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Persuasions #11, 1989 Page 77-84 Assertion and Aggression in the Novels of Jane Austen
DWIGHT McCAWLEY
In Northanger Abbey John Thorpe tells
Catherine Morland that she can forget her scheduled walk with the
Tilneys
because he saw them leaving town a half-hour ago; he then gets
Catherine into
his gig, only to pass the Tilneys walking on the sidewalk coming to
meet her. She calls to him to stop, but he refuses. In
spite of her repeated pleas for him to stop the carriage
and let her out, he merely whips the horse into a faster pace, laughing
as he
goes. This
scene perfectly illustrates a familiar scenario in Jane Austen: that of
someone
riding roughshod over someone else’s rights. If the obvious, surface plot of her novels is courtship, there
is, I
suggest, a less obvious but equally intense plot at work in the Austen
novels, a
plot that provides a sort of metaphorical context within which the
courtship
story unfolds. This backgrounded
plot is the struggle between aggressors and their victims. To
explain what I mean, I will borrow a distinction made by the popular
books on
“assertiveness training” that have appeared in the last few years,
teaching
shy folk that they should stop letting people walk all over them,
should learn
to say “no” when they have taken on all that they can handle, should
express
their preferences more readily, and so on. These books (of which Your Perfect Right, by Alberti and
Emmons,
is perhaps the most intellectually respectable, being written by two
bona fide
academic researchers) usually make a distinction between “assertive”
and
“aggressive” behaviour, a distinction that will be useful in discussing
Jane
Austen: “Assertive”
behaviour is any behaviour toward another person that directly, firmly
and
honestly expresses one’s feelings, wishes, needs, or legitimate rights
– but
which at the same time respects the feelings, needs and rights of the
other
person. “Aggressive” behaviour, by contrast, is any behaviour that blatantly disregards
the
needs or rights of other people in the blind, juggernaut pursuit of the
aggressor’s own goals. A
third type of interpersonal behaviour implicit in this analysis is
non-assertive
or passive behaviour – the total failure to take any definite
action on
one’s own behalf at all. The want
of resolution thus exemplified leaves the person highly vulnerable to
the
machinations of bolder, more aggressive types. Turning
to Jane Austen, I contend that in an Austen novel the courtship plot is
only the
surface plot. The real plot is the
incessant struggle of decent, well-behaved, considerate people to hold
their own
against self-seeking, aggressive types who disregard the restraints of
etiquette
or ethics and ruin the plans of any who stand in their way. This other plot is not exactly a sub-plot, in the sense that in Pride
and Prejudice the courtship of Jane and Bingley is a sub-plot to
the main
plot of Elizabeth and Darcy. Rather
it is a “constant” in the social scheme, operating somewhat as static
on a
radio does: the action of the courting couple always proceeds in spite
of it,
and they are always at least half-aware that it may break forth in
their own
relationship. Before looking at
this phenomenon in Pride and Prejudice, let me offer brief
examples from
the other novels: Northanger
Abbey: Isabella Thorpe
consistently lavishes the most insincere nonsense upon Catherine Morland,
proclaiming deep and lasting friendship, only to further her designs
upon
Catherine’s brother, James. Naïve
Catherine has developed no defences against aggression and takes a long
while to
become wise to it. John Thorpe
shows his own brand of aggressive behaviour toward her, as we have
already seen. For some time the naïve and well-bred Catherine meekly and
non-assertively goes along with Thorpe’s behaviour. However, the day finally comes when she does assert herself:
when he runs
to the Tilneys and makes her excuses for her, Catherine at last rebels. She races to the Tilneys (not only against his protest, but
against that
of Isabella and James as well) and rights the wrong. She is learning her first lesson in getting tough with
aggressors. Sense
and Sensibility: the name Fanny
Dashwood will call to mind a stupifyingly insensitive action: “No
sooner was
[Henry Dashwood’s] funeral over than Mrs. John Dashwood, without
sending any
notice of her intention to her mother-in-law, arrived with her child
and their
attendants.” She comes to occupy Norland, with her mother-in-law barely home from the funeral! – a
perfect
example of the territorial aggression mentioned earlier. The next chapter contains the famous scene in which Fanny
persuades her
husband to give no money to Mrs. Dashwood at all, in spite of Henry
Dashwood’s
specific instructions to his son. Here
is double aggression, for not only are the Dashwood women being cheated
of their
inheritance, but John Dashwood himself is being manipulated to a
fare-thee-well. But
these are early scenes, and we can tick off many other instances of
aggression
in the novel: Lucy Steele pre-empts Edward from Elinor; Willoughby uses
Marianne
for his summer pleasure; Mrs. Ferrars treats Edward like a welcome mat;
Fanny
chooses to have the Steele sisters come to stay at their London house
instead of
Elinor and Marianne; Robert Ferrars filches Lucy from Edward (not that
Edward
minds); and so on. People are
victimized by aggression from start to finish. Mansfield
Park: the entire novel
chronicles the career of aggression versus non-assertion, as Fanny
Price, the
meek, non-assertive heroine, attempts to survive the blatant onslaughts
of Mrs.
