Anne Sofie von Otter: Swan Song

Anne Sofie von Otter, mezzo-soprano. Photo credit: Ewa Marie Rundquist. Image source: Cal Performances

The Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter turned 70 this year. She has had a long and illustrious career in concert, in opera, and on recordings. If her concert in Berkeley's Hertz Hall two Sundays ago was her last public appearance in the Bay Area, it was a fitting farewell: a performance of Franz Schubert's Schwanengesang (Swan Song, 1829).

Schwanengesang is a collection of fourteen of the last lieder Schubert wrote before his death at age 31 in November 1828. The songs are settings of texts by two poets, Ludwig Rellstab and Heinrich Heine, plus a final song that sets a poem by Johann Gabriel Seidl. The songs were not intended as a cycle by the composer, but probably instead conceived as two separate collections, each devoted to a single poet. As a result, the collection lacks coherence of subject and tone. Their grouping as a set was the decision of Schubert's publisher Tobias Haslinger, who also provided the title. (Schubert wrote two earlier songs with the title "Schwanengesang"; neither is included in Schwanengesang.) Von Otter performed the songs in their published order without an intermission, accompanied on a period-appropriate fortepiano by Kristian Bezuidenhout. 

With their short metrical lines and regular rhyme schemes, Rellstab's poems work better as song lyrics than they read on the page. Perhaps the best-known of the seven Rellstab songs in Schwanengesang is "Ständchen" (Serenade), here performed by contralto Nathalie Stutzmann accompanied by Inger Södergren:

https://youtu.be/3smT4FX-9fs

Leise flehen meine Lieder Durch die Nacht zu Dir; In den stillen Hain hernieder, Liebchen, komm' zu mir! Flüsternd schlanke Wipfel rauschen In des Mondes Licht; Des Verräthers feindlich Lauschen Fürchte, Holde, nicht. Hörst die Nachtigallen schlagen? Ach! sie flehen Dich, Mit der Töne süßen Klagen Flehen sie für mich. Sie verstehn des Busens Sehnen, Kennen Liebesschmerz, Rühren mit den Silbertönen Jedes weiche Herz. Laß auch Dir die Brust bewegen, Liebchen, höre mich! Bebend harr' ich Dir entgegen; Komm', beglücke mich!

My melodies plead softly through the night to you; down within the silent grove, beloved, come to me! Whispering slender treetops rustle in the moon's pale light; That a betrayer will eavesdrop There's no need to fear. Do you not hear the nightingales calling? Ah, you they implore; with their voices sweetly singing they send my entreaties to you. They understand the heart’s keen yearning, they know the pain of love; with their notes so silvery they touch every tender heart. Let your heart, too, be moved, beloved, hearken to me! Trembling, I await your coming! Come, bring me happiness!

To provide von Otter with some respite, Bezuidenhout performed two solos. The first, Schubert's Impromptu in C minor, D 899 No. 1 (1827), came after the first group of six of the seven Rellstab songs, ending with "In der Ferne" (Far Away).

Kristian Bezuidenhout. Image credit: Marco Borggreve. Image source: Festival Ghent

After the second group of four songs, which began with Rellstab's "Abschied: Ade, du muntre, du fröhliche Stadt, Ade!" (Farewell, you lively, you cheerful town!) and ended with Heine's "Das Fischermädchen" (The Fisher-Maiden), Bezuidenhout performed the Andante from Schubert's Sonata No. 13 in A major (1819). The Andante flowed almost imperceptibly into the first song of the final group of four, "Die Stadt" (The City), without a pause for applause.

Schubert's Heine songs have a darker sound than his Rellstab settings, and are filled with imagery of death and loss. From the final group of Heine songs, "Am Meer" (By the Sea), again performed by Stutzmann and Södergren:

https://youtu.be/Jp4k6hW7W-s

Das Meer erglänzte weit hinaus Im letzten Abendscheine; Wir sassen am einsamen Fischerhaus, Wir sassen stumm und alleine. Der Nebel stieg, das Wasser schwoll, Die Möwe flog hin und wieder; Aus deinen Augen liebevoll Fielen die Tränen nieder. Ich sah sie fallen auf deine Hand, Und bin aufs Knie gesunken; Ich hab’ von deiner weissen Hand Die Tränen fortgetrunken. Seit jener Stunde verzehrt sich mein Leib, Die Seele stirbt vor Sehnen; – Mich hat das unglücksel’ge Weib Vergiftet mit ihren Tränen.

The sea glittered wide before us in the last rays of the sun; we sat by the fisherman’s lonely house, we sat silent and alone. The mist thickened, the waters surged, a seagull soared back and forth. From your eyes, so filled with love, the tears flowed down. I watched them fall on your hand. I sank upon my knee; I, from your hand so white, Drank away the tears. Since that hour my body is yearning, My soul dies of longing; I have been poisoned forever by her disconsolate tears.

With the passage of time von Otter's voice has lost a touch of the purity of tone, perfection of intonation, and sustained breath support so evident in her earlier recordings. However, her communicative power as an artist remains undiminished. As the last chords of the last song in Schwanengesang—the incongruously sprightly "Die Taubenpost" (The Pigeon Post)—faded away, the audience responded with an extended standing ovation.

The artists generously offered an encore: Schubert's "Abschied von der Erde" (Farewell to the world), a poem spoken by the character Mechthild in her death scene from Adolf von Pratobevera's play Der Falke (The Falcon), for which Schubert wrote a keyboard accompaniment. The reading was a powerful reminder of the acting skill that von Otter brought to all of her operatic roles. Many thanks to Cal Performances for bringing her to Berkeley; if Schwanengesang was the last time we'll have the opportunity to see her in concert, she left us wanting more.

Anne Sofie von Otter: Three favorite performances

We first became aware of von Otter as a soloist on the recording of Handel's Messiah performed by the English Concert conducted by Trevor Pinnock. Her performance of "He was despisèd" remains our favorite, which is saying a great deal, since we also own recordings of this aria by Lorraine Hunt and Andreas Scholl.

After hearing her in Handel we sought out her other recordings. The very next one we found became a favorite that we still return to frequently, 30 years on: Opera Arias: Mozart, Haydn, Gluck (Arkiv Produktion, recorded 1995) in which she was again accompanied by The English Concert and Pinnock (themselves a recommendation; Pinnock always seems to choose the right tempo, and The English Concert was and remains among the premier period instrument orchestras).

Image source: Presto Music

The selections on the album are not the usual collection of standards. Of course she includes Cherubino's "Voi che sapete" (You who know what love is) from Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, as an example of her excellence in trouser roles. She also performs arias of Donna Elvira and Zerlina from Don Giovanni. But there's nothing from Dorabella's role in the third Mozart-Da Ponte opera, Cosi fan tutte; instead, Otter and Pinnock include arias from the less-well-known Mozart operas Lucio Silla, La finta Giardiniera, and La clemenza di Tito, as well as from three Gluck and three Haydn operas. By itself this disc is an education in late 18th-century operatic styles, and was our introduction to the operas of Haydn as well as at least two of the three Gluck operas.

