Guilty of Duplicity

I’m intrigued by the development of Jane Austen as a writer and how she came to conjure the rogues, scoundrels, and guileful creatures that populate her novels. Did she base those characters on personal experience, local gossip, characters in books, or purely from her imagination?

PHOTOGRAPH BY BERNARD WALSH / AMAZON STUDIOS / ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS

To be sure, every good story requires heroes and heroines to overcome obstacles which can include lies, treachery, betrayal, duplicity, or any manner of mistreatment that challenge their course to finding true happiness. Jane Austen populates her novels with characters who are often both attractive and duplicitous. As evidence let’s examine each of her six novels and even throw in the epistolary Lady Susan for good measure.

Mansfield Park introduces us to brother and sister Henry and Mary Crawford. One could consider them merely charming and attractive at the outset of the novel, but Henry’s open flirtation with Maria Bertram early in the novel, followed by his unwelcomed pursuit of innocent Fanny, and finally the reputation destroying affair with Maria, now Mrs. Rushworth, revealed the character flaws that Fanny had recognized all along. The man was not to be trusted.

For her part, Mary Crawford had a rather more modern view of social mores in her assessment of the world, the lifestyle she hoped to attain, and her willingness to overlook the foibles of her brother. She admired Edmund but was reluctant to live the quiet life of a clergyman’s wife and hoped to guide him towards choosing a more sophisticated lifestyle. She would remake the man if she could, to fit into the society she admired and, if only his older brother would succumb to an illness, all would be well for Mary. Fanny recognized this from the start and mistrusted the influence Mary appeared to have over Edmund, as well as her attempted manipulation of Fanny. I don’t include Mrs. Norris because her disabuse of Fanny was completely up front and unfiltered; she never hid her feelings or pretended otherwise.

John Willoughby and Lucy Steele are the standouts in Sense and Sensibility for duplicity although Willoughby’s faults were far more egregious than those of the young lady. He knew he had seduced and abandoned one young girl when he turned his attentions and appeared to actively court Marianne Dashwood before his aunt interceded and sent him back to London, leaving Marianne with a wounded heart. He went on to break her heart completely when he chose to get engaged to a wealthy heiress and returned all her letters and a lock of hair.

I’ve always viewed Lucy Steele as a manipulative social climber who took advantage of an immature Edward Ferrars by entering a secret engagement with him when he was a young student of her uncle’s. When she and her sister arrive at Barton Park, she immediately ingratiates herself to Lady Middleton by fawning over the children and then draws Elinor into a conspiracy to keep secret her engagement to Edward. This intrigue was surely based on the knowledge that Elinor and Edward were already acquainted and Lucy wished to quash any hopes Elinor might have had about the prospect of a relationship. Even her eventual conquest of Robert Ferrars was based on manipulation, once he was named heir after his brother was disowned. Edward meant to honor that early secret engagement despite his feelings for Elinor. Lucy is consistently self-serving and disingenuous; her marriage to Robert was a personal triumph of subtle yet unrelenting maneuvering.

Some might ask why Mrs. John Dashwood didn’t make this list, but I believed she was very transparent about her feelings towards her husband’s stepmother and half-sisters. She concealed nothing of her ambition and greed, while Edward Ferrars must be forgiven for his youthful indiscretion and always honorable intentions.

Persuasion introduces us to Mr. William Elliot and Mrs. Clay, two of my favorites for duplicitous behavior. Clever Mrs. Clay makes an art of pleasing and there are no bounds to her efforts at flattery which perfectly suits the vain Sir Walter Elliot and his equally vain oldest daughter, Elizabeth. She insinuates her way into the lives of people far above her station with designs on cementing a more permanent connection. The intelligence from a friend in Bath about the presence of Mrs. Clay compels Mr. Elliot to make his way there to observe the situation and he ingratiates himself once again into the graces of Sir Walter, as the heir-apparent to the estate. He is attentive to the possibility that a liaison between Mrs. Clay and Sir Walter could produce a new heir and interfere with the prospects for his inheritance. He wasn’t so sure a protruding tooth, freckles, and a clumsy wrist would deter a potential match between a scheming woman and a vain man. For his part, Mr. Elliot plays both sides in his effort to win over Anne and cement his legacy through a potential marriage, while he also diverts Mrs. Clay both by spying on her behavior in Bath and later taking her under his protection in London. Either way he made sure to protect his self-interests and inheritance.

