Social Definition in Pride and Prejudice: An Exercise in Extensional Semantics

SOCIAL DEFINITION IN PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: AN EXERCISE IN EXTENSIONAL SEMANTICS R. A L L E N H ARRIS University of Alberta I AUSTEN AND SEMANTICS I t is no secret that Jane Austen is one of literature’s finest semantic tech­ nicians. Her use of English is surgically precise. This is not to say, of course, that when Mr. Collins uses the word amiable in his proposal (73.41; 74.39; 76.27) he uses it with the same acuity as Darcy in his letter of self­ justification (136.33); quite the opposite. Collins uses it as a shortcut, a lexical omnibus that spares him the chore of enumerating any more than a bare minimum of Elizabeth’s virtues. Darcy uses it to focus directly on Jane’s primary virtue, to single out why she (and, implicitly, Elizabeth) is naturally superior to the rest of her family.1 Moreover, Collins’s use is simply wrong. His omnibus is on the avenue of social skills. He thinks that Elizabeth’s reluctance is feigned and that feigned reluctance is the proper feminine move in a proposal-game: had she not shown “this little unwillingness,” she would have been “less amiable in [his] eyes” ; appearance is at a premium. Darcy’s use identifies an inborn disposition for generous and agreeable behaviour, which he tacitly contrasts with appearances: it is not Jane’s “countenance and airs” that are amiable, but her “temper” ; here, essence is at a premium. For Collins, the word is a catch-all denoting “qualifications.” For Darcy, it denotes a very specific and admirable quality, and this is clearly the more accurate usage. Still, because this is fiction, it is not a paradox to claim that both characters use the word with equal (and great) precision. If these two creations, Collins and Darcy, can be said to have intentions, then surely their intentions in employing amiable are very different. As people they must be judged to display radically opposite linguistic facilities. Collins is lazy and careless. Darcy is earnest and exact. But as characters, they are equally precise. The initial function of any character’s language is self-definition, and Collins’s use of amiable reveals as much about Collins as Darcy’s use reveals about Darcy. In short, it is exactly because the language of Collins (as a person) reveals him so completely to be imprecise that his language (as a character) is so precise. Virtually every one of Jane Austen’s English Stud ies in Ca n a d a , x v ii, 2, June 19 9 1 characters has this level of precision, including her narrators. So, as a number of important critical studies show — in particular, those of Chapman, Page, and Tave — a language-test of this order is highly relevant to her work. Austen’s world is profoundly social, and language is a profoundly social phenomenon. Meaning is the negotiated product of meaning-users, and their level of competence is a measure of their awareness of that contract. Collins violates it; Darcy substantiates it. But such a test is also unfair, and for the same reason. Whatever Collins’s environment was before he came into the clutches of Lady Catherine, his fel­ low guarantors appear to have been equally sloppy. In any event, his use of amiable is clearly not in violation of any contract set up at or near Rosings. Wickham, a far nastier character than Collins, uses the word with as much specificity as Darcy does (57.19). Though Wickham is clearly more intelli­ gent than Collins, Pemberley has also supplied him with a more profitable exposure to social contracts. Part of Collins’s function is to serve as a walk­ ing and (more to the point) talking indictment of Rosings, but to abstract a fuller appraisal of his character, we need a supplementary test. It must involve language, because we are dealing with Austen, and with literature, but social semantics must be filtered off. The necessary property for this test, then, is “a narrowness of meaning, fixed and single,” exactly inverse to Tave’s liberating “largeness of scope” (30). A move in this direction can begin with the fundamental distinction most lexical...