Forward Girls and Fast Novels - Katherine Langrish

Let us start with Jane Austen.

“While the abilities of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of a man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogised by a thousand pens, – there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit and taste to recommend them.  'I am no novel reader – I seldom look into novels – Do not imagine that I often read novels – It is really very well for a novel.' Such is the common cant. ‘And what are you reading, Miss – ?’ ‘Oh! It is only a novel,’ replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference or momentary shame.

“... Or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.”

Northanger Abbey, Ch. 5

Of course this is very funny and of course one cheers (though I suppose I may be just as guilty of the modern equivalent: ‘I watch hardly any television – the odd documentary – nothing, really – it's all such rubbish’ – etc). But here, from an improving book called Letters to a Young Lady on a Variety of Useful and Interesting Subjects by the Rev. John Barrett, published 1791, is a passage which casts vivid light on the sort of prejudice Austen must have encountered. After all, she was writing Northanger Abbey in 1798-1799, only a few years after Letters to a Young Lady appeared. And the Reverend Barrett’s awful warnings about novels clearly chimed with the opinions of stuffy people everywhere, for my own copy of his tiny little pocketbook is the tenth impression, dated 1843.

The Reverend Barrett is Firmly Against Novels. And yet funnily enough he uses the fictional device of the epistolary novel to make his points. Using as his example the (presumably fictitious) young Lady Harriet ******, this is what he has to say:

Though Lady Harriet ****** is not yet fourteen years old, she has more than the airs and forwardness of a woman. Who can have taught this girl, that roses are expected to open all at once, and not by degrees? 

Who or what indeed? Mr Barrett blames first: boarding schools. Persisting with his sentimental flowery metaphor, he explains that he likes girls to remain children.

Timidity and diffidence are the most attracting qualities of a girl... Boarding schools, it would seem, may be compared to hot-beds. They bring fruits and flowers quickly to their growth. But they have not their proper essence, healthiness, or flavour. 

The girlish state is so pleasing, in itself, that we wish not to see it exchanged, before its time, for the caution, the artifices, or the subtle policy of age. It is desirable that a girl should retain, as long as possible, the innocent dress, manners, habits and sentiments of childhood. She will never be more captivating when she is a woman. ...

A forward girl always alarms me. Indelicacy, imprudence and improper connexions start up to my view. I tremble for her friends, and see her history gradually unfolding into indiscretion. 

In other words, don’t send your daughter to school, Mrs Worthington. Who knows what mischief a group of twelve and thirteen year-old girls may get up to between them? Why, they may even expand their ideas and vocabularies by reading and exchanging novels or poems! I feel sure Jane Austen would have enjoyed Reverend Barratt’s comical alarm at the notion of being confronted with a well-read, self-possessed teenage girl. He has no idea how to respond, so is reduced to predicting her entire moral and social ruin. The poor man turns again to the dire example of Lady Harriet:

I could discover, from the conversation of Lady Harriet, that she was deeply read in novels and romances. Her expressions were beyond nature, turgid, and overstrained, where she only wished to convey a common idea. 

A volume would not be sufficient to expose the dangers of these books. They lead young people into an enchanted country, and open their view to an imaginary world full of inviolable friendships, attachments, ecstacies, accomplishments, prodigies, and such visionary joys, as never will be realised in the coarseness of common life. 

What is wrong with the fellow? How can he possibly object to inviolable friendships, and accomplishments, and visionary joys? But here is the old argument, so many times rehearsed and still alive today: that fiction and fancy and poetic invention are nothing but harmful lies which unfit a person for ‘real life’.

The romantic turn they create, indisposes for everything that is rational.

Worse still.  Novels and poems ‘corrupt all principle.’

Fortitude they unnerve, and substitute, in its place, a sickly sensibility, that cannot relish common blessings or common things; that is continually wounded with its own fancies. ... Plays, operas, masquerades and all the other fashionable pleasures, have not half so much danger to young people as the reading of these books. With them, the most delicate can entertain herself in private without any censure; and the poison operates more forcibly because unperceived. The most profligate villain, that was bent on the infernal purpose of seducing a woman, could not wish a symptom more favourable to his purpose, than an imagination inflamed with the reading of novels.