Norris and the subtler but equally damaging harassments of Sir Thomas,
Henry
Crawford, Mary Crawford, Maria Bertram, and even Edmund Bertram, her
sometime
champion and confidant. Space will
not permit detailed examination, but perhaps one example in each case
will
suffice to indicate the extent of Fanny’s besiegement: Mrs.
Norris, who first thought of having Fanny come live at Mansfield, tries
to deny
Fanny everything: a fire in her room, a horse, a trip to Sotherton, the
use of a
carriage to go to a dinner engagement, and so on. Maria Bertram delights to remind Fanny daily of her place as a
non-Bertram and a nobody. Sir
Thomas causes Fanny excruciating pain when he tries to force her to
marry Henry
Crawford and makes her feel ungrateful and selfish when she refuses. Henry Crawford blatantly announces to his sister that he plans
to make
Fanny fall in love with him, as an amusement for himself on his
non-hunting
days. Mary Crawford pretends to be
a friend but abets Henry’s egotistic pursuit by manipulating Fanny into
accepting the necklace. Even Edmund
exploits Fanny by using their confidential relationship for his own
selfish end,
that of harping forever on his infatuation with Mary Crawford and
asking
Fanny’s advice as to how he should proceed. Fanny outlives this aggression; she never confronts it. Emma:
Emma herself is a major aggressor: consider her manoeuvring of Harriet
into rejecting Robert Martin’s proposal. She believes she is doing it for Harriet’s good, but we see that
it is
an action of pure ego on Emma’s part: she believes she knows what is
best for
everybody, and she is in a position to force her infallibility on poor
Harriet. Harriet’s submission to Emma in this matter is non-assertion
at
its worst: she does not say, as a more assertive person might, “Miss
Woodhouse, I love Robert Martin and want to marry him. I am going to accept his proposal.
I’m
sorry if I have to lose your friendship in the bargain, but that is a
sacrifice
I’ll have to make.” She has a
perfect right to say that, but she just doesn’t have the assertiveness
to do
it. Knightley’s
reaction, on the other hand, is characteristically assertive: “You saw
her
answer! You wrote her answer too. Emma, this is your doing,” and so forth.
Knightley’s
schooling of Emma is nearly always a matter of
assertiveness confronting aggression. Other
aggressors show their colours in Emma: Mrs. Elton’s mode of
behaviour
from the very first moment of her arrival in Highbury is aggressive;
she sets up
as the superior woman in the society, advertising herself with slogans
and
logos, à la Madison Avenue (Maple Grove, Selina, my caro sposo, etc.). She is a junior-grade Lady Catherine, without the money or the
style. Frank Churchill is another aggressor: his behaviour toward Jane
Fairfax,
the repeated occasions of flirting with Emma in his fiancée’s presence,
is
inexcusable; we cannot pardon him any more than we can pardon Maria
Bertram’s
flagrant behaviour with Henry Crawford in front of Mr. Rushworth. As
in the other novels, the surface plot of Emma is courtship: but
the
subtler and more pervasive plot is the damage, potential and actual,
inflicted
by these three primary aggressors upon other characters who are either
too
unassertive to defend themselves (Harriet, Miss Bates) or are simply
not in a
position to do so (Jane Fairfax). Mr.