"O del mio dolce ardor bramato oggetto" (O beloved object of my sweet passion) from Gluck's rarely-performed opera Paride e Elena (Paris and Helen, 1770):

https://youtu.be/v3E4N2ZLAqk

The film A Late Quartet (2012, directed and co-written by Yaron Zilberman) brought von Otter to the attention of a broader audience. In the film she plays the deceased wife of the fictional Fugue Quartet's cellist Peter (Christopher Walken). To commune with her memory, he puts on her recording of "Mariettas Lied" from Erich Korngold's opera Die Tote Stadt (The Dead City, 1920). Here is a different recording of the aria, performed with a piano quintet (arrangement by pianist Bengt Forsberg) rather than full orchestra:

https://youtu.be/WN_vsAUEE8s

Glück, das mir verblieb, rück zu mir, mein treues Lieb. Abend sinkt im Haag bist mir Licht und Tag. Bange pochet Herz an Herz Hoffnung schwingt sich himmelwärts. Naht auch Sorge trüb, rück zu mir, mein treues Lieb. Neig dein blaß Gesicht Sterben trennt uns nicht. Mußt du einmal von mir gehn, glaub, es gibt ein Auferstehn.

Joy, stay with me. Come to me, my true love. Night falls now; You are my light and day. Our hearts beat as one; our hopes rise heavenward. Though sorrow darkens all, come to me, my true love. Bring your pale face close to mine. Death cannot separate us. If you must leave me one day, know that there is a life after this.

After the Berkeley concert, my partner and I wanted to hear more of von Otter. Usually we don't listen to music after a concert, wanting to give ourselves some time to absorb the experience. But in honor of what may have been our last opportunity to see her perform live, that night we watched scenes from the excellent 1994 Vienna production of Richard Strauss's opera Der Rosenkavalier (1911) directed by Otto Schenk and accompanied by the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Carlos Kleiber. In that production von Otter is a superb Octavian, fully worthy of being mentioned in the company of other great Octavians such as Brigitte Fassbaender and Elina Garanča.

Here is the exquisite final love duet from Der Rosekavalier. Von Otter's Sophie is Barbara Bonney, Sophie's father Faninal is Gottfried Hornik, and the Marschallin is Felicity Lott:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EolhXNJBbU

Von Otter's recordings and our memories of her concert performances will be among our most treasured. Below I offer a list of posts on E&I that discuss her or that include linked or embedded performances:

• The songs of Erich Korngold and Reynaldo Hahn: Erich Korngold, "Mariettas Lied" (1 January 2009)
• Opera Guide 5: L'incoronazione di Poppea" Claudio Monteverdi, "Pur ti miro" (14 August 2009)
• Ten recordings you many not know—but should: Christoph Gluck, "O del mio dolce ardor" (13 April 2015) 
• Why we live in cities: Five exceptional musical performances: Concert by von Otter and Andreas Scholl accompanied by Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra conducted by Nicholas McGegan (25 May 2016)
• Five songs: "Traumgekrönt" (Dream-crowned) from Alban Berg's Sieben frühe Lieder (Seven Early Songs, 1905-1908) with both orchestral and piano accompaniment, and "Liebesbriefchen" (Love-note) from Erich Korngold's Sechs einfache Lieder (Six simple songs, 1911-1913) (17 August 2017)
• The first Black prima donna: Vittoria Tesi: Final quartet from Gluck's Le cinesi  (9 April 2022)
• Every Valley: Handel's Messiah: Handel, "He was despisèd" (13 April 2025)
• A season of Handel operas, part 4: Ariodante: Handel, "Scherza infida" (7 June 2025)

Mozart and the London Bach: Allegro

Cover of Allegro by Ariel Dorfman, Other Press, 2025. Image source: Bookshop.org

Historical novelists set themselves a doubly difficult task: they must create not only an engaging fictional world, but one that is plausibly of a specific past time and place. This sets up two pitfalls which many historical novels fail to avoid: the first is characters whose function is all too clearly to explain things to the readers that the author assumes they do not know, and the second is jarring anachronism.

Indeed, over-explanatory characters are doubly problematic: they not only stretch our credulity, they are also almost always anachronistic. People take for granted the world in which they are living; they don't bother to explain it in detail to one another, because there's no need. When arranging a meeting with someone we might say "Text me when you arrive"; we wouldn't say "Alert me to your arrival by transmitting a short message from your personal handheld wireless communication device to my own."

Which brings us to some early passages from Ariel Dorfman's Allegro, a novel narrated from the point of view of none other than Wolfgang Mozart.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, attributed to Pietro Antonio Lorenzoni, ca. 1763. Image credit: Mozarteum, Salzburg. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Here are the remembered thoughts of the nine-year-old Mozart one February morning during his family's stay in London in 1765:

Today I would hear Maestro Bach present my symphony, the inaugural offering of so many—I could already envisage a long stretch of similar works ahead of me, I was already finishing the second and the third, I would start next week on the fourth symphony—today was the day, tonight the night. Oh, molto allegro my outlook, like the first movement of my first symphony, very joyful and buoyant. . . (p. 12)

But then he learns that his father Leopold is ill and so none of the Mozarts will be able to attend the concert. A letter dictated by his father is dispatched to

my protector, Baron Johann Christian Bach. . .Please ask Concert Master Bach to forgive our absence this evening at Carlisle House and at dinner later at Dean House, King's Square Court, where he and Herr Carl Friedrich Abel reside. . .The Allegro Molto's buoyancy had lapsed into the mournful strains of my Andante, a somber second movement that denied the playfulness of the first one. . . (pp. 13–14)

Would Mozart explain to himself the meaning of molto allegro and andante? Would Leopold inform J.C. Bach of his own address? And finally, the tempo indication of andante is "moderate" or "at a walking pace"; it doesn't necessarily imply "mournful" or "somber." I would call the second movement of Mozart's Symphony No. 1 "stately," "measured," or "reflective" rather than "mournful," but of course, musical affect is in the ear of the auditor:

https://youtu.be/gPDK9IE921Y

The performers are The English Concert conducted by Trevor Pinnock.

Wolfgang's fears of missing the première of his symphony turn out to be groundless: Johann Christian Bach comes in his carriage to take Mozart to the concert. Afterwards, Wolfgang is approached by a stranger:

. . .in a voice so squat that only he and I could harken to it, he scooted a question at me: "Can you keep a secret, Master Mozart?. . .You must swear that you will tell no one of this conversation," the man continued. "Save for one man, save for the London Bach, Johann Christian Bach, son of the incomparable Johann Sebastian, deceased these fifteen years," and his eyes scurried in the direction of the Kapellmeister, still standing close to the podium receiving congratulations for his own newest Sinfonia Concertante, written exclusively for this subscription series. (p. 9)

As you may have noticed, this passage is discordant in several ways:

• it's over-explanatory: Wolfgang knows perfectly well who "the London Bach" is and who his father was, and so doesn't need to be told by the stranger. And the information that J.C. Bach wrote music for the subscription concert series that he and Abel organized is extraneous.
• it's anachronistic: Johann Sebastian Bach would not be generally thought of as "incomparable" until the 19th century revival of his music. At this time he would more likely have been considered a somewhat old-fashioned, "learned" composer. Wolfgang's six sonatas for clavier and violin or flute had been dedicated the previous fall to Queen Charlotte with the words (probably written by Leopold), "With your help, I shall become as famous as any of my great countrymen; I shall become immortal like Handel and Hasse, and my name will be as famous as that of Bach." As Heinz Gärtner writes in his biography of Johann Christian, "less than a decade after Johann Sebastian Bach's death, when people talked about 'the famous Bach,' they did not mean the cantor of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig; he had been virtually forgotten by then." There was only one famous Bach in London in the 1760s, and it was Johann Christian, not his father. [1]
• it includes some odd word choices. "A voice so squat": one meaning of "squat," according to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, is "hidden from sight; quiet, still." It's a stretch to use a term referring to someone trying to avoid being seen to describe a soft voice, and especially so since the meaning "quiet, still" dates from a dialect first recorded in the mid-19th century, a hundred years or so after this scene is supposed to take place. "Scooted a question" is also strange: all the meanings of "scoot" in the Shorter Oxford refer to physical movement, not to rapid or sudden speech. And "his eyes scurried in the direction of the Kapellmeister" again applies a metaphor of displacement in space to something that happens while both Wolfgang and his interlocuter are rooted to the spot, not to mention the disturbing mental images that are conjured if we take the metaphor literally.

A few pages later we witness Wolfgang waking up: "With one bound I was out of bed, jerked upright and in motion before my eyes draped themselves open. . ." (p. 12). To drape something, of course, is to cover it, not reveal it. Dorfman published the novel in Spanish a decade ago, and since no translator is credited, presumably he is the one who rendered it into occasionally awkward English.

Johann Christian Bach by Thomas Gainsborough, ca. 1776. Image source: National Portrait Gallery, London. Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.

Oh, and one more thing. At the very beginning of the novel Dorfman offers an Author's Note: "In Allegro all musical offerings, dates, characters, and public events, with some minor exceptions, are factually true. Their existence may be consulted in the historical record." Well, I consulted the historical record about the very first scene of the first chapter, the première of Wolfgang's Symphony No. 1 at a Bach-Abel concert on 2 February 1765. I found that "there is no evidence that Wolfgang Amadeus appeared at the Bach-Abel concerts." [2]

The first performance of his first symphony likely took place at a concert organized by Leopold on 21 February 1765 at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket. A notice in the Public Advertiser announcing a "Concert for the Benefit of Miss and Master Mozart" stated that "all the Overtures will be from the Composition of these astonishing Composers, only eight years old." [3] (Wolfgang's sister Nannerl was 13, and he was 9.) Stanley Sadie notes that "the term [overtures] is interchangeable at this date, in England, with 'symphonies.'" [4] It seems unlikely that Wolfgang's first symphony would have been given to J.C. Bach to perform three weeks earlier. And J.C. Bach would not have been present at the Mozart's 21 February concert, as he and Abel were giving another concert in their series on the same evening.

Nannerl, by the way, is virtually absent from the novel, although she performed along with Wolfgang, and was the copyist for his compositions. She even may have played a role in the structure of the first symphony. She later remembered,

In London, when our father lay ill and close to death [in the summer of 1764], we were not allowed to touch the clavier. So, to occupy himself, Mozart composed his first symphony with all the instruments, above all with trumpets and drums. I had to sit by him and copy it out. As he composed, and I copied, he said to me: 'Remind me to give the horns something worthwhile to do'. . . [5]

Maria Anna (Nannerl) Mozart, attributed to Pietro Antonio Lorenzoni, ca. 1763. Image credit: Mozarteum, Salzburg. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

In his description of Symphony No. 1 (we don't actually know in which order Mozart composed his early symphonies), Sadie observes that "there are no trumpets and drums as specified by Nannerl—unless, as is not uncommon, the parts for those instruments were separately written out [and have been lost]. . .Conceivably, the four-note horn phrase beginning on bar 14 [of the second movement] could be a consequence of the reminder from Nannerl; this pattern (in C major, C–D–F–E) is heavy with significance for the later Mozart, most famously in his last symphony but elsewhere as well." [6] (The horn phrase begins around 0:24 in the YouTube recording by The English Concert linked above, and recurs at least twice more in the first 2:45.)

Allegro is framed as a mystery. A man's reputation is at stake, and Wolfgang is asked to effect a reconciliation, or at least a meeting, between J.C. Bach and the son of the oculist John Taylor. Taylor, whom Samuel Johnson is reported to have called "an instance [of] how far impudence could carry ignorance," operated on the eyes of both J.S. Bach and Handel. [7] In both cases, Taylor's treatment resulted in his patients' partial blindness becoming total; in Bach's case, it likely contributed to his death a few months later.

Mezzotint of John Taylor by John Faber Jr, after Paul Ryche (Riche), 1756. Image source: National Portrait Gallery NPG  D40851. Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.

The choice of Bach and Handel (and hundreds of other unfortunates) to undergo an agonizingly painful procedure that they must have known would almost certainly fail is the "mystery" which Allegro attempts to solve. But is any reason other than their utter desperation needed? In proffering an unconvincing explanation for these tragic real-life events, Allegro reminded me too often of Peter Shaffer's Amadeus—a comparison which from me does not constitute praise.

Ultimately Allegro leaves us with Wolfgang's homily: "'I think the answer is always music. I think we must seek answers there when we are most lost, most bereft'" (p. 201). But for me music does not provide answers, but rather poses insoluble questions.

Perhaps the best thing about the novel is its concluding "Playlist Companion to Allegro" of the music that "inspired the author as he wrote and that accompanied the characters as they lived their real and fictional lives" (Author's Note). Any opportunity to explore (or renew acquaintance with) the music of Mozart, Handel, J.S. Bach, J.C. Bach, and Carl Friedrich Abel is recommendable; if only Dorfman's novel were more so.

From the playlist, the first movement, andante, of J.C. Bach's Sinfonia Concertante in C major, C 36a, performed by The Hanover Band conducted by Anthony Halstead. The cello solos may have been played originally by Abel:

https://youtu.be/dHYBns6DtYI [the first movement ends at 10:55].

---

1. Heinz Gärtner, John Christian Bzch: Mozart's Friend and Mentor, translated by Reinhard G. Pauly, Amadeus Press, 1994, p. ix. 
2. Christoph Wolff and Stephen Roe, "Bach, Johann [John] Christian," Grove Music Online, https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.6002278196 (subscription required).
3. Otto Erich Deutsch, Mozart, A Documentary Biography, Stanford University Press, 1965, pp. 41–42.
4. Stanley Sadie, Mozart: The Early Years, 1756–1781, W.W. Norton, 2006, p. 69.
5. Quoted in Sadie, p. 65. After Nannerl produced a clean copy of the full score, Leopold later wrote out the orchestral parts.
6. Sadie, pp. 82-83.
7. James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, Second Edition, Revised and Augmented, Vol. 3, 1793, p. 184. https://archive.org/details/lifeofsamueljoh03boswuoft/page/184/mode/1up

"I will not allow books to prove anything": What Jane Austen's characters read (and why), part 5

The Reader by Marguerite Gérard and Jean Honoré Fragonard, c. 1786. Image source: The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

In her book What Jane Austen's Characters Read (and Why) (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024), Persuasions editor Susan Allen Ford examines the reading preferences of Austen's characters as a key to understanding them more deeply. In this post series I am looking at each of Austen's canonical novels to see what this perspective can tell us in particular about her heroines. The previous installment, "Meaning to read more", looked at Emma Woodhouse's desultory reading in Emma. This final installment examines perhaps the most devoted reader in all of Austen's novels, Persuasion's Anne Elliot.

