Persuasions #15, 1993 Pages 124-130
Blair’s Rhetoric and the Art of
Persuasion ELAINE BANDER English Department, Dawson College Westmount, QC Persuasion is aptly
titled, but one powerful association with the term “persuasion” which Jane
Austen would have taken for granted is probably lost to most readers
today. Ever since Plato and Aristotle
wrote about “the art of persuasion,” the word “persuasion” has been closely
associated with the term “rhetoric,” and in Austen’s day, “rhetoric” was
virtually synonymous with “Blair.” Dr. Hugh Blair’s Rhetoric and Belles Lettres,
first published in 1783, dominated schoolrooms for generations. Selections from Blair’s Rhetoric also
formed the greatest part of Vicesimus Knox’s Elegant Extracts in Prose,
a one-volume anthology published in 1794 to provide, prose models in English
“for reading, writing … memorizing, reciting or declaiming” (ii). At least one of these versions of Blair’s Rhetoric
must have found its way into the Rectory at Steventon. Certainly Austen was sufficiently familiar with
Blair to allude to him in Northanger Abbey as a proverbial or household
name on a par with Dr. Johnson. When
Henry Tilney teases Catherine Morland about her sloppy use of language during
their walk around Beechen Cliff, Eleanor Tilney protests: “Miss
Morland, he is treating you exactly as he does his sister. He is forever finding fault with me, for
some incorrectness of language, and now he is taking the same liberty with you. The word ‘nicest,’ as you used it, did not
suit him; and you had better change it as soon as you can, or we shall be
overpowered with Johnson and Blair all the rest of the way.” (NA, 108) Eleanor mentions “Blair” in the same breath as “Johnson,” as casually as we might say “Fowler” or “Strunk and White.” For Catherine Morland, clearly, no further gloss is necessary. The same, however, cannot be said of us. Blair is no longer a household name, and his
Rhetoric has long been superceded by vast libraries of freshman
composition and public-speaking textbooks inflicted upon hapless students by
English teachers such as myself. So let
me introduce you to his Rhetoric, once so popular, and then suggest how
Blair’s art of persuasion bears upon Austen’s art in Persuasion. Hugh Blair, the first Regius Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at the University of Edinburgh, published his Lectures “for the initiation of Youth into the study of Belles Lettres, and of Composition.” He made no claim for originality but rather “consulted his own ideas and reflections; and a great part of what will be found in these Lectures is entirely his own” (I. iv). In adapting the best of ancient wisdom to modern purposes, he concentrated on issues of taste and style rather than the technical details of figures and tropes, topics and common-places so beloved of traditional rhetoric. Blair’s emphasis upon style accurately reflects the concerns of his age, during which a new middle class was emerging into political and economic power to challenge the entrenched privilege of the landed gentry. For Blair, like Austen, style has both moral and political implications. As he relates, rhetoric first arose among the
ancient Greek democracies: The Athenians were an ingenious, quick, sprightly people; practiced in business, and sharpened by frequent and sudden revolutions, which happened in their government. The genius of their government was entirely democratical. …. Eloquence there sprung, native and vigorous, from amidst the contentions of faction and freedom, of public business, and of active life; and not from that retirement and speculation, which we are apt sometimes to fancy more favourable to Eloquence than they are found to be. (II. 11-13) Himself a flower of the Scottish Enlightenment, proud of his nation’s democratic traditions of education, Blair clearly admires and identifies with the vigorous, independent, democratic Athenians. Persuasion, too, in opposing the physical and moral exhaustion of the landed
gentry represented by Sir Walter to the social utility and warmth of the
upwardly-mobile naval officers, shares Blair’s democratic preference for a
manly, energetic, unaffected oratory over polite hot-house eloquence. Austen’s sailors reveal the same pragmatic
virtues Blair ascribes to the Athenians; these virtues, enjoyed by the Crofts
at Kellynch and the Harvilles in their cozy house at Lyme, are lacking in Miss
Elliot’s drawing rooms in Bath.1
Throughout Persuasion, in fact, Austen contrasts formality and
informality, social snobbery and social ease.
Sir Walter’s toadying to Lady Dalrymple and Mary’s insisting upon the
observance of her rank at Uppercross are sources of shame for Anne, while the
casual family affection of the senior Musgroves and the good-hearted fellowship
of the sailors cause Anne no small amount of envy. Anne’s journey from the moral decay of her father’s regime at
Kellynch Hall to the unsettled life of a sailor’s wife is a movement from the
values of aristocracy to those of meritocracy, from the privileges of birth and
rank to the privileges of courage and energy, from the false elegance of
society to the true eloquence of heroism. Rhetoric too has always recognized a hierarchy
of styles: what traditional rhetoric called Ciceronian (or amplified) style and
Attic (or plain) style, Blair calls “the Diffuse and the Concise Styles” (I.
