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Persuasions #15, 1993 Pages 200-206
Reconfiguring the Family in Persuasion TESS O’TOOLE English Department, State University of New
York, College at Oneonta, Oneonta, NY Persuasion begins with
a reference to the Baronetage, the “book of books” in which Sir Walter Elliot
takes refuge from “unwelcome sensations arising from domestic affairs,” and
ends with a tribute to the navy, which is lauded as “[even] more distinguished
in its domestic virtues than in its national importance” (3, 252). While the aristocratic obsession of Sir Walter
is set in opposition to the domestic, the naval profession is identified with
it. The supersession of aristocratic
values by naval values which the novel records and celebrates entails a change
in the prevailing definition of family.
Domesticity replaces genealogy as the favored model for family
structure, and a series of what might be termed “adoptive” relations takes
precedence over sanguinal ones. The
marriage plot which reunites Anne and Wentworth unfolds in the context of
contrasting models of family relations and household customs. In her last completed novel, Austen
foreshadows the Victorian promotion of the domestic family.1 In Persuasion different types of family
values are illustrated by the contrast between the Musgroves and the Elliots;
as is customary with Austen, endorsed values are established through binary
structures which allow key distinctions to emerge. While the Elliot household is characterized by coldness,
formality, and posing, visually symbolized in the plethora of mirrors that are
a hallmark of the interior decoration of Kellynch Hall, the Great House at
Uppercross is notable for its informality and warmth. The Musgrove home is represented as a cozy, cluttered and vital
domestic space. Visiting there, Anne
observes its “old-fashioned square parlour, with a small carpet and shining
floor, to which the present daughters of the house were gradually giving the
proper air of confusion by a grand pianoforte and a harp, flower stands and
little tables placed in every direction.
Oh! could the originals of the portraits against the wainscot, could the
gentlemen in brown velvet and the ladies in blue satin have seen what was going
on, have been conscious of such an overthrow of all order and neatness! The portraits themselves seemed to be
staring in astonishment” (40). The
contrast established between the lively “present daughters of the house” and
the staid figures represented in the portraits, presumably the Musgroves of
yore, suggests that in the Musgrove family, the current generation’s happiness
takes precedence over the veneration of ancestors. Their home is also a place where the needs and desires of
children are attended to, as is evidenced by the Christmas festivities staged
for the Musgrove and Harville children which Anne observes on a subsequent
visit. On this occasion the domestic
tableau is described in terms reminiscent of a genre painting, rendering the
Musgrove home into a framed emblem of domesticity: “On one side was a table,
occupied by some chattering girls, cutting up gold and silk paper; and on the
other were tressels and trays, bending under the weight of brawn and cold pies,
where riotous boys were holding high revel; the whole completed by a roaring
Chrismas fire … It was a fine
family-piece” (134). From Anne’s perspective, the greatest
difference between the Musgrove family and her own is the difference in the
degree of affection between family members.
Sororal friendship plays an important role in Austen’s novels, but Anne
Elliot is denied the sort of sisterly companionship enjoyed by Jane and
Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice or by Elinor and Marianne
Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility.
Elizabeth Elliot is condemned as “unsisterly”; both Austen’s narrator
and Lady Russell are appalled by Elizabeth’s preference of Mrs. Clay over her
own sister and the fact that Elizabeth says to an undeserving friend about a
deserving sister: “She is nothing to
me, compared with you” (145). Anne is
not in general subject to envy, but she does envy Henrietta and Louisa Musgrove
their sisterly communion: “Anne always contemplated them as some of the
happiest creatures of her acquaintance; but … [she] envied them nothing but
that seemingly perfect good understanding and agreement together, that
good-humoured mutual affection, of which she had known so little herself with
either of her sisters” (41). Interchange among family members is frequent
and informal in the case of the Musgroves.
Notable for their hospitality and cordiality, they do not stand on
ceremony. Anne is surprised at the frequent intercourse between the senior and
junior branches of the family: “The two families were … continually meeting, so
much [were they] in the habit of running in and out of each other’s house at
all hours” (36). By contrast, when his
daughter and son-in-law arrive in Bath, Sir Walter feels burdened by his
obligation to host them, and decides to substitute an “evening” for the
expected dinner invitation. The
opposition between the family pretention displayed by the Elliots and the domestic
comfort enjoyed by the Musgroves is dramatized in the stifling effect the
Elliots’ arrival has on the cozy scene taking place in the Musgrove lodgings at
Bath: “[T]he door was thrown open for Sir Walter and Miss Elliot, whose
entrance seemed to give a general chill.