The duplicitous characters in Emma are of a far more innocent nature. Frank Churchill’s secret engagement to Jane Fairfax creates an undercurrent of intrigue in the novel to keep us guessing about his intentions but while it is deceitful to both his adoptive family and the inhabitants of Highbury, there was no great harm done to anyone and a happy ending was had by all. Who can blame Jane Fairfax for falling in love with Frank and hoping to escape a life of employment as a governess? None of the characters in the story would wish to change the outcome.

There is only one true villain in Northanger Abbey although it could be argued that General Tilney wasn’t necessarily duplicitous by nature, but merely a bad-tempered man who was angry at his own mistake in assuming that Catherine Moreland had wealth and connections and felt compelled to abruptly extricate her from his family domicile after an extended stay. He had deceived himself at Catherine’s expense, although, in the end, she does get her heart’s desire, her beloved Henry Tilney.

Of all Jane Austen’s villainous characters, George Wickham in Pride and Prejudice is a true standout. Early on he convincingly lies about his extended relationship with Mr. Darcy when he is first introduced to Elizabeth Bennet, thereby cementing her already established distain for a person she considers to be proud and arrogant. His failed effort to seduce Darcy’s young and innocent sister, Georgianna, is followed by the successful seduction of Elizabeth’s youngest sister, Lydia. That Wickham is eventually prevailed upon by Darcy to marry her is indicative of his dissolute values as he had to be paid handsomely by Darcy who engineered the match, saved the Bennet family name, expedited the engagement of Bingley to Jane, and won the hand of Elizabeth. Wickham’s pretenses throughout the novel place him at the top of the list for duplicity.

There is only one character to surpass him for unremitting subterfuge, deceit, and duplicity, Lady Susan. I remember being shocked and horrified by her unrelenting selfishness and scheming the first time I read the story. Her lack of even the slightest modicum of motherly love I found unfathomable. Who could conceive such a creature? The only person with whom she was completely honest was her dear friend, Mrs. Alicia Johnson. Everyone else in her purview were pawns to be played to her advantage.

Jane Austen conceived them all and I wonder at the imagination that envisioned them and gave them voice. Surely, they suited the needs of her stories but was there any personal experience that created a core persona upon which to build? Seduced and abandoned young ladies are an age-old story and gossip exists in every era to spread the news. Selfish, self-absorbed, conniving people can be identified in any society and Jane witnessed life in a variety of social circles. Yet I wrestle with the question of whether she simply imaginatively conjured them or based her characters on people and situations she knew and then revealed portions of those personalities in her novels. To be sure we’ll never know but it’s very diverting to consider.

I also find myself questioning my own underlying inclinations when writing about Jane Austen’s characters in my fan fiction efforts. When I wrote The Matchmaker of Pemberley, An Amorous Sequel to All Jane Austen’s Novels, I found it far more entertaining and significantly easier to write dialog for the miscreants in my novel than it was to find words for pretentious creatures like pious Mary Bennet who proselytized her views and elevated her talents far more than she deserved. Did Jane relish writing about the wicked side of her characters more than the good-natured ones or simply need them as plot devices? We do know from her letters that she could be cruel and even cutting and she was certainly known to have a wicked sense of humor. I often wonder if so many of her letters were destroyed because they revealed a little too much of that acerbic side that her relations wished to remain hidden. We all have a good angel and a bad angel on our shoulders, but they preferred us to perceive Jane as the good angel when in reality she was a little of both.