In the face of this kind of disapproval, no wonder Jane Austen’s imaginary young lady hastily hid her book. (I feel sure somehow that the Reverend Barratt and Mr Collins knew each other. They probably went up to Cambridge together.)  Let’s give Austen herself the chance to retort upon Mr Barratt with the last word. If instead of a novel, the young lady had been discovered reading a journal like The Spectator, she suggests –

... how proudly she would have produced it, and told its name; though the chances would be against her being occupied with any part of that voluminous publication of which either the matter or manner would not disgust a young person of taste: the substance of the papers so often consisting in the statement of improbable circumstances, unnatural characters, and topics of conversation ...  and their language, too, frequently so coarse as to give no very favourable idea of the age that could endure it. 

And.. well. Yes.
Quite.

 

Picture credits:

Coloured print of Jane Austen, University of Texas, Wikimedia Commons
Letters to A Young Lady, frontispiece: scan from book in author's possession
Young Regency lady reading: unknown provenance.

How to be a Young Lady - Katherine Langrish

Letters to a Young Lady

(by the Rev. John Bennett)

…on a Variety of Useful and Interesting Subjects, Calculated to Improve the Heart, To Form The Manners and Enlighten the Understanding

“That our daughters may be as polished Corners of the Temple.”

Have you ever felt a wish to be a Polished Corner?   I bought this little book a few years ago in Corning, a small town in rural New York State. It’s dated 1843, and this is its Tenth American Edition, but the original edition was published in England in 1795.  The author's preface states, ‘this Work was originally dedicated to the Queen of England’. That would have been Caroline of Brunswick, unlucky enough in 1795 to become the unloved bride of George IV.  An ill-starred choice of dedicatee. But so many editions! And so many decades! How many hundreds, perhaps thousands of girls were presented with a copy of this book? 

It doesn’t claim much - only to Recommend:

I          Religious Knowledge, with a list of proper writers.

II         Polite Knowledge, as it relates to the Belles Lettres in general: Epistolatory Writing, History, the Lives of particular Persons, Geography, Natural History, Astronomy, Poetry, Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Heraldry, Voyages, Travels etc; with a catalogue of, and criticisms upon, the most improved authors under each article.

III        Accomplishments, as displayed in Needlework, Embroidery, Drawing, Music, Dancing Dress, Politeness, etc.

IV        Prudential Conduct and Maxims, with respect to Amusements, Love, Courtship, Marriage, etc.

What can he mean by that last ‘etc’? 

The book was certainly read, for here are some bookmarks I found left in it - the labels from a bottle of Sarsaparilla Fluid Extract! (WHAT is Sarsaparilla?) And it is written in the form of letters to one Miss Lucy ******* whose mother has died. Rev. John begins by condoling with her:

It would give me the sincerest pleasure, if I knew how to alleviate your grief, or afford you a single moment’s consolation.

He proceeds to attempt to do so:

I need not press upon you the doctrines of religion.  You have, doubtless, considered who it is, that has deprived you of this invaluable parent; a God of infinite wisdom

(God! – God has done it to her deliberately!)

who, without the strongest reason, would not afflict; and a Being of unbounded power, who is abundantly able to make up your loss, and open you to a thousand sources of comfort.

He’s scarily sincere.  I can’t think what Lizzie Bennett would have had to say to this.  Poor Miss Lucy! Indeed, for me, the spirit of Jane Austen hovers over the pages of this little book like the spirit of God over the face of the waters, lifting one cool eyebrow and smiling a Giaconda smile.  The Rev. John concludes his first letter by assuring the young lady that both parties will benefit from their correspondence:

If I am able to communicate to you any little knowledge, you will more than repay it by that ease, delicacy, refinement, confidence and expansion, which the mind never effectually feels, but in the friendship of a sensible and an interesting woman. 

