor
we
readers of the novel, could ever have predicted. Elizabeth’s first major unpleasant
surprise occurs when Wickham does not attend the Bingleys’ ball: “a
doubt of
his being present had never occurred to her” (79).
An even more painful shock occurs when Charlotte Lucas tells
Elizabeth
that she has agreed to marry Mr. Collins: that
Charlotte should encourage him, seemed almost as far from possibility
as that
she could encourage him herself, and her astonishment was consequently
so great
as to overcome at first the bounds of decorum, and she could not help
crying
out, “Engaged to Mr. Collins! my dear Charlotte, – impossible!”
(113)
Elizabeth’s
third surprise comes at about the same time.
Bingley has indeed left Netherfield for good, though Elizabeth
had been
so certain it could not happen: “The idea of his returning no more
Elizabeth
treated with the utmost contempt” (108).
Her fourth unpleasant surprise follows quickly and consists of
another
defection: Wickham leaves off his attention to Elizabeth and begins
determinedly
making himself agreeable to a Miss King, whose most remarkable charm is
the
sudden acquisition of £10,000 (134). Elizabeth
is ostensibly cool and unaffected at the loss of
her admirer, but her professions of cynical acceptance are so bitter
that Mrs.
Gardiner remarks, “Take care, Lizzy; that speech savours strongly of
disappointment” (138). Her fifth
and greatest surprise comes when Darcy abruptly enters the drawing room
at Hunsford, where she is sitting alone, and bursts out with the words,
“In vain
have I struggled” (168). Darcy’s
proposal is actually, of course, merely the culminating instance in a
series of
unsettling overtures by Darcy to Elizabeth during the Netherfield and
Hunsford
scenes. My point is that all of these
surprises are
ironic ones: surprises to Elizabeth, but pseudo-surprises to us.
For instance, Wickham’s tale to Elizabeth is preposterous: he
intersperses his maligning of Darcy with claims such as, “Till I forget
his
father, I can never defy or expose him” (71).
Similarly, we have seen Charlotte consistently profess and act
upon a
credo of cynical opportunism, though Elizabeth has been blind and deaf
where
Charlotte is concerned. And, of
course, Darcy’s proposal has been looming more and more inevitably: an
increasingly obvious flurry of hints while Elizabeth is at Hunsford
shows us
that his is a kettle about to reach the boiling-point.
In short, the greatest surprise of all to Elizabeth in the first
half of
the novel is the event that we most expect. All of these surprises to Elizabeth
are
disturbing and even humiliating. They
all spring from her prejudices, her determination to think the best of
herself
and the worst of Darcy, but she chooses to ascribe these surprises to
the
unsatisfying, undependable nature of reality itself.
She tells Jane that Bingley’s desertion and Charlotte’s marriage
are
simply “unaccountable” (121). A
great change occurs, however, with Darcy’s letter to Elizabeth, the
sequel to
and even continuation of his proposal. The
letter is, in effect, Darcy’s Proposal, Part Two. It is a complete surprise to us as well as to Elizabeth, such a
jolt to
the reader’s expectations that Mary Lascelles has argued that it shows
Jane
Austen sacrificing plausibility in order to advance the plot: “The
manner is
right, but not the matter: so much, and such, information would hardly
be
volunteered by a proud and reserved man – unless under pressure from
his
author, anxious to get on with the story.6
The letter is the first of five
genuinely
surprising events in the second half of the novel; each of these
surprises (with
the partial exception of the central, transitional letter) is pleasant
in nature
and satisfyingly advances Darcy and Elizabeth’s relationship.
The second comes when Elizabeth finds herself at Pemberley,
finds that
the house is gracious, but not ostentatious, and finds, to her special
astonishment, that his housekeeper Mrs. Reynolds insists that he is a
kind
master: she has never had a cross word from him in her life, and has
known him
since he was four years old (218). The
crescendo in this series of surprises at Pemberley comes when Darcy
himself
steps out from behind his house, and the climax is the change in
Darcy’s
manners. The third great surprise
is the news of Lydia and Wickham’s elopement, though the surprise lies
not so
much in the elopement itself as in the change it makes in Darcy and
Elizabeth’s relationship. Five
lines after Jane’s second letter ends Elizabeth has run to the door of
the
room and confronted – Darcy. And
then something even more surprising than the elopement happens:
Elizabeth finds
herself confiding in Darcy. This
act is her response to, her reciprocation of, his letter and his
reformed
behaviour at Pemberley. The fourth
great surprise leaps out of a babble of trivia as Lydia describes her
wedding
day to the assembled Bennets: “However,
I recollected afterwards, that if he [Mr. Gardiner] had been
prevented
going, the wedding need not be put off, for Mr. Darcy might have done
as
well.” “Mr.
Darcy!” repeated Elizabeth, in utter amazement. (282) Elizabeth now induces her aunt to reveal all
Darcy has secretly done to bring about Lydia’s marriage, and his
actions, of
course, have a secret meaning of their own: “Her heart did whisper,
that he
had done it for her” (288). The
fifth and culminating surprise is Lady Catherine’s appearance at Pemberley, an
appearance that, like all of the other surprising events in this half
of the
novel, is an extremely happy turn of events: Lady Catherine, who loves
to be of
use, removes all of Darcy’s doubts about Elizabeth’s feelings (339). Not only are all of these surprises pleasant, but they are
genuine:
Elizabeth is no longer self-deceived, and once she begins to see the
world as it
is, she finds that it far exceeds her expectations. Though, as she tells
Wickham, “In essentials … [Mr. Darcy] is
very
much what he ever was” (207), that true identity proves to be far
better than
she had ever imagined. NOTES 1
Quotations are from Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Oxford
World’s
Classics Edition, ed. James Kinsley and Frank W. Bradbrook (Oxford and
New York:
Oxford University Press, 1980). 2
See Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, ed. B. C. Southam
(London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968), pp. 152, 175. 3
The view that Elizabeth unwittingly loves Darcy from the outset is
developed in
Bruce Stovel, “ ‘A Contrariety of Emotion’: Jane Austen’s Ambivalent
Lovers in Pride and Prejudice,” International Fiction Review,
14
(1987), 27-33. 4
Tony Tanner, Jane Austen (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
Univerity Press,
1986), p. 120. 5
E. M. Halliday, “Narrative Perspective in Pride and Prejudice,”
Nineteenth-Century
Fiction, 15 (1960), 65-71; cited here from Twentieth-Century
Interpretations of Pride and Prejudice, ed. E. Rubinstein
(Englewood Cliffs,
N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969), p. 81. 6
Mary Lascelles, Jane Austen and Her Art
(London: Oxford University Press,
1939), p. 162. |
