Jane Austen, or, The secret of style

116 Pages·2003·2.373 MB·English

by  D.A Miller

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Jane Austen, or The Secret of Style
D. A.]vfiLLER
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PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Princeton and Oxford
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Copyright© 2003 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,
3 Market Place, Woodstock. Oxfordshire OX20 1S Y
All Rights Reserved
liBRARY OF CoNGI
Miller, D. A., 1948-
Jane Austen, or Th·
p. em.
Includes bibliogra1
ISBN 0-691-09075-0 (alk. paper)
1. Austen. Jan~ 177>-1817-Criticism and interpretation.
2. Women and literature-England-History-19th century.
3. Love stories, English-History and criticism. 4. Man-woman
relationships in literature. 5. Mate selection in literature.
6. Single women in literature. 7. Young women in literature.
8. Courtship in literature. 9. Marriage in literature.
I. Title: Jane Austen. II. Title: Secret of style. Ill. Title.
PR4037.M55 2003
813'.7-<lc21 2002193067
British Library Cataloging·in-Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Minion
Printed on acid-free paper. oo
www.pupress.princeton.edu
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
Lamont Ubr.y
Harvard Univwsity
JUN 2 8 2004
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I have no other resource but this irony:
to speak of the "nothing to say."
ROLAND BARTHES
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Contents
0 N E Secret Love 1
TWO No One Is Alone 31
THREE Broken Art 57
Afterimage 93
Notes 95

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Jane Austen, or The Secret of Style
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0 N E Secret Love
I
All of us who read Jane Austen early-say, at eleven or twelve,
the age when she began writing-were lost to the siren lure of
her voice. "How nicely you talk; I love to hear you. You under
stand every thing."' Yet whereas Emma's talk merely held Har
riet with the charm of a perscn, what Austen's writing chan
neled for us was the considerably more exciting appeal of no
longer being one. Here was a truly out-of-body voice, so stir
ringly free of what it abhorred as "particularity" or "singularity"
that it seemed to come from no enunciator at all. It scanted
person even in the linguistic sense, rarely acknowledging, by
saying I, its origination in an authoring self, or, by saying you,
its reception by any other. We rapt, admiring readers might feel
we were only eavesdropping on delightful productions intended
for nobody in particular. And in the other constituents of per
son-not just body, but psyche, history, social position-the
voice was also deficient, so much so that its overall impersonal
ity determined a narrative authority and a beauty of expression
both without equal. The former, bare of personal specifications
that might situate and hence subvert it, rose to absoluteness;
while the latter, likewise emptied of self, achieved classic self-