Jane Austen Game Theory

Dr. Chwe is a professor at UCLA who has taken an interesting perspective of Jane Austen's writings. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/04/23/books/michael-chwe-author-sees-jane-austen-as-game-theorist.html?_r=0

"The Angel in the House" Optional Reading Blog Post (Arica Roberts)

The poem “The Angel in the House” was written in the mid-nineteenth century and was popularized throughout the end of the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, especially for the middle class. Written by Coventry Patmore, it was an account in which he idealized his courtship with his idea of the perfect woman, his first wife, Emily.

The first part of the poem is written in which a husband tells his wife he is writing a long poem about her. He tells of when he met a woman, Honoria Churchill who became his wife. He declares her ideal of femininity. The lyrics from Honoria’s point of view talk about when her cousin becomes the favorable suitor over Frederick, the husband-poet.

The next part, is written from the perspective of the husband-poet, Frederick, who marries Jane after Honoria’s marriage to her cousin. Each poem is written like a letter, between Frederick and his mother in which he tells her his dissatisfactions with his wife Jane, especially after seeing his first love, Honoria, with her husband. He struggles to have complete devotion to his wife and expresses doubt. Other characters in the letters also express their doubts, but Honoria helps Jane find the way to act with ideal femininity to help Frederick overcome his struggle of doubt.

In Patmore’s poem it is found that the ideal wife should show complete devotion and submission to her husband and that this should bring her pleasure found in the lines,

“Man must be pleased; but him to please, Is woman's pleasure; down the gulf, Of his condoled necessities, She casts her best, she flings herself.”

She must also be graceful, self-sacrificing, pious, and pure. This idea is exemplified in the following lines,

“While she, too gentle even to force His penitence by kind replies, Waits by, expecting his remorse, With pardon in her pitying eyes;

And if he once, by shame oppress'd, A comfortable word confers, She leans and weeps against his breast, And seems to think the sin was hers;

Or any eye to see her charms, At any time, she's still his wife, Dearly devoted to his arms; She loves with love that cannot tire;

And when, ah woe, she loves alone, Through passionate duty love springs higher, As grass grows taller round a stone.”

Patmore holds his diseased and beloved angel-wife, Emily, as a model for all women.

Feminist scholars have written much about “The Angel in the House” being used as a tool to show the ideal Victorian female expectation of domesticity and sexual purity. They criticize Queen Victoria for conforming and promoting these ideas, which is why it has been heavily associated with her name. They also bring up how other writers have shown the problems with this ideal and how it ultimately leads not only to chaos and destruction, such as Kate Chopin who wrote “The Awakening”, used the character, Adèle Ratignolle, as an angel in the house who boisterously reminds Edna, the main character, of her duties as a wife and mother. Edna, in the end, drowns herself in the ocean out of realizing her misery and inability to meet up the expectations of these ideals of femininity. ("An Extinct Angel." Kate Field's Washington 23 September 1891:199-200. "The Yellow Wall-Paper" and Other Stories. Ed. Robert Shulman. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995. 48-50.)

Other female writers, such as Virginia Wolf, wrote in 1931, “Killing the Angel in the House was part of the occupation of a woman writer.” (“Professions for Women” is an abbreviated version of the speech Virginia Woolf delivered before a branch of the National Society for Women’s Service on January 21, 1931.) These writers who commentated and rejected the notion that the selfless, sacrificial woman of the nineteenth century had the idea taught to them that their sole purpose in life was to flatter and comfort males created the change in dialogue about the Victorian ideals of femininity.

I attended the lecture given by Nicholas Mason entitled “Can Women be as Funny as Men? Caroline Bowles & Women’s Satire in the Age of Austen. It was an excellent lecture. Mason talked about what women had to do when they expressed satire and humor in society.

  

He began with an explanation of early modern England definition of humor. Humor showed advanced intelligence and creativity, and was highly valued in men, even essential for men during courtship to impress women. Mason explained that when women said a man was funny was the same as when a man said a women was pretty. Men valued women’s receptivity to their humor. If humor was a high sign of intelligence, then women displaying humor were a threat to men when they displayed humor, if it was to clever or satirical.

For women to express humor, and thus their intelligence, they had to do it within the bounds of what was considered proper for a women. They had to “tone it down” and not appear either to funny or too sarcastic. Satirical humor displayed aggression, intelligence, lewdness, political savvy, physical punishment, all couched in a tough world, thus unsuitable for women.

Women could exhibit humor, but they had to put a “face” on it, to soften the edges. Their realm was love, not satire. Their humor was moderated, they had to be careful about when they were funny, how far they could push the joke, and know when they needed to retrench. This is illustrated in Jane Austen’s novel, Emma. At a picnic at Boxhill, Frank Churchill decides they need to play a game; each person will say one thing very clever, or two things moderately clever, or three things very dull. Miss Bates said “then I need not be uneasy. Three things very dull indeed. That will just do for me, you know. I shall be sure to say three dull things as soon as ever I open my mouth.” Emma says, “but there may be a difficulty, you will be limited as to number - only three at once.” When Miss Bates catches Emma’s meaning she is embarrassed and hurt. In private, Mr. Knightley censures Emma and asks “How could you be so unfeeling to Miss Bates? How could you be so insolent in your wit to a woman of her character, age, and situation?” Clearly, Emma overstepped the bounds of propriety when she expressed her humor.

So, women could be funny, but only within the proper bounds allotted them. This seems to be a theme through women’s history. They could be religious, they could be educated, they could be employed, they could fill a social and political role, but only in the “domestic” realm and in ways deemed proper for women. The degree women displayed patience, perseverance, and tenacity throughout history as they embraced each new change or shift in society is inspiring.