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Good Tenses Make Good Neighbors: Or, How Grammar and Linguistics Shaped Austen’s Moral Worldview

Jane Austen’s life, though sadly the shortest of the eight Austen siblings’ lives, spanned a particularly action-packed portion of Western history.  Born mere months after the first shots at Lexington and Concord, she grew into adolescence while French heads parted ways with French shoulders in revolutionary Paris.  In the year she vacationed at Lyme Regis, Napoleon Bonaparte became emperor.  Amid all this upheaval, a quieter, though no less revolutionary, change began to take place within the English language itself.  Literacy rates rose dramatically, as did the number of available books:  while about 100 new titles a year were published in the 1750s, by 1825 that number was over 600 (Tucker and Unwin).  With increased circulation came increased scrutiny, and learned men began to give the English language a level of scholarly attention once reserved for Latin and Greek.

Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language, with nearly 43,000 words and over 100,000 quotations, represented a monumental effort to codify the English language.  Alongside this landmark dictionary, a new genre of publication arose—the grammar guide—and the eighteenth century was its golden era.  Four times as many grammar guides were published between 1750 and 1800 as had ever been published in English history (Van Ostade, Bishop’s 258).  One of the most popular was Robert Lowth’s A Short Introduction to English Grammar, the 1767 edition of which graced the shelves of Godmersham Park.  Sales were brisk, and just one month after its first publication in 1762, Lowth wrote to his publisher, “I am very glad to find the Public has so good an Appetite for Grammar” (Van Ostade, Bishop’s 79).  Indeed, they ate it up because a pivotal sociolinguistic shift was taking place in England.  As K. C. Phillipps puts it, “It had been no disgrace for ladies in Queen Anne’s day to write letters innocent of grammar; but by Jane Austen’s time to be ungrammatical was to be ungenteel” (“English” 328).  At the dawn of industrialization, social mobility was a glimmering possibility, with proper language use a vital tool to that end.  Although today most people dread “the wagging finger of the prescriptivist” telling us not to split our infinitives or dangle our participles, eighteenth-century readers “in their desire to climb the social ladder . . . needed guidance as to the norm of linguistic correctness—‘polite’ usage—that accompanied the new status they aspired to” (Van Ostade, Bishop’s 2).  They reached for Lowth’s grammar, or Joseph Priestley’s, or John Ash’s.  And there they learned not just the principles of Standard English grammar and syntax but also the subtle but persistent lesson that good grammar equaled good character—and even good morals. 

Austen absorbed this lesson through her own reading.  It surfaces repeatedly in both her fiction and her letter-writing.  She clearly agrees with the sentiment in part.  She uses slang and solecisms to reveal the flaws and moral failings of many of her characters.  Norman Page says that for Austen, “speech becomes an index of moral qualities:  men and women demonstrate their virtues, or betray their weaknesses, out of their own mouths” (148).  While Austen does seem to believe that refined language reflects refined thought, however, she also introduces characters who speak and write properly only to hide their inner flaws, Frank Churchill and Lady Susan foremost among them.  In doing so, Austen plays with and complicates the assumptions of eighteenth-century linguistic discourse, recognizing that, although proper language use is a virtue, it neither substitutes for nor directly correlates with virtuous behavior. 

Austen was exposed to the eighteenth-century parallels between good grammar and good breeding through her “dear Dr Johnson” (8–9 February 1807), rhetorician Hugh Blair, and other language experts.  In his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, first published in 1783, Blair calls conjunctions and prepositions “the foundation of all reasoning” (85).  “Among barbarous nations,” he continues, “and in the rude uncivilized ages of the world, the stock of these words might be small,” but the Greek language is full of them, “in consequence of the acute and subtile genius of that refined people” (85).  With his dictionary, Samuel Johnson strove to create order and preserve purity in the English language for fear of its being “reduce[d] . . . to babble a dialect of France.”  “We have long preserved our constitution,” Johnson opines; “let us make some struggle for our language” (10).  Since Christianity imbued nearly every aspect of life for eighteenth-century Britons, such a struggle quickly took on religious and moral dimensions.  Though only a rector when he wrote his Short Introduction, Lowth later became Bishop of Oxford and then Bishop of London before his death in 1787.  Thus, Austen and her contemporaries knew the great grammarian as Bishop Lowth, and the title no doubt added moral weight to his linguistic admonitions.  The shelves of the library at Godmersham Park, which Austen herself visited, contained two volumes by Scottish minister and rhetorician Hugh Blair:  his seminal work on English language and composition, and a book simply titled Sermons.  When your grammarians are also your priests, the lines between good language use and good moral character become not so much blurred as deliberately erased. 