Anne felt an instant oppression, and, wherever she looked, saw symptoms
of the same. The comfort, the freedom,
the gaiety of the room was over, hushed into cold composure, determined
silence, or insipid talk, to meet the heartless elegance of her father and
sister. How mortifying to feel that it
was so!” (226). The Elliots’ dependence upon form and ceremony
to mediate family ties is suggested by the history of their relationship with
the Dalrymples. Until the Elliots’
removal to Bath, the cousinship has been expressed solely in a ritualistic
exchange of condolence letters, and when the textual exchange is
short-circuited at a certain point, “the Dalrymples considered the relationship
as closed” (149). This restriction of a
family relationship to textual production is related to the aristocratic
definition of family, scripted by the genealogical chart. It can be said that
for Sir Walter, all family relations are mediated by a text. Anne will remain “nobody” to Sir Walter as
long as he has “[no] hope … of ever reading her name in any other page of [the
Baronetage]” (6). Family alliances only
signify in the context of Sir Walter’s favorite book; to Sir Walter the
marriage of a child is cause for an addendum to the Baronetage, and the marriage
is evaluated only in terms of the impression its record will convey. In their persons, his children signify as
genetic texts, judged according to their closeness to his own. Elizabeth is valued because she is a reprint
of Sir Walter, while Anne is dismissed because her more delicate looks and
manner resemble her mother’s rather than her father’s. The aristocratic and the domestic conceptions
of family entail alternate agendas for the promotion of children’s
marriages. The Elliots have prohibited
Anne’s marriage to the man she loved because of his social inferiority, while
in agreeing to Henrietta’s union with her curate cousin and Louisa’s with the
relatively modestly circumstanced Captain Benwick, the well-to-do Musgroves
seek to promote their daughters’ happiness rather than the agrandizement of
their family. Wentworth comments: “The
Musgroves are behaving like themselves, most honourably and kindly, only
anxious with true parental hearts to promote their daughter’s comfort”
(182). Anne also endorses their
criteria: “Such excellent parents as Mr and Mrs Musgrove … should be happy in
their children’s marriages. They do
everything to confer happiness, I am sure.
What a blessing to young people to be in such hands! Your father and mother seem so totally free
from all those ambitious feelings which have led to so much misconduct and
misery” (218). The contrast between familial glory and
domestic felicity as possible ends towards which matches may be geared is
reflected in the difference between the two projected marriages of cousins that
the novel presents. An attachment
exists between Henrietta Musgrove and her cousin Charles Hayter, who have known
each other since childhood. They are
cousins on the maternal side, and there is a notable disparity in the social
status and material circumstances of the two families. (Mary Musgrove, née Elliot, objects to this
match for her sister-in-law because of the relative obscurity and poverty of
the Hayter family.) The other potential
alliance between cousins is the match between Anne and her cousin William
Elliot that is widely speculated about and ardently hoped for by Anne’s
godmother, Lady Russell. Anne is Lady
Russell’s favourite because of her resemblance to her mother; Lady Russell
wishes to see her in her mother’s place.
Having said no years ago to Anne’s desired love match, Lady Russell now
wishes Anne to marry according to an aristocratic, genealogical script; she
wants her to choose the marriage that will allow her to become, like her mother
before her, Lady Elliot of Kellynch Hall: “[T]o be able to regard you as the
future mistress of Kellynch, the future Lady Elliot – to look forward and see
you occupying your dear mother’s place, succeeding to all her rights, and all
her popularity, as well as to all her virtues, would be the highest possible
gratification to me. – You are your
mother’s self in countenance and disposition; and if I might be allowed to
fancy you such as she was, in situation, and name, and home, presiding and
blessing in the same spot, and only superior to her in being more highly
valued!” (159-60). We eventually learn
that such a marriage, had it occurred, would have been disastrous for Anne,
even aside from the question of her love for Wentworth. However, the other marriage between cousins,
the union of Henrietta and Charles Hayter, does take place, and it is viewed by
Anne and by the narrator as a happy circumstance. The central difference between the two projected marriages is
that the Hayter-Musgrove match is based not on considerations of family and
estate integrity, as the Elliot one is, but rather on a Wordsworthian “first
affection.” In addition to the Elliots and the Musgroves,
there is a third family that plays an important role in the novel’s endorsement
of domestic values: the Harvilles. The
description of the Harville home emphasizes, on a much smaller scale, the
quality of cozy domesticity that is also present in descriptions of the
Musgrove home. Like the Musgroves, the
Harvilles are distinguished by their hospitality. At Lyme Anne is surprised that people with such a small home
would not hesitate to propose hosting as large a group as theirs; the Harvilles
have “rooms so small as none but those who invite from the heart could think
capable of accommodating so many” (98).
