Jane Austen's Usually Unknowable Characters

Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility is filled with people that don’t know each other, people who create public personas, participating in an act of polite deception all the while hiding private misgivings about those around them. 

As Austen’s characters actively construct personalities for themselves, they change behaviours like sets of clothes, one specifically cut out for the presence of polite society, while the unembellished self stays in private. Even the pretense that they know one another is part of the act. Yet this process of contriving false identities is not only undergone by imposters and cheaters. Elinor, the main protagonist, is no less proficient at playing pretend. Furthermore, identities are contrived and changed with such casualness that there is rarely any moral consequence involved. On the contrary, Austen illustrates in Marianne the perils of not participating in this polite deceit as Marianne constantly suffers for her honesty. 

In this world, playing pretend is clearly an expected custom, and to be honest is to be vulnerable. What results is a common sitting room populated by perfect strangers all happily deceiving each other into the belief that they really know one another. Yet that is only what lies on the surface. Ultimately, the novel is concerned with what lies underneath and how one can get to know anyone in the company of pretenders. 

For this, instances are provided in which a person fails to pretend convincingly, allowing brief views into private windows. These passing glances are crucial because without those public glimpses into personal lives there would be no evidence of the contradictory and changing nature of a person, for it is when the external fails to match up with the internal that Austen’s characters become complex and unknowable. 

Ultimately, it is in the conflict of the private and the public person that Austen’s concern lies as each is revealed to be critical to the completion of a person’s character. Thus, the connection between the contrived and the sincere is constantly being brought to the surface as Elinor and Marianne come to know the inconsistencies within themselves and those around them. In the end, it is only when both the public and the private person are seen in unison that unknowable people can be known with any certainty at all. 

 

Of all the ways that Austen incorporates the unknowableness of people into the plot, the constant claim of characters that they know each other better than they do is the most overt. The speed with which these comments are disproved by others shows that the definition of knowing someone is equally disputable. People are constantly wishing to be closer to others than they really are, not just in intimacy, but in proximity. Thus, Mrs. Palmer claims to live closer to Willoughby than she does, and the Dashwood sisters are consistently getting invited to spend more time with the Middletons than they would like. When Sir John is asked if he knows Willoughby he expresses great confidence in his knowledge of Willoughby’s character simply because “he is down here every year”. 

Of course, Sir John’s assessment of Willoughby’s character is proven to be horribly false. The problem with his view of knowing is later revealed as the narrator states that “to be together was, in his opinion, to be intimate”. 

Austen offers further cases of mistaken intimacy by displaying various unsuccessful pairings, couples who seem to play at marriage without knowing the other person at all, such as Mr. and Mrs. Palmer. It is debatable whether anyone outside the pair believes in their act, for not even Mr. Palmer seems to care enough to pretend that they really know each other.

These instances not only set the bar for what it means to know someone humorously low, it shows that many characters are contended to take others at face value. The falseness of surface appearances runs so deep throughout the lives of these characters that not even their claim that they know another can be trusted. They merely wish to appear as if they are well acquainted without actually taking the time to get to know one another. 

When Willoughby’s true character is revealed Mrs. Palmer suddenly decides to be glad that she was never “acquainted with him”. It is only after it has been publicly acknowledged that Willoughby is less than decent that he can be treated with anything less than politeness. Willoughby has, to put it simply, become someone who is no longer worth knowing, and, since they never really knew him at all, it is easy for those who had been acquainted with him to claim that they do not know him. It is, after all, true. 

In this way, the communal agreement at false intimacy works fine, for the most part, so long as its falseness is never publicly acknowledged. Yet for young women looking for a spouse, it makes for a dangerous playing field. 

 

The difficulty of knowing someone is most evidently displayed in the way the male characters are constantly mistaken for one another, hinting that, on the surface, a scheming man and an honest one look dangerously similar. Thus, when Edward and Willoughby are seen from a distance or in passing they are difficult to tell apart. It is precisely because Willoughby is not the only one who disguises himself that he blends in so well with common company, for the problem with surface appearances is that there is not much to them, and because people are generally expected to act amiably, they quickly start to resemble each other.  