Knightley provides the assertive norm: he does not
hesitate to upbraid Emma for her mistreatment of people; he sees
through Frank
Churchill’s shallowness and refuses to join in Highbury’s general
adulation
of him; he thwarts Mrs. Elton’s designs several times (he dances with
Harriet
when Elton refuses her and joins his wife in smirking; he insists on
making out
his own guest-list for the strawberry party, when Augusta proclaims she
will do
it for him). Persuasion: Anne Elliot suffers daily slights and insults to her
maturity and
intelligence at the hands of her father and her sister Elizabeth. A typical example is found in Elizabeth’s notion of a good way
to save
money for the sake of the family finances: it consists of not bringing
Anne a
present from London! In fact she slights
Anne on all occasions, out of an abiding
need to be the first lady of the family. Sir
Walter acts almost as though Anne did not exist, for the very good
reason that
she does not flatter his ego as Elizabeth does. Her
sister Mary also uses Anne for her own selfish needs. Thus is she exploited by the whole family. As
in the case of Fanny Price and Harriet Smith, we see Anne taking no
really
assertive action in response to the aggression: we overhear her private
thoughts
as she regrets the tactless, snobbish behaviour of her father and
sister, but
she never speaks her mind to them. We
understand why, of course: she would be wasting her time remonstrating
with
fools. Still, the author who created
Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Knightley, if she had chosen to do so, could have found a way to let
Anne put
Sir Walter and Elizabeth in their place. One
would have enjoyed an exchange in which Anne might have caused them to
see what
ego-ridden fools they really are. These
hasty suggestions of the workings of aggression in the other novels
provide a
context within which we may look at the presence of that phenomenon in Pride
and Prejudice, and at the way that it is (for once in the six major
novels)
triumphantly thwarted. As an early
example is the scene in which the Bingley sisters slash at Elizabeth
after she
has left the room to attend to Jane: “I hope you saw her petticoat, six
inches
deep in mud,” and so on. Bingley’s
response is mildly assertive: “Your picture may be very exact, Louisa,
but
this was all lost upon me. I
thought Miss Elizabeth Bennet looked remarkably well when she came into
the room
this morning. Her dirty petticoat
quite escaped my notice.” The
growing hostility of Caroline Bingley toward Elizabeth, born of her
all-too-obvious determination to have Darcy for herself, creates the
prickly
atmosphere that prevails throughout the Bennet sisters’ stay at Netherfield.
The dramatic high point of this part of the novel is reached
when
Caroline acidly comments on Elizabeth’s “paltry device” of recommending
herself to the opposite sex by undervaluing her own. Darcy, answering aggression with cool assertion, says:
“Undoubtedly,
there is meanness in all the arts which ladies sometimes
condescend to
employ for captivation. Whatever
bears affinity to cunning is despicable.” The narrator slyly remarks, “Miss Bingley was not so entirely
satisfied
with this reply as to continue the subject.” In
fact – though she holds her own very well – Elizabeth is plagued by a
succession of aggressors. Caroline
Bingley’s jealous, catty aggression is followed
very soon by Mr. Collins’s pompous, stupid, territorial aggression:
smacking
his lips in anticipation of taking over Longbourn itself, he comes to
gobble up
one of Longbourn’s daughters. Next
comes the sexually exploitative aggression of Mr. Wickham, an evil
spirit who
charms Eliza into believing the worst of Mr. Darcy and thus largely
predetermines her vehement rejection of Darcy’s first proposal. And finally, there comes Lady Catherine. Lady
Catherine’s brand of aggression is tyrannical, self-opinionated; she
belongs
with Mrs. Norris among those rare humans blessed with infallibility yet
condemned to share the earth with their inferiors. At the end of the party, says the narrator, they “gathered round
the
fire to hear Lady Catherine determine what weather they were to have on
the
morrow,” suggesting that Mother Nature herself hesitates to be
assertive with
Lady Catherine. (Ironically, Lady
Catherine’s own daughter provides a perfect example of the scared,
non-assertive personality.) However,
Lady Catherine’s insufferable behaviour sets the stage for the one
thoroughly
satisfying example, in all of the Austen novels, of aggression being
perfectly
answered and defeated by a determined application of assertiveness. I refer, of course, to the magnificent confrontation between
Lady
Catherine and Elizabeth Bennet, when Lady Catherine comes to Longbourn. The interesting thing for our purposes is that, although Lady
Catherine
makes one inexcusably aggressive assault after another, Elizabeth never
once
steps beyond the line of legitimate assertiveness in answering her. She does not give way to abusive language, to name-calling, to
insults
– in fact, she hardly even becomes heated. Instead, she counters every offensive remark from her assailant
with
cool, polite logic. The scene is
too familiar to require much quoting, but three exchanges will
illustrate the
point: 1.
Lady Catherine: Miss Bennet, I insist on being satisfied. Has
he, has my
nephew, made you an offer of marriage? Elizabeth:
Your ladyship has declared it to be impossible. 2.
Lady C: You will be censured,
slighted, and despised, by every one connected with him.
Your alliance will be a disgrace; your name will never even be
mentioned
by any of us. E:
These are heavy misfortunes. But
the wife of Mr. Darcy must have such extraordinary sources of happiness
necessarily attached to her situation, that she could, upon the whole,
have no
cause to repine. 3.