371). He observes: “Each of these
manners has its own peculiar advantages; and each becomes faulty when carried
to the extreme” (I. 372), but later on he leaves little doubt which he prefers:
“An ostentatious, a feeble, a harsh, or an obscure Style, for instance, are
always faults; and Perspicuity, Strength, Neatness, and Simplicity, are
beauties to be always aimed at” (I. 375). Although style is Blair’s chief concern,
traditional rhetoric also included the study of invention (the discovery and
demonstration of the truth to be communicated), division or arrangement (the
most effective distribution of the parts of the speech), and delivery (the oral
presentation of the speech, including memorization). In the 16th century, however, the rhetorician Peter Ramus
radically reorganized the study of rhetoric, returning the categories of
invention and arrangement to philosophy, where he felt they properly belonged,
leaving only style and delivery to rhetoric (c.f. Ong). Like Ramus, Blair declines to discuss
argumentation, although agreeing that rhetoric embraces both logic and ethics:
“For … when we are employed, after a proper manner, in the study of
composition, we are cultivating reason itself.
True rhetoric and sound logic are very nearly allied” (I. 6-7). An orator must be virtuous as well as
logical: “In order to be a truly eloquent or persuasive Speaker, nothing is
more necessary than to be a virtuous man” (II. 228). Nor is the mere appearance of virtue sufficient to persuade, as
those smooth manipulators Mr. Elliot and Mrs. Clay ultimately discover, for
“from the fountain of real and genuine virtue, are drawn those sentiments which
will ever be most powerful in affecting the hearts of others. No kind of Language is so generally
understood, and so powerfully felt, as the native Language of worthy and
virtuous feelings” (II. 231). That language of worthy feelings saturates Persuasion. The rhetoric of Persuasion conveys
the emotional effects of events upon Anne in ways which recreate her feelings
in readers. When emotion blurs the
clarity of Anne’s impressions, the narrator, too, withholds details, providing
only blurred impressions, as when Anne first meets Captain Wentworth after
their seven-year separation: “Her eye half-met Captian Wentworth’s; a bow, a
curtsey passed; she heard his voice – he talked to Mary, said all that was
right; said something to the Miss Musgroves …. the room seemed full – full of
persons and voices – but a few minutes ended it” (59). We cannot see this scene, but we feel
it intensely, as Anne does. Like Blair, Anne Elliot suspects reason without
passion, distrusting Mr. Elliot’s correct opinions because she cannot determine
to what extent he believes his own rhetoric: Though
they had now been acquainted a month, she could not be satisfied that she
really knew his character. That he was
a sensible man, an agreeable man, – that he talked well, professed good
opinions, seemed to judge properly and as a man of principle, – this was all
clear enough. He certainly knew what
was right, nor could she fix on any one article of moral duty evidently
transgressed; but yet she would have been afraid to answer for his conduct
…. She felt she could so much more
depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a
hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue
never slipped. (160-61)2 Logic alone may serve to convince, Blair asserts, but only passion will successfully persuade: “Conviction …. affects the understanding only; persuasion, the will and practice” (II. 3). In the highest form of eloquence, he claims, “we are not only convinced, but are interested, agitated, and carried along with the Speaker; our passions are made to rise together with his; we enter into all his emotions; we love, we detest, we resent, according as he inspires us; and are prompted to resolve, or to act, with vigour and warmth.” This higher eloquence, continues Blair, is “always the offspring of passion.” Such passion, moreover, “is universally found to exalt all the human powers” (II. 6). Now, had Anne but recalled these words of Blair
instead of her favourite poetical descriptions of autumn, she might have felt
less despondent during the walk to Winthrop, for when Captain Wentworth
delivers his homily on the hazelnut, he speaks more with reason than with
passion. In his sermon on firmness
Wentworth introduces what Blair calls an “Explaining Comparison” or simile (I.
