Excerpt from "Seven Days of Literature: Talking to Liang Yongan about Literature"
Interlocutors: Liang Yongan× Liu Mengyun
Dialogue work: "Pride and Prejudice"
Source: Phoenix Net Reading (Id: ifengbook)
01.
The graffiti-addicted lady in the blue socks, or middle-class women, began writing
Before I begin today's conversation, I would like to read a passage from Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own: "At the end of the eighteenth century, women's minds were extremely active—talking, gathering, writing articles about Shakespeare, translating classics, all thanks to the hard fact that women can earn money by writing." If no one pays for a thing, it will appear frivolous, and money makes frivolity become solemn. Of course, there are people who laugh at 'blue sock girls who are addicted to graffiti', but no one can deny that they can put money in their wallets. "So, at the end of the eighteenth century, there was a change that, if I could rewrite history, I would say it more than the Crusades or the Wars of the Roses—middle-class women began to write.
The end of the eighteenth century that Woolf is talking about coincides with the birth of the novel Pride and Prejudice, which was completed in 1796 when Jane Austen was 21 years old, and she originally named the novel First Impressions. The novel was not officially published until 1813, 17 years after it was written. And the author of the novel, Jane Austen, is the standard "graffiti-addicted blue sock talent". But why? Why did Woolf think it was such a shocking thing for middle-class women to start writing? And even not hesitate to define it as "the epic age of women"?
I think there are three concepts that need to be brought out first, one is the middle class, one is women, and finally writing. It is impossible for us to finish them all at once, we can leave them for later. But I want to emphasize first that Woolf's words are very historical hindsight and cannot be believed. Why do you say that? Woolf, and the small group of Bloomsbury represented by her, are themselves a quintessentially middle-class community. And they are all people at the beginning of the twentieth century, when capitalism has entered a period of imperial expansion, as Veblen said, society is gradually changing from production to consumption, and the division and consciousness of social classes are very clear. Conversely, to place such a word on Jane Austen, an old-timer more than a hundred years ago, the old grandmother on which she writes, must be "silly and indistinguishable".
She may simply say that she is the daughter of the Rev. Austin in Steventon Village in Hampshire. At that time, geographical and family origin were still the most important identifiers.
Another question you also mentioned is that Jane Austen was only 21 years old when she wrote "Pride and Prejudice", not to mention cardamom age, it is also a wonderful age, in fact, she has never been married, and before the age of 25, she has written three immortal masterpieces "Pride and Prejudice", "Northumber Temple" and "Reason and Sensibility". So, how do you define the concept of women here? (By judicial definition, any woman over the age of fourteen is a woman). But obviously, those craftsmen and factory workers living at the bottom cannot do this. Therefore, women are here a limited threshold word.
The last fallacy is the relationship between writing and money. You notice that the point of the first half of Woolf's remarks is that "women can earn money by writing." This is actually an important thesis of "A Room of One's Own", that is, the economics of writing as a profession. And women's economic independence is also familiar to Chinese readers Lu Xun's classic exposition of "what happened after Nala left". But Jane Austen finished writing a work and could not publish it until 17 years later, longer than the sixteen-year contract between Yang Guo and Xiaolongnu. If she wants to support herself by writing, I am afraid that she will die a long time ago, so why not talk about a room? So women's writing at the end of the eighteenth century, at least from Jane Austen, must have had a more primary reason than making money.
But it must also be said that Woolf is keenly aware of this change of the times. Middle-class women began to write, and we might as well replace it with "women with some savings began to write", which opened up space for our conversation. Pulling out a thread, a series of problems was pulled out. For example, what was the era of the late eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century? How to quantify a certain amount of savings, and can it be quantified? And where does the savings come from? There are also some questions about women's lives, and so on, which can be said to be a great view. To avoid mistakes, let's start with Jane Austen's family and look at the concept of "having a certain amount of savings".
As in the case of the Bennett family's five children in "Pride and Prejudice", Jane Austen was born into a large family, except for a baby girl who died shortly after birth, Jane is the sixth child in the family, she has four older brothers and an older sister, and she will have a younger brother in the future. Mrs. Austin's success rate was very high at the time (before 1800, the mortality rate for women was about 1.5 percent). Imagine Jane growing up in such a large family, bustling with people, and if you include the cousins of both parents and the schoolchildren who lived at home because her father opened a boarding school, it is not difficult to understand why Jane Austen is so good at writing family stories.