Susan Morgan writes about the possible perils of blending people together in this way, saying that it creates a world “of uncertainty... without characters above reproach or beneath contempt”. The problem with everyone acting amiably is that they must be treated amiably in turn. Willoughby’s behaviour should thus be cause for suspicion from the start, for he is claimed to be known extremely well by many, all of whom “think him extremely agreeable”. Statements like these suggest that Willoughby is an extremely adept pretender, for he possesses an ability to be agreeable to anyone, whoever they may be. It is doubtful whether any of his acquaintances have ever seen the real Willoughby, for not only is he well liked by everyone, he possesses the ability to make everyone believe they know him intimately. 

In contrast, Colonel Brandon and Edward Ferrars, whose surface appearances are painted to be quite boring, are also safer, for both turn out to be equally steadfast in their private and public lives. 

Meanwhile, any sign of the real Willoughby is so well hidden that those who meet him once a year believe they have already gotten to know him. No one openly pries Willoughby for his secrets in the way they do with Brandon, for there is no evidence that he has anything private to hide. Altogether, Willoughby is so proficient at displays of false intimacy that his deceit extends even into relationships of real private emotion, such as his relationship with Marianne.

Austen shows in Marianne that to be publicly known is to be horribly vulnerable, for Marianne is one of the few characters whose public self is the same as the private. Because Marianne does not participate in public deceit, her private affairs don’t just become public, she is left unprotected without anything to hide behind. The entirety of her relationship with Willoughby, from its positive start to its painful end, is completely exposed. In contrast with those other secret engagements and private affections shown throughout the novel, there is very little about Marianne’s relationship with Willoughby that is private. The majority of their romance, even the very public humiliation that ends their relationship, happen under the eyes of others. Morgan writes that the role of polite lies is to offer a “public avowal of continued feelings and thoughts... It is a polite lie which promises truth”. The problem, of course, is that the promise Willoughby’s public actions make is the extent of it. The intimacies in which Marianne and Willoughby participate in public are not backed up by any private promises. Marianne’s mistake is to assume that Willoughby is who he publicly pretends to be. The mistake of those who are looking in on their relationship is the assumption that there is a private relationship backing up the public, namely, that an engagement has been privately agreed upon. 

There are also reverse examples of this throughout the narrative as various engagements are agreed upon which signal at affections that don’t actually exist. Morgan notes that “neither Willoughby’s engagement nor Edward’s reflects the state of their affections”. The public assumption is typically that one’s actions reflect the state of one’s mind and the affection of one’s heart. Yet, though this is certainly a comforting thought, it is rarely shown to be the case. People are far more complicated than that, and it is this that makes them unpredictable and difficult to know. R.F. Brissenden writes about this, saying “Austen’s wry insistence that absolute honesty in conversation would make ordinary intercourse impossible is amusing rather than horrifying”. It is by lying that others are spared the discomfort of truth, just as it is by lying that her characters are spared the discomfort of being publicly known. 

By allowing glimpses of her character’s contradictory nature, Austen shows that, when a character’s public and private lives don’t line up, there is usually something wrong, for it suggests that there is something that is painful or base enough to merit hiding. In the case of Willoughby, it is the selfishness of his true nature. For Elinor, it is the pain of loving a man who is engaged to another woman. For Brandon, it is the cruel fate of the first woman he loved and how little he could do to save her. 

 

For better or worse, Austen’s characters are rarely who they appear to be. Thus, the inaccuracy of their first impressions serves as an insight into how they wish to be seen rather than who they actually are. By complicating their first impressions, Austen provides insight into the contradictory nature of her characters, leading into the question of why exactly her characters wish to be seen this way and what their public personas say about their private motives. Brissenden writes about this process, describing how Austen introduces her characters by showing “how their (manner) strikes people on first acquaintance” only to ask within the following sentences “whether the appearance accurately reflects or expresses reality”.  

This is what Marianne fails to do and what Elinor is constantly attempting to find out. In this way, Marianne’s desire to see Willoughby as good says more about her than it does about Willoughby. Elinor’s need to hide her emotions speaks volumes about the vulnerability she feels. Colonel Brandon’s demeanour, which many think is boring, allows insight into his desire not to be publicly inspected. Similarly, the insistence of others that Lucy Steele is a sweet girl says more about Lucy’s need to be liked than her temperament, for Lucy is a character whom John Mullan describes as “a kind of monster”, something which is not sweet at all. 

