{"id":"01KJRRE0KZBM7K8BJ4AW9A3TG4","cid":"bafkreift4rffdretxbzf72ud76yzgi7b3ylafielnzx6rvd2m4ykepj6xe","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":15166,"char_start":7196,"chunk_index":1,"chunk_total":108,"estimated_tokens":1993,"label":"aversion to actual love. I do not know whether the","source_file_key":"pride-and-prejudice","text":"aversion to actual love. I do not know whether the all-grasping hand of\r\nthe playwright has ever been laid upon_ Pride and Prejudice; _and I dare\r\nsay that, if it were, the situations would prove not startling or\r\ngarish enough for the footlights, the character-scheme too subtle and\r\ndelicate for pit and gallery. But if the attempt were made, it would\r\ncertainly not be hampered by any of those loosenesses of construction,\r\nwhich, sometimes disguised by the conveniences of which the novelist can\r\navail himself, appear at once on the stage._\r\n\r\n_I think, however, though the thought will doubtless seem heretical to\r\nmore than one school of critics, that construction is not the highest\r\nmerit, the choicest gift, of the novelist. It sets off his other gifts\r\nand graces most advantageously to the critical eye; and the want of it\r\nwill sometimes mar those graces--appreciably, though not quite\r\nconsciously--to eyes by no means ultra-critical. But a very badly-built\r\nnovel which excelled in pathetic or humorous character, or which\r\ndisplayed consummate command of dialogue--perhaps the rarest of all\r\nfaculties--would be an infinitely better thing than a faultless plot\r\nacted and told by puppets with pebbles in their mouths. And despite the\r\nability which Miss Austen has shown in working out the story, I for one\r\nshould put_ Pride and Prejudice _far lower if it did not contain what\r\nseem to me the very masterpieces of Miss Austen’s humour and of her\r\nfaculty of character-creation--masterpieces who may indeed admit John\r\nThorpe, the Eltons, Mrs. Norris, and one or two others to their company,\r\nbut who, in one instance certainly, and perhaps in others, are still\r\nsuperior to them._\r\n\r\n_The characteristics of Miss Austen’s humour are so subtle and delicate\r\nthat they are, perhaps, at all times easier to apprehend than to\r\nexpress, and at any particular time likely to be differently\r\napprehended by different persons. To me this humour seems to possess a\r\ngreater affinity, on the whole, to that of Addison than to any other of\r\nthe numerous species of this great British genus. The differences of\r\nscheme, of time, of subject, of literary convention, are, of course,\r\nobvious enough; the difference of sex does not, perhaps, count for much,\r\nfor there was a distinctly feminine element in “Mr. Spectator,” and in\r\nJane Austen’s genius there was, though nothing mannish, much that was\r\nmasculine. But the likeness of quality consists in a great number of\r\ncommon subdivisions of quality--demureness, extreme minuteness of touch,\r\navoidance of loud tones and glaring effects. Also there is in both a\r\ncertain not inhuman or unamiable cruelty. It is the custom with those\r\nwho judge grossly to contrast the good nature of Addison with the\r\nsavagery of Swift, the mildness of Miss Austen with the boisterousness\r\nof Fielding and Smollett, even with the ferocious practical jokes that\r\nher immediate predecessor, Miss Burney, allowed without very much\r\nprotest. Yet, both in Mr. Addison and in Miss Austen there is, though a\r\nrestrained and well-mannered, an insatiable and ruthless delight in\r\nroasting and cutting up a fool. A man in the early eighteenth century,\r\nof course, could push this taste further than a lady in the early\r\nnineteenth; and no doubt Miss Austen’s principles, as well as her heart,\r\nwould have shrunk from such things as the letter from the unfortunate\r\nhusband in the_ Spectator, _who describes, with all the gusto and all the\r\ninnocence in the world, how his wife and his friend induce him to play\r\nat blind-man’s-buff. But another_ Spectator _letter--that of the damsel\r\nof fourteen who wishes to marry Mr. Shapely, and assures her selected\r\nMentor that “he admires your_ Spectators _mightily”--might have been\r\nwritten by a rather more ladylike and intelligent Lydia Bennet in the\r\ndays of Lydia’s great-grandmother; while, on the other hand, some (I\r\nthink unreasonably) have found “cynicism” in touches of Miss Austen’s\r\nown, such as her satire of Mrs. Musgrove’s self-deceiving regrets over\r\nher son. But this word “cynical” is one of the most misused in the\r\nEnglish language, especially when, by a glaring and gratuitous\r\nfalsification of its original sense, it is applied, not to rough