Then again, if the whole family only depends on their father's pastor to make a living, the burden of living will be very large. In addition to running a school, her father, as a village pastor at the time, would engage in a little farming, both on church land and on his own land. Around December 16, 1775, when Jane Austen was born, his father, George Austen, was engaged in a farming competition with local farmers. It can also be seen that the life of the Austins is not much different from that of the peasants themselves, that is, they are not rich. All this came to naught with the death of his father, because houses and land were provided by the parish, and the church did not provide subsidies for widows and orphans of clergy. Together with the primogeniture system (abolished in 1925), after the death of the father, the inheritance was automatically transferred to the eldest son. If the daughter of the family is not married at this time, then she will have to rely on the support of other brothers.
It is not difficult to imagine how anxious their parents, especially their mothers, are that the five daughters of the Bennet family in "Pride and Prejudice" have not yet been married. Since she and Mr. Bennet had no sons, Mr. Bennet would have to inherit four thousand pounds a year of his fortune by a distant relative after a hundred years. I remember that the novel mentions Mrs. Bennet's "life's achievement being the successful marriage of her five daughters." Otherwise, after Bennet's death, Mrs. Bennet's little dowry will be difficult to sustain her daughters and herself.
But in fact, Jane Austen is not as lucky as the characters in her novels. After the death of her father, she was almost penniless, living with her mother and relying entirely on the support of her brothers to arrange her life until the publication of her novel in 1813. She happily bought a cloth for her sister Cassandra and wrote to her sister, "Don't refuse, I have money." ”
You have described the microclimate of the Austin's house in great detail, and I can add some of the general climates of the times here. Britain from 1796 to 1813 coincided with the late George III and the famous Regent era. The exact year of George IV's regency is 1816, but given George III's insanity, the Regency era actually runs from 1800 to 1830.
Jane Austen's novel Emma is dedicated to His Royal Highness the Prince Regent and is signed as "His Highness's loyal, obedient, and humble servant." In fact, the inscription was not Jane's meaning, and she was even very resistant to such a practice. But John Murray, the publisher at the time, insisted, and he also told Jane Austen that it was a royal hint and that she had to do so. Emma turned out to be Jane's most widely circulated book, and I remember printing 2,000 copies.
It can also be seen from this hint of the royal family that at that time there was a kind of extravagant and vain aristocratic style in the social atmosphere, and people with a certain status and family lineage were inevitably regarded as superior and low, and they all had an aristocratic attitude towards work. The daughter of a priest like Jane Austen had little other way out than to marry, and it was hard to imagine leaving home to find a job like our current women. At that time, the jobs offered to women were all "undignified" in their opinion, such as maids, female workers, etc., which were basically the occupations of lower-class women. And to be able to become a female teacher in a home or educational institution like Jane Eyre will have to wait until the Victorian era.
On the other hand, the year after Jane Austen was born, in 1776, coincided with the era of Watt's improved steam engine, which meant that Britain entered the golden age of the Industrial Revolution. Machinery freed up manpower, and at the same time brought about large-scale production and later colonial expansion "overseas". At the same time, in the time interval between the birth and publication of "Pride and Prejudice", the French Revolution, the Anglo-French War, and the Napoleonic Wars were also continuing.
Two of Jane Austen's brothers, brother Frank and brother Charles, joined the British Navy and actually participated in the war. The former later rose to a very high rank in the army, reaching the rank of marshal of the navy. From this point of view, it is really surprising to compare the stable and peaceful rural atmosphere in Jane's novel.
In fact, it is not surprising that all external changes greatly stimulate men's vitality and imagination, and in turn, it is not so "lively" for women, or there are few stages left for women to show outside. And women like Jane Austen cannot be maids and maids, so only the family can be her space. Jane spent her later years commuting between East Kent and Jodon, and much of her life was spent caring for her brothers' children, her sisters-in-law's childbirth and postpartum rehabilitation. Life, in turn, imprisons women within the four walls of the family, but at the same time opens a window of imagination for them - writing.
