Both partisans and skeptics of Jane Austen's Emma will remember Harriet Smith, the young woman who becomes the object of Emma Woodhouse's officious matchmaking. Harriet's ancestry is explained by JA; she is "the natural daughter of someone" -- that is, she is an illegitimate child of obscure origin. Harriet's patronizing friend Emma imagines, without a shred of evidence, that the poor dear must be the daughter of nobility. She therefore interferes with Harriet's romantic prospects, first by discouraging an "attachment" to an upright and capable farmer -- and then by promoting relationships which we readers are taught to believe should be beyond Harriet's aspiration. JA, for all her satirical spirit, is not one to challenge the rigid class distinctions of rural Highbury.
But then, at the very end of the novel, other options having led to disaster, Harriet and farmer Robert Martin are allowed to marry. Almost as a coda -- an afterthought -- Austen reveals to us that
Harriet''s parentage became known. She proved to be the daughter of a tradesman, rich enough to afford her the comfortable maintenance which had ever been her's and decent enough to have always wished for concealment, -- such was the blood of gentility which Emma had formerly been so ready to vouch -- It was likely to be as untainted, perhaps, as the blood of many a gentleman, but what a connexion had she been preparing for Mr. Knightley -- the Churchills -- or even for Mr. Elton! The stain of illegitimacy, unbleached by nobility or wealth, would have been a stain indeed.
It's a curious and I think distressing revelation.
There's an unpleasant sneer in the dismissive phrase, "daughter of a tradesman" where "merchant" or even "prosperous merchant" might have been more generous. Moreover, the pregnant phrase "illegitimacy unbleached by nobility or wealth" neatly encapsulates the hypocrisy of a society that can condone a rich bastard but condemn a poor one.
But what is most bothersome about the paragraph is what it omits. Although JA pull back the curtain on Harriet Smith's father, she does not bother herself to reveal anything about Harriet Smith's mother. Surely even an illegitimate child had one, and surely that mother, in addition to her pregnancy and childbirth, had a story of her own -- both before and after she surrendered her child. If Harriet's father can be revealed (even though he is not named), why then, why not her mother? What is implied by this omission? That the mother doesn't matter -- she was merely "someone's" mistress or concubine. Or perhaps a prostitute. That Harriet's status in society has nothing to do with her inconsequential mother.
Or perhaps that JA, raveling the loose ends of her story, preferred to avoid a distracting complication.
My own theory is that JA just simply forgot. Because fathers matter a great deal and mothers matter much less, it's not of any moment who was Harriet's mother. In psychological terms, JA is guilty of a perfect parapraxis -- and unconscious forgetting, canceling, or, in modern jargon, an erasing. Harriet's mother is not even erased -- she's utterly non-existent.
Sometimes what is not represented can be as revealing as what is included.
Harriet’s mother would have died probably in childbirth.
I think you read Austen wrongly. The whole paragraph,as is notable in Austen’s novels, is heavily ironic’illegimacy unbleached by wealth or nobility’ is a condemnation of her society that she is wittily pointing out
Posted by: Ve | June 16, 2024 at 11:10 AM