344). Such comparisons, Blair cautions,
do not represent “the language of strong passion”: No, they are the language of imagination rather than of passion; of an imagination sprightly, indeed, and warmed; but undisturbed by any violent or agitating emotion. Strong passion is too severe to admit this play of Fancy. (I. 346) When addressing Louisa, therefore, Wentworth speaks the language of wit,
not the language of love. To Anne,
however, these are “words of such interest, spoken with such serious warmth! –
she could imagine what Louisa was feeling” (88). Anne of course is not the intended audience for Wentworth’s
homily, nor does Wentworth realize that she is listening, for this is one of
several scenes in Persuasion in which a speech or letter intended for
one audience is overheard or read by another (Ruoff 59-60). Nevertheless Wentworth’s rhetoric affects
the eavesdropping Anne more than it does Louisa, and significantly, the
metaphorical hazlenut which Wentworth flourishes is less analogous to Louisa
than to Anne, who, blessed with original strength of character, has outlived
(so far) the storms of autumn. Clearly
Anne’s defects rather than Louisa’s virtues are foremost in his thoughts as he
speaks. Anne is in Louisa’s thoughts as well, for when
Louisa speaks again, she shifts the subject explicitly to Anne: “Mary is good-natured enough in many respects,” said she; “but she does sometimes provoke me excessively, by her nonsense and her pride; the Elliot pride. She has a great deal too much of the Elliot pride. – We do so wish Charles had married Anne instead.” (88) Wentworth’s tone immediately shifts in response. After a pause he abruptly questions Louisa about the date of this rejected proposal: “Do you mean that she refused him?” he asks. “When did that happen? (89). All traces of rhetorical amplification are stripped from his speech. Anne, still eavesdroping, understands: She saw how her own character was considered by Captain Wentworth; and there had been just that degree of feeling and curiosity about her in his manner, which must give her extreme agitation. (89) When he speaks about Anne, Wentworth reveals just that degree of feeling
to his secret listener to suggest that on this subject, at least, he speaks
with passion. Eventually their shared secret produces shared
eloquence in the final chapters of Persuasion, for only when driven by
his passion for Anne does Wentworth become truly eloquent, and then only in
response to Anne’s own eloquence. In
Chapter 4 we were told: “How eloquent could Anne Elliot have been, – how
eloquent, at least, were her wishes on the side of early warm attachment
… (my emphasis; 30). By the end of the
novel, that potential eloquence is realized.
Austen’s rewritten conclusion to Persuasion emphasizes the
importance of Anne’s active, heroic eloquence in winning back her lost love. In the cancelled “Chapter X” with which Jane
Austen originally concluded her novel, the final éclaircissement between Anne
and Captain Wentworth occurs in the Crofts’s lodgings rather than in the
Musgrove’s crowded sitting-room at the White Hart Inn. In the original ending Anne once again
overhears snatches of Captain Wentworth’s conversation, this time with his
brother-in-law Admiral Croft, who commissions Wentworth to convey his offer to
vacate Kellynch Hall in the event of Anne’s marriage to her cousin. During the ensuing stiff, awkward dialogue,
Anne denies the engagement, whereupon the estranged lovers enjoy “a silent but
a very powerful dialogue; on his side supplication, on hers acceptance” (258). In this earlier conclusion Anne responds but
does not initiate, and the hitherto non-verbal nature of their courtship is
reinforced. Not only does this climax prove remarkably
flat, however, but worse, it turns on the hoary plot device of a heroine
compromised by false appearances and unable to get her message through to the
right man. This device served Fanny
Burney but creaks badly in Austen’s novel.
Anne herself pooh-poohs this old convention by which lovers are kept
apart for five volumes when, in the revised Chapter X, she reassures herself
that she and Wentworth are not characters in a Burney plot: “ ‘Surely, if there be constant attachment
on each side, our hearts must understand each other ere long. We are not boy and girl, to be captiously
irritable, misled by every moment’s inadvertence, and wantonly playing with our
own happiness’ ” (221, Bander 53). The revised conclusion compels Anne to woo
Captain Wentworth through the art of persuasion, for as many critics have
pointed out, their roles are now reversed: Wentworth now is the eavesdropper,
Anne the eloquent speaker, employing the formal diction of argumentation
(Marshall 44). To bolster his case, Captain Harville invokes
the voluminous tradition of antifeminism: “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 of 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.” (234) As a debater Captain Harville thus falls back upon ready-made arguments
in books. Now, although Blair, like
Ramus, declines to say much about “invention,” he does speak to the ancient
rhetorical practice of consulting inventories of ready-made arguments called topoi
– that is, topics, or common-places – by the Greeks: These Topics or Loci, were no other than general ideas applicable to a great many different subjects, which the Orator was directed to consult, in order to find out material for his Speech …. At the same time, it is evident, that though the study of common places might produce very showy academical declamations, it could never produce useful discourses on real business …. What is truly solid and persuasive, must be drawn … from a thorough knowledge of the subject, and profound meditation on it. (II. 180-82) Anne possesses a thorough knowledge of
