How I Survived my Thesis

If anyone actually checks this blog regularly for updates, you've probably noticed that there haven't been any in about a billion years. (Well, more like two months. But it feels longer.) This is because I have spent that billion years (or I suppose two months) immersed in writing my senior honors thesis.

Because of the SURF grant that allowed me to start researching for this over the summer, I've been at work on this project since the end of June. But really, since I had to research and write a proposal for SURF that was due in March, I have been working on this since February. And really, if we're going to get technical, I've been wanting to write something like this ever since my first English course at Berkeley, where I read Pride and Prejudice in a truly scholarly manner for the first time and fell more deeply in love with English as a critical practice and Austen as an author.

So eight months, or fourteen months, or four years later -- however you want to put it -- I'm done.

It hasn't been easy. It has involved more books, caffeine, and tears than are likely healthy for any single individual to experience. But it's also cemented my belief that this is what I want to be doing for the rest of my life, and it's taught me a lot of important things along the way. Because I am mostly a tissue of things that other people have said and how I have thought about them, I think about the lessons I've learned in terms of the quotations that seem to encapsulate them the best

"If you're going through hell, keep going." --Winston Churchill

My father quoted this to me at the beginning of the summer, and I've been living it pretty much ever since. Life is not easy. But you can't go back, so looking back isn't going to be much help. This thesis, along with the other pressures of life over the last year (ranging from grad school applications to work to volunteering, not to mention those other English classes I was taking), has occasionally felt like hell. But I kept going. And I made it through.

"I hope when you have written a great deal more you will be equal to scratching out some of the past." --Jane Austen

I encountered this gem of advice over the summer when reading through Austen's collected letters. She wrote it to her niece, Anna, who was also an aspiring novelist and often sent excerpts to her aunt to critique. Even though Austen's comments make me doubt that Anna was anything better than an average writer, Austen is surprisingly kind with her honesty.

It's that combination of honesty and critique that made this quotation into one of my thesis mantras. Austen admits that "scratching out some of the past" is hard -- something you have to be "equal" to, and something that takes time. It's difficult to work so hard at something and then acknowledge that it isn't all working, that some of it is bound to be deleted. The only thing that will make you "equal" to doing it is writing more to take its place, and I love that Austen realizes this. It's an encouragement to joint revision of the old and production of the new, one that suggests exactly how intertwined those practices are.

"A poem is never finished, only abandoned." --Paul Valery

I was first given this advice in a fiction-writing workshop, but I've come to realize over the years that it applies almost equally to any form of written endeavor. The bottom line is that nothing will ever be perfect. There will always be some word that can be changed or improved, some new source to footnote, some new direction that your argument ought to address. But if you get so caught up in revision, so desperately tied to making it perfect, you'll never end up with anything. There's a point when you just have to suck it up and tell yourself you're done -- for now. Abandonment is not a forever thing, especially not for me in this context; there is a good chance that at least some of my thesis will survive and wind up as a chapter or two in the first book of literary criticism that I publish somewhere down the road. But until I have to start thinking about that, I'm going to leave the thesis behind for a while and gain some perspective.

Jane Austen's Cutting Art

Apparently, when we think of Jane Austen, we think of a writer whose style is so polished and so impenetrable that to imagine her editing or changing her work is to commit a minor sacrilege. At least, that's what this article takes as its baseline -- and it's a baseline I can understand. For most people, books are finished things; their very completeness lends them credibility and solidity, makes them believable even though they are obviously fictions. From this perspective, I can understand why people who don't frequently write literature (or write about literature) might express a kind of shock upon discovering exactly how meticulous Jane Austen was in rewriting her novels, and exactly how unfinished they once were.

I remember my first experience of this side of Austen. I was a freshman in my first ever English class at Berkeley, and my professor, in a lecture on Pride and Prejudice, mentioned that the novel had once been titled First Impressions and written in an entirely epistolary style. I don't remember my exact response, but I'm fairly certain that rather than shock, I experienced something like regret for the fact that this initial draft of the novel no longer existed.

