What's the deal with Wickham and Colonel Fitzwilliam?

[kiki1982]

Kiki is so good on Austen that I don’t want to contradict her. But I had the impression that the first person narrative was the standard form of what we now call the novel, and Austen certainly wrote in that form (and sent it up mercilessly) in her youth. The earliest third person, omniscient narrator, well known novel I can think of is Fielding’s Tom Jones, and the third person narration is used there because it is parodying of epic convention. Defoe, Behn, Smollet, Richardson, even Sterne – all first person narratives.

Haha, I thank you for the compliment, but I wasn't fishing or anything .

I was under the other impression, as you see.

I know that's what it seems like, but do not forget that early fictional works like Swift, Defoe (I've only read Moll Flanders, but I expect the remainder is about the same format), Richardson, etc. provide a frame story (i.e. the editor has found an amount of letters that looked interesting, the editor feels it his duty to tell this story for the good of man, etc.) with an auctorial narrator. Then, in order to facilitate a deeper characterisation (which early novellists searched for, they were looking for teh human side of things, not for the story itself), they leave the frame story to delve into a person's mind via the 'I' persp/ective, which is the most obvious. The mosst elaborate and extreme cases are Richardson's two enormous works Clarissa adn Pamela, but Moll Flanders and Robinson Crusoeare also good examples of this.

Still, a Jane Eyre 'I' perspective is different from a Moll Flanders 'I' in that JE is written by a narrator in that perspective with the express aim of telling an all-encompassing story, while Moll tells her own life, but has been 'edited' by an editor. So she only tells those bits important for humanity, not anything that happens like Miss Eyre. Some of the bits Moll leaves out are quite fundamental. Miss Eyre on the other hand, describes even the hay making which is not really important to her story.
AN auctorial narrator also typically comments on the events he is telling, comments which may differ from the main character's thoughts.

Looking at something like Waverley by Scott from 1814, it is written in a different perspective than Austen. There is a narrator who tells what happens to one Edward Waverley, sometimes tells the reader about his feelings, but he never describes what happens from Waverley's perspective. The auctorial narrator hovers over the story, as it were, and flits over to any object that is interesting for his story.
Austen sometimes shifts out of her free indirect discourse (that's what she's famous for), mainly at the end when she's tying up all the loose ends, but most of the time she retains it. The story rarely leaves her heroine, precisely for that reason. You cannot tell a story from someone's perspective if that person isn't there. Waverley at some point is left for what he is, I think when he is in prison, or something.

The problem the early novellists had was that they werre used to telling a story like a child, essentially: "And then this, and then that, and this happened and then that." The I-perspective was not enough. WHen they started to experiment, like Richardson, they found that what Clarissa Harlowe is telling (what she knows, which is grievously little, poor girl) so they included other I-perspectives in order to 'fill up' the whole auctorial picture. So the reader knows more than the character. It's quite nerve-wracking, really. A bit the same feel as Natuarlism will give you 150 years later. Eventually they got used to this, maybe because if shifts in how they considered human beings as well. Not sure. Or maybe because they found other ways to 'expose' characters through other characters' eyes, at which Austen took a good attempt. It is not complete yet, but it's a good try.

Shockingly, I have not read Tom Jones yet. I'll have to crack on.

[Jackson Richardson]

Jason - I hope you haven't been put off by our tangential discussions. and you managed your assignment. Do let us know how it went.

[kiki1982]

Actually, come to think of it, Ian Hislop's documentary got me thinking about this thing with Wickham and Fitzwilliam v Darcy.

Hislop's documentary is about the quintessentially British 'stiff upper lip'. This was only an early 19th century invention. Apparently the British were pretty effeminate in Shakespeare's day (according to Belgian/Flemish historian-author Erasmus). Kisses everywhere, apparently. Men too. Cue Lord Percy in Blackadder.

Anyway, Admiral Horatio Nelson was also pretty effminate, in our perception at least, and very emotional. The cult of sensibility, so nicely embodied in Marianne in S&S, had very much taken hold.

Now, when Nelson died, he asked his captain, a Mr Hardy, to 'kiss him'. The Victorians were so appalled they argued he had been rambling in Turkish, meaning in fact 'faith' instead of 'kiss me, Hardy'.

Hislop emmphasised the connection between the perception of Nelson as the Hero of the Napoleonic Wars before the Duke of Wellington. Hysterical crowds burst into the bulding of the Admiralty in Greenwich to greet his coffin. Hundreds of thousands of people also came to Wellington's funeral, but in contrast to the total hysteria surrounding Nelson's death (perfume bottles, plates, portraits, etc.) the crowds just watched in silence, which is pretty surprising. So much so that even Queen Victoria was astonished about it.

Austen later, in her unfinished novel, apparently features one budding businessman who has called his sea-side hostel the 'Trafalgar' (emohasising the craze for Nelson). Whereas he later regrets not calling it the 'Waterloo'.
The craze for sensibility Europe-wide (starting in Germany) was apparently viewed across the Channel on the British island as dangerous by the time the French Revolution erupted. Order must be restored. Hysteria leads to chaos and look what happened in Paris with the Bastille state prison. So, figures like Wellington decided consciously to do away with any outward emotion whatsoever (although they still felt it; hence why he threw his violin away, you can see what the violin means to Sherlock Holmes some 100 years later).

Austen writes on the cusp of this change, relfected in the regret of the businessman about his hostel: by 1817, when she was writing her last novel, Wellington had taken over as the epitomy of the British man probably, and had eclipsed Nelson.