enduring, hopeless love and has meditated profoundly upon this subject. Her eloquence, fuelled by passion,
rhetorically outweighs the kindly Captain Harville’s commonplaces, the more so
since their debate was prompted by the example of Captain Benwick’s rapid
recovery from a broken heart. Like that
much earlier resident of Bath, Chaucer’s Alisoun, Anne perfers the authority of
her own experience to the authority of books written by men (c.f. Harris 273
ff; also Gilbert and Guber 11). The Wife of Bath is not, however, the only
medieval echo in this passage.3
The
debate between Anne and Captain Harville suggests the rhetorical tradition of
the medieval disputation. Blair himself
believed that classical eloquence died with the Roman Republic, and although he
acknowledged “a new species of Eloquence” which resulted from the rise of
Christianity, he lamented that “none of the [Church] Fathers afford any just
models of Eloquence” (II. 36). As for
the ages of Aquinas and Abelard and the great flowering of rhetoric in the
medieval universities, Blair asserted “there is nothing … that occurs to me,
deserving particular attention in the middle age …” (II. 37). We need not share his eighteenth-century bias
against the middle ages. In the still
largely oral, book-poor culture of the medieval university, rhetoric
flourished; there apprentice scholars held debates, or oral disputations, in
which they presented arguments for and against (sic et non) a given
proposition before a judge or magister (Ong 60-61, 154), just as Anne
and Harville debate before the listening Captain Wentworth, who becomes, in
effect, the magister of this disputation on woman’s constancy. Earlier Captain Wentworth had exchanged a significant look with Anne as they both heard Mrs. Musgrove and Mrs. Croft discussing the evils of long engagements (231). Now, with every indication that Captain Wentworth is once again listening, Anne responds “eagerly” to Captain Harville’s arguments: “I
hope I do justice to all that is felt by you, and by those who resemble 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 oppressed. (235) Except for Blair’s gender-bias, the following account of a passionate man’s eloquence could describe Anne’s heroic persuasion of Captain Wentworth: A man, actuated by a strong passion, becomes much greater than he is at other times. He is conscious of more strength and force; he utters greater sentiments, conceives higher designs, and executes them with a boldness and a felicity, of which, on other occasions, he could not think himself capable. But chiefly, with respect to persuasion, is the power of passion felt. Almost every man, in passion, is eloquent. (II. 6-7) Captain Wentworth’s hastily scrawled response to Anne also displays the eloquence of a man in passion: “I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul …. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you ….” (237). Anne has passed the supreme test of an orator:
she has persuaded her judge, her magister, Captain Wentworth, to act.
Her eloquence elicits Wentworth’s declaration of love. She has won her debate. NOTES 1 But c.f. Mary Wollstonecraft in A
Vindication of the Rights of Women, ed. Charles W. Hagelman (New York:
Norton, 1967) 45-46: after lamenting the deleterious effect of garrisoned
soldiers upon the morals of a country town, she adds: “Sailors, the naval
gentlemen, come under the same description, only their vices assume a different
and a grosser cast” (45-46). And let us
not forget Admiral Crawford with his Rears and Vices! 2 We might also compare Emma, who comes to love
everything that is open, with the circumspect Jane; or compare careful Mr.
Elliot to the Crawfords, who do allow their tongues to slip so significantly. 3 Harris also suggests, among others, the
Loathly Lady (275 ff), but I think Anne bears more likeness to Patient
Griselda. WORKS CITED All references to Jane Austen’s works are to The
Novels of Jane Austen. Ed. R. W.
Chapman, 3rd ed. London: Oxford University Press, 1933-34. Bander, Elaine. “Jane Austen and the Uses of Silence,” Literature and Ethics: Essays Presented to A. E. Malloch. Ed. Gary Wihl and David Williams. Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queens
University Press, 1988: 46-61. Blair, Hugh.
Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. Ed. Harold F. Harding. Foreword David Potter. 2 vols.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1965. Collins, K. K.
“Prejudice, Persuasion, and the Puzzle of Mrs. Smith.” Persuasions, 6 (1984): 40-43. Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman
Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale, 1979. Harris, Jocelyn. “Anne Elliot, the Wife of Bath, and Other Friends.” Jane Austen: New Perspectives: Women & Literature, Vol. 3: New Series. Ed. Janet Todd. New York: Holmes, 1983: 272-94. Knox, Vicesimus. Elegant Extracts in Prose. London, 1794. Marshall, P. Scott. “Techniques of Persuasion in Persuasion – A Lawyer’s
Viewpoint.” Persuasions, 6
(1984): 44-47. Ong, Walter J., S. J. Ramus: Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958. Rackin, Donald. “Jane Austen’s Anatomy of Persuasion.” The English Novel in the Nineteenth Century. Ed. George Goodin. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972: 52. Ruoff, Gene W. “The Triumph of Persuasion: Jane Austen and the Creation of Woman.” Persuasions, 6 (1984): 54-61. |