Anne is charmed by the snug comfort of their home; her initial surprise
at the smallness of the house gives way to admiration of the ingenious contrivances and nice arrangements of Captain Harville, to turn the actual space to the best possible account … The varieties in the fitting-up of the rooms, where the common necessaries provided by the owner, in the common indifferent plight, were contrasted with some few articles of a rare species of wood, excellently worked up, and with something curious and valuable from all the distant countries Captain Harville had visited, were more than amusing to Anne: connected as it all was with his profession, the fruit of his labours, the effect of its influence on his habits, the picture of repose and domestic happiness it presented, made it to her a something more, or less, than gratification. (98) Like the interior design, the emotional spirit of the household is connected to Captain Harville’s profession. Anne associates the warm-hearted hospitality and openness of the Harvilles with naval fraternity: “There was so much attachment to Captain Wentworth in all this [welcome], and such a bewitching charm in a degree of hospitality so uncommon, so unlike the usual style of give-and-take invitations, and dinners of formality and display, that Anne felt her spirits not likely to be benefitted by an increasing acquaintance among his brother-officers. ‘These would have been all my friends,’ was her thought: and she had to struggle against a great tendency to lowness” (98).
The fraternal band of the navy, a non-sanguinal
but intense brotherhood, provides a model for the sort of family circle that
Anne values: a circle that is constituted by like-minded, mutually affectionate
people. The idea of a voluntary
association, embodied by the naval fraternity, rather than an association
scripted solely by pedigree, can be related to the role that relations which we
might term “adoptive” come to play in the novel. The Harville family, whose domestic arrangements are associated
with naval customs, provides a prime example.
Captain Benwick, former fiance of Harville’s deceased sister Fanny, is
an integral part of the family circle.
Significantly, the bond between Captain Benwick and the Harvilles is cemented
when Fanny Harville dies, and thus when the possibility of legal or biological
alliance through marriage and offspring is eliminated: “The friendship between
[Captain Benwick] and the Harvilles seemed, if possible, augmented by the event
which closed all their views of alliance, and Captain Benwick now was living
with them entirely” (97). The model of
family relations which I am terming adoptive is found throughout the novel;
Lady Russell, a friend, not a relative, of Anne’s late mother, treats Anne as
her own daughter. With her, Anne knows,
she “might always command a home” (146) should her own father remarry. In the wake of Anne’s marriage, Lady Russell
“adopts” Wentworth as well: “She attach[ed] herself as a mother to the man who
was securing the happiness of her other child” (249). And Anne is absorbed into the Musgrove family. While she is “nobody” to her own father and
sister, she is decidedly “somebody” to the Musgroves. Though to her own family the advantage of her arrival at Bath
lies only in her making a fourth at dinner, she is welcomed with open arms into
the domestic fold of the Musgroves. She
is greeted with “a heartiness, and a warmth, and a sincerity which [she]
delighted in the more, from the sad want of such blessings at home. She was entreated to give them as much of
her time as possible, invited for every day and all day long, or rather claimed
as a part of the family” (220-21). For
her part, Anne finds when she is reunited with her own family at Bath that her
affections are claimed by the surrogate family: “Anne would have been ashamed
to have it known, how much more she was thinking of Lyme, and Louisa Musgrove,
and all her acquaintance there; how much more interesting to her was the home
and the friendship of the Harvilles and Captain Benwick, than her own father’s
house in Camdenplace, or her own sister’s intimacy with Mrs. Clay. She was actually forced to exert herself, to
meet Lady Russell with anything like the appearance of equal solicitude, on
topics which had by nature the first claim on her” (124). Because her natural family is such an
unnatural family, Anne’s sanguinal relations are ultimately superseded by
voluntary associations. The brotherhood
of the navy provides a paradigm for the adoptive model of family relations
which allows friends to be absorbed as part of the family circle, and under
which warmth and hospitality prevail. The novel’s reflection on family models is
relevant for Anne’s future. Marriage is
itself a vehicle for reconfiguring the family, not only because of the new
family it creates in the union of husband and wife, but also because it entails
a set of new connections of each of the partners. In altering an old household and creating a new one, it often
allows for a reshuffling of other family members in addition to the bride and
groom.2 With Wentworth, Anne
will construct the sort of domestic space that will secure their own comfort
and promote the comfort of those who come within their domestic orbit. Anne will experience the companionate
marriage that is integral to the domestic ideal, a type of marriage illustrated
