Jane Austen: Illusion and Reality by Christopher Brooke (review)

Abstract

YES, 32, 2002 YES, 32, 2002 choice but to sanitize Moll Flanders's story by putting it into a pseudo-editorial frame; Pamela is rendered unable to protect herself (self-defence is too 'artful'); Clarissacannot document her victimization, and her life-story,post-rape, necessarily disintegratesinto the 'mad papers'. Since even literary'artfulness'is unvirtuous, the women's letters in Humphrey Clinker must be 'incomprehensible' without the men'sletters(p. 72);AuroraLeigh'spromisingomniscient narrationinevitablyloses sight of its end; and, finally, in a hugely paradoxical celebration of defeat, Browning's Pompilia is 'exempt from the stain of language' (p. 189), since she cannot writeat all. The only bright spot is Jane Eyre, who is shown struggling against negative images of herselfas a plotting woman, while managing to plot her own life (with a bit of help from the supernatural).The most illuminatingaspect of PlottingWomen, however, is the inclusion of feminized male characters into 'feminine narration': Case highlights the diaries of Darsie Latimer (Scott's captive cross-dresser in Redgauntlet), as well as the documentarywritingof WilkieCollins'sWalterHartright (Armadale) and Dracula's Jonathan Harker. Also to be applauded are Case's intertextual links:Jane Eyre,for example, becomes a re-writing of Pamela,and Esther Summerson'snarrationin BleakHouseis seen as a conservativeversionof JaneEyre. Case is to be congratulated for opening up the epistolary tradition to gender theory,and forplacing 'femininenarration'centre-stage,but shehasbeen too quick to disempoweritsothernessand ignoresitspotential forsubversion.Post-modernists (and others who give plotting power to the reader)will object to Case'sjudgement that 'femininenarration'is ultimatelyincomprehensiblewithout the interventionof a master-narrator,and many readers of epistolary fiction will feel that Case has over-valued the master-narrator:who, for example, remembers the pseudo-editor of Moll's improper story, and who cares about Clarissa's Belford?Who prefersDr Dryasdustto Pamela? Case's plot to establish a new literary convention, while at the same time contesting itsnarrativeauthority,isfascinatingand textuallyilluminating,especially of some less familiar works. But she loses sight of the crucial importance of the immediacy and spontaneity of 'feminine narration' (it is, after all, what keeps readers'attention)and one is left with the feeling that 'feminine narration',like the epistolaryheroine herself,has been leftdefencelessrathertoo deliberately. UNIVERSITY OF READING MYRA COTTINGHAM Jane Austen: Illusion and Reality. By CHRISTOPHER BROOKE. Cambridge: Brewer. 1999. xii + 224 pp. C25; $45. The subtitleof this studywould seem to imply an entire innocence of those critical debates that have troubled the old dichotomies of illusion and reality, fiction and truth,in the yearssince Lionel Trillingand D. J. Harvey talkedabout the novel as a repository of moral truth. Indeed, whilst Christopher Brooke is aware that 'historianswho regard[Austen's]novelsas transcriptsof reallifedeceive themselves' (p. 9) he also has an unabashed conviction that not only is Austen concerned to representthe real world but that she is capable of writing'real conversation'which is also 'high art' (p. 13). The complexity of this antinomy is not even superficially considered and as Brooke's writing is incapable of tearing itself away from an epistemology more naive than that of Austen herself, so it is unable to make any criticalheadway. The best one can say to palliate thisharshjudgement is that even to begin to raise these concerns may be to askmore of the book than it ever intends since it is largely ignorant of Austen scholarship and reads as a hotch-potch of choice but to sanitize Moll Flanders's story by putting it into a pseudo-editorial frame; Pamela is rendered unable to protect herself (self-defence is too 'artful'); Clarissacannot document her victimization, and her life-story,post-rape, necessarily disintegratesinto the 'mad papers'. Since even literary'artfulness'is unvirtuous, the women's letters in Humphrey Clinker must be 'incomprehensible' without the men'sletters(p. 72);AuroraLeigh'spromisingomniscient narrationinevitablyloses sight of its end; and, finally, in a hugely paradoxical celebration of defeat, Browning's Pompilia is 'exempt from the stain of language' (p. 189), since she cannot writeat all. The only bright spot is Jane Eyre, who is shown struggling against negative images of herselfas a plotting woman, while managing to plot her own life (with a bit of help from the supernatural).The most illuminatingaspect of PlottingWomen...