Jane Austen's Range of Language: ‘A'n't I a good boy?’ to ‘zigzags of embarrassment’

JANE AUSTEN'S LANGUAGE 119 Clarissa's 'internalization of certain "feminine" speech patterns' (n 3, p 63) she seems to forget that she is writing about a creation of Richardson's mind. IfIhave found fault with these two studies itis in partbecause Ihave responded to their joint plea. They each demand from readers an intense emotional engagement . While Eagleton seeks to antagonize us and Castle tries to woo us, an astonishing similarity between them emerges. Each has 'fallen in love' with the text of Clarissa, and each has usurped its heroine's voice - Eagleton through an unacknowledged appropriation of her parable and Castle through a plea for the reader's best 'construction on what it is I do.' Both works clearly should be read, although we also have much to learn about Richardson that only'archaeological' critics of the future will be able to show us. We will continue to profit from the earlier work of Margaret Doody, Cynthia Griffin Wolff, Christopher Hill, Ian Watt, Mark Kinkead-Weekes, Carol Flynn, and many others; nevertheless, Castle and Eagleton rightly demand that we think about ourselves as readers. They have not led us through the hopeless gate of inferno; rather, they have tricked us out of a garden gate through which we are never to return inviolate, like Clarissa herself after her fateful interview with her tormentor. Jane Austen's Range of Language: 'A'n't I a good boy?' to 'zigzags of embarrassment' G.E. BENTLEY, JR Peter L. De Rose and S.W. McGuire. A Concordance to the Works ofJane Austen Garland Reference Library of the Humanities. New York and London: Garland Publishing Company 1982.3 vols. ix, 1645. $275 In Northanger Abbey, Catherine Morland has a conversation with Henry Tilney and his sister: 'But now really, do not you think Udolpho the nicest book in the world?' 'The nicest; - by which I suppose you mean the neatest. That must depend upon the binding.' 'I am sure,' cried Catherine, 'I did not mean to say any thing wrong; but it is a nice book, and why should I not call it so?' 'Very true,' said Henry; 'and this is a verynice day, and we are having a very nice walk, and you are two very nice young ladies. Oh! it is a very nice word indeed! it does for every thing.' ... 'While, in fact,' cried his sister, '... You are more nice than wise.' (Pp 107-8) Catherine never uses the word 'nice' again, nor does anyone else in the novel thereafter, doubtless all of them frightened from it by Henry's severity, but Jane UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 54, NUMBER I, FALL 1984 120 G.E. BENTLEY, JR Austen uses it sixty-two times in her novels, and she uses it mostly in the senses for which Henry Tilney reproves Catherine - e.g., 'a nice place,' 'a nice little girl' without pejorative connotations for the speaker. Clearly, by Jane Austen's own standards, Henry Tilney is being excessively nice here, and the joke is at least partly upon him for his pretentious fastidiousness about language. Jane Austen's range of language is displayed, and such conclusions made possible without Significant labour, in the prodigious Concordance to the Works of Jane Austen compiled by Peter L. De Rose and S.W. McGuire,1 a work of quite extraordinary usefulness to anyone concerned with Jane Austen. There are very few concordances to the works of novelists, chiefly because there are very few novelists all of whose works have been reliably edited, but Messrs De Rose and McGuire have been able to base their work with confidence upon the great edition of R.W. Chapman, which began publication as long ago as 1923, and to which page numbers in this review refer. And Jane Austen's deftness and elegance of language make such a concordance wonderfully entertaining and revealing. The work is enormous: over 1,600 pages, 9" x 12", in double columns of rather small type, amounting to over four and a halfmillion words. The title is somewhat misleading, because, though the work does include allJane Austen's long fiction, both those completed by her (Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride...