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The Comic Conclusion in Jane Austen's Novels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Lloyd W. Brown
Lloyd W. Brown*
Affiliation:
Fairleigh Dickinson University, Rutherford, N. J.
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Abstract

The conclusions of Jane Austen's novels are invariably ironic devices for the final summary of themes and characters. This role is illuminated by three main elements of all the conclusions. First, the novelist parodies the predictability of sentimental “happy endings” in much popular fiction. This accounts for the exaggerated self-consciousness with which she approaches the mechanics of concluding her own narratives, a self-consciousness that seems on the surface to contradict Jane Austen's well-known dislike of unrealistic plots. Second, she subverts the canons of poetic justice that are integral to most happy endings: instead of allocating “rewards” and punishment in accordance with ideal conventions, Jane Austen exposes the prevailing social norms that frequently undermine and replace traditional ideals. Finally, she replaces the arbitrary endings of poetic justice with the logical evolution of character and theme. Each character “punishes” or “rewards” himself, in keeping with his frequently unreliable sense of right and wrong. These features are particularly useful in a much-needed revaluation of Mansfield Park, for they demonstrate that it is not the didactic work described in traditional criticism. Thus Jane Austen's comic conclusion is a consistent device for the realistic, rather than didactic, analysis of character and society.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 84 , Issue 6 , October 1969 , pp. 1582 - 1587
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1969

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References

1 The Novels of Jane Auslen, ed. R. W. Chapman, 3rd. ed. (London, 1932–34). Quotations from her short pieces are taken from Minor Works, ed. Chapman (London, 1954).

2 Jane Austen's Letters, ed. R. W. Chapman, 2nd. ed. (London, 1952), p. 442.

3 See, e.g., W. H. Husbands, “The Lesser Novel 1770–1800,” unpubl. M.A. Thesis (Univ. of London, 1922); A. Walton Litz, Jane Austen: A Study of lier Artistic Development (New York, 1965), pp. 55–57; Edward M. White “Emma and the Parodie Point of View,” NCF, xviii (1963), 55–63.

4 Jane Austen, pp. 56–57.

5 Henrietta Ten Harmsel notes that in the happy ending Jane Austen succeeds both in mocking a convention and in providing the reader with what he wants. Jane Austen: A Study in Fictional Conventions (London, 1964), p. 27.

6 The inevitability of the happy ending in many Gothic novels usually arises from the fact that details of the horrific and the supernatural are more apparent than real, and the eventual explication of these usually determines the “perfect felicity” of the conclusion. Thus an anonymous reviewer of Eliza Parsons' The Castle of Wolfenback (1793) complains that the improbable narrative is based on spells and plots that “vanish into thin air.” The British Critic, iii (1794), 199–200.

7 Mary Lascelles, Jane Austen and Her Art (Oxford, 1939), p. 76.

8 This is comparable to the inversion of judgment and common sense in the famous opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice (p. 3).

9 See Chapman, Jane Austen: Facts and Problems (Oxford, 1948), p. 194; H. Ten Harmsel, Jane Austen, p. 103; Joseph M. Duffy, “Moral Integrity and Moral Anarchy in Mansfield Park,” ELII, xxiii (1956), 71–91; Kingsley Amis, “What Became of Jane Austen?” in Jane Austen, ed. Ian Watt (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1963), pp. 141–144.

10 This kind of counterbalancing is a constant factor in the portrayal of Fanny Price and Mary Crawford: Fanny's fragile health and rigorous morality are contrasted with Mary's sparkling health and amoral values; Fanny frequently rhapsodizes on nature with sentimental fervor, while the materialistic Mary remains indifferent to the poetic.

11 Duffy finds that Jane Austen is “insincere and fainthearted” in making this statement. “Moral Integrity and Moral Anarchy in MansfiM Park,” p. 90.

12 The philosophical assumptions that Jane Austen inherits from eighteenth-century satire are very important here, for as Basil Willey has indicated, the eighteenth-century satirist envisages a profound dichotomy between two distinct conventions. On the one hand there are the moral standards of traditional ideals, and on the other the conventions based on the hypocrisies and double standards of social practices that reduce moral traditions to mere nominality. Willey, The Eiglileenlh-Century Background (London, 1940), pp. 101–102. Thus Amis, who accuses Jane Austen of conventionality in Mansfield Park, seems to have missed the basic premises of the eighteenth-century ironist. He complains that she has been enslaved by conventional notions that she once attacked (“What Became of Jane Austen?” p. 144).