The frontispiece to the book

It’s fascinating to see how he goes on.  While he clearly believes in educating women, and feels they are let down by contemporary standards, he never for a moment expects a girl to step out of the domestic sphere.  Reading his second letter, I shudder at the lot of a young lady in the late 18th/early 19^th century.  Imagine being told this kind of thing, again and again; imagine having this kind of mirror continually held up to you:

The timidity, arising from the natural weakness and delicacy of your frame; the numerous diseases to which you are liable; that exquisite sensibility which in many of you vibrates to the slightest touch of joy or sorrow; the tremulous anxiety you have for friends, children, a family…; the sedentariness of your life, naturally followed with low spirits or ennui, whilst we are seeking health and pleasure in the field; and the many lonely hours, which, in almost every situation, are likely to be your lot, will expose you to a number of peculiar sorrows which you cannot, like the men, either drown in wine or divert by dissipation.

Those were the days.  And it doesn’t end there.  “From the era, that you become marriageable,” Reverend John warns, croaking like Poe’s Raven, “the sphere of your anxieties and afflictions will be enlarged.”
Well whoopee-doo.

Here is his advice on personal adornment.

Finery is seldom graceful.  The easy undress of a morning often pleases more than the most elaborate and costly ornaments. [He may have something there.]

The nearer you approach to the masculine in your apparel, the further you will recede from the appropriate graces and softness of your sex.  Riding habits… conceal everything that is attractive in a woman’s person… they wholly unsex her, and give her the unpleasing air of an Amazon, or a virago.  [Good grief!]

Painting is indecent, offensive, criminal. It hastens the approach of wrinkles, it destroys constitutions, and defaces the image of your Maker. [Oh come on…]

He is hilarious on dress:

Young ladies should not be too liberal in the display of their charms. Too much exposure does not enhance their value.  And it approaches, too nearly, to the manner of those women, whom they would surely think it no honour to resemble.  Bosoms should throb unseen.

Yes, those are his italics.  I really don’t think the comedy is intentional… Rev. John warns Miss Lucy frequently of the danger presented by the opposite sex, and in doing so throws much light, for me anyway, on the behaviour of Elinor in ‘Sense and Sensibility’(1811). No wonder she suppresses all trace of feeling for Edward, if she’d read much advice of this sort:

To entertain a secret partiality for a man, without knowing it reciprocated, is dreadful indeed. If you have address and fortitude enough not to betray it, and thus expose yourself to ridicule and censure (and yet what prudence is always equal to the task?) it will cost you infinite grief, anxiety and vexation, and a victory over yourself, if you do gain it, may be at the expense of your health and constitution.  It will, at the same time, totally unfit you for any other connexion, for who would take the body, when another person is in possession of the soul?

Good works, though, are always acceptable in a woman.  Do you remember Jane Austen's Emma and Harriet, visiting the sick and poor of Highbury?  Well, here is the Reverend John's Miss Louisa, daughter of a clergyman, being held up as an example to Miss Lucy:

I have often heard Louisa dwell with rapture on the entertainment and edification she has received in many cottages, when she has been carrying clothing, cordials or money, to the distressed inhabitants…

General admiration is Louisa’s reward:

[she is] praised as often as her name is mentioned, and followed, whithersoever she moveth, with their tears, and with their blessings.

Contrast with this from Austen's 'Emma' (1815):

'She understood their ways, could allow for their ignorance and their temptations, had no romantic expectations of extraordinary virtue from those, for whom education had done little … and quitted the cottage with such an impression of the scene as made her say to Harriet, as they walked away, “These are the sights, Harriet, to do one good.  How trifling they make everything appear! –I feel now as if I could think of nothing but those poor creatures all the rest of the day; and yet, who can say how soon it may all vanish from my mind?”'

And of course it does so the very next minute, as Mr Elton appears, Emma’s designated suitor for Harriet’s hand.

‘ “To fall in with each other on such an errand as this,” thought Emma, “to meet in a charitable scheme; this will bring a great increase of love on each side.  I should not wonder if it were to bring on a declaration…”’

Whereupon she falls back to retie a perfectly good bootlace, in an attempt to throw Harriet and Mr Elton together. What censure would the Rev. John Bennett have had for such scandalous behaviour?  Let us hope and believe that in real life, Emmas have always been more common than Louisas, and that most, if not all, of the young women who read this tightly printed little book did so with at least the occasional wicked smile.