The common assumption that Marianne represents sensibility while Elinor embodies good sense is merely Austen’s way of tempting further false first impressions, this time on the part of the reader. Ultimately, the point is not that each sister represents one or the other, but how their ability to be both sensible and sensitive complicates their lives, their ability to feel and to make choices. 

 

Despite all its concern with private and public behaviour, the narrative spends little time with people when they are alone, suggesting that it is not really in the private where its interest lies. Rather, Austen is concerned with what public pretences promise about the private. Solitude is usually observed from afar, and a person is put into private places only to be intruded upon by unwanted visitors.   

In many ways, Austen’s avoidance of private places serves to preserve their privateness, for the narrator consistently refuses to impinge on moments of intimacy. What goes on in private is usually implied through the gossip of outsiders or the unintentional intrusions of other characters into scenes of intimacy. Furthermore, intimacies of any kind are typically relayed by the narrator without any kind of indulgence, and they usually end quickly. Proposals of marriage are preserved by removing them from public view, omitting them from the narrative entirely. The intense emotions of those more private characters are likewise protected as characters constantly withdraw into solitude in order to dwell on their feelings. Even Elinor, the character that is followed most closely by the narrator, is allowed to step away and experience her emotions in private. Thus, after learning of Edward’s betrothal Elinor waits until after the Steeles have departed to “think and be wretched”, upon which the first volume abruptly ends, allowing Elinor privacy even from narrative intrusion. 

In this way, the narrator takes great care in offering just enough to suggest the contradiction of a character’s private and public self, giving a glimpse at the truth beneath the deception without allowing for a complete understanding of their real character. Austen, in short, does not care so much about the truth as she does about the process of obtaining that truth, for it is in the act of knowing that her real interest lies. 

In the end, Austen’s characters are not there to be known but to learn and to teach how to go about knowing. 

 

Although the unknowableness of Austen’s characters allows for them to be misunderstood by an inattentive reader, this does not seem to concern Austen in the least, for any reader who would dismiss her characters based on their surface appearances has failed to learn the lesson she is trying to show. 

Morgan writes that “the limited truth that learning mere facts can provide constantly remind the reader of how difficult it can be to...understand others without actually seeing into their minds and hearts”. In this way, Austen’s choice to tell the story largely through the eyes of Elinor makes sense. Elinor starts off the narrative already knowing one of the most important lessons about getting to know someone: that knowing takes time. Morgan writes that “judgment requires...being able to give oneself time. But human relations do not wait for judgments to be conclusive. They happen in the meantime”. 

It is in what Morgan refers to as “the meantime” that human relationships are formed, either to fall apart and fade away or stand the test of time and continue forming. Morgan concludes by saying that “(although) politeness is not an adequate expression of our feelings and thoughts... it leaves space and time for something still to be known”. 

In short, Morgan believes that Austen’s polite deceit functions as a promise. It is in its very inadequacy that its value lies, for it leaves space for something still to be known, for people to be more or less than their first impressions. While this allows for betrayal and the pain of being mistaken in someone, it also makes room for hope, for people to pleasantly surprise, or to be more than one thought they could be.

Sense and Sensibility ends with a feeling of incompleteness, suggesting that the process of knowing remains unfinished. The marriage of Marianne and Colonel Brandon, though built towards since their first meeting, is mentioned in passing as the story moves to its conclusion. Altogether, more time is spent in telling how Willoughby never stopped loving Marianne than in relating how Marianne came to love Brandon. This is because in many ways the Marianne of the beginning of the story is already gone, just as the Marianne that comes to love Brandon is one the reader never gets to know. Yet the very fact that the novel ends with marriage is a promise that knowing will continue. Edward, a character who throughout is barely known at all, will be known by Elinor, just as Brandon and Marianne will get to know one another. Knowing continues, and so it is never complete.   

In this way, Austen’s characters will always be unknowable, for, in the scope of a novel, the process of knowing ends when the story does. Thus, as Elinor and Marianne move on into love and a lifetime of knowing, the versions of them that have been briefly revealed by the narrator are already being left behind.