Women, too, combined the dual aims of good grammar and good behavior during Austen’s time.  Many acted as “teacher-grammarians,” as Karen Cajka calls them.  Their goal was “the education of girls into ‘proper’ women,” and their methods “emphasized the primacy of intellectual development, particularly through the study of English grammar” (220–21).  One such teacher was Jane Arden Gardiner, who established a girls’ school in Yorkshire in 1784, one year before young Austen attended a similar school in Reading.  In 1799, Gardiner published her Young Ladies’ English Grammar, which, like many language guides of the time, “interspersed religious references and moral aphorisms throughout the text of her grammar.”  Such a method “naturally blends religious and linguistic instruction,” strengthening the pervasive attitude that good language use and good morals were one and the same (Cajka 196). 

The word propriety, connecting both language use and behavior, forms a strong link between Austen and eighteenth-century grammarians.  Van Ostade calls propriety “a key notion” in Lowth’s grammar (Bishop’s 113); as Lowth says in his preface, “every person of a liberal education . . . should be able to express himself with propriety and accuracy” (viii).  The word is also a favorite of Blair’s, appearing nearly one hundred times in his Lectures.  “Let the matter of an author be ever so good and useful,” writes Blair, “his compositions will always suffer in the public esteem, if his expression be deficient in purity and propriety” (91).  In his dictionary, Johnson defines propriety as “accuracy; justness,” but Blair provides a definition specific to language use:  “Propriety, is the selection of such words in the language, as the best and most established usage has appropriated to those ideas which we intend to express by them.  It implies the correct and happy application of them, according to that usage, in opposition to vulgarisms or low expressions” (93).  Though frustratingly vague and subjective, Blair’s advice to his readers is to let others’ speech and writing be their guide:  “There is no standard, either of purity or of propriety, but the practice of the best writers and speakers in the country” (93).  Social propriety, like grammatical propriety, is largely based on what is “done” and what is “not done.”  Both require close observation of others and a common consensus on what is right and wrong, and Austen’s characters enjoy varying levels of success in both spheres.  The charming and smooth-talking Willoughby, for example, is guilty of “saying too much what he thought” and “in slighting too easily the forms of worldly propriety” (SS 48–49)—small social indiscretions that subtly indicate greater moral failings. 

Social propriety is a characteristic prized by Austen’s protagonists, and its boundaries provide much of the structure of her novels.  She often uses linguistic impropriety to hint at social impropriety.  When Austen deploys “vulgarisms or low expressions,” in Blair’s words, they are in the mouths of her low, vulgar characters.  Says Phillipps, “Certain words, however much they may be in vogue, are not to be used by the more refined of her characters.  Such a word is beau, . . . [which] epitomises the vulgarity, familiarity, and blatant husband-hunting which she pillories” (“English” 320).  Miss Anne Steele uses the word more than any other Austen character, chattering endlessly about “smart beaux.”  Though Miss Steele commits no sins that we know of, she constantly oversteps the rules of grammatical and social propriety with her “vulgar freedom and folly” (SS 124).  Her verbal flaws parallel her character flaws; there is a level of ignorance and carelessness in each.  Some of her mistakes, which Lowth and others denounced in their grammars, include subject–verb disagreement (“‘I wonder you was not afraid’”), the use of flat adverbs (“‘a prodigious smart young man”), and the use of an’t for is not (“‘I don’t pretend to say that there an’t’”) (276, 123, my italics).  Her constant infractions grate on the reader just as her impertinence grates on Elinor’s patience. 

