Moral Geography in Jane Austen

DAVID JACKEL Moral Geography in Jane Austen Several years ago Charles J. McCann drew attention to the way in which Jane Austen 'carefully places her characters in just the proper symbol of their econontic, social, or intellectual condition. In this respect the country houses in all Austen novels, and especially those in Pride and Prejudice , are constant values - that is to say, each is a recognizable emblem for a complex of social, econontic, and intellectual realities." More recently the importance of estates and country houses in Austen's novels has been investigated in some detail by writers who have reinforced and extended McCann's conclusions.2 The useful results of these studies have tended, however, to focus attention on the thematic importance of setting in Jane Austen's works while ignoring or underestimating the extent to which the handling of settings and locations, particularly in Pride alld Prejudice, must also be understood as an aspect of her indirect narrative method, whose function is to assist the reader in making proper moral judgments about the characters. The subject is of interest because this is one significant area in which Jane Austen could have learned very little, except in a negative way, from the practice of earlier novelists. In other words, her accomplishment here is proof both of craftsmanship in execution and of originality in design. I We need survey the major novelists of the eighteenth century only briefly in order to see that setting is seldom an important element in the narrative structure of their works. Defoe, for example, does make us aware of the connection between character and environment, but this concept comes to us as a general impression rather than as the result of the close examination of the relationship between the character and a particular location. Characters such as Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack belong in the picaresque tradition, and in this tradition setting is an aspect of plot; we are less interested in where the characters are than in what they do, and if we do become interested in the setting, the issues raised usually represent a digression from the main themes of the novel. This is even more obviously the case with Smollett's fiction .The locations in which we find Roderick Random cannot be shown to have any major determining effect UTQ, VOLUME XLVD, NUMBER 1, FALL 1977 2 DAVID JACKEL on Roderick's moral character, whatever interest they may have as detachable pieces of information about life in London or the expedition to Cartagena. Generally, in their attitudes to the function of their settings, these two novelists seem to be asking Mr Bayes's question: 'Why, what a devil is the plot good for but to bring in fine things?' When Defoe and Smollett try to make some use of setting, the effect is likely to be disconcerting. For example, when Moll transforms Newgate prison into a symbol of hell not all of us are convinced, and as a result (whatever Defoe intended) we are suspicious of her reformation. To this point in the narrative various locations have been introduced and then dropped in a casual manner; we are invited to treat this one differently only because Moll says we ought to. Similarly, when Matthew Bramble's health improves as he nears the border of Scotland, we suspect that Smollett is less a literary artist than a Scottish nationalist. The two major novelists of the eighteenth century are not distinguished by any sustained attention which they pay to the rhetorical function of particular settings. What reader could determine the particular route followed by either joseph Andrews or Tom jones, and what reader would be prepared to say that the particular route mattered? Richardson may not be as close as Fielding to the picaresque tradition, but this difference does not produce a greater attention to the rhetorical function of setting. Mr B's estate is a convenient location for the duel between Mr B and Pamela, but why is this estate in Lincolnshire and not in Devonshire? Or some other shire? The answer, of course, is that'the location is largely irrelevant, and in this novel appropriately so. A character such as Pamela, who transforms...