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Can This Marriage Be Saved-Jane Austen Makes Sense of An Ending
Can This Marriage Be Saved-Jane Austen Makes Sense of An Ending
Can This Marriage Be Saved-Jane Austen Makes Sense of An Ending
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extend access to ELH
BY KAREN NEWMAN
693
Clearly the motivation for Elizabeth's action is not the ironic one
given by the narrator, "to observe the game," but to hear more
on the subject of Darcy's estate. Elizabeth was so much caught by
what passed. Later, when she seeks to discover from Wickham the
reason for Darcy's reaction to meeting him, Elizabeth says to him
tellingly, unwilling, we are told, to let the subject drop, "he is a
man of very large property in Derbyshire, I understand" (121). In
her revealing conversation with Mrs. Gardiner about Wickham's
affection, she says that "he is the most agreeable man I ever saw-
and if he becomes really attached to me-I believe it will be better
that he should not. I see the imprudence of it-Oh, that abomi-
nable Mr. Darcy" (181). On a syntactic level, Darcy here literally
blocks her affections for the impecunious Wickhaml Austen voices
through Elizabeth herself the fundamental contradiction of the
novel: "What is the difference in matrimonial affairs between the
mercenary and the prudent motive? Where does discretion end
and avarice begin?" (188). No one, particularly no woman who is
economically dependent, not even Elizabeth, whom we admire, is
unmoved by property. We should remember that only the ignorant
and imprudent Lydia marries "for love," and then a man whom
Darcy has paid to tie the knot.
Every idea that had been brought forward by the housekeeper was
favourable to his character, and as she stood before the canvas, on
which he was represented, and fixed his eyes upon herself, she
thought of his regard with a deeper sentiment of gratitude than it
had ever raised before.
(272)
I would quarrel with this statement only in its assertion that Austen
was unaware of the subversive dimension of her novels, for how
can we know?
In closing I want to consider briefly the problem of specificity
in women's writing. Feminist critics have been preoccupied with
discovering "what, if anything, makes women's writing different
from men's."36 The most common answer is that women's lives and
experiences differ from men's, and that the difference is inscribed
in their writing-in imagery, and more important, in content. This
judgment is ironically consonant with the traditional rejection of
Austen's small world, her "little bit (two inches wide) of Ivory,">
though the feminist critic usually, but not always, recognizes the
value of the women's world Austen portrays. Alternatively fem-
inists have hypothesized a feminine or female consciousness dif-
ferent from the masculine that produces a specifically feminine or
female style. Both approaches have met criticism from those who
point out that male writing often manifests a content or style else-
where termed feminine or female. Rather than attempt to label
Brown University
FOOTNOTES