Lady C.: You are then resolved to have him? E: I
have said no such thing. I am only
resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion,
constitute my
happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly
unconnected with me. The
first of these rejoinders includes nothing that an unbiased observer
could call
offensive, but it stoutly refuses compliance with the demand.
The second speech politely undercuts the effect of Lady
Catherine’s
threat and leaves her high and dry. The
third could almost stand as the very definition of assertiveness, as
Eliza
deftly defines what is her inalienable human right: the right to pursue
her own
happiness without being inhibited by a self-centred aggressor. But
now a question arises: why is it that such a triumphant rout of
aggression by
assertion occurs so seldom in the Austen novels? It happens occasionally, to be sure.
We rejoice when Sir Thomas does eventually quash Mrs. Norris: it
happens
when he enters the room and says, “Fanny, at what time would you have
the
carriage come round?” “My
dear Sir Thomas!” cried Mrs. Norris, red with anger, “Fanny can walk.” “Walk!”
repeated Sir Thomas, in a tone of most unanswerable dignity, and coming
farther
into the room. – “My niece walk to a dinner engagement at this
time
of the year! Fanny, will twenty minutes
after four suit you?” Ah, we feel, this is more like
it; this is what we’d like more
often. We feel the same way when
Mr. Knightley squelches Mrs. Elton upon her announcing that she will
make out
the guest-list for his strawberry-party at Donwell Abbey. “I
hope you will bring Elton,” said he, “but I will not trouble you to
give any
other invitations.” She
presses him: “Leave it all to me. I
will invite your guests.” “No,”
he calmly replied, “there is but one married woman in the world whom I
can
ever allow to invite what guests she pleases to Donwell, and that one
is – ” “Mrs.
Weston, I suppose,” interrupted Mrs. Elton, rather mortified. “No
– Mrs. Knightley; and till she is in being, I will manage such matters
myself.” Take
that, Augusta! These are
delicious moments, but how few they are. Most
of the time the aggressor is allowed to get away with his/her bullying;
other
characters on most occasions suppress their true feelings or mutter
them
privately to a confidante, but do not speak up to the offender. Why does Emma never say anything to Mrs.
Elton, whose conduct
deserves at least one reprimand per conversation? Emma
is neither shy nor weak. Why does she not deliver Mrs. Elton some sort of rebuff?
Again, we would like to see Catherine Morland tell Isabella
Thorpe that
her everlasting insincerity is not only comical but downright harmful,
and she
ought to stop it. We would like
John and Fanny Dashwood to receive a thumping from somebody, preferably
Elinor
or Marianne, or perhaps Colonel Brandon. Having
shown how triumphantly she could do it with Elizabeth and Lady
Catherine, why
does Jane Austen not give us these scenes? I would offer the following speculations: 1. Jane Austen’s women have been nurtured
on the food of “proper feminine conduct.” As Claudia Johnson says, women of Jane Austen’s time were
required
“to be amiably weak, retiring, and docile so as to assure the
authority, the
chivalry, even the identity of men” (2). Now, in fact, the premise that women and men are made from the
same
stuff, and that neither sex as a whole is inferior to the other as a
whole
(though certain individual men may be inferior to individual women, and
vice
verse) – this premise underlies the action of every Jane Austen novel. The admirable women command the same respect as the admirable
men; the
unadmired characters of both sexes stand on an equal footing. Nevertheless, Jane Austen could not be unfaithful to what she
saw around
her every day. In real life an
Elinor Dashwood, intelligent, mature, and well-spoken, would not say
anything to
anyone that could be regarded as “uppity” or “abrasive” (“bitchy”
would be the modern term). More
accurately, she would probably not have the nerve to do so. She would be letting herself in for shame and disgrace.