And reading. Under these major historical changes and economic changes that you talked about, many old labors have been replaced by new ways of specialization and mechanization, the most direct of which is women's textiles. When women have unprecedented time in the family and, in Ian Watt's words, "forced leisure," reading becomes a good way to pass the time. Ian Watt said in "The Rise of the Novel" that the primary reason why learning is more suitable for the women's world than the male world is that they have enough time in their hands, and they live a life that requires more sedentary life... Another reason is that women of social status are particularly keen to write letters, because their husbands are often strangers to them. All of this, intentionally or unintentionally, cultivates women's talents in reading and writing. Women also became an important driver of the rise of fiction.
Because the husband cares about things outside the family.
In addition, because you just mentioned the aristocracy of aesthetics and life attitudes in the Regency era, parents like the Austins must not advocate their daughters to work outside the home, but do not want them to be illiterate. Jane and her sister grew up at home, strictly speaking, humanistic education rather than skills training. By the time Pride and Prejudice was published, the literacy rate for British women was around 40 per cent. Elizabeth Bennett, Emma Dashwood, Catherine Moran, these heroines of Austen's writing, are all the same. On the one hand, this enriches their spiritual world, but on the other hand, it also makes them very distressed in the face of masculine reality in adulthood, and their only way out can only be found in the marriage market. Conversely, confinement at home gives women a sharper and richer sensibility to discover and imagine the subtleties of private relationships, which are crumbs and mundane things for men, and become women's advantages in the field of fiction.
You just mentioned Ian Watt's words, in addition to reading and writing, he also mentioned that writing letters is an important pastime for women, and that writing letters is a more important social way than reading, and the desire to write letters is often stronger and more persistent than writing. Because it is the best way to share gossip by heartbeat. Reading the letters left behind by the people of the time, you will be surprised by the frankly and shameful explicit words on both sides, which the nineteenth-century writer Flaubert is probably the most famous. Jane Austen spent a large part of her life writing letters.
Unfortunately, after her death, her sister Cassandra burned most of her letters.
In this way, under the dual role of reading and writing letters, women enrich their imagination and exercise their pen practice, and writing on this basis seems to become a natural thing.
It is worth adding that people at that time were keen to read books or letters aloud as a family entertainment. In Pride and Prejudice, you can read that the Bennett family used to read and listen to books like this. Of course, at the time, this was also due to economic considerations, because the cost of a book was still high, the collection of books at home was always limited, on the other hand, candle lighting during the war was also a high expense, and one person reading a book for a group of people to listen to was the most cost-effective way to consume lighting, and it was also the best way to entertain a book.
Remember that the UK once imposed a window tax, and the more windows, the more taxes you have to pay. In turn, there are fewer windows, taxes are saved, but lighting and lighting are weak. Reading aloud may have something to do with this window tax.
Let's go back to 1796. The earliest surviving letter from Jane Austen was written to Cassandra on January 9, 1796. The letter mainly recounts a ball that Jane attended the night before the letter was written, and also implies that she was attracted to a blonde and attractive Mr. Tom Løy from Ireland at the ball, in addition to other men and women she had heard and seen at the ball. The cheerful words that poured out the girl's heart were full of youthful atmosphere. If we also think that this year Jane was writing her "Pride and Prejudice", Elizabeth's age is precisely Jane's age. So how is the love between Elizabeth and Darcy not a projection of Jane Austen's desire to love in reality? Although Jane Austen never married, for future readers, we should understand from this letter that it is not because she has the celibacy that we modern women have.
02.
Surprising stunner, or long live love!
Now let's go back to the text to see how Jane Austen's desires are projected into Pride and Prejudice. In Jane Austen's view, "Pride and Prejudice" is the most "light, cheerful and eye-catching" of her six published novels, and the greatest credit here is of course for the creation of the character of Elizabeth.
We might as well invite the heroines of several of her other works to appear, and we will find that Emma Dashwood's cleverness in "Emma" is a little overdone, almost close to snobbery; Catherine Moran in "Northumbrie Temple" is too realistic; And Fanny Price in "Mansfield Manor" and Anne Elliot in "Persuasion" are both quiet and calm, lively and insufficient. Only this Elizabeth Bennett, who is fierce and thoughtful, fits our real-life vision of the modern woman.