Learning romance: Anne Elliot, Scott, and Byron

In a famous description early in Persuasion, we are told that Anne Elliot "had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning" (Vol. I/III, Ch. IV). But we are not told, at least not immediately, how it is that she learned romance.

Bitter experience was surely one teacher: at 19, Anne had been persuaded to retract her acceptance of 23-year-old naval commander Frederick Wentworth by an older friend who occupies "the place of a parent" in her regard, Lady Russell:

Anne Elliot, with all her claims of birth, beauty, and mind, to throw herself away at nineteen; involve herself at nineteen in an engagement with a young man, who had nothing but himself to recommend him, and no hopes of attaining affluence, but in the chances of a most uncertain profession, and no connexions to secure even his farther rise in the profession, would be, indeed, a throwing away, which she grieved to think of! Anne Elliot, so young; known to so few, to be snatched off by a stranger without alliance or fortune; or rather sunk by him into a state of most wearing, anxious, youth-killing dependence! It must not be, if by any fair interference of friendship, any representations from one who had almost a mother’s love, and mother’s rights, it would be prevented. (Vol. I/III, Ch. IV)

Anne is now 27. In the eight years since she was convinced to withdraw her acceptance of Commander Wentworth she has received just one other offer of marriage, from Charles Musgrove. She refused him, and he married instead her younger sister Mary. Charles is amiable and well-off, but nothing like the naval hero who is described as being

full of life and ardour. . .such confidence, powerful in its own warmth, and bewitching in the wit which often expressed it. . .[a] sanguine temper, and fearlessness of mind. . .He was brilliant, he was headstrong. (Vol. I/III, Ch. IV)

Meanwhile, Wentworth has been promoted to captain and has become rich through the prize money he has received by capturing enemy ships in desperate battle. Lady Russell's fears have proved to be misplaced, and "Anne, at seven-and-twenty, thought very differently from what she had been made to think at nineteen . . .How eloquent could Anne Elliot have been! how eloquent, at least, were her wishes on the side of early warm attachment, and a cheerful confidence in futurity, against that over-anxious caution which seems to insult exertion and distrust Providence!" (Vol. I/III, Ch. IV)

Title page of the first edition of Northanger Abbey: and Persuasion: by the author of "Pride and Prejudice;" "Mansfield-Park," &c., 1818 (December 1817). Image source: HathiTrust.org.

"Impassioned descriptions of hopeless agony"

But in learning romance Anne has had other teachers, or at least has found reinforcement for her original feelings, in two of the greatest poets of the age: Walter Scott and George Gordon, Lord Byron.

We know that she is deeply familiar with their works because of a friendship she strikes up with a former shipmate of Captain Wentworth's, Captain Benwick. He had a long engagement with Fanny Harville, the sister of another naval colleague, which ended when she died before he could return to shore with the promotion and prize money that would have enabled him to marry her.

Captain Wentworth believed it impossible for man to be more attached to woman than poor Benwick had been to Fanny Harville, or to be more deeply afflicted under the dreadful change. He considered his disposition as of the sort which must suffer heavily, uniting very strong feelings with quiet, serious, and retiring manners, and a decided taste for reading, and sedentary pursuits. (Vol. I/III, Ch. XI)

Benwick now lives with Fanny's brother Captain Harville and his family in Lyme. When Anne meets them while visiting Lyme with a party that includes the Musgroves and Wentworth,

it fell to Anne’s lot to be placed rather apart with Captain Benwick; and a very good impulse of her nature obliged her to begin an acquaintance with him. He was shy, and disposed to abstraction; but the engaging mildness of her countenance, and gentleness of her manners, soon had their effect; and Anne was well repaid the first trouble of exertion. . .For, though shy, he did not seem reserved; it had rather the appearance of feelings glad to burst their usual restraints; and having talked of poetry, the richness of the present age, and gone through a brief comparison of opinion as to the first-rate poets, trying to ascertain whether Marmion or The Lady of the Lake were to be preferred, and how ranked the Giaour and The Bride of Abydos; and moreover, how the Giaour was to be pronounced, he showed himself so intimately acquainted with all the tenderest songs of the one poet, and all the impassioned descriptions of hopeless agony of the other. . . (Vol. I/III, Ch. XI)

Clearly, Anne is also intimately acquainted with these Romantic poems, which all share a common theme: they are about constancy in love.

Title page of Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field by Walter Scott, 1808. Image source: HathiTrust.org

In Walter Scott's Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field (1808), set in the time of the conflict between Henry VIII and James IV, Lord Marmion lusts after both the person and the lands of the beautiful Clara de Clare. Inconveniently for him, she loves and is betrothed to the knight Ralph De Wilton. Marmion forges documents implicating his rival in treason, and De Wilton is exiled. The way is now open for Marmion to marry Clara. However, rather than abandon her disgraced lover and submit to Marmion's desires, Clara flees to the protection of a convent. De Wilton returns, proves his innocence, fights heroically at the Battle of Flodden (where the guilty Marmion dies), and is finally united with Clara in marriage.

Title page of The Lady of the Lake: A Poem by Walter Scott, 1810. Image source: HathiTrust.org

Scott's The Lady of the Lake (1810) is set in the mid-1500s, during the reign of James V. Three men, the king (traveling in the Highlands in disguise as the knight Fitz-James), the rebel chieftain Roderick Dhu, and the exiled member of another clan, Malcolm Graeme, vie for the love of Ellen, the daughter of the exiled (but loyal) chieftain James Douglas. Although both Roderick and Fitz-James declare their ardent passion for her, Ellen remains steadfast in her love of Malcolm. Ultimately the rebels are defeated, Roderick dies, and Malcolm is imprisoned. Ellen goes to plead with King James for Malcolm's freedom, and discovers that the monarch she is petitioning is the man she has known as Fitz-James. He condemns Malcolm to be chained—by the bonds of matrimony with his true love.

Title page of The Giaour, A Fragment of a Turkish Tale by Lord Byron, 1813. Image source: HathiTrust.org

At the outset of his career Byron was "the poet of love and constancy" (quoted in Ford, p. 218). In The Giaour (The Infidel, 1813), Leila, a woman in the harem of Hassan, becomes enamored of the Giaour, the Christian hero. When Hassan discovers Leila's betrayal, he has her sewn into a sack and thrown into the sea. To revenge Leila's death, the Giaour kills Hassan, and then retreats to a monastery, where he "spends the rest of his life in monastic solitude, agonizing over the loss of Leila" (p. 215).

Title page of The Bride of Abydos. A Turkish Tale by Lord Byron, 1813. Image source: HathiTrust.org

Bryon's The Bride of Abydos (1813) features a love story between a couple raised as half-siblings, perhaps inspired by Byron's own affair with his half-sister Augusta Byron Leigh. The hero Selim, the supposed son of Pasha Giaffir, has been mistreated by him throughout his upbringing. Selim declares his love for the Pasha's daughter Zuleika, and she reciprocates his feelings. But their marriage is forbidden by the Pasha, who, it turns out, is a usurper: he killed his own brother to seize the throne. Selim is actually the true heir and the Pasha's nephew, making Zuleika his first cousin. When Selim rebels, the Pasha attacks and kills him. And when Zuleika hears of Selim's fate, she dies of sorrow rather than live without him.