and\r\nsnarling invective, but to gentle and oblique satire. If cynicism means\r\nthe perception of “the other side,” the sense of “the accepted hells\r\nbeneath,” the consciousness that motives are nearly always mixed, and\r\nthat to seem is not identical with to be--if this be cynicism, then\r\nevery man and woman who is not a fool, who does not care to live in a\r\nfool’s paradise, who has knowledge of nature and the world and life, is\r\na cynic. And in that sense Miss Austen certainly was one. She may even\r\nhave been one in the further sense that, like her own Mr. Bennet, she\r\ntook an epicurean delight in dissecting, in displaying, in setting at\r\nwork her fools and her mean persons. I think she did take this delight,\r\nand I do not think at all the worse of her for it as a woman, while she\r\nwas immensely the better for it as an artist._\r\n\r\n_In respect of her art generally, Mr. Goldwin Smith has truly observed\r\nthat “metaphor has been exhausted in depicting the perfection of it,\r\ncombined with the narrowness of her field;” and he has justly added that\r\nwe need not go beyond her own comparison to the art of a miniature\r\npainter. To make this latter observation quite exact we must not use the\r\nterm miniature in its restricted sense, and must think rather of Memling\r\nat one end of the history of painting and Meissonier at the other, than\r\nof Cosway or any of his kind. And I am not so certain that I should\r\nmyself use the word “narrow” in connection with her. If her world is a\r\nmicrocosm, the cosmic quality of it is at least as eminent as the\r\nlittleness. She does not touch what she did not feel herself called to\r\npaint; I am not so sure that she could not have painted what she did not\r\nfeel herself called to touch. It is at least remarkable that in two very\r\nshort periods of writing--one of about three years, and another of not\r\nmuch more than five--she executed six capital works, and has not left a\r\nsingle failure. It is possible that the romantic paste in her\r\ncomposition was defective: we must always remember that hardly\r\nanybody born in her decade--that of the eighteenth-century\r\nseventies--independently exhibited the full romantic quality. Even Scott\r\nrequired hill and mountain and ballad, even Coleridge metaphysics and\r\nGerman to enable them to chip the classical shell. Miss Austen was an\r\nEnglish girl, brought up in a country retirement, at the time when\r\nladies went back into the house if there was a white frost which might\r\npierce their kid shoes, when a sudden cold was the subject of the\r\ngravest fears, when their studies, their ways, their conduct were\r\nsubject to all those fantastic limits and restrictions against which\r\nMary Wollstonecraft protested with better general sense than particular\r\ntaste or judgment. Miss Austen, too, drew back when the white frost\r\ntouched her shoes; but I think she would have made a pretty good journey\r\neven in a black one._\r\n\r\n_For if her knowledge was not very extended, she knew two things which\r\nonly genius knows. The one was humanity, and the other was art. On the\r\nfirst head she could not make a mistake; her men, though limited, are\r\ntrue, and her women are, in the old sense, “absolute.” As to art, if she\r\nhas never tried idealism, her realism is real to a degree which makes\r\nthe false realism of our own day look merely dead-alive. Take almost any\r\nFrenchman, except the late M. de Maupassant, and watch him laboriously\r\npiling up strokes in the hope of giving a complete impression. You get\r\nnone; you are lucky if, discarding two-thirds of what he gives, you can\r\nshape a real impression out of the rest. But with Miss Austen the\r\nmyriad, trivial, unforced strokes build up the picture like magic.\r\nNothing is false; nothing is superfluous."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJRRD3TNE5A6AKAVXSRFT9RC","peer_label":"pride-and-prejudice","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJRRC2C7K6XERRJES8143XGV","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KJRREYSFW4PJDQD79XG9GFG8","peer_label":"jane austen","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-03T02:30:17.391Z"}},{"peer":"01KJRRFYPQ98XXM8N71SQD6TVA","peer_label":"lydia bennet","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"fictional_character","extracted_at":"2026-03-03T02:30:17.391Z"}},{"peer":"01KJRRFXPHNKJJFYTCY0G36WA7","peer_label":"mr bennet","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"fictional_character","extracted_at":"2026-03-03T02:30:17.391Z"}},{"peer":"01KJRRG4XBRVWS6C0E17SY85H7","peer_label":"austens character 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