Mrs. Elton, too, may not violate any moral laws, but her linguistic follies are verbal proof of her many social defects.  Her use of the word beau highlights her ability to make everything, even Mr. Woodhouse’s “‘quaint, old-fashioned politeness,’” about herself:  “‘Here comes this dear old beau of mine, I protest!—Only think of his gallantry in coming away before the other men!’” (E 302).  Though Miss Bates has a reputation as Austen’s most long-winded character, Mrs. Elton’s self-aggrandizing speeches often go on for paragraphs, and they are filled with linguistic evidence of her indelicacy.  Another casual word Mrs. Elton bandies about is puppy.  She calls Frank Churchill “so truly the gentleman, without the least conceit or puppyism.  You must know I have a vast dislike to puppies—quite a horror of them.”  In the same speech, Mrs. Elton commits a grammatical error (“‘Neither Mr. Suckling nor me had ever any patience with them’”) (321, my italics).  With these slips, both linguistic and social, Austen reinforces the connection, first established in the eighteenth century, between proper grammar and proper behavior. 

For a character who violates both linguistic propriety and morality, we need look no further than Lydia Bennet.  Across the six novels, Lydia is the only Austen character to talk of fun, which Johnson marks as a “low cant word.”  On a carriage ride with her sisters, she uses it four times in a single speech, talking of “‘the fun of having another bandbox’” and “‘a good piece of fun the other day at Colonel Forster’s.’”  In the same speech, she drops casual phrases such as “‘crammed in’” and, worst of all, uses object pronouns when she should use subject pronouns (“‘Kitty and me were to spend the day there’”; “‘Mrs. Forster and me are such friends’”) (PP 221).  Lydia’s looseness with language culminates in a shocking moral looseness at the end of the novel.  In a poorly written letter, in which she uses who when whom is required and calls Mrs. Forster a “‘simpleton,’” another of Johnson’s “low” words, Lydia joyfully tells of her scandalous elopement (291).  Alongside extensive religious counsel, James Fordyce, in his Sermons to Young Women, says it is “folly” for young ladies “to neglect the study of [their] native English” (149).  As Lydia rudely interrupts Mr. Collins’s reading of Fordyce’s Sermons, it is little wonder that she ultimately fails to heed both the grammatical and moral guidance of the famous clergyman. 

Austen was finely attuned to the linguistic debates of her day.  One issue of concern was semantic drift, the change in usage and meaning of words over time.  “The many offences against purity of language,” writes Blair in his lecture on style, “which are committed by writers who are far from being contemptible, demonstrate that a careful study of the language is previously requisite, in all who aim at writing it properly” (91).  He adds that close attention to definitions must be paid, lest they become so loose as to be meaningless.  Only with strict attention to the meanings of words can one express an idea with precision.  Austen joins the grammarians’ chorus against semantic drift through the character of Henry Tilney.  When Catherine Morland suggests young men despise novels “‘amazingly,’” Henry pounces on her casual use of the adverb (NA 107).  “‘It is amazingly,’” he smirks; “‘it may well suggest amazement if they do—for they read nearly as many as women.’”  Catherine means to add emphasis, a bit of hyperbole, but Henry reins her in to the dictionary definition of the word.  Again, in the next paragraph, Catherine makes the mistake of calling The Mysteries of Udolpho “‘the nicest book in the world.’”  “‘The nicest;—by which I suppose you mean the neatest,’” he replies.  “‘That must depend upon the binding’” (107).  Once an older brother, always an older brother, and Eleanor Tilney takes him to task for his teasing: 

“Henry,” said Miss Tilney, “you are very impertinent.  Miss Morland, he is treating you exactly as he does his sister.  He is for ever finding fault with me, for some incorrectness of language, and now he is taking the same liberty with you.  The word ‘nicest,’ as you used it, did not suit him; and you had better change it as soon as you can, or we shall be overpowered with Johnson and Blair all the rest of the way.”  (107–08) 

This scene neatly demonstrates Austen’s awareness of semantic drift and of the ire it could kindle in the hearts of the persnickety.  After addressing the issue head-on, Austen ends this conversation with a comic exaggeration of semantic drift.  In discussing history books, Catherine quips, “‘You think me foolish to call instruction a torment, but if you had been as much used as myself to hear poor little children first learning their letters and then learning to spell, if you had ever seen how stupid they can be for a whole morning together, . . . you would allow that to torment and to instruct might sometimes be used as synonimous words’” (109–10).  With her “craftsmanlike interest in English words,” Austen tinkers with their meaning and usage to great comedic effect (Phillipps, English 17). 

Austen understood that only in adhering closely to proper Standard English could she then bend or break the rules for her own stylistic purposes.  Her own grammar was nearly irreproachable.  In her thorough analysis of Austen’s private letters, Van Ostade comments on Austen’s “strong sense of linguistic awareness,” calling her “a language professional” on par with grammarian Robert Lowth (“Flat Adverbs” 174).  As Phillipps observes, “her heroes and heroines, in virtue of their status, speak language free from grammatical error” (“English” 328).  So when other characters do not, we take note.  For example, a favorite error Austen deploys for the sake of characterization is flat adverbs (adverbs without the -ly).  Lowth condemns their use in his grammar:  “Adjectives are sometimes employed as Adverbs improperly, and not agreeably to the genius of the English language” (154 n.).  Sir John calls Marianne a “‘monstrous pretty girl’” (instead of “monstrously,” which would be the correct adverbial form), and Mrs. Jennings is “‘monstrous glad’” throughout the novel (SS 108, 154).  Miss Steele calls Norland Park “‘prodigious beautiful’” and Willoughby “‘prodigious handsome’” (123, 125).  According to Van Ostade, Austen uses flat adverbs in her early letters, but her usage drops off over time, seemingly in response to their increasingly “stigmatized status” (“Flat Adverbs” 93), and she never uses them in her formal letters, such as those to her publishers or acquaintances.  As Austen’s grammatical awareness and prowess increased, she had more tools in her linguistic toolbox to draw on in her novels. 

Style is another principle of good language use that grammarians linked to personal behavior and character.  Style is more than mere words, Blair tells us:  “The words which an author employs, may be proper and faultless; and his style may, nevertheless . . . be dry, or stiff, or feeble, or affected.”  Ultimately, Blair concludes, one’s writing style reveals one’s true self:  “style is nothing else than that sort of expression which our thoughts most readily assume” (92).  Austen engages with this idea of style as self throughout all of her novels in both small and large ways.  Our first introduction to Sir John Middleton is via a letter “written in so friendly a style as could not fail of giving pleasure” (SS 23), and when the Dashwoods later meet him in person, “his manners were as friendly as the style of his letter” (30).  Sir John is exactly as he appears on paper.  And perhaps if Emma, so prone to errors of judgment, had put more stock in Blair’s views, she would have seen Robert Martin’s worth shining through the quality of his letter to Harriet:  “The style of the letter was much above her expectation.  There were not merely no grammatical errors, but as a composition it would not have disgraced a gentleman” (50–51).  In contrast to Robert Martin’s “strong and unaffected” language (51), Austen gives us the rambling, insincere, error-riddled musings of Lucy (Steele) Ferrars at the end of Sense and Sensibility.  “‘How I have blushed over the pages of her writing!’” Edward cries.  “‘[T]his is the only letter I ever received from her, of which the substance made me any amends for the defect of the style’” (365).  Clearly, Austen agrees with Blair that a poor writing style indicates an inferior mind.  “In order to write with precision,” instructs Blair, “one must possess a very considerable degree of distinctness and accuracy in his manner of thinking” (94).  Flighty, manipulative, and vulgar, Lucy Steele’s character is revealed through the style of her letters. 

Thus far I have shown how Austen repeatedly uses grammatical errors and substandard usage to mark her unrefined or even sinful characters.  But what of her immoral smooth talkers?  Frank Churchill writes “‘handsome,’” “highly-prized” letters (18) that please everyone except the perceptive Mr. Knightley.  Only he sees the “[d]isingenuousness and double dealing” between the lines of Frank’s pretty phrases (348).  “‘He can sit down and write a fine flourishing letter, full of professions and falsehoods. . . . His letters disgust me,’” says Mr. Knightley (148–49).  This scene, while revealing Mr. Knightley’s sound judgment about Frank, also provides an interesting bit of linguistic analysis from the hero:  “‘No, Emma, your amiable young man can be amiable only in French, not in English.  He may be very ‘aimable,’ have very good manners, and be very agreeable; but he can have no English delicacy towards the feelings of other people:  nothing really amiable about him’” (149).  Frank Churchill may express himself well, but he is a liar, and “his own surface manners are ‘never pleasing’ to a Johnsonian moralist like Jane Austen” (Knoepflmacher 647).  As both “chief artificer and chief letter-writer in the novel” (646), Frank Churchill constantly uses his words to feign, conceal, and misrepresent, whereas Mr. Knightley uses words to reveal truth and to provide good counsel. 