Some of Byron’s society-women could brazen it out (Lady Caroline
Lamb,
for example), but they accepted the notoriety that went with the
careless behaviour. Elinor could not and
would not do that, nor would Fanny Price or Anne Elliot. Thus
Jane Austen was probably indulging a fantasy in allowing Eliza Bennet
to get
away with as much frank expression as she uses; young women of her time
would in
all likelihood not have survived socially with that degree of
outspokenness. The author’s remark about Pride and Prejudice being
altogether
too “light and bright and sparkling” may reflect a feeling that she had
fudged on reality a little in making Eliza freer than most women were
actually
able to be, just as she had done in allowing Eliza to be as idealistic
about
marriage as she was; Charlotte Lucas’s views come closer to the sad
truth of
female necessity in her time. Hence,
there would have been a reluctance on Jane Austen’s part to get quite
that far
from actuality again. So, in her
next novel she chose to depict a young woman repressed by everyone in
her
household. Fanny’s literal
repression by everyone at Mansfield, if taken figuratively, signals the
general
repression of women by the entire society. 2. Paradoxically, the very desire to subvert this
entrenched notion
of woman’s place may have led her to muzzle her heroines in order to
make the
injustice more keenly felt. Feeling
the daily and hourly frustration of the intelligent woman unable to
speak her
mind for fear of censure, how was she to drive home the wrongness of it
except
to make the reader feel the same frustration that she and every
other
intelligent woman of her time (Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Godwin
Shelley, to
name two) must have felt under the prevailing edicts of the conduct
books,
parental training, dull sermonizing, and general socialization that
emphasized
to young women the necessity of demureness, sweetness, modesty, and
acceptance
of inferiority? As Mary Poovey has
said, in writing of Persuasion, For,
given the liabilities of both individualism and paternalistic values,
Austen’s
ideal solution was to use one system of values to correct the abuses of
the
other. But in doing so, Austen
inadvertently exposed tensions inherent in both ideologies, and even in
her
symbolic resolution of these tensions, she laid bare the ideological
configuration that was finally most damaging to women.
(155-56) Thus
it is easy for us to say, for example, that Elinor Dashwood’s mother should
have said to Fanny Dashwood, “Fanny, you may be legally entitled to
occupy
this house; but to move into it the moment my husband’s funeral was
over is
the most unfeeling and improper behaviour I have ever witnessed by any
human
being.” It is, I say, easy for us to write
such speeches and smugly
announce that that is what we would have said if we had
been Mrs.
Dashwood. But it was not at all
that easy for a woman of that time to say such things in a public,
social
situation. The rarity of assertive
confrontations with aggressors in these novels is not incompatible with
an
authorial decision to let the terrifying frustration of women’s
entrapment in
social repression be felt to the point that the reader would
cry out in
exasperation for the heroine to tell somebody off. Having driven the reader to the wall, the author can smile
and say, “Aha, my friend! I
perceive that you begin to see how it feels.” But
when all is said and done, there is a retribution for aggression in the
novels. We tend to overlook – because it never comes up in the novels –
Jane
Austen’s private devotion to Christianity. Consider her prayer for humility: Incline us oh God! to think humbly of ourselves, to be severe only in the examination of our own conduct, to consider our fellow-creatures with kindness, and to judge of all they say and do with that charity which we would desire from them ourselves. (Chapman 456) Transgressions
of this humble approach to human relationships abound in her novels,
and the
non-assertive heroines alone seem to carry it out (Anne Elliot perhaps
most
serenely). The prayer says a great
deal about the impression a John Thorpe, a John or Fanny Dashwood, a
Lady
Catherine, a Mrs. Norris, or a Sir Walter Elliot (to name a few) must
have made
upon her when she encountered their human counterparts in a social
situation.
On the surface the prayer may seem to underwrite the notion of
accepting
one’s inferior station, but it is not written for a woman any more than
for a
man; it counsels Christian humility, regardless of sex.
And
Christian humility is precisely what the Fanny Dashwoods, Lady
Catherines and
Sir Walter Elliots do not evince. The
Lady Catherines of the world will not “be severe only in the
examination of
their own conduct”; they will not examine their conduct at all. Instead they will assign a living to a toady like Collins so as
never to
face any unpleasant truths about themselves, except on those revolting
occasions
when they run afoul of an Elizabeth Bennet or a Mr. Knightley. Thus,
keeping her heroines from assertive rejoinders is not inconsistent with
a
decision to leave final judgements and punishments to Providence.
We sense the subtle workings of psychological revenge upon those
without
the intelligence and the Christian humility to change their perceptions
and
their behaviour. Increasingly cut off from
the warmth and love felt by the
more open-hearted, generous, decent members of society, these
self-seeking,
hurtful aggressors will live in wretched isolation – wealthy, perhaps,
but
emotionally impoverished, the ironic victims of their own aggression.
Mrs. Norris and Maria Bertram will live out their days with none
but each
other for company. So will Sir Walter and
Elizabeth Elliot, and John and Fanny
Dashwood, and all the other insensitive, self-focused, static
personalities of
the novels. Incapable
of emotional and intellectual growth, they will smolder all their days
in a hell
of their own devising. WORKS
CITED
Chapman,
R. W., ed. The Works of Jane
Austen, vol. VI [Minor Works.] New
York: Oxford University Press, 1983.
Johnson,
Claudia. Jane Austen: Women,
Politics, and the Novel. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1988. Poovey, Mary. “Persuasion and the Promises of Love.” In The Representation of Women in Fiction, ed. Carolyn G. Heilbrun and Margaret R. Higonnet. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983. |