Tellingly, all of the Romantic epics Anne and Captain Benwick discuss were published after 1806, the year Anne was parted from Wentworth by the force of Lady Russell's persuasion. The poems have provided her with stirring examples of steadfast fidelity persisting beyond separation and even death.

But we also know that Anne has not lived exclusively on the rich diet of Romantic poetry's heightened emotions. In their conversation on Scott and Byron, Captain Benwick

repeated, with such tremulous feeling, the various lines which imaged a broken heart, or a mind destroyed by wretchedness, and looked so entirely as if he meant to be understood, that she ventured to hope he did not always read only poetry, and to say, that she thought it was the misfortune of poetry to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly.

His looks shewing him not pained, but pleased with this allusion to his situation, she was emboldened to go on; and feeling in herself the right of seniority of mind, she ventured to recommend a larger allowance of prose in his daily study; and on being requested to particularize, mentioned such works of our best moralists, such collections of the finest letters, such memoirs of characters of worth and suffering, as occurred to her at the moment as calculated to rouse and fortify the mind by the highest precepts, and the strongest examples of moral and religious endurances. (Vol. I/III, Ch. XI)

Anne's reading has helped her to bear suffering and adversity through eight long years, although

Anne could not but be amused at the idea of her coming to Lyme to preach patience and resignation to a young man whom she had never seen before; nor could she help fearing, on more serious reflection, that, like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination. (Vol I, Ch. XI)

"I will not allow books to prove anything"

Reading is so important to Anne's understanding of herself and her situation that at the beginning of the book it is a metaphor for her perception of others, especially Wentworth. As her feelings are thrown into turmoil at their first meeting since his return, she asks herself, "Now, how were his sentiments to be read?" (Vol. I/III, Ch. IV).

At a critical moment near the end of the novel, she will have the opportunity to literally read his sentiments. And a spoiler alert: if you have never read Persuasion, you may wish to skip to "Emulating the feelings of an Emma" below.

At the Musgrove's rooms at the White Hart in Bath, Anne encounters among the party Captain Harville and Captain Wentworth. Captain Harville has been given the unwelcome errand to have a miniature of Captain Benwick set for his new fiancée; characteristically, Captain Wentworth has offered to undertake the task himself in order to spare Captain Harville's feelings. While Wentworth is writing out a letter of instructions, Captain Harville and Anne debate constancy in men and women. In support of his arguments against women's fidelity, Captain Harville cannot resist referencing his own reading:

"Well, Miss Elliot," (lowering his voice), "as I was saying, we shall never agree, I suppose, upon this point. No man and woman would, probably. But let me observe that all histories are against you—all stories, prose and verse. If I had such a memory as Benwick, I could bring you fifty quotations in a moment on my side the argument, and I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men."

"Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything." (Vol. II/IV, Ch. XI)

When Harville speaks of his own joy at being reunited with his wife and children after a year at sea, Anne responds,

"I hope I do justice to all that is felt by you, and by those who resemble you. God forbid that I should undervalue the warm and faithful feelings of any of my fellow-creatures! I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachment and constancy were known only by woman. No, I believe you capable of everything great and good in your married lives. I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as—if I may be allowed the expression—so long as you have an object. I mean while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone."

She could not immediately have uttered another sentence; her heart was too full, her breath too much oppressed. (Vol. II/IV, Ch. XI)

Wentworth, of course, has overheard every word of their exchange. Under cover of writing the jeweler's instructions, he takes a new sheet of paper and pours out his still-ardent feelings for Anne, using the same metaphor of reading the beloved's feelings that Anne employed at the beginning of the novel when thinking of him:

"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan.—Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others.—Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in

F. W."

(Vol. II/IV, Ch. XI)

As a final indication of the importance of reading to Anne's self-understanding, it is through her reading of Wentworth's impassioned words that the misapprehensions that have kept them apart are dispelled and the two lovers are brought together again at last.

Amanda Root as Anne Elliot in Persuasion, adapted by Nick Dear, directed by Roger Michell, and produced by BBC Films, 1995. See Jane Austen proposal scenes, part 6: Persuasion.

"Emulating the feelings of an Emma"

Ford's book highlights an important dimension of Austen's characters that I had considered before only in the cases where well-known writers or books were explicitly mentioned (Cowper and Scott for Marianne Dashwood, Cowper and Inchbald for Fanny Price, Ann Radcliffe for Catherine Morland, and Scott and Byron for Anne Elliot). She illuminates many references that to me were obscure, especially the significance of conduct books in Pride and Prejudice and Madame de Genlis's Adelaide and Theodore in Emma.

To offer just one more example where Austen could assume that her contemporary readership would understand a reference that in our day requires explanation, when in Persuasion Anne volunteers to stay in Lyme to nurse Louisa Musgrove after her fall, she muses on a literary parallel: "Without emulating the feelings of an Emma towards her Henry, she would have attended on Louisa with a zeal above the common claims of regard, for his sake" (Vol. I/III, Ch. XII).

Emma and Henry are characters in Matthew Prior's poem Henry and Emma: A poem, upon the model of the nut-brown maid (1709), which was reprinted throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Title page of Henry and Emma by Matthew Prior, Manchester and London, 1793. Image source: Internet Archive

In the poem Henry woos and wins the beautiful Emma, but fears that she will be inconstant. Like Walter cruelly testing Griselda in Chaucer's "The Clerk's Tale," Henry decides to test Emma "by one great trial" (line 179). He pretends to be in love with another "younger, fairer" woman. Emma responds,

Yet let me go with thee, and going prove,
From what I will endure, how much I love.
   This potent beauty, this triumphant fair,
This happy object of our diff'rent care,
Her let me follow; her let me attend,
A servant: (she may scorn the name of friend). . . (lines 599–604)

Although Anne claims not to share Emma's feelings, at this point she is convinced that Wentworth and Louisa are sure to marry once she has recovered. Her willingness to care for Louisa "for his sake" indeed shows how much pain she is willing to endure out of love for Wentworth.

Ford's elucidation of many references such as these, which a hasty (or in my case, ignorant) reader might simply pass over without understanding, reveals an important aspect of the almost infinite richness of Austen's fictional world. What Jane Austen's Characters Read (and Why) will increase the pleasure of anyone entering, or re-entering, that world.

Other posts in this series:

• "So rapturous a delight": Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey
• "I am not a great reader": Pride and Prejudice
• "To be a renter, a chuser of books!": Mansfield Park
• "Meaning to read more": Emma

"Meaning to read more": What Jane Austen's characters read (and why), part 4

The Reader by Marguerite Gérard and Jean Honoré Fragonard, c. 1786. Image source: The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

In her book What Jane Austen's Characters Read (and Why) (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024), Persuasions editor Susan Allen Ford examines the reading preferences of Austen's characters as a key to understanding them more deeply. In this post series I am looking at each of Austen's canonical novels to see what this perspective can tell us in particular about her heroines. The previous installment, "To be a renter, a chuser of books!", looked at Fanny Price in Mansfield Park; this part will focus on Emma Woodhouse.

"Meaning to read more": Emma

Among Austen heroines, Emma is perhaps the least avid reader.

"Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawing-up at various times of books that she meant to read regularly through—and very good lists they were—very well chosen, and very neatly arranged. . .But I have done with expecting any course of steady reading from Emma. She will never submit to any thing requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding." (Vol. I, Ch. V)

It becomes apparent that the entire course of the novel involves Emma learning to subject her sometimes over-active imagination to her rational understanding.

Title page of Emma: A Novel. In Three Volumes. By the Author of "Pride and Prejudice," &c. &c., London, 1816. Image source: HathiTrust.org

When Emma, "handsome, clever, and rich," meets pretty Harriet Smith, "the natural daughter of somebody," she decides to manage Harriet's introduction into Highbury society. Miss Smith, thinks Emma,

wanted only a little more knowledge and elegance to be quite perfect. She would notice her; she would improve her; she would detach her from her bad acquaintance, and introduce her into good society; she would form her opinions and her manners. (Vol. I, Ch. III)

But Emma's program for Harriet's "improvement" is hardly a systematic one, reflecting her own haphazard education, overseen by her governess Miss Taylor. Although Emma has high-minded intentions, they are always undermined by her preferred inclinations:

Her views of improving her little friend’s mind, by a great deal of useful reading and conversation, had never yet led to more than a few first chapters, and the intention of going on to-morrow. It was much easier to chat than to study; much pleasanter to let her imagination range and work at Harriet’s fortune, than to be labouring to enlarge her comprehension or exercise it on sober facts. . . (Vol. I, Ch. IX)

Emma's own reading has presumably been made up almost entirely of fiction, rather than "sober facts." When Harriet mentions Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), Ann Radcliffe's The Romance of the Forest (1791), and Regina Maria Roche's The Children of the Abbey (1796), Emma seems to share knowledge of these books (Vol. I, Ch. IV). But with poetry, history, biographies, essays, and the like—"useful," that is, morally instructive, reading—we understand that little progress has been, or will be, made.

Madame de Genlis' Adelaide and Theodore

Emma mentions one book specifically, a hint, perhaps, of its significance. When towards the end of Austen's novel Mrs. Weston (the former Miss Taylor) becomes the mother of a little girl, Emma assures Mr. Knightley that the girl's education will be ideal, because of Mrs. Weston's former role as her teacher:

"She has had the advantage, you know, of practising on me," she continued—"like La Baronne d'Almane on La Comtesse d'Ostalis, in Madame de Genlis' Adelaide and Theodore, and we shall now see her own little Adelaide educated on a more perfect plan."

"That is," replied Mr. Knightley, "she will indulge her even more than she did you, and believe that she does not indulge her at all. It will be the only difference." (Vol. III, Ch. XVII)

Title page of Adelaide and Theodore; or, Letters on Education, by Madame de Genlis, Third Edition, London, 1788. Image source: HathiTrust.org

Adelaide and Theodore is the English translation of Adéle et Théodore (1782), and concerns the proper upbringing of children—particularly girls and young women. As Ford writes,

Adelaide and Theodore presents itself as a collection of "Letters on Education," like those of Madame de Genlis's model Samuel Richardson, blending practical and theoretical discourse with narrative, strictures on conduct with the pleasures of romance. It is the account of the twelve years devoted to the education of the Baron and Baroness d'Almane's children. (pp. 196–197)

Ford points out the importance of the concept of "perfection" in the education of girls, and that Jane Austen "laughs at the very notion of perfection for which Genlis provides the model."

Portrait of Madame de Genlis by Adelaide Labille-Guiard, 1790. Image source: LACMA.org

Ford writes, "As in Adelaide and Theodore, Emma's perfection is a central issue. Mr Knightley is 'one of the few people who can see faults in Emma Woodhouse, and the only one who ever told her of them'" (pp. 201–202).

At the Box Hill excursion, for example, Mr. Weston attempts to flatter Emma by posing a riddle: "What two letters of the alphabet are there, that express perfection?" The answer is "M. and A.—Em-ma—Do you understand?" (Vol. III, Ch. VII). This riddle comes just after Emma has directed a cutting remark to Miss Bates, humiliating her in front of the group—hardly an example of Emma's perfection. Ford notes that Mr. Weston's "'very indifferent piece of wit'. . .only points to the illusiveness, even the fraudulence, of such an ideal. Mr. Knightley's irony further underscores Emma's very real distance from the ideal and mocks human attempts to define that ideal: 'Perfection should not have come quite so soon'" (p. 202).

The Box Hill incident echoes one in Adelaide and Theodore. Young Adelaide hangs a satirical drawing of her governess, Miss Bridget, in her room; when Miss Bridget sees it she is mortified. Adelaide's mother remonstrates with her:

No joke can be innocent that is offensive. . .You, who owe friendship, respect, and gratitude to Miss Bridget, you make her uneasy, you laugh at that which gives her pain, and you wish to make her appear ridiculous. . .She cannot read [your feelings] in your heart; she can only judge from from your actions; and you have treated her with so much ingratitude!. . .I confess to you your behaviour has both surprized and afflicted me, I had an opinion so different of you! (Vol. I, pp. 181–183)

Compare Mr. Knightley's "scolding" of Emma:

How could you be so unfeeling to Miss Bates? How could you be so insolent in your wit to a woman of her character, age, and situation?—Emma, I had not thought it possible. . .Her situation should secure your compassion. It was badly done, indeed! You, whom she had known from an infant, whom she had seen grow up from a period when her notice was an honour, to have you now, in thoughtless spirits, and the pride of the moment, laugh at her, humble her—and before her niece, too—and before others, many of whom (certainly some,) would be entirely guided by your treatment of her. (Vol. III, Ch. VII)

When her mother expresses her disappointment in her behavior, "Adelaide burst into tears" (p. 181); in the carriage after parting with Mr. Knightley, "Emma felt the tears running down her cheeks almost all the way home" (Vol. III, Ch. VII).

This scene is not the only parallel to Adelaide and Theodore that Ford discerns in Emma. Genlis' novel includes a chapter devoted to the "Course of Reading pursued by Adelaide, from the Age of Six years, to Twenty-two" (Vol. III, pp. 284–292), no doubt the origin of the "great many lists" Emma draws up of her intended reading.

"Course of Reading pursued by Adelaide, from the Age of Six years, to Twenty-two," from Adelaide and Theodore, or, Letters on Education, by Madame de Genlis, Vol. III, Third Edition, London, 1788. Image source: HathiTrust.org

Adelaide tells her mother that she "should like better to marry an amiable man of thirty-seven, than a young man of three and twenty" (Vol. III, p. 172); Frank Churchill just happens to be "three-and-twenty" (Vol. I, Ch. XI), while Mr. Knightley is "a sensible man about seven or eight-and-thirty" (Vol. I, Ch. I). Ford details many other echoes between the two works, with a key difference: "What Genlis lays out with instructive gravity, Austen plays ironically" (p. 197).

But the novel that Austen wrote after Emma is, perhaps, her least ironic.

Next time: "I will not allow books to prove anything": Persuasion

Other posts in this series:

• "So rapturous a delight": Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey
• "I am not a great reader": Pride and Prejudice
• "To be a renter, a chuser of books!": Mansfield Park

"To be a renter, a chuser of books!": What Jane Austen's characters read (and why), part 3

The Reader by Marguerite Gérard and Jean Honoré Fragonard, c. 1786. Image source: The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

In her book What Jane Austen's Characters Read (and Why) (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024), Persuasions editor Susan Allen Ford examines the reading preferences of Austen's characters as a key to understanding them more deeply. In this post series I am looking at each of Austen's canonical novels to see what this perspective can tell us in particular about her heroines.