Since then, I've spent my fair share of time wondering (as I will suppose almost every Austen scholar has wondered, at one point or another) about the possibility that First Impressions could still exist, sitting in a forgotten drawer in an English country estate, or wedged accidentally behind a dresser in a neglected parsonage. After encountering A. S. Byatt's Possession this spring -- in which two modern academics discover the lost letters of two (fictional) Victorian poets, and follow the literary clues therein on a detective hunt through Great Britain and parts of France -- I'll admit, I fantasized about being the person who opened the right drawer, or pulled the right dresser away from the wall, to see the manuscript come fluttering down, the light of day reanimating the dead leaves of paper covered in the veined tracery of aging ink.

This summer, in the process of researching for my senior thesis, I embarked upon a voyage through the collected letters of Jane Austen -- and everything changed.

It didn't happen all at once. Though Austen is always an interesting writer, her letters (mostly to her sister Cassandra) deal primarily with her day-to-day life, referencing people and places and events that my minimal knowledge of Austen biography precluded me from truly understanding. But more important than the actual content of the letters was my growing understanding of Austen's style. I slowly realized that only very rarely did I feel like I could take her seriously -- even when speaking with her sister about serious matters, she always seems to address her own real beliefs from an angle, or reference them only backhandedly. I was shocked to discover that particular passages which older Austen critics frequently read as plain and simple truth were, from my vantage point, obviously spoken with a deep irony that must effect my interpretation.

For example, I had heard more than one critic propound that Austen was dissatisfied with Pride and Prejudice, because in a letter to Cassandra she writes, "the work is rather too light & bright & sparkling;--it wants shade;--it wants to be stretched out here & there with a long Chapter" (Jane to Cassandra, 4 February 1813). I'd been uneasy with this assertion, having personally considered the "light & bright & sparkling" nature of Pride and Prejudice to be the main reason for its critical reputation. An earlier letter only provided more support for my idea; Austen writes that she has "lopt & cropt [Pride and Prejudice] so successfully however that I imagine it must be rather shorter than S.&S. [Sense and Sensibility] altogether" (Jane to Cassandra, 29 January 1813). This pride in cutting her work down to size -- in removing, excising, revising -- seemed out of touch with the Austen described by critics as disapproving of the "bright & sparkling" nature of her own novels.

To me, the falsehood of these critics' views is proven without a doubt by a fuller extract from the very letter they use to support their claims:

"Upon the whole however I am quite vain enough & well satisfied enough.--The work is rather too light & bright & sparkling;--it wants shade;--it wants to be stretched out here & there with a long Chapter--of sense if it could be had, if not of solemn specious nonsense--about something unconnected with the story; an Essay on Writing, a critique on Walter Scott, or the history of Buonaparte--or anything that would form a contrast & bring the reader with increased delight to the playfulness & Epigrammatism of the general stile" (Jane to Cassandra, 4 February 1813).

The continuation of the second sentence does, it is true, suggest ways in which Austen could have lengthened the work -- but the suggestion that such lengthening might be little more than "solemn specious nonsense" suggests to me that the entire passage is a backhanded self-compliment. Why would a woman who has spent some time and effort "lopping and cropping" this manuscript down to size then complain about its "Epigrammatism," which she admits to finding "delightful"? Austen would not be Austen if she digressed from her tightly-woven narratives to provide the reader with essays on writing, critiques on contemporaries, or historical asides. And she understands this about herself -- later she writes, "I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my Life, & if it were indispensable for me to keep it up & never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I finished the first chapter" (Jane to James Stanier Clarke, librarian to the Prince Regent, 1 April 1816). The repetition of "seriously" and "serious" mocks the very notion of such solemnity, which Austen admits would be broken by laughter, either at herself or others, if such a project were to succeed. Even when Austen is serious, I think her avid readers can attest that she is rarely solemn. Sir Walter Scott himself, when speaking of her juvenile writing, summed her up as "the girl of fifteen [who] is laughing, in her corner, at the world" (qtd. in Johnson 29).