Speaking of Elizabeth's extraordinary, do you remember how she was described in the book? and her sister Jane, she is not so beautiful and her personality is not gentle; Compared with her sister Mary, she reads more but does not have a nasty dropped book bag (this is an advantage); And Lydia and Kittybi, she's not cheesy. Pay attention to this last point - not bad. I think this is Elizabeth's greatest characteristic, and it is precisely because of her goodness that her initial prejudice against Darcy has produced the dialogue nature of this novel. To illustrate Elizabeth's goodness, let's first look at how Jane Austen wrote "vulgar". Do you remember the famous beginning of the novel?
"It has become a universally recognized truth that all rich bachelors always want to marry a wife."
This is said from a male point of view, in fact, as we talked about above, in the tight marriage market at that time, women were so "slow-selling", who would not want to marry a rich gentleman for young and beautiful women? This should become another universally recognized truth that repeats itself synonymously. And this truth is precisely the motivation for the action of all the characters in the novel, and it is also the narrative driving force of the novel.
"Pride and Prejudice" opens with the vulgarity of the social reality of the time, the Bennett family is arguing, the whole Meriton explodes because of the arrival of two rich gentlemen, and the other characters after the novel are portrayed one by one in this "marriage market" world.
This reminds me of two groups of characters, one is Elizabeth's sister Lydia and Willoughby elopement; The other is that the parish priest Collins failed to pursue Elizabeth and went after her best friend Lucas backhanded. The former is an accident in the mundane world, but compared to the love myth of Elizabeth and Darcy, it is clear that Jane Austen has a negative attitude towards the practice of these two people consuming each other's youth purely for lust.
And she almost despised the second pair (mainly to Mr. Collins, but sympathy for Lucas). Collins is a bit like what we now call a man - a general man (obviously very ordinary but very confident). You see what he said after his proposal to Elizabeth was repeatedly rejected:
Dear cousin, allow me to say something confident: you refused my marriage proposal, but as usual. There are several reasons why I think this: my marriage proposal will not be unworthy of your acceptance, and my family property will not make you indifferent. My social status is my extremely advantageous condition. You have to think a little further: despite your many appeals, you won't necessarily be asked again. You have too few possessions, which is likely to offset all of your liveliness and cuteness. Therefore, I must not be determined: you are not really rejecting me, I see that you are imitating the habits of elegant women, trying to get away with it, wanting to win my affection even more.
What Collins said was dictated by middle-class patrons. In the traditional sense of the time, the status of women was defined by the status of fathers and husbands. Collins's desire to marry was to dress Elizabeth into an ideal model for women, mainly middle-class women (such as being a housekeeper and a husband and a godson). His self-confidence was not simply gender self-confidence, but also class self-confidence, and it was hard to imagine a worker and peasant man speaking to the woman he wanted.
George Eliot's Adam Bader is about the love of young peasant men and women.
And Collins' marriage was highly rational and calculating. If the reader can be tolerant, why are many of the other women in the novel, including the daughters of the Bennet family, not a female version of Collins?
Jane Austen created this mundane world of the English countryside through these successful and failed loves and marriages surrounding the hero and heroine. This, in turn, makes Elizabeth's love with Darcy more romantic.
In fact, we can give another example, you remember Mary Bennet, Elizabeth's sister. In the book, she is portrayed as a very conformist "silly lady" who pays great attention to her etiquette norms. Compared with this sister, Elizabeth's behavior of running three miles alone to visit without regard for "decency" when her sister Jane suddenly fell ill and was delayed in returning home at Netherfield Manor was quite unique.
This is also the turning point in the book, Darcy's impression of Elizabeth.
At that time, the former's self-denial and self-interest were respected, and the latter's humanity and boldness were to be gossiped. In fact, Bingley's sister Caroline was quite jealous and said that Elizabeth came running with muddy legs and was very hillbilly.
Another "good" contrast.
That's right. But this is good, and there is a price.
Because of prejudice.
03.
Go both ways, or rather, we are different!
Elizabeth's impression of Darcy after Lonbourne's first ball was that the man was "shockingly rough."