Last time, in "I am not a great reader," it was the turn of Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. This week: Fanny Price in Mansfield Park. Ford covers both Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey in a single chapter, discussed in "So rapturous a delight"; it's an indication of Mansfield Park's complexity that she devotes two chapters to it (the only novel that receives more than one).

The Mansfield Park theatricals

Ford's first Mansfield Park chapter is devoted to the private theatricals involving the Bertram siblings, their cousins Henry and Mary Crawford, and their neighbors Mr. Yates and Mr. Rushworth. Much has been written about the significance of the choice of play, Elizabeth Inchbald's Lovers' Vows, a translation and adaptation of August Kotzebue's scandalous Das Kind der Liebe (The Love-Child).

Title page of Lovers' Vows, from the German of Kotzebue, by Mrs. Inchbald, London, 1798. Image source: Internet Archive

A brief synopsis of Inchbald's version:

A young soldier on his first leave in years, Frederick, goes back to his home village and discovers his mother Agatha begging by the side of the road. She has been ill, and is now homeless and starving. Frederick has returned for a copy of his birth certificate so that he can leave the army and apprentice himself to learn a trade, but his mother reveals to him that his birth was never registered. Twenty years earlier she was seduced and abandoned by a soldier, who went on to marry a rich woman and become Baron Wildenheim; Frederick is his illegitimate son.

Frederick finds Agatha nourishment and shelter, and, having spent his last pennies on her, goes out to beg on her behalf. A passing rich man gives him a pittance and refuses more; when in desperation Frederick tries to rob him, he is seized and imprisoned. The rich man is, of course, the Baron.

The Baron, now widowed, has been approached by the wealthy Count Cassel, who is seeking to marry his daughter Amelia. The Count describes himself as "a gay, lively, inconsiderate, flimsy, frivolous coxcomb," and the Baron calls him "an idiot." The Baron has tasked Amelia's tutor Anhalt, a clergyman, with sounding out his daughter about this socially advantageous marriage. Instead, Amelia reveals to Anhalt that she loves him, but he rebuffs her because he knows that the Baron will never agree to the match—the social distance between them is too great.

All ends happily for everyone except the Count. When the virtuous Anhalt discovers the identities of Frederick and his mother, he reunites them with the Baron. And at Anhalt's urging, the Baron agrees to marry Agatha and recognize his son. Anhalt himself is then rewarded by the reformed Baron with Amelia's hand, to their mutual delight.

The Baron, Agatha and Frederick are reconciled as Amelia and Anhalt look on. Image source: Project Gutenberg

Its themes of seduction, sex outside of marriage, and forbidden love across class barriers made Lovers' Vows notorious (and also very popular). When Fanny learns that it is to be the play performed at Mansfield Park, "the first use she made of her solitude was to take up the volume which had been left on the table, and begin to acquaint herself with the play of which she had heard so much." Finding it "totally improper," the modest Fanny reads the entire play straight through:

Her curiosity was all awake, and she ran through it with an eagerness which was suspended only by intervals of astonishment, that it could be chosen in the present instance, that it could be proposed and accepted in a private theatre! Agatha and Amelia appeared to her in their different ways so totally improper for home representation—the situation of one, and the language of the other, so unfit to be expressed by any woman of modesty, that she could hardly suppose her cousins could be aware of what they were engaging in; and longed to have them roused as soon as possible by the remonstrance which Edmund would certainly make. (Ch. XIV)

Edmund does remonstrate with his brother Tom and his sisters for their choice of play, to no effect. And soon, to avoid even greater impropriety, the moralistic clergyman Edward agrees to play the moralistic clergyman Anhalt. The role of the spirited, flirtatious Amelia is taken by the spirited, flirtatious Mary Crawford.

Meanwhile, her youthful and impulsive brother Henry plays the youthful and impulsive Frederick, while the sisters Maria and Julia Bertram vie for the role of Frederick's mother Agatha just as they vie for Henry's attentions offstage. Maria wins the role, which has several tender scenes with Frederick. The man she will marry, Mr. Rushworth, takes the part of the Count, and is similarly fashion-conscious and empty-headed.

As these assignments suggest, the play is improper not only for its language and situations, but because (as I wrote in "Two recent books on Jane Austen," following Paula Byrne's The Genius of Jane Austen) "the roles that the family members and neighbors take on in Lovers' Vows parallel and comment on their romantic attractions outside the rehearsals."

And despite her disapproval of the play, by degrees Fanny becomes drawn into the theatricals. Her own quiet refuge, the East Room, is invaded by Mary and Edmund, who seek Fanny's help to run their key third-act scene together:

The whole subject of it was love—a marriage of love was to be described by the gentleman, and very little short of a declaration of love be made by the lady. . .Fanny was wanted only to prompt and observe them. . .To prompt them must be enough for her; and it was sometimes more than enough; for she could not always pay attention to the book. In watching them she forgot herself; and, agitated by the increasing spirit of Edmund’s manner, had once closed the page and turned away exactly as he wanted help. It was imputed to very reasonable weariness, and she was thanked and pitied; but she deserved their pity more than she hoped they would ever surmise. (Ch. XVII)

Meanwhile, Maria and Henry are taking every opportunity to rehearse the emotional scenes between Agatha and Frederick. The passions expressed through the characters will later erupt catastrophically into real life, and Maria will become the "fallen woman" she enacts onstage.

"Does it not make you think of Cowper?"

Fanny's small library of books, "of which she had been a collector from the first hour of her commanding a shilling," are kept in the East Room (Ch. XVI). We can identify at least some of the contents of her library from her references to the poets it must contain. Among them is William Cowper, whose book-length poem The Task (1785) is quoted by Fanny in a scene in which Mr. Rushworth describes the changes he is intending for the grounds at his estate, Sotherton. Those "improvements" involve cutting down trees planted at the time of Elizabeth I:

". . .There have been two or three fine old trees cut down, that grew too near the house, and it opens the prospect amazingly, which makes me think that Repton, or anybody of that sort, would certainly have the avenue at Sotherton down: the avenue that leads from the west front to the top of the hill, you know," turning to Miss Bertram particularly as he spoke. But Miss Bertram thought it most becoming to reply—

"The avenue! Oh! I do not recollect it. I really know very little of Sotherton."

Fanny, who was sitting on the other side of Edmund, exactly opposite Miss Crawford, and who had been attentively listening, now looked at him, and said in a low voice—

"Cut down an avenue! What a pity! Does it not make you think of Cowper? 'Ye fallen avenues, once more I mourn your fate unmerited.'" (Ch. VI) [1]

Title page of The Task, A Poem In Six Books by William Cowper, 1787. Image source: Hathitrust.org

Cowper's poem describes his wanderings around the estate of "Benevolus," his patron, and the musings the landscape inspires:

Ye fallen avenues! once more I mourn
Your fate unmerited, once more rejoice
That yet a remnant of your race survives.
How airy and how light the graceful arch,
Yet awful as the consecrated roof
Re-echoing pious anthems! (The Task, Book I)

Cowper compares the avenue's arched canopy of leaves to that of a church. When the Bertram household and the Crawfords form a party to visit Sotherton, they are shown its family chapel, and Fanny is unimpressed.

