Textual Vision by Erwin Timothy;

Author:Erwin, Timothy; [Erwin, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
Published: 2015-05-12T16:00:00+00:00

4

Picturing Jane Austen

Nature is always great in design. She is an admirable colourist also; and harmonizes tints with infinite beauty, and variety. But she is seldom so correct in composition, as to produce an harmonious whole.

—William Gilpin, Observations on the River Wye1

To whom can it be unknown that . . . the power of first impressions is not easily surmountable? A due attention should . . . be given to the motion of the instep, the air of sinking and rising; to the position of the hips, shoulders, and body; to the graceful management of the arms, and particularly to the giving the hand in a genteel manner, to the inflections of the neck and head, and especially to the so captivating modesty of the eye.

—G. A. Gallini, A Treatise on the Art of Dancing2

It’s become a commonplace to begin a discussion of Austen and visual culture with the landscape picturesque, and these last pages are no exception, though they also mean to take us beyond that view. To one degree or other the picturesque is a feature of all the major novels, and performs distinct functions in each. In Mansfield Park the landscape serves to sort out cultural provocateurs like the Crawfords from reliable improvers like Fanny Price and Edmund Bertram, young people who may be trusted to uphold tradition and custom.3 The picturesque becomes an index of sisterly affection in Sense and Sensibility, a preliminary context for courtship in Northanger Abbey, and a prelude to discovery in Pride and Prejudice. Let’s take the journey that sets the first of these in motion, the removal of the Dashwood women from Norland Park. Death, entailment, and a malevolent daughter-in-law have made Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters dependents in their own home when a kindly cousin invites them to rent a cottage on his estate. Austen says little about their journey to Barton Cottage other than to note that the prospect of a new dwelling lifts their spirits, but she points their arrival with an unmistakable sense of being well-placed. The brisk sketch of the house and grounds approaches the brushwork of Thomas Gainsborough or John Constable and in language reflecting a precise knowledge of William Gilpin. Although not large and surrounded by little parkland—“a small green court,” Austen tells us, “was the whole of its demesne in front”4—the cottage is comfortable and its situation good, and before long the family make themselves at home. Here as in Persuasion the house of fiction rises from the ashes of dispossession.5

Well before the double courtship plot gets underway, Austen prepares a comparative study of psychological loss and compensation in two sisters of opposed temperament. Building upon the generic critique of Charlotte Lennox and other contemporaries, she complicates the studied air of romance with keen psychological observation, asking readers to distinguish between Elinor and Marianne by noticing the flexible accommodation of the elder, the difficult impetuousness of the younger, and the amiable sincerity of both. Part of the difference between the two

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