“How nicely you talk; I love to hear you”

Abstract

“‘How nicely you talk; I love to hear you’: Speech as Cultural Capital in Emma, Middlemarch, and The Portrait of a Lady” (pp. 286–315) In this essay, I examine how, in Emma, Middlemarch, and The Portrait of a Lady, Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Henry James craft heroines who unite a precarious relationship to the British gentry with a talent for conversation. I argue that, through this glorification of their heroines’ eloquence, Austen, Eliot, and James align this socioeconomic positionality—what I term “precarious affluence” or “gentry-adjacence”—with novelistic protagonicity. Through this analysis, I study the differing degrees to which these three major nineteenth-century novelists use their smooth-talking heroines to imagine an emerging, alternative elite to the gentry and the aristocratic upper classes. Ultimately, the article suggests that, as the nineteenth century progresses, Eliot and James begin to give increasing credence to the possibility that a monied class distinct from the aristocracy and gentry could offer unique powers and freedoms to its members.