his taste yet, he has not reformed his taste, his taste remains as it was before, and the thing involved is purely a matter of taste: he will not be able to enjoy those Presbyterians until he has learned to admire them.
Does Jane Austen do her work too remorselessly well? For me, I mean? Maybe that is it. She makes me detest all her people, without reserve. Is that her intention? It is not believable. Then is it her purpose to make the reader detest her people up to the middle of the book and like them in the rest of the chapters? That could be. That would be high art. It would be worth while, too. Some day I will examine the other end of her books and see.
All the great critics praise her art generously. To start with, they say she draws her characters with sharp discrimination and a sure touch. I believe that this is true, as long as the characters she is drawing are odious. I am doing “Sense and Sensibility” now, and have accomplished the first third of it—not for the first time. To my mind, Marianne is not attractive; I am sure I should not care for her, in actual life. I suppose she was intended to be unattractive. Edward Ferrars has fallen in love with Elinor, and she with him; the justification of this may develop later, but thus far there is no way to account for it; for, thus far, Elinor is a wax figure and Edward a shadow, and how could such manufactures as these warm up and feel a passion. Edward is an unpleasant shadow, because he has discarded his harmless waxwork and engaged himself to Lucy Steele, who is coarse, ignorant, vicious, brainless, heartless, a flatterer, a sneak—and is described by the supplanted waxwork as being “a woman superior in person and understanding to half her sex;” and “time and habit will teach Edward to forget that he ever thought another superior to her.” Elinor knows Lucy quite well. Are those sentimental falsities put into her mouth to make us think she is a noble and magnanimous waxwork, and thus exalt her in our estimation? And do they do it?
Willoughby is a frankly cruel, criminal and filthy society-gentleman.
Old Mrs. Ferrars is an execrable gentlewoman and unsurpassably coarse and offensive.
Mr. Dashwood, gentleman, is a coarse and cold-hearted money-worshipper; his Fanny is coarse and mean. Neither of them ever says or does a pleasant thing.
Mr. Robert Ferrars, gentleman, is coarse, is a snob, and an all-round offensive person.
Mr. Palmer, gentleman, is coarse, brute-mannered, and probably an ass, though we cannot tell, yet, because he cloaks himself behind silences which are not often broken by speeches that contain material enough to construct an analysis out of.
His wife, lady, is coarse and silly.
Lucy Steele’s sister is coarse, foolish, and disagreeable.
THE FORCE OF “SUGGESTION”
I f a wave of incendiarism were sweeping the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the lakes to the Gulf, and you knew the names and addresses of every one of the incendiaries, what would you do—double the strength of the 2,000 fire departments?
That would be one way. Another would be, to put the incendiaries under bonds to stop setting fires.
“Suggestion,” as an impelling and compelling force, is not confined to the hypnotist—the most of our daily acts proceed from it. If a newspaper tells of a starving family, the bare suggestion is sufficient, it does not need to solicit help for it, the donations will begin to flow in, without that; if a newspaper tells of a child that has been abandoned by its parents, there is no need to ask for succor, fifty childless homes are eagerly flung open for the waif; if a newspaper gathers from the police court the inflaming particulars of how a young girl has been captured in a lonely place by one or a dozen ruffians and outraged—
What follows? We all know what follows—we know it well: the inflaming particulars excite a thousand ruffian readers, and they frenziedly hunt for opportunities to duplicate
Does Jane Austen do her work too remorselessly well? For me, I mean? Maybe that is it. She makes me detest all her people, without reserve. Is that her intention? It is not believable. Then is it her purpose to make the reader detest her people up to the middle of the book and like them in the rest of the chapters? That could be. That would be high art. It would be worth while, too. Some day I will examine the other end of her books and see.
All the great critics praise her art generously. To start with, they say she draws her characters with sharp discrimination and a sure touch. I believe that this is true, as long as the characters she is drawing are odious. I am doing “Sense and Sensibility” now, and have accomplished the first third of it—not for the first time. To my mind, Marianne is not attractive; I am sure I should not care for her, in actual life. I suppose she was intended to be unattractive. Edward Ferrars has fallen in love with Elinor, and she with him; the justification of this may develop later, but thus far there is no way to account for it; for, thus far, Elinor is a wax figure and Edward a shadow, and how could such manufactures as these warm up and feel a passion. Edward is an unpleasant shadow, because he has discarded his harmless waxwork and engaged himself to Lucy Steele, who is coarse, ignorant, vicious, brainless, heartless, a flatterer, a sneak—and is described by the supplanted waxwork as being “a woman superior in person and understanding to half her sex;” and “time and habit will teach Edward to forget that he ever thought another superior to her.” Elinor knows Lucy quite well. Are those sentimental falsities put into her mouth to make us think she is a noble and magnanimous waxwork, and thus exalt her in our estimation? And do they do it?
Willoughby is a frankly cruel, criminal and filthy society-gentleman.
Old Mrs. Ferrars is an execrable gentlewoman and unsurpassably coarse and offensive.
Mr. Dashwood, gentleman, is a coarse and cold-hearted money-worshipper; his Fanny is coarse and mean. Neither of them ever says or does a pleasant thing.
Mr. Robert Ferrars, gentleman, is coarse, is a snob, and an all-round offensive person.
Mr. Palmer, gentleman, is coarse, brute-mannered, and probably an ass, though we cannot tell, yet, because he cloaks himself behind silences which are not often broken by speeches that contain material enough to construct an analysis out of.
His wife, lady, is coarse and silly.
Lucy Steele’s sister is coarse, foolish, and disagreeable.
THE FORCE OF “SUGGESTION”
I f a wave of incendiarism were sweeping the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the lakes to the Gulf, and you knew the names and addresses of every one of the incendiaries, what would you do—double the strength of the 2,000 fire departments?
That would be one way. Another would be, to put the incendiaries under bonds to stop setting fires.
“Suggestion,” as an impelling and compelling force, is not confined to the hypnotist—the most of our daily acts proceed from it. If a newspaper tells of a starving family, the bare suggestion is sufficient, it does not need to solicit help for it, the donations will begin to flow in, without that; if a newspaper tells of a child that has been abandoned by its parents, there is no need to ask for succor, fifty childless homes are eagerly flung open for the waif; if a newspaper gathers from the police court the inflaming particulars of how a young girl has been captured in a lonely place by one or a dozen ruffians and outraged—
What follows? We all know what follows—we know it well: the inflaming particulars excite a thousand ruffian readers, and they frenziedly hunt for opportunities to duplicate
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