Austen's revising mind, then, rather than shocking us, should be acknowledged as a significant factor in her self-as-writer. In fact, Austen scholar D. A. Miller says "the founding gesture of Austen Style is the cut" (34) -- and although he means it in the sense of the cutting remark, I think it's just as applicable to Austen's cutting down of her own prose to achieve the kind of "Epigrammatism" she ironically disclaims. The result is prose that is intentionally "light & bright & sparkling," like a gemstone that must be "cut" in order to betray its true brilliance.

In light of all of this, I realized at some point this summer that even if First Impressions (or Elinor and Marianne, the epistolary original draft of Sense and Sensibility, or Susan, the original draft of Northanger Abbey) existed, reading it would be like attempting to reconstruct a perfect diamond from the fragments left behind on the cutting table, instead of merely going and looking at the diamond where it sits on its plush velvet cushion on a pedestal in the next room, all "light & bright & sparkling." I might still feel a frisson of excitement at the mention of Austen's early drafts, or her lost letters, but my fervor to be the one who makes the discovery (if there is even a discovery to be made) has died down. In the case of Pride and Prejudice, at any rate, Austen's own letters suggest that her cuts were intentional, and produced the result she desired; with this, then, I can be satisfied.

Works Cited

Johnson, Claudia L. Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1988.

Le Faye, Deirdre, ed. Jane Austen's Letters. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Miller, D. A. Jane Austen, or, The Secret of Style. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.

Deciphering Henry Tilney

I read Northanger Abbey for the first time slightly over a month ago in preparation for my senior thesis on Jane Austen and the form of the novel, and ever since then I’ve been going back and forth about what I think of the novel’s purported “hero” Henry Tilney. I find the protagonist Catherine to be simple in a cute sort of way—strong-minded and genuine in her opinions even when she’s not willing to speak up and assert them, young and a bit naïve but without it being really infuriating—but Henry is a mystery that I just can’t seem to wrap my mind around.

Part of this, I suspect, can be blamed upon the BBC. I hadn’t read Northanger Abbey a month and a half ago, but I had seen the 2007 TV movie starring Felicity Jones and J. J. Field. I’d found it to be much like its heroine (short, cute, fun), and almost like Pride and Prejudice lite (all the wordplay and banter but none of the ferocious arguments or long-held grudges). In the film, Field’s Henry Tilney is affable, and he delivers his character’s more questionable lines with a smile that makes you forget that he’s not making sense. I bought into Tilney’s silliness as a result of the film, and went into the novel expecting to find him, if nothing else, a good match for Catherine, willing to tease her and challenge her in such a way that would promote their developing relationship as well as the intelligence of both individuals.

I came away from my first reading of the novel with a pretty favorable account of him. He was a little more jokey, and a little more likely to cut others off for the sake of expressing his own intelligence, than I had expected, but his playful humor left me feeling that he was, in a strange way, a male prototype for Elizabeth Bennet. The language used to describe them is, in fact, incredibly similar. Henry is introduced as having “a very intelligent and lively eye,” “fluency and spirit,” and “an archness and pleasantry…which interested” (NA Vol. I Ch. III). In comparison, Darcy relates that Elizabeth’s countenance “was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes” (P&P Vol. I Ch. 6), with “a mixture of sweetness and archness in her manner which made it difficult for her to affront anybody” (P&P Vol. I Ch. 10). Just as Henry teases Catherine by asking her a series of rote questions about her enjoyment of Bath, Elizabeth pursues conversation-by-formula with Darcy during their dance at the Netherfield ball. They are both witty jokesters who wouldn’t be able to stand having many acquaintances at whom they were not allowed to laugh.

But where Elizabeth’s mocking laughter is tamed (at least a little) by her increasing concern for Darcy’s feelings, Henry’s wordplay remains primarily unchecked, and herein lies my problem. Upon a second reading of key passages, I found myself running across instance after instance in which Henry’s wordplay, rather than seeming playful and ridiculous, began to appear authoritarian, a method to prevent others from speaking their minds rather than a way of encouraging light and easy conversation. Take, for example, a conversation between Henry and Catherine, in which Catherine speaks first:

“I do not understand you.”

