Holiday Musings

Though the posting cycle shoots me past Austen’s birthday and Christmas, it is still a time of holiday reflections.

Let us begin with the seemingly Grinch-like rejection of the following “Pride and Prejudice” holiday wishes, which we occasionally see on Austen-themed cards and knickknacks:

“I sincerely hope your Christmas … may abound in the gaieties which that season generally brings.”

Lovely thought, it seems. And it’s often shown without context, as if the wishes are genuine. But the holiday message is in fact part of a sweetly hypocritical note from Caroline Bingley to Jane Bennet. Caroline and friends have recently spirited her brother Charles away from Jane to break up the couple’s budding romance. Mr. Bingley is rich and his family socially ambitious; Jane is poor and untitled. To apply a catchphrase of the time: It would not do.

Christmas is emphasized in different ways in Austen’s other novels. Three use it as a convenient calendar date. In “Sense and Sensibility,” the Dashwood sisters, the book’s two heroines, are invited to visit the Palmer family at Christmas. In “Northanger Abbey,” James Morland visits the Thorpe family during Oxford’s Christmas holiday, setting up the book’s main interactions with the Thorpe brother and sister later in Bath.

In “Mansfield Park,” Christmas brings the time of Edmund’s ordination, which will set him upon his clergy career but might cost him the affection of Mary Crawford. The spirited Mary has no intention of giving up London’s high life for the meager glories of being a parson’s wife in rural England. Edmund, of course, is the object of adoration by the heroine, Fanny Price. Fanny is watching anxiously to see whether his romance with Mary will falter. It does, finally.

“Emma” unfolds over several seasons. The first volume culminates on a snowy Christmastide evening, when the heroine’s ingenious plans to matchmake Harriet Smith with the minister Mr. Elton collapses dramatically. Mr. Elton traps Emma alone in a carriage, vigorously proposing to her instead of her protégé. Our heroine is outraged at Mr. Elton’s impertinence, though everyone else in the book has seen her behavior as encouraging the vicar’s attentions.

“Persuasion” features a Christmas set piece. Children do not play major roles in Austen’s novels, but they provide lively background for the main action. In this Christmas season, Anne is visiting the Musgrove family, where she observes the following family scene: “On one side was a table occupied by some chattering girls, cutting up silk and gold 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 Christmas fire, which seemed determined to be heard, in spite of all the noise of the others.”

Christmas eventually ends well in “Pride and Prejudice,” too. Elizabeth Bennet, having reconciled with Mr. Darcy, is getting married. Her sister Jane, recipient of the earlier devious note from Caroline Bingley, is now engaged to her brother—with the help of Darcy, who earlier had been one of those conspiring against them. Elizabeth writes to her aunt: “I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh. Mr. Darcy sends you all the love in the world that he can spare from me. You are all to come to Pemberley at Christmas.”

Meanwhile, Austen tells us, Caroline sends congratulations to her brother Charles on his approaching marriage to Jane. Caroline’s words “were all that was affectionate and insincere.” Caroline also writes to Jane, repeating all her former professions of regard. Jane is not deceived, but she is so sweet that she “could not help writing her a much kinder answer than she knew was deserved.”

Like Jane Bennet, we should all, in the Christmas and general holiday spirit, give back a little more kindness and sincerity than we receive. A start is to replace the deceitful words of Caroline Bingley with some of Jane Austen’s own words. Here is a prayer that is particularly apropos to the holiday season, and to the ending of a long, difficult, dangerous, discontented year:

“Incline us oh God! to think humbly of ourselves, to be severe only in the examination of our own conduct, to consider our fellow-creatures with kindness, and to judge of all they say and do with that charity which we would desire from them ourselves.”

—

My new book, Jane Austen and the Creation of Modern Fiction: Six Novels in “a Style Entirely New,” investigates her development as a writer and shows how her innovations as a prose stylist set the course for modern fiction. It is available from Jane Austen Books at a special low price.

The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen is also available from Jane Austen Books and Amazon. The trilogy traces love from a charming courtship through the richness and complexity of marriage and concludes with a test of the heroine’s courage and moral convictions. A “boxed set” that combines all three in an e-book format is also available.