ELIZABETH DALTON
57
around her neck. "
If
Anne can 't get free, surely Walter's hands are
fas–
tOled
around her neck, not "unfastened." And if the child pulls her head
down, he must be in front of her rather than on her back. Moreover,
cause and effect are reversed: here the bending of the head seems to cause
the hands to be fastened rather than vice versa.
It
is difficult to visualize
this scene if the language is taken literally. The confusion, so unusual in
Jane Austen's work, may be simply an error that would have been cor–
rected had the author lived long enough to do her usual revision; but
from the psychoanalytic point of view, such errors are not without sig–
nificance.
This is the most powerful physical experience Anne has in the novel,
involving distress, loss of control, even violence, and it is caused by hav–
ing a child attached to her body - until he is "borne away." The lan–
guage and imagery, the confusion and intense emotion, suggest that the
scene may be a disguised representation of a child being born as well as
"borne away." Moreover, as dream language often reverses cause and ef–
fect and conflates opposites, perhaps Wentworth's unfastening of the lit–
tle boy from Anne's back represents also the act by which the child is
first fastened to the woman's body. Thus this scene may contain in con–
densed and symbolic form the whole sequence - intercourse, pregnancy,
parturition - whose dangers, both real and fantasied, are hinted at in the
condition of many of the female characters, including the dead mother
of whom Anne is almost the double.
This episode, like the scene in the hedgerow and that on the Cobb
at Lyme, is a turning point for Anne and for her relationship with
Wentworth.
In
these scenes, a sexual fear seems to be expressed and to
some degree worked through. Here a child has fallen (perhaps the dan–
gerous drop of birth), and the woman caring for him is encumbered by
still another, younger child. As in Louisa's fall, unruly instincts are ex–
pressed; both scenes suggest a fear of the perils and responsibilities of sex
and childbearing, and yet both end on a rather hopeful note, with
Wentworth carrying someone off in his arms. Freud asserts that the fan–
tasy of rescue has the unconscious meaning of giving someone or being
given a child.
Both of these scenes turn towards Eros, hope, and life and away
from grief, depression, and death. Throughout the text, the threads of
life and death are interwoven, and death may provide the context for
the discovery of a new love or the revival of an old one. Wentworth is
invited to the Musgroves' home, where he sees Anne again, because he
was captain of the vessel on which the deceased Dick Musgrove once
served. Captain Benwick's grief over his dead fiancee leads to his brief
infatuation with Anne. And the death of Mr. Elliot's wife has left him