by Wentworth’s sister and her husband, the Crofts. The following passage shows both Anne’s admiration of the Crofts’
conjugal felicity and the fact that in her mind it is linked with their naval
association: They brought [to Bath] their country habit of being almost always together. He was ordered to walk, to keep off the gout, and Mrs Croft seemed to go shares with him in every thing, and to walk for her life, to do him good. Anne saw them wherever she went … Knowing their feelings as she did, it was a most attractive picture of happiness to her. She always watched them as long as she could; delighted to fancy she understood what they might be talking of, as they walked along in happy independence, or equally delighted to see the Admiral’s hearty shake of the hand when he encountered an old friend, and observe their eagerness of conversation when occasionally forming into a little knot of the navy, Mrs Croft looking as intelligent and keen as any of the officers around her. (168) Though Persuasion promotes domesticity,
it does not sentimentalize it. While
the Musgroves are praised for their genuine affection for each other and their
friends, for their lack of pretention, and for their hospitality, it is also
stressed that they are “not much educated, and not at all elegant” (40). The delicate sensibilities of Anne – and of
Austen’s narrator – are occasionally offended by these traits, as when at Bath
Mrs. Musgrove’s “open-hearted communication” on the subject of her daughters’
recent, engagements means boring her guest with “minutiae which, even with
every advantage of taste and delicacy which good Mrs. Musgrove could not give,
could be properly interesting only to the principals” (230). The strongest check against any temptation
to sentimentalize the family is found in the notorious passage about the late
Dick Musgrove, the revival of whose name generates a maudlin parental mourning
which is made the object of the narrator’s deliberately brutal irony: “He had,
in fact, though his sisters were now doing all they could for him, by calling
him ‘poor Richard,’ been nothing better than a thick-headed, unfeeling,
unprofitable Dick Musgrove, who had never done anything to entitle himself to
more than the abbreviation of his name, living or dead” (51). While Austen anticipates the Victorian
celebration of middle class domesticity, she does not indulge in the
sentimentality that often marked its representation in Victorian literature. In Persuasion the domestic vision
must be carried out, as all things must be in Austen, with moderation and
taste. The endorsement of the domestic
family is unambiguous, however, and is an important component in the novel’s
promotion of the navy over the aristocracy.
The reconfiguration of the family in Persuasion is two-fold,
involving on the level of individuals a reconstitution of the family circle,
and on the level of the culture at large, a shift from a genealogical
definition of family to a domestic one. NOTES 1 The contrast that Persuasion
establishes between a genealogical model of family associated with the
aristocracy and a domestic model of family associated with the navy accords
with the historical change Lawrence Stone documents in The Family, Sex and
Marriage in England, 1500-1800.
Stone describes the transition from the lineage family to the nuclear
domestic family, a shift which he connects to the rise of affective
individualism. Also relevant to my
discussion of family models in Persuasion is Nancy Armstrong’s Desire
and Domestic Fiction. In her
account of the rise of the novel, Armstrong describes the process by which
gendered subjectivity replaces kinship as the most important mediator of
individual identity. Armstrong argues that
“[n]arratives which seeem to be concerned solely with matters of courtship and
marriage in fact seized the authority to say what was female, and … did so in
order to contest the reigning notion of kinship relations that attached most
power and privilege to certain family lines” (5). Gendered subjectivity is related to the separated spheres
idealogy that accompanies the nineteenth-century cult of domesticity. 2 A reconfigured family circle is often one
consequence of the marriages with which Austen’s novels conclude. For example, we learn at the end of Pride
and Prejudice that Pemberley becomes the center of a reconfigured family
circle from which Wickham is banished and Mrs. Bennet kept at a safe distance,
while the Bingleys, Mr. Bennet, and the Gardiners are frequent visitors; the
reconfigured family circle provides a domestic space in which Georgiana Darcy
can be nurtured and Kitty Bennet can be rehabilitated. At the end of Mansfield Park, Fanny’s
deserving sister Susan is added to the family circle, while Maria is exiled
from it. The issue of adoption is
present in that novel, since Fanny is not only a cousin but an adopted member
of the Bertram family, though that adoption is neither gracious nor complete until
quite late in the novel, when the reconfiguration of the family is ratified by
the betrothal of Edmund and Fanny. WORKS CITED Armstrong, Nancy. Desire and Domestic Fiction. New York: Oxford, 1987. Austen, Jane.
Persuasion. London:
Oxford University Press, 1959. Stone, Lawrence. The Family. Sex, and Marriage in England, 1500-1800. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977. |