He was a most hateful and hateful person, and he didn't deserve to be bothered with at all. So arrogant, so arrogant, unbearable! ...... I hated this person.
In fact, I quite understand Elizabeth's feelings, because her dignity cannot be insulted. After all, if you change anyone, you will not silently accept it without waves when you hear someone say this.
She's okay, but not pretty enough to touch my heart. At the moment, I'm not in the mood to lift up the ladies who have been snubbed by others.
Yes, Elizabeth's prejudice is the opposite of Darcy's arrogance. They were all smart people, and because of their cleverness, the account that Mr. Collins and the like had calculated - the right door, or climbing the high branch—was even more like a mirror in the minds of Elizabeth and Darcy. And this "human sobriety" is precisely the reason why they met with saber rattling. Of course, this is also the reason why they feel sorry for each other.
Later in the novel, when the lovers complain to each other, Elizabeth bluntly broke:
In fact, you hate being courteous, reverent, and courteous. Some women, from speaking, to demeanor, to thought, always want to please you, and you hate this kind of woman. I caught your attention and touched your heart because I was so different from them.
This is really the love of smart people. It's all about falling in love with IQ, and they know each other.
I remember reading an analysis that said that Darcy in the novel was among the four hundred richest families in Britain at the time with an income of "ten thousand pounds a year". And consider the daughters of the Bennetts, whose dowry was at most a thousand pounds each. From this, we can also talk about the correspondence between social hierarchy and wealth at that time:
The first estate was still the nobility, who had absolute wealth of the land; The second estate is the old family that owns property but some may not have a title of nobility; The third level is the group that has acquired wealth through the individual's occupation and profession; The fourth estate is the low-status class of squires; The last class is the professional class with gentlemanly manners, such as doctors, lawyers, clergy, etc. Darcy's identity in the novel is of the first rank, and Elizabeth (including the Austins) is a typical last class.
The gap is not too big!
Indeed, coupled with the Bennet's mother's "chicken baby" boost to the five girls, the involution within the family reinforces the disdain of outsiders to see this tacky and snobbish family. Darcy's arrogance comes precisely from the huge class differences and the involution tendency of the class desire to leap within the saturated middle class.
But we said, Elizabeth is good. But Darcy's understanding of the "good"—the spiritual search for one another—takes time.
Including Elizabeth's dissolution of Darcy's "arrogance".
To put it bluntly, it is actually how to prove that "we are different".
From Darcy's point of view, his arrogance was actually class arrogance, the inherent perception of the rich (and still aristocracy) of the rich one percent of the new bourgeoisie. This was evident from Darcy's disgust at his refusal to dance at the Meriton Ball. His gentlemanly demeanor was plant-based, cold and unwanted, and when he came to Merriton, the people he saw were so noisy, and his eyes were full of "choose me, choose me, choose me". These people (including Elizabeth) were animal in comparison to his vegetative nature.
And the plot of Netherfield Manor gives Darcy a chance to recognize Elizabeth's "different". Her "disregard for decency", her "anxiety and impulsivity" made her different in Darcy's eyes.
Jane Austen asked Darcy to let go of his arrogance too quickly. That's why in the movie version of "Pride and Prejudice" Darcy said to Jane, I am waiting to fall in love with you from the road we have already walked halfway. But this also shows that Elizabeth fell in love with Darcy and experienced a tangled emotional education.
And this emotional education is basically the successful re-enactment of an inherent routine in English literature - the maid marries the master. I remember that many years ago, Translation Publishing House published Richardson, the great writer of the era before Jane Austen, the masterpiece "Pamela", which was born in 1740 and wrote the story of the maid Pamela who endured the personal attacks, seduction, and deception of the male master Mr. B for a long time, but finally Pamela touched B with her kindness and made the two fall in love deeply. The story was a huge success in the UK and was almost a household name at the time. Jane Austen has loved reading novels since she was a child, and she must have read it. And the structure of the Elizabeth Darcy relationship, in a sense, is the resurrection of Mr. Pamela-B's relationship. After this, there is another such classic relationship in the history of English literature, that is, Jane Eyre-Rochester.
And these three novels are also from the perspective of female characters, showing their emotional education process, and finally achieving the happy ending of romantic romance novels. Although the form and degree vary. Pamela, like Elizabeth, initially rejected the hero's marriage proposal, and flatly refused.