"I am disappointed," said she, in a low voice, to Edmund. "This is not my idea of a chapel. There is nothing awful here, nothing melancholy, nothing grand. Here are no aisles, no arches, no inscriptions, no banners. No banners, cousin, to be 'blown by the night wind of heaven.' No signs that a 'Scottish monarch sleeps below.'"

Fanny references not only Cowper's poem, but also quotes Walter Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), undoubtedly another book in her small collection. Her love of Scott hints at the romantic feelings she conceals behind her modesty and reserve.

Title page of The Lay of the Last Minstrel by Walter Scott, 1806. Image source: Hathitrust.org

Cowper's poem continues,

. . .while beneath,
The chequered earth seems restless as a flood
Brushed by the wind. So sportive is the light
Shot through the boughs, it dances as they dance,
Shadow and sunshine intermingling quick,
And darkening and enlightening, as the leaves
Play wanton, every moment, every spot. (The Task, Book I)

It's not only the shadows of the leaves that play wanton on the grounds of Sotherton. The visitors are being given a tour of Sotherton by Mr. Rushworth and his mother, "when the young people, meeting with an outward door, temptingly open on a flight of steps which led immediately to turf and shrubs, and all the sweets of pleasure-grounds, as by one impulse, one wish for air and liberty, all walked out" (Ch. IX).

After this escape into the garden Edmund jokes about "feminine lawlessness," but we and Fanny soon witness transgressions by both Maria Bertram and Mary Crawford. From the house the group had "looked across a lawn to the beginning of the avenue immediately beyond tall iron palisades and gates." After walking through Mr. Rushworth's planned "wilderness" they find the gates locked. While Fanny sits on a bench awaiting their host's arrival with a key, Maria determines, with Henry's help, to "get out":

". . .that iron gate, that ha-ha, give me a feeling of restraint and hardship. 'I cannot get out,' as the starling said." As she spoke, and it was with expression, she walked to the gate: he followed her. "Mr. Rushworth is so long fetching this key!"

"And for the world you would not get out without the key and without Mr. Rushworth’s authority and protection, or I think you might with little difficulty pass round the edge of the gate, here, with my assistance; I think it might be done, if you really wished to be more at large, and could allow yourself to think it not prohibited."

"Prohibited! nonsense! I certainly can get out that way, and I will." (Ch. X) [2]

Maria's quote about the starling is from a scene in Laurence Sterne's popular A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768), in which Sterne's narrator Mr. Yorick compares a starling in a cage to a prisoner in the Bastille; perhaps this is another book on Fanny's shelf (or at least on Sir Thomas's).

Title page of A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy by Mr. Yorick, by Laurence Sterne, 1768. Image source: Internet Archive

Maria and Henry have soon squeezed past the gate, and as Fanny looks on aghast, "by taking a circuitous, and, as it appeared to her, very unreasonable direction to the knoll, they were soon beyond her eye" (Ch. X). Soon Maria will go even further, and pass beyond Mr. Rushworth's authority and protection for good.

Maria is not the first to seek a way out. When Mary and Edmund arrive with Fanny at the gate, Mary soon contrives a way to leave Fanny behind so she can have Edmund's company to herself: "a sidegate, not fastened, had tempted them very soon after their leaving her, and they had been across a portion of the park into the very avenue which Fanny had been hoping the whole morning to reach at last, and had been sitting down under one of the trees" (Ch. X). Another temptation yielded to, and more wanton flirtation among the shadows. As with the Mansfield Park theatricals, Fanny's unhappy experiences reflect and echo the books she has read.

"To be a renter, a chuser of books!"

When the morally unreliable but well-off Henry Crawford proposes to Fanny, she refuses him, "perfectly convinced," as she tells Sir Thomas, "that I could never make him happy, and that I should be miserable myself" (Ch. XXXII). This severely disappoints Sir Thomas, for whom the basis for a woman's choice of husband is primarily his income and social standing. He decides to send her back to her parents' cramped, unkempt, and ill-managed home in Portsmouth for an extended visit:

. . .his prime motive in sending her away had very little to do with the propriety of her seeing her parents again, and nothing at all with any idea of making her happy. He certainly wished her to go willingly, but he as certainly wished her to be heartily sick of home before her visit ended; and that a little abstinence from the elegancies and luxuries of Mansfield Park would bring her mind into a sober state, and incline her to a juster estimate of the value of that home of greater permanence, and equal comfort, of which she had the offer.

It was a medicinal project upon his niece’s understanding, which he must consider as at present diseased. A residence of eight or nine years in the abode of wealth and plenty had a little disordered her powers of comparing and judging. Her father’s house would, in all probability, teach her the value of a good income; and he trusted that she would be the wiser and happier woman, all her life, for the experiment he had devised. (Ch. XXXVII)

Fanny is indeed dismayed by what she finds in Portsmouth. But she finds a purpose and consolation in her visit by taking her 14-year-old sister Susan under her wing:

The intimacy thus begun between them was a material advantage to each. By sitting together upstairs, they avoided a great deal of the disturbance of the house; Fanny had peace, and Susan learned to think it no misfortune to be quietly employed. . .[Fanny] often heaved a sigh at the remembrance of all her books and boxes, and various comforts there [at Mansfield Park]. By degrees the girls came to spend the chief of the morning upstairs, at first only in working and talking, but after a few days, the remembrance of the said books grew so potent and stimulative that Fanny found it impossible not to try for books again. There were none in her father’s house; but wealth is luxurious and daring, and some of hers found its way to a circulating library. She became a subscriber; amazed at being anything in propria persona, amazed at her own doings in every way, to be a renter, a chuser of books! And to be having any one’s improvement in view in her choice! But so it was. Susan had read nothing, and Fanny longed to give her a share in her own first pleasures, and inspire a taste for the biography and poetry which she delighted in herself. (Ch. XL)

Messrs. Lackington Allen & Co., Temple of the Muses, Finsbury Square. Plate 17 from Rudolph Ackermann, The Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions and Politics, Vol. 1, London, 1809. Image source: Internet Archive

Fanny had been introduced to those first pleasures by Edmund, and she is now taking on the role of tutor and guide that he had assumed when she first came to Mansfield Park. As she tells Edmund, "You taught me to think and feel," and now she is filling that role in Susan's life. Susan is getting a later start, and has a different character from Fanny. But through Fanny's tutelage, Susan's life will be transformed, as Fanny's has been, by a love of reading, and the imaginative engagement with the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of others that it brings.

But not every Austen character loves reading books.

Next time: "Meaning to read more": Emma

Other posts in this series:

• "So rapturous a delight": Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey
• "I am not a great reader": Pride and Prejudice
• "I will not allow books to prove anything": Persuasion

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1. "Repton" is the garden designer Humphry Repton, who in his designs emphasized vistas and showcased the situation of manor houses.
2. A "ha-ha" is a deep ditch, invisible from a short distance, that prevents wild deer or grazing livestock from wandering onto the grounds. Its advantage over a fence or wall is that it does not interrupt the prospect with a visual barrier.