Secret Regency snogs: a guide to furtive love (and other naughty bits) in Jane Austen
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Version 0 of 1. Our leading Janeite, John Mullan, has discovered a little snogfest in Emma. Lusty young Frank Churchill is described as mending Mrs Bates’s broken glasses for a suspiciously long time. He and Jane are deep into a secret affair and out of sight. We may picture, argues Mullan, that he cops a kiss – perhaps more. It’s convincing. Hunting for naughty bits, some less convincing, is an off-course sport for Janeites. In Northanger Abbey we are told the heroine’s father was “a very respectable man, though his name was Richard”. Dick? Perish the thought. There’s a similar resonance to “Fanny” Price in Mansfield Park. Every male reader would recall Fanny Hill (her name is a vulgarisation of mons veneris, Fanny’s mound). Austen, let’s remind ourselves, had sailor brothers. In Mansfield Park, worldly Mary Crawford says she also has nautical relatives, which acquainted her “with a circle of admirals. Of Rears and Vices I saw enough. No, do not suspect me of a pun, I entreat”. Many have, indeed, suspected. Returning to Emma, an Austen heroine’s most prized quality is “bloom”. We are told – more than once – that Jane Fairfax (the name recalls “fair-face”) is so pale as “to give the appearance of ill-health”. I have always indulged the fantasy that she fears she may be a month pregnant and Frank will marry that snobby Emma bitch. Then there’s that country walk the Rev Elton, Harriet and Emma take when – intending match-making – the heroine stays behind on the pretence of doing up her half-boot laces. Elton (who loves Emma) would, if it were just bootlaces, do a Sir Walter Raleigh. But he walks on. Why? Because he assumes Miss Woodhouse intends to relieve herself. Move on to another scene in the novel when the Rev Elton, heated to irreverence by drink, manoeuvres himself into a tête-à-tête in the coach back from the Westons’ Christmas party and Emma is appalled to find him “actually making violent love to her”. Not “speaking wild words of love”. Something more gropingly “actual” is hinted at by “making”. Twenty years ago, Terry Castle kicked over a hornet’s nest with a smart article in the LRB entitled Was Jane Austen Gay? It hinged on the fact that Jane and her sister, Cassandra, shared a bed. There are, of course, two actual kisses already recorded in Emma. One is between the heroine and her former tutor, now Mrs Weston, and the other when Harriet kisses her benefactress’s hand. In the practice of the time, these young unmarried women would have quite likely shared a bed. Take it from there. The Austen community did. As for Mr Knightley telling his future wife he has been “in love with you ever since you were thirteen at least” – let’s leave that “historic” issue for the literary-critical equivalent of Operation Yewtree. |