“Then we are on very unequal terms, for I understand you perfectly well.”

“Me?—yes; I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.”

“Bravo!—an excellent satire on modern language.” (NA Vol. II Ch. 1)

On a first reading, the English major in me saw those last two lines as a frankly brilliant satire on modern language, but upon re-reading, I realized that Henry is talking more to amuse himself than to enlighten or entertain his conversational partner, who honestly doesn’t understand what he means. When he interprets her confused (and possibly annoyed) remark as satire, he is applying his own reading to the situation, for his own sake. Henry Tilney certainly speaks well enough to be unintelligible.

But even when he’s intelligible, his manner of talking isn’t always agreeable. He calls his sister “stupid” to her face and seems to consider it as an endearment (or at least not an offense); Eleanor is clearly used to this kind of address, and therefore keen to make sure Catherine doesn’t take her brother too seriously. Frankly, under these conditions, I’m surprised that Catherine manages to take him seriously enough to fall in love with him. He takes over topics of conversation introduced by her and does his best to direct them toward his own experience and interests; when Catherine cuts him off from extolling himself for being so well-read, he retaliates by quarreling with her diction:

“But now really, do not you think Udolpho the nicest book in the world?”

“The nicest;—by which I suppose you mean the neatest. That must depend upon the binding.”

“Henry,” said Miss Tilney, “you are very impertinent. Miss Morland, he is treating you exactly as he does his sister. He is for ever 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 Vol. I Ch. 14)

Again, Eleanor must step in to assure Catherine that this man of her dreams isn’t really as rude and obnoxious as he seems—but even as she does so, she encourages Catherine to “change” her diction to suit Henry’s tastes. It’s obvious that Eleanor’s spent too much time with her brother, and has given up opposing him in these petty arguments. Some people might think this saintly of her, but I identify too much with the fierce and sprightly Elizabeth Bennet to find the idea of forbearance terribly appealing in this instance. (As a side note, when working on my thesis over the past few days, I’ve found my thoughts continually interrupted by a scene of Elizabeth Bennet and Henry Tilney meeting on the dance floor after their respective marriages and sharing an intriguing and flirty power-play of a conversation before going their separate ways. In case you were wondering, in my head it’s a power-play Elizabeth undeniably wins.)

All of this has left me asking myself a question I simply can’t answer: why does Catherine marry him?

The problem with this question is that it’s more a question of theme than of character. I can understand completely Catherine’s attraction to Henry Tilney; it’s one that I felt acutely the first time I read this novel, and in a world of limited options and minimal power for women, perhaps I would have made a similar choice. What I can’t understand is what their marriage means on a larger level—what Austen is trying to get at. I’m of the opinion that marriages in Austen’s novels pull a lot of thematic weight in addition to what they do for the plot and the form. I’m convinced that, on a metaphorical scale, the marriage of Elizabeth and Darcy singlehandedly averts the French Revolution from happening again on English soil (there may be more about this conviction in a future post); Elizabeth herself suspects that her marriage could “teach the admiring multitude what connubial felicity really was” (P&P Vol. III Ch. 8), and I don’t think this is an overstatement.

But what do Henry and Catherine have to teach us? Why should the admiring multitudes even give them a second look? Henry Tilney would probably be quite happy at the idea of teaching others; many of his interactions with Catherine are didactic in nature, intended as correctives to her overactive imagination or supplements to her aesthetic education. He seems destined to become the husband-as-teacher, with Catherine as a perfect and eager student, but their intellectual relationship seems sadly one-sided, a conversation in which one voice will always overpower the other. Perhaps, in time, Catherine will learn (as Eleanor has already learned) to stop speaking out, to laugh at her husband’s outlandish assertions rather than to challenge them. But I can’t help but think that she deserves a better future than this, and so I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t something I’m missing, about Henry or Catherine or the whole scale of the novel, that would set this all right.