Elizabeth's answer was:
Mr. Darcy, if you behave politely, you may feel overwhelmed by my refusal, and besides, if you think that the way you confess will affect me in any other way, then you are mistaken.
Of course, as readers, even if we don't know the ending in advance, we won't make a fuss when we see this sentence, after all, as a romance novel, this is just a little twist and turn on the road of love.
It should be noted that the emotional education of male and female characters, especially women, is an important psychological depiction method in modern novels. From Pamela's epistolary (she confides in her parents, she writes to her parents, but in fact her parents can't receive them at all) to the inner monologue of Elizabeth and Jane Eyre, the opening of the psychological space of the characters in the novel makes the two-way rush in love, not only on the material level, but first on the spiritual and cultural level.
But conversely, why are women always more educated?
For example, it is written earlier in the novel that Elizabeth is so independent of thought and self-awareness, but when Elizabeth gradually understands Elizabeth, the mavericks in front of Elizabeth have to converge, or compromise. Just like in the novel, after Uncle Gardner's inadvertent visit to Pemberley Manor (Darcy's home), Jane Austen gives Elizabeth this inner monologue:
Mr. Darcy, as a brother, manor owner, and patriarch, holds the happiness of many people! How much joy can it bring to people, how much pain it can cause! And how much good can be done, and the evil will not change... I couldn't help but think of his heartfelt feelings, and my heart flooded with gratitude that I had never felt before. As soon as I thought of his devotion, I no longer cared about his abrupt words when proposing.
Although Jane Austen wrote this class fusion with positive emotions, and gave the novel a happy ending. However, thinking of the kind of female agility and independence in the first half of the novel, I still feel that behind Elizabeth's "indifference", there is a certain compromise that women faced with class jumps at that time.
Every author is limited by the time in which he lives. You mention the Gardners, and you'll notice that they have a positive image that is rare in Elizabeth's class. (When Mr. Gardner appears in the novel, he is described as "knowledgeable and gentlemanly.") In the novel, if it weren't for the couple bringing Elizabeth to Derbyshire, nothing would have been possible. In addition, at the end of the story, the deviant Willom and Lydia were also saved with the cooperation of Darcy and Mr. Gardner. What does this mean? I think maybe this represents some kind of cooperation or marriage between the aristocracy and the new business class. It was also a kind of ideological totem that Jane Austen stood in her time and offered us.
And in this "marriage", it is still men who stand in the lead, and women who are secondary. The limitations of the times forced Jane Austen to sacrifice women and compromise in order to pursue a perfect ending. You see her Brontë sisters who were less than half a century old that night, and when Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre, she didn't pursue the so-called "perfection" so much, and in the end Jane Eyre and Rochester did get together, but it was very bleak - an old blind love.
No wonder Charlotte Brontë was very unimpressed with Jane Austen, who once told others that Jane Austen was a noblewoman, but not a woman. Because she pays far more attention to people's eyes, mouths, hands and feet than to people's hearts.
I think her words point to the more essential question of fiction - what is reality!
All of the quotes in this section are from Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice. Translated by Sun Zhili, Yilin Press, 2018
This article is excerpted from
"Seven Days of Literature: Talking to Liang Yongan about Literature"
Author: Liang Yongan / Liu Mengyun
Publisher: Wenhui Publishing House
Year of publication: 2022-11
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The powerful brain makes us accustomed to rational thinking and controlling emotions, but excessive suppression makes many people start to be anxious and depressed. The better, the more anxious.
Why, the body becomes a machine that only works? Life becomes like a pool of stagnant water? Why are we no longer full of passion and vitality like the ancients?
Perhaps we should go back to the beginning of life and look at the essence of dance - free expression, free dancing body in the field, and regaining that very simple, special essence of vitality.
A flower does not shy, a tree does not have the puzzle of dancing, we have forgotten ourselves for a long time ...
Then follow the modern dance master Gao Yanjinzi to dance, let go of the standard, let go of the stereotype, let go of all the constraints imposed on us, and express freely.
Rejuvenate and energize your body, this is what you want, and this is what modern dance is after.
Only by letting go of the brain can life fully open up. - Tsuko Gao
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