In Lowth’s guide, he uses this sentence as part of a grammar exercise:  “The power of speech is a faculty peculiar to man, and was bestowed on him by his beneficent Creator for the greatest and most excellent uses; but alas! how often do we pervert it to the worst of purposes?” (9–10).  He could almost be talking about Lady Susan, another of Austen’s eloquent sinners.  An adulteress, a liar, a selfish and unfeeling mother, Lady Susan nevertheless “‘talks very well, with a happy command of Language,’” using her skill, as Lowth might lament, “‘to make Black appear White’” (MW 251).  She considers study and education a waste of time for her daughter and only wants her to acquire the “‘superficial’” accomplishments of “‘Grace & Manner’” (253).  As the wicked and well-spoken Mr. Elliot observes, “‘Good company requires only birth, education and manners, and with regard to education is not very nice’” (P 150).  In her novels Austen shows how good manners and smooth speeches, divorced from true virtues such as “self-knowledge, generosity, and humility” (MP 19), become a sort of falsehood in and of themselves, a deceptive sheen of polish on an otherwise worthless object. 

By almost any metric, grammar is a subject of modest import.  Rarely does it make headlines or move armies.  But Austen specialized in the perfection of small things, in capturing the intimate details of three or four families on her “(two Inches wide) of Ivory,” and the “fine . . . Brush” (16–17 December 1816) she used to record such details was shaped and honed by her exposure to eighteenth-century linguistic ideas.  Hugh Blair, whom Austen read and referenced, tells his readers that “dry and intricate” as grammar may seem, it is important because of its close connection “with the philosophy of the human mind” (85).  In eighteenth-century England, proper language use became a matter of national importance, a sign of sound understanding, good breeding, and strong moral fiber.  Austen grew up in this time of linguistic discovery and delineation, a time of dictionaries and grammar guides, newspapers and novels.  Through the writings of language experts such as Johnson, Blair, and Lowth, at once great writers and great moralists, Austen learned to be a great moral writer.  She borrowed their tools and made them her own, using them to create characters whose flaws are revealed through their words, whether too low, like the Steeles and Mrs. Elton, or falsely fine, like Frank Churchill and Lady Susan.  In doing so, Austen aligns herself with the grammarians in preferring “plain, unaffected, gentleman-like English” (E 448).

Works Cited
  • Austen, Jane.  Jane Austen’s Letters.  Ed. Deirdre Le Faye.  4th ed.  Oxford: OUP, 2011.
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  • Blair, Hugh.  Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres.  1783.  New York: Duyckinck, 1817.
  • Cajka, Karen.  “Eighteenth-Century Teacher-Grammarians and the Education of ‘Proper’ Women.”  Grammars, Grammarians and Grammar-Writing in Eighteenth-Century England.  Ed. Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade.  Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2008.  191–222.
  • Fordyce, James.  Sermons to Young Women, Two Volumes in One.  1766.  Philadelphia: Carey, 1809.
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  • Knoepflmacher, U. C.  “The Importance of Being Frank: Character and Letter-Writing in Emma.”  Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 7 (1967): 639–58.
  • Lowth, Robert.  A Short Introduction to English Grammar.  1762.  Cambridge: Folsom, 1838.
  • Page, Norman.  The Language of Jane Austen.  1972.  New York: Routledge, 2011.
  • Phillipps, K. C.  “Jane Austen’s English.”  Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 70 (1969): 319–38.
  • _____.  Jane Austen’s English.  London: Deutsch, 1970.
  • Tucker, David H., and George Unwin.  “History of Publishing.”  Encyclopedia Britannica.  20 May 2024.  http://www.britannica.com/topic/publishing.  Accessed 17 July 2024.
  • Van Ostade, Ingrid Tieken-Boon.  The Bishop’s Grammar: Robert Lowth and the Rise of Prescriptivism in English.  Oxford: OUP, 2011.
  • _____.  “Flat Adverbs and Jane Austen’s Letters.”  Touching the Past: Studies in the Historical Sociolinguistics of Ego-Documents.  Ed. Marijke J. van der Wal and Gijsbert Rutten.  Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2013.  91–106.
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