PARTISAN REVIEW
be more agreeable, speak louder
&
look Impudenter ;-and is it not
a fine Character of which Modesty is the only defect?-I have no
doubt that he will get more lively
&
more like yourselves as he is more
with you;-he will catch your ways if he belongs to you. And as to
there being any objection from his
Goodness,
from the danger of his
becoming Evangelical, I cannot admit
that.
I am by no means convinced
that we ought not all to be Evangelicals,
&
am at least persuaded that
they who are so from Reason and Feeling, must be happiest
&
safest.
Do not be frightened from the connection by your Brothers having most
wit. Wisdom is better than Wit,
&
in the long run will certainly have
the laugh on her side;
&
don't be frightened by the idea of his acting
more strictly up to the precepts of the New Testament than others.
The great charm, the charming greatness, of
Pride and Prejudice
is that it permits us to conceive of morality as style. The relation of
Elizabeth Bennet to Darcy is real, is intense, but it expresses itself
as a conflict and reconciliation of styles: a formal rhetoric, tradi–
tional and rigorous, must find a way to accommodate a female
vivacity, which in turn must recognize the principled demands of the
strict male syntax. The high moral import of the novel lies in the
fact that the union of styles is accomplished without injury to either
lover.
Jane Austen knew that
Pride and Prejudice
was a unique suc–
cess and she triumphed in it. Yet as she listens to her mother reading
aloud from the printed book, she becomes conscious of her dissatis–
faction with one element of the work.
It
is the element that is likely
to delight us most, the purity and absoluteness of its particular style.
The work [she writes in a letter to her sister Cassandra] is rather
too light, and bright, and sparkling; it wants to be stretched out here
and there with a long chapter of sense,
if
it could be had; if not, of
solemn specious nonsense, about something unconnected with the story;
an essay on writing, a critique on Walter Scott, or the history of
Buonaparte, or anything that would form a contrast, and bring the
reader with increased delight to the playfulness and epigrammatism of
the general style.
Her overt concern, of course, is for the increase of the effect of the
"general style" itself, which she believes would have been heightened
by contrast. But she has in mind something beyond this technical
improvement-her sense that the novel is a genre that must not try for