Looking for the Manx Cat

A Chase After a Symbolic Cat Which Appeared Briefly in Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own

Anyone that’s ever tried to catch a cat knows that they can be tricky creatures. Cats are beings of mischief. They are quick, and they are sly. They disappear into shadows and crannies like into fantastical rabbit holes. Furthermore, anyone who has ever spent an extended amount of time observing a cat might have noticed that they always give one the impression that they know something which no one else does. Perhaps it is the way that they blink at you, slow and steady like, completely self-satisfied in keeping their secrets to themselves. But, whatever may be said about the trickiness of realities cats, the cats which one meets in books are far trickier.

Anyone who’s ever encountered a fictional cat knows that, whatever it is that the cats of this world aren’t telling us, the fictional cat certainly won’t tell us either. Do not get me wrong, many fictional cats will swindle and tease you with their riddles, and I wouldn’t say that the fictional cat is a liar, but I don’t know if I’ve ever met a fictional cat that spoke a bland truth. In fact, I’m quite sure there wasn’t a single one of them that was not a riddler.

You’ve probably met the Cheshire Cat, and if you haven’t, I’m quite sure you’ve heard of him. But, if his reputation has somehow evaded you, I should explain that he is a most remarkable trickster. He knows more than he says, and yet never says what he knows. I could not name another who is quite so remarkable, though that has little to do with me not knowing of any others whose tricks and riddles exceed his and more to do with the fact that most other cats, at least the ones which I have encountered, do not have names.
The cat who appeared in Neil Gaiman’s Coraline certainly comes to mind, for he is the one that first remarked that cats do not need names simply because they have no use for them. He told me that “people have names… because you don’t know who you are. We know who we are, so we don’t need names”. And I must say, I quite agree with him.
The nameless cat in Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn is another trickster whose sole purpose is to confuse you. He, like the trickster from Gaiman’s Coraline, also fashionably neglected to introduce himself to me, saying only “I am what I am”, and “I would tell you what you want to know if I could… But I am a cat, and no cat anywhere ever gave anyone a straight answer”. 

It wasn’t until recently though that I encountered a more peculiar creature still; a creature that one might say is a riddle all on its own. Yes, fictional cats may be tricky, that much I know, but the symbolic cat might just be the trickiest trickster of them all.

The symbolic cat is in itself a peculiar creature, it is, as Virginia Woolf says, “quaint rather than beautiful” (A Room of One’s Own, 17). But what makes the symbolic cat so unusual is that we expect symbols to mean something. Yet I do not expect that I will decipher any meaning in our search for the Manx Cat. As I’ve already said, chasing a cat is tricky business. But chasing a symbolic cat may prove near impossible, for cats in books disappear between pages like cats in the real world disappear into shadows, and the Manx Cat has already managed to swindle us, for though he appeared briefly in the title of this essay, I have quite lost track of him since in my excursion after these other fictional tricksters, so let me get back to the point.

We are going to chase the Manx Cat. I first spotted him on page 15 of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, and so, if we are to find him, that is where we should begin. 

If I recall correctly, Virginia Woolf had just set the scene by remarking that “it is a curious fact that novelists have a way of making us believe that luncheon parties are invariably memorable for something very witty that was said,” (A Room of One’s Own, 13), which I find rather unusual, because the most curious event of this particular luncheon party was the arrival of the cat, (who did in fact not come to the luncheon party but stayed humbly outside on the lawn), and he didn’t say anything at all.
Woolf then goes on to mention all the things which novelists neglect to mention about the on-goings of luncheon parties, such as the soup and salmon that was eaten and the cigars that were smoked, as if this was of “no importance whatsoever” (A Room, 13). Indeed, the writers who failed to mention these details might not even have mentioned the uninvited guest who showed up outside the window.
Woolf had just remarked, most earnestly I’m sure, that all the members of the present luncheon party were going to heaven and exclaimed how right the world is with all its sweet rewards and trivial grudges and grievances and how admirable the friendship is between society and all of their kind (A Room, 14), when the uninvited guest makes his timely arrival.

Of course, the completely unimportant and previously unmentioned ashtray comes into play here, but had it not been there, had things, as Woolf says, “been a little different” she would never have spotted the tailless cat outside (A Room, 15)

He looks just as he did the last time I saw him here. Like before, he does not seem to notice his not having a tail, neither does he notice us watching him, though he is certainly aware of his having made his way once again into an essay, for there is an air of importance about him as he flicks his non-existent tail. Woolf watches him, and she cannot help but notice, as she did the last time, that “something seemed lacking, something seemed different” (A Room, 15).

