ESC: English Studies in Canada

“ S U B S T A N C E A N D S H A D O W ” : C O N V E N T I O N S O F T H E M A R R I A G E M A R K E T I N N O R T H A N G E R A B B E Y MARIAN FOWLER York University W h e n Jane Austen refers in Emma to Mr. Elton, on the eve of his marriage to Augusta Hawkins with £10,000 portion, as having “caught both substance and shadow — both fortune and affection,” she is echoing William Kenrick’s The Whole Duty of Woman, first published in 1753 and reprinted many times throughout the century. Kenrick speaks of the “matrimonial vow” as a “com­ mercial contract without affection : it is the shadow of marriage and not the substance thereof.” 1 The Whole Duty of Woman belongs to that genre of literature known as courtesy books which carefully prescribed the expected behaviour, both moral and social, for young ladies of the upper classes. Throughout the eighteenth century they were very much read, and their ad­ vice carefully followed. Like other young ladies of her day, Jane Austen was well-versed in courtesy-book literature.2In Fanny Price, the heroine of Mans­ field. Park, Jane Austen has drawn the portrait of a courtesy-book girl par excellence, and her condemnation of private theatricals echoes contemporary Evangelical courtesy-book writers.3Fourteen years before she wrote M ansf eld Park, when she was working on Nothanger Abbey during 1798 and 1799, Jane Austen was already showing signs of that typical courtesy-book moral earnestness and didacticism which were to become even stronger in her later novel. Many critics of Northanger Abbey to date have viewed the novel as a youthful writer’s jeu d’esprit, a romping burlesque of the conventions of Gothic and sentimental fiction. But Northanger Abbey is more than that: it shows Jane Austen’s serious side as well. If we examine Northanger Abbey in a socio-historical rather than a literary context, we become aware that it is cogent criticism of the customs, values, and manipulators of the marriage market of her day. In Northanger Abbey Jane Austen’s didactic intent is strong and her satire aimed as much, or more, at criticizing and correcting marriage mart abuses as literary ones. Before we can assess Jane Austen’s attitudes, we need to know just what the conventions of courtship and marriage were in her day. In this essay, the ideology of the marriage market among the landed gentry and mercantile class will be established by examining courtesy books, and periodicals containE n g lish Studies in C anada, vi, 3, Fall 1980 ing typical courtesy-book advice, and corresponding social norms by a reading of memoirs, diaries, and letters. Although the years of greatest concern to us are those of Jane Austen’s lifetime (1775-1817), we shall examine conduct books, periodicals, diaries, and letters covering the years 1690-1817, in order to show that certain conventions still flourishing in her time were deeply rooted in the past and that pressures to conform were therefore correspond­ ingly strong. To round out the picture, we shall also investigate the attitudes to courtship and marriage of a sampling of novelists writing during Jane Austen’s lifetime, where it seems expedient to do so. A reading of memoirs, journals and letters of the eighteenth century reveals that among the English landed gentry and mercantile class mercenary con­ siderations in matrimonial matters very often outweighed all others. Because of the convention barring an estate-owner from seeking remunerative employ­ ment (if he was an eldest son) or the legal impediments to selling part of the estate (if it was entailed, as it frequently was), the most common way for a land-owner to acquire more capital was through marriage, thus enabling him to buy more land and increase his rent-roll and annual income. When he married, the young man in question obtained his bride’s “portion,” payable to him in several instalments after the marriage.4 The amount of portion to...