Anyway, so my point being: at the time when Lizzie faces Wickham and Fitzwilliam, the ideal is still a Nelson: pouring out your feelings etc. You shouldn't become hysterical, but a very reserved person like Darcy comes across as cold and utterly devoid of feeling. A point Jane and Lizzie make together when talking about Bingley.
Darcy will only make Lizzie realise he does have some feeling in him when he does his best there when the Gardiners turn up suddenly at Pemberley.
In that, the symbolic description of the Pemberley grounds as a nice English landscape (read: him as his physical appearance, with goood features as an effect of good breeding), cut through by a river (read: his inner emotions) and the interior of the house (again, what he is inside) evoke the shock Lizzie feels at beholding that, wow, the man has got it in him! She had probably exected it to be a barren landscape, unfertile and undecorated whatsoever.
Wickham and Fitzwilliam come across as better people, though the first one is definitely not, because they are open and more mainstream men who answer to the image of Nelson. Darcy not so.

Now I am reminiscing about this aspect, I can see the issue returning in Sense and Sensibility in Colonel Brandon who must be utterly past love, according to Marianne Dashwood ; in Persuasion where Wentworth is practically accused of having forgotten Anne Elliot; Fanny Price in Mansfield Park is regularly mistaken for just a friend and just about feelingless, pretty much like Elenor in S&S too; Jane Fairfax and someone else (big spoiler here, so I won't say) who use this convention in misleading the rest of their community; General Tilney who seems so cold he coul dhave murdered his wife in the imagination of Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey.

Although, then, the thing came up that in Austen's work, those who pour out their feelings are dishonest. I do not really agree. There are such people - mainly thinking of Isabella Thorpe in Northanger Abbey and Wickham, naturally - but others, like Colonel Fitzwilliam and Eleanor Tilney and her brother are not dishonest but I suppose it's rather people in Austen's work who directly go the whole hog who get the stick afterwards. Such people, even nowadays, are mostly short-term phenomenons and are not worth investing your energy into.

So, if you had to pair up Fitzwilliam and Wickham, you could put them together in the idea of what a human being should be v Darcy who does not answer to that image completely. If you had to find differences, you would be able to go with the fact that Wickham is too eager to say certain things which Fitzwilliam is not, i.e. Wickham is too fast so dishonest where Fitzwilliam is moderate so honest. Darcy says nothing, so is empty.

[Jackson Richardson]

I've just re-read the book for my own enjoyment and noticed the two long conversations in question.

The main difference is sex appeal.

That with Col Fitzwilliam is basically a plot device in order to give Elizabeth more ammunition when she rejects Darcy's proposal of marriage in the next chapter. She has no particular attraction to him (other than in my last post), he does not appear further in the novel and his character is hardly sketched.

By contrast in Elizabeth's long conversation with Wickham in which he gives his dishonest account of Darcy, she finds him extremely sexy - "he had never looked so handsome" as when he puts in a particularly shameless hard luck story.

I wonder how many first time readers would see through Wickham any more than Elizabeth?

[kiki1982]

As to your point 'how many first-time readers would see through Wickham', I think that's quite a potent one.

I think contemporary first-time readers would have started to see through him from the moment Darcy refused to greet him. I'm not sure, I think that occurs after Lizzie has learned that they know each other. Darcy not ackowledging Wickham as an acquaintance is extremely disturbing, even offensive to some extent. Lizzie also notes that. As Darcy is a man of wealth, standing and honour, he naturally knows how to behave. It would not have popped into his head to not greet Wickham on a whim. I.e. there must be a substancial reason why he does not bow to him, a matter of a gentleman's honour. Pretty scary stuff.

Then it only becomes worse when Wickham starts talking about Darcy. One did not reveal such things about another in those days. Hence why Darcy does not do that about Wickham, although he would be more entitled to (he does not even really have to mention his sister in this either). The least that happens to Wickham in the eyes of contemporary first-time readers is that he comes across as dishonorable and devoid of propriety in some way, which is pretty severe.

As to modern first-time readers, I think they would probably not notice if they didn't know the conventions from back then.

Saying that, when I read it first, I had already seen Lost in Austen where Wickham was rudely pushed aside by a character who had read the book several times and warned to stay away from Lydia (don't ask, just watch ). Later he is redeemed (unlike in the original), but of course that spoilt the effect for me a little. The conclusion was that something was up with Wickham. I do have to say that he made a fairly good impression on me. I would not be so fooled anymore now, though...

[Jackson Richardson]

Just as a footnote, Col Fitzwilliam as the younger son of an earl is strictly speaking the Honourable Col Fitzwilliam. (It is a quirk of the English orders of nobility that whereas younger sons of earls are Honourable, their sisters are Lady Diana Spencer or Lady Anne Darcy. They maintain that rank and title if they marry below them, as Lady Catherine and her sister have.)

Now I can't think of a single character in Jane Austen with an hereditary title whom she respects. (Lady Russell in Persuasion has a title in virtue of her husband being a knight - it is not hereditary. Sir Thomas Bertram is a baronet - a hereditary title - and although redeemed in our eyes, has obvious shortcoming.)

Col Fitzwilliam is never referred to by his full hereditary title and I can't help wonder if that's because Jane wants us to see him as a good guy.

I'm quite embarrassed that I'm so on the ball with all this snobbish stuff.