In an effort to search for this missing thing, Woolf thinks “herself out of the room” (A Room, 15).  We follow her as she meanders through her thoughts into the past to another luncheon party which happened not so long ago. Though she remarks that at first glance everything about this luncheon party is different, everything is also very much the same (A Room, 15). The talk is the same, the room is the same. I imagine the attendees are eating soup and salmon and that the same ashtray sits idly on the coffee table waiting to be dumped.

Unfortunately, though, no one goes to dump the ash out of the window, and so, no matter how much we strain our necks, we will not be able to glance outside. We will never know whether or not there was a tailless cat outside the window. Though somehow, I have an inkling that the Manx Cat had little business there, for what could a tailless cat possibly want at a luncheon party that is so rich and nostalgic; a luncheon party in which nothing is lacking and men and woman hum love poems to each other. I think, if there was a cat outside this window, it probably had a tail.

I have not been to many luncheon parties and so I cannot be sure just how inappropriate Woolf’s random outburst of laughter was. But I cannot imagine that the other attendees understood the joke when Woolf, in an effort to explain her laughter, points at the Manx Cat outside. I must admit, I am not entirely sure I understand the joke myself.

The Manx Cat leaves soon after, for the luncheon party ends, and as it slips away, without so much as an exit, the only thing which we have left to ponder is how strange it is “what a difference a tail makes” (A Room, 17). Though it is rather puzzling that it should show up here, for Woolf does mention that the tailless cat is “rarer than one thinks” (A Room, 17), and so the odds of us sighting it again are rather low. 

The Manx Cat disappears for a long time after that. He might have appeared briefly on page 56 if only to look disapprovingly at the notion that anyone could lock a cat out of anywhere, even heaven.

I followed Virginia on her wanderings the last time I was here, and as I followed her, I kept my eyes open, watching ever for the Manx Cat. And, as I searched for the Manx Cat, Virginia searched high and low for her missing thing. She went searching in gardens and libraries and museums; she searched through the centuries of time, through natural histories and whimsical ones; she searched through the scope of a looking glass and at the point of her pencil; she peered into secluded rooms and wandered empty streets and graveyards, all in search of a flicker of a shadow; a shadow that looks somehow very much like the queer form of a cat.

Eventually, she does what any intelligent person would do when looking for a lost symbolic thing, like a missing cat that never was and may never be again; she goes to the library and, picking up books that aren’t there, she looks for things that are missing. Leafing through these imaginary books, she turns “page after page…feeling that a crisis was approaching” (A Room, 118).

The crisis comes in the form of two people on a beach, a man and a woman who walk towards each other under the sun. In the fanciful world they may have been named Phoebe and Alan. In a more nostalgic world they may have been two poets named Alfred Lord Tennyson and Christina Rossetti. Whatever their names were, we will never know for certain because neither of them bothers to introduce themselves; in fact, neither of them says a word. But the Manx Cat greets you with the nod of his head, for he too sits there on the beach, and he turns to you grinning, very much the image of the Cheshire Cat. And although he does not speak, there is something in his grin that suggests a remark, a sly whisper perhaps –something like “Hello, I am the Manx Cat.”

But, on second thought, I cannot be too sure that that is what the Manx Cat would have said. For as the two people part ways without so much as a goodbye, and their obstructive shadows form into blockades, the Manx Cat blinks its cunning eye, and I could have sworn I might have heard him whisper something like… “Hello reader, I am something missing. I am something wrong.”

But then again, I cannot be sure, for the waves were crashing and the gulls were calling, and the pages flipped, and then the cat was gone.

As I walked along the beach nearing the end of the essay and heard the traffic roar, as Mary Beton ceased to speak, and the sun on the beach peered into the common sitting room, all I was left with was the shadow of a notion that, if I were to write an essay about women and fiction, I would go to another luncheon party. I would look out of the window, and I would not see so much as the solitary shadow of a cat. But there, out on the lawn where the ashes have blown, a cat’s tail hangs from a tree or a hedge, ragged and battered by the wind. But where